The father of a Deakin medicine graduate killed while cycling has gifted the university $6.1m for a new centre for disadvantaged and rural medicine students. | adamlcarey
A fatal collision with a car while cycling in Mount Waverley ended Damion Drapac’s medical career barely a year after it began.
“He was penalised for those two years,” Drapac said. “So many students are denied access to the course, not because they haven’t demonstrated vocational and empathetic suitability, but because they weren’t in the top 1 per cent of academic students.” The Damion Drapac Centre, as it will be named, will provide scholarships to medicine students from disadvantaged, diverse and regional backgrounds, groups typically under-represented in the medical professions.The scholarships, worth $60,000 over four years, will not solely be awarded based on an applicant’s academic results, but also by their demonstrated commitment to a career in medicine. They will be offered in perpetuity.
Deakin vice-chancellor Professor Iain Martin said, “you don’t need to scratch very far at the moment to see just how hard it is to get doctors in regional and rural Australia”.