Raquel Arias MD '82 isn't a typical USC faculty member—as the associate dean of admissions at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, she reviews 9,000 or so applications a year and helps determine which 186 future doctors are accepted to the school. She has always worked to admit the very best students, but also wanted to ease their entrance into medicine as much as possible.
Arias understood personally how educational debt could affect the choices students make, and she wanted to do more to help students from all backgrounds realize their professional goals. But how?
The answer she found was making an estate gift earmarked for scholarships. "I was happy to give to the Keck School with the goal of recruiting the very best people," says Arias. "The Keck School is number one in my heart."
Her strong commitment makes even more sense when she talks about her background. She grew up in an agricultural community in California's Central Valley. After high school, she earned a bachelor's degree from UC Santa Cruz and a master's in public health from UC Berkeley, before coming to the Keck School as a member of the Class of 1982.
"USC was very pricey, even in the 1970s," Arias says. "More money for one year's tuition than my mom's house was worth. It was beyond my imagination. I joined the National Health Service (NHS) because I could understand paying the tuition back with service, not money."
When an NHS position opened at a hospital in Merced, California, Arias, an obstetrician by training, took it and delivered more than 1,000 babies there. She later returned to the Keck School and rose to her current role as the associate dean of admissions.
"Dr. Arias has an unwavering dedication to supporting Keck medical students," says USC Vice Dean for Medical Education Donna Elliott '77, MD '82, MS '96, EdD '06. Dr. Elliott was Arias's roommate when they were medical students at USC. "Her generous gift is not surprising to those who know her and her convictions."
Thanks to Dr. Raquel Arias, the Keck School of Medicine of USC will be able to show even more students how much they're wanted, and how committed the school is to their success.
*This profile is a condensed version of the original profile written by Janice O'Leary and Scot Macdonald.