The University of Minnesota today announced that a new endowment fund has been created to provide a match for private gifts for fellowships. The new fund, called the 21st Century Graduate Fellowship Endowment, is made possible as a result of the university's licensing agreement for an AIDS drug with Glaxo Wellcome PLC, a pharmaceutical company.
Graduate programs are the heart and soul of a research institution.
The fellowships made possible through this fund will be an important magnet for attracting talent to the university and to Minnesota, which is essential for the university to remain competitive in its research and education missions. The fund will match gifts supporting fellowships in the 150 Graduate School programs, which enroll nearly 7,500 students. Graduate students are critical to university research programs as they assist faculty in all aspects of research including conducting experiments, doing field research, and teaching to facilitate the movement of ideas from the lab to the marketplace. The endowment will be created through royalties generated by worldwide sales of Ziagen, an AIDS drug. Last October, the university reached an agreement with Glaxo specifying the percent of income the university would receive from sales of the drug.