Late alumna Sciacca endows scholarship at UM School of Pharmacy

OXFORD — The University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy is offering a new scholarship thanks to the generosity of the late Madeline O. Sciacca of Slidell, La., who remembered her alma mater in her will.

Sciacca, who obtained her pharmacy degree from UM in 1953, left $400,000 to the Ole Miss School of Pharmacy to create the Madeline Occhipinti Sciacca Memorial Scholarship Endowment.

To honor the gift, Sciacca’s 1953 diploma and a plaque bearing her name have been placed in the pharmacy building.

Sciacca practiced pharmacy at Walgreens in downtown New Orleans for years. After retiring in the 1970s, she began buying rental properties and buying and selling real estate. In 2001, shortly after Barbara G. Wells became dean of the Ole Miss pharmacy school, Sciacca contacted her and said she wanted to leave some money to the school for scholarships.