Illinois Medicine

SCHOLARSHIP MAKES A DIFFERENCE Private funding is becoming increasingly important to the College of Medicine's future. Scholarships alleviate the burden on students and their families, allow recipients to fo- cus more fully on their studies, and keep the COM competi- tive with peer institutions. 92.4 PERCENT The annual growth rate of loan indebtedness for COM students 9 $161,000 24 The average individual debt for the Class of 2009 PERCENT The percentage of the COM's current 1,293 students who receive some form of financial assistance, including student loans, aid and scholarships ON HIS GAME W PERCENT Percentage of COM students across all campuses who received a scholarship for the 2009-10 academic year To learn more about how you can enable students to receive a quality medical education, please call Jane Johnson, assistant director of stewardship, at (312) 355-1899. PHOTO: STEVE BECKER Jermaine Kyong White has taken a long road, but he's nearly at his goal of becoming a physician HEN YOUR FOOTBALL TEAM PLAYS IN A LEAGUE WITH NINE MEN on the field instead of 11 and your high school's graduating class numbers 32, it's pretty hard to attract a gridiron scholarship offer from an NCAA Division I program, even for one-time prep star Jermaine Kyong White. It didn't help that White played quarterback at a Department of Defense high school in Taegu, South Korea—an area that isn't exactly teeming with collegiate scouts. "The competition wasn't as good as it was in the States," says third-year student White, the recipient of the COM Class of 1938 Scholarship and the Dr. and Mrs. A.J. Novotny Scholarship. "So I got an academic scholarship to Florida A&M and walked on the football team my junior and senior years." Perhaps it comes as no surprise, then, that White's interests include sports medicine. After his parents divorced when he was 5, White moved around frequently—his father was in the military and his mother is a native of South Korea. From the age of 5 to 14, he lived with his father in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana and Germany. When he was about to enter high school, he moved to South Korea to live with his mother and stepfather. As a biracial student, he says he never felt like he fit in, going from an all-black elementary school to a white and Asian high school to a predominantly African-American campus at Florida A&M. "The only thing that kept me going," he said, "was sports." "Jermaine has a remarkable life story," says Albert Novotny, a 1949 graduate of the College of Medicine, an orthopaedic surgeon for 30 years and a former faculty member of the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria. Novotny and his wife, Marjorie, who graduated with a degree in speech therapy from the Urbana-Champaign campus in 1948, started their scholarship to support students in their quest to become doctors. The scholarship is one of about 100 such funds that provided nearly $1 million in support to COM students this school year—an important factor in continuing to attract the most talented and diverse students to the college. When Novotny was attending his 60th class reunion in Chicago last October, he and Marjorie had dinner with White. "In talking with him, we were sorry the scholarship wasn't larger," Novotny says. "Now that we've gotten to know him, it's a great incentive to increase the amount." The international flavor of the College of Medicine sits well with the adult White, who, at 27, is older than some of his class- mates. "It's probably the most diverse school I've been to, in all honesty," he says. "And it's also the best school I've been to." Ultimately, White's hopes for the future are almost low-key compared with his busy life growing up: He'd like to have a family, a stable physician's practice and a return to the gridiron—this time as a medical professional. "I'd love to be along the sidelines as the doctor on-site for my kids' football games." I L L INOI S MEDICINE | 27

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