For Pathway to PhD UMass students, a Chance to Study at Tufts
Diana Hussaini has wanted to be a surgeon since childhood. But the UMass Boston senior had a lot of questions about how to make that happen—everything from how to study for the MCAT to whether she should or shouldn’t take one or more gap years before applying to med school. “What exactly did it take to get accepted?” Hussaini wondered. “Every time I asked someone—friends, Google, online—I got different answers. I felt really lost.”
She found what she was looking for at Tufts University School of Medicine’s UMass Boston Enrichment Program. After taking classes, shadowing physicians, and meeting Tufts students during the three-week program, Hussaini has a roadmap to a career in medicine. “I feel more confident that if I want to get there, I will get there,” she said.
The enrichment program was established and funded in 2012 by Gerard and Jane Gaughan to strengthen ties between health-related schools at Tufts and UMass Boston (UMB). Gerry Gaughan, M71, is a retired cardiologist and professor of medicine at the School of Medicine. Jane Gaughan, who held an EdD, passed away in 2017. The program aims to offer undergraduate students at UMB new opportunities while increasing the diversity of students applying to pursue medical, allied health, and biomedical degrees at Tufts.
“Many of these students, prior to this program, didn’t have the opportunity to have guidance or mentorship into pursuing a health care career, an MD, or a PhD,” said José Caro, assistant dean for multicultural affairs, who holds the Dr. Jane Murphy Gaughan Professorship at the School of Medicine. “For a lot of them, this information is brand new and they are having experiences they have never received anywhere else.”
Clinical Careers and Research Careers
The enrichment program has two tracks: the Clinical Careers Pathway and Pathway to PhD. Twenty-four UMB students, including Hussaini, participated in the clinical pathway and eight participated in the research pathway.
In the Clinical Careers Pathway, students took classes where Tufts medical students coached them through diagnosing case-study patients and showed them how to perform ultrasounds and physical exams. The students also shadowed physicians at Tufts Medical Center. Throughout, they interacted with a variety of students, faculty, and staff from the medical and other health science schools, all of whom were eager to extend a helping hand.
Simone Trainor, a sophomore majoring in biology and psychology at UMass Boston, participated in the Pathway to PhD. track. She has long been drawn to research, but felt she lacked experience, so she jumped at the chance to spend winter break doing research at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) at Tufts University.
Aimee Shen, associate professor of molecular biology and microbiology at the School of Medicine, directs the research pathway. “We’re providing an opportunity for UMB students to get hands-on research experience in different areas of biomedical research,” she said, “and to hopefully springboard that into additional research opportunities.”
Trainor and the other students in the research cohort completed six different research projects over three weeks, working in labs with teaching assistants (TAs) who were graduate students in those labs. “We were being treated as equals in the lab,” Trainor said. “They really took the time to explain every single step to us.”
After each project, the students worked closely with their TAs to prepare a presentation for a faculty panel, loosely modeled after thesis advisory committee meetings. “During the presentations, the students are being asked questions they weren’t necessarily anticipating,” Shen said. “They start understanding at a deeper level than they would have if they just went through the experiments.”
Trainor was energized by working so closely with the Tufts graduate students at GSBS. “It feels like we’re looking at a future version of ourselves,” she said. And the experience made her more enthusiastic than ever about incorporating research into her career. “This program has solidified my plans,” she said. “The physician-scientist pathway feels really right for me.”
Making Connections That Last
Students in both pathways attended many of the same lectures and seminars, learning about topics such as how to apply to medical school or graduate school and how to finance it. They also heard presentations by Tufts faculty, staff, and students about other health-related careers and programs at Tufts, such as the Physician Assistant Program and the Master of Public Health program. Some of the presentations came from UMB faculty, including Hazel Sive, dean of the College of Science Mathematics, and her predecessor in that position, Andrew Grosovsky.
The two tracks also participated in the Evening Open House with Families at the end of the program, where students shared what they’d been learning, and families had the chance to ask questions of deans and faculty members about educational opportunities for their children.
By then, the UMB students had bonded with each other and with members of the Tufts community. “This program was so much more interesting and joyful and helpful that I thought it would be,” Hussaini said. “Everyone was so adamant about ‘Reach out to us again, reach out in two or three years, here’s my email, here’s my phone number, here’s my friend’s email.’”
That kind of support and encouragement is intentional. “We think those personal connections are a key aspect of our program,” Caro said. “I’m talking about connections with current medical students, PhD candidates, faculty, deans. Some of them become informal mentors to the students when applying to medical school or to PhD programs.”
For Hussaini, some of those connections have already played a role in where she will go to earn a MS in Biomedical Sciences (MBS), which acts as a stepping stone to medical school. She had been accepted at more than one program but wasn’t sure where to go. After spending three weeks at Tufts, including meeting a current MBS student and the director of the MBS program, she made up her mind.
“Seeing how much everyone was willing to help each other within the Tufts community solidified for me that Tufts is where I want to go for my MBS,” she said. “It’s the program for me.”