Gwynedd Mercy University receives $10 million gift, its largest, for new health-care innovation center

Gwynedd Mercy University has received a $10 million gift, its largest, to build a new health-care education complex on its campus in Gwynedd Valley.

The money comes from the Maguire Foundation, which now has given gifts totaling more than $20 million to the Catholic university, with an enrollment of just over 2,300 students. The new complex will be called the Frances M. Maguire Healthcare Innovation campus, in honor of the late Frances M. Maguire, a philanthropist and 1955 graduate of the college.

“We cannot think of a better way to honor the memory of our beautiful mother,” Megan Maguire Nicoletti, president and CEO of the Maguire Foundation, said in a statement. “She loved her time at GMercyU, and always took a genuine interest in helping future generations of students succeed.”

» READ MORE: Gwynedd Mercy University sells 150 acres for $31.5 million; same land it bought for $12.1 million in 2018

The 65,000-square-foot center will include “immersive simulation and skills labs” so that students can practice, as well as space for collaboration.

Other donations from the foundation include scholarship support for more than 50 Gwynedd Mercy students and a naming gift for the nursing school.

» READ MORE: Gwynedd Mercy buys Merck property, doubles size of campus

Gwynedd Mercy in March announced it was selling for $31.5 million a 150-plus-acre property it bought a little over three years ago. The amount the school received was more than twice the price it paid.

The property on Sumneytown Pike in Gwynedd Valley had doubled the size of the small Catholic university’s campus when it bought the adjacent property from Merck & Co. for $12.1 million in 2018. When the college announced it was selling the property, it said it would keep adding facilities and technologies to its existing campus.