Meet Our Past and Present

Brandon Lebioda, '18, Talks Clinical Job Shadowing

Major: Biology

Hometown: Romeo, Michigan

What was your summer experience like?

My summer experience consisted of a total of 40 hours shadowing in clinical settings. It started with Dr. Michael Williams, who is a family doctor for Prism Medical Group. He was my contact that helped me set up with other doctors in the Macomb area. I ended up shadowing seven different doctors from all ranges of practice. I had the pleasure of observing many different types of physician work, which ranges from watching multiple surgeries in Troy Beaumont’s operating rooms to being with doctors in family practices. Every physician or surgeon that I shadowed had something else to bring to the table, and every new place I went felt like a new adventure in the world of healthcare.

What do you love about being in Albion's Healthcare Institute?

I love Albion’s Healthcare Institute because of their effort. Dr. Barbara Keyes was the person who set me up with Dr. Williams, and I believe that without her none of my experience could have been possible. The Healthcare Institute goes to great lengths to prepare students for the next step toward their career goals, whether that is some sort of specialty school, or jobs within healthcare. This institute provides hands-on help to educate and help students toward their goals.

How do you think your experience will help you in your career goals?

I believe this summer experience helped me gain crucial knowledge of different healthcare careers while also giving me a sense of direction when it comes to choosing the career that suites my interests the best. Watching these different physicians, and learning about their backgrounds, allowed me to see how many different paths there are to become a kind and caring physician, who works hard to improve the lives of their patients.

What do you love about Albion College?

I love Albion College because of it’s family atmosphere. The College as a whole, not only the Institute of Healthcare, does a great job of preparing students for their next step. The smaller numbers allow coaches, professors, advisors, and other faculty members to create relationships with students that other universities cannot compete with.

Andrew Prince, '17, at University of Michigan Medical Center

Andrew Prince, ’17, says Albion College gives its students every opportunity to succeed if they have the desire to take advantage of the possibilities.

A member of Albion’s Institute for Healthcare Professions, a biology major, and an all-Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association defender for the Briton men’s soccer team, Prince is seeing how his experiences—both academic and athletic—at the liberal arts college have prepared him and fellow biology major Nicole Schnabel, ’16, for an internship at the University of Michigan Medical Center.

Working alongside researchers in Dr. Silvana Papagerakis’ lab, Prince and Schnabel have been running experiments to investigate the link between antacid medications and the treatment of cancer in the head and neck.

“Being part of a team has real-world applications,” Prince said. “Dr. Papagerakis is leading a team of intelligent people from all over the world. We share our results and learn from each other. By working in a group, we expand and improve on all of our projects.”

Nikhil Patel, '18, Interns at Beaumont

My summer was spent doing a radiology externship at Beaumont Royal Oak under Dr. Kurt Tech, ’80, an Albion alumnus. I was with two other students interested in medical school and we had a mixture of shadowing and interning experiences.

I got to see how diverse a field radiology truly is. You can have little to no patient interaction if you simply read scans in a dark room (a neuroradiologist for example), or you could be in general radiology where you regularly meet with patients and take scans. Coming out of the externship 12 weeks later, my appreciation for radiology as a field increased dramatically.

Albion’s Healthcare Institute set me up with this externship. They initially acted as a liaison for Dr. Tech and I, and that got the ball rolling. The institute helped me look at other medical professions aside from physicians, nurses, and medical researchers. They want to give you the breadth of the health sciences so you can pick your ideal career within healthcare.

It gave me an in-depth look at diagnostic medicine. As an aspiring physician, I won’t have to wait until rotations in medical school to be exposed to radiology.

The small class sizes mean that the professors get to know you by name, and if you are interested in their research, it makes it easy to match up with them. Many of the classes I’ve had have been taught by faculty with the terminal degree in their field as well.

Grace Dougherty, '14, Studies at Georgia Health Sciences University

I had a very enriching summer in Augusta, Georgia as a part of the Student Training and Research (STAR) program at Georgia Health Sciences University. There, I worked in a biochemistry and molecular biology lab doing basic science bench work under my mentor, Michael Duncan, Ph.D.

The program was nine weeks and I was able to gather enough data to make a poster that I presented at the end of the program. My research looked at the role of recruited macrophage cells in the liver tumor microenvironment in hepatocellular carcinoma.

I was awarded the Outstanding STAR Student Award out of 24 students for my work and presentation.

I really enjoyed my time in Augusta and now have much more interest in research.