Medical scholarships meet a critical need in ensuring the supply of highly skilled and compassionate physicians for Alabama, the region, and the world. The increasing cost of providing our best and brightest students with a top-caliber medical education means tuition can become a major burden. This debt load – averaging $200,000 nationally for graduating medical students – not only can make the medical school years difficult, but can influence a student’s choice of the medicine he or she will practice. For instance, it can lead a young person who feels called to primary care to choose a specialty in which the pay is higher, thus contributing to the already critical shortage of primary care physicians across Alabama.
Your support of medical scholarships can directly impact the future of these promising aspiring physicians and the quality of health care throughout our region. You can help more talented students realize their dreams of a career in medicine by easing their financial worries, allowing them to focus on their studies and clinical experiences.
Your gift can change everything – not only for the students who benefit, but for their future patients, too.
We’ve identified the following priority areas for scholarships:
- Need-based scholarships to relieve student debt
- Merit-based scholarships to reward student achievement
- Scholarships for students wishing to pursue primary care careers
- Scholarships for students at our regional campuses in Huntsville, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa
- Scholarships for students with demonstrated interest in pursuing medicine in a rural community
Scholarships may be endowed, meaning the funds are invested and a portion of earnings used to fund an annual award, or sponsored, meaning current-use funds are spent outright each year to support a student.
Scholarships are named according to the donor’s wishes. Some donors choose to use their own names; others choose to name their endowed scholarship in honor or memory of a loved one.
Scholarship Gift Matching
Double your scholarship gift's impact.
Now is a great time to make a gift to medical scholarships because the Heersink School of Medicine Dean’s Office is matching gifts to the General Scholarship Fund through Sept. 30, 2024.
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For more on how you can support scholarships, contact:
Erica Hollins
Director of Development
(205) 996-6839
elhollins@uabmc.edu