Sparking Careers in Medicine

IN A SOUTHEAST PORTLAND CLASSROOM, a group of students examines a patient. Their instructors give them the facts of the case, listing symptoms and explaining relevant pre-existing conditions. The students take notes.

“Your job will be to assess and diagnose the patient based on their symptoms and explain why they’re presenting the way they are,” one instructor, Kevin Nguyen ’23, explains. “You may not know the answer right away, but that’s okay, because we’re learning, and learning should be uncomfortable.”

The room fills with the sound of rapid typing and medical jargon, students hypothesizing potential diagnoses as their fingers fly over their laptops, hunting for the answers before they present their case to the second instructor, Daniel Mesquiti ’23, who nods approvingly with each correct diagnosis and proposed course of action.

“Look at these future health care workers!” He beams.

But this is not a med school, or even an undergrad pre-med course—it’s an AP Bio classroom at McDaniel High School, and the room of burgeoning clinicians are high school juniors and seniors. They’re part of the group pilotingmNguyen’s new project, known as MedSpark, which the UP alum and current OHSU medical student developed alongside Mesquiti and UP biology professor Dave Wynne. According to Ngyuen, MedSpark was born of a desire to connect high school students, particularly in underserved communities, with real-world opportunities to apply their scientific knowledge. The program’s mission statement identifies its role as “a bridge between fundamental biology principles and their clinical applications, offering students a real-world perspective on the material they are learning,” with a goal of deepening scientific understanding and kindling an early interest in the medical field.

It’s a labor of love and personal motivation for Nguyen, himself an alumnus of McDaniel High School and a lifelong Portland resident. “A lot of the students here come from communities where maybe they don’t have parents who went to college or are aware of the options they have beyond high school,” Nguyen says. “I wanted to do something to show them what was possible.”

Nguyen and Mesquiti met as undergrads at UP, where Nguyen was a biology major on the pre-med track and Mesquiti was a secondary education major. Their partnership as classroom mentors and student teachers while on The Bluff was a deciding factor in pursuing a collaboration in MedSpark, which is getting its footing in the McDaniel classroom where Mesquiti has taught biology and AP Bio for almost three years now.

In action, the Medspark programming operates as a one-two punch of theory and practice: first, students review the AP Bio topics of the day with Mesquiti—in this case, atypical chromosomal reproduction and meiosis—before moving into a suite of real case studies, provided by Nguyen, with patients exhibiting symptoms connected to the biology topics they’ve reviewed. Students are encouraged to suggest a plan of treatment based on their research, all while connecting the case to their curriculum and AP standards. As students review each case, Nguyen points out health care specialties that are connected to each case—oncology, pathology, genetic counseling, and more.

“Since it’s AP Bio, a lot of the students are already pretty interested in science, but this connects what they’re learning to a real-world application,” Mesquiti says. “We want them to understand it’s not just words on a page; there are careers connected to this as well.”

If the goal is to get students more interested in medical science, it’s working. “I definitely appreciate him bringing in the cases,” said one student, a senior named Theo who was one of many students eager to sing the program’s praises. “It’s way more fun than just lectures and helps me see what these concepts look like in real life.”

In the future, Nguyen hopes to expand the program to more high schools in the Portland area and plans to enlist other medical students and high school teachers to team up on curriculum.

“I think it could be a great way for medical students to improve their teaching skills as well,” Nguyen says. “Working with classroom teachers to see what the biggest needs are, I think it could be a very valuable resource.” If this first class is any indication, it’s clear that MedSpark’s light is poised to grow only brighter as it expands.

EMILY NELSON ’19 is UP’s marketing project specialist.