Dean's Newsletter

Archive of previous newsletters

Profile of the Class of 2010

September 22, 2006

Last year, the newsletter about which I received more comment than any other was the one that profiled a cross-section of the first-year medical school class.  Back by popular request, this year’s version highlights six students in the Class of 2010.

But first, let me outline the overall class profile (abstracted from a more detailed summary of the class prepared by Dr. John Hansen, Associate Dean of Admissions). 

The Class of 2010 includes 50 women, 51 men and ranges in age from 21 to 33.  The average age is 23.2 years and about 50% is 24 years old or older.       About 30% of the students identify themselves as non-Caucasian. Nine percent were born in another country.  Countries of birth include: Canada, China, Dominican Republic, Israel, Korea, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago.

About 23% of the class majored in Biology or some variation of that major, 15% in Psychology, while another 6% of you majored in Biochemistry.  5% of you majored in Neuroscience and 4% in Molecular Biology.  3% each majored in Chemistry, Economics, English, Health and Society, Math and Philosophy.  Other majors include Flute Performance, Political Science, Physiology, Physics, Computer Science, Anthropology, Biomedical Engineering, and History, among others.
           
There are 55 different colleges and universities represented in the class: 16% attended the University of Rochester as undergraduates, 5% attended Cornell, 4% each attended Brigham Young University, Columbia, and Dartmouth, and 3% Barnard. In addition to personal or family travel experiences, many of you held volunteer, work, or study abroad positions overseas.  Sites included over 20 different countries. Three students were in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, Mongolia and Mali, and three more were in AmeriCorps or Teach America.

A large number are proficient in piano and cello, violin and guitar, but also play the bassoon, flute, saxophone, trumpet, and drums.  One student sings and plays the piano, clarinet, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, bassoon, recorder, percussion instruments and bass guitar!   There are also many athletes.  Many students were varsity members of college teams--crew, volleyball, golf, soccer, fencing, cross-country and/or track and field. teams.  One student was President of her college's Boxing Club and several compete in triathlons. 

Here, now, are personal biosketches of a cross-section of six students in the Class of 2010, written in their own voice:

Karim Boudadi

As an American born in Morocco, I had the opportunity to explore much of the world at a young age.  Leading a diplomatic lifestyle abroad enabled me to travel extensively throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.  I was exposed to many customs and traditions, and learned four languages in the process (English, French, Spanish, and Arabic).  Although my interest in human biology first developed while attending a science-oriented school in Rabat, Morocco, my true passion for medicine did not flourish until I moved back to Pittsburgh during high school, and was faced with several personal obstacles. 

Indeed, my family life changed dramatically, as my father remained overseas.  I took on the responsibility of helping raise my younger brother and provided my mother with moral support.  In addition, I helped care for my ailing grandfather as he underwent amputations due to diabetes, an event which contributed to my decision to pursue a career in medicine.  I also began part-time employment at the age of sixteen during this financially difficult period.  Throughout that time, I grew attached to working with children and underserved communities.  I worked as a counselor for the YMCA's Early Childhood Learning Center, and volunteered for such organizations as the Children’s Miracle Network, and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program). 

After graduating valedictorian of my class, I attended Cornell University, where I majored in Biological Sciences with a concentration in Neurobiology and Behavior, and minored in French Literature.  Throughout my time at Cornell, I remained actively involved in helping underprivileged communities as a member of Circle-K Community Service Organization.  I also personally financed 100% of my education, and maintained work-study employment as a Physical Therapy Administrative Assistant, Journal of Fluid Mechanics Editorial Assistant, and Cornell Annual Fund Caller.

Furthermore, I pursued my interest in medicine as a volunteer at Cornell’s Student Health Clinic for four years, where I served as both a Medical Assistant and an HIV-Test Counselor.  This defining experience solidified my interest in medicine: I had the opportunity to gain clinical skills, conduct campus outreach on various health issues, and build confidential patient rapport which illustrated the importance of cultural awareness in the modern practice of medicine. 

In addition, I explored my interest in scientific research while at Cornell.  I was selected as a Howard Hughes Research Scholar and studied olfactory acuity as a reduced model for cortical learning and dementia in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior.  I also had the opportunity to conduct full-time research for a summer at the University of Rochester Medical Center.  I investigated mechanisms by which environmental contaminants lead to lung damage and debilitating respiratory diseases.  I found the project very engaging as childhood lung diseases continue to increase alarmingly, especially among underprivileged children.  This rewarding experience further increased my interest in attending medical school at the University of Rochester.

