WMed campus named for Upjohn founder

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (WOOD) - The new home of the Western Michigan University School of Medicine (WMed) in downtown Kalamazoo will be named for the founder of the Upjohn Company, university officials announced Thursday.

The home base will be known as the W. E. Upjohn Campus.

WMed is a partnership involving the University and Kalamazoo's two teaching hospitals, Borgess Health and Bronson Healthcare. Planning has occurred during the past four years -- fundraising, accreditation work and curriculum development for the school are well underway.

The school is a privately funded initiative housed at WMU, which is one of the nation's 139 Carnegie-designated public research universities and one of only five such universities in Michigan. In March 2011, WMU announced a foundational gift of $100 million for the medical school from anonymous donors.

In December 2011, William U. Parfet, chairman and CEO of MPI Research in Mattawan, announced the donation of a 330,000 square-foot downtown Kalamazoo building to the University for use by the new medical school.

The building, located just off the northwest corner of Lovell and Portage streets and widely known as Building 267, was once part of the Upjohn, Pharmacia, and Pfizer downtown campuses.

Planning is underway to extensively renovate and slightly expand the facility to house the WMed. Renovation will begin later this summer and is scheduled to be completed by mid 2014, in time for the first class of medical students to enter the school in August 2014.

"In 1885, my great grandfather moved from Hastings, Mich. to Kalamazoo to start The Upjohn Co.," said Parfet, great grandson of W.E. Upjohn. "The first piece of land he purchased was located on Lovell Street. This property represents the beginning of the greatly expanded Upjohn Campus, which included this building throughout the life of the company. I'm proud of that. It only makes sense to our family that this would be the headquarters for the WMU School of Medicine."

William Erastus Upjohn was an 1875 graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School and practiced medicine for 10 years in Hastings. In his home, Upjohn experimented with ways to improve the means of administering medicine, and received a patent for his invention of the easily digested friable pill.

In 1886, he founded The Upjohn Pill and Granule Co. in Kalamazoo, which later became The Upjohn Co., manufacturer of friable pills. He served for 43 years as the company's president. Upjohn was known as Kalamazoo's "first citizen" because of his active role in the community.