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Match Day is always a special event for the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. This year, the college added to the excitement by celebrating an incredible milestone in its mission of training more physicians in Kentucky, for Kentucky.
The college’s first regional campus in Bowling Green, Ky., which opened in 2018, celebrated its first Match Day on Friday, March 18. Because of the regional campus celebration, the Class of 2022 was the College of Medicine’s largest group of students recognized at this annual event.
As a former college basketball player, March has always been exciting for Rachel Potter. This year, as she prepares to graduate from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, the month holds even more significance.
Instead of March Madness, Potter’s focus is on Match Day, an annual celebration recognizing medical students across the country as they simultaneously learn which residency program they “matched into” and will pursue.
Potter is excited to reach this pivotal career milestone, which she compares to college basketball’s Selection Sunday.
Housed in the UK College of Medicine Department of Toxicology and Cancer Biology is a new professional master’s degree program that is the only one of its kind in the state of Kentucky, and the fifth of its kind in the country.
And due to its unique educational experience and strong curriculum, this new program is seeing a jump in its number of students.
Whether it was pediatric neurology, pediatric surgery, or pediatric emergency medicine, Lily Weddle, MD, found a recurring theme in the clinical rotations she enjoyed most during medical school – they allowed her to help children. It became obvious to her that for residency, pediatrics was her ultimate specialty.
Driven by her strong faith, Dr. Weddle says it is her calling to be there for children in their ultimate time of need. Today, she has found a way to answer that call, both during and outside of work.
On crisp fall or spring mornings, Bradley Bale, MD ’74, wakes up early enough for his daily five-mile run so he can witness one of his favorite scenes in nature. When there’s a certain amount of moisture in the ground, and the temperature is just right, water comes up through the weeds, weaves into the branches and freezes. It’s called a “frost flower.”
This moment of tranquility motivates Dr. Bale to get out and exercise at 73 years old. And he knows that that’s important because as a cardiovascular specialist, he needs to embody his advice to earn the trust of his patients.
Urim Geleta is only into her senior year of her undergraduate degree, yet she has already played a key role in neuroscience research at UK.
A young John DeMasi foreshadowed his career at 5 years old when he chose his first Halloween costume. Wearing green scrubs from a teddy bear and a stethoscope so big it dragged as he walked, he proudly impersonated a doctor.
Grant writing is a competitive process. Without the proper resources, staff, or expertise, faculty may struggle in gathering key funding that could benefit future research projects, and ultimately, promote innovative health discoveries.
By the time she became a faculty member at the UK College of Medicine, Susanne Arnold, MD, was arguably more prepared than anyone to treat Kentuckians and educate future physicians.
She was introduced to the medical field early and was surrounded by it. She recalls taking a preserved human brain to show and tell when she was in grade school (which she jokes wouldn’t happen now, though her classmates thought it was pretty cool). In high school, she shadowed physicians in a clinic, and she gained clinical experience observing autopsies before she even started medical school.
Ten years ago, when Amrita Iyengar was pursuing an undergraduate engineering degree, she sought a program that would take her far from her hometown of Maysville, Ky. She landed on the University of California at Berkeley, which, of the schools to which she applied, was the furthest possible distance from home.
Engineering was an exciting career path. It eventually led Iyengar to building cars at Tesla and General Motors, followed by a brief stint in nanomanufacturing research at the University of Texas-Austin.
The University of Kentucky football team has invigorated the campus community with one of the best seasons in the program’s recent history. In October, the Wildcats earned an exhilarating win over Florida, as well as a 21-point victory over 2019 national champion LSU.
The University of Kentucky College of Medicine has received the 2021 Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education.
Dr. Michael D. Rankin, a 1980 graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, was honored today for his monumental $22 million gift commitment that will transform medical education in Kentucky.
Rankin’s gift is the second-largest single gift in university history and will support scholarships in the College of Medicine and the construction of a new health education building.
When his parents drove from their home in rural Lincoln County to drop Michael Rankin off at Haggin Hall on the University of Kentucky campus in August 1967, it was one of the biggest places he had ever seen.
His high school math teacher had encouraged his love for math and science and in 1971 he received an engineering degree. His dream was to go on to medical school, but he feared achieving this goal was out of reach. Today, he wants to make sure that young men and women from rural areas who aspire to be physicians have the support they need to make their dreams come true.
Juneteenth is observed on June 19, 2021, to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved people in the U.S. On this day, enslaved African-Americans in Galveston, Texas, were notified they had actually been freed almost 2.5 years earlier.
Members of the College of Medicine were asked a series of questions on how they honor Juneteenth.
Kaylin BateyClass of 2023
Q: When did you first become aware of Juneteenth?
Cheavar Blair, PhD, a 2017 graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, is now a postdoc at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
The University of Kentucky College of Medicine’s 58th commencement ceremony will take place at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 15, 2021.
This will be a ticketed event and has a strict capacity limit, so guests will be unable to attend in-person. However, you may view the ceremony virtually through our YouTube livestream.
Click here to watch the ceremony on the UK College of Medicine’s YouTube page.
When Abi Recktenwald graduates from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, she will officially start a career she never imagined possible thanks to a combination of hard work, skill, and a strong faculty support system.
Going into her third year, Recktenwald had a wide range of interests across medicine and surgery. However, on her pediatric rotation early that year, she encountered a child who needed a complex plastic surgery procedure to cover a skin defect. It was through the experience she realized plastic surgery was her calling.
The UK College of Medicine chapter of the Student National Medical Association (SNMA) is commemorating Black History Month by curating educational information about the Black community's impact in medicine.
This week, SNMA conducted a Q&A with Black physician-leaders who either currently work or have worked at the UK College of Medicine to learn their perspectives on medicine and how we can continue to improve.
The University of Kentucky College of Medicine is committed to enhancing its medical school curriculum and ensuring students are introduced to a variety of important topics as they pursue their medical education. It is with these goals in mind that the UK College of Medicine is excited to announce a new curricular initiative.