A $1 million gift from the Medical College of Georgia Foundation will help establish a new scholarship and further diversify the state’s public medical school.

Announced at the Feb. 7 event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, the gift establishes an endowment whose interest will create scholarship funding for students entering MCG as early as fall 2017. Those students would graduate exactly 50 years after the medical school’s first two black students – the late Dr. John T. Harper Sr. and Dr. Frank Rumph, who graduated in 1971.

The hope is that the initial endowment will grow over time and help attract a more diverse student body at MCG that reflects the state it serves, said Ian Mercier, President and CEO of the MCG Foundation.

“The idea is to keep more and more of the best and brightest students in Georgia and at MCG,” he said. “The school does a terrific job at recruiting applicants and this scholarship, we hope, will make choosing MCG an easier decision.”