Stories of an untraditional medical student and two siblings who fulfilled their dreams
Tears flowed down his cheeks as UMKC medical student Keith Loftin embraced his wife on Match Day inside the UMKC Student Union, holding a letter in his hands that spelled out the next four years of their lives. His misty-eyed parents looked on as well as he read the news.
Loftin had matched in a residency position at Samaritan Health Services in Corvallis, Oregon, where he will enter his preferred specialty of psychiatry.
“It’s amazing to be here with all these people who have supported me, all the people who care about me,” Loftin said. “It’s all kind of surreal right now.”
Loftin was one of the 112 members of the UMKC School of Medicine class of 2023 that participated this year’s National Resident Matching Program. Like many in the class, he was elated at receiving his first choice of residency positions.
“I found psychiatry and realized how much I connected with it and how much I loved working with my patients and decided this is where I need to be,” Loftin said. “It felt like this is where I belonged.”
His journey to becoming a physician, however, took a different path than the rest of his classmates, most of whom are half his age.
UMKC medical student Keith Loftin celebrated his match in psychiatry with his wife and children.
Prior to moving with his wife and two children to Kansas City and entering medical school, Loftin was a high school science teacher in Jefferson City, Missouri. Before that, he spent nearly seven years in the Army working on Chinook helicopters, then returned to school to earn a master’s degree in education. All the while, Loftin, who earned a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and science at the University of Missouri before joining the Army, said he harbored a hidden desire to become a doctor.
“I was teaching a class for high school students who wanted to enter health care and they kept asking me why I hadn’t gone to medical school,” he said. “After about the 100th conversation my wife and I had about it, she finally said you know what you need to do and that started the ball rolling.”
With the backing of his wife, and while still teaching his high school classes, Loftin began the tedious process of studying for the MCAT exam and preparing to become a full-time student again for the first time in nearly 17 years.
“Medical school was a challenge, but doable,” he said. “I faced a lot of personal challenges.”
During his time as a medical student, Loftin underwent multiple surgeries for back injuries from his time in the Army and helped his wife through the loss of her mother. His efforts paid off on Friday. Loftin applied for residency positions in psychiatry at hospitals across the country from Oregon to Florida, knowing the day would come when he would have to move his wife, a 17-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son again.
“It’s a little tough,” he said. “It’s not so bad for me. I moved six times to different duty stations when I was in the Army. It’s going to have its challenges, moving my family, but I know my son is excited about it.”
Brother and sister
While Loftin celebrated with his family, Mozammil and Sumaiya Alam were enjoying the day with family and friends as well. The brother and sister from Kansas City, Missouri, had the unique experience of going through Match together.
Mozammil received his desired match in neurology and will be headed to the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix. Sumaiya matched in internal medicine at Emory University School of Medicine.
“I’m going to Atlanta,” Sumaiya screamed. “ I started crying before I even opened my envelope. This is what I was dreaming.”
Mozammil was sharing a similar excitement.
“There is so much joy right now,” he said. “We both got the matches we wanted.”
While the two were able to lean on each other for support throughout medical school, they were also able to turn for advice about the residency process to their brother, Mobashshir Alam, a 2018 graduate of the UMKC School of Medicine and now a gastroenterology fellow at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.
“He was really helpful in guiding us through the match process,” Sumaiya said.
Mozammil said having his sister by his side helped as they have gone through the same highs and lows of medical school together.
“We definitely have relied on each other for multiple things,” he said. “During the interview season we were always there to support each other.”
Nearly half of the UMKC students who matched will be entering residency programs in one of the primary care specialties. Internal medicine drew the largest number of students with 19, followed by family medicine with 11 and pediatrics with nine. A growing number of graduates will also be going into psychiatry, which had 11 matches.
Twenty students will remain in Kansas City to do their residencies at UMKC School of Medicine-sponsored programs. Overall, 33 UMKC grads – about a third – will stay in Missouri for their residency programs.
See the full list of UMKC School of Medicine students who matched in programs across the United States from Honolulu, Hawaii, to New York.
School of Medicine Dean Mary Ann Jackson, M.D., congratulated the class, calling Match Day a defining moment in their journeys.
“The lessons you learned here will carry you through your career,” Jackson said.
