CEO of Gateway Regional Medical Center in Granite City, Moore came to IC hoping to go into medicine and ultimately became a hospital administrator. Not only does he have more than 35 years of executive experience at hospitals across the country, but his is a healthcare family. Moore’s wife Sherry retired as chief nursing officer at Penn State Milton Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and three of the couple’s six children have careers in healthcare.

The Moores have supported Illinois College students through annual giving for more than four decades. However, last year they took their generosity to another level, funding the Bob Moore ’78 Endowed Scholarship for Pre-Medicine.

Moore said, “I wish I’d hit the lottery tonight and I could do more.”

“Looking back to when I was at IC — I started there in ’74 — while there were endowments and scholarships, there weren’t that many,” he said. “I came from a family that didn’t have a lot of extra money and I wish we would have had more of those types of scholarships back then.

I hope that more IC alumni — as they look back at what education and training they got there, and how that helped them propel their careers — I wish more and more would help the next generation of students coming in.”

Moore also recalls his son’s search for scholarships, and how both small and large scholarships were a help on his way to medical school. Dr. Brian Moore is a neonatologist with Mercy Health Systems in St. Louis. Two of Moore’s daughters, Andrea and Karen, are also in healthcare — a physical therapist, and a nurse and director of cardiology at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, respectively.

As a central Illinois native and hospital administrator tasked with recruiting talented doctors to the area, Moore also hopes future healthcare professionals who graduate from IC have meaningful ties to the area.

“I’m just hoping that those connections to Illinois College and the medical schools — and a little piece of what Sherry and I can do to help them — that it helps them remember to come back to where they got their education and their training,” he said.

Moore was glad to hear IC launched a nursing program and is excited about IC’s potential for educating future healthcare professionals.

“I think that’s a great field and I hope there will be more and more scholarships there, because we need more nurses and we need more physicians,” he said. “And sometimes students shy away from what they really want to do because they can’t afford it and they don’t want to go into debt. So, the scholarships help them to bridge that gap.”

With the values the College is known for — a student-centered liberal arts education — and the potential he sees for IC to provide education in more healthcare careers, Moore said IC is “positioned very well.”

“I think IC’s got a great place in the future especially in healthcare,” Moore said.