It’s not uncommon to hear a doctor say that he or she decided on a career path early on as a child.
Now, a new partnership between the College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Future DOcs program and the MSU Gifted and Talented Education – or GATE program – will give kids in middle school and first-year high school students a chance to explore a career in medicine sooner.
On June 22-27 at MSU, 20 campers from sixth through ninth grades will have the option to stay in dorms or to commute in for daily activities that include CPR training, building clinical skills, exploring forensics, learning about osteopathic manipulative medicine, working in teams and interpersonal skills.
The program started after GATE director Susan Sheth was introduced to Future DOcs online. After learning more and discussing the idea with Floyd Hardin, the college’s manager of outreach and inclusion, they both saw the potential to add the program to the GATE lineup of summer sessions focused on math, technology and forensic science.
“I went over and introduced myself and I said, ‘I think we should meet,’ so we did,” Sheth said. “Floyd really liked the idea of a feeder program, which we do primarily with middle school students at this point.”
Participants will come from communities across Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. Those who choose to stay on campus will live in Shaw Hall and get a taste of life on a major university campus.
“When Susan approached me about collaborating I was over the moon excited about it,” Hardin said. “We had done some preliminary efforts in trying to expand the programs into the middle schools and elementary schools, so we were looking for intentional efforts to collaborate and expand what we were doing.”
The students will get the chance to learn from faculty members, work with current osteopathic medical students and get mentoring from Osteopathic Medical Scholars—MSU undergraduates who are also interested in careers as physicians.
“It’s been a great marriage between the two programs,” Hardin said. “We have so many of our high school students who have younger brothers and sisters or parents in our networks in southeast Michigan and here in Lansing who are looking for programs for younger students. With the birth of the GATE collaboration, we have somewhere that those students who are not yet in high school can go to get that exposure to osteopathic medicine.”