Full-ride scholarship helped pave road to success for medical student

As a high school student, Skyler Howell, MD ’21, saw how a knee replacement surgery transformed his father’s life by restoring his mobility.

“He was incredibly grateful for the surgery and the skilled doctors who helped him,” says Skyler, a graduate of McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston and now a resident in the school’s urology program. “The profound impact these physicians made on my father’s life is one of the driving reasons I wanted to become a doctor.”

Skyler has been able to pursue this career thanks to the first full-ride scholarship at McGovern Medical School. In 2015, the John P. McGovern Foundation made a transformational gift to the school, with part of the gift establishing the John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern Scholarship Fund. Skyler received the scholarship’s inaugural distribution in 2017 during his freshman year.

"This gift serves as the foundation for any success I will have in my career, and for that I will always be grateful.”