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Collyn Gaffney, an instructor of mentorship and research at NCSSM-Morganton, always tells students who are participating in off-campus mentorship opportunities that passivity is not allowed.
“Sitting back and letting the experience just wash over you is not an option,” she says. “The expectation is that students enter the mentorship program asking ‘what if’ and ‘how about.’”
Navya Bansal and Abhinav (Abhi) Tudi, both seniors on NCSSM’s Morganton campus, took Gaffney’s direction to heart. The result is that, through their active engagement in NCSSM’s mentorship partnership with UNC Health Blue Ridge Hospital in Morganton, they were able to join a research project run by Campbell University medical school students that culminated in an invitation to a poster presentation at the North Carolina chapter of the American College of Physicians conference in Raleigh.
Navya, who came to NCSSM from Green Hope High School in Cary, and Abhi, who came from Ardrey Kell High School in Charlotte, are two of nine Morganton mentorship students spending time each week with mentors at the hospital just a couple of miles away. While their particular mentorship is in the hospital’s cardio-pulmonary department (other mentorship students are working in rehab, graduate medical education and innovation, data analytics, and the pharmacy), they and the other mentorship students were invited to attend weekly “didactics,” or learning and sharing sessions, with medical school students rotating at the hospital.
Attending didactics is not a requirement of the mentorship program, but Navya and Abhi took advantage of them anyway, using the opportunity to get to know many of the medical school students at the hospital. One of those med school students was Danika Ng, who was leading a research project exploring gastric cancer.
The research piqued Navya and Abhi’s interest. Remembering Gaffney’s advice to be proactive, they decided to take a chance.
“We just asked them if we could be a part of their research, if they would let us in on the work they’re doing, and they were more than happy to do it,” Abhi says. “Since then, we’ve been working with them.”
As happy as she was to have them join the team, Ng wasn’t expecting their request.
“I would go talk to the NCSSM students because I wanted to make them feel welcome, but I was shocked and impressed that Navya and Abhi wanted to join the research team,” she says. “They have so much curiosity and so much enthusiasm for medicine. I think their courage opened up a lot of doors for them and I hope that they’ll continue to do that when they go off to college.”
Laura McNeely, Executive Director of Medical Affairs and Education and Associate DIO, Medical Staff Services & Graduate Medical Education at UNC Health Blue Ridge, marvels at what the mentorship students bring to the table.
“They bring perspective, they bring innovation, and they bring creativity to problems and find solutions that we may not have considered or thought about,” she says. “They are contributing in such meaningful ways and actually having an impact on the way our community seeks care and the outcomes they ultimately have. They’re doing all this, and they’re not even 18 years old yet.”
Even before their involvement in the medical students’ research, the mentorship program was already providing the pair with experiences that they would not have gained elsewhere.
“Mentorship is a very unique opportunity,” Navya says. “It really allows you to immerse yourself in a professional world and it’s a great stepping path towards a career that I ultimately see myself in.”
“Mentorship has shown me how wide medicine is,” Abhi adds. “It’s not just being a physician or being a nurse. There are so many different aspects to it and different aspects of care.”
Though partnering up with the medical school students on their research was an unexpected opportunity, Navya and Abhi immersed themselves in the work and earned themselves a spot on the team that presented the research at a poster session of the North Carolina chapter of the American College of Physicians conference. In a room full of physicians and medical school students, they were the only two high school students there.
It was a bit intimidating, Navya admits, but it helped her revise her plans for the future.
“At first, I will say I was a little overwhelmed. But as time went on, I realized how inspired I was by meeting all these people. When I first started mentorship, I came in thinking I really wanted to do the clinical side of things, but doing this research project and presenting at a conference really showed me that I don’t want to lose touch with the physician-researcher aspect of medicine. I’ve really become passionate about clinical research.”
“We’ve learned a lot about ourselves,” Abhi says. “The mentorship program, and this research conference, has been super exciting, and it has showed us that there are seats at the table for us in the future.”
That’s what the whole program is about, says Gaffney, the mentorship and research instructor helping guide NCSSM-Morganton’s students through the program.
“Because we can get students into working professional environments, they’re able as high school students to begin developing research ideas and solving real-world problems by utilizing their creativity and their desire to move forward,” she says. “And I always tell them: you’re not there to be the smartest person in the room. You’re there to be the most curious. It’s up to them as to how deep they dive and how far they want to go.”
