Alumni gifts for professorships doubled, thanks to anonymous donor
Editor's note: Five years ago, an anonymous $20 million challenge grant made it possible for Case School of Engineering and 窪蹋勛圖厙 School of Medicine to endow 10 new professorships eachif they secured matching commitments from other donors. The effort proved so successful that three years later, the university received a second $10 million challenge grant to create five additional professorships at each school.
Below are stories about how the matching opportunity allowed two alumni couples to establish professorshipseach focused on an area of personal meaning.
Vijay Marwaha, MD (MED 99, MGT 99), and Dinaz Italia (GRS 99, nutrition) want to spare others the pain of losing loved ones to terminal illness.
For Marwaha, the cause was an autoimmune disease that struck his sister. His wife, meanwhile, saw ovarian cancer claim her mother.
The two have chosen to pay tribute to their respective family members by endowing the Marwaha-Italia Family Professorshipspecifically designated for a researcher developing treatments for cancer and diseases of the immune system.
Part of the inspiration for the couples gift came from the experience of Italias sister. After their mothers passing, both siblings participated in genetic testing to identify likely risks.
Italias sister tested positive for BRCA, a gene mutation that indicates an increased risk of developing certain cancers. In the follow-up process, her sister was diagnosed with stage one ovarian cancer. While early detection likely saved her sisters life, the treatments involved gave Italia pause.
My sisters treatment for ovarian cancer was largely the same as our mothers 35 years ago, said Italia, a registered dietitian. We hope this professorship will help bring about new therapies and make breakthroughs in the field.
The couple is confident their alma mater was the ideal place for such work.
We visited the university last year and it seems to have only become more impressive since we attended, said Marwaha, who runs a private cardiovascular practice in southern New Jersey. We want to support researchers, and there is no better place to do it than at 窪蹋勛圖厙.
A holistic approach
窪蹋勛圖厙 brought Beth Sersig, MD (MED 84), and Christopher Brandt, MD (WRC 80, MED 84), together more than four decades agoand their connection to the university continues to this day.
Brandt holds the medical schools Richard B. Fratianne Professorship in Surgery, and Sersig spent the majority of her career as a physician and director of womens health at 窪蹋勛圖厙s University Health and Counseling Services.
All along, they continued to give generously to the university.
Looking back on our time [at 窪蹋勛圖厙], its all about the people, said Brandt, who is a general surgeon and former chair of the Department of Surgery at the MetroHealth System in Cleveland. The relationships we builtwith our mentors and with classmates who became colleaguesare still important to us today.
Those relationships are the motivation behind the couples gift to endow the Christopher Brandt and Beth Sersig Professorship in Family Medicine.
This professorship will provide important resources, Brandt said, but it also honors Beths commitment to family medicine and how she approached patient care.
Sersig, describes family medicine as a person-first model, considering the whole picture, not just the symptoms that may have prompted a visit.
Family medicine promotes seeing the patient holistically, she said, and how their community influences their health.
They hope this initiative will increase student interest and research in family medicine, in addition to providing faculty members with opportunities to expand their knowledge in the field.
Its easy for faculty members to get bogged down with day-to-day stressors, said Brandt, but with this extra support, hopefully they can interact with colleagues from other institutions and find new points of view. As students, [Beth and I] benefitted from professors who had similar resources, and this is just one way to keep that going.
Originally published in the winter 2024 issue of Forward Thinking magazine