Nursing School Gets $5 Million Donation
Donation: MDC received a $5 million donation from the Leon family.
Miami Dade College’s School of Nursing received a $5 million donation from Leon Medical Centers, a leading healthcare services provider that caters to seniors. The company was founded by Benjamin Leon Jr.
The donation was awarded in honor of the school of nursing’s 50th anniversary. The program located at 950 N.W. 20 Street, which opened in 1962, was renamed The Benjamin Leon School of Nursing at Miami Dade College in recognition of the donation.
Starting in January of 2013, the school will receive $500,000 each year for the next ten years, according Amy Pettigrew, the nursing school’s dean.
“Out of their generosity they are investing in health care providers for the future,” Pettigrew said.
Half of the money will go toward scholarships, the rest of the funds will be used to support the operation of the school, capital improvements, equipment, a lecture series and for faculty to attend conferences.
Ten scholarships will be awarded each year. The money will be accessible to students who have recently completed their Associates of Science in nursing degrees, are not employed as registered nurses and are moving on directly to the Bachelor of Science in nursing (BSN) program as full-time students.
Frantz Jean Charles, a student in the BSN program, who said he works in the ER Department at Aventura Hospital, hopes to benefit from the Leon family’s donation.
“It is positive” Jean Charles said about the donation, “a good cause.”
The donation is not the first the Leon family has made toward education; in 2008, Benjamin Leon Jr. donated $10 million to FIU’s College of Medicine.
The nursing program at MDC is highly competitive, accepting approximately one out of every four applicants, according to Pettigrew. It has graduated 19,000 nurses for hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices in the community, and graduates more minority students than any other school in the country.