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Scholarships Awarded to Minority Students
Brandi Compton was celebrating Feb. 1, 2004, with thousands of people in downtown Houston. While the crowd was excited over the Super Bowl being played in the city for the first time, Compton had other reasons to cheer. She phoned her father at midnight and asked him to log onto the Internet to find out where she had been accepted to medical school.
The UT Health Sciences Scholarship Foundation announced scholarships for students of The UT Medical School at Houston. Standing from left are: Ana Lisa Ramirez, Claudia Moreno, Antonio Barksdale, Mark Trevino and Brandi Compton. Seated from left are: Brannon George, Demequa Derouselle and Elton Naidoo. Photo by Ester Fant
“He told me I was accepted to UT-Houston, which was my first choice, and I was screaming in the middle of the street,” Compton recalled.
Soon, Compton had more cause to celebrate as she learned she had won a $3,500 annual scholarship from The University of Texas Health Sciences Scholarship Foundation.
Designed to encourage minority students in health and biomedical sciences, awards are based upon ethnicity, gender, religion or other qualifications determined by the foundation’s board of directors.
Carlos R. Hamilton Jr., M.D., executive vice president for external affairs at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, is managing director and one of the founders of the scholarship fund.
“It’s important that the medical profession reflect the people that we care for,” Hamilton explained. “It’s also important that our faculty reflect the demographics of the population that we serve and in order to do that, we have to have students that represent that demographic.”
Foundation board chairman and attorney Anthony Haley added that competition among medical schools over students is fierce and that the decision a student makes is often based on economics.
“We lose a lot of students to other medical schools, not because those schools are the student’s first choice, but because the financial incentives are better,” Haley said.
Hamilton, Haley and Albert Gunn, M.D., associate dean for admissions at the UT Medical School at Houston and foundation advisory member, recently hosted a luncheon for eight of the most recent recipients of scholarships from the foundation. Four first-year medical students received first-time $3,500 scholarships, and four second-year students received $3,500 scholarships for the second time.
The foundation began in 2002 and is supported through donations from individuals, corporations and foundations. Among the donors are The Brown Foundation, The Ellwood Foundation and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The governing board consists of a majority of individuals not directly employed by the UT Health Science Center.
By Wendy K. Mohon, Development