Dieckamp Scholarship recipient doing remarkable work in women’s health
By Ben Cox
When Herman Dieckamp donated $1 million to Jacksonville School District 117 back in 2010, the goal was to afford one Jacksonville High School senior student the opportunity to study at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.
To date, 16 students have been awarded the scholarship with nine having completed the 4-year program and two students still receiving scholarship assistance in the current year. The total awarded to date is $694,000. The scholarship program is administered by the Jacksonville Public Schools Foundation.
Dieckamp was a 1946 graduate of JHS and a 1950 graduate of the University of Illinois, who later became the president of General Public Utilities in New Jersey. He often said he valued the quality of education he received at both institutions and he wished to afford students of the future a similar opportunity.
One of the most recent students to complete the program was Esha Kulkarni. Kulkarni, a 2021 graduate of Jacksonville High School, says the scholarship program afforded several opportunities at U of I that she wouldn’t have been able to undertake otherwise: “I feel like it’s really hard to quantify exactly how much it afforded me, but I feel like to summarize it, it just allowed me to take advantage of any and every opportunity I wanted to that I thought could benefit me personally or professionally in college without having to think about finances or financial stress at all.”
She says by not having to worry about the financial side of things, she could take on a more active role in finding internships, paid or otherwise, as well as be involved in any of a number of student organizations on campus. She was also afforded the opportunity to study abroad in Paris, France for a semester — something that would have never happened without the Dieckamp Scholarship.
In addition, Kulkarni was able to take advantage of a great professional opportunity through the university’s partnership with the Mayo Clinic. Last year, she participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) and Health Equity Research Experiences (HERE) at Mayo Clinic. Each year, Mayo Clinic invites approximately 180 undergraduate students across the nation to participate in their SURF program. Kulkarni was one of nine students who participated in the program at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “I feel so lucky to have been able to find out that it existed and take advantage of it because obviously Mayo Clinic is well known as a hospital, but their research and their clinically translational research is great,” Kulkarni explains, “I was essentially matched with a mentor based on my interest and based on whether they were looking for summer students or not. And I joined an immunology lab, so immunology was something I had kind of always been interested in, especially being a student during the COVID pandemic.” Kulkarni was placed in a fetal immunology lab, helping to further focus and narrow down the type of science she wishes to focus on in her career.
Kulkarni says that women’s health — especially for women of color — is oftentimes a confusing and difficult realm to navigate. After graduation from JHS, Kulkarni read the 2020 book “EmpowHERed Health: Reforming a Dismissive Health Care System” by S. Mayumi “Umi” Grigsby, which showed her the systemic problems that lie in the women’s healthcare field.
“When I was in this immunology lab over the summer, I learned that in 2025, scientists still do not fully understand what actually causes labor — to start this thing that is life producing. That is obviously a huge, important thing. We still don’t know exactly what triggers it, and that would be super helpful in learning how to stop it for preterm birth,” Kulkarni says. She says that recent breakthroughs about women’s heart health have only recently diagnosed women’s symptoms for heart attacks.
She was able to study these problems as well as other issues, and discuss them, while still in high school, with family friends and scientists Jeremy and Annette Turner of Turner Scientific; this helped drive her toward graduate research and study in the women’s health field.
Putting her passions and interests together has been a joy that she sees continuing into the future. Kulkarni began her doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this month.
“It’s going to be in endocrinology and reproductive physiology, so essentially the study of hormones and metabolism and reproductive health, which is exactly where I want to be and where I see myself being happy.” Kulkarni says of the fast pace of her post-high school life, “[The doctoral program] will be probably between four and six years. It’s a commitment, but I think I’m ready and I’m looking forward to it. The connections that I made in college, in Jacksonville, through the Turners and at Mayo Clinic have already helped me so much in that journey and getting there.”
For students contemplating attending the University of Illinois and applying for the Dieckamp Scholarship, Kulkarni says that applicants should stay open minded and curious about the world around them. “I feel like when I began college and when I was applying to the scholarship, applying to college, I wasn’t exactly sure where I saw myself or where I wanted to be,” Kulkarni explains, “I think expressing that and being honest about wanting to use college as a time to explore where my actual passions lie and where my interests lie, helped me and helped others know that I was coming from a genuine place when I truly wanted to take advantage of all the opportunities that U of I had to offer because there are so many.” In the end, Kulkarni says students should stand by the belief that it is their own life and career they are making decisions about, and they should take advantage of all of the gifts and opportunities that they are given and able to pursue.
The Jacksonville Public Schools Foundation begins the celebration of its 40th year with the opening of the 2025-26 academic year.
