While the University of Lethbridge’s Southern Alberta Medical Program is still in its infancy, a prominent southern Alberta family has stepped forward to establish the program’s first scholarship award in perpetuity — the Dr. Cormican Excellence Scholarship in Rural Medicine.
Created through a $25,000 gift from Dr. Aileen Cormican, which will be endowed and matched by the ULethbridge Board of Governors matching program, the scholarship will provide one minimum $2,000 award annually to a ULethbridge student who is admitted to the Southern Alberta Medical Program.
“There are a lot of talented individuals and bright minds in our city and region. We need to do our best to keep them here and practising in our communities,” says Cormican, a senior staff specialist at the Chinook Regional Hospital, a radiologist and CEO of her own international teleradiology corporation.
SAMP was established in 2024 in partnership with the University of Calgary and is designed to train medical students at the U of L and in rural communities across southern Alberta. One of two Rural Medical Education Program Training Centres in the province, learners will train alongside other health care professionals, gaining practical medical experience. The program will enrol learners who are identified as being likely to practice in rural areas upon graduation.
The Cormican scholarship will give preference to students who have graduated from a high school in a district south of Calgary. Eligible students must have completed a minimum of 60 credit hours at ULethbridge. Cormican says she is cognizant of her Lethbridge roots, her family originally settled in Allerston and farmed in Milk River.
“The pursuit of medicine is hard enough. We need to make sure we’re doing the right things to keep health care professionals here for our region by attracting and supporting medical students and keeping physicians in southern Alberta,” she notes.
Cormican is excited to be the first to support SAMP with a scholarship gift and confident others will recognize the vast potential of the program and how it could transform health care in southern Alberta through similar gifts. “We can all make a difference in our community, with whatever our talents or gifts are.”
