Les Reid, MD (Med\u201966), is an engineer, a businessman, a physician, and, now, a fairy godfather of sorts to Geisel medical students.<\/p>\n
Reid, who grew up in New Jersey, first attended Dartmouth College because he wanted a small liberal arts school and Dartmouth offered a scholarship, \u201cwhich was pretty high on my list because my family didn\u2019t have much money,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Now, in a position to give back, he and his wife, Estelle, have included a gift to scholarships at the medical school in their estate plans. They\u2019ve also established a special fund at the medical school to assist students with emergency expenses. The couple is funding a $50,000 endowment, named the Les and Estelle Reid Student Emergency Fund, which assists medical students with unexpected financial hardships, such as dental needs, car trouble, study aids, and traveling to a funeral.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost students do not have income or much savings,\u201d explains Gordon \u201cDino\u201d Koff, director of financial aid at Geisel. \u201cWhen life throws them a wrench\u2014such as a health issue, a family emergency, or just bad luck\u2014it\u2019s wonderful to have this fund available to help.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 90% of Geisel students rely on loans to fund their medical education and more than 55% receive scholarships, so they often don\u2019t have the money for such emergencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this is money the students don\u2019t need to worry about paying back,\u201d says Michelle Chamley, assistant director of financial aid at Geisel, \u201cwhich is a huge relief to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Giving Back<\/strong><\/p>\n Reid is enthusiastic about giving back because of the education he received not just at the medical school but at Dartmouth\u2019s other professional schools, too. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1956, Thayer School of Engineering and Tuck School of Business in 1957, and Dartmouth Medical School (now the Geisel School of Medicine) in 1966. In fact, he is the only person in Dartmouth\u2019s history to hold degrees from all four institutions.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother firmly believed that the reason I did all of this was I never could make up my mind about what I wanted to do. I think she was partially right,\u201d Reid says.<\/p>\n However, his eclectic interests served him well. After graduating from Dartmouth Medical School\u2019s then two-year program and finishing his MD degree at Johns Hopkins, Reid joined the Medical Computer Applications Group at IBM. Later he practiced cardio-pulmonary medicine, and eventually served as medical director of Blue Shield Insurance Plan.<\/p>\n Common Thread<\/strong><\/p>\n Retired since 2001, Reid has no trouble identifying the common thread in his varied career.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of the things that I\u2019ve done in medicine and engineering involve problem-solving,\u201d he says. \u201cI like to solve problems. The Thayer School and the Medical School taught me how to do that well.\u201d<\/p>\n Les and Estelle are now helping to solve financial problems for Geisel medical students.<\/p>\n \u201cIf a student\u2019s budget didn\u2019t include dollars for a winter coat, if someone\u2019s mother dies and there\u2019s no money for an airplane fare, this fund will provide financial help,\u201d Reid says. \u201cWe wanted to do something on a more personal level.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Les Reid, MD (Med\u201966), is an engineer, a businessman, a physician, and, now, a fairy godfather of sorts to Geisel medical students. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":7577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[17,637,129,695],"class_list":["post-7576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-donor-impact","category-news","tag-alumni-2","tag-giving","tag-philanthropy-2","tag-student-support","author-13"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/10\/reid_07162015_1U5A0105.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-1Yc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7576"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7580,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7576\/revisions\/7580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}