A pair of Virginia Tech alumni are making the largest scholarship commitment in the university's history.
Jim and Augustine Smith are giving a $20 million endowment to the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine for in-state scholarships. The Smiths say they don't want financial challenges to block regional medical students from pursuing their degrees in Roanoke.
Jim Smith says their hope is to boost the supply of local-grown doctors who will stay and practice medicine in western Virginia. Currently 40 percent of medical students from Virginia go out of state.
"If they come to Virginia Tech and they're there in Roanoke, then the chances of them graduating and staying in western Virginia are a lot higher than if they were somewhere else and being recruited into western Virginia," Smith says. "The key gets to be affordability. Can they afford to be there? And that's where the scholarship comes in."
The Smiths are both Virginia Tech alumni. In 2017, they established the James R. Smith Family Charitable Foundation Scholarship, which benefited students like Maedot Haymete. Haymete will graduate in May and intends to pursue a residency in diagnostic radiology.
"Between what the school itself was offering me, and then with this named scholarship, it pretty much covered what I needed to serve in med school without even to take out loans," Haymete says.
Lee Learman, dean of the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, says the medical school is also looking to add a new building and incorporate in-state tuition to attract more Virginians. Its goal is to double the size of the student body and increase the percentage of Virginians in it.
"So as you put all those things together, we will be able to quadruple the number of Virginians who graduate from our medical school, and they will have much lower debt," Learman says.
Learman estimates the Smith's gift will assist one to two students now in its first year, and about 20 students by the time it's fully phased in.
