The UCF College of Medicine hosted its annual M.D. Scholarship Reception, bringing together scholarship donors and recipients to share the impact of their support.
“In many ways, a student’s graduation is just the beginning of the impact a scholarship has,” says Thomas Bolick, the medical school’s senior director of development. “Think about patients these students will care for and the families they will comfort in life’s most difficult moments. The scholarships donors award today have the potential to touch thousands of lives over the course of a physician’s career.”
Gavin Murray is one of the students whose lives have been touched by a scholarship. Murray is a second-year medical student and recipient of the William E. and Mary Joe Davis endowed M.D. Scholarship.
His interest in medicine was sparked when he saw the impact of a compassionate physician on his mother, who suffers from schizoaffective disorder. Now, a husband and a father of two, Murray pursues medicine to be able to provide that same care to others. He and his wife are expecting their third child in December.
“Your gift means so much, more than just a dollar sign,” Murray told donors. “You guys are really showing us that there are people, not just our family and friends, who are invested in what we are doing, and it is really powerful.”
Often, medical students can feel pressure to choose a specialty based on what will best help them pay off their student loans. Scholarships open the doors for students to explore the specialties where they feel they can have the most meaningful impact, without the weight of debt.
“When I went to medical school, I worried constantly about the loans I was taking out,” says Dr. Wilhelmina Korevaar, an anesthesiologist and founder of the new Richard D. Peppler Ph.D. Endowed M.D. Scholarship Fund, named after the medical school’s associate dean for academic and faculty affairs. “I hope that with my scholarship and other scholarships, students can be freed from that burden of worry.”
When the College of Medicine welcomed its charter class, it did so with a unique vision from the founding dean, Dr. Deborah German. Thanks to community support, she raised $6.5 million to create full, four-year scholarships that covered living expenses for every student, making UCF the first medical school in American history to provide full scholarships to an entire class. The first in her family to graduate from college, Dr. German had received a full scholarship to attend Harvard Medical School.
“When I came here to build this medical school, I wanted all of our students to have what I had,” she says. “And our donors made it happen.”
Dr. Sarina Amin was a member of the charter class and says that scholarship gave her the freedom to choose her own career path. Today she is an ophthalmologist at the Orlando VA Medical Center in Lake Nona and a scholarship donor.
“I became inspired to become an M.D. Scholarship Donor myself because of the opportunity to pay it forward,” Amin says. “I received the generosity from the Edith Bush Charitable Foundation as a medical student, and they supported me when I had not accomplished anything yet. I wanted to provide that foundational support to other students as a sign of respect for the gift that was given to me.”
Interested in becoming an M.D. scholarship donor? Visit https://med.ucf.edu/giving/giving-opportunities/scholarships/ to learn more.