Pathways to Healthcare Brings East, West Campus Together
Stony Brook University has always been divided in two: East Campus and West Campus. While we are all a community, there hasn’t always been a reason for students or faculty to visit and explore the opposite side.
Several years ago, a program was put into place that brought these two sides of campus together, and now that program — Pathways to Healthcare — has grown so robust, it has become an unexpected bridge between the two sides.
“This program is so important because it represents the best collaboration between clinical medicine and undergraduate education,” said Marianna Savoca, associate vice president for career readiness and experiential education, Career Center. “Students who have an interest in healing and in becoming health care professionals get exposed to what it’s really like so that they can best position themselves to be competitive applicants to programs in those areas.”
Started as a collaboration between Robert Nocito, MD, clinical assistant professor and assistant program director, Emergency Medicine Residency in the Renaissance School of Medicice Department of Emergency Medicine, and David Cohen, MD, associate dean of Student Affairs and associate professor of emergency medicine and the Career Center on the West Campus, it is designed to allow first-generation and underrepresented students a chance to dip their toes into the medical field. It is a year-long, for-credit program that gives students direct access to healthcare professionals, basic clinical training, exposure to the medical field, shadowing experiences, mentorship, and guidance on strengthening applications for future programs.
“Pathways to Healthcare is more than just a program — it’s a bridge for undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college,” explained Nocito. “By offering a unique opportunity to explore various healthcare fields, gain hands-on clinical experience, and build lasting relationships with mentors, we are empowering the next generation of healthcare professionals to dream bigger, reach further, and ultimately transform the future of healthcare.”
Open to about 35 students, the program got about 100 applicants the first year, according to Urszula Zalewski, director of experiential education and student employment at the Career Center.
“Now, it’s up to more than 450 for 35 slots and the students in the program are the ones who are doing the most promotion,” she said. “We keep it small on purpose because we really want to allow for personal connections; that’s what makes this program so special.”
Cohen, who helped start the program with Nocito, explained that this has been a bright spot for both sides of the campus.
“It’s so rewarding to see young kids, and they’re amazing,” he said. “They’re kids who haven’t had any help to get to where they are, their parents aren’t doctors or have family physicians to help them with this, so to be able to help them over the process is really rewarding.”
Since this program has been so successful, all involved have tried to figure out ways to grow it, as well as expose others who may not have been accepted — or maybe didn’t even know they were interested — to what it has to offer. Recently, panels have been opened up to more students, including a Women in Healthcare Panel. And recently the program expanded to Stony Brook’s Renaissance School of Medicine, allowing those in the Pathways program to be mentored by a medical student.
“This program has been such a highlight. The students are very committed and it has been wonderful to see more and more connections being made at the hospital. In fact, students have been asking for some of their connections to come to West campus for events and take part in networking,” said Giulianna Vullo, experiential learning coordinator at the Career Center.
Savoca and Cohen added that having real-life exposure to the medical field has been crucial to students’ choices about their career. In fact, Cohen explained that it has actually helped open eyes to different types of medicine, even ones students hadn’t previously thought of.
“Sometimes they come in really sure about what they want to do, and throughout the course of the program, we expose them to some other possibilities, and in a small percentage of them, we change some minds and maybe they want to go a different route,” he said.
Added Savoca, “We all want them to make decisions about their career direction with knowledge and experience, so that they understand what they’re getting themselves into. That’s what we’re aiming to do. We’re aiming to help our undergraduate student body understand the great variety of opportunities in healthcare and then help get them exposed, and help them get connected to people who can help them.”
— Emily Cappiello