Vanderbilt Undergraduate-MSTP Mentorship Program
by Hailey Kresge (G1)
I participated in Vanderbilt’s undergraduate/MSTP mentorship program as a Vanderbilt undergraduate back in 2016 and found that interactions with current MSTP students was one of the most helpful things in confirming my interest in pursuing a MD/PhD. Since joining the Vanderbilt MSTP in 2020, I wanted to re-start this program to offer the same opportunity to current Vanderbilt undergraduates, so in Fall 2021 this program was re-launched thanks to help from the MSTP Outreach Committee and the Undergraduate Health Professions Advisory Office (HPAO). In 2021 we matched ~30 mentor-mentee pairs, and we saw an exciting increase in interest this past year, resulting in over 60 undergraduates being matched with a MSTP mentor. We also hosted a panel last week for Vanderbilt Undergraduate students in which Dr. Chris Williams gave an overview of what it means to be a physician scientist, followed by a Q&A panel with current MSTP students (special thanks to Matt Madden, Megan Tigue, Christiaan Wijers, and Mark Petrovic for participating on our panel). We are excited to continue to grow this program, both on the undergraduate campus and within the MSTP, and are so appreciative of everyone’s efforts (especially all of our MSTP mentors) thus far in making this program a success!