|
|
The Mallory-Wilson Center
for Healthcare Education
Alumni Newsletter: June 2025
|
|
|
|
| Message from the Director
| |
Dear Alumni and Friends,
The spring semester has just finished, and we are enjoying the change of pace after the hustle and bustle of getting our graduating seniors out the door. We have completed our nominations for scholarships to premedical and pre-dental students, and we are making plans to welcome our newest class of Miami premedical and pre-health students. Our acceptance rates into medical school, dental school, and physician associate programs continue to highlight the quality of our Miami students.
I’d like to highlight a few opportunities and activities that will help us serve our premedical and pre-health students.
- First, we held our inaugural Tri-Health/McCullough Hyde Memorial Hospital Externship, in which six Miami University premedical and pre-health students were able to experience the inner workings of a rural hospital. Through lectures, observations, and other professional development activities, these students learned the importance of collaboration when faced with limited resources, and received insight about the differences between academic medical centers and smaller community hospitals. This opportunity was a collaborative effort between The Mallory-Wilson Center, The Center for Career Exploration and Success, and the McCullough Hyde Foundation.
- Second, we now have opened the door for shadowing opportunities with 2 local health networks – Kettering Health and Mercy Health. With the limited shadowing options in somewhat isolated Oxford, this is an important avenue for our students to acquire experiential learning.
- Third, thanks to alumni donation, we have established a new pre-dental fund. This fund is designed to help cover costs associated with DAT exam preparation courses and books, pre-dental experiential learning opportunities (travel expense, room and board, other), as well as dental school applications, visits and associated expenses.
- Fourth, we are completing our second summer of supporting undergraduate research by premedical students. The McLeish Premedicine Undergraduate Research fund provides additional financial support for these students to broaden their experience by engaging in laboratory research.
These opportunities all help us accomplish the mission or the Mallory-Wilson Center, to “enhance and enrich premedical and pre-health education at Miami University by providing the resources, information, and support that enable students interested in a career in healthcare to make informed decisions about their professional goals and to develop a plan to achieve those goals.”
Our curricular and extracurricular programming continues to attract and engage students interested in healthcare-related careers. Programming at the Center includes:
- administering the Premedical and Pre-Health Studies co-major to over 1100 Miami students;
- offering the PMD 101 and PMD 301 professional development courses, as well as the PMD 320 and PMD 410 seminar courses which provide multiple opportunities for our students to interact with physicians and other healthcare professionals;
- providing programming for the Mallory-Wilson Center Premedical Living Learning Community (LLC) for first-year students;
- administering our preceptorship program, in which Miami students engage in extended shadowing opportunities with Miami alumni physicians and healthcare professionals;
- promoting our week-long emphasis on premedical and pre-health education in Health Careers Week, which brings focus to the Center through a diverse array of events, lectures and workshops; and
- delivering our weekly e-newsletter that reaches all students in the co-major
In addition, the Center oversees a variety of endowed scholarships which are based on academic merit or financial need, as well as the Frankel Outstanding Premedical Student Award Fund. I am very pleased to report that thirty-seven students were awarded scholarships totaling over $100,000. If you'd like to consider a contribution, please visit our Move In Miami page. One area in which we are continuing to grow is our preceptorship program, which is an extended, immersion-style shadowing experience. We try to match our interested students with alumni volunteers, some of whom even offer living accommodations for the students during the preceptorship. We are only limited by the number of Miami alumni physicians and healthcare professionals who participate in our program. If you would like to get involved, reach out to us. We continue to be enthusiastic about the future of the Mallory-Wilson Center and look forward to continued success in our mission. Thank you for your interest in Miami and the Mallory-Wilson Center. Your feedback is important to us, so please do not hesitate to contact us with comments or suggestions, and stop by when you’re in town.
Best wishes and stay healthy,
Joseph Carlin, PhD - Director
| |
| Advisor Corner: Tailyn Walborn
Assistant Director & Pre-Health Professions Advisor
| |
Some things are predictable - like the decrease in student appointments once the semester has ended, or the increase in emails asking me to review personal statements and activity descriptions the week before applications open.
