Pears Foundation has donated £2 million to the Kent and Medway Medical School (KMMS), a collaboration between the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University.
To acknowledge such a transformative gift a new Medical School building on Kent’s Canterbury campus will be named the Pears Building.
Due to open in July 2020, the Pears Building will provide medical students with an inspirational learning and study environment containing a 150-seat lecture theatre, seminar rooms, IT suites, social spaces and a GP simulation suite – the first in the UK.
Professor Karen Cox, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Kent, said: ‘We are extremely grateful for this generous gift from Pears Foundation. It will help transform health provision in the region, and ensure that we provide our students with the best facilities in which to train, study and become the medical practitioners they aspire to be.’
Sir Trevor Pears, Executive Chair, Pears Foundation, said: ‘My brothers and I are delighted to support the new Kent and Medway Medical School. Our family foundation has a long-standing relationship with the University of Kent and we are confident this new collaboration will make a significant contribution to health provision regionally and nationally.’
Professor Chris Holland, Dean of the Kent and Medway Medical School, added: ‘This wonderful donation from Pears Foundation will have a huge impact on helping KMMS deliver our ambitions to address healthcare inequalities in Kent and Medway. We look forward to working with our students and the wider community in the Pears Building at the University of Kent.’
When complete, KMMS will be the first medical school in Kent and Medway, providing a centre in the region for medical education and research to develop the area’s health workforce, and address the growing need for medical professionals in the area due to rapid housing and population growth.
KMMS will offer first-class medical education and research, combining the existing high-quality clinical teaching and research strengths of the two universities.
From 2020, it will offer a five-year Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (BM BS) degree with medical placements in Primary, Community, Mental Health and Secondary Care settings across Kent and Medway.
Based at the universities’ Canterbury campuses, Kent and Medway‘s first medical school aims to be first choice for all those aspiring to achieve excellence in person-centred medical care in the UK.
