Emory gets $261 million gift

<p>In one of the largest financial gifts in the history of U.S. higher education, the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation is giving $261.5 million to Atlanta's Emory University.</p><p>Emory plans to use $240 million of the money to replace two large medical buildings and for the modernization of other outpatient services.</p><p>About $9 million is to go for the renovation of a health services administration building, and $12.5 million is to be spent on creating a fund for initiatives related to the advancement of Emory's strategic plan.</p><p>The gift was announced Thursday at a meeting of the university's board of trustees.</p><p>"We are excited and deeply gratified by the confidence in Emory's future expressed by this gift from the Woodruff Foundation," said President James Wagner, in a prepared statement.</p><p>Robert Woodruff, the late leader of Coca-Cola, was a long-time benefactor of Emory. In 1979, he and his brother George Woodruff gave Emory the then-record sum of $105 million, the first nine-figure gift to an institution of higher education.</p><p>In 1996, the Woodruff Foundation gave Emory $295 million for the endowment of a foundation whose proceeds specifically benefit the university's Woodruff Health Sciences Center.</p><p>The 1996 and 2006 gist to Emory both rank in the top 10 given to any institution of higher education in the last 40 years, according to a database kept by the Chronicle of Higher Education.</p><p>Emory is planning outpatient care improvements that may cost $400 million or more.</p><p>"This gives us the juice to move this process forward to reality," with construction potentially completed within five years, said Michael Johns, Emory's executive vice president for health affairs.</p>

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