Marilyn Weaver Paulk Memorial Scholarship

The Marilyn Weaver Paulk Memorial Scholarship was established to honor the life and career of Marilyn Weaver Paulk. She was a grassroots trailblazer, a talented clinician, and an exceptional educator. Marilyn worked side by side with a local dentist to found the Dental Hygiene program at SIU in 1961. During her 37 years in the teaching profession, she taught, advised and mentored well over 1,000 oral health professionals including Dental Hygienists, Dentists, Educators and Administrators.

Marilyn brought a level of professionalism to the Dental Hygiene program that was unmatched. She instituted a student chapter of the ADHA; created the Sigma Phi Alpha Dental Hygiene Honors Society; established the Dental Hygiene Alumni Continuing Education Conference; transformed a two year Associates degree program into a 4 year Bachelor degree program and started the Illinois Dental Hygiene Educators Association. In addition to her teaching efforts, she focused on service. She led the effort to create a mobile dentistry lab that traveled to rural underserved communities and provided dental care to those who had no other options for care.

Marilyn was officially recognized on numerous occasions. She was awarded the Illinois Dental Hygienists’ Association Award of Merit and chosen the outstanding Faculty Advisor at SIU. Her work is still recognized on a daily basis as hundreds of Dental Hygiene professionals say “let me show you how Mrs. Paulk taught me how to do this.”

• Recipients must be a sophomore in the Dental Hygiene program
• Recipients must exhibit exceptional instrumentation skills at the end of the first year in the professional sequence of the curriculum, as judged by the Dental Hygiene faculty.
• Recipients must demonstrate a positive, professional attitude and excitement about a career in Dental Hygiene as judged by the Dental Hygiene faculty.