Schmidlapp Scholarship Winner Focuses on Women, Service

In the last months of her third year of medical school, student Morgan Brown was named the 2013 recipient of the Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Scholarship, providing $20,000 for tuition costs.

The scholarship is awarded annually on the basis of outstanding academic achievement, community involvement, leadership and involvement in women’s health care.

"I feel very lucky,” says Brown, "the Schmidlapp scholarship was perfectly tailored to what my experience in medical school has been so far.” 

In between her first and second year, the Loveland, Ohio native completed an internship with non-profit organization Off the Streets, which provides support and rehabilitation services for women who were involved in prostitution.

"It was a little intimidating to step into the internship,” she remembers. "I didn’t know how I would be received by the women, but they were fantastic. I honestly think I learned just as much from them as they hopefully did from me. It opened my eyes to people with unique struggles and challenges who I will hopefully be serving and working with in the future.”

Now completing her last internal medicine rotation at ChristHospital this summer, Brown is looking forward to jumping into her final year of medical school, and her focus in pediatrics, with a rotation in the UC Medical Center Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. 

"I’m excited to get started and focus on pediatrics in my fourth year,” says Brown. "When you’re in your first and second year of medical school, you learn so much information at once and it can be overwhelming. But it’s kind of fun now—in the third and fourth year, we’re seeing how things are coming together. I’m finding myself better able to come up with an assessment or treatment plan on my own. In the clinic, every day that you go to work, you’re there to learn and grow and further develop as a physician. There’s always room for that.”

The 2013 Schmidlapp scholarship includes an increase in funds from previous years. Instead of $15,000, the Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund Fifth Third Bank Trustee has committed to awarding $20,000 to a third-year female College of Medicine student each year for the next three years.

Brown says the scholarship will be particularly helpful in defraying the increased costs of the fourth year of medical school, when she’ll be traveling and interviewing for residency positions. 

After a pediatrics residency, she hopes to work with adolescent girls, saying she was inspired by her rotation at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center’s Teen Health Clinic.

"I think that population is extremely important and deserves so much of our time and attention,” says Brown. "Girls are going through important changes in their development and lives in adolescence. I think that, as doctors, we can help guide them in the right direction and take care of more than just their physical health, but also their mental health and emotion well-being.”

The Schmidlapp scholarship is financially assisted by the Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund Fifth Third Bank Trustee and are connected by history to Jacob Schmidlapp, a prominent Cincinnati banker and philanthropist whose Union Savings Bank merged with Fifth Third in 1919. The trust has contributed over $1.6 million toward art, health and community initiatives. The scholarship celebrates the memory of Jacob’s daughter, Charlotte.

The Schmidlapp scholarship supports one of the priorities of Proudly Cincinnati, UC’s $1 billion fundraising campaign, to transform higher education through private support.