A chance conversation at a high school volleyball game led to a series of student visits this spring to UNMC’s Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology.
Arash Ronaghy, MD, PhD, who joined the department last year as an assistant professor, was driving his niece, Peya, a sophomore at Brownell Talbot in Omaha, to one of her games. While watching the game, he struck up a conversation with Dr. Kristi Gibbs, the principal of Brownell Talbot. When she found out that he was a pathologist, the conversation quickly turned to planning the student tours. Dr. Ronaghy saw this as an opportunity to increase the university’s engagement with high school students in the community to teach them about pathology at UNMC.
Groups of eight to 15 Brownell Talbot students visited the department four times in all. Each visit included a tour of the core lab, histology lab, a slide session in the microscope room with Dr. Ronaghy and concluded with an HR presentation about job and job-shadowing opportunities for young people at the medical center. “I was grateful for the support of those in the department’s medical education team, such as Dr. Geoffrey Talmon, and Tyler Shearer, who were involved early on in the process,” he said.
With the support of Dr. Dominick DiMaio, Katie Grant, the lead histotechnologist, and others such as Cynthia Nikodym, Tracy Coleman, Collin Highberg, and Rylee Waldschmidt, walked the students through the histology laboratory. The students saw how tissues were fixed, processed, put on slides and stained with H&E. In addition, the tours through the core lab showed the students the types of samples and tests that fall under the clinical pathology umbrella. This was made possible by the support of core lab director Dr. Neha Gupta, manager Megan Jorgensen, and lab scientist Bailey Runia. The grossing lab’s Travis Rinehart helped supply the sections of normals, to which Dave Varga pulled the cancer counterparts, allowing for educational microscope slide sessions with Dr. Ronaghy.
One group of students had the opportunity to visit with Dr. Joseph Khoury, the department chairman, and learn what pathology is all about. “That’s important,” Dr. Ronaghy said, “because a lot of people don’t understand what pathologists do, and how pathology pervades other disciplines of medicine because it happens behind the scenes. We are the doctor’s doctor—we don’t have a lot of patient contact.”
Sabrina Rogers, Nick Wasley, and Kay Grant from human resources presented work/shadowing opportunities and gave advice for resumes and job interviews. Last but certainly not least was the help of administrators such as Liz Tierney, Jen Nelson, and Emile True, who made this happen.
The visits went so well that they plan to schedule Brownell Talbot visits again next school year. “Though this initiated from my niece’s volleyball game, its success comes from the hard work and support of many others. Credit goes to them,” Dr. Ronaghy said. “I am so thankful.”
