It may be time for UT Health San Antonio students to head back to class, but many never really took a break. From attending professional conferences to conducting research and community outreach, catch up on how some Long School of Medicine, School of Dentistry and School of Health Professions students spent their summers.
Medical school students share experiences from the 2022 RISE conference
Every year the American Academy of Medical Colleges (AAMC) hosts an annual conference in Washington, D.C., called RISE: Developing Future Leaders in Academic Medicine & Science. The curriculum focuses on four core areas: relationships, influence, self-awareness and effectiveness.
The purpose of this conference is to serve as a leadership development seminar for those entering their second year of medical school. This year, UT Health San Antonio’s Long School of Medicine was represented by Chioma Stephanie Owo from Sugarland, Texas, and Abigail Johnson from Phoenix, Arizona. Both are Class of 2025 students.
School of Dentistry LEADs future dentists in South Texas
From clinical outreach to scientific research, doctoral and dental hygiene students kept a full schedule. The Learning Enhancement for Achievement in Dentistry (LEAD) program is unique among the school’s summer offerings in that it is open to dental and predental students.
The goal of the program has been to provide a seven-year pathway of experiences leading to academic success in the pursuit of dentistry. LEAD programs 1-3 focus on helping undergraduate college students prepare for the Dental Admission Test and the Texas dental school application process.
For LEAD 4-7, enrolled dental students engage in a three-week curriculum to prepare participants for the academic year ahead. Students can interact with faculty as they preview upcoming course material, treat patients at community clinics and discover how to properly care for their physical and mental well-being with a demanding school schedule.
The LEAD pathway has instituted a pipeline, bridging hopeful predental students with their career goal of becoming an oral health care professional. An intentional aim of the program has also been to become a guide for first-generation college students and those with an economically or academically disadvantaged background.
Speech-language pathology program offered two pediatric summer programs
Two community-based pediatric speech and language programs offered this summer by the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders helped children get ready for the new school year and gave graduate speech-language pathology students valuable clinical experience.
One of the programs, LAUNCH, is a four-week language enrichment program offered in June to children at a San Antonio apartment community as part of an ongoing partnership with Prospera Housing Communities. The program helped 17 children ranging in age from 4 to 13 years old who were identified as being at risk in the area of language skills during the project’s first phase last summer.
LAUNCH was funded by a Community Service Learning grant from the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics. Speech-language pathology master’s students helped facilitate the program, which featured a different theme each week with stories and activities designed to teach and reinforce grammar lessons.
ROAR, a speech sound disorder intervention program focused on children whose families are part of a home-based learning network, Family Educators Alliance of South Texas (FEAST). Graduate speech-language pathology students worked with participating children for two sessions per week over a three-week period. They targeted speech production, offered assessments of speech-sound production and provided parents with resources and education.