News and Progress

Famed MU surgeon and wife give $2 million for endowed deanship in School of Medicine

With a new $2 million deanship, Hugh and Sally Stephenson hope to encourage support of the MU School of Medicine.

Feb. 4, 2005

Hugh and Sally Stephenson established an endowed deanship in the School of Medicine, which has been part of Hugh's life for more than 65 years.

In his long history with the MU School of Medicine — a relationship that goes back more than 65 years — Hugh Stephenson has made a point of leading by example. In October, the School of Medicine announced that Stephenson and his wife, Sally, established a $2 million endowed deanship, the largest gift for an endowed position in the school's history.

“We wanted to do whatever we could to increase enthusiasm for the School of Medicine,” he says. “We are confident others will join in support.”

Stephenson says the gift is a vote of confidence for the School of Medicine's dean, William Crist, who has helped raise more than $45 million and recruit nationally known chairs for 16 of the school's 20 departments in his nearly five years as dean. Funds from the gift will not be used for Crist's salary but rather will be made available to him annually to support teaching, research or faculty recruitment.

“He is determined to bring this medical school into the upper echelon of all schools in the country,” Stephenson says. “We've been so impressed with his vision for the school, and we want him to have the tools he needs.”

Stephenson, a Columbia native and a 1943 graduate of what was then a two-year medical program at MU, has played an integral role in the medical school's history, and he's known for being its most ardent supporter both in his actions and his words. More than 50 years ago, when Missouri officials were debating whether to locate a new four-year medical school in Columbia or Kansas City, Stephenson spoke up for the University. He sent letters to Missouri legislators and called many of them from a pay phone in the lobby of the New York University Medical Center at Bellevue Hospital, where he was chief surgery resident and where he established the nation's first course in cardiac resuscitation. In September 1951, he returned to Missouri to testify in front of a Missouri House of Representatives committee on the matter.

“I believed very strongly that the future of the medical school would be so much brighter if it were tied to the other schools and disciplines on campus rather than being an isolated trade school in a metropolitan area,” Stephenson says. In a narrow vote, the committee opted to locate the medical school in Columbia, and in 1953, Stephenson returned to MU, where he became the first full-time surgery faculty member appointed to MU's new four-year medical program.

Since that time, Stephenson has served as chair of the surgery department, chief of general surgery, the first elected chief of staff at University Hospital, and interim dean, and he performed one of the first open-heart surgery procedures in the state at University Hospital. He also served on the University of Missouri System Board of Curators, for which he was president in 2000.

Today, Stephenson is retired, but he still maintains an office in the School of Medicine, where the surgery department is named in his honor and where he gives an occasional special lecture.

“He has met and known all of the medical students since the four-year program started; I'm not kidding,” says Sally Stephenson. “Not only does he know them, he communicates with many of them regularly.”

Hugh Stephenson says the new endowment is just one more opportunity for him to serve his beloved alma mater.

“The gift is a symbol of our hope for the future of the School of Medicine, our commitment to do what we can to help and our desire to encourage others to give their support,” he says.