Thompson Scholarship Reaches Distinguished Status, Honors Longtime Educator
| Each year, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Pharmacy awards more than a half million dollars in scholarships to qualified students, representing a significant and sustained show of support from alumni, faculty, and friends of the college.
A select few of these scholarships, built up over years or even decades, reach a total endowment of over $100,000 and are elevated to distinguished scholarships. This past year, the college recognized five such scholarships reaching that level. One of those is The Lloyd R. Thompson Distinguished Endowed Scholarship.
These awards are created with a specific purpose, such as memorializing a loved one. All of them, however, share the same pursuit of giving a financial hand up to students in need, to help educate and train the next generation of pharmacists.
Lloyd Thompson, a longtime faculty member of the UAMS College of Pharmacy, died unexpectedly in 1991 at age 45, and a scholarship was established in his memory. His wife, Linda Thompson, remembers him as a man with a knack for teaching others. He taught hundreds of students over the course of 20 years as an assistant professor of pharmaceutics.
“He was good at explaining things, but he was also very careful,” Thompson said. “He didn’t want to send [graduates] out there to hurt people. He wanted them to understand how important it was for them to get this stuff right. He loved to teach and he loved his job.”
Lloyd Thompson completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees before coming to teach at the College of Pharmacy in 1971, while he worked to obtain his Pharm.D. degree. He was only three to four months away from completing his degree when he died, Thompson said.
“That’s just who he was; he wanted to teach,” Thompson said. “They called him Dr. Thompson, but he didn’t like it. He was always just Mr. Thompson.”
Following her husband’s death, Linda Thompson was hired by then-Dean Larry D. Milne, Ph.D. as a receptionist and then as secretary for Karrol Fowlkes, Pharm.D. During that time, she got to hear from some of the students who her husband taught. He held them to high standards, she said.
“They all seemed to really like him — he was tough, but I knew that,” she said. She gave one example of a time that a student got a life lesson along with a graded paper.
“Lloyd had graded [a student] on some test, and marked some things wrong, and so that student went in to talk to him,” she said. “He asked, ‘Dr. Thompson, I’m off just a little bit, can’t you excuse this?’ Lloyd looked at him, called him by name, and said, ‘That’s just enough to kill a baby.’ At the time, this student had a new baby too. He said that really stayed with him.”
“I think he would want to be remembered, not for being a good teacher but for teaching students the right way: to respect their profession and remember that the person they’re giving that medicine to is a real person,” Thompson added. “They’re not just putting pills in a bottle.”
Thompson said her husband got through school on scholarships himself, including working summers to earn additional income. She said that if he were alive today, he would be grateful to know that his scholarship is helping students who need financial help.
“I want people helped that need it financially, who are working other jobs to put themselves through college, like Lloyd had to do,” she said. “They may not have the best grades, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to be a good pharmacist. I think that’s important, and I know it was important to Lloyd. It’s great that others can be helped.”