Mar 17, 2023
Students from all three of UMKC School of Pharmacy campuses participated in clinical rotations¬ with nonprofit organization
Today’s pharmacists fill a multitude of roles as health care providers, but even this was a new one for UMKC pharmacy student Natalie Bishop.
Bishop is one of three UMKC pharmacy students who spent a month doing a clinical rotation at Hillside Health Care International, a small nonprofit clinic in Eldridgeville, Belize, a tiny community just miles from the port city of Punta Gorda.
During her stint at Hillside, a young boy suffering from acute asthma came to the clinic for a refill on his inhaler. Bishop and the clinic pharmacist, explained to the patient how using a spacer, a short plastic tube attached the inhaler, would help deliver the medication to his lungs more effectively and help him better manage his asthma.
Seemingly simple resources, such as a spacer for an inhaler, can be a luxury in this part of the world. The clinic pharmacist and Bishop did the next best thing, cutting up a plastic bottle and strategically applying some duct tape to craft a needed spacer for their patient to use with his inhaler.
Lily Edwards in the pharmacy at Hillside Health Care International.
“They don’t have all the resources down there like we do here, so to be able to thinkon your feet and use what you do have is important,” Bishop said. “It was so cool seeing the pharmacist make one right there and help the patient moving forward.”
After Bishop, a pharmacy student on the Columbia, Missouri campus, returned home after completing her rotation, Lily Edwards, a student at UMKC’s campus in Springfield, Missouri, took her place in Belize. The two shared similar experiences. The clinic in Eldridgeville is largely made up of volunteers who support a small handful of physicians and one full-time pharmacist. That meant when Bishop and Edwards weren’t working side by side with the staff pharmacist, they found themselves working on their own.
“It really pushed me a lot to know things because resources are limited there,” Edwards said. “I didn’t get to look everything up before I had to answer a question. I really had to know my stuff and be ready to recall it.”
“It really pushed me a lot to know things because resources are limited there.” - Lily Edwards said.
Carlos Olivas, a student on the Kansas City campus, completed the same rotation in January. While Bishop, Edwards and Olivas served the same role at the clinic, collaborating with doctors, medical students and physician assistant students while dispensing medications and counseling patients, Olivas said their situations were different.
“I was actually fortunate enough to have two other pharmacy students there with me,” Olivas said. “We were able to kind of team up together where Natalie and Lily didn’t have other pharmacy students with them to help.”
That came into play on mobile clinic days.
Each week, doctors and students would load a van with essential medications and travel from 45 minutes to three-hours from their home clinic to remote regions and villages where they would see as many as 40 to 50 patients in a day. One long trip took Edwards and her team to a village that had not received medical care for three years.
Operating out of a building with no electricity or running water, Edwards was the lone pharmacist on the team, dispensing medications and counseling patients. Before the day was over, the team had run out of antibiotics before running out of patients. Edwards was forced into problem solving mode.
“Doctors are coming to me saying, ‘I want this antibiotic for an ear infection,’ and I’m telling them, ‘I’m sorry, what’s your next choice? I have this,’” said Edwards, who looked back on the experience as both stressful and extremely rewarding. “It was incredibly eye opening. It definitely pushed me further than I thought was possible.”
Problem solving became part of the regular routine for the student pharmacists as they were often dealing with limited supplies, answering questions about available medications and determining proper dosings.
"I definitely developed a lot of communication skills throughout the time I was there.” - Carlos Olivas
“That was really a neat experience getting to collaborate with (physician assistant and medical students) and show them what a pharmacist can do, the knowledge that we have,” Bishop said. “It was fun to work with them because they didn’t realize what we learn. We don’t diagnose patients, but we have to learn about the diagnosis so that we can recommend the right medications.”
Carlos Olivas working with a patient during a pharmacy rotation in Eldridgeville, Belize.
Those collaborations made for a rewarding experience that Olivas said he wasn’t expecting.
“The discussions were very open,” he said. “They would come to us whenever they needed any kind of expertise in our realm of ‘what is the dosing’ or ‘what do we have?’ Being able to have those open discussions was great and I definitely developed a lot of communication skills throughout the time I was there.”
Not all of their time was spent in the Eldridgeville clinic or the mobile clinics. The three also found themselves enjoying time in another public health service role, visiting local schools and participating in public health fairs, doing everything from blood-pressure checks to diabetes screenings.
