John Yumul is not just the first in his family to go to grad school but also the first to earn a bachelor’s degree. Entering his fourth year as a USC Mann PharmD student, he is determined to seize every moment of the opportunities arising from that privilege.
Yumul maintains a top GPA while immersing himself in a wide range of service and leadership roles: director of the PharmSC community clinic in Boyle Heights; director of professional affairs for the campus American Pharmacy Student Alliance chapter; and president of Rho Chi Society (Theta Chapter), the national pharmacy academic honor association. He also volunteers on the Mann School admission committee and serves as an ambassador greeting new students when they arrive on campus.
“I wanted to get the best experience I could,” he says.
This spring, Yumul’s drive earned him an unexpected honor: a USC Mann alumni scholarship worth $11,000.
It’s a recognition of the excellence and commitment Yumul brings to all he does, notes Kari Franson, USC Mann senior associate dean for academic and student affairs. “Some students do incredibly well in the curriculum, but keep their heads down,” she says. “John keeps his head up. He engages and always tries to make everything better.”
Yumul, 26, grew up in San Francisco, the son of Filipino immigrants. His mother is a nursing assistant; his father works in food services. He grew up interested in the biological sciences, but his passion for pharmacy sparked in a physiology course while he was earning his biochemistry degree at San Jose State.
“We touched on what drugs do, but I wanted to know exactly how they work,” he recalls.
Working at a genetic testing lab for a year confirmed his career aims. “It was a great position, but I wanted to see patients,” he adds.
USC Mann offered the ideal next step—a top-ranked pharmacy school in a city where he’d always wanted to live. As a first-generation student, he also appreciated the tightly knit Trojan Family. “I liked knowing there was an alumni network backing me up,” Yumul says.
As an undergrad, Yumul was active in campus life. Still, he expected such volunteer opportunities to end when grad school began—and was glad to be proven wrong. Beyond his school-based positions, he has conducted clinical research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center under the supervision of Mann School alum Lee D. Lam, PharmD ’91, a mechanical circulatory support pharmacist.
That opportunity, Yumul says, “broadened my perspective on what research really could be like.” He helped examine infection rates in patients hooked up to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine for life support.
“John was always the one who stood out in terms of asking smart questions so he could go back and further elaborate on an idea,” Lam says. He was further impressed after mentioning to Yumul a couple of statistics tests needed to analyze the data gathered. Before Lam could explain the methods, Yumul had found online tutorials and learned how to do them by himself. “I was amazed,” Lam said. “He didn’t wait to be told what to do.”
Alumni Scholarship
It was no surprise, then—except to Yumul himself—that he received the prestigious Alumni Endowed Scholarship. He learned in April that he’d receive an award, but this one was significant enough to require attending a ceremony to accept it. He was busy and didn’t expect much, and even forgot to tell his parents.
At the ceremony, waiting to hear his name, he noticed that each award was larger than the previous one. Eventually, the scholarship announcements passed the $10,000 mark. “I started to wonder if I was there by mistake,” he admits.
When they reached his award, Yumul heard the presenter describing all the wonderful accomplishments the recipient had achieved, but still didn’t realize it was him until his name was called. “I was in shock,” he says.
Afterward, he called his parents to tell them what he’d won and how much it was worth. “They started to cry,” he recalls, “and it reminded me why I do all these things.”
The award not only thrilled his parents but helped to lessen the pressure they all felt to manage the cost of his education, he adds.
“I’m the first in my family to enter higher education, and that’s a lot of weight—but it brings a lot of pride as well,” Yumul says. “My parents work all the time, and I think that’s where I get my workaholic tendencies. But it’s their sacrifices that helped me be here.”