To this day, Dr. Betsey Abbey Eggler is not sure who it was who changed her life.

A 1967 graduate of Smethport Area High School, she was smart and especially good at science. After graduation, she had a job offer to work at a lab in Bradford. She was just about ready to start that job when she got a call from the four-year-old University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. She was offered full tuition, room and board, but never knew who had put up the money.

By contrast, the students who benefit from a new chemistry research fund named for her will know who helped them. The Betsey Abbey Eggler Undergraduate Chemistry Research Fund was created with a $100,000 gift from Betsey and her husband, Dr. David Eggler. Eggler scholars may even have met their donor.

Eggler and her daughter, Dr. Aimee Eggler, an associate professor of biochemistry at Villanova University, visited Pitt-Bradford’s chemistry colloquium this spring, when Pitt-Bradford students presented their own research and heard a keynote talk from Aimee Eggler about her lab at Villanova.

The new fund will pay students while they are researching so that they don’t have to miss out on valuable research opportunities just to earn money elsewhere. Betsey Eggler said she wanted to support chemistry students at Pitt-Bradford and that her daughter suggested supporting research specifically.

“I wanted to support education in rural areas. I think the opportunity should not just be confined to big academic institutions,” Betsey Eggler said. “Obviously, Bradford supported me.”

Eggler’s first boost of confidence on her path to becoming a medical doctor came from her mystery donor who got her started at Pitt-Bradford.

Taking classes in one of the university’s two academic buildings, Hamsher House, she met Dr. June Pfister, the first woman she’d ever met with a college degree beyond a bachelor’s. Pfister, who taught chemistry, became a role model for the young scholar and steered her toward chemistry.

At that time, students regularly took two years’ worth of liberal arts general education requirements at Pitt-Bradford, then transferred to the Pittsburgh campus to finish their degrees.

“I really liked being in the sciences,” she said. “I liked that the problems had answers.” And because the problems had right and wrong answers, Eggler knew she was just as smart as any of the men in her classes. They did not intimidate her, even though she was one of the few women in her chemistry classes – sometimes the only one.

“There was no role model,” she said, but she remembered June Pfister. “Some of those pre-med school students didn’t like the sciences and I had to tutor them, and I thought, ‘Geesh, if these guys can do it, I guess I can.’”

When she approached the pre-med advisor, however, he disagreed, telling her that she could not become a doctor.

Not listening, she took the Medical College Admission Test and found a spot in a chemistry graduate program at Penn State University, where she met her husband, a geologist. Having decided she did not want to pursue a doctorate in chemistry, however, she returned to that pre-med adviser with her excellent MCAT scores. He apologized, and she decided to attend the new Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, where she continued to be a pioneer, becoming a mother while still a medical student.

After being accepted to medical school, she spent time shadowing Dr. Anita Herbert, the only female physician in McKean County at the time.

Eggler continued to lean on her chemistry background throughout her career, which continues today. She specializes in care that requires a good knowledge of pharmacology.

She went on to treat patients who struggled with addiction and worked in a veterans hospital and even a prison during the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Now she continues to help patients as they recover from addiction, even developing new protocols to reduce withdrawal symptoms.

“My life seems a bit unlikely to me,” she said, adding that she is grateful to be able to support the next generation of chemistry researchers.