Children Honor Mother With UAMS Geriatrics Professorship
Cathey Sparkman Powers, M.D., Is Inaugural Recipient
| LITTLE ROCK – The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ (UAMS) Cathey Sparkman Powers, M.D., today became the first recipient of the Magalene McKinnon Ingram Professorship in Geriatric Education.
Powers, director of UAMS’ Geriatrics Fellowship Program since 1994, has overseen the education of 30 fellowship-trained geriatricians. Arkansas now has more geriatricians per capita than any other state. The professorship will allow Powers to develop and expand courses for medical residents and students related to the care of aging adults.
“For more than a decade, Dr. Powers has inspired the emergence of a geriatrics education program at UAMS that is second to none,” said UAMS Chancellor I. Dodd Wilson, M.D. “Her commitment combined with the Magalene McKinnon Ingram Professorship ensures that we have an enduring legacy of quality geriatric medical education at UAMS.”
The professorship requires an endowment of at least $500,000. It was established on Ingram’s behalf with a gift from her three surviving children and an equal match by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.
Ingram, 94, was born in Rutherford, Tenn., and grew up in West Memphis, Ark. She married William Kent Ingram in 1932, raised four children, was a heritage member of the West Memphis First United Methodist Church and helped form the Twenty Club, a group that knitted sweaters, gloves and hats for soldiers. Her late husband served as an Arkansas state senator from 1962 until his death at age 71 in 1981.
“Now the inspiration of Mrs. Ingram, who encouraged education with her own children, will help provide educational programs for medical students and doctors who have an interest in aging adults,” said David Lipschitz, M.D., Ph.D., chairman of the UAMS Department of Geriatrics and director of the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging. “The Magalene McKinnon Ingram Professorship in Geriatric Education is a lasting, loving way for her children to recognize this special woman.”
Powers, vice chairman for education in the UAMS Department of Geriatrics, is an Arkansas native and graduated valedictorian from Northside High School in Fort Smith in 1971. She graduated summa cum laude from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia with majors in chemistry and biology and obtained her medical degree from the UAMS College of Medicine. She completed an internship and a residency in internal medicine at UAMS, and a geriatric fellowship at the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Administration Medical Center.
She is also an associate professor in the UAMS Colleges of Medicine and Nursing and is chief of the home health care service for the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System. She became one of the first geriatrics fellows in the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Administration Medical Center.
Her work with geriatrics fellows earned Powers the UAMS College of Medicine Residency Educator Award in 2004. She also helped to develop the mandatory geriatrics clerkship for all junior medical students at UAMS and served as clerkship director for seven years.
UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with five colleges, a graduate school, a medical center, six centers of excellence and a statewide network of regional centers. UAMS has about 2,430 students and 715 medical residents. It is one of the state’s largest public employers with about 9,400 employees, including nearly 1,000 physicians who provide medical care to patients at UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and UAMS’ Area Health Education Centers throughout the state. UAMS and its affiliates have an economic impact in Arkansas of $4.5 billion a year. For more information, visit www.uams.edu.