Conversely, some things are unexpected - like the loss of invaluable programming that we’ve come to take for granted, or a strong premedical student who recently received a prestigious award breaking down in my office because they still don’t feel like they’re doing enough as an applicant.
Despite the academic year coming to an end as it does every year, things are far from normal. Over the past few months we’ve lost the assistance of our student intern, have seen colleagues step down/leave the university, and have witnessed hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants pulled. While the Mallory-Wilson Center is fortunate enough not to rely heavily on grants, important resources for our students have been impacted, and I can’t help but feel the same stress and anxiety that is present nationwide.
At times like these I’m appreciative of the support we receive from our alumni, the interdepartmental collaboration we have across campus, and the Miami community as a whole. At times like these we need to come together even more to support our students. It’s times like these we need to refocus and plan for the future. So here I am, freshly returned from a week-long staycation with my dog, Toby, beginning plans for the 2025-2026 academic year.
After seeing the success of our inaugural Tri-Health/McCullough Hyde Memorial Hospital Externship, a variety of professional development events, and the improved PMD 301 curriculum during the 2024-2025 academic year, I’m looking forward to growing our presence within the community, creating new and exciting opportunities for students, and developing the curriculum for the newly approve PMD 201 course that we will be offering in the spring of 2026 to help fill any gaps experienced by students between PMD 101 and 301. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future has in store for our students, and hope to see as many of you as possible throughout this next year!
I hope you have a wonderful summer!
| |
| Mallory-Wilson Center Faculty/Staff Recognition Award:
Dr. Heeyoung Tai
| |
The 2024-2025 awardee, Dr. Heeyoung Tai, is a Teaching Professor at Miami University. She is the Lead Departmental Advisor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and has taught biochemistry to many pre-health students. Dr. Tai was an important contributor to the development and successful creation of our Premedical Studies co-major in 2012, and the supporting courses - PMD 101: Exploring Healthcare Careers and PMD 301: Navigating Healthcare Professional School Admissions. As a continuing member of our Pre-health Advisory Committee (PAC), she plays an important role in helping the premedical and pre-health students develop successful applications. In addition, Dr. Tai has been an important voice in helping us shape the objectives and approaches we use in PMD 301 so that we can continue to graduate highly successful Miami alumni healthcare professionals.
Read more.
| |
| Premedical Student of the Year: Sofia Rebull, Class of 2025
| |
The Frankel Outstanding Premedical Student of the Year Award recognizes the top premedical student in each graduating class, and the awardee is selected by the Director and Assistant Director of the Mallory-Wilson Center for Healthcare Education. The 2024-25 recipient of the Ken and Joan Frankel Outstanding Premedical Student Award is Sofia Rebull.
Sofia is a biology and premedical and pre-health studies double major, with a medical sociology minor. She is also a member of the honors college and the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Scholarship program.
| |
| 2025 Cuts Impact the Mallory-Wilson Center
| |
Written by Tailyn Walborn, Assistant Director & Pre-Health Professions Advisor
For these past two academic years, the Mallory-Wilson Center for Healthcare Education has had the privilege of hosting a Service + Change Agent through a unique AmeriCorps grant provided to Miami. This program allowed Miami students to work in a variety of settings within non-profit organizations, impacting the following areas:
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- Economic Opportunity
- Education
- Environmental Stewardship
- Healthy Futures
- Veterans and Military Families
Because of our work related to education, healthy futures, economic opportunity, and serving a diverse student body, we have had two wonderful individuals serve with us. We previously featured an article introducing our 2023-2024 Change Agent, Mason Schmitt, and were planning on introducing you to our 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 Change Agent, Natalie Hicov, with this newsletter. However, due to the unexpected loss of the grant supporting this program, we were notified in April that all Service+ Change Agents were immediately terminated, so we are not only introducing you to Natalie, we are also saying goodbye to her and the program.
Introducing Natalie
Natalie Hicov is currently pursuing a B.S. degree in Biochemistry with a Minor in Finance, alongside a Premedical & Pre-Health Studies Co-Major. She is currently working on her application for medical school, and hopes to begin in the summer of 2026. She has experience with both clinical and non-clinical volunteerism, is involved in several extracurriculars including Miami's Premedical fraternity, Phi Delta Epsilon, and is an active student-researcher in Chemistry and Biochemistry labs on Miami's campus. She enjoys assisting other Pre-Health and Pre-Medicine undergraduate students to become informed and competitive applicants for their healthcare education following Miami University as well as introducing them to healthcare opportunities. Outside of her academics and work with the Mallory-Wilson Center, Natalie enjoys baseball, crocheting, and Iron Maiden!
