Every year when the spring semester begins it always amazes me how different it is from the fall semester. During the fall semester, there is barely time to breathe, students begin making appointments the week prior to the start of classes, first-year students jump at the opportunity to meet with you to make sure they are starting off on the right foot, and registration season comes with concerns about getting in the necessary coursework to take admissions tests, meet professional school requirements, and to graduate. In the midst of all of this, we find the time to host a multitude of events, including those that we feature during Health Careers Week.

Health Careers Week is a week-long symposium that I started hosting during my first year at Miami. It’s the Mallory-Wilson Center’s time to collaborate with different departments across campus, connect with the community, and bring alumni back to campus to help educate our students about a variety of healthcare-related topics. 

This year’s Health Careers Week kicked off with Ohio Medical Education Day, an annual conference hosted by the Ohio Health Professions Advisors organization, of which I was the president. We chartered a bus to make sure that our students could attend the event at the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences. Because of this, there were 40 Miami students comprising the 230 total students in attendance! Following this, we hosted a slew of events, including an ethics workshop, a career balance and cognitive wellness session, a visit from the Southern College of Optometry, a Community Blood Center blood drive, a talk by alumnus Dr. Richard Hirsh on Medical Humanitarianism, Stop the Bleed programming, a discussion on the importance of understanding language barriers in healthcare, an admissions panel, mock interviewing, multiple screenings of The Color of Care documentary, and a keynote panel discussing healthcare inequities, featuring Miami faculty and alumni, including Dr. David DeLaet. These events saw hundreds of Miami students in attendance, and multiple departments across campus contributed so we were able to make the events fully accessible.

With the start of the spring semester, things have calmed down a bit and we are able to focus some time on improving our courses and programming for the next school year. Our Student Advisory Board is applying to become a recognized student organization on campus, so they can utilize funding to plan and promote events; the Premedical Living Learning Community will be saying goodbye to the wonderful resident assistant who has turned it into one of the most successful on campus, but we are working to create a committee to continue in his tracks; students really enjoy the changes we’ve made to PMD 101 and 301, but we continue to evolve the curriculum; and finally, we are always looking for new ways to help our students, through events, classes, funding, and extracurricular activities - if you have any recommendations, or would like to have a more active role in our wonderful community, please don’t hesitate to reach out!