FEATURE STORY — Jan./Feb. 2006

2006 Award Recipients

UIC City Partner Award

The UIC City Partner Award recognizes the impact that UIC alumni have on the region, whether that impact is quiet and generally unknown, or public and highly visible. The award identifies alumni involvement in outstanding service to UIC or in key areas of urban development identified by the UIC Great Cities program.

UIC Corporate Partner Award

The University of Illinois Alumni Association established the UIC Corporate Partner Award, which recognizes organizations that have had, or continue to have, a significant impact on the campus and/or the lives of alumni and students by assisting in the advancement, growth and/or development of UIC.

Corporate Partner Recipient Astra Tech

UIC’s partnership with Astra Tech Inc., a Waltham, Mass.-based dental implant manufacturer, is having far-reaching, tangible results—better and more affordable care for patients, a unique curriculum for students, and opportunities for alumni to learn implant dentistry and add it to their repertoire of skills.

A number of obstacles typically prevent schools from delivering a comprehensive implant education program. Facilities must be retrofitted, it’s an expensive form of care and few faculty members have expertise in the technique. Moreover, to provide good experience to students, schools need a large patient pool of implant recipients. Dental schools have faced insurmountable financial odds when trying to develop implant education.

“Without Astra Tech, there is no way we could have a comprehensive program that would touch all of the students,” comments Dr. Stephen Campbell, professor and head, Restorative Dentistry and director, Comprehensive Dental Implant Center.

Adds Bruce S. Graham, dean of the College of Dentistry, “Many schools offer lectures and teaching labs, but they’re not real-life, hands-on experiences. This puts us into a small group of schools that can offer a comprehensive patient-based experience.”

A dental school is the ideal spot for such training, says Scott Root, president of Astra Tech Inc. “Some companies were trying to provide training, but we’re not professional educators; dental schools are. That’s where the education should reside. And we’d rather partner with the University in that process.”

The implant program is touching a broad audience, including students, alumni and faculty who will be able to learn about dental implants. In addition, Astra Tech’s underwriting of the program enables patients in the dental clinic to receive cutting-edge care. “The treatment will be accessible to our patients, and now every student will get experience in implant treatment,” adds Graham.

“Implant dentistry is shifting from being a boutique part of dentistry, in which just a select group of specialists are using it. It’s now becoming a mainstream part of tooth replacement,” observes Root. “So it’s wise for schools like UIC to embrace this now and take a strong training approach.”

—Elyse Umlauf-Garneau

City Partner recipient John DENardo

Although he’s spent his entire professional life in health care administration, in a sense, John DeNardo, ’71 PHARM, MS PHARM ’74, has had two careers. DeNardo had planned on retiring after 30 years with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs when in 2000, he became executive director of the UIC Medical Center. (In 2005, he was named CEO, Healthcare System.) In both of DeNardo’s professional lives, and also his extensive volunteer work, his endeavors have been marked by a commitment to the well-being of the city’s residents.

The son of a policeman, DeNardo was the first person in his family to graduate from college. His background has fueled his dedication to providing the same high standard of health care to people from all walks of life. “At UIC, we treat people who do not have income and people who can pay cash for care they receive, but the care is the same for all,” he declares.

DeNardo worked his way up from staff pharmacist to director positions within the VA system, ultimately serving as CEO at the West Side VA Medical Center (1992-1996) in Chicago and Hines VA Hospital in Hines (1996-2000).

DeNardo has used his strong skills as an administrator to help reverse the financial situation of the UIC Medical Center. Three years prior to his arrival, the Center had budget deficits totaling $25.4 million. Under his leadership, the Center has achieved surpluses of $22 million during the last five years.

He initiated staff recognition programs that have significantly boosted morale, resulting in an increase in reported patient satisfaction and referrals. DeNardo also improved processes throughout the hospital, increasing efficiencies in everything from purchasing and collections to operating room turnover and phone usage.

An active volunteer, DeNardo chaired a United Way fund-raising campaign among federal employees in the Chicago area in 1998, which raised a record $4.4 million.

From his office window, DeNardo can see students entering and leaving the College of Pharmacy. “Thirty-five years ago, I was one of those students. It was UIC that started me out. Being back here and being able to put this medical center on solid ground is a very rewarding sense of being able to give back.”

—Kevin McKeough

City Partner Recipient Patrick Magoon

Patrick Magoon, MUPP’79, has had an enormous impact on the health and well-being of children in the Chicago area. Since 1997, he’s been president and CEO of Children’s Memorial Medical Center, the parent organization of Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. The 270-bed hospital provides care to more than 102,000 children annually throughout the state, and in 2004 provided $27.5 million in charity care and unreimbursed health care services.

