Healers Who Help

Profiles in Medical Service

Acommon theme among four graduates of the Health Careers Program is a devotion to service. Matt Aldrich, for example, majored in public policy at Brown, where he volunteered at a Providence Boy's and Girl's Club and dressed as McGruff the Crime Dog to give safety talks to children. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude. His decision to study medicine might have been predicted from his service-oriented work following graduation. First, he taught at an elementary school in Harlem and then at a small alternative middle school in a Boston housing development. With his judgment and confidence, Matt is well suited for the medical profession; he is preparing for that role now at Stanford Medical School.

Another public policy major from Brown, Milda Saunders earned a GPA of 3.72, received departmental honors, and was named a Resource Scholar for her senior thesis on the Crime Bill. She belonged to the Organization of United African Peoples (OUAP), the Black student union, and served for two years on its executive board. She served as co-chair of the Black Pre-Law Society and as editor of the African Sun. She also interned at the Providence Plan, an urban revitalization agency. On a more personal level, she was a writing peer tutor, a peer academic counselor, and most notably a volunteer at a crisis and referral hotline, where, she reported, "we had callers from a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints--housewives, hookers, stressed parents, the elderly, and the mentally ill. Although I had never been any of those things, I was able to relate to them and their situation." This empathy is very like that combination of kindness and clinical detachment that is a physician's daily work. She is now attending medical school at the University of Pennsylvania.

Christine Jacobson double-majored at Princeton in history and Afro-American studies. Not of African-American lineage herself, she thought the major would be helpful because she contemplated a career in civil rights law--a plan consistent with an already lengthy history of public service. Growing up, she candystriped at a local hospital, assisted in afterschool programs for kids with autism, and organized benefit functions at her high school for local charities. Later in life, she led week-long volunteer retreats to help build homes for the inner-city poor, volunteered at a soup kitchen, and taught English-as-a-second-language classes for Latin American immigrants. Her plan to attend medical school arose in 1995 after a relative was diagnosed with cancer and his doctors gave him six months to live. (Luckily, her relative is still alive and has been cancer-free for several years.) Her experience of the dedication and support of his medical team led her to want to become a physician herself, and like Matt Aldrich, she is now attending Stanford Medical School.

Timothy Ryan attended Cal Tech as an engineering major, worked to support himself, rowed on the crew, and earned a GPA that was, by the standards of medical admissions, unimpressive. After graduation he invented medical devices, watching surgeons implant them in patients, and seeing the patients recover. That was practical success, that was helping real people in the real world. The exhilaration of doing good led him to want to become a physician but his grades kept him out of medical school on his first attempt. On the advice of deans of admission, he completed 44 credits worth of postbaccalaureate courses both here and at MIT. Fortunately, his scores on the MCAT exam were excellent, including the highest score possible on the verbal section. That affirmation of his scientific aptitude and language skills, along with his professional success as a bioengineer, his new good grades, and a sheaf of strong letters of recommendation, brought him acceptance into the Harvard-MIT Medical Science Training Program.

Last year the Health Careers Program sponsored 58 students, including these four outstanding candidates who were admitted to Harvard Medical School, three of whom for various personal and professional reasons chose to attend elsewhere. We wish all our Health Careers Program graduates continued success in their careers.