We continue to be grateful and amazed by what has been made possible at UT Southwestern over the last year through the support of our community.

We saw the successful opening of our RedBird campus in Southwest Dallas, welcomed our first patients to the new Cancer Care Outpatient Building, and completed the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Biomedical Research Building where breakthroughs in brain science are already underway. The Texas Instruments Biomedical Engineering and Sciences Building is scheduled to open this fall, and we broke ground on the Texas Behavioral Health Center at UT Southwestern, slated to welcome patients in 2025. We continue to lay the groundwork to welcome our first class of Master of Public Health students this fall at our new Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health, with classes for Ph.D. students to begin fall of 2024.

These projects further UT Southwestern’s mission “to promote health and a healthy society that enables achievement of full human potential.” In partnership with our donors, we are focused on maintaining our exceptional clinical care, renowned research, and commitment to training the next generation of physicians, scientists, and health professionals.

To help ensure we can continue to deliver on this mission well into the future, we have undertaken a review of our endowment-level minimums, some of which have remained unchanged since 1988. In the nearly 35 years since these were last set, UT Southwestern’s endowment levels have progressively lagged behind many institutions across the state and our peer institutions nationwide. An endowed chair at UT Southwestern, for example, is currently set at a minimum of $500,000. In contrast, endowed chairs average a minimum of $1,500,000 among other state university systems here in Texas, and anywhere from $2,000,000 to $4,000,000 at comparable academic medical centers across the country. Simply put, our endowment thresholds have not kept pace with our institutional needs and priorities, particularly in the area of chairs and professorships. Most importantly, as a result, the impact of the payouts from endowments in helping us recruit and retain faculty has steadily declined.

After extensive study and discussion, we have decided to raise minimums for new endowments, including upgrades to existing endowment funds, effective June 1. Below, please find information on these new levels. These new minimums will not apply to commitments already in place or new gifts and pledges for endowments made by May 31, 2023. If you have questions, our development team would be happy to assist you and can be reached by calling 214-648-2344 or emailing giving@utsouthwestern.edu.