The effort earned her the university’s 2021 Dr. The club invites health care professionals as guest speakers and performs community service. She works as a chemistry tutor for MAGIC, and last fall, she started a new student club, Advocates of Health Equity for Minorities. She goes above and beyond to support her students.”Īgyemang-Brantuo is now doing her part to support younger students. “And on the day we got accepted, she brought us cake and she was jumping up and down with us and celebrating. I really appreciated that,” Agyemang-Brantuo said. “Professor Reddie wrote a letter of support for the BaccMD program. This spring, all three students in the BaccMD program have won provisional acceptance to UMass Medical School, including Archila Quezada and chemistry major Benedicta Agyemang-Brantuo of Worcester. This year, three more - including Fedna - applied and got in.īaccMD students attend residential summer programs and a monthly book group that introduce them to different medical specialties while preparing them for the MCAT through projects, physics instruction and seminar-style discussions. During MAGIC’s first year, three sophomores in the group, including Archila Quezada, applied - and all three were accepted. Students apply to the BaccMD program as sophomores. So I decided to stick with it.”įor some, MAGIC serves as preparation for another, similar program: the Baccalaureate MD Pathway Program, which prepares UMass undergraduates who are financially disadvantaged, first-generation college students or from racial and ethnic groups that are underrepresented in medicine for admission to UMass Medical School. “But I went into biology because I love biology and I knew if I opted out of it, I’d be disappointed in myself. “I was working so much trying to pay for school that half the time I didn’t even know why I was doing what I was doing,” Fedna said. But she said Reddie encouraged her to stick with biology and to cut back on her work hours. That’s where I got a community.”īiology major Shakira Fedna, who works as a pharmacy tech at CVS, has been accepted to UMass Medical School’s BaccMD program.įedna, an Everett native who was working as a pharmacy technician 40 hours a week, was tempted to drop biology and switch her major to public health.
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Through MAGIC, I saw we could help each other. “We studied with each other and checked in with each other. “I don’t know if I would have passed Organic Chemistry without that tutoring, but the thing I got out of it most was the relationship with the kids in the group,” he said. Most important, he stopped seeing other premed students as the competition. He also learned that medical schools are looking for patient care experience and interpersonal skills, not just grades and MCAT scores. (UMass Lowell courtesy photo)Īrchila Quezada, a Marlborough resident who had switched his major from biology to applied biomedical sciences, said MAGIC helped him stay on the premed track and do well in his classes.
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Thanks to UMass Lowell’s MAGIC program, applied biomedical sciences major Jose Archila Quezada has won provisional acceptance to UMass Medical School. The students also learn about the medical school admission process. MAGIC provides twice-weekly tutoring in Chemistry I and II for first-year students and Organic Chemistry I and II for sophomores. That fall, 40 first- and second-year students enrolled, including Archila Quezada. Francine Coston, associate director of multicultural affairs, and Shontae Praileau, coordinator of college-based advising, helped Reddie to structure MAGIC and then identify incoming first-year students and rising sophomores who showed academic promise and a strong interest in pursuing medical and other health careers. So with support from the Kennedy College of Sciences and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Julie Nash, Reddie started the Medical Profession Admission Gap Initiative and Collaboration, or MAGIC, in fall 2019. We can provide equity in their educational pathway.”
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Most of them are behind on every metric - reading, chemistry skills - but we can give them a fair shot. “They are playing catch-up from the day they start college.
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“These kids aren’t given a fair chance from the get-go,” Reddie said. Many are first-generation college students who come from school districts that don’t offer many advanced-placement science classes or prepare them well for the critical-thinking section of the Medical College Admission Test, Reddie said. “I took that seminar to remotivate myself and see if I really wanted to do medical school, and I decided that I really did,” he said.įor Reddie, who teaches multiple sections of Organic Chemistry, the seminar was preparation for a program that would provide chemistry tutoring and support to students from groups that are underrepresented in medicine, including Black, Hispanic and Southeast Asian American students.