Supporting the Next Generation of Doctors

Future surgeon Justin Benton draws encouragement and inspiration from Ravi Goel, the ophthalmologist whose scholarship he receives.

Justin Benton was awake at 1 a.m.

He had finished a day shift as a hospital nurse and then studied late into the night. Rather than sleep, the third-year medical student at Rutgers University’s Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) in New Brunswick used the moment to reflect and be thankful.

“Tonight, I am thankful to you for creating this fund,” he wrote to Dr. Ravi Goel, a RWJMS alumnus who established the scholarship Benton receives to help defray medical school expenses. “I am thankful, beyond words, for your grace, humility, and selflessness to give back to the upcoming generation of providers.”

Coming from a single-parent home, Benton wrote, he often was stressed about finances. But receiving the Ravi D. Goel, M.D. Endowed Scholarship has helped lessen his worry about needing to pick up extra 12-hour shifts to pay bills, allowing him to focus on his studies.

“While I may never have been blessed with great financial means, I certainly was blessed with a sound moral compass, a strong work ethic, and a desire to succeed against the odds,” wrote Benton, who works as a nurse at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. “Your blessing will be a part of my story and my testimony as I continue forward.”

A Winding Path to Medical School

Benton and his younger sister were raised by their mother on a small island—“one bridge on, one bridge off”—off the coast of Maryland. A lifelong nurse, his mother inspired him to pursue a nursing career.

“All our family works on the water: fish, crab, oysters. It’s like a rite of passage,” he says. “My mother and I took the odd road out and decided we had a passion for nursing and being a humanistic beacon.”

After graduating high school in 2014, Benton attended a community college in Maryland for two years, then started working on the neurosciences floor at what was then Peninsula Regional Medical Center while he completed his bachelor's degree in nursing online, graduating in 2017.

He served as a hospital staff nurse, then in management and administration at a skilled nursing facility, later as director of nursing. After completing two years in an online nurse practitioner program, he began to question the path he was on: Nurse practitioners are regulated as to where they can practice, and Benton did not want to be restricted to one state.

“I took a very hard left turn, started trying to figure out how I could do med school and what I would need,” he says.

George Washington University offered a ten-month post-baccalaureate, pre-medicine program, which he completed in April 2021, as well as a “linkage” program with several medical schools, including Rutgers.

“Thankfully, somebody took a risk on me, and that's how I ended up here,” Benton says. “I took the very long route and checked out every other stop until I arrived at Rutgers.”

Following a True Vocation

Having once been in Benton’s shoes, Goel understands the financial challenges of medical school and the difference a scholarship can make. Coming from a family of modest means, he depended heavily on student loans to pay for medical school. Even with some scholarship support and a part-time job in his family's business, he graduated in 1997 with student debt.

Feeling that burden, then the relief scholarships provided him, Goel was motivated to fund a scholarship of his own and support students like Benton.

“Medical school debt can influence the path students take, luring them toward high-paying specialties, and that impacts their ultimate happiness,” Goel says. “I see my gift as an investment in physicians who are pursuing the path that calls to them, not the path that will make them the most money.”

Benton says he appreciates the role the Goel Scholarship will play in reducing his debt and the vote of confidence the scholarship represents.

“Many opportunities in my life have been thanks to people who took a risk on me,” he says. “To make a gift to someone you’ve never met is a risk, but I’m deeply grateful that Dr. Goel had the heart to take that risk.”

The Future Calling

Benton hopes to work in trauma or general surgery—fields that requires quick decision making and steely nerves, both of which he tested as a nurse during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks in part to his scholarship, he is forging ahead without regard for the pay he can expect to receive, instead focusing on what calls to his heart.

“I enjoy being able to take a chaotic situation and turn it into a positive, to orchestrate a lot of things at once, to use my critical thinking skills,” he says. “Trauma and surgery both tap into these strengths.”

He hopes to support the field of medicine not only as a physician, but as a donor himself one day. “Knowing what it feels like to be the recipient of someone’s selfless generosity, I hope to give that feeling to someone else someday,” he says.

Goel is cheering him on.

“My hope is for students I support to finish medical school without excessive debt, to be happy, and to be productive members of society,” he says. “Justin is an amazing young man. I cannot imagine a better use of my resources than supporting students like him.”

Goel shares the philosophy of the late basketball coach John Wooden, who said, “You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

Support the next generation of healthcare professionals by contributing to medical student scholarships at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School or the New Jersey Medical School.

(For information about the planned integration of the two medical schools, visit Our Future: Rutgers School of Medicine.)