12 minute read
IGNITE Impact: Stories of philanthropy
Supporting PhD students
Sherri Mendelson and her husband, Tom, met on the Urbana campus, where she was preparing to study nursing and he, agriculture. She is pictured on their farm in Wisconsin.
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Sherri Mendelson, PhD, MS ’84, BSN ’77, says her success as a UIC Nursing master’s degree student was due to the encouragement of classmates and faculty; they even rallied behind her as she brought her newborn daughter to class the week after she was born.
“I was supported physically, fi nancially and emotionally during my master’s degree at University of Illinois Chicago,” she says. “Without that support, I probably couldn’t have done it.”
Mendelson, now nurse scientist and Magnet program director at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, California, wanted to pass on that same sense of support to a future generation of nurse scientists.
She and her husband made a gift in 2020 to endow the Tom and Sherri Mendelson PhD Awards. The inaugural awards were given to fi ve doctoral students in April.
“My current position as research scientist for a large hospital system really helped me understand how much nurses need support in order to do their research and to move forward in understanding evidence-based practice and research,” she says.
Mendelson and her husband, Tom, met on the Urbana campus, where she was preparing to study nursing and he, agriculture. She is pictured here on their farm in Wisconsin.
The five inaugural Mendelson Scholars
Left to right: The PhD students as listed top to bottom below
Elizabeth Rios
RESEARCH TOPIC: Psychosocial factors that may influence the development of type 2 diabetes among Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American women living in the United States
ADVISOR: Lauretta Quinn, PhD ’96, RN, CDE, FAHA, FAAN
Sungwon Park
RESEARCH TOPIC: Factors infl uencing adherence to health behaviors recommended by a metabolic syndrome management program
ADVISORS: Carol Ferrans, PhD ’85, MS ’82, RN, FAAN; Lauretta Quinn, PhD ’96, RN, CDE, FAHA, FAAN
Asha Mathew Solomon
RESEARCH TOPIC RESEARCH TOPIC: Symptom-cluster experiences in Symptom-cluster experiences in oral cancer oral cancer
ADVISOR: Ardith Doorenbos, PhD, RN, FAAN PhD, RN, FAAN
Wiphawadee Potisopha
RESEARCH TOPIC RESEARCH TOPIC: Understanding treatment-seeking Understanding treatment-seeking decisions in acute stroke survivors decisions in acute stroke survivors
ADVISOR: Patricia Hershberger, PhD ’05, FNP-BC, FAAN PhD ’05, FNP-BC, FAAN
Manassawee Srimoragot
RESEARCH TOPIC: Sleep characteristics and cardiovascular disease risk among Asian women
ADVISOR: Bilgay Izci Balserak, PhD
A gift for clinical faculty
The Kathleen M. Irwin Endowed Chair Professorship in Outstanding Nursing Practice will support clinical-track faculty.
Longtime University of Illinois supporter Steven Irwin, MD, has made a gift to the UIC College of Nursing to help support the work of an exceptional clinical-track faculty member active in nursing practice.
The endowment is in accordance with the wishes of his late wife, Kathleen, who was a nurse, and establishes the Kathleen M. Irwin Endowed Chair Professorship in Outstanding Nursing Practice.
“Kathy wanted to give to the College of Nursing after her passing,” Irwin says. “She knew the chair we would establish in her name would bring talented faculty to the college—faculty whose work honors Kathy’s many decades serving as an exceptional nurse.”
Kathleen had a modest upbringing in Chicago’s Bowmanville neighborhood, Irwin says, bestowing her with great empathy and insight. Kathy and Steve Irwin both attended UIC, although they didn’t meet until much later. Together, the couple became advocates for top-notch public education at a reasonable price. They began supporting the University of Illinois in 1983.
Although Kathleen did not get her nursing degree at UIC, they knew of the college’s excellence. After research and discussion, the couple determined they wanted to support UIC Nursing’s academic enterprise.
UIC Nursing Dean Emerita Terri Weaver,PhD, RN, FAAN, ATSF, FAASM, says she believes this is one of the nation’s few endowed positions aimed at nursing faculty engaged in clinical practice at a Research I university.
