Mudd Fund Provides $2.7 Million For New Medical School Building

The Medical School announced yesterday that it will build a new classroom building-its first since 1906-with the help of a $2,750,000 challenge grant from the Seeley G. Mudd Fund of Los Angeles.

The new building will open up possibilities for extremely important developments in Med School admissions and curriculum, according to Dr. Robert H. Ebert, dean of the Med School.

"We are truly indebted to those individuals who have the foresight to realize that changes in the pattern of medical education as well as increases in enrollment, must be necessarily preceded by the addition of facilities in which teaching takes place," Ebert said.

"When the funds are in hand, and the building is completed, the Harvard Medical School will be able to move ahead with the formulation of plans for an increasingly flexible medical curriculum, the use of smaller teaching groups, and for an augmented student body," he said.

The building will be named Seeley G. Mudd Building in honor of the late Seeley G. Mudd of Los Angeles, who graduated from the Med School in 1924 cum laude.

The building as planned now is expected to contain approximately 90,000 square feet of floor space, and will cost $5.5 million. It will house seminar rooms, classrooms, and teaching laboratories. According to Ebert, the new building should be completed by 1974.

The Mudd Building will be erected on ground in the Med School quadrangle now occupied by a parking lot, thus avoiding expansion into nearby Roxbury.

Regarding the rest of the funds necessary for the completion of the building, Ebert said, "Now we must turn to both the public and private sectors of our nation-the Federal government, and other foundations, business, industry and private donors for the funds necessary to match this challenge grant."

Harvard will have until December 31, 1972, to raise the matching capital.

Mudd Fund

The Seeley G. Mudd Fund was established by Mudd's will, to provide buildings at leading, privately endowed universities and colleges.

Mudd, after leaving Harvard, served for two years as an intern at Massachusetts General Hospital, and was later a Dalton Scholar and a resident physician in cardiology there.

His great interest was education. He was a trustee of Stanford University, Pomona College, California Institute of Technology, the University of Southern California and the Carnegie Institution of Washington.