{"id":6633,"date":"2017-04-27T15:12:23","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T15:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2017\/04\/27\/team-of-believers\/"},"modified":"2024-07-23T14:17:31","modified_gmt":"2024-07-23T18:17:31","slug":"team-of-believers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/team-of-believers\/","title":{"rendered":"Team of believers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Madison Ritter \u201917 spent the summer before her senior year in Memphis, participating in research at the University of Tennessee and clinical observation at St. Jude Children\u2019s Research Hospital.<\/p>\n

It was a dream come true\u2014and it came true because the right people knew it was her dream.<\/p>\n

Ritter, a neuroscience major, has been connecting with Furman faculty and staff since she first arrived on campus. Every time someone suggested an opportunity, she pursued it. When she missed qualifying for one experience at St. Jude by a sliver of a percentage point, it seemed the dream had slipped through her fingers.<\/p>\n

But Susan Ybarra \u201992 was determined that wouldn\u2019t be the case. Ybarra is associate director of the Institute for the Advancement of Community Health and helps place students in observation and internship experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew the caliber of student she was,\u201d Ybarra said. \u201cI had no problem going out on a limb for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

She reached out to Dr. Matt Wilson \u201986, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Tennessee and the St. Jude Chair in Pediatric Ophthalmology. By the end of the same day, the framework of plan was in place for Ritter to work in the lab and shadow Wilson through the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would not have happened if I didn\u2019t know her,\u201d Ybarra said.<\/p>\n

Ritter wants to work in pediatric oncology and has considered St. Jude the pinnacle for that work for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat has been a goal of mine\u2014to have some interaction with that hospital\u2014since high school,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Around the same time that Ritter was looking for summer opportunities, Wilson was renewing his connections with Furman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI left it as, \u2018If there\u2019s anything I can do, let me know,\u2019\u201d said Wilson, who describes his field in layman\u2019s terms as \u201ceyeball cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Ybarra reached out to him about Ritter, he didn\u2019t hesitate.<\/p>\n

Through her work in the lab and her time shadowing Wilson in the clinic and in surgery, Ritter experienced pediatric oncology and hematology on the cellular level, the social level and the surgical level. \u00a0Some people consider the field depressing.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it is one of the most hopeful and optimistic fields,\u201d she said. \u201cGetting a taste of it has now made me want to pursue those options even harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson said Ritter rose to every challenge the work presented.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re the first one being sent off to build a relationship, so there is added pressure there. And she did great,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Her success opened the door for students coming behind her\u2014Ansley Ulmer \u201918 will take advantage of the same opportunity this summer and Ybarra anticipates the possibility of more placements in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis wouldn\u2019t have occurred unless the connections were made between the university and alumni,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n

The Memphis work wasn\u2019t Ritter\u2019s first laboratory experience. She spent the previous summer in the lab with Victoria Turgeon, her academic advisor and director of Furman\u2019s neuroscience major (an interdisciplinary major between biology and psychology). Ritter said that work helped her learn the basics of research, including how to develop experiments, and prepared her for the laboratory in Memphis.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Maddie Ritter in the lab with Professor of Biology Victoria Turgeon<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWhile it was a big step, it wasn\u2019t such a big step for her,\u201d Turgeon said.<\/p>\n

Ritter has been connecting with faculty and staff since she was a freshman. She wasted no time lining up to see TJ Banisaukas, chief health careers advisor.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe basically laid out my life-plan at Furman,\u201d she said, laughing.<\/p>\n

Ybarra helped her navigate off-campus experiences, including two semesters in a shadowing\/observation program, an emergency room internship related to Web-based medical records and an internship at a center for cancer patients in remission.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough Furman alone, I\u2019ve accumulated almost 200 hours of shadowing experience, which is crazy,\u201d Ritter said. \u201cIt\u2019s really opened up a lot of doors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ybarra said Ritter repeatedly demonstrated that she had not just the academic ability for the Memphis work but the maturity, commitment and work ethic.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaddie understood experiences like St. Jude and the University of Tennessee come after you\u2019ve done your time,\u201d she said. Students who want premier-level internships \u201cneed to start with volunteering \u2026 start with other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe came in driven,\u201d agreed Turgeon. \u201cYou just can\u2019t push her too much. She\u2019s always working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritter said the help she\u2019s received outside the classroom is one reason she came to Furman in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a small enough school that you can get individual attention,\u201d she said. \u201cThey actually take the time to get to know you and your interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, knowing that, they are equipped to fight for opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was amazing to see all these people work together,\u201d Ritter said. \u201cAnd now they\u2019ve turned it into an annual opportunity for a student.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduation, Ritter will work as a post-baccalaureate fellow and coordinator for Furman\u2019s Institute for the Advancement of Community Health, with medical school on the horizon.<\/p>\n

Ybarra said it\u2019s not hard to look into the future and see what will come next.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody\u2019s going to be calling Maddie and saying, \u2018Hey, Dr. Ritter, I have this student\u2014 \u2019 and that\u2019s going to be the really exciting thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Madison Ritter \u201917 spent the summer before her senior year in Memphis, participating in research at the University of Tennessee and clinical observation at St. Jude Children\u2019s Research Hospital. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":16982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3,19,17,65,48,61,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-alumni","category-biology","category-centers-and-institutes","category-institute-for-the-advancement-of-community-health","category-psychology","category-the-furman-advantage","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33148,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633\/revisions\/33148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}