NEW ORLEANS — A longtime donor who has given more than $160 million to Tulane University is the new namesake of the expanding 112-year-old university. school of public healthTulane officials announced Wednesday.
The amount of Celia Scott Weatherhead’s latest gift has not been revealed, but school officials have indicated that it will help transform the institution into one of the best in the world. Weatherhead is a 1965 graduate of Tulane’s Newcomb College.
The university said the gifts she and her late husband Albert have made in support over several decades constitute the largest amount in the school’s history.
The school also said a new gift from Weatherhead will help expand the school’s downtown campus in New Orleans and increase research funding, with the goal of establishing itself as the first school of its kind in the United States is one of the first in the world.
Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine was established in 1912. Its research and educational fields include biostatistics, maternal and child health, epidemiology, nutrition, health policy, clinical research, environmental health sciences and violence prevention,
“Her gift is a real game changer,” said Thomas LaVeist, dean of what is now Tulane’s Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “It will further advance research on the most devastating diseases and the most troubling and complex problems of our time. It will provide generations of students with the skills and knowledge they need to help heal our world.”
Weatherhead is a past member of Tulane’s main governing body and currently serves on the Public Health Dean’s Advisory Council, the school’s advisory board.