"He saw something in me at the time when I did not," said Allen, now the foot and ankle physician for the NBA's San Antonio Spurs. "His vision and the opportunities he presented to me changed my future."

Yesterday, Allen, 43, who grew up in Lindenwold, donated $100,000 to start a scholarship in Meagher's name at the new Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. He hopes the gift inspires others to contribute.

Allen, who was in town for Thanksgiving with family, surprised Meagher with the news at a private luncheon on campus.

"If, a year from now, all that's sitting in there is my $100,000, I'll be disappointed," Allen said. "My story is as simple as it gets. I want the common person to identify with me, and maybe this will move him or her to donate."

Gov. Corzine signed an executive order in June to establish a four-year medical school in downtown Camden run by Rowan and Cooper University Hospital. It will replace a two-year program run in Camden by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

The medical school plans to admit its first class of 40 students in 2012 and grow over time to an enrollment of 400.

Rowan will construct a $100 million building at Broadway and Benson Street, part of Cooper's expanding campus and the redevelopment of the Cooper Plaza-Lanning Square neighborhood.

The school's goal is to raise $4 million in scholarship money to cover the first class' four-year tuition - $25,000 a year per student - as Rowan did for its first class of engineering students in 1996, university president Donald Farish said.

"This gift is a vote of confidence in the university," he said. "Marque understands that the education he received - heavily subsidized by the taxpayers of New Jersey - gave him a platform to move forward."

Often forgotten in the current health-care debate is the high-cost of medical education, said Annette Reboli of Cooper University Hospital, the medical school's acting dean. Scholarships reduce students' debt and allow them to pursue lower-paying professional specialities, such as primary care.

Allen's donation will assist a student who earned a bachelor's degree from Rowan, university officials said.

Allen "barely graduated" from the former Overbrook High School in Lindenwold in 1984, he said. With a grade point average of 1.64 out of 4.00, he ranked 303d among 309 students.

"I never saw algebra in high school. I never even took the SATs," he said.