The first-year Masters of Biomedical Sciences students wrapped up their fall semester in December by presenting educational posters at the MSBS Community Service Symposium. The Special Topics II course allows students to gain hands-on service experience through working with organizations in the local community. Students are required to complete 30 hours of volunteer work over the course of the semester and present educational posters on their projects.
“[Professional schools] are often looking at academic performance, service, research, and clinical exposure, and [our curriculum] provides that,” said Terence Mitchell, Ph.D., course director for Special Topics II. “We wanted to add a course to the program that [directly] meets the community service aspect.”
Students serve and partner with many varied organizations where they can do something they’re passionate about. Working with an organization for an extended period of time throughout the semester allows students to gain depth and understanding of the needs in society with regard to their chosen topic of study.
First-year students Alexandra Miranda, BS, Darrica Byrd, BS, and Daniel VanRooyen, BS, are all interested in pediatrics and worked together to research and present their poster titled Clinical Correlations of Preterm Birth and Cognitive Defects in Newborns. However, throughout the semester they each partnered with a different organization for the community service aspect of the project.
As part of his project, Daniel VanRooyen mixed his creative side with his passion for pediatrics.
“For my project, Tentacles for Preemies, I crocheted small stuffed octopi to donate to NICU babies,” shared VanRooyen. “The idea behind it is that it gives a preterm baby something else to pull at instead of their tubes, and it helps stimulate them physically.”
Alexandra Miranda and Darrica Byrd spent their semester volunteering in two local elementary schools. Miranda worked with the ESL program at Boone Trail Elementary and Byrd worked one-on-one with second graders on reading comprehension at Buies Creek Elementary. She also had the opportunity to work alongside a medical mission team in Guatemala diagnosing and treating children while working with the children’s ministry.
“It was really cool because even though there was a language barrier we all got along really well,” said Byrd. “We had so much fun seeing and working with the kids.”
She went on to share how her group studied different types of premature birth – the causes, the treatment, the risks, and the injury possibilities and how the service aspect connected to their other courses and the research component of the project.
Alexandra Miranda agreed saying, “We took embryology at the beginning of the semester and we learned about the different developmental defects and impairments that preterm babies [can experience] and this kind of tied it all together – what we learned about in embryology and now the clinical correlation.”
Special Topics II – a course focused specifically on community service – isn’t designed to just increase professional school application numbers. It’s designed to give students exposure to working with rural and underserved populations, which is the heartbeat of the mission of the Campbell’s School of Medicine.
“The most important goal for this [course] is to help students gain interest in working with those in need,” said Dr. Mitchell. “We hope it provides the impetus for continued lifelong service to underserved communities.”
PHOTO CAPTION: First-year MSBS students Alexandra Miranda, Darrica Byrd, and Daniel VanRooyen presenting their educational poster at the fall Community Service Symposium.