After a three-year hiatus due to lack of funding, UCSF has resumed its annual outreach program to students at local two- and four-year degree schools who are interested in pursuing careers in health and science.
The program, Inside UCSF 2008, kicked off on Oct. 10 with a daylong event featuring UCSF student panels, interactive workshops and a reception with University faculty and staff. Nearly 60 potential future applicants participated, some coming from as far away as Fresno.
This year’s renewed funding was secured by the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Academic Diversity, which is tasked with implementing UCSF’s diversity initiative, now in its second year.
“We’re all very excited the chancellor restored funding for this project,” said Renee Chapman Navarro, PharmD, MD, director of academic diversity at UCSF. “This all came about as a result of our new emphasis on diversity efforts, and a large part of that is outreach.”
In June 2007, UCSF finalized its first-ever campuswide strategic plan, and placed special emphasis on nurturing and promoting diversity.
Navarro said it is important to reach out to minority students before they even apply to UCSF, thereby “establishing long-term relationships with them.”
One of the main features of the Oct. 10 event was a panel of six current UCSF students from the four schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy, as well as the Graduate Division.
The students on the panel — four females and two males — were selected because they shared similar backgrounds with the students in the audience. Several had taken time off between college and graduate school, one had attended a two-year junior college and all six came from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Laurie Ruelas, a fourth-year pharmacy student, said education wasn’t a high priority in her large family, though her father always encouraged her to go to college.
Since starting down the path toward her degree, Ruelas has applied her medical knowledge to aid her relatives, many of whom suffer from chronic diseases such as diabetes.
“I serve as a health resource for my family,” she told the audience.
Family health problems were what first inspired Ruelas’ fellow panelist, Christopher Jones, to pursue medicine.
“My older brother suffered from a disease that made him have to go to the hospital once a month,” said Jones, who is now in his fourth year of medical school at UCSF. “Our local doctors couldn’t help him, so we always had to go out of the area. I wasn’t very old, but I remember not understanding why he couldn’t get the help he needed where we lived.”
The panelists each had followed different paths before ending up at UCSF, but most of them mentioned the high quality of education and the wide range of opportunities both within and outside the classroom as reasons they chose the University above all others.
Several of the individuals who attended the event asked how UCSF helps students maintain balance between their academic and personal lives.
At UCSF, “you’re not just a student; you’re a person who happens to be studying and pursuing your career goals,” responded Naledi Saul, coordinator of Special Projects in the Office of Student Academic Affairs and associate director of UCSF’s Office of Career and Professional Development, who helped organize Inside UCSF 2008.
Asked what advice they had to offer the assembled students, the panelists stressed the importance of getting involved in various aspects of campus life and of exploring the various education and career options available to them.
“Be sure to keep asking questions because someone [at UCSF] will know the answer,” added Adebola Olarewaju, a second-year nursing student. “Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.”
The University plans to host another Inside UCSF event in the spring. Starting next year, the event will be held once a year in the spring, Navarro said.
“Inside UCSF 2008 has given our campus an opportunity to develop a relationship with diverse students who aspire to be among the next generation of leaders in the health professions," said Joseph Castro, PhD, vice provost of Student Academic Affairs. "One key to this initiative’s success will be sustaining these relationships in ways that benefit both the participants and UCSF.”
Photos by Susan Merrell
