WORCESTER — UMass Medical School is renaming its three graduate schools in honor of a family foundation that donated $175 million dollars to the school. 

UMass Medical’s Chancellor Michael Collins announced the receipt of the generous $175 million gift from The Morningside Foundation at the Worcester campus on Tuesday, Sept. 7.

In addition, Governor Charlie Baker, UMass President Marty Meehan and members of the University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees joined hundreds of faculty, students and staff in thanking the foundation for their donation, which more than doubled the medical school’s endowment.

“This gift is a powerful statement about the stature—and the potential—of our medical school, a very special place,” Collins said. “The confidence this historic gift conveys about our medical school is breathtaking, permitting us to recruit renowned and innovative faculty, conduct more breakthrough biomedical research, offer financial support to highly qualified and diverse students; and be ever more expansive in fulfilling our public service mission.”

Tim Murray, the former lieutenant governor and current president and CEO of The Worcester Chamber of Commerce, said the multimillion-dollar donation is going to be a game changer for the city of Worcester, which was elevated recently by the opening of Polar Park.

“The recent announcement by UMass Medical School Chancellor Dr. Michael F. Collins and Gerald Chan of the Morningside Foundation about the Chan family’s $175 million donation to UMass Medical School is a game changer,” said Murray. “Their generous donation will take the school and its various divisions to new heights and accelerate UMass Medical School’s national and global prominence as a place of research, cures, and care.”

The Morningside Foundation is a private equity and venture capital investment firm that was founded in 1986 by the Chan family of Hong Kong. The foundation’s co-founder Gerald Chan was present at UMass Medical’s announcement.

In honor of the foundation’s generous donation, UMass Medical School is going to rename it’s three graduate schools after the Chan’s patriarch, T.H. Chan (Gerald Chan’s father), the matriarch, Tan Chingfen, and the foundation itself.

UMass Medical School will now be called the “UMass Chan Medical School” in honor of T.H. Chan who, according to a press release from UMass Medical School, “was deeply committed to supporting higher education.”

 The Graduate School of Nursing will be renamed the “Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing” after Chingfen who is a retired nurse and the “Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences” will be renamed “Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences” after The Morningside Foundation.

In a statement, The Morningside Foundation said, “The Morningside Foundation and the Chan family are proud to honor their patriarch and matriarch’s legacy and their deep commitment to the advancement of health and education. There is a powerful alchemy and very special culture at UMass Medical School in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”