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$25 M Donation Helps KU Proceed With Building New Health Education Building

The University of Kansas Medical Center has received a $25 million donation from the Hall Family Foundation that will help build a new health education building.

Fred Logan, chairman of the Kansas Board of Regents, called the building the regents' top educational priority and said he couldn't thank the foundation enough for the donation. Medical center officials said that outdated classrooms and lecture halls threatened the center's accreditation.

The new $75 million building at the Kansas City, Kan., campus will allow the medical center to train about 25 more students in modern classrooms that take students out of large lecture halls and put them in smaller problem-solving teams.

The medical center faced resistance in this year's legislative session to its requests for state aid to construct the building. The university had hoped to receive $30 million in state-issued bonds, along with about $26 million that the state received when the federal government refunded Social Security and Medicare taxes that medical schools had paid on stipends given to medical residents. Lawmakers at first appropriated just $1 million to begin planning the facility before approving $25 million in bonds last month for construction. The university will provide $15 million in funding and the remaining $10 million will be raised by the KU Endowment.

The new building, slated for opening in the fall of 2017, will provide technical support to Kansas medical school campuses in Wichita and Salina, allowing them to also increase enrollment. 

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