Trending
Marquette -- The Mazzuchi Scholarship has been awarded to five medical students from the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine Upper Peninsula Region: Ava Adler, Sophia Aque, Jenny Haely, Ted Hoenke and Laura Lyons.
Recipients are chosen based on their intention to practice in the Upper Peninsula after residency, interest in primary and specialty fields and financial need. Specific specialty fields include emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, general surgery, hospitalist medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics or psychiatry.
“Supporting medical students who intend to practice in the Upper Peninsula is an investment in the long-term health of our communities," said Community Assistant Dean Dr. Stuart Johnson. "The Mazzuchi Scholarship helps make medical education more accessible while reinforcing the connection between educating physicians here and meeting the health care needs of our region."
The scholarship recipients are third-year medical students who are completing the last two years of medical school in Marquette and other rural areas in the Upper Peninsula.
The Class of 2028 medical student recipients:
• Ava Adler, of New York, received a BA in Biology from Oberlin College in Ohio
• Sophia Aque, of Charlevoix, received a BS in Biochemistry from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
• Jenny Haely, of Novi, received a BS in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan in Ann Abor.
• Ted Hoenke, of Marquette, received a BS in Biology from Franciscan University in Steubenville, OH
• Laura Lyons, of Calumet, received a BS and a MS in Biomedical Engineering from Michigan Tech University in Houghton.
Established in 1983 to support the College's UP Region students, the scholarship fund was renamed the Mazzuchi Scholarship in 2006 to honor Dr. Dan Mazzuchi and his lasting contributions to medical education in the Upper Peninsula. A dedicated advocate for physician training in the region, Dr. Mazzuchi helped establish the UP Region Campus, served as its first community assistant dean in 1978, and, even before the campus was founded, joined fellow local physicians in traveling to Escanaba to teach the program's first class of medical students at the Bay de Noc Health Center in 1975.
Beyond his work with the medical school, he also played a pivotal role in laying the foundation for the UPHS-Marquette Family Medicine Residency Program, affiliated with Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and is widely recognized as the program's founding father after being hired in 1977 to lead its planning efforts.
"It was an honor to have expressed my personal gratitude to him for his commitment over the years to medical education, the students, the residents, the faculty, and for the lives that have been touched," said Johnson. "Dr. Mazzuchi's legacy lives on when our medical learners return to practice in the Upper Peninsula's under-served rural communities, in this wonderful place we call home."