Students, professionals share knowledge, serve community
Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 11:29AM By Amanda Phipps
Students, health professionals and recruiters come together to help the community, build connections and learn of new opportunities.
Club Med is an organization on campus that meets three or four times a semester and invites professional health-care workers, managers and recruiters to speak to the students, club advisor and biology professor Julian Smith III said.
“It’s good to have prospective health professionals together with students,” he said. “They learn things by talking to them.”
The club, which was created in the mid-1990s, is open to anyone who is interested in pursuing a career in the health-care field, Smith said. These careers include dentistry, health-care management and pharmacy.
“I was looking for a club that got together everybody in the health professions,” Smith said.
The club is also student run, said John Samies, vice president and senior biology major.
“(The club) focuses on student interaction with their classmates,” he said. “It is organized to help promote interest among various health-care careers.”
As the club’s president, Jarod Fincher has to schedule and coordinate events, he said.
“(These events) will provide an opportunity to help out members of the organization to enhance their chances of succeeding in the medical, dental or veterinarian field,” he said.
When the club is not meeting, the students work with other organizations such as the Raptor Center in Charlotte to provide community service, Smith said. The club has worked with the center in the past to help with the animals.
“(We) try to find some way for people to use their expertise to help someone,” he said.
Club Med has also volunteered at the Special Olympics and helped with abandoned animals at Richardson Rescue, Samies said.
“There is more focus on community involvement,” he said.
Besides helping the community and learning from professionals and recruiters, the club members take field trips to different schools, Smith said.
They visited the USC School of Medicine two weeks ago, toured the facilities and learned about the admission process.
Samies said the club offers students other opportunities as well.
“It has given me a great opportunity to get more involved on campus,” he said. “It is also a good leadership position.”
Fincher agrees that the club provides students with good opportunities.
“Being a member of this club offers many rewards such as providing members with the opportunity to network with already established professionals,” he said. “Having the opportunity to be exposed to these kinds of events will benefit pre-professional students greatly.”
Smith said Club Med is fun just like any other club.
“It is just a blast,” he said. “It is neat to see people come in as freshmen and go out as professionals.”
