A Gift That Came Full Circle

A simple act of generosity left a lasting impression on Paul J. Schilling, MD, and ultimately inspired a gift of his own.

As a medical student, Dr. Schilling found himself $200 short for his $700 annual tuition payment. Already working to put himself through school, Dr. Schilling told the dean that he would have to drop out.

“‘Oh no, you’re not,’” Dr. Schilling recalls the dean telling him before giving him the $200. “He told me to pay it back when I could.”

Over the years, Dr. Schilling has done exactly that, paying forward the generosity that helped him stay on the path to becoming a successful radiation oncologist.

Most recently, he established the Schilling Scholars program at Medical College of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Every first-year medical student in the class of 2029 is receiving a $10,000 scholarship, renewable for all three years of their medical education. The gift is intended to ease the financial barriers on their path to becoming physicians.

“It’s important to make sure that anyone who wants to go to medical school can go,” Dr. Schilling says.

Dr. Schilling specifically chose to invest in future physicians at MCW-Green Bay because he knows his gift will have a meaningful impact there. The campus opened in 2015 to expand access to care in northeastern Wisconsin. According to the Wisconsin Council on Medical Education and Workforce, about 28% of Wisconsinites reside in rural areas, but only 11% of physicians practice there.

“I’m hoping that doctors will give back to the community by staying here,” Dr. Schilling says.

With an accelerated three-year curriculum, MCW-Green Bay is uniquely positioned to close the gap. Since 2018, the campus has graduated 208 physicians, many of whom have remained in the region to practice medicine.

For Dr. Schilling, those results reinforce the value of supporting future physicians. His investment extends beyond helping students complete their education – which he experienced firsthand – to strengthening the healthcare workforce and meeting a critical community need for quality care.

“You’ve really got to look at where you're going to have an impact and where you’re going to do some good,” he says.

Matthew L. Hunsaker, MD, FAAFP, MCW-Green Bay campus dean, says that’s exactly why community support matters.

“Students who train here will return to the region, work at the bedside, and care for those who live in this community. It’s important for people in the community to invest in the students because they really are the future of our local healthcare systems.”

For first-year medical student Torgor Crick, one of the inaugural Schilling Scholars, that investment is already making a difference. Crick, a husband and father to a 10-month-old daughter, says the scholarship eases some of the financial pressure of medical school and allows him to focus more fully on his studies and his family.

More importantly, he sees the gift as an extension of Dr. Schilling’s lifelong commitment to patient care, one that reaches beyond his own practice and into the next generation of physicians.

“You can definitely see that taking care of patients comes first for him. The scholarship represents a way for him to take care of patients in the future,” Crick says.