The Pharmacist / Spring 2022 / Volume 44 / Issue 2

Drs. Susan Veremis Maddux
and Mike Maddux
cancer, and endured the loss of a son, Samuel, in 2007
while thriving as a collaborative, admired professional.
Donnelly worked with College of Pharmacy officials
to establish a formal scholarship in Romie’s name.
He then began contacting some of Romie’s closest
colleagues and past coworkers, including ones from
Fresenius Kabi, where Romie served as director of
professional strategies at the time of her passing, to
solicit contributions. He also leaned on Dr. Brad Cannon,
PharmD ’94, to rally support from members of the closeknit
Class of 1994.
“If you knew Alice one bit, then it’s no surprise to see the
energetic response this scholarship created,” Cannon
says. “Alice was graceful, incredibly intelligent, and a
light in the room.”
The Dr. Alice Romie, PharmD ’94, Memorial Scholarship
honors Romie’s spirited life. The scholarship will be
awarded to PharmD students with a demonstrated
financial need who can also detail how they have
overcome a significant life challenge and plan to
leverage that experience to help others.
“It’s nice to have student applicants giving thought and
reflection here because that exemplifies Alice,” Donnelly
says. “She was someone who faced hardship and kept
pressing forward in service to others.
MADDUX-VEREMIS SCHOLARSHIP
While growing up in the rural southern Illinois town of
Louisville, Dr. Susan Veremis Maddux, BS ’81, PharmD
’87, didn’t know the uplifting professional opportunities
that awaited her. After earning her PharmD from UIC,
however, Maddux began an inspired, diverse career in
pharmacy that included a decade on the UIC College of
Pharmacy’s clinical faculty, working at the UIC Medical
Center, and managed care positions that catapulted her
into her current role as the chief pharmacy officer for
UnitedHealthcare’s Employer Group Division.
“My education at UIC enabled me to do so many things
in my career and demonstrated the importance of
pharmacy education and the profession as a whole,”
says Veremis Maddux, whose husband, Dr. Mike Maddux,
RES ’80, the executive director of the American College
of Clinical Pharmacy is, like his wife, a former UIC
College of Pharmacy faculty member.
Pairing an earnest gratitude for the opportunities UIC
afforded each of them with a sincere desire to unlock
similar opportunities for others, the couple established
the Maddux-Veremis Scholarship to support PharmD
students with demonstrated financial need.
“We didn’t have to think long about creating something
like this,” says Veremis Maddux, who attended UIC on a
scholarship herself. “It made perfect sense for us to do.”
The couple hopes their scholarship enables students
with limited financial resources to attend the UIC
College of Pharmacy and pursue their professional
ambitions just as they were both fortunate to do.
“We want to make sure pharmacy education is
accessible and affordable to many different individuals,”
Veremis Maddux says. “We believe in the value of
professional education and the doors it opens for
people to fulfill personal goals and improve healthcare
in their corner of the world.”
BARTELS FAMILY PHARMACEUTICS LAB
SCHOLARSHIP
Whenever Dr. Dave and Carol Bartels would listen to
their son, UIC College of Pharmacy clinical assistant
professor Dr. Brad Bartels, talk about the students in
his pharmaceutics lab courses at UIC, they noticed
an undeniable enthusiasm in his voice. After students
were sitting in classes, listening to lectures, and running
statistics on a computer, they looked forward to getting
into the pharmaceutics lab to apply their classroom
learning in a hands-on way.
“We could see how much this meant to Brad and how
much it seemed to mean to his students as well,” Carol
Bartels says.
In establishing the Bartels Family Pharmaceutics Lab
Scholarship, the family aims to further energize Brad
Bartels’s laboratory-based classroom and encourage
deeper study of pharmaceutics, an increasingly critical
professional area as the number of compounding
pharmacies across the United States declines.
“Compounding is an important part of pharmacy
practice, but somewhat of a dying art,” says Dave Bartels,
a 38-year UIC College of Pharmacy faculty member and
former vice dean of the college’s Rockford campus. “We
want to support those interested in this area and those
who show promise in it.”
Brad Bartels, the college’s 2021 Golden Apple Award
winner, hopes the scholarship not only motivates
students to do well in their pharmaceutics lab courses,
but that its eventual recipients leverage the scholarship’s
funding to pursue additional training in compounding.
In a competitive job market in which compounding skills
are becoming more and more valuable, Brad Bartels
believes students with a strong grasp of pharmaceutics
can differentiate themselves and uplift their career
prospects alongside patient care.
“In addition to lightening the financial burden of their
pharmacy education, we hope this scholarship opens
future opportunities for the recipients,” Brad Bartels
says. “There’s an important place in our profession for
individuals who can do compounding with competence
and confidence.”
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