The public health master’s program at UVM changed Lyndelle LeBruin’s life.
LeBruin, a project coordinator at the Laboratory for Clinical Biochemistry Research (LCBR) at UVM, completed the online UVM Master of Public Health Program in 2016.
She found that the program was robust yet flexible enough to allow her to continue to work full-time while earning her degree. She also found the program included many resourceful and personable instructors who offered exceptional guidance.
“I felt that the program was accessible, flexible and accommodating. After completing the program’s capstone project, I knew that I had gained the skillset to probe and answer important research questions,” says LeBruin, who lives in Burlington. “The program gave me a lens into epidemiology and population health. It provided a broader understanding of the value of my input in the lab day-to-day and the important work that we’re doing to help solve public health problems.”
After growing up in the West Indies on the island of Dominica, LeBruin graduated from SUNY Plattsburgh with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and earned her master’s degree in chemistry at UVM. While working on her master’s thesis on the self-assembly of collagen mimetic peptides, she felt compelled to connect her basic science background to clinical and translational research.
This desire was further ignited when she joined the LCBR in 2013, and ultimately led to her decision to pursue a public health master’s degree at UVM.
LeBruin’s role at the LCBR entails clinical trial core laboratory research support and data management. The LCBR focuses on understanding risk factors for heart disease, stroke, venous thrombosis, obesity, diabetes, aging, and frailty using a wide variety of assays in population and family-based research settings.
UVM’s 42-credit, online public health master’s degree, developed in collaboration with the Larner College of Medicine, prepares students for a variety of public health careers, such as the kind of work LeBruin oversees at LCBR.
“The public health program helped build the foundation for this next step in my career,” she says. “It was an amazing program, and it changed my life.”
