Page 1 of 4

A Shared Vision:
The Promise Lives,
Ohio University’s Capital Campaign
The generosity of alumni and friends fuels our future

Five years ago, when his daughter decided to attend Ohio University, Robert J. Hampton, D.O. (’84), made a trip back to his alma mater. Touring campus, he recalled the excitement of seeing how much OU-HCOM had improved in 23 years, the new training facilities and technology available to medical students, but also how much was exactly the way he remembered it.

“You want your alma mater to be a quality place of education . . . to be better than it was when you were there, and that’s the feeling that I got,” Dr. Hampton said. “It was a university that had moved many strides forward from when I was there and yet kept that comfortable feel that I remembered.

” That same feeling was the impetus for Dr. Hampton and his wife Suzanne, both long-time donors, to fund a surgical suite within the new Heritage Clinical Training and Assessment Center. With the initial funding for the clinic coming from a $2.3 million gift from Osteopathic Heritage Foundations (see page 6), the Hamptons’ contribution was necessary to complete important education spaces like the “Robert J. Hampton, D.O., Emergency/Surgical Simulation Laboratory Suite.” He described their gift as a tribute to his late father, Donald V. Hampton, Sr., D.O., who fought for licensure for osteopathic physicians across the country.

“I saw this as an opportunity to honor my father who was, in the osteopathic profession, someone who created opportunities for us, and this is my way of creating opportunities for the next generation of osteopathic physicians,” Dr. Hampton said.

While still relatively young in terms of medical schools, OU-HCOM has a history of support from alumni and friends such as Dr. Hampton. As OU-HCOM welcomes its 37th class of students to Athens this fall, this continued support is more important now than ever before.

As part of Ohio University’s capital campaign, The Promise Lives, OU-HCOM has set forth on its most ambitious capital campaign yet. The college’s strategic vision for the future, leading the transformation of primary care education, includes the expansion of scholarships to remove barriers to entering primary care specialties, increased support to recruit and retain talented faculty, expansion of research facilities and strengthening OU-HCOM’s community health programs. The college aims to raise $123 million during the campaign in support of this vision.

The initiatives require support from our friends, alumni, faculty, staff and esteemed partners who share the school’s desire to change the future of medicine and support the needs of Ohio’s communities. Recognizing OU-HCOM’s unique capabilities in its effort to re-engineer primary care education, the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations stepped forward with unprecedented support for the college with its $105 million lead gift (see related, page 16). Support also from the Cleveland Clinic, Brentwood Foundation, OhioHealth and many others have already provided an important launching point for the transformational changes now under way.

Sharon Zimmerman, M.P.A (’94), executive director of constituent relations for health affairs at Ohio University, points to several examples of major transformations at the college that had their beginnings with lead gifts from the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations, including the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations and Charles R. and Marilyn Y. Stuckey Academic & Research Center (ARC), and the Heritage Clinical Training and Assessment Center and Community Clinic. All were brought to fruition through critical additional support from partners, alumni and friends of the college. “These projects just wouldn’t have been completed without that further support of our graduates and friends,” said Zimmerman.

Strengthening Community Health Programs