UAMS receives $2 million scholarship dedication
The College of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has obtained a $2 million dedication from Rhonda M. Dick, M.D., and Joseph Kennedy “Ken” Dick, MBA, to ascertain the Dr. Rhonda and Ken Dick Endowed Scholarship within the UAMS Faculty of Drugs. This pledge is made by way of their revocable belief.
The scholarship will probably be awarded to a scholar enrolled within the Faculty of Drugs who’s a resident of Arkansas, with choice given to a scholar from or dwelling in a rural space who demonstrates a monetary want.
“We’re profoundly grateful to Dr. Rhonda and Ken Dick for his or her generosity and dedication to younger Arkansans, particularly these from rural areas, who aspire to develop into physicians and proceed their legacy of service in our state,” stated Susan S. Smyth, M.D., Ph.D., UAMS govt vice chancellor and Faculty of Drugs dean. “Scholarships are a strong device for recruiting promising college students to UAMS and to careers in rural medication, and this endowment may have an incredible impression for generations to come back.”
The Dicks created the scholarship partially to honor the reminiscence of Dr. Herd Stone, in appreciation of his mentorship and compassionate care of the individuals of Monroe County, Arkansas.
The inspiration for the scholarship’s creation got here from Rhonda Dick’s preliminary expertise working in well being care. She grew up in Holly Grove, Arkansas, and at age 17, started working in Stone’s medical clinic, curious if it will encourage her to pursue a profession in nursing.
“After working for Dr. Stone for about six months, he known as me into his workplace to debate my profession plans. He inspired me to go to medical faculty. It was one thing I had by no means thought of,” she stated. “I had not been uncovered to many potential profession alternatives in our small, remoted rural neighborhood and there weren’t many ladies practising medication at the moment. So it had by no means occurred to me as a risk.”
Stone would proceed his mentorship of Dick whereas she attended Hendrix Faculty and later UAMS, graduating as a part of the Faculty of Drugs Class of 1981.
“Dr. Stone taught me some beneficial classes that I carried with me by way of medical faculty later in my medical follow,” Dick stated. “He usually took me on home calls within the evenings to a number of the most rural elements of Monroe County to supply medical care to deprived individuals who have been unable to make the journey to his clinic. Though I didn’t notice this till a few years later, he did this for a cause. He wished me to grasp the challenges that a lot of my future sufferers may be going through. These classes served me effectively all through my profession.”
The scholarship additionally honors the reminiscence of Ferrill and Betty Martin, the mother and father of Rhonda Dick, and George Theodore Jr. and Charlotte Kennedy Dick, the mother and father of Ken Dick.
“Rhonda and I’ve been blessed with nice lives and far of that’s due to our respective mother and father,” stated Ken Dick. “Rising up, we each obtained nice help and love from our households, and it set us as much as each have fulfilling careers.”
Rhonda Dick retired because the medical director of Pediatric Emergency Drugs at Arkansas Kids’s in Little Rock in 2019. Ken Dick retired as an assistant director of fiscal companies for the Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Analysis in 2006.
