High school senior Carter Visicaro is setting his sights on becoming a pathologist.
The Vergennes High School student has always wanted to work in medicine, and participating in UVM’s Summer Academy’s Health and Medicine course helped him decide what he really wants for a career.
“I’ve always wanted to be in the medical field, and Summer Academy help me realize where I wanted to land. It made me realize I want to be a pathologist,” he says.
The Health and Medicine course exposes students to the world of modern medicine and bioscience through active learning in labs, lectures, demonstrations, and hospital visits.
The course, which runs July 7 to Aug. 2, 2019, is part of UVM’s Summer Academy, a four-week residential and online program offered to high school juniors and seniors who want to explore areas of study and earn transferable college credit.
Health and Medicine students learn in the Larner College of Medicine’s academic facilities, including the Clinical Simulation Laboratory, where students perform virtual medical procedures. The program helps students discover their interests, learn about the latest advances in bioscience and molecular medicine, and develop an understanding of diverse medical and health science career paths that might be right for them.
Noah Fryou, a senior at Lexington High School in Massachusetts, is interested in studying pre-med when he heads to college this fall. He hopes to eventually become a physician assistant (PA) or surgeon. He attended Summer Academy last summer to learn about what kinds of medical careers he could pursue.
“The Summer Academy program seemed to be the most dynamic and was the best fit for me,” Fryou says. “It was more academic than some of the others I had looked into, and it was a good way to get hands-on experience in the labs.”
Fryou, who underwent a series of surgical procedures as a child, has a special appreciation for the medical field.
“The marvels of science and medicine have made me interested in this field for a long time,” he says. “It’s just amazing what we can do now.”
Students in the Health and Medicine program engage with experts in genomics, cancer research, medicine, nursing, and allied health practice on the latest advances in their fields. Students will interact with clinical and scientific faculty who train the University of Vermont medical students in the College of Medicine, known for being one of the most competitive and successful medical schools in the country.
For Visicaro and Fryou, the power of making a difference in people’s lives is the main reason they want to work in medicine.
“I’m doing this because I want to know, at the end of the day, that I helped someone,” Visicaro says. “I want to be able to help people in a serious and deeper way.”