As such, growing up abroad exposed to diverse customs and languages has inspired me to incorporate my multicultural background in being a doctor.  My work, research, and volunteer experiences have all given me a greater appreciation for an integrated approach to medicine.  For this reason, I was especially attracted to Rochester’s Double Helix Curriculum and its emphasis on biopsychosocial education

Nianda Clouden

Ever since I could remember, medicine was my purpose; not a career, not an interest, but "my purpose." I was born and spent more than half of my life on the beautiful island of Trinidad as the second oldest of my mother’s four children. I remember walking off the plane upon my arrival to the U.S. and thinking to myself, "here is where the journey begins." Indeed a tough journey it was – attending an inner city high school in NY, trying to adapt to my strange new surroundings with propelling but yet distant dreams of a career in medicine. My mother’s words I would repeat time and time again, "There is always a way!"

When I first arrived on the University of Rochester campus, a first generation college student, I was excited to embark on a new journey that would take me to achieving my ultimate dream. Throughout my undergraduate career at the U of R, I was privileged for three years to hold a position as Resident Advisor, mentoring and advising new students as they embarked on a new stage in their lives. This experience helped me to do for others what so many have done for me, as I’ve had many angels in my life helping me to my ultimate goal. I was also privileged to enjoy a number of study abroad experiences during my college career. These experiences showed me a bigger picture of life and instilled in me a sense of belief that indeed anything is possible. Whether I was standing on the Great Wall of China, walking under a waterfall in Oaxaca Mexico, looking down from the Eiffel Tower, hiking on the glaciers of Switzerland or just sitting in a London’s Tube station, I thought back to from whence I came.

Finally, it was my last year at the University of Rochester’s undergraduate campus. I was excited to begin medical school, but my constant thirst for multifaceted knowledge found me at the University of Rochester’s Simon Graduate School of Business after graduation. I was astonished that I had just as much interest in health care market research as I did in chemistry research! The shift from undergraduate Chemistry to Business and Health Care Management was not an easy one but it was an essential tool. I want to be a physician who understands the inner workings of the dreaded Health Care system and the intertwinement of the business, science and medical world in order to provide the best quality of care for my future patients.

In 4 years more I would have embraced all that the University of Rochester has given me, in hopes that my experiences will inspire others. For now, at last I sit in the lecture halls of the U of R School of Medicine, grateful for all my past experiences and anticipating all to come. Remembering where I came from, I repeat my mother’s words, "There is always a way!"

Jeffrey Cooney

My desire to become a physician has grown out of my dual interests in clinical care and neuroscience research, and I believe that the University of Rochester provides an ideal setting in which to combine these pursuits.  Raised in Wellesley, MA, I have been interested in the natural sciences for as long as I can remember, but it was not until college that I began to develop my particular interest in medicine.  Three experiences were instrumental in furthering this interest: a winter spent working in a clinic in Ecuador, a year and a half of research with a callosotomy (“split-brain”) patient in college, and four years investigating the impact of aging and stroke on memory and attention.

Although the roots of my interest in medicine took hold while shadowing a neurologist in high school, it was on a fellowship in Ecuador during my junior year at Dartmouth College that I first fully experienced the relationships that a physician can establish with his patients and the community.  Living and working with a local physician in a small clinic outside of Quito, I was invited to observe many of the patient examinations, and was challenged to come up with plausible explanations for what the patients reported.  I spent my evenings trying to better understand the reasoning that had been applied to that day’s cases, and reading through medical texts so that I might better understand the next day’s patients.  I was captivated by the art of interacting with people to determine the cause of their ailments, and by the subtle problem solving necessary for each diagnosis. It is a process that I hope to center my career upon as a future physician.

Returning to college after my fellowship, I had the unique opportunity to work with a split-brain patient under the direction of Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, and began my exploration of neuroscience research.  Working with patient JW provided a rare and often startling window into the mechanics of the human mind, and challenged my understanding of cognitive processes and conscious experience.  Observing a person’s left (speaking) hemisphere incorrectly claim responsibility for actions that the right hemisphere has directed is a powerful example of how little we understand about the function of the mind, and such experiences motivated me to attempt to better understand the physical brain that underlies cognitive processes.  I designed a study to investigate how attention resources are shared between the hemispheres of the brain, then completed my graduation requirements early so that I could pursue my research full-time.  Further building upon my experiences with JW, I then proceeded to develop and publish an article that proposed a theoretical approach to understanding the cognitive effects of several neurological syndromes that affect attention, memory, and conscious experience. 