Olivas spoke to a group of school children about the need for and benefits of good nutrition and exercise. While interacting with a particular classroom of 30 to 40 third- and fourth-grade students, all smiling and laughing with him, the students at one point began telling him what they knew about carbohydrates and cholesterol.
“I was like, you’re in third or fourth grade and you’re talking to me about that,” Olivas said. “It was really cool.”
Mar 16, 2023
For the sixth year in a row, the program was ranked among Top 10 by The Hollywood Reporter
The Master of Fine Arts in costume design program is noted in The Hollywood Reporter for its training in both costume design and production, its emphasis on digital graphic skills, entrepreneurial approaches to the field and environmentally conscious practices.
“We are thrilled that our outstanding costume design program is earning this well-deserved recognition,” Courtney Crappell, dean of the Conservatory, said. “When you see UMKC listed with these other top-10 schools, you get a much clearer understanding of the level of excellence and top-value we offer here in Kansas City.”
The Hollywood Reporter also made positive mention of the plan to completely revise the curriculum for Fall 2023. Program head Brandon McWilliams said the changes come from a desire to reflect current trends in live entertainment design.
“We’re making space in our coursework for emerging technologies and digital graphic skills, and we want to help our students develop entrepreneurial toolkits,” McWilliams said. “Our overall focus though remains the same – to prepare practitioners to be successful costume designers, managers and technicians.”
McWilliams arrived at UMKC in August 2022 and has been impressed with the program, particularly its students. An alumnus of another institution on the Top 10 list, Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, McWilliams appreciates the recipe for success at the Conservatory.
“It seems like this place has always offered students an experience so balanced in practical and theoretical approaches that it makes for a really well-prepared and adaptable artist,” McWilliams said. “It’s our students that set us apart, there is such a long-standing trend of success in the profession and in academia from our graduates.”
UMKC was ranked among the University of Southern California, David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.
Here’s the full list.
Mar 15, 2023
Philosophy professor shares life insights and the subject of his latest book
Clancy Martin, Ph.D, is a well-known professor of philosophy here at UMKC. He’s releasing his latest book: “How Not to Kill Yourself”
Martin is scheduled to appear March 23 at the Kansas City Public Library and April 5 on NPR’s “Fresh Air.”
In celebration, we wanted to get to know this popular professor a little better. Here are seven fun facts about Clancy Martin:
Philosophy was not his first major choice.
“I was a chemistry major, and I wanted to go to medical school,” Martin said. But how did he end up teaching philosophy instead of going to medical school? Like many students who end up on a new career path, he took a required elective.
“I didn't even know what philosophy was,” he said. “Then I just had this amazing professor and read a couple of philosophers in that class. I didn't realize that people thought and wrote like this. It made me completely crazy about philosophy.”
He was on the fence about going to graduate school.
When Martin wasn’t sure whether to continue to pursue medical school or a graduate degree in philosophy, he turned to his father.
“Normally, to be frank, he didn't give the best advice and I normally didn't listen,” Martin said. “But I called him and asked him ‘Should I go to medical school or graduate school in philosophy?’ He said ‘Son, all of my friends who are doctors, they complain about how they work all the time and have to deal with insurance. They have no home life. All of my friends who are professors, none of them are rich, but they're all really happy. So, I think you should go to graduate school in philosophy,’ and for once, I listened.”
He used to be in the jewelry business.
After Martin had his first child (bonus fun fact: she is currently getting her Ph.D. at her dad’s alma mater, University of Texas-Austin, but not in philosophy), he dropped out of school for a while. He had brothers in the jewelry business and decided to give working with them a try.
“I thought, maybe I should just make a lot of money rather than be a professor, and I did that for six or seven years,” he said. “I was miserable, and whenever I would get really down, I'd drive to a college campus, just to walk around the campus and see the students. It would make me remember that life was worth living, until eventually I knew I had to get up and go back to graduate school. I had to become a professor because it's just where my heart was.”
He's written for many popular publications, including the New York Times and Elle.
When asked how he started writing for such a large gamut of publications, Martin looked to his heroes, the 19th- and the 20th-century existentialist philosophers.
“Their driving idea is that philosophy should always be relevant to as many people as possible,” he said. “Basically, it should be relevant to the ordinary person on the street. And if we can't reach that person and speak to that person, then we're just not doing philosophy properly. I very strongly believe that.”
