The Tufts Pre-Med CONNECT Program, a one-week immersive program for first-years and sophomores interested in careers in medicine, will pilot over spring break. Students participating in the five-day program will commute from the Medford/Somerville campus to Tufts Medical Center.
The CONNECT Program is designed to teach undergraduates about different health professions and prepare them to pursue careers in the medical field. The program will include hands-on activities, clinical simulations, career and education advising and provide an immersive exploration of the Tufts Medical Center.
Students accepted into the CONNECT Program will have opportunities to explore the reality of health fields, which includes learning about admissions processes and the everyday lives of students from various health backgrounds.
“We’re going to have a number of our folks from our different programs, the deans of admissions for example, come and speak about what the process of admissions is like to try to take some of that mystery away,” Berri Jacque — chair and professor of Medical Education, director of the Center for Science Education at the Tufts University School of Medicine and one of the CONNECT Program’s creators — said. “We’re going to have lunch mixers with current students across the health spaces, so students can hear what they recently did to get into school and what their experience is like.”
The CONNECT Program will also include “actual medical education” at the Thompson Sim Center from the School of Medicine, according to Jacque.
“We’re going to do some suturing, we’re going to do some patient intake, some intubation,” he said.
Beyond direct pre-health education, participants will also be matched with a faculty advisor who will work with them during the immersion program, as well as check in with them over the next year.
“We’ll do a mixer and a bonding with our advisors so that each student participant will have a subsequent number of interactions and individualized advising meetings with them to help make that plan over time,” Jacque explained.
The CONNECT Program leads have seen a strong interest across the Medford campus, with students like first-year Sorelle Tan learning about it from their lecturers, Instagram posts and posters.
“The program is really great for pre-med [students] because it allows you to get mentorship opportunities,” Tan said. “It also allows you to go to the Tufts Medical Center, shadow physicians and other health specialties and see where you might want to end up later on your medical journey. So I thought it’d be a good opportunity.”
Diren Pamuk-Turner, a senior chemistry and biochemistry lecturer and one of the CONNECT Program’s creators, thinks this type of experience is important for students interested in pre-health.
“When they’re in their first and second year, [pre-med students] sit in these big basic science classes like chemistry, biology, and they don’t really see the connection of why they are doing this as a prerequisite,” Pamuk-Turner said. “The profession that they are going for is nowhere near the things that they are learning, so hands-on experience or experiential learning as you are actually thinking about that profession is so important.”
The CONNECT Program aims to fill gaps in exposure to the health field for students who might not have had access to these types of experiences.
“We are targeting students who are first in their family to go to college, maybe they didn’t have any kind of experiences like this before, and also low-income students who might not have the opportunities to get into this kind of program,” Pamuk-Turner said.
Jacque said that the program will help students early in their academic careers understand what the medical profession entails.
“This is what we’re hoping, to have folks come in early thinking ‘Yeah, working in health and medicine would be really good,’” Jacque said. “If folks decide they don’t want to go down a certain career path, but they have a better understanding of how important health is, so they can be better citizens around health, no matter what job they’re in, I’d be thrilled.”
The program’s creators also want people to hear about the opportunities that students can access at the Tufts Medical Center, including work-study positions and research opportunities for undergraduates.
“Any students who are interested in the pre-health space really should consider coming down, getting in touch and taking advantage of the opportunities on our campus,” Jacque said. “We’d like to build more bridges, and we have opportunities.”
