![\"mckeever\"](\"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/mckeever.jpg\")
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A professor\u2019s impact on students\u2019 lives, today and 20 years from today, can easily be underestimated \u2013 especially by the professor. But the students of the late Sturgis McKeever know the truth of it.<\/p>\n
During his 26 years as a Georgia Southern biologist \u2013 and beyond – McKeever influenced the lives of thousands of Georgia Southern students, many of them medical researchers and physicians like Scott (\u201888) and Janet (\u201887) Lubas. Through their skill and compassion, his knowledge and love of learning lives on.<\/p>\n
Now, the Lubases want to honor their former professor while helping other students fulfill their dreams of a career in medicine.<\/p>\n
\u201cDr. McKeever was amazing,\u201d said Janet, an internal medicine physician. \u201cSturgis is probably the reason I went into medicine. He was the most demanding professor we ever had. For somebody who made that big of an impression on us, we thought we should do something that helps other people as much as he helped us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to leave something, to make some contribution to society that would outlive us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe asked ourselves, \u2018What are worthy causes that we can give our money and our time that can help other people?\u2019 One of those things is education.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janet and Scott have created the McKeever Scholars program, which provides funds for collaboration between the University Honors Program and pre-medicine\/pre-veterinary students, support of Phi Delta Epsilon honor society activities, travel to conferences and seminars, shadowing experiences, enhanced research opportunities, and equipment and materials relating to pre-professional training. A second fund, the McKeever Scholarships, provides financial awards to pre-medicine and pre-veterinary students.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnderstanding the importance of a diversified pre-professional curriculum and, more significantly, extracurricular \u2018real-life\u2019 experiences, has led to the creation of the McKeever Scholars’ Fund,\u201d Janet said. \u201cWe hope this legacy will help enable Georgia Southern\u2019s continued success in producing the multi-talented individuals pursuing professional careers as veterinarians or physicians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Scott, a former cancer therapy researcher at the Medical College of Georgia and West Virginia University, and Janet needed jobs while they pursued demanding coursework. Working was a financial necessity, but it caused them to miss out on some learning opportunities with peers and professionals as well as miss exposure to cutting edge literature and research in the medical field. The couple wants promising students to be able to focus on those kinds of experiences in addition to classroom and lab work.<\/p>\n
Their gift makes that possible. They\u2019re also hoping former classmates, now colleagues, will want to help their successors and honor Sturgis McKeever.<\/p>\n
\u201cScott and I would like some of the other people who were there when we were, to, over time, contribute to help more students,\u201d said Janet. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping that our gift stimulates discussion among the people who were in our classes – the other people who went to med school, vet school or dentistry school. I\u2019d like for there to be more funds in Dr. McKeever\u2019s name that will help all the other students.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I don\u2019t want is to have a student that\u2019s good or has a chance to do this to be held up because of funds,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
On a day-to-day basis everyone can positively impact those around them, but as a physician, Janet sees the results more quickly than most. \u201cI know from taking care of patients over the years that I affect people more than I think,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m pretty sure that my professors know that they made an impact, but not as much as they really did.<\/p>\n
\u201cDr. McKeever was a demanding instructor, a generous mentor and a genuine friend to all of us lucky enough to know him. He excelled in many different areas – in the field, the lab, the classroom, and also in his endeavors of photography, illustration and research, but most importantly as a role model,\u201d Janet said. \u201cHe was always there to offer encouragement and focus us toward our goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
– David Thompson<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Couple Creates Endowment to Honor Mentor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1436,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foundation","tag-spring-2013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}