By Taylor Patterson
Elm Staff Writer
A new partnership between Washington College and Georgetown University Medical Center presents students with a unique opportunity. WC students interested in pursuing various biomedical and research disciplines benefit from a 15 percent tuition reduction for a master’s program offered through GU, excluding online programs.
Dr. Karl Kehm, physics department chair and McLain associate professor of physics and environmental science and studies, has been developing partnerships with schools with post-graduate options for students.
Dr. Kehm said he would, “love to see this be the beginning of a more extensive partnership with Georgetown University in the future.”
WC students who complete their four years of undergraduate work still must go through the regular application process for the master’s programs at Biomedical Graduate Education and be accepted in order to benefit from the tuition discount.
This program is not only medically centered; it is for everyone with an interest in science and policy. Any students wishing to pursue medical school or other medical related fields should meet with their advisors to speak about options for their future.
Some of the programs offered through GU are: biohazardous threat agents and emerging infectious diseases, biostatistics, bioinformatics, biomedical science policy and advocacy, biotechnology, complementary and alternative medicine, integrative neuroscience, and systems medicine.
Programs more geared towards students wishing to pursue medical school are also available such as: biochemistry and molecular biology; microbiology and immunology; pharmacology; physiology, the special master’s in physiology; and tumor biology.
Dr. Mindy Reynolds, co-chair of the department of biology and associate professor of biology, helped develop the partnership. She said that this would be a great intermediate step between WC and medical school. This program allows students to enter into a medical adjacent career like insurance or federal government jobs.
“For pre-med students, this partnership provides an opportunity for additional training before applying to medical school,” she said in a WC press release. “But the breadth of the programs also enables our students to launch a career in health-related and biomedical science and research. For instance, earning a master’s in bioinformatics would prepare a student to do high-level data analysis in a research lab.”
Dr. Kehm said many of the faculty members, both at WC and GU, have connections to several companies in D.C., providing students with resources for job opportunities.
In WC’s press release Barbara Bayer, senior associate dean of biomedical graduate education and chair and professor of neuroscience say that “[w]e are thrilled to officially partner with Washington College and offer their students the opportunity to further their studies on our campus. Over the past few years, WC alums have successfully graduated from our various Master of Science programs in areas such as Biotechnology and Health Physics, and gone on to start their careers in the metropolitan DC area. I am delighted that our institutions have come together to create a pipeline for bright and talented WC graduates to study biomedical sciences at GU.”