Austin couple donating $25 million to San Antonio medical school
Austin philanthropists Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long are donating $25 million to the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, whose medical school is being named for them in recognition of a long history of donations.
The latest gift — of which $15 million has already been paid, with the balance pledged by the end of the year — brings the Longs’ giving to the health science center to $51 million. When other campuses in the UT System are counted, their donations total more than $70 million, including $10 million for UT-Austin’s Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, officials said.
All told, the Longs have donated more than $100 million to colleges and universities in Texas, Joe Long estimated. The couple is also the namesake of the Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin, to which they donated more than $20 million.
“Mr. and Mrs. Long chose to announce their new gift today, Feb. 1, on their 59th wedding anniversary as an expression of their shared commitment to each other, our students, and UT Health and its School of Medicine,” said William Henrich, president of the San Antonio campus. “The enduring result of their legacy of investment in health education and research will be improved health for all.”
Henrich said Joe Long approached him in December with plans for a major donation. Of the $25 million, $20 million will be earmarked for endowed faculty positions, $4 million for scholarships for medical students and $1 million for an endowed chair held by the dean of the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine.
The Longs donated $25 million to the health science center in 2008 for scholarships benefiting medical, nursing and other students. Their first donation to the center was $1 million in 1999 to underwrite scholarships for medical students from South Texas.
“We have always felt that there was a shortage down in South Texas of doctors,” Joe Long, who was born in San Antonio and made his fortune in Austin in banking, told the American-Statesman. “Doctors tend to practice where they go to school and do their intern work. We were losing a lot of people up North and East who would get scholarships up there and never come back.”
Fifty students across four schools at the health science center currently receive Long scholarships every year. And 44 so-called Long physicians are practicing medicine in South Texas and beyond.
“The Longs’ gift to me exceeds the present moment,” said Leo Lopez III, a primary care resident in San Antonio who graduated from the medical school in 2015. “Their generosity has given me the tools and foundation to go out into the world and serve people for generations.”
Joe Long said he and his wife met as young schoolteachers in Alice, in South Texas west of Corpus Christi. She earned three degrees, including a doctorate in education, at UT-Austin, and he earned bachelor’s and law degrees from the university.