His favorite experience with his writing (so far) has been his latest book, “How Not to Kill Yourself.”
He says it’s because it was the hardest to write. It took him about five years.
“It was the most serious self-interrogation that I've done in any of my work,” Martin said. “I think that, as a philosopher, part of your job is to try to go as deeply as you can and ask the questions about the meaning of life. This is when I have done my most thorough attempt yet to investigate that question. It had a life affirming quality to it.”
His favorite part of Kansas City is Midtown.
“I love being able to walk to school,” Martin said. “I love the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. I love that Kansas City has everything you want in a big city, but it still feels like a normal size. You never feel overwhelmed, like you can in a lot of big cities. This is just a place that feels right to me. I've had other job offers since I've been here, and I've never been tempted to leave because I love the city, UMKC and our students.”
He wants the student body to know support is available across the UMKC campus.
“If they are having feelings of worthlessness, anxiety, stress or fear, anything like this, reach out, not just to me, but all the faculty and staff at UMKC,” Martin said. “I would like our students to know that we are here for them as human beings and as people to help them in every way that we can. We’re not just an educational resource for them. We're a human resource for them. After they graduate, too. I always tell my students ‘Hey, once you’ve had me as a professor, you're stuck with me for life now. Anytime you need me, send me an email and I'll be there for you.’ And I know that's not just true of me, that's true of all of my colleagues who are faculty at UMKC. This is how we run things at UMKC, and this is one of the best things about our university.”
Mar 13, 2023
More than $2 million has helped enrich the academic careers of more than 2,000 women
The UMKC Women’s Council celebrated 52 years of supporting women in graduate studies and honoring the 2023 awardees with a reception on March 2.
This year, the group of 77 women received more than $100,000 from the Women’s Council Graduate Assistance Fund. Since its inception, the fund has supported the academic achievements of more than 2,500 women with more than $2.2 million in graduate fellowships.
Ghadah Almousa (Ph.D. ‘24) is researching deep learning solutions to detect and prevent cybercrime in social media. She’s interested in finding solutions to the spread of misinformation and malicious activities. These deep learning models can analyze large volumes of data from social media platforms and identify patterns that are indicative of cybercriminal activity, such as fake accounts, bots and malicious links.
“There is amazing work going on at UMKC. I’m honored to be part of the process.” - Leslie Boe
“Detecting and preventing cybercrime in social media is a challenging task,” Almousa says. “Cybercriminals are constantly evolving their tactics and using new techniques to evade detection. By using deep learning to detect and prevent cybercrime in social media, researchers can help to protect users from scams, fraud and other malicious activities. Also, I have kids, and I want to make the social media environment as safe as possible for them.”
Chancellor Mauli Agrawal with Bibie Chronwall, Ed.D., Ph.D. and Hazel Knutson.
Funding from the UMKC Women’s Council will further her work by allowing her to attend top conferences on cybersecurity and publish her research.
“I am very grateful for the people who provide this funding,” Almousa says.
Rhonda Cooksey, (M.F.A. ’18, GRCT ’18, Ph.D. ‘25 ) is writing her dissertation on representations of racial violence in 19th-century print culture. She received funding to present her research on 19th- century literature and society, and the print culture of the time, and attend a conference that focused on papers that were integral to research.
“The conference call for papers referenced Michael Foucault's concept of parrhesia as a means to interrogate truth--what is it--who tells it--and what are the consequences of telling the truth,” Cooksey says. “As editor of the Colored American Magazine (CAM), Pauline E. Hopkins spoke for agitation at a time when Booker T. Washington stood for accommodation. Hundreds of Black people were lynched every year, and he considered it safer for Black folks to accommodate segregation and not make waves.”
The Women’s Council Graduate Assistance Fund support enabled Cooksey to network with colleagues with similar interests, research archives in the area and further her work on her dissertation. She feels this experience will enhance her career.
Leslie Boe, ( J.D. ’01) is the current UMKC Women’s Council Board of Directors president, and has been on the board for five years. As a shareholder and director at Dysart Taylor McMonigle Brumitt & Wilcox, her work life is demanding. But after attending a Graduate Assistance Fund event, she was inspired by the graduate students and their groundbreaking work.
