Scholarships
Feinberg
Feinberg Celebrates Scholarship Impact While Kicking Off $200 Million Fundraising Campaign
Donors and medical students assembled May 2 at The Peninsula Chicago Hotel to honor the transformative power of scholarships and mark the launch of a new $200 million campaign at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
“The competition for top students among our peer institutions is fierce, as many of you are aware. Strong scholarship support allows students to choose a path guided by passion and purpose, not financial pressure,” Marianne Green, MD, vice dean for Education, chair of the Department of Medical Education, and Raymond H. Curry, MD, Professor, told the approximately 240 attendees of the annual Commitment to Scholarships luncheon.
The new campaign seeks to raise an ambitious $200 million in scholarship funds by 2032. But thanks to many generous donors present at the luncheon, Dr. Green said, Feinberg is already $36 million into that goal.
Attendees heard from two such supporters: Kevin Hicks, PhD, who spoke on behalf of his family and the Snorf family, and faculty member Sean D. O’Connor, MD, whose grateful patient established a scholarship in his name in 2018.
Dr. Hicks spoke of his stepfather’s sense of indebtedness to his mentors and his profound desire to pay forward his good fortune to the next generation of medical students.
“My stepfather’s commitment to this scholarship was sourced in his awareness of the debt he had incurred to his mentors at Northwestern, who gave him the great gift of believing in him before he fully believed in himself,” Dr. Hicks said of Charles “Charlie” Snorf, ’58 MD, ’63 GME, namesake of the Snorf Medical Student Scholarship. “Charlie knew that he could best meet his obligation to these professors by extending his philanthropy to the next generation of medical students, just as his teachers had helped him in part to pay forward their own debt to long-gone mentors.”
Dr. O’Connor, clinical assistant professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine), also spoke to attendees, sharing gratitude for the patient who established the Sean D. O’Connor, MD Scholarship and for all his patients, students, and fellow faculty members who have inspired him to be a better clinician and educator throughout his 25-year career at Feinberg. He and his wife, Gail, as well as many patients, have donated generously to the scholarship since its inception.
“Today is about commitment and about supporting scholarship. Gail and I, along with my patients, want to support this scholarship and make it grow, so that by 2032, the scholarship will be able to support a medical student going into a primary care residency get the support and financial relief that they need,” he said.
Today, Feinberg’s scholarship endowment is $294.8 million, with over 71% of medical students receiving scholarship assistance thanks to thousands of donors who have made outright and estate gifts. The school aims to one day increase its endowment to $800 million and provide free tuition to all its students.
Crystal Apple Acknowledges Outstanding Donor Support
Robert Lohr, MD ’76, and Marlene Goodfriend, MD ’69, were each honored with a Crystal Apple award for their distinguished careers and support for their alma mater.
In 2025, Dr. Lohr established a new endowed scholarship that will bear his name in perpetuity, ensuring lasting opportunity for future students. While he retired in 2014—and this year celebrates his 50th class reunion—he has remained deeply engaged in service, working in a supplemental capacity, volunteering with the MAVEN Project and the Salvation Army Clinics in Rochester, Minnesota, and leading five Mayo Clinic teams providing medical care and education in Haiti.
Dr. Goodfriend, a career pediatrician and psychiatrist, is a staunch advocate for global health, working in the U.S. and in resource-poor areas of the world, recently as a mental health advisor for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). Also a member of Feinberg’s Half Century Club, Dr. Goodfriend epitomizes the importance of giving back, having supported both the Class of 1969 Scholarship and the Dr. Howard S. and Regina G. Traisman Scholarship, as well as a planned gift benefiting scholarships.
Scholars Share Paths to Medicine
Offering personal reflections on the paths that led them to Feinberg, medical students Cecile Schreidah and Shawn Yates shared how donor support transformed what once felt like distant dreams into lived realities.
A first-year medical student and Medical Alumni Scholar, Schreidah grew up in Toledo, Ohio, in a low-income family where education was deeply valued but financial limitations shaped her choices. She described how a series of small, formative decisions—what she called a “butterfly effect”—guided her toward medicine, beginning with joining a middle school Science Olympiad team that sparked her interest in public health and infectious disease.
That curiosity carried Schreidah to Brown University, where she designed her own concentration in infectious epidemiology. A pivotal turning point came through the Northwestern Pre-Med Summer Internship, which provided extensive clinical exposure and introduced her to Feinberg’s collaborative culture. Returning to Northwestern during her gap year as a dermatology scribe and researcher further confirmed that Feinberg was where she wanted to train.
“The Medical Alumni Scholarship made my dream a reality—allowing me to choose the place where I knew I would thrive,” Schreidah said. “For me and students like me, your generosity changes everything.”
Shawn Yates, a first-generation medical student and Feinberg Promise Scholar, shared his journey from Clarksville, Missouri—a rural town of fewer than 400 residents where opportunities for higher education and healthcare experience were limited. Raised in a community where bachelor’s degrees were less common, he spoke candidly about the barriers and self-doubt that accompanied his ambition to become a physician.
Through persistent work, community involvement, and mentorship, Yates earned a merit scholarship to attend Washington University in St. Louis and gained hands-on clinical experience in his local, rural hospital. While Northwestern initially felt financially out of reach, scholarship support changed that trajectory.
“I see the impact of my peers and that the impact that you’re making will extend well beyond the classroom,” Yates said. “And so on behalf of all students that you’ve generously supported, and the lives that you’re changing, thank you.”
For more information, or to support scholarships, please contact Larry Kuhn at larry-kuhn@northwestern.edu or 312-503-1717.