When School of Public Health professor Dr. Francisco Sy came to UNLV in 2016 and was first asked to consider donating to the school, he replied with a joke: “Can I pay it in installments?”

It was a common practice in the Philippines, where Sy was born, when making large purchases.

The answer was: yes. So, Sy began the process of deducting $500 out of his paycheck every month, a sum that later became over $1,000 a month.

Those donations have turned into over $137,000 raised in the last nine years, enough to fund three endowments for students in the School of Public Health.

“Little by little, you have the whole amount,” he said. “You don’t really feel it.”

Sy’s legacy of giving is one that has spanned two continents, five universities, and scores of student lives transformed.

“I try to help as much as possible, help other people,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here if not for the help other people gave me.”

‘A bit of a unicorn’

Sy’s journey in public health began 50 years ago, when he received his medical degree from the University of the Philippines. After graduation, he was required to serve six months in a rural area of the country, which he managed with a generous stipend that covered his food and housing.

He emigrated to the United States to attend Harvard, then later Johns Hopkins University, where he also benefited from scholarships. Today, Sy is the chair of UNLV’s School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, which he came to following a career at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He credits his giving in part to the School of Public Health’s development team. Director Erika Christensen approached him with sincerity and a warm smile, Sy said, making it easy to say yes to asks.

For Christensen, encouraging donations among faculty and staff is often as simple as having a conversation. “They understand the mission. They understand the importance of philanthropy,” she said of faculty members. “We’re not pitching anything; we’re just encouraging people to invest in the work they already believe in and love.”

From there, it’s important to remove any barriers to giving that they might have, including the idea that they have to make a certain amount of money or donate at a certain threshold. “If you want to give, there are a million different ways that people are just not aware of,” she said. “Whatever your goals are, we can probably make that happen.”

Still, even Christensen is surprised at the impact that can be made, as exemplified by Sy, who she calls “a bit of a unicorn” among faculty in his passion for philanthropy.

“The fact that through payroll deduction he has created three, fully endowed, named scholarships — that really is something that is obtainable for most faculty members, the impact that can be made,” she said. “It matters that our faculty believe in our work enough to donate.”

‘I wish I had more money to give’

Sy’s support for public health and medical students extends to all of his alma maters.

“All the universities I went to, I try to pay it back,” he said. “I wish I had more money to give to students.”

But for the students whose lives he has touched, his gifts go beyond his financial contributions.

Miklo Alcala, a UNLV School of Public Health alumnus, was also born in the Philippines and moved to the U.S. when he was 11 years old. He grew up in a home where his mother was the sole earner, so he relied on financial aid and scholarships to support his tuition. Those scholarships included Sy’s graduate scholarship, which Alcala was awarded twice.

The money positioned him to be more financially stable as he was going to school and helping support his family.

But it also introduced him to Sy, who he described as a grandfatherly figure with a wealth of experience and influence in the field of public health.

“Overall, he’s just been there. He’ll text me and just say ‘How are you?’ Just yesterday he took me out to lunch. He’s very generous,” Alcala said. “All the little things…it does add up. The encouragement that I got from him in general pushed me to be more independent.

Kimberly Mae Ramos, a doctoral student at the University of the Philippines College of Medicine, was recently awarded Sy’s scholarship through the college’s Medical Alumni Society in America.

In a letter to Sy, Ramos expressed her gratitude and shared a line from a hymn: “Because I have been given much, I too must give.”

“I have been given much because of your generosity and I hope to be able to have the capacity to do what you do also,” Ramos said. “In the future, I shall follow your footsteps in helping others with their education, but for now I am doing my best to pass the kindness forward in ways I can already afford, such as giving sincere service to every patient I get to work closely with.”

It was a sentiment that Alcala also shared.

“I look up to him. I want to be like him. I want to give back. If Dr. Sy could do it, I could do it.”