“I immediately reached out to a board member to let them know I’d love to be involved in supporting the UMKC Women’s Council and its work,” Boe said. “The first year I reviewed applications I was stunned and impressed by the work of our applicants. There is amazing work going on at UMKC. I’m honored to be part of the process.”
Established in 1971, the UMKC Women’s Council Graduate Assistance Fund supports UMKC women working toward post-baccalaureate degrees with up to $2,000 in funds that furthers their completion of graduation requirements and enriches their educational experiences.
Mar 07, 2023
UMKC honors Patricia Macdonald for a lifetime of service
Each year, the UMKC Alumni Association recognizes the achievements of outstanding alumni with an awards celebration. UMKC is honoring Patricia Macdonald with its Class of 2023 Bill French Alumni Service Award.
Patricia (Pat) Macdonald, a UMKC alumna with a Bachelor of Arts in liberal arts and an American Cultures concentration, has always had a passion for urban public education. A product of New York public schools, Pat holds the conviction that “Great minds exist everywhere.” She has taken that conviction into service throughout her professional career.
Macdonald has served as president for the UMKC Alumni Association Governing Board, a UMKC Trustee Board chair, a volunteer for Kansas City Public Schools and Pembroke Hill School, among many other service and leadership positions. She is currently on the boards of KCUR, the Kansas City Ballet, the Missouri Arts Foundation and Visit KC. In all her spare time, she has managed to lead the Strategic Ventures and Operations at the Healthcare Institute for Innovations in Quality at UMKC as a director.
What inspired you to live a life of service?
I can’t say I had a conscious epiphany where I said “I am going to lead a life of service,” but most of us are shaped by what we see, hear and experience on a regular basis. My father never told me to volunteer but he always had messages that equated to “do the right thing,” and he modeled that. He passed away when I was just 9, and fortunately for me, there were a number of women in my life who took special interest in my development and whom, as a result, I quietly admired and I watched very closely. I can say with great gratitude that I am shaped, in part, by them pouring into me, and me, watching them pour into others without talk or fuss but in very special and important ways, when they did not have to.
You are involved in so many organizations – how do you manage your time?
I only consider causes and tasks that I care about, I thoughtfully assess my capacity and I am candid about my capacity before fully accepting a leadership role or new task. The candor is fair to the organization and allows the organization to plan better.
You say that taking opportunities to give back are opportunities to grow in your own personal and professional development; how have you grown?
Opportunities to give back affords me opportunities to interact and develop relationships with people I ordinarily would not, which expands my social and professional aperture. Service has increased my ability to fully analyze situations and conditions which has contributed to my ability to develop win-win and broad-serving solutions. Service has expanded my network of knowledge and professional friends on whom I can call when I need solutions that are not in my personal skillset or personal knowledge base.
What is your favorite UMKC memory?
Having been a UMKC volunteer for as long as I have, I developed tremendous respect and admiration for UMKC faculty and staff. They support volunteers’ efforts at every turn and make sure the volunteer experience is accessible, fun and rewarding. In the fall of 2021, and because of my tremendously rewarding volunteer experiences and esteem for UMKC employees, I was excited to accept a professional position within UMKC. I did not think my respect for UMKC faculty and staff could be any higher but it skyrocketed beyond anything I could have imagined once I began to serve in a professional capacity. I have new insight into what it takes to make UMKC operate with excellence and I bow very low to those who have been serving the university professionally for years.
What is your proudest accomplishment?
My kid! Allister Macdonald. He’s awesome. He’s funny, smart and just graduated with degrees in Kinesiology/Exercise Science and Spanish. He’s also an MMA competitor (I don’t like that part so much, thank goodness he’s good at it).
Where can you be found on the weekends? What are your hobbies?
On weekends, I can be found at the WERQ Dance Fitness studio in the northland having a blast in cardio hip-hop with friends, porch-sitting with my neighbors, reading and/or listening to a book and on Saturdays I am always tuned in to the Session and Soulsations on KCUR 89.3.
About Alumni Awards
Join us in honoring Patricia Macdonald and the other Class of 2023 awardees at an in-person event on the evening of March 10 at Plexpod Westport Commons. For more, visit UMKC's Alumni Association website. If you are unable to attend the event but would like to donate to student scholarships, contributions can be made online.
