The University of California, Berkeley has announced a $50 million commitment from the Dr. Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Family Foundation in support of the School of Optometry.

The largest gift ever to a school of optometry in the United States is the lead gift for a ten-year, $100 million effort to enhance the school's training and research programs through investment in innovative models of vision care, teaching, and discovery. To that end, the commitment will fund new clinical and educational facilities, an expansion of the school's clinical network and residency training, new initiatives for children's vision, the creation of endowed support for professional and research graduate students, and a Vision Science Institute that will help unite vision research at UC Berkeley. Those initiatives will be supported by two endowed chancellor's chairs: the Herbert Wertheim Chair in Neuro-Optometry and the Nicole Wertheim Chair in Pediatric Optometry. In recognition of the gift, the school will be named the Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry and Vision Science.

The gift also will create an integrated model clinic for children's vision and help establish Berkeley Vision CURE, a national and international initiative that will work to get eyeglasses to all children who need them.

"One reason that children fail to thrive in early educational environments is an inability to see — a lack of corrected vision — and that can go on to affect their success in the rest of their lives," said John Flanagan, dean of Berkeley Optometry. "Here at Berkeley, we are trying to devise a road map to improve children's vision here and around the world, and this investment will be a catalyst for that process."

"Optometry is America's first line of defense for the prevention of blindness. I'm excited about what we're going to do at Berkeley over these next years, because it's going to transform patient expectations of vision care and service to help prevent those that would have become blind without care and help protect those from accidental eye injuries worldwide," said Herbert Wertheim, an optometrist, inventor, and founder and CEO of Brain Power Incorporated (BPI), which manufactures ophthalmic instruments and chemicals. "We hope to expand the practice of optometry so that we're able to provide timely and expanded patient care and outcomes to America's communities and to the worldwide population."