Distinguished alumnus pays it forward 60 years after Dean’s generosity
Herman ‘Hank’ Koren, MPH ’59, sets up emergency fund to help students
By Bob Cunningham
An illustrious, 60-plus-year career in public health all started with an act of kindness.
Herman “Hank” Koren, MPH ’59, was a graduate student during the academic year of 1958-59, attending the University of Michigan School of Public Health, when he suddenly had a financial hardship.
A native of Philadelphia, Koren’s tuition was being funded through a fellowship from the state of Pennsylvania. The state, however, had written a bad check, and, as a result, stopped all its checks. Koren, a married man with two young daughters, depended on the generosity of Pennsylvania to make ends meet.
“When they stopped all their checks, it meant that I no longer had any money because I was getting $500 a month as a stipend from the state, and they paid for my tuition—I had to pay for my own books,” said Koren, 90.
“My career has been immense. I track it back to the wonderful generosity of Dr. Vaughan and the excellent professors I had at the University of Michigan, who took a young kid and saw I had enormous potential and taught me how to become a futuristic thinker.”
— Herman 'Hank' Koren
He met with Henry F. Vaughan, the inaugural dean of the School of Public Health, to see if he could borrow money from the school and pay it back after he graduated.
“He said that wasn’t an option, but then he proceeded to pull out this huge checkbook—one of those old-fashioned business checkbooks that had like 10 or 12 checks on a single page—out of his desk,” Koren said. “He asked, ‘How much were you getting?’ And I said, ‘$500 a month.’ So, he wrote me a check for $500. Mind you, $500 in 1958-59, that would be a bloody fortune today.
“And I said, ‘I will not be able to pay this back until I get back to Philadelphia and get back to work. I’ll save up the money and I will send it to you.’ Well, I did, and about a year and a half later, I sent him a check for $500. Soon after, I received an envelope with a little note in it. Dr. Vaughn had torn the check in half and included on the note: ‘The books for last year are closed. Have a good life.’
“Can you imagine that? Well, I never forgot it, I never forgot him, and I never forgot, of course, the University of Michigan.”
Koren is returning the favor Vaughan paid to him by creating the Dr. Herman “Hank” and Mrs. Donna Koren Helping Hands Expendable Fund. The Expendable Fund will be used to provide support for Michigan Public Health graduate students facing an emergency situation or unforeseen emergency expense, with first preference given to students from the Department of Environmental Health Sciences.
After graduating from Michigan Public Health with a Master of Public Health in Environmental Health, Koren started out as a district environmental health supervisor in his hometown before he founded the Environmental Health and Safety program at Indiana State University and served for 28 years as a professor.
While at Indiana State, where he is a professor emeritus, he placed students in more than 1,150 internships in 28 states and 70 health departments. In 2005, he won the Walter S. Mangold Award, which he gave to the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Michigan Public Health. He received his fifth presidential citation in 2023 from the National Environmental Health Association.
“I ended up graduating over 500 students, men and women with Bachelor of Science degrees and seven months of paid internship experience. They’re all in the workforce, and they’ve made a huge impact—and it all goes back to Dr. Vaughan. What I learned at the University of Michigan was priceless. I said to myself, ‘One day, I’ll pay him back.’”
— Herman 'Hank' Koren
Koren also has proved to be a prolific writer. He has authored 22 books on environmental health. Even though he is partially blind, he currently is writing book No. 23, “A History of Environmental Health in the National Environmental Health Association.” It includes historical information about Vaughan, whom Koren calls “one of the seven giants of the environmental health and public health field.”
“My career has been immense,” Koren said. “I track it back to the wonderful generosity of Dr. Vaughan and the excellent professors I had at the University of Michigan, who took a young kid and saw I had enormous potential and taught me how to become a futuristic thinker.
“I ended up graduating over 500 students, men and women with Bachelor of Science degrees and seven months of paid internship experience. They’re all in the workforce, and they’ve made a huge impact—and it all goes back to Dr. Vaughan.
“What I learned at the University of Michigan was priceless. I said to myself, ‘One day, I’ll pay him back.’”
Promise kept, and then some.
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