Marian University receives $29M gift for medical school

Marian University

Marian University in Indianapolis has received a $29 million donation from Julie Wood—on behalf of the Tom & Julie Wood Family Foundation—to support the university’s College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The donation, which is the largest individual gift in Marian’s history, was announced Sunday during the school’s annual whitecoat ceremony.

The university said in recognition of the gift, the medical school will be named the Tom and Julie Wood College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Tom Wood was a prominent car dealer who died in 2010 due to lung cancer. Marian President Dan Elsener said the university’s relationship with the Wood family began about four years ago in an effort to ensure students of all economic backgrounds had access to quality education, particularly in the field of health care.

“The Tom and Julie Wood Foundation, through Julie Wood’s goodness, started investing in health care camps and ensure that students of all economic backgrounds could be involved, and then once they got involved through the summers, they had scholarships to attend Marian University,” Elsener said. “That was our first interest with them.”

Elsener said after that partnership began, the foundation expressed interest in making a gift to help address the doctor shortage both in Indiana and neighboring states.

The $29 million gift, Marian said, will “significantly contribute” to the school in several key areas, including facility enhancements at the Michael A. Evans Center for Health Sciences on the Indianapolis campus.

It will also establish endowed scholarships for primary care physicians looking to practice in Indiana, especially those from middle- and low-income backgrounds.

“This last year, we had over 5,000 applicants for 160 seats in our medical school, and a lot of them want to be primary care physicians,” Elsener said. “Seventy-three percent of the students were admitted from the state of Indiana. We want to make sure the students that are highly talented in Indiana can go to an Indiana medical school and serve in Indiana, because we have a shortage which causes quality problems, expense problems and health care problems for the state.”

The gift will also support endowed faculty positions to bolster the College of Osteopathic Medicine, as well as the expansion of clinical rotations and the development of new clinical sites for students, the university said.

Julie Wood said in written remarks that the Wood family has great admiration for Marian’s commitment to recruit and educate physicians for the state.

“We believe in the mission of the school and its commitment to training compassionate and skilled healthcare professionals,” Wood said. “We hope this gift will enhance the facilities and resources available to students and ensure that Indiana continues to benefit from dedicated primary care physicians. My late husband, Tom, would be very proud knowing that our resources are being invested with an institution like Marian University who shares our commitment to central Indiana and enhancing the community that has done so much for our family.”

The Wood College of Osteopathic Medicine celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2013. Marian said in 2024, 40% of the graduating class matched with residencies in Indiana, with nearly 85% of those students participating in areas with a known physician shortage, including primary care, emergency medicine, psychiatry, and general surgery.

Elsener said the donation from the Wood family will serve as an anchor gift for further expansion, details of which will be announced this fall. The long-term goal for the university is to further the original mission of the medical school.

“We want to build off that tradition [of] excellent scientific education in pre med and medical school, excellent clinical partners with Ascension, Community Health, and many other hospitals,” he said. “Then, we think that medical school class with the number of applications we get should expand to 180 positions. We want to deepen the connection between faith and healing, so the doctors serve with a particularly great passion, understanding commitment to the poor and those that are vulnerable and more disenfranchised by the entire system. It’s part of our mission.”

He said with investments like that from the Wood family, the university can make additional personnel hires, provide financial support, and build a pipeline of talented students from all backgrounds “so they can become outstanding, compassionate, mission driven, physicians, nurses and other health care professionals in this city, state and beyond.”

The gift is the latest from the Wood family, which has supported health care initiatives in central Indiana for many years. In March, Julie Wood provided a $20 million gift to Indiana University to establish the Tom and Julie Wood Center for Lung Cancer Research.

IU also received a $4.5 million gift from the Wood Family Foundation in November 2023 to fund a mobile lung cancer screening program at IU Health.

Also in March of this year, Julie Wood gave $5 million to the Community Health Network Foundation to endow Community Fairbanks Recovery Center’s Recovery Housing program in Indianapolis.