About Us

Purpose

Society of Smith Scholar goals include:

• Encouraging Smith Scholars to donate to the Florence L. Smith Medical Scholarship Fund and help future physicians

• Raising visibility about the prestige of being a Smith Scholar

• Fostering bonds between current and past recipients

• Increasing scholarship award amounts to keep pace with escalating medical school costs
  
   

Smith Scholar Spotlight

Don Richard Martin, M.D.

Don Richard Martin, M.D. believes he has the best of both worlds for a physician. As an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore “half the time I direct clinical care and the other half I am teaching and handling administrative work and projects.” Part of his duties include overseeing the school’s rheumatology residency program.

Martin’s specialties are internal medicine and rheumatology. The Harrisonburg native and Eastern Mennonite College graduate earned his medical degree from the VCU School of Medicine in 1983. A Florence L. Smith Medical Scholarship helped Martin, a minister’s son, pay for his education “at a time when tuitions were starting to go up,” he recalls. “I had a variety of loans and patched together my financial aid.”

Martin went to Johns Hopkins for his residency and has never left except for 1986 through 1988 when he worked in Tanzania as a medical office at a mission hospital.
By working at Johns Hopkins Martin finds he is able to continue his interest in international medicine since “I take care of patients from around the world.”

To read about other Smith Scholars click here.