When physicians answer immediate questions about patient care, they fall back on their experience--and their medical education. “You'll get a call at 2 am where the nurse has a very clear question: ‘Their most recent blood count came back at this, what should I do?’” recalled UCR alumnus Ernest Rasyidi, MD. “That's not your time to be like, ‘let me go to a textbook’--either you know it or you don't,” he added. “I still remember to this day lectures I had at Riverside in my core medical school education that seemed really trivial… and every now and then something will pop up and it makes the difference, and I'm really glad that I had that quality education.”
The medical training that Rasyidi received through the UCR/UCLA Thomas Haider Program in Biomedical Sciences has allowed him to help patients in a variety of situations. “Regardless of what your specialty is, you are fundamentally a physician,” said Rasyidi, who graduated from the program in 2007. “We may be taking care of people in different ways and different approaches or different specialties, but it's still a person, and there are many components of a person that are all tied together.”
Rasyidi reflects with gratitude on his time in the Haider Program, which he decided to apply to based on his high school counselor’s recommendation. The UCR program encompassed students’ undergraduate education and first two years of medical school at UCR before they transferred to UCLA to complete their MD’s. Despite initially being unaware of the program’s selection process, which accepted only 24 out of hundreds students in its UCR undergraduate class into its medical school portion, Rasyidi excelled. “It wasn't anything pre-planned, but it was an amazing education at a fantastic institution with great instructors on both ends--the Riverside and the LA side,” he said. “None of this was calculated; in hindsight, it's like, ‘Oh wow, I really benefited from all these different things.’”
The positive UCR experience motivated Rasyidi and his brother, both UCR alumni, to create the Rasyidi Family Endowed Scholarship Fund for UCR undergraduate students, providing around $2,000 in funding per year. “I have nothing but great things to say about the educational experience at UC Riverside, which is why I'm such a proud alum and supporter, because that really gave me all these opportunities and experiences that I continue to benefit from today,” Rasyidi said.
A “transformative” program
As a child in an immigrant family, Rasyidi wanted to become a doctor because of G.I. Joe. “My parents are not professionals, and so my conception of all these different career paths and occupations was… influenced by media,” he explained. He remembered being impressed by an episode of the show featuring a medic who refused to carry weapons, saving the day without resorting to violence. “Doctors are always portrayed positively as these noble, altruistic characters, so that concept of helping people was very appealing,” Rasyidi said.
the back in a white shirt and tie
Rasyidi found his time at UCR to be “transformative.” “I would describe that experience as an adventure that put me on a path for life that has been really rewarding and beautiful and exciting, and that I'm still going down,” he said. In addition to meeting his wife at UCR, Rasyidi took advantage of undergraduate opportunities to explore fields beyond medicine, minoring in environmental sciences and ethnic studies to complement his biomedical sciences major. “It was a totally different school of thought and discipline and approach…and it just gave me so much more experience and perspective,” he said.
During medical school, Rasyidi chose to specialize in psychiatry because he found neuroscience fascinating and enjoyed helping psychiatric patients. Even after choosing his specialty, though, Rasyidi enjoyed delving into other areas of medicine. “Once I realized I was going to be a psychiatrist, I viewed all the other specialties as an opportunity, because… when else am I going to do this? And… it can then help me in the specialty that I do too,” he recalled. He called one surgery that he scrubbed into, a 12-hour operation to remove the pancreas, “the world's greatest field trip.”
Rasyidi’s broad knowledge base has come in handy throughout his career, which currently involves managing a medical group that contracts physicians with St. Joseph’s in Orange and Anaheim Community Hospital but originally focused on direct patient care. One classic, challenging patient case in psychiatry involves handling withdrawal symptoms for a pregnant woman with a drug addiction. “As a psychiatrist, you would think, ‘Why do you need to know about pregnancy? You're not going to deliver a baby,’” Rasyidi said. But, he continued, a key point to remember is that pregnancy causes water in the body to increase, diluting medications and changing the required dosage. “Sometimes the margin for error is that tight where you remember step one, step two, step three, but you forgot that there was a step four, and now it all falls apart,” he said. “You’ve got to be on point.”
Helping students like him
Last year, Rasyidi and his family decided to create a named endowed scholarship to show their appreciation for UCR while giving back to students. Rasyidi, his wife, and two of his siblings are all UCR alumni. “We've had amazing experiences at UC Riverside. It has impacted our lives just so tremendously in a positive way. I look at where we are--I'm a physician, my brother's a lawyer, my sister was working for Amazon in Seattle, and it’s that immigrant story or that American dream,” he said. “Riverside played a huge role in that.”
For the family’s new merit scholarship, Rasyidi took inspiration from his own situation as a student needing financial aid. “I tried to envision a kid like me today and how would I support them in their educational process financially,” Rasyidi explained. “I would hope that in their time at Riverside, they would have an experience like I did.”
He worked with SOM Director of Development Jane Hoag to set up the scholarship, which will begin accepting applications this year for its first award. “The Rasyidi family's generosity comes from a real place. They lived the UCR experience, and they wanted to make sure future Highlanders have that same chance to flourish,” said Hoag. “It was a privilege to help them build something that will support students for generations.”
During the process, Rasyidi toured UCR’s campus in October 2025 to see the changes over the two and a half decades since he first enrolled. He had been excited to hear of UCR starting its School of Medicine in 2013 and was able to see it firsthand. “It made sense, and I was pumped--I knew that it was a great foundation because of my experience with the first two years,” Rasyidi said.
Reflecting, then donating
Rasyidi said he hopes to stay involved with the SOM, reflecting that his experience at UCR significantly shaped his career. “There's a quote that goes, ‘You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been,’” he said. “I find it comforting to go back to my formative experiences and reflect, and it gives me some confidence that I didn't know what I was doing at the time, and it worked out.”
He advised other alumni to look back on their careers as well--and to donate. “At the end of the day, I hope the most significant feeling you have is gratitude for the experiences you've had and the difference you've made, and a desire to help others eventually feel that same gratitude. Because that's how I feel,” Rasyidi said. “I've been thankful that I've been able to experience these things, that I've been able to participate in my patients' lives, that I've been able to affect positive change, and I want future physicians to have that opportunity as well.”