Approaching my college graduation with strong interests in both research science and clinical medicine, the desire to further explore the ways in which academic neuroscience can be combined with clinical neurology led me to the neuroimaging lab of Dr. Mark D’Esposito at UC Berkeley. During my four years in the lab, I studied the effects of stroke and aging on human memory and attention systems, combining functional MRI with pharmacology and behavioral techniques and participating in the preparation of three articles.  This work brought me into extensive contact with stroke patients and elderly adults, and it was my experience with these individuals that convinced me to pursue a career in medicine.  I was inspired by the patients’ accounts of overcoming hurdles imposed upon them by their strokes, but regretted being unable to address their questions about the issues most critical to their daily lives.  Through a career in medicine I hope to equalize the exchange, acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to interact with people as a caregiver.  My research interests remain strong, but it is my desire to engage in the human interaction so central to the role of a physician that has driven my desire to become a doctor. As I look to the future, I anticipate one day maintaining a clinical practice enriched by a complementary research program, learning from the patients themselves as I work to provide them with the best possible treatment.

Sophina Manheimer

I am Diné from Tuba City, Arizona on the Navajo Nation. I am of the Towering House Clan and born for the Reed People. My maternal grandfather is of the Salt Clan and my paternal grandfather is of the Edgewater Clan. I grew up as the oldest of six children in a beautiful place outside of Tuba City.  It is an area that doesn’t have a formal name but is referred to by its nearest geographical feature, Shadow Mountain. Growing up in a traditional Navajo (or Diné, as we prefer to be called) household, I was told to always introduce myself properly in this way. My story of how I arrived here to study medicine at the University of Rochester begins with my family and our Diné beliefs.

I grew up in a very close family in an area where everyone who lives within a five-mile radius is related to me. The land that we live on is the same land on which my mom, my grandmother, her parents and grandparents had lived and raised their livestock. Up until my parent’s generation, living a successful life didn’t depend on a formal education. Life was about raising a strong herd of sheep and cattle and living the Diné philosophy of Hozhó, which is a term that encompasses balance and beauty in all aspects of life. In Diné philosophy, an illness is more than just a physical ailment but involves a complex web of evil that is a result of an imbalance in Hozhó. Seeking treatment means going to visit a healer that can cure the illness in relation to restoring the balance back into your entire being. A healer reaches you on a spiritual level and speaks the language of the ancient people who are called upon to help you in your healing. In this way, Hozhó can be restored and you can be considered to be cured.

My family has a very long history of cancer, mainly of the colon and stomach. All of my grandfather’s siblings have passed on from cancer and many other family members have dealt with it at some point. Growing up I spent so much time in and out of hospitals showing our support and, in most cases, paying our last respects. My grandmother passed on from stomach cancer and, more recently, my grandfather passed on from leukemia after previously having cancer three different times. My uncles have all had cancer, two of whom have had it twice. Having grown up in an isolated world on the Navajo Nation, I had no idea that this number of cases in one family was not normal. After spending some part of my education off the reservation, I began to make larger comparisons and realize more and more that there was something wrong.

Spending so much time in hospitals while growing up, I had interacted with doctors almost regularly by watching them attend to my family members and getting involved by translating between English and Navajo. As I became more involved in translating and helping my family to understand certain issues, I felt that somehow the doctors needed my help. Before high school I decided that I wanted to become a doctor and made the best of my education and took advantage of other educational opportunities elsewhere. I attended a math and science summer program at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA for three consecutive summers and strengthened my background in those areas. My mother told me that if I wanted to go to college, I had to do well in school to receive scholarships because she couldn’t save anything for college as I had five younger siblings at home. I worked hard, graduated valedictorian of Tuba City High School and received more than enough scholarship money from various sources to attend Dartmouth College, where I received a B.A. in Mathematics without putting financial stress on my family.

I was very impressed with the University of Rochester’s biopsychosocial model of learning medicine and felt that it would integrate all aspects of my traditional beliefs into a great medical education. I spent the last bit of my grandmother’s life at her bedside talking with her for hours about my plans for my life, which included how I wanted to become a doctor. She expressed her concern about how the world (of the Diné) was changing into that of the “white” people and how Western medicine was taking over traditional healing and knowledge. I convinced her that I was not going to leave my Diné teachings but that I was looking for a way to integrate and balance Western medicine into our traditional sense of healing. She said that she was very proud of my courage and willingness to continue and that as long as I was in touch with the Creator by giving thanks for all that Mother Earth provides for me, I should be able to maintain Hozhó and bring whatever I needed to back home to help our people.

