As told by Joelle Lieberman
UVU is a place for everyone. I think that there are so many resources and so many different pathways at UVU.
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My major is biology. I've always loved science, since I was in middle school, but I didn't really know what to do with it. And I've always known that I wanted to do medicine. Biochemistry aligns really well with medicine.
My seventh-grade science teacher really got me into science. We were learning about cells, and for some reason, it just kind of clicked. We did cells, and we did human anatomy, and I loved those two topics. I did really well in them. I liked memorizing all the bones and the muscles and everything. And I watched all the shows like “Grey's Anatomy,” and I only liked the medical parts — I would skip through the drama. I started seeking out TED Talks about cell biology, innovations, surgical tools, and things like that.
[Cell biology is] in all of us. It's in everything. You just look at something, and you don't think about the cells that are in it. But I could visualize it for some reason.
I started talking to my friends about being interested in [and] wanting to seek out medicine, but also science. So, my friend and I started a club in high school. We got together all of our friends and everybody who was interested in medicine or possibly pursuing a career in medicine, and we just started calling local medical professionals who could come and teach us something. They came and taught us sutures, how to cast people up, how to remove casts, [do] CPR and first aid — everything like that. We got to learn how to draw blood our freshman year. We got nurses, doctors, and police — everybody who was in medicine. It was an introduction to everything that we could possibly do.
It was amazing for everybody in the club because medical school is a lot of money. So, [it was] to decide if you want to do medicine before you go to medical school or any other route in medicine.
I'm from Colorado. Most of my generals were kind of done by the time I got here [to Utah]. I [toured] a lot of schools, and I thought about staying in Colorado. And for some reason, I really liked the vibe at UVU. I talked to some students — and I think this is so true, now that I've been here — [UVU has] more focus on the individual, and the resources for that person, and helping that person go further instead of providing resources for a mass group of people. So, I felt like there was more opportunity for me here to do more of what I loved.
When I [first] came to UVU, [I had] always looked at research as a Ph.D. field. When I came here, I got involved with a program called U-SIS [Underrepresented Students in Science], and I was able to do some research here in the microbiology lab. I was able to research macrophage cells and how methamphetamine affects its proliferation in wound care. We spent so many hours in the lab, and it was all preparing for a summer fellowship. [Another student] got me a connection with Harvard. I was doing [his] research with him, so when he publishes, I'll be on that.
This past summer, I went to Harvard Medical School and did a fellowship out there with some other UVU students. We got to look at viruses and their structures and, ultimately, how we can use sequences of RNA — basically, to get the sequence and structure from it so we can see what that virus looks like without doing too much to it. Then, we can create vaccines and therapeutics for that virus. That was incredible. It just led straight to virology, which is exactly what I wanted to do. It was the combination of cell biology for viruses.
[It] fit everything, every box that I was working for in the science field. We were here until one in the morning, sometimes just pipetting and waiting for things to be done, incubating, and things like that. And it all had to be perfect. So, when it wasn't perfect, that was frustrating. I look back at those times as fun, but they were hard in the moment. But it was good.
Dr. [Geoffrey] Zahn was my PI for that project. Meeting with him was really helpful, as well as Dean [Danny] Horns — he’s been awesome throughout this whole process and with the projects and everything that I've tried to do since then. He’s been great.
I’m currently trying to get a bridge program off the ground. This was our first year. What I'm trying to do is bridge the gap between high school and college. We’re working with local high schools to create that bridge. It’s two-fold — it's health care meetings and science meetings. It's introducing high school students to undergraduate research, what that can look like for them, and how they can get involved. My club in high school is like a precursor to this.
So, we bring [students] to UVU, and they can hear lectures and hear from UVU faculty who are doing research that can take high school students — they can see what it looks like, what could be interesting to them, and then techniques that they can use. And they can also get an introduction to health care like my club did. We'll bring in medical professionals, and we're actually partnering with Rocky Mountain University. We go over to their facilities and take tours of their program. I’m just trying to make it something that I wish I could have made my club. I would have loved to know more about research in high school. So, I'm trying to show high school students what research can be and how it's affected me.
I think it's so important just to show the different options in both [science and medicine] because they go hand in hand. Medicine is science, and science is medicine.
I love working with youth. It's one of my passions. I love this project. It's kind of my baby. I [had] met with Dean Horns and talked to him about it. He’s helped me with the project. It was actually one of the reasons I chose UVU; I thought that I could potentially start this here and hopefully create a ripple effect.
I'm learning how to better interact with school boards and medical professionals to come and talk to us and how to bring the right sorts of people that can talk to that audience. Next year, we're hoping to get four to five schools and get as many high school students as we can who are interested, no matter what their background is. If they know where they're going, if they're doing medical school, PA school, or dental school, it can change how they look at things and how their classes go.
I'm the president of the Pre-PA Club, so I spend a lot of my time doing that, too. I am pre-PA, so I will be going hopefully to school. I'll be applying this next cycle. The more that I learn about PAs, the more I'm like, “Yes, I want to do it!” PAs have their master's degrees, and they basically still see their own patients. They can specialize after they're licensed, so they can be a family doctor or go into a family practice. And then, if they don't like that as much, they can switch the next year. That’s really interesting to me — that I could change gears if I wanted to. I could find something that really speaks to me because even after all of these skills meetings, I'm like, “I love all of this!” I've never heard a PA say that they don't like their job.
UVU clubs have really prepared me. I joined a club when I was a freshman, at Club Rush, and went from there, getting more involved with leadership and things like that, but with information sessions and everything. And the PA school at UVU has been so instrumental in giving resources. The advisors as well — Jeannine Rushing is awesome. She has helped me see what prerequisites I need. There are so many requirements. It’s the same thing for medicine or dental. But there's so much to do before you apply. Clubs and Jeannine and the advisors have just helped things fall in line.
UVU is a place for everyone. I think that there are so many resources and so many different pathways at UVU. I meet new people every single day who are majors I haven't even heard of before. I've been here for two years, and it's just crazy to me that there's so much diversity and variety here that literally anybody wanting to be anything could come here and be happy and find resources for them, which I think is incredible.
Underrepresented Students in Science (U-SIS)
Dr. Geoffrey Zahn
Dean Daniel Horns
UVU Pre-PA Club
UVU PA Program
Jeannine Rushing
