Nebraska-based Creighton University is set to open a health services campus in Phoenix in a few years — and an Arizona nonprofit is donating $10 million to help fund development of the school.
The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust announced Monday it’s donating $10 million to Creighton for construction of its health services campus at Park Central Mall.
Father Daniel Hendrickson is the university’s president. He said the campus will serve nearly 900 students seeking medical, nursing and other health care related degrees.
“To meet the needs of a dire shortage of healthcare in the city and the state is a huge interest of ours," Hendrickson said, "and to do that through our own mission of Jesuit Catholic formation of our students.”
Hendrickson said there are only four Catholic medical schools in the nation.
“With this expansion of Creighton medicine in particular," Hendrickson said, "we will now become the largest Catholic medical school in the nation, and we couldn’t be more excited.”
Hendrickson said Creighton already partners with Dignity Health St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix.
The Piper Trust was established in 2000 as a legacy of Virginia Galvin Piper, whose first husband was Motorola founder Paul Galvin.
The new building is expected to break ground this summer be completed with the program’s launch in the fall of 2021.
