Building a new medical education program as a teaching faculty at UC Merced!

I am an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Medical Education at the University of California, Merced (UC Merced). As part of the founding faculty in the department, our combined role is to build the first 1.5 years of a medical education program based on the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine’s Bridges Curriculum. The ultimate goal of this medical education program is to develop students from the San Joaquin Valley in California into medical professionals who will hopefully stay in the valley to practice medicine and elevate healthcare delivery in their communities.

I started my college education at my hometown’s community college, West Hills College Lemoore (renamed Lemoore College as of April 2024). I studied biology and graduated in 2011 and transferred to the University of California, Davis on September 2011 as an Animal Science major with an emphasis on Avian Sciences. I conducted research on avian immunology and nutrition and completed my B. S. on June 2014.

I moved to Auburn, AL to continue my education at Auburn University to pursue an M. S. in Biological Sciences. My master’s program widened my research knowledge with bioinformatics, ecology, microbiology, and working with mammalian models as I explored how dietary protein intake impacted fecal and milk microorganisms.

I continued my education at North Carolina State University as a Ph. D. student in Nutrition and my dissertation was titled “Evaluation of dietary vitamin D3 on physiology and vitamin D metabolism in chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) model“. My dissertation revolved around vitamin D effects from examination of a synthetic form of vitamin D on growth and blood chemistry, to super-dosage effects on aged laying hens in production and how super-doses of vitamin D impacts their egg production, calcium mobilization, and metabolism. I completed my Ph. D. in May 2020 and moved to Madison, WI for my postdoctoral training.

I was a NIH T32 postdoctoral trainee for 3 years and then completed my postdoctoral training a year later as a Research Associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My four years as a postdoc was in the Rey Lab in the Department of Bacteriology. My postdoctoral research explored how host genetics, sex, and diet impacted host utilization of microbial-derived short-chain fatty acids in the Diversity Outbred Mouse, a genetically-diverse mouse population. I accepted a job offer to be part of the founding faculty in the newly established Department of Medical Education at UC Merced and completed my postdoctoral training on June 2024.

My goals as a tenure-track teaching professor are: learn and deliver UCSF’s Foundational Sciences 1 block content, help UC Merced’s students in the NextGen Health Professionals Living and Learning Community explore career options in the health and medicine career tracks, and build my tenure portfolio and get promoted with tenure. My ultimate goal is to  inspire and train the next generation of leaders to advance society!