Senior Vice President and Manager of Commercial Banking at First Citizens Bank, Tim Richardson, recently presented a symbolic check representing a monumental contribution of $500,000 from First Citizens to the Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine (SOM). The check was presented in the lobby of the new $65-million, state-of-the-art facility to Founding Dean Hershey Bell, MD, and MU’s Vice President for Institutional Advancement & Senior Counsel Greg Swanson, along with Emily Holder, First Citizens’ Senior Philanthropy Program Administrator.

“In Southeastern North Carolina, we live in a doctor desert,” said Richardson in a press release. “This medical school will profoundly enhance the region and positively transform the community’s economic landscape to levels never before imagined. For nearly 100 years, First Citizens has proudly served this community as an active, supportive banking partner and community citizen. This contribution is another way we can help significantly improve the communities where we live and work for years to come.”

The new SOM is scheduled to open the doors for its first cohort of students in July of 2026, and Bell knows how impactful a gift such as this will be on those in the school, community and region.

“We are so grateful for this gift from First Citizens because bringing a medical school to Fayetteville and Southeastern North Carolina is a huge undertaking,” he said in a press release. “This gift is going to help us provide state-of-the-art education for medical students who are going to be future doctors in this region. This gift will help support the technology, so we’re on the forefront of what’s going on in medical education. It’s also going to support the recruitment of top-notch faculty from all across the country. This gift is a godsend when it comes to establishing a medical school in our region.”

As Methodist University President Stanley T. Wearden has said many times over the past few years about the SOM, “the focus of this medical school on rural and underserved populations is a perfect match for MU’s service-focused mission, and the focus on a health-systems approach to medical education fits well with our longstanding liberal arts tradition.”

Richardson knows the excellence of an MU education well, serving on several committees over the years and the University’s Board of Trustees (of which he is currently the chair).

“I get to see all the great things MU does not only for its students, but also the community,” he said in a press release. “It’s an economic engine and the medical school is a continued driver in that economic engine.”