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Dr. L. Maximilian Buja, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, holder of the Distinguished Chair in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and the H. Wayne Hightower Distinguished Professor in the Medical Sciences, and wife Donna Buja |
I was a junior or senior in high school when I set my sights on a career in medicine. I later received my training as a general pathologist, but as a medical student, I eventually started working in a cardiologist's lab and that is what turned me toward research and academic medicine. Today, I like the challenges I face as a professor and administrator at such a complex "organism" as The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. It is both rewarding and stimulating to have the daily opportunity to analyze and move this university forward. But in my opinion, it's not sufficient to just deal with day-to-day problems.
One has to have a vision of the future, and to be successful as an academic leader, I have to communicate that vision and couple it with a detailed understanding of the system. Donna and I both want to ensure that my vision, in which she has been a constant partner, continues into the future after I am gone. Reflecting my chosen field of study, Donna and I decided to place the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine of The University of Texas Medical School at Houston in our estate plans by designating the school as a beneficiary of a portion of my retirement assets. My gift is made even greater by the avoidance of any taxes on the distribution of retirement income. One hundred percent of the value of the asset will go toward establishing the L. Maximilian and Donna K. Buja Chair to support the biomedical field of pathology and related sciences. Donna and I then purchased life insurance to replace the inheritance (net of taxes that would be due), which these retirement plan assets represent to our children.
Everyone is taken care of - our children receive the same inheritance they would have gotten from the assets after income and estate taxes, and the Medical School gets the full value of the assets for a new endowed chair in research. It's a vision for the future that is as rewarding for our family as it is for the school.
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