Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Community Education & Outreach Activities

The Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine encourages participation in community education and outreach.

Medical student, Ben Koren, and Associate Professor, Bei Zhang, MD, PhD, CLS (ASCP) received the following correspondence after our career visit to Winooski High School! 
“I am writing to you both as the lead contacts to express my deep gratitude for Monday's session, but please share this with both of your entire teams. The session on Pathology on Monday was excellent. The career overview in the beginning was incredibly helpful and important context and the stations (with real world materials!) were highly engaging. The fact that so many of you took the time to come work with Winooski HS is so appreciated and I look forward to continuing to work together to support and advance the students' career exploration.
Bei, thank you for offering to schedule job shadows. I would love to follow up on that in the first week in December. One of the students already followed up with me, so there is definitely interest. I was not able to get any of the surveys back from students yet, but I am going to hold a session during our Advisory when we return from break with the core group of students who have attended both sessions so far and will be happy to share that feedback with you. Anecdotally, they loved it! THANK YOU!

On March 18 a team of pathologists and phlebotomists gave 2, 1-hour teaching sessions to 7th graders at Williston Central School.

The pathology department also hosted the second visit from the Schoolhouse Learning Center.

A small group from the DEI Committee of the people first council and the Pathology Education Council department went to Winooski High School on December 14th, 2023, in conjunction with two medical students working on a Health careers education funded project. The representatives included a few of our clinical lab microbiologists, Residents/Fellows, and pathologists. During this visit, we talked about the careers available in Path and Lab Med, how many years of schooling was needed, average salaries, time commitments, etc. Along with this presentation, these middle school and high school students were able to engage with preserved organs and follow the work up of a potential microbiologic pathogen with pictures as well as some hands-on testing. This was a great opportunity to bring culturally diverse students into our rewarding and clinically impactful fields that may not be as well-known and advertised as nursing and clinical medicine. Exciting things to come! By Alicia Hill. 

On 1/20/24 Doré Guptil, Di Poljak, Pam Gibson and Christi Wojewoda participated in the Northern Vermont Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Health Exploration Resources & Opportunities (HERO) Mentoring Celebration. This is a program that pairs high school students with medical students at LCOM to explore anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Our team spent time showing students organs and discussing how we all got into pathology and what we do. The students were super engaged and appreciative of what we had to show them!

(Far Right:High school students from the Upward Bound program learn how to operate the scanning electron microscope with Michele Von Turkovich, UVM lab/research technician in pathology, in the Microscopy Imaging Center at the Larner College of Medicine.)

(Right: Mount Mansfield Union (MMU) High School visit the Vermont Cancer Center for an interactive day of advanced learning about biomedical science and technology. Janet Schwarz, senior lab/research technician in pathology, right, guides an MMU student in the Microscopy Imaging Center)

Community Medical School

Many of our faculty have taken part in the Larner College of Medicine / University of Vermont Medical Center's Community Medical School program, a public lecture series that highlights relevant topics in clinical medicine and research.

• Archive of past presentations can be found here.

Project Micro

The Microscopy Society of America developed this outreach plan in 1993, to bring hands-on, "real" science study to middle school students. Pathology & Laboratory Medicine staff from the Microscopy Imaging Center have routinely participated in this program to connect with local area middle schools to set up Microscopic Festivals to actively engage students in science and their natural world.

Community Education/Outreach Programs (with our clinical group at the UVM Medical Center)    

Throughout the year, many of our faculty and technical staff provide educational opportunities to community education programs... students who participate in MedQuest, the UVM Summer Academy, Upward Bound and Vermont Regional Area Health Education Center programs visit pathology and laboratory medicine.(Left: Champlain Valley AHEC MedQuest shadowing; Alexandra Kalof, M.D., and MedQuest student Matthew Noonan)

Faculty sit on question and answer panels, lead seminars and present specimens in the Pathology Teaching Museum to students exploring the diverse fields within pathology and laboratory medicine.

(Champlain Valley AHEC MedQuest shadowing; MedQuest student Matthew Noonan in gross lab with Michelle Schwartz, Pathologists' Assistant)