Scholarship Helps Small Town Pharmacy Students

Future Illinois pharmacists from small towns could get a hand up at UIC thanks to1976 alum Dave Hicks.

Dave’s estate will fund a scholarship at the Rockford campus, specifically for rural students who intend to return to their small towns. The scholarship will be funded
by an endowment currently estimated at $50,000.

Dave wanted to benefit the Rockford campus because he grew up in nearby Belvidere, Boone County. Raised on a 160-acre corn and livestock farm, Dave knows the importance of pharmacies in rural communities.

“I very much identify with the rural environment,” he said. “There are a number of small towns across northern Illinois that still need pharmacies. And pharmacies are really a bedrock of small communities… So I wanted to do something to help to support that.”

In fact, Dave’s pharmacist as a kid — Al Anderson at Rexall Drug — helped steer him toward a pharmacy career.

“He was my original role model in terms of getting into pharmacy,” Dave said. “I saw that it was a good career and mixed my interest in chemistry with an altruistic profession.”

Among the many accomplishments in his career, Dave served as vice president and chief pharmacy officer at University of Chicago, earning American Society of Hospital Pharmacy Best Practice Awards in 2011 and 2012, and turning the medical school into one of UIC Pharmacy’s top clinical rotation sites. Last year, the UIC Pharmacy Alumni Association recognized Dave with the Jesse Stewart Service Award.

Dave credits UIC for much of his success.

“ I wanted to give back, and give forward, for the great career I had,” Hicks said. “This college was instrumental in my career.”