Stories of Giving

Inspired by Dennis Murphy III’s remarkable recovery from a stroke, Dennis’ mother, Julie Murphy, has established a fund named in memory of her husband and Dennis’ father, Dennis F. Murphy Jr., to advance stroke rehabilitation education at UMass Chan Medical School.

A gift from the Hall family, including Kimberly Hall, FNP, DNP’19, her husband Bruce Hall, and their children, will make international clinical nursing experiences more accessible to students at the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing through the establishment of the Hall Family Global Nursing Fund.

More than 2,000 participants descended on Polar Park in Worcester for the 26th annual UMass Cancer Walk presented by Harr Toyota on Sunday, Sept. 29. This year, more than $650,000 was raised.

On Thursday, Sept. 12, the 2024 Convocation and Investiture ceremony celebrated the achievement of faculty at UMass Chan Medical School—“the heart and soul of this academic institution”—and the donors who support them. 

A longtime leader in emergency medicine, David E. Wilcox, MD, FACEP, is funding a new award that will support research in the specialty at UMass Chan Medical School, where he was a valued faculty member for more than 15 years.

A commitment to fighting ALS is a common thread that unites the Cellucci Fund marathon team in a profound way. This year’s team raised more than $105,000, exceeding their goal and bringing critical funding to ALS and related research at UMass Chan and in the lab of Robert H. Brown Jr., DPhil, MD, the Donna M. and Robert J. Manning Chair in Neurosciences and professor of neurology. 

When Jürgen Holleck, MD’99, R’02, and Walter Mutter, MD’99, returned to the UMass Chan campus for Reunion 2024 in May, for old times’ sake, they visited the Student Lounge, where they used to play ping pong to unwind after long days of studying.

Are we more microbial than human? This thought-provoking question was posed at the 39th annual meeting of the Hudson Hoagland Society (HHS) held on May 14 at UMass Chan Medical School. 

Bob Wellman, PhD, and the late Mary Wellman, PhD, shared a commitment to psychology and education that will live on through a new bequest intention. 

Leslie Shaff, MD’84, P'99, MBA, JD, MAT, always wanted to be a doctor. However, when she graduated from college in the late 1960s, the message received by many women at the time was clear: You can’t practice medicine and start a family. Aspiring female physicians, including Leslie, often felt forced to choose one path or the other.