She hopes her gift will encourage other alumni to give back.
“ I know not everyone can commit at the same level, but I would encourage fellow alumni to reflect upon the fact that if you are able to give, it’s probably because of the foundation you received at UIC,” she says. Amatayakul in the open area near the College of Medicine East Tower, “This space is nice and peaceful, and when I needed a little down time on campus I came here.”
desire to pursue an M.S. in health informatics or a Ph.D. in biomedical and health informatics will be able to do so. The Margret Amatayakul Health Information Sciences Endowed Scholarship Fund continues UIC’s commitment to making education accessible and affordable to a diverse student body. “I want to help students directly,” Amatayakul says. “People generally enter the healthcare profession because they’re seeking a fulfilling, rewarding and challenging career.” For Amatayakul, that means financially supporting students with big dreams. Amatayakul says her UIC professors encouraged her to look ahead at what else she could achieve. By setting high standards for herself, Amatayakul found she could push herself further than she thought possible. Those standards include an endless thirst for learning. In the constantly 18
AHS MAGAZINE
WINTER 2018
evolving field of healthcare, a zest for education is key. “It’s about going beyond continuing education credits—to me, that’s maintenance, not advanced learning,” Amatayakul says. She strives to learn something new every day. Indeed, she says it’s imperative to do so. “I read healthcare news and subscribe to different publications, and it helps me appreciate the changing dynamics of this field,” she says. “To succeed in healthcare, you really need to have that lifelong learning.” When Amatayakul looks back on her own education, she can pinpoint specific moments when teachers, professors, mentors and supervisors recognized her strengths and weaknesses and were able to guide her appropriately. “I had people looking out for me,” she says. “In a general sense, that’s partly what motivated my gift.”
As alumni likely recall from their own time at UIC, students are challenged from their very first days on campus. They dive into hands-on experiences that prepare them to be leaders in their careers. They receive training that allows them to positively impact communities in Chicago and around the world. They undertake a rigorous curriculum that helps them become practitioners, researchers, scholars and educators as our changing world accelerates. Your generosity can help current and future students do all this—and then some. That’s what it came down to for Amatayakul. “AHS was a place where my gift could truly make a difference,” she says. “I hope it inspires others who want to make an impact, too.”
To make your own gift, visit
ahs.uic.edu/alumni/giving.