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Class of 2025's 124 students selected from more than 8,800 applicants
Pictured above: Collage of photos featuring "Dr. Moo" costumed character (left), med student badges (center), and Orientation schedule (right).
Vermont Business Magazine With Vermont’s vaccination levels at well over 80 percent and Delta variant-related cases rising, the 124 members of the Larner College of Medicine’s medical Class of 2025 are starting their journeys to becoming physicians during a completely new and different academic year, but they’ll be doing it in person.
This week – August 9 to 13 – first-year University of Vermont (UVM) medical students will launch their medical school training with Orientation – the first course of the Foundations level of the Vermont Integrated Curriculum. The future doctors will be required to wear masks while indoors in UVM buildings – the same protocol required of Class of 2024 medical students in August 2020 – but this year, the aim is for all pre-clinical educational activities to take place in-person vs. a combination of remote learning and in-person sessions.
“We are looking forward to the start of a new academic year and welcoming our Class of 2025 students,” said Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education Christa Zehle, M.D., in a communication to the incoming future physicians. Zehle also thanked the class members “for all that you have done and continue to do to mitigate transmission of COVID-19 and to keep our community safe.” All UVM students are required to be compliant with UVM testing requirements.
Highlights of the week-long orientation course include a “Your First Patient” presentation and debrief; team-based learning practice sessions; Burlington-area community service activities; a diversity, equity and inclusion session and keynote; and a session on “Becoming a Doctor at Larner: Professional Identity Formation, Closing Reflection.”
Students in the Class of 2025 were selected from more than 8,800 applicants and were the first class to conduct their interviews virtually. About a quarter of the new med students are Vermonters, 18 percent identify as LGBTQ+, and 54 percent of the class members identify as female. In addition, 23 percent of UVM’s newest medical students are people underrepresented in medicine – referred to in higher education as “URM” – a category that includes African Americans/Blacks, Hispanics/Latino(a), and Native Americans/Alaskan Natives.
Below are profiles of three of the newest UVM future doctors:
- Jasmine Bazinet-Phillips was born and raised in Baltimore City, Md., but enjoyed skiing in Vermont’s Mad River Valley growing up. She served as a Teach for America educator in her hometown following graduation from Colby College and was inspired by her mother – a longstanding Baltimore City public school teacher and former PeaceCorps volunteer – who demonstrated the value of commitment and duty to students and families. “In the classroom, the inequality I saw seemed almost insurmountable,” says Bazinet-Phillips. “Many of my students and families did not have access to adequate healthcare or nutrition, which directly interfered with learning,” she adds. Fueled by this experience, she decided to pursue medicine and gain expertise in the biopsychosocial determinants of health to guide her care of children and families.
- Gabriela Sarriera is a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico and UVM undergraduate alum. She says she “was always intrigued by the idea of studying medicine,” but spent time working in Rwanda with Agnes Binagwaho, M.D., M(Ped), Ph.D., a pediatrician and current vice chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity, in Boston with Partners In Health, and volunteering at a queer bookstore before applying to med school. The youngest of six children, Sarriera says she is “grateful to be back at UVM and excited to listen and learn from people in Vermont.”
- Justin Henningsen is a mandolin player who originally grew up in Brookings, S.D. About four years ago, he moved to Worcester, Vt. with his wife and children. A biology major at Northern Arizona University who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and did postdoctoral research at Texas A&M, he says “I didn’t think that medicine was the right field for me” when he was younger. Over time, he admits, “helping others in a direct way and building community have both become much more important to me.” While teaching biology, ecology, and anatomy & physiology classes at the Community College of Vermont, he also worked part-time at his local hospital and shadowed physicians. That experience “convinced me that medicine was for me,” he says.
“This has been a challenging 18 months,” says Larner College of Medicine Dean Richard L. Page, M.D., in a video message welcoming members of the medical Class of 2025. “You’ve had to negotiate applying to medical school in new and different ways, but we’ve come through it and soon, you’ll begin your medical career.”