$91 million medical school transformation made possible by Dr. Lydia Watson, Beth Charlton, Robert M. Richmond, and Tim & Nan Buerger Maczka

Central Michigan University’s College of Medicine is being remade this year not by a single benefactor, but by four distinct people whose personal histories — a Girl Scout turned hospital CEO, a career nurse who rose to the corner office, a quiet IBM-trained entrepreneur, and a retired banker and his artist wife — now sit at the center of the largest philanthropic wave in the university’s history.

Combined, their decisions have committed more than $91 million to relocate the college to Saginaw, rename it, and rebuild it around Michigan’s rural physician shortage.

Dr. Lydia Watson has spent her entire career working toward this moment. The longtime president and CEO of MyMichigan Health, who colleagues fondly recall began as a Girl Scout in the very communities her health system now serves, is retiring this year after being personally credited with steering MyMichigan’s acquisitions of former hospital sites in Saginaw, Standish and Tawas — moves that helped position her nonprofit system to lead this partnership with CMU.

Last November, Watson committed MyMichigan Health to a $40 million pledge toward a new medical education building on its own Saginaw campus, tracing her system’s relationship with the college back to 2010.

“Since 2010, our partnership with CMU’s College of Medicine has been pivotal in training future health care professionals,” she said, describing the investment as a way to keep care accessible and equitable across the 26 counties and roughly one million residents MyMichigan serves.

It reads, in many ways, like a capstone gift closing out a career built inside the very system she’s now helping to expand.

Beth Charlton’s path to that same $40 million commitment ran through nearly four decades on Covenant HealthCare’s payroll before she ever held its top title.

She started as a student nurse, worked her way up to Executive Vice President, COO and CNO, and was tapped in 2021 to succeed retiring CEO Ed Bruff, a move made on his own recommendation and with the unanimous backing of Covenant’s board.

As CEO, Charlton matched Watson’s pledge dollar for dollar, framing it as continuity rather than departure: “As part of our decades-long commitment to medical education, Covenant HealthCare is proud to support the CMU College of Medicine… Assurance of a strong medical talent pipeline is foundational and requires both collaboration and resources,” she said.

The gift fits neatly alongside a broader wave of investment under her leadership, including a $25 million orthopedic facility that broke ground in Saginaw Township this past May and a new neurological-care partnership with Henry Ford Health announced in March — proof that the medical school commitment was one piece of a much larger reinvestment strategy she’s pursued since taking the helm.

Robert M. Richmond never worked in healthcare and never sat on a hospital board — his connection to CMU’s transformation is entirely posthumous.

A 1966 CMU business administration graduate, Richmond trained with IBM after school, helping early clients set up their first computer systems, before meeting his late wife, Lois, in Belding, Michigan.

Together they built B&L Plastics and later B&L Development, eventually retiring to Rio Verde, Arizona. Back in 1995, he quietly told CMU he intended to remember the university in his estate, offering no further detail for the next three decades.

Richmond died in late 2025 after a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer, and it was only then that the university learned the scale of his intention: nearly $10 million, the largest single cash donation from any individual donor in CMU history.

The bequest creates the President’s Fund for University Excellence, backing undergraduate scholarships, a “Finish Up Chips!” program for students within 25 credits of graduation, and support for adult and online learners.

“This gift is the culmination of Mr. Richmond’s life and work, and his generosity is an inspiring example of how the CMU community takes care of each other,” CMU President Bob Davies said.

Tim and Nan Buerger Maczka are the only donors in this story still around to see their gift take shape. The Rockford, Michigan, couple—both CMU alumni, Tim from the class of 1974—built careers entirely outside medicine: Tim in banking before founding his own business-financing firm, and Nan across art and design.

Their $1 million gift, announced this past March, established a namesake scholarship for students at the newly renamed Covenant HealthCare College of Medicine, with priority given to applicants from northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.

The motivation was personal: Nan’s mother nursed in Cheboygan, and her sister still does in Alpena, while Tim’s sister works as a social worker in rural northern Michigan.

“Having grown up in northern Michigan and having family involved in healthcare, we are acutely aware of the shortage of physicians and the lengths people must go—traveling an hour or more—to access medical care,” Nan said.

Tim added that the timing came down to a practical trigger: “When we were required to take minimum distributions from our IRAs, we decided to allocate all of it for charitable endeavors. We felt it was time to take a bold step.”

It wasn’t their first gift to CMU, either — the couple has also backed the university’s New Venture Challenge for student entrepreneurs, its Emergency Student Food Pantry, and the same “Finish Up” scholarship fund that Richmond’s bequest now helps sustain, making them steady, if quieter, fixtures of the university’s donor community long before this headline gift.

Four donors, four different relationships to medicine, and one shared outcome: CMU says it will keep fundraising toward a $100 million target for the new Saginaw building, with groundbreaking targeted for this fall and completion expected in 2028 — meaning this list of names is very likely to grow before the first class ever sets foot in the finished facility.