The Next Generation of Baird Scholars

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In the winter of 1936, James Baird came to Tucson for a reason many people did back then — to recover from a respiratory illness that lacked the solutions we rely on today. Baird, who had established himself as a bellwether civil engineer, took a liking to the dry heat and high elevation. He decided to stay beyond his recuperation from asthma, living among the saguaros and coyotes until his death in 1953. This decision, plus some remarkable philanthropy, would prove to have a lasting impact on students at the University of Arizona. 

While his work can be seen all over the United States in landmark structures such as the Flatiron Building and the Lincoln Memorial, Baird’s legacy in the southwest extends to a transformative gift made in 1948 to establish the Baird Scholarship for the brightest students coming from Arizona high schools to the U of A. At the time, this donation of $207,000 (equivalent to around $2.8 million today) was the largest the university had ever received. “In the 1940s, there weren’t any substantial scholarships,” says John P. Schaefer, U of A president emeritus and longtime advisory board member of the Baird Foundation. “It was a public university and funded by the legislature. So it was really a breakthrough.” By way of acknowledging this landmark gift, the U of A conferred an honorary degree on Baird in 1951. After his death two years later, the Baird Foundation was formed to cement his legacy.   

‘When I see [Baird Scholars], I see a benchmark to be a better person and student.’

Now, almost 75 years since its inception, the scholarship continues to empower a select group of scholars each year, awarding them an ample annual stipend and a full-tuition scholarship provided by the U of A. Its transformative potential can be seen in the story of Eddie Vargas ’21, whose life pivoted on an ordinary summer morning. “I got a letter in the mail,” he says, as though still somewhat surprised by this detail. “My parents were ecstatic, as financially there was no other way for me to attend college.” Both his parents worked in downtown Tucson: his father a bus driver, his mother a janitor. Vargas says while this played a part in shaping his work ethic, it sometimes made the goal of attending college a distant and uncertain prospect. It wasn’t until Vargas was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that he slowly began to envision a pathway to college. “I looked up to the people managing my condition a lot, who were people working in hematology and oncology. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that’s it — that’s the kind of person I want to be.’” 

With the help of the Baird Scholarship, Vargas went on to study neuro- and cognitive science at the U of A, with the annual stipend affording him precious research time without the distraction of working a job. The freedom was almost disorienting at first, but he quickly filled it with purpose. Vargas began volunteering, focusing on local hospices where he helped provide free health screenings (blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, etc.) for underserved or underrepresented patients. These experiences provided a holistic perspective on his research, ultimately shaping his primary goal today: to work in an emergency room. “For a lot of patients, the ER is like their first contact with the health care system. Many don’t have insurance, don’t have a primary care physician for regular follow-ups. And so I think it’s a great responsibility to be the first person they see.” Drawing on his own experience with the physicians who treated him, Vargas hopes he can provide that same level of care to those who will one day enter the emergency room needing his help. “How you interact with that patient can really influence what they think of medicine and health care.” 

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A trend among Baird Scholars is their deep humility and desire to give back — something clear in current scholar and biomedical engineering student Gayatri Kaimal ’27, who stresses that she is really one of many: “As a Baird Scholar, you’re connected with such an amazingly accomplished group of individuals. It’s really a potent motivator. When I see them, I see a benchmark to be a better person and student.” When not drawing inspiration from her Baird peers, she is attending conferences to keep tabs on her ever-changing academic field. Meeting people face-to-face is important, she says, in order to understand science as a human-led endeavor rather than a collection of abstract journal papers. The work she encounters, admittedly, can still be otherworldly at times: “When you go to conferences, you see people building nerve cells and whatnot. Sometimes I think it’s like science fiction.” 

On top of a full-tuition scholarship, Baird Scholars receive $12,500 per year — the combined value of the two awards equal to almost $100,000 over four years.

Though the Baird Scholarship isn’t tied to any one discipline, Kaimal hopes to follow a path similar to Vargas’ and venture deeper into the field of medicine. “I can see myself as some kind of physician-engineer,” she says. In short, she says, this means designing tools that can treat and heal a whole host of illnesses. While her dreams are still nascent, they were strongly influenced by her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis. “I felt helpless,” she admits. “It really cemented my desire to go down the road I’m on.” As she edges closer to her senior year, the contours along this road have become clearer, too. “Ideally, I’d like to do something in oncological reconstructive surgery,” she says, before flashing a wry smile, “but I know people often change their plans in medical school.” 

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Plans, as James Baird himself could attest, do change. Much of what the Baird Scholarship seems to offer its recipients is time — time to figure things out, to immerse themselves in research projects, to gain experience working in the field rather than taking on odd jobs to cover basic expenses. Some current scholars have yet to decide on majors, while others are still finding the intersections of their separate interests. In some cases, this means nutrition and feminist theory. In others, neuroscience and the criminal justice system. One thing, at least, is clear — there’s no pigeonholing these students.  

‘In the 1940s, there weren’t any substantial scholarships [...] so it was really a breakthrough.' 

The Baird Scholarship’s deep roots in Arizona’s educational landscape have persevered thanks in part to its advocates and donors. Last year, the program was strengthened by an extraordinary $8 million estate gift from the late Susan K. Von Kersburg ’62 ’72. A lifelong champion for student success at the U of A, Von Kersburg learned about the Baird Scholarship at one of its annual dinners, where she heard stories like Kaimal’s and Vargas’. She likely also heard the origin story of James Baird — perhaps not that he was asthmatic, but that he was an engineer and philanthropist who understood that enduring infrastructure for education was just as important as it was for the cities he helped build from iron and steel. “Susanʼs contribution will have quite an impact on the scope of the program,” Schaefer says. “I imagine it’ll prove to be another breakthrough, in that other people recognize that this is a very good foundation with a great history.”