“I find it noteworthy that Kathy was not an alumna of UIC Nursing, but together, she and Steve decided our college was the one to entrust with her legacy,” says Weaver. “That is a testament to the outstanding reputation our faculty and staff have built for our college.”
Rewarding research
Established by an emerita dean and her husband, the Heung Soo and Mi Ja Kim Endowed Faculty Scholar is the college's first endowed scholar position focused on research.
UIC Nursing Dean Emerita Mi Ja Kim, PhD, RN, FRCN, FAAN, credits the college for her illustrious career, saying it’s where she “grew up.”
In 2018, Kim made a significant gift to create the Dr. Mi Ja Kim Endowed Faculty Research Award. Now she and her husband, Heung Soo, have doubled the endowment to $250,000 to transform the award into the Heung Soo and Mi Ja Kim Endowed Faculty Scholar Position.
“Expanding the gift was important to me to recognize and support faculty research at a higher level,” says Kim, who also served as vice chancellor for research and dean of the Graduate College during her 38 years on faculty at UIC. “This is special because my husband has joined me for this gift.”
“An endowed faculty scholar position bearing the name of Mi Ja Kim, who is known worldwide in the field of nursing science, is an incredible tool for our college to use in recruiting and retaining world-class faculty,” says Dean Eileen Collins.
Named an American Academy of Nursing “Living Legend” in 2012, Kim continues to remain active in research and scholarship. Her research career includes more than $12 million in extramural funding, 160 scholarly publications and honorary fellowship in the Royal College of Nursing in London.
Says Kim: “God has blessed me and my family immensely. I hope the gift will serve as inspiration for others to also give when their time comes. If I can do it, anybody can do it.”
Diversifying midwifery
Scholarship recipient Jayme Henderson, RN, is passionate about addressing maternal health disparities.
Jayme Henderson
Jayme Henderson’s interest in midwifery was solidifi ed when she shadowed a midwife during a practicum in her undergraduate program. She was inspired by the individual attention the midwife gave to her patient, staying with her for the duration of her labor.
Just six months after graduating with her BSN, Henderson enrolled in the UIC Nursing DNP program for midwifery and women’s health.
“All aspects of [these fi elds] excite me, from preparation and prenatal care, to actual delivery, to postpartum care,” she says. “That’s why I wanted to jump right into the midwifery program.”
Henderson is the fi rst recipient of the Diversity & Inclusion Scholarship established by the UIH Midwifery Practice in October 2020 to benefi t midwifery students from underrepresented backgrounds. UI Health midwives Kathleen Harmon, MS ’95, CNM and Maddalena Buscemi, DNP ’19, CNM, were primary drivers in bringing the fund to fruition.
“I’m glad that this scholarship brings to light the need for more diversity in midwifery,” Henderson says. “As a student just starting my journey at UIC, this is really encouraging.”
Henderson works full-time as a labor and delivery nurse at Advocate Trinity Hospital in southeast Chicago, adding that she deliberately chose a hospital where much of her patient population would be people of color.
“As a person of color, I want to ensure all my patients of color get the same treatment that their white counterparts get,” she says. “I’m driven to be there as a resource, to educate and to ensure those patients of color aren’t falling through the cracks.”
‘We always knew we had to give back’
Karyn and Terrance Holm shared a rich life together, anchored by a mutual passion for sailing, a love of family and a common value system that prioritized charitable giving.
Karyn and Terry Holm aboard their sailboat, South Side Magic, in Burnham Harbor.
After her husband, Terrance, passed away in July 2019—just shy of their 50th anniversary—Karyn Holm wanted to honor their relationship with a gift to a cause that was important to both of them: the University of Illinois. Karyn Holm, PhD, FAAN, FAHA, had spent 12 years on faculty at UIC Nursing, ultimately becoming associate dean of practice, and Terry earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
“There were so many things that Terry and I held in common: Our value system, our love of the water, our love of family and parents, and being active givers,” Karyn says. “We always knew we had to give back. It’s part of being human.”
Now her gift of $1 million will create the Terrance and Karyn Holm Endowed Professorship Fund and the Terrance and Karyn Holm Unrestricted Research Center Program Fund to support the college’s Midwest Nursing History Research Center (MNHRC).
