Santa Clara U Receives $175M Gift for New Medical School

Santa Clara University has received a $175 million gift to support a new medical school, which the university will launch in collaboration with Sutter Health. It will be the first new medical school in the San Francisco Bay Area in over a century, according to the announcement.

The school will be called the Mark & Mary Stevens School of Medicine after the donors, Santa Clara alumna Mary (Mathews) Stevens and her husband, Mark Stevens, a venture capitalist who sits on the board of Nvidia and is a part owner of the Golden State Warriors.

Their donation represents the largest-ever cash gift to an institute of Catholic higher education, and the largest gift in Santa Clara’s history, the announcement said.

“Our new school will be grounded in Santa Clara’s Jesuit tradition of keeping the needs of the whole person at the forefront of empathetic and trustworthy care, while also embedding innovative technologies that assist physicians in keeping individuals, families, and communities well,” said Santa Clara president Julie Sullivan. “We are profoundly grateful for the extraordinary naming gift from the Stevens family, who embody the values and standards of excellence of both organizations.”

The new medical school, an 82,000-square-foot facility, will be built five miles from Santa Clara’s main campus and adjacent to the Sutter East Santa Clara campus in Silicon Valley. On the nearby West Santa Clara campus, Sutter is also planning to open a new 272-bed medical center by 2031.

Rather than seek out clinical training partnerships with multiple organization, the new medical school will become part of Sutter’s not-for-profit integrated health-care system, allowing students to train with the system’s care teams.

“California doesn’t wait for the future—we build it. And that’s exactly what this partnership between Sutter Health and my alma mater, Santa Clara University, represents: a new model for medical education built to support a more innovative, connected health-care ecosystem,” said California governor Gavin Newsom, who graduated in 1989.