Magoon credits UIC professors with both inspiring his interest in health care and alerting him to the internship that first brought him to Children’s Memorial Hospital in 1977. “Because of the network that the school had across the entire civic fabric of Chicago, it gave individuals like me a sense of what professional opportunities there were before we even finished school,” he explains.

As president and CEO, Magoon has helped improve the Center’s financial situation. For example, he led the hospital to a $30 million financial turnaround, in part by initiating and expanding programs that addressed unmet needs for children in areas such as pediatric neurology and transplantation. He also presided over the five-year fund-raising campaign that raised $137 million, the most successful campaign in the medical center’s history.

In order to make appropriate care more convenient and accessible, Magoon spearheaded the development of additional regional facilities. His efforts also helped expand the Children’s Memorial Research Center and led to a three-fold increase in its annual funding from the National Institutes of Health.

“Since we treat large numbers of children who have very esoteric diseases, it’s very important for us to investigate the causes of these diseases and to find treatments and cures for them. It’s an essential component of our mission,” Magoon observes.

Magoon is now overseeing a seven-year plan to finance and build a new, larger hospital so that Children’s Memorial Medical Center can provide care to a greater number of Chicago-area children. “Our primary mission is to make certain that we do everything we can to improve the health and well-being of the children in this city,” Magoon says.

—Kevin McKeough

City Partner Recipient Barry Maram

One of the first jobs Barry Maram ’67 LAS landed after completing his UIC political science degree was as a social worker. His dedication to people’s well-being has remained central to his work throughout his long legal career and in his current position as director of the Department of Illinois Healthcare and Family Services (formerly the Illinois Department of Public Aid).

That dedication was recognized this past July, when Maram was one of three civil servants selected to receive the National Governors Association Award for Distinguished Service to State Government. He was the first Illinois public official in 10 years to earn the award, which was presented to him in recognition of his work expanding health care coverage, enforcing child support payments and eliminating bureaucratic obstacles to enrollment in the agency’s programs.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich appointed Maram HFS director in 2003, putting him in charge of an agency that currently has a $15 billion budget, 2,400 employees and responsibility for coordinating the state’s health care programs for low-income residents, and for providing additional services to children, seniors and people with disabilities.

As director, Maram has helped coordinate and implement new state health care programs, including Kid Care, which expands coverage for children to include families earning up to 200 percent of the poverty level; Family Care, which extends coverage to working parents earning up to 185 percent of the poverty level; and Leave No Senior Behind, which compensates for gaps in Medicare coverage for senior citizens. (Currently, Maram is implementing the state’s new All Kids program, which will extend access to state health insurance coverage to every uninsured child in Illinois.)

All in all, these initiatives have provided health care coverage to more than 370,000 adults and children who previously lacked it. Maram has also worked with hospitals throughout the state to increase eligibility for federal matching funds, adding $490 million to the state’s Medicaid system as a result.

“There’ve been so many great victories that have helped real people,” Maram says. “The governor has given this agency a large responsibility, and we take it very seriously.”

—Kevin McKeough

City Partner Recipient Margaret Small

High dropout rates. Poor attendance. Unmotivated teachers. High school students with low math and science test scores. Not enough young women and people of color entering the fields of engineering, mathematics or the sciences. No doubt, you’ve read about these topics in your local newspaper.

Margaret Small MS LAS ’85, PHD ED ’01, read about them, too. But unlike others, Small rolled up her sleeves and got to work—first as a high school mathematics teacher for 15 years, instructing African-American and Latino students in the Chicago Public School System, then as principal investigator on a $930,000 National Science Foundation grant (providing in-class teacher support for math instruction in 25 Chicago schools) and now as director of Young Women’s Leadership Charter School of Chicago.

Small first joined YWLCS as co-director soon after the school received its charter from the Chicago Board of Education in December 1999. Today, YWLCS serves 340 students in grades seven through 12 and draws its students from 30 communities (one-third are from Bronzeville, Bridgeport and other near South Side neighborhoods). The students are ethnically and economically diverse—73 percent are African-American, 17 percent Latina, 8 percent white and 1 percent Asian. Seventy-two percent live below the poverty level.

Admission to the school is not based on academic excellence but on a lottery. Our students “have a wide range of preparation, backgrounds and abilities,” explains Small. “They mostly come to us because [their parents are excited] that we have [the only] single-sex school [in the CPS system] that commits itself to preparing every girl for college.”

Under Small’s leadership, YWLCS has made remarkable strides in that mission. In 2005, for example, the school had a four-year graduation rate of 84 percent. “We recently completed a survey of our first graduating class and 97 percent of them applied and were accepted to college,” Small notes. “Of the entire class, 85 percent are still in college as sophomores.”

Such success makes Small feel optimistic about the future. “I feel that YWLCS really has the potential to educate young women to lead Chicago,” she concludes.

—Hugh M. Cook