USC’s medical school renamed in honor of late trustee and his wife
In an apt tribute to the University of South Carolina’s longest-serving board member and his wife, the university announced Friday that its medical school would now bear their names.
The Kay and C. Edward Floyd, M.D. School of Medicine, as the school will now be called, honors the late trustee and his wife of 66 years, who shared a lifelong commitment to education, healthcare and public service, the university said in a statement.
The naming, which was announced Friday afternoon at a private luncheon attended by members of the Floyd family, trustees and university leadership, recognizes the late couple’s years of service and philanthropic support to USC.
C. Edward “Eddie” Floyd, a surgeon and farmer, and his wife Kay, a businesswoman, gave more than $30 million to the university over the years, officials said. Their contributions, which include a new gift designated in Floyd’s will, will be used to fund needs-based scholarships for medical students and endowed faculty positions in surgery, neurosurgery, neurology, sports medicine and basic science.
“This gift is particularly meaningful because it also honors two exceptional people who gave so much to the University of South Carolina and the Palmetto State, and in so many different ways, throughout their lives,” USC President Michael Amiridis said in a statement. “Through their generosity, they will continue to have a tremendous, far-reaching impact on the School of Medicine, and the entire University of South Carolina.”
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who attended Friday’s luncheon, said renaming the medical school in the Floyds’ honor fittingly carried the couple’s legacy forward.
“The Floyds represented the very best of South Carolina, with lives defined by service to others and a deep commitment to improving their community,” the governor said in a statement. “By naming the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in their honor, we carry their legacy forward in every physician who trains here and serves the people of this state.”
Floyd, who died in January at the age of 91, served on USC’s board of trustees from 1982 to 2024, including five years as chair.
A longtime resident of Florence, where he established a pioneering medical practice, Floyd was born into a family of tobacco farmers in Lake City and went on to earn an undergraduate degree in business from the University of South Carolina in 1956.
After college, Floyd attended medical school in Charleston and completed his residency at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans.
In addition to his work as a vascular surgeon, Floyd cultivated tobacco and was a prominent fundraiser for state and national Republican political candidates.
His wife, Kay Baker Floyd, who died in 2023, managed one of South Carolina’s largest farming operations and served as business manager at one of the state’s first vascular laboratories, according to her obituary.
A native of Timmonsville, Kay Floyd graduated from Saint Mary’s College in Raleigh and the University of South Carolina. She was a founding member of the Arts Alive Festival at Francis Marion University, which celebrates the Pee Dee’s history of art, music and culture, and a benefactor to civic institutions across the state.
Numerous buildings, including the Floyd Conference Center in Florence and the former Kay and Eddie Floyd Football Building at Williams-Brice Stadium, have been named in honor of the Floyds.
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Their daughter, Coleman Floyd Buckhouse, who in 2024 succeeded her father on the USC board of trustees, said by naming the medical school after her parents the university was honoring their highest ideals.
“My parents loved this university with all of their hearts,” Buckhouse said in a statement. “They believed deeply in improving lives and expanding opportunity. The USC School of Medicine Columbia has served South Carolina through education, discovery, and care, and those same values guided my parents.”
The School of Medicine, founded in 1977, is in the process of relocating from the Dorn Veteran Affairs Medical Center on Garners Ferry Road to a new 300,000-square-foot facility in Columbia’s BullStreet District.
The new medical education and research facility, which is expected to be completed in August 2027, will be part of USC’s Health Sciences Campus, a 16-acre swath of land being developed in the northeast corner of the district that USC architect Derek Gruner has called “the most ambitious single project in our university’s history.”
In addition to housing the Floyd School of Medicine, the Health Sciences Campus will also include a cutting-edge neurological hospital, scheduled to open in 2029, and a recently opened Brain Health Center, equipped to provide advanced diagnostics, treatment and support services for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and other complex cognitive conditions.
The Floyd School of Medicine is the fourth school or college renamed for a donor in the past three years, and the university’s sixth named school in total.
In April 2025, USC renamed its College of Arts and Sciences for Peter McCausland, a 1971 graduate and founder of Airgas, one of the world’s leading industrial and medical gas companies, whose $75 million gift was the largest in school history.
The university named its College of Engineering and Computing in honor of Alex Molinaroli, the former CEO of building technology at Johnson Controls, and his family in 2024, and its law school for alumnus Joseph F. Rice in November 2023. Both men gave $30 million to their alma mater.
USC’s other named schools are its Arnold School of Public Health, named in 2006 for business leader Norman J. Arnold, and the Darla Moore School of Business, named in 1998 after investor and philanthropist Darla Moore.