McNair $100M gift provides impetus for medical advances, cures, collaborations
By Ruth SoRelle, M.P.H.
The second week in September was a good one for community and business leaders Robert and Janice McNair. The Houston Texans won against the Kansas City Chiefs. The first-round draft pick Mario Williams of the Texans was named Associated Press NFL Player-of-the-Week.
And they struck a major blow against diseases that kill and injure with a $100 million gift to Baylor College of Medicine to recruit science "stars" who can make much needed discoveries in the areas of breast and pancreatic cancer, juvenile diabetes and neuroscience. The McNair Scholars are a dream that the couple want to share with the world. Read more about the McNair Scholars announcement.
"Intellect is the engine," said McNair, owner of the Texans and a BCM board member. "We just think perhaps that this will provide some additional impetus to move along discoveries. Janice and I are excited to be a part of this whole effort, and we are looking forward to producing many medical advances and discoveries that will lead to cures."
Attracting the best
The plan is to provide funding that will enable BCM to attract two such scientists each year, enabling them to jump-start their research.
"We developed this program, which we think will enable Baylor to attract additional stars – we have great stars now – but additional stars in these fields of discovery." McNair said he hoped that the program "will lead to more collaborative efforts on the part of the scientists and the institutions. So that's the motivation behind it, and we want you to understand why we are doing it."
The program will enable BCM to recruit the best and brightest during the next decade. BCM leaders anticipate that the first two McNair Scholars will join the College before the end of 2008 and that Scholars will be recruited at a rate of two per year.
Careful selection process
Finding the best scientists for the McNair Scholars program will be a careful process, said BCM President and CEO Peter G. Traber.
"John D. Rockefeller said, 'The best philanthropy is constantly in search of the finalities — a search for a cause, an attempt to cure evils at their source.' This gift is about such a search," he told those who attended the press conference. "The recruitment effort will be focused on identifying the best scientists or physician-scientists in the world who have demonstrated research excellence and have extraordinary future potential for significantly advancing the field toward cures for human disease."
Faculty will help identify the best candidates, and the program will provide them with the equipment and staff they need to pursue their goals.
"We envision McNair Scholars interacting and collaborating with all institutions in the Texas Medical Center, bringing together groups to advance disease cures," said Traber.
McNair philosophy
The McNairs' philanthropy has centered on quiet investment in areas where they can do the most good for people who need help. It began with a program in Robert McNair's hometown of Forest City, N.C., where he remembered the bright students with whom he graduated who could not afford college.
"I thought it would be awfully nice if we just had a program to help those kids go on to college who otherwise might not be able to," he said. Pairing high school students with mentors in their freshman year, the program has doubled the percentage of graduates who go on to college to 60 percent from 30 percent. The McNair program has provided scholarships to 700 students there.
Then they developed a McNair Scholars program at the University of South Carolina that provides scholarships to worthy out-of-state students. It awards 20 four-year scholarships a year – awards that include one year of study abroad. Currently, there are more than 80 students at the University of South Carolina, and more than 300 students from all over the country have gone through the program. Following on that success, the McNairs have set up a similar program at Columbia College in Columbia, S.C., where Janice McNair went to school.
They have been long-time supporters of the BCM M.D./Ph.D. program, supporting students for seven or eight years, and increasing the pool of physician-scientists around the world. Through their foundation, they have been involved in education at all levels – preschool, in-school and after school. They've even funded adult-education programs for parents.
In part, the McNairs chose the fields in which researchers will be sought because of the experiences of their own families and friends.
"We just hope that this gift will lead to many discoveries," McNair said. "It will benefit not only our family, not only our friends, but everyone."
