Fondren Foundation Donates $850,000 for UT Dental Branch Building

The Fondren Foundation of Houston has awarded an $850,000 grant to The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston to help build a new facility for the UT Dental Branch (UTDB).

The gift will reinforce state funds already dedicated to the project and will allow students to learn and train in a contemporary and technologically sophisticated environment that mirrors the future direction of dentistry.

"We're very grateful for this generous gift from the Fondren Foundation," said UTDB Dean Catherine M. Flaitz, D.D.S. "Their investment in dental education will yield decades of dividends paid not in dollars, but in oral health care delivered by generations of future dentists and dental hygienists who will be educated inside our walls."

After 52 years at the corner of Moursund Street and M. D. Anderson Boulevard, the Dental Branch plans to move to new quarters off Old Spanish Trail and Cambridge Street. Phase 1 of the $90 million dental building project will be part of the 100-acre UT Research Park complex now under construction.

In the new location, Houston's only dental school will be very close to several state-of-the-art research facilities, including UT's new Biomedical Research and Education Facility, a new Neuroscience Building, and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging Research, due for completion later this year. A parking garage is part of the construction project, also.

The university broke ground on the projects in August 2007. The new dental school is expected to open in 2011.

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