How We’ve Benefitted from Service+ and What’s Next
With the assistance of the Service+ Change Agents, the Mallory-Wilson Center was able to more closely connect with the 500+ incoming students we see every year through group advising, a more diverse schedule of events, and assistance with our PMD 101 course. Our Service+ members have also helped us to develop partnerships with healthcare providers and non-profits in the community, bring more admissions representatives to campus, and improve our application assistance process (featuring a new and improved PMD 301 curriculum that was rolled out this spring!). Internally, the assistance our Service+ members have provided to Dr. Carlin, Kathy, and Tailyn has been invaluable, reducing the stresses of serving such a large population, and their presence in the office will be missed. We are hoping to bring Natalie back on for one more year, and ideally would hire a replacement after she graduates. However, we will have to do so via the student employee process, which is something we are still working through with human resources and compensation.
| |
Written by Farzin Daruwala ‘28
“From a small idea to one of the most transformative events we've hosted - this really was one of my favorite events to date! The conversations I overheard were diverse, informative, and inspiring - I'm actually sorry I had to keep ending them after 12 minutes! I also want to shout out to all of our students who attended an event on a rainy Friday afternoon because they recognized how wonderful of an opportunity it was. We couldn't host these types of events without our supportive community of alumni, healthcare professionals, faculty, and staff, but we wouldn't host these events if it weren't for our incredible students who recognize what great opportunities these events are.“
- Tailyn Walborn, Assistant Director and Pre-Health Professionals Advisor,
The Mallory-Wilson Center for Healthcare Education
On April 25, 2025, the Mallory-Wilson Center held its first-ever speed networking event, with a total of 9 different health professionals coming to speak to students about their journey to becoming a health professional. To make sure that there was time allotted for each student to ask questions and engage in conversation, we were split up into 9 groups with about 4-5 people in each group. Read more.
| |
| Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine Hosts Ohio Medical Education Day
| |
 | Dr. Paul Madtes welcomes everyone to the OMED Symposium, hosted annually by the Ohio Health Professions Advisors (OHPA)
|
| Written by Natalie Hicov, Biochemistry and Premedical Studies, ‘26
In attendance were 24 Miami University MWC premedical students, who were able to attend several different exciting panels and workshops with topics ranging from interviewing skills to medical school case studies and bioethics and situational judgment tests. Read more.
| |
| Conducting A Pre-Health Test Prep Workshop
| |
 | Nolan Kutchey and Natalie Hicov during the May 2025 commencement festivities
|
| Written by Nolan Kutchey, Biochemistry and Premedical Studies, Spring ‘25
Nolan Kutchey is now a Miami graduate, from Oxford, MI who’s majoring in biochemistry with the premedical studies co-major and a healthcare sales certificate. Besides the Student Advisory Board, Nolan is involved as the Community Service chair for Rotaract, and former Fundraising chair for the Phi Delta Epsilon, Safety Officer for Club Baseball, and VP of Risk Management for Beta Theta Pi. In the community, Nolan volunteers locally at McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital, TOPSS, and the Booker T. Washington Community Center in Hamilton.
During this spring semester, the Mallory-Wilson Center held a test-prep workshop for its premedical and pre-health students to become familiar with their respective professional school entrance exam. Taking a deep dive into the MCAT, DAT, OAT, and GRE, Natalie Hicov and myself were able to speak on various aspects of each exam to cater the presentation to many different students. Within the material, we shared key insights into the testing subjects and format, what Miami courses would be advised to take beforehand, what study materials are available to students, a tutorial of Anki flashcards, and any tips we had for creating a detailed study schedule. Based on my personal experience of taking the MCAT twice, I was additionally able to share what the testing days looked like and offer what I had learned about study habits from the first occurrence to the second (spoiler, it was a lot). Read more.
| |
|
Copyright © 2025 Miami University.
| |
|
|
|
|
