Kathleen and Gary Schneiderman: A scholarship for the generous of spirit

"Though we're nowhere near Chicago, it is great to still feel the connection across time and geography," says Kathleen Schneiderman, MD ('78), speaking of the relationship she and her husband, Gary Schneiderman, MD ('77), have maintained with Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine over the 30 years since they met on campus and married during the first year of his internship.

Dr. Kathleen Schneiderman, a south-side Chicago native, quilter, and marathon runner, is a pediatrician. Her husband, who came to medical school a self-described "southern California surfer guy with liberal politics" and still plays in a rock band, is an orthopaedic spine surgeon. After her graduation from Stritch, they moved to Los Angeles, where they completed their medical training and had their first child before moving to Sacramento, where they have practiced and raised their three children.

Speaking about their decision to create a scholarship for a third-year student, the Drs. Gary Schneiderman and Kathleen Prendergast Schneiderman Medical Student Scholarship, both the Schneidermans talk about the influence of people in their pasts.

Kathleen notes that, with nine brothers and sisters, all of whom went through college at the same time, "generosity and sharing were strong lessons I learned from my parents." Gary remembers the physician mentors he respected and looked up to--Robert J. Freeark, MD, Gerald Nora, MD, and Joseph Wells, MD, PhD, former dean of Stritch--not only for their exemplary clinical practices, but because "they showed me the sort of kindness that I hoped I could emulate in my life."

Both Schneidermans agree that Loyola is a school with a heart. She had believed it for a long time, growing up watching her dad go off to teach evening accountancy classes twice a week at Loyola University Chicago and "surrounded by an extended family always active in Catholic circles." He discovered it the first day he arrived at Stritch, after touring two other top-ranked Midwestern medical schools in bleak, gray weather. He found the people and welcoming environment he encountered "so totally different from the highly competitive atmosphere of my pre-med days at UCLA that I went home and told my folks I was going to Stritch."

Neither was disappointed with the choice. Gary says that he made lifelong friends from all over the country at Stritch and found the cultural and political milieu invigorating--completely different from his undergraduate experience. Kathleen, one of about 20 women in her class, says that although her parents had felt some trepidation about a young woman being a doctor, choosing Stritch "aligned my goals with my parents' strong family values, which had guided us all my life."

Those family values have continued to play out in the Schneidermans' life together. While they were raising their three children, now all in college, Kathleen was, for the most part, able to maintain a one-to three-day-per-week practice. Because of this flexibility, "I could be a mom all these years," she says, "which made our life wonderful." Theirs is also an interfaith marriage, the union of an Irish Catholic girl and a Jewish boy. Their children attended parochial primary schools and Jesuit high school and grew up celebrating Chanukah and Christmas, Passover and Easter.

As they considered how they might share the blessings they've experienced in their lives, the Schneidermans wanted to create a scholarship aimed at someone committed to service and Jesuit ideals, one that would honor both their fathers and mothers as well as their Stritch mentors. Their gift will, thus, fund a scholarship to be awarded yearly to a medical student who demonstrates "significant generosity of spirit."