Video Transcript: Inspiring Professional Identity

Dr. Jianmin Zhong, Biology Department and Loren Collins, Faculty Support Coordinator

Zhong:
BIO 482, Supervised Internship, was created based on student demand. So, I've been serving as Pre-Med Advisor for two years. And then two co-presidents of Pre-Med Club approached me saying that they are going to apply to medical school or PA school. They need a certain amount of hours as clinical training. So they say it's possible whether I can create a class for them so they can have a letter grade on their transcript. So I saw that's very good idea, excellent idea so I approached the department chair.

Valuable is the, basically, clinical hours they spend on site. By shadowing with local physicians, they can tell whether the job is good, you know, is the right career for them. Some of them will hate the health care career after they see blood. Then, you know, it's not good for them. But after certain hours of the shadowing, they enjoy working on site. For sure they will pursue a career in health care. So the class offers the opportunity for student to explore a career in health care and decide by themselves whether this career in health care is right for them.

Collins:
That's why — community-based learning I love it — because we have a lot of ideas and we have the students who will go teach and decide that's what they want to do forever and they've never considered it. And we'll have students who go and do that and are like "I'm never working with kids again!" So it's a really good touch on an experience that they wouldn't see in class.

I know that there are a lot of other industries that would like a lot of other students from from different departments. For example, Business has really great relationships in the community. It's really known because of the Smullin Foundation internships. We have a lot of other existing internship programs. But I just ran into a winemaker a few months ago who was, like, I wish I could have a chemistry student work with me and learn about how to use chemistry in this field. And he was a Chem grad from here.

I think students don't have this dichotomy of like, "Oh, I want the pure content or I want to be in a school that's preparing me for a profession." They want both. I think they can have both and I think what's incredible about this case is Dr. Zhong saw the the need that they had. Part of it to qualify for med school but part of it to see themselves as future scientists or future medical professionals. And brought those two things together by creating this internship experience where to get to work with local doctors and physicians and PAs. And I think it just created a fantastic program where that happens and part of what happens in that I think is that they not only start to see themselves as professionals. But one ofthe activities is we have our career advisor to the Natural Resources and Sciences from Academic and Career Advising Center created one of the workshops which is how to basically professionalize this experience. Put it on your resume. How do you talk about it in an interview? And so helping students carry it to that next step even beyond college.

So the connections just continue to thrive.