Dar and Mudita Shah nurture medical students’ passions

A recent pledge from Drs. Dar and Mudita Shah will create a scholarship to enable students to pursue their artistic passions while in medical school.

The Shahs in 2005 as they graduated from medical school.

Drs. Dar and Mudita Shah firmly believe that having a passion outside their chosen field of medicine led them to become better, more well-rounded physicians. They also believe that may hold true for others.

With their recent establishment of the Mudita and Dar Shah Endowed Scholarship Fund at the University of Oklahoma Foundation, you might say they are putting their money where their mouths are.

The Shahs both earned their OU bachelor’s in chemistry and biochemistry in 2001 and earned their OU medical degrees in 2005. He practices nephrology, while she practices allergy/ immunology in Fort Worth, Texas.

Their recent $62,500 pledge to the OU Foundation will create a scholarship enabling medical students to honor artistic passions as they pursue medical degrees by also nurturing outside interests.

“We did not want this scholarship to be based on merit alone,” said Mudita. “Obviously we want students in good standing, but there’s more out there. Sometimes when a person pauses to discover and pursue another part of themselves, they might revisit their love for art and not be able to make that A in Organic Chemistry because they’re working on an art project. In my youth, I pursued piano and voice. Dar studied philosophy, and I think we are better doctors because we didn’t just study medicine.”

Dar and Mudita are both originally from India. Dar’s family relocated to Oklahoma when he was 12, and Mudita’s when she was 2.

“OU has been in the background for not only our professional lives, but personal lives, as well,” said Dar. “And the interesting part of our journey is that we are both from the same part of India but did not know each other. OU was where everything started for us—where we met as undergrads and dated for six years. We got married the day after we graduated from med school. Our foundation was always at OU. For us, OU represents our seminal point of development.

“We just knew we needed to re-engage with our alma mater. We have so much connection with the university, and we want nothing more than for future students to have the opportunity to flourish. We hope this endowment will serve that purpose.

“As physicians, we want to take care of people, and whatever we are blessed with in terms of financial success, we want to use it to give back so the next generation can get through medical school without a tremendous financial burden,” he added. “We are fortunate for the education we have received at the OU College of Medicine.”