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Estate gives $17.3 million to Penn dental school
Philadelphia—A chance meeting and some shop talk turned into a 12-year friendship.
It also yielded unprecedented support for the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine's Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. It was Dr. Louis Schloenleber Jr.'s fascination with the advances Penn was making in oral surgery, and the structure of its program, that led the alumnus to leave the majority of the proceeds from his multimillion dollar estate to his alma mater.
The $17.3 million gift is the largest gift in the school's history and one of the largest ever bequeathed to a U.S. dental school. Dr. Schoenleber died on Jan. 7, 2005, at the age of 84, but his estate was only settled recently.
"The gift was the culmination of his lifelong passion for oral surgery and, fittingly, it will help to advance medicine in this field," said Dr. Peter Quinn, who is the Schoenleber Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Pharmacology, a position endowed by his friend.
The two men met by happenstance when Dr. Schoenleber returned to Penn Dental Medicine for his 50th reunion. Dr. Schoenleber asked how the oral surgery program was run and was impressed to find out it was a six-year double degree program, where students earn a medical degree from Penn, a two-year certificate of general surgery and a certificate in oral and maxillofacial surgery.
"What interested him most was our dual degree program. He believed strongly that to be an oral surgeon in this day and age you needed both dental and medical training," Dr. Quinn said. "Our program seemed to fulfill his dreams of what should happen in this specialty."
The conversation led to a deep and long friendship.
"I somewhat became a family advisor as well as health care advisor and helped him with a lot of his issues over a period of time," Dr. Quinn said.
According to his will, the gift can be used to fund research, facility construction and renovation, continuing education, new technology and equipment, and endowed professorships and faculty positions.
"Typical community oral surgery units and indeed, many teaching hospitals, do not possess the level of medical equipment needed to perform the complex oral surgical procedures undertaken within Penn Dental’s Oral Surgery Department," said Dr. Denis F. Kinane, Morton Amsterdam Dean of Penn's School of Dental Medicine. "Oral surgery is a vital aspect of dental medicine that requires specialized training. This gift means that Penn can remain at the forefront of this field and take on the complex cases that lie at the junction of surgery and dentistry."
Dr. Schoenleber was also interested in the money being used to underwrite residents' tuition, Dr. Quinn said. Paying to attend both dental and medical school can lead to an average debt of around $230,000, he said.
About 80-100 people apply for three resident slots each year. The program enrolls 18 students.
Dr. Schoenleber grew up in North Arlington, N.J., and enrolled in Penn as an undergraduate in 1938. In 1940, he began at Penn Dental Medicine and entered the Navy after graduating in 1943.
Dr. Schoenleber gained much of his experience as an oral surgeon during his service in World War II. Once he was out of the Navy, Dr. Schoenleber maintained an oral surgery practice in Ridgewood, N.J., for 35 years.
Dr. Schoenleber was private about the contents of his will, only hinting he would donate to Penn near the end of his life, Dr. Quinn said.
"We had no inkling he was going to do this until right at the end. He told us he was going to leave a portion of the estate," Dr. Quinn said. "I had no idea that he would ultimately leave the majority of the estate to us."
