AMSNY scholarships help two Jacobs School medical students pursue their dreams

BUFFALO, N.Y. – New York State students who aspire to practice medicine in the state’s underserved communities have to weigh that dream against the hard reality of the debt they take on in order to pay for medical school tuition.

For Angelia Clemons and Monique Martin, students in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, that tricky balance just got a lot easier: Both were awarded the Associated Medical Schools of New York (AMSNY) Scholarship in Medicine. The goal of the scholarships is to reduce debt load for medical students while increasing the number of physicians practicing in medically underserved areas in New York State.

Funded by the New York State Legislature and Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, the highly competitive scholarships are open to graduates of the post-baccalaureate program funded by the state Department of Health and supported by AMSNY. This yearlong, intense, academic program provides students who have demonstrated resilience in overcoming adversity on their paths to medicine with conditional acceptance at a New York State medical school provided the student successfully completes the program. Scholarship winners must have excellent academic track records and a dedication and eagerness to practice in underserved communities.

Upon graduation and completion of their residency training, each scholarship winner commits to working in a medically underserved area of the state for two to four years, depending on the number of years they have received the $45,000-a-year scholarship.

“We are delighted and honored that AMSNY has recognized Angelia and Monique with these scholarships,” says David A. Milling, MD, senior associate dean for medical education in the Jacobs School. “With less medical school debt after graduation, they will be able to focus their careers on the reason why they decided to come to medical school in the first place: to work in New York State’s underserved communities where physicians are needed most.”

‘In love’ with the heart

Now in her third year in the Jacobs School, Clemons wasn’t thinking of medicine when she auditioned in high school for the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts. As someone who had been singing and dancing at church for years, she was happy to be accepted as a theater student. But once she started learning about anatomy and the human heart in science class, she knew that she had to go into medicine.

“I fell in love with the anatomy of the heart in ninth-grade biology and decided I wanted to be a heart surgeon,” she says. “My dream and passion for medicine grew as I became a caregiver to my mother, who was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was a senior in high school.” Her own experiences as a patient added to her desire to be a force for change and advocacy in medicine.

Clemons majored in biomedical sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology. She then earned a master’s in anatomy at D’Youville University while working as a medical assistant before completing UB’s post-baccalaureate program.

Clemons, a Western New York native, volunteers with and is secretary of the executive board of Our Curls Inc., a local organization that promotes empowerment and provides ethnic beauty services to women battling cancer and their families. Last year, she was community outreach coordinator for White Coats 4 Black Lives, Jonathan Daniels Chapter, where she worked with other organizations providing meals, clothing and health screenings to people experiencing homelessness. She has also worked as a medical assistant and coordinated workshops with the New York State-funded Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP) at UB to excite middle and high school students about careers in the health sciences.

A multitude of interests

Martin, now in her first year at the Jacobs School, has always loved science and research, but also enjoys helping people and trying to solve problems. She says that medicine felt like the best way to combine all of her interests. At the University of Vermont, she majored in history while taking pre-med courses, then earned a master’s in biology from New York University.

Before doing her post-baccalaureate year at UB, Martin, a Bronx native, was a study coordinator at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, working with the community on helping to make their multicultural diets healthier. The project gave Martin a sense of how powerful such changes can be.

“They’d tell me, ‘oh my cholesterol went down,’” she says, “so I could see how I was transforming people’s lives in my community, and my community is very underserved. That’s the population I want to serve.”

Martin has worked with the Red Cross and the Jacobs School’s Lighthouse Free Medical Clinic, and she is a member of White Coats 4 Black Lives and DoctHERS.

Both Clemons and Martin are tremendously grateful for both the post-baccalaureate program and the AMSNY Scholarship in Medicine.

Martin notes how invaluable the post-baccalaureate was. “The post-bacc is an amazing opportunity,” she says, “I was confident going into my M1 year. I’m very grateful for the program and for the scholarship so that I can focus on my studies and not as much on finances. My goal is to graduate with the skills necessary to be an immediate and effective asset to underserved communities.”

Clemons agrees: “This scholarship shows just how much AMSNY believes in each student and how they are willing to fight for change,” she says. “When I graduate, I will not have to worry about an overwhelming amount of debt and can focus on serving in underserved communities.”