Displeased by the UI College of Public Health’s handling of the $15 million gift offer from Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Marvin Promerantz resigned his position as head of the college’s capital raising committee. “I think the College of Public Health dean embarrassed me and embarrassed the university,” said Pomerantz, a University of Iowa alumnus and prominent donor. “It is a terrible insult to the university what Dean Merchant has done.”

Merchant, the dean of the College of Public Health, rejected the $15 million gift offer after the public health faculty voted against it because Wellmark wanted naming rights of the college’s new building in exchange for the donation. In response to Merchant, Wellmark rescinded its offer.

Pomerantz, a former Wellmark director, helped solicit the $15 million from the Wellmark Foundation, the charitable arm of Iowa’s largest for-profit health insurance company. The gift was intended to be used for the proposed $45 million building for the College of Public Health. Currently, the college is housed on the second floor of the UI Hospital.

Read more about Pomerantz’s resignation and Wellmark’s embedded relationship with Iowa’s Regents’ institution at “The Press-Citizen” and the “Cedar Rapids Gazette.”