Students Set Up for Success in Healthcare Careers

Kenyon students pursuing professions in medicine and healthcare are served by a multitude of experiential learning opportunities.

By Ryan E. Smith
Date

There may be no perfect prescription for getting into medical school or allied health programs, but numerous hands-on experiences available to Kenyon students are designed to offer an important boost. 

And the results are showing: Last year, applicants from the College received a first-ever 100 percent admit rate. From 2019-2024, 80 percent of medical school applicants from Kenyon were accepted — about twice the national average.

Interest in healthcare careers among Kenyon students is high — data from the Career Development Office (CDO) shows it to be the second-most popular field — and so are the number of related support structures in and out of the classroom, whether it’s advising students, connecting them to medical professionals, facilitating volunteer opportunities, or creating chances for meaningful research.

“The success of our students in the application process has a lot to do with the high level of support and access to opportunity they receive throughout their Kenyon experience,” said Sara Stasko, senior director of pre-health advising in the CDO. “Between faculty, alumni, their peers, the CDO, and the local community, they are set up to achieve exceptional outcomes post-graduation.”

Helping along the way is KC-Meds, the College’s student-run pre-health club, whose goal is to connect pre-med and pre-health students with others in the industry. 

Sometimes that happens by facilitating volunteer opportunities at Knox Community Hospital in nearby Mount Vernon; at others, it’s by bringing alumni expertise into the mix through events like its “Scrubs and Stories” speaker series. Dr. Daniel Akuma ’04, a clinical pathology resident in Philadelphia, will be featured in the series’ next installment on Oct. 20.

KC-Meds President Ella Salvino ’26, left, shadowed Dr. Maggie Somple ’99 at Knox Community Hospital.
KC-Meds President Ella Salvino ’26, left, shadowed Dr. Maggie Somple ’99 at Knox Community Hospital.

KC-Meds President Ella Salvino ’26 knows the value of these connections as much as anyone. A biology major from Canton, Ohio, who wants to be a pediatrician, she shadowed Dr. Maggie Somple ’99 at Knox Community Hospital for an entire year, spending one day a week with her to learn more about the life of a pediatrician.

“It was fantastic,” Salvino said. “I loved being able to get into a groove and really see the routine of the practice and also seeing repeat patients — fostering that connection, getting to know them, being able to talk to both patients and their parents.”

Students must complete hundreds of volunteer clinical hours before applying for medical school, and Somple said that forging connections with working physicians along the way is more important than ever. She has mentored a handful of Kenyon students and hopes to connect with even more in the future.

“There’s something about a liberal arts education that makes really phenomenal physicians,” she said. “We just need more.”

“There's something about a liberal arts education that makes really phenomenal physicians. We just need more.”

Dr. Maggie Somple
Pediatrician at Knox Community Hospital and member of the Class of 1999

To help link local healthcare professionals with current students, the CDO has numerous physicians at Knox Community Hospital on its list of job shadowing opportunities during October break. 

Another chance to get a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on at the hospital is built into — and supplemented by — a community-engaged learning course offered annually in the biology department with support from the Office for Community Partnerships.

“Health Service and Biomedical Analysis” (BIOL 211), which will take place this spring, requires students to volunteer four hours a week in the emergency department of the hospital. There they support staff, prepare rooms and observe patient treatment. In the classroom, they talk about the biology and physiology underlying much of what they see in the hospital.

“Our students get more access than they typically would in a normal shadowing position. That’s part of what makes the class unique,” said Peter Kropp, Harvey F. Lodish Faculty Development Chair in Natural Sciences and assistant professor of biology, who teaches the course. “Another part of the benefit that we see with this course is that this is getting students clinical hours in a setting that is still part of an educational experience, not strictly a volunteer experience.” 

Students training at the fire department
Students take part in a training session as part of the Mount Vernon Fire Department Kenyon volunteer program. (Courtesy of Riley Ragland ’26).

Other students have received practical experience serving as volunteer emergency medical technicians, or EMTs, through a program for students with the Mount Vernon Fire Department.

Riley Ragland ’26 went through EMT training — paid for by the fire department — during her sophomore year and has been volunteering ever since. Now she’s the student liaison for the program, which offers the chance to respond to 911 calls with paramedics during designated shifts. Ragland is a religious studies major from San Francisco who wants to become an oncologist.

“It is a good way to get clinical experience and volunteer hours,” she said. “You have a lot of patient contact, and you’re very directly caring for your community in a way that I think is important.”

Many pre-health students also take advantage of Kenyon’s robust slate of research opportunities under the guidance of faculty mentors, both during the academic year and over the summer, according to John Hofferberth, professor of chemistry and co-chair of the College’s Health Professions Advising Committee, a group of faculty who provide students with personalized academic advising during their undergraduate training and support students during the application process.

“Those research projects are rich preparation for pre-health,” he said. “That’s another thing that sets Kenyon students apart and gives them an advantage.”