The Gentle Doctor Benefit is a long-standing tradition within the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Missouri. Funds generated from this non-profit gala are used to support the College and its students. Currently, funding from the Gentle Doctor Benefit is being applied toward an endowed scholarship fund for veterinary medical students. The interest from the endowment provides a much-needed scholarship to an incoming student each year. Our endowment is just over $241,000 after the 2009 Gentle Doctor Benefit. This allows us to give a scholarship of about $7,000 each year. We would like to increase the endowment so that we can provide a more significant scholarship to a student each year or provide more than one scholarship.

For the past three years, we have been able to provide $100 scholarships to EACH member of the incoming class to help with the cost of a text book. This is very exciting, and our hope is that we will be able to continue this practice. By providing this scholarship to each student, the Gentle Doctor Benefit is able to touch the lives of all of our students rather than just one per year. Although it is not a large scholarship, it helps out with the cost of required textbooks and makes the burden just a little lighter for all of our first year students. They have been grateful for this assistance.

In recent years, tuition has risen beyond the rate of inflation, in part due to state budget cuts. MU veterinary graduates incur an average debt load over $100,000. To encourage the best and brightest students to attend MU, we need to ensure that sufficient scholarship funding is available. The Gentle Doctor Benefit Endowed Scholarship Fund will better enable the College of Veterinary Medicine to meet the goal of providing as many scholarship opportunities to as many students as possible.