Financial Aid
Seventy-five percent of Alpert medical students need financial assistance in order to attend Alpert Medical School. The School helps them shoulder the cost of their education by providing loans and scholarships. These scholarships are made possible by generous donors who believe in the noble endeavor of medical education.
Read about and see video from our Generosity and Gratitude dinner, an annual celebration of medical scholarship giving.
Alexes Hazen '87 MD'96
Why do you want to be a doctor?" Alexes Hazen's grandfather once asked her. "Just be a woman."
But Hazen '87 MD'96 wanted to help people, and though her path was a little more circuitous than most, she finally found her way to medicine. Now an assistant professor of plastic surgery at New York University and director of the NYU Aesthetic Surgery Center, Hazen endowed the Alexes Hazen, MD, and Alex Ettl Medical Scholarship.
Hazen completed the postbaccalaureate premedical program at Bryn Mawr College and returned to Brown for medical school. She soon realized how privileged she was - with her parents paying for her tuition, her living expenses, even buying her a car - after seeing the experiences of her best friend, who was also a medical student.
"She had scholarships, loans, jobs ... I'd be going to the movies and she'd be going to work," Hazen says. "She was under pressure to do well and she had to succeed. It was eye opening to me. I decided at that point if I ever had the means, that I would do something so that people had the chance to decide on whatever career they wanted and to go with their heart rather than what makes money."
That opportunity came when her grandfather died at the age of 96. He established a foundation with his fortune and appointed his children and grandchildren directors. Shortly after she graduated from medical school, Hazen used some of the funds to establish the medical scholarship that bears her and her grandfather's names.
As part of her giving to Boldly Brown: Campaign for Academic Enrichment, Hazen committed additional funds to the medical scholarship. Her gifts were matched dollar for dollar by the Women's Leadership Challenge, established by the Women's Leadership Council at Brown to both honor President Ruth J. Simmons' commitment to higher education, particularly the education of women, and to inspire greater leadership giving from Brown alumnae.
Majid Mohiuddin '97 MD'01
Majid Mohiuddin '97 MD'01 spent a lot of time thinking about the kind of impact he wished to make with his gift to Brown, and he decided that he wanted to do more than leave a legacy---he wanted to watch one grow. He endowed the Dr. Mohammed Mohiuddin P'97 MD'01 Medical Scholarship.
The younger Mohiuddin was born to immigrant parents and grew up in Cherry Hill, NJ. In high school, he won the New Jersey Governor's Award for Literary Arts for playwriting and a Brown University Book Award, sponsored by Brown alum Richard Schomp '70. The prize is awarded to "those who use words effectively to be leaders in their generation." This award made Mohiuddin think seriously about attending Brown; as it sits on his bookcase at home now, it makes him realize how even a small gift from an unrelated alumnus could have a lasting impression on a promising student.
It is easy to see the influence Mohiuddin's family had on his career path and interests. His mother, Mubeen, taught English literature at university and his father, Mohammed, is a physician-scientist in the field of oncology. Mohiuddin chose to honor his father by naming this new scholarship after him. "Aside from being a physician," Mohiuddin says, "my father is an educator who is passionate about making intellectual contributions that benefit humanity, while remaining humble. He told me that the real contribution one makes in academic medicine is teaching the next generation. So, the timing is apropos: I am a father now, too─ my son Suleiman is 1 ─ and I have a new appreciation for the role a father plays as a mentor."
The Dr. Mohammed Mohiuddin P'97 MD'01 Medical Scholarship will have a lasting effect on Brown medical students, and Mohiuddin is looking forward to hearing all about it year after year."Brown's medical school is young and needs support," he says. "Right now, I am feeling excited about the school, how it has grown, and the momentum it has gained over the years. Though I, too, am just starting out I wanted to make a substantial gift now, while I am still young. I want to see the impact of this gift in my parents' lifetime. I want to hear stories from scholarship recipients 20 years from now about what paths their careers and lives have taken. I hope their stories change my life, too. And I hope that one day, if they are able, they too will consider a gift to the next generation."