A New Year’s Resolution
The Holms met in March of 1969 when Karyn and a roommate considered subletting an apartment from Terry and his roommate Jim, who had gotten drafted. She didn’t take the apartment, but she did click with its occupant. Karyn and Terry were married by October of that year.
The two were well-matched. Both goal-directed, they took turns supporting each other as they advanced in their careers and attended graduate school (she in nursing and he in business). When accepted into her PhD program, Karyn recalls that Terry formally pledged to help.
“He always wrote down his New Year’s Resolutions,” she says. “‘Help Karyn get her PhD’ was one of his resolutions that year. He was so supportive.”
As she pursued a career in nursing and healthcare, he worked as an executive at Edward Hines Lumber Company and later realized his dream of launching Holm Financial, a successful fi nancial services company. Through it all, they “appreciated each other’s friends and colleagues,” she says, recalling their close friendship with former UIC Nursing Dean Mitzi Duxbury and others at UIC, including Marjorie Powers, Susan Dudas, MiJa Kim, Jan Baldwin, Laurie Whitney and Mary Sheehan.
The Holms also shared a strong desire to give to causes that were important to them, previously creating the Terrance and Karyn Holm Endowed Visiting Scholar Award in honor of their parents.
A life on the water
Sailing was a constant in their lives. The Holms began sailing in 1972 and attended the Annapolis Sailing School. Over the years, they spent their free time setting sail from progressively challenging boats on Lake Michigan (often with their golden retriever, Rainbow, in tow).
In 1982, they set their sights on one of the trickiest of sailing conquests: piloting a boat under the Golden Gate Bridge. They faced repeated warnings about unpredictable winds, currents and tides in San Francisco Bay. The subtext was clear: only expert sailors should attempt.
Terry later wrote about the experience, recalling the “intense” anticipation as they drove across the bridge to their lodgings. The next day, their strategic planning paid off, as they “seemed to fl y over the sea” and approached the bridge “smack dab in the center.”
“The exhilaration was unbelievable,” he wrote. “We had done it.”
Karyn now cherishes these paper artifacts, which memorialize her relationship with her husabnd.
It’s her interest in preserving history—whether the history of her family or, more broadly, nursing history—that prompted her gift to UIC Nursing.
“Our history is essential to moving the profession forward as we truly stand on the shoulders of giants,” she says.
Spending power
Donors support faculty with flexible funding
In October 2021, Dean Eileen Collins issued the fi rst awards from the Dean’s Faculty Catalyst Fund, a fl exible, current-use fund launched with a gift from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation President’s Grant Fund of the Princeton Area Community Foundation, as directed by alumnus Paul Kuehnert, DNP ’12, MS ’91, RN.
Kuehnert, retired associate vice president at RWJF, and his wife, Judith, seeded the fund, which was swiftly enhanced by major gifts from a number of UIC Nursing alumni, donors and friends who understood a dean’s need for dynamic, philanthropic funding to use in attracting and retaining top-notch faculty.
The inaugural Catalyst recipients, each awarded with funds to be used as a part of their professional activities, are:
Valerie Gruss, PhD, CNP-BC, FAAN, clinical professor and the college’s director of interprofessional education
Susan Kilroy, PhD ’20, RN, CHSE, visiting clinical assistant professor and director of the Clinical Learning Resource Center, including the M. Christine Schwartz Experiential Learning & Simulation Laboratory
Pamela Martyn-Nemeth, PhD, RN, FAHA, FAAN, associate professor and director of the college’s PhD program
If you are interested in adding to the Dean’s Faculty Catalyst Fund or creating your own fund to help UIC Nursing reach its $33 million IGNITE goal, please contact Steven George at steveg@uic.edu.
Expressing Gratitude
Sentiments from three recent scholarship recipients
Theresa Gibbons, MS ’21, Recipient of the UIC College of Nursing Scholarship
Janelli Barrow, Midwifery DNP student, Recipient of the Craig & Sarah Allen Scholarship in Memory of Hal Gold; Mitzi L. Duxbury Nursing, Neonatal Nursing and Midwifery Scholarship Fund in Honor of Dr. Alexander (Mack) Schmidt
Heather Beckman, BSN student, Recipient of the Memorial Health System Scholarship