Ashley Poelma

I was raised in East Amherst, NY (a suburb of Buffalo).  When I was four, I fell off a boat at a boat show and sustained a concussion.  While I was recovering in the hospital, I was so impressed by the doctors and how they had helped me that I decided I wanted to be a doctor someday so I could help kids just like my doctors had helped me.  During high school, I participated in a summer research program at Roswell Park Cancer Institute and did a medical internship that allowed me to rotate through every area of a hospital in Buffalo.  Both of these experiences reaffirmed my goal of becoming a physician.  As a result, during my senior year of high school, I applied to the REMS program (an 8-year combined Bachelor’s/MD program at UR).

During my undergraduate years at Rochester, I majored in Biology and minored in Psychology.  I was involved in campus as a Students’ Association Controller, Freshman Resident Advisor, Chairwoman of the Student Health Advisory Committee, a campus tour guide, a member of the student alumni group and an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and Secretary of the campus’ Medical Emergency Response Team.  I also volunteered as an EMT with Henrietta Volunteer Ambulance Corps. 

During the summer between my first and second year of college, I volunteered with abandoned children at a children’s hospital in Oradea, Romania.  This was something I’d wanted to do since age five when I watched a news documentary that showed the horrible conditions and complete neglect the abandoned children there lived under.  Although conditions had improved during the intermittent 15 years, the kids were still very neglected in many ways, particularly socially and emotionally.  Before I left Romania, I vowed I would return again for a longer period of time.  I decided to graduate from college a year early.  Last year, I returned to Romania on a Fulbright Fellowship from the US Department of State.  I spent the year in Bucharest, Romania working with the abandoned kids at a children’s hospital and doing research on patients’ rights.  It was a heartbreaking year, but definitely the best experience of my life.

Another passion I discovered during college--through tutoring inner-city kids in reading and math and serving as a teaching assistant for many courses--was that I love teaching.  As a result, I spent four months between graduation and the beginning of my Fulbright Fellowship in Romania teaching English to children in Seoul, South Korea.  I loved teaching, my students, Seoul, and Korean culture!

As a Navy medical school scholarship student, I look forward to using the knowledge and skills I obtain at Rochester to take care of those individuals (and their families) who are serving our country.  I hope to incorporate providing medical care to underprivileged children, both within the US and abroad into my future career as a physician.

Joanna Touger

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY.  At Stuyvesant High School in NYC, I was fortunate enough to take part in a newly developed program that allowed me to take classes not normally available to high school students, such as molecular biology and biochemistry, and to work in a research lab at NYU Medical Center. 

I then attended Williams College, where I was a biology major, and it was my senior honors thesis in biology that cemented my desire to pursue a career in the biomedical sciences.  While at Williams, I was also able to pursue a wealth of other activities. I worked for three years as a member of the ski patrol at the local ski mountain, and I directed the outdoor orientation program at Williams, allowing hundreds of incoming freshmen to go on four-day backpacking trips as part of their orientation experience.  As vice president of the outing club I was also involved in organizing many other activities for the campus, including mountain day, a William’s tradition in which classes are randomly cancelled and the students and faculty hike up a local mountain.  I also taught a variety of classes, including skiing, climbing and leadership training.  Among other activities, I helped to found a pro-choice organization at Williams, and was a member of the varsity cross-country running team. 

After graduating from Williams in 2004 I worked in a pulmonology lab at UCSF, studying the role of mast cells in the innate immune response to bacterial lung infections.   The principal investigators I worked with were pulmonologists, and through this exposure to academic medicine I began to realize that I wanted to integrate clinical medicine and patient care in with the basic science research I hoped to do.

Last year I began my PhD program in biomedical research here at the University of Rochester, completing my graduate school classes and research rotations. I was able to learn a tremendous amount working with various professors here, and when I return to complete my thesis I will be working in the lab of Dr. Stephen Dewhurst to optimize an HSV amplicon vector for delivery of an HIV vaccine.  However, as a result of my exposure to the combination of clinical medicine and basic science in San Francisco, I decided to apply to transfer into the MD/PhD program here.  With the combination of a strong emphasis on patient care through the biopsychosocial model, and an incredibly supportive and diverse group of research faculty, I believe that University of Rochester is an ideal place to pursue a dual degree and I am looking forward to continuing my education.

I think you will agree that the future is in good hands.

Meliora,

David S. Guzick, MD, PhD
Dean, School of Medicine and Dentistry