Faculty Donors Honor Colleague Each Year With Endowed Scholarship Award

From left: Dr. Andrew Sullivan, Chair of the Department of Periodontics, with scholarship recipient Dr. Kevin Murawski.

The process of earning a DMD or postdoctoral certificate can be grueling enough. But the financial burden for dental school students can also be hard to bear. Dr. Andrew Sullivan, Chair of the Department of Periodontics, and his colleagues sought to ease financial burdens, too.

Ten years ago, Sullivan and Drs. Joel Pascuzzi, Howard Drew and Barry Simon created the Michael J. Deasy DMD Endowed Scholarship. Since 2009, it has been awarded to a postgraduate periodontal student who demonstrates exemplary academic performance, clinical excellence and has completed the second year of post-doctoral study.

“We have very bright students and we need more resources to help them,’’ says Sullivan. “We would be able to reward more students if we had more scholarships.’’

Dr. Deasy, the scholarship’s namesake, was an alumnus (Class of '72) and instrumental in helping to develop the RSDM perio department, where he was chair for 35 years before retiring 11 years ago.