P20
September 2013
Serving as a Navy medic taught Ryan Miller the value of being able to save lives. He
graduated from GCU in May and began this summer at the University of Arizona’s
College of Medicine. Photo by Darryl Webb
– by Michael Ferraresi
Biology program prepares students
for medical school challenges
T
he handshakes and “attaboys” were nice,
Ryan Miller
thought. But he
refused to get too comfortable.
Miller enjoyed the White Coat Ceremony that marked a rite of passage for
his University of Arizona College of Medicine class, taking the opportunity
at the traditional Aug. 9 introductory event to rub shoulders with classmates
who had excelled in pre-med programs at Caltech, Stanford and Princeton.
He realized just how difficult the next four years would be as he pursued his
dream of becoming an emergency room doctor.
“It’s the sheer amount of stuff you have to memorize and understand by
Friday,” Miller joked about the weekly routine for medical school students,
likening the barrage of assignments to drinking from a fire hose.
Miller, 28, a Navy corpsman, said Grand Canyon University’s pre-med
program helped prepare him for the rigors of med school. He graduated
from GCU in May and moved his family from the Phoenix area to Tucson over
the summer.
Graduating with a pre-med degree and being accepted into a top medical
school capped years of recovery from military service. Miller survived a
traumatic brain injury from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2008 while
serving as a medic attached to Marine battalions, and he fought through
other wartime injuries to remain available to treat wounded Marines.
He remembered the day he decided to go into medicine. The memory
weighed on him in his first days at the U of A. His squad was ambushed in
Afghanistan and pinned against a waist-high wall. He recalled seeing a close
friend gravely wounded and feeling, in the hail of gunfire and chaos of the
“kill zone,” a sense of helplessness as he struggled to understand how best to
treat his friend’s hemorrhaging.
The incident reminded Miller about the potential costs of not knowing how
to treat a patient. His friend survived with the help of another medic. While
Miller did everything he could, given the nature of war, he wanted to do
more – and swore he would do anything in his power to avoid that feeling of
uncertainty again.
GCU’s pre-med program helped solidify that passion for serving in health
care, providing Miller and other students with the one-on-one instruction,
mentorship and practical training many students miss in lecture classes of
several hundred students at larger universities.
Miller saw it first hand while studying briefly at Arizona State University,
where he grew frustrated with the disconnection between course material
and instructors, with whom there was limited interaction.
He transferred to GCU, where professors made complex courses such as
organic chemistry and genetics seem more applicable.
“You come into the class and the lecture isn’t entirely passive,” Miller said.
“You don’t sit there and zone out.
“It’s broken up where you see the information, and then have to apply it –
which really makes it stick.”
Stressing practical training
Mark Wireman
, the assistant dean for GCU’s College of Arts and Sciences
who oversees science programs, said the University often receives feedback
from graduates who have gone on to medical schools. They observe
classmates struggling with coursework in their first year.
In addition to the University of Arizona, GCU pre-med students have been
accepted to prestigious programs at Harvard Medical School, Cleveland
Clinic, the University of Michigan and other schools. Some of GCU’s best and
brightest earned their way to osteopathic doctorate programs at Arizona-
based A.T. Still and Midwestern universities.
Wireman said the Arts and Sciences college hired several new faculty members
over the summer to keep pace with the rapid growth of the University.
CLUB MED
alumni