Mar 03, 2023
Paid internship provides experience, peace of mind
History student Katy Anielak (M.A.23) had created physical museum exhibits, but her paid internship to develop content for the Clio app led to unique opportunities.
Anielak had participated in undergraduate research, and she wanted to further develop those skills.
“I thought graduate research would be an excellent opportunity to do that while also focusing on topics I’m passionate about,” she says.
Anielak was working with David J. Trowbridge, Ph.D., William T. Kemper Associate Research Professor of Digital and Public Humanities, on content for Clio, a free mobile app that provides guides for history and culture, and he mentioned that the Kansas City Women’s History Trail had not been developed.
“I’m not originally from Kansas City, so the idea of the trail appealed to me to provide assessable information for others, but also to expand my knowledge of the city and the women who have shaped it over time,” she says.
“I don't think I could have found an opportunity that worked around my course schedule as smoothly as this internship, and it helped with my success in both my classes and the internship itself.” - Katy Anielak
Anielak had created physical exhibits before, but this research provided a unique opportunity to create digital content. She worked with UMKC faculty, public history organizations and nonprofits, such as the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and Operation Breakthrough.
“These interactions allowed me to connect with professionals and broadened my understanding of what goes into both career paths,” she says. “This opened my eyes to the importance of expanding and maintaining public history and nonprofit programs.”
The flexibility of the internship worked well with her class schedule and enabled her to ensure that the quality of the exhibits were well-executed.
“I don't think I could have found an opportunity that worked around my course schedule as smoothly as this internship, and it helped with my success in both my classes and the internship itself.”
This is the scholarship and experience that the Digital Humanities programming was designed to encourage.
“Katy gained confidence and experience as she conducted research that supported her efforts to create virtual museum tours,” Trowbridge says. “We believe that Katy’s virtual tour of the Kansas City Museum will serve as a model and learning experience as we support other historical and cultural organizations in Kansas City.”
Mar 03, 2023
Reaner Shannon served 34 years at UMKC School of Medicine
UMKC celebrated the memory and legacy of Reaner Shannon, long-time director and associate dean of minority affairs at the School of Medicine, with a special tribute on Feb. 24.
Tyler Smith, School of Medicine associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion; and Shannon’s daughter, Pamela, unveiled a portrait of Shannon, who was a staunch promoter of diversity and equity within the school and throughout Kansas City for 34 years before her retirement in 2008.
The UMKC School of Medicine is renowned for its unique six-year, combined BA/MD program that accepts students directly from high school, and its docent-based mentoring instructional model. Thanks in large part to the efforts of Shannon, it is recognized as a trailblazer in diversity and inclusion as well. Reaner Shannon died last July at the age of 85. Her husband, Henry Shannon, died just five months later, in December, at the age of 89.
The unveiling ceremony took place at the conclusion of the school’s annual Dr. Reaner and Mr. Henry Shannon Lectureship in Minority Health.
The Shannons established their annual lectureship that now takes place each February during Black History Month to create an awareness of health disparities and provide medical professionals, students, residents and the local community information about timely issues that affect underserved and minority communities.
The list of those who have delivered the Shannon Lecture over the years is filled with local, regional and national health leaders. They include leaders such as:
Jocelyn Elders, former U.S. surgeon general (2006)
Gloria Wilder-Brathwaite, founder of Justice Speaks (2008)
Louis Sullivan, former U.S. secretary of health and human services (2015)
Nadine Gracia, deputy assistant secretary of minority health and director of the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2016)
Altha J. Stewart, president of the American Psychiatric Association (2019)
Patrice Harris, past president of the American Medical Association (2021)
Pamela thanked Smith and School of Medicine Dean Mary Anne Jackson, M.D., for recognizing her parents and for the honor of keeping her mother’s legacy alive at the medical school.
“Hospital Hill meant so much to my parents,” she said. “It’s where their careers began and where they ended. This has been like home for us.”
Below the portrait that now hangs on a wall outside the School of Medicine’s theaters is a plaque honoring Shannon as “a leader, educator, scholar, researcher and mentor. She was a tireless advocate and activist for diversity, equity and inclusion for students, residents, fellows, faculty and staff at the UMKC School of Medicine and people in the Kansas City Community.”
Former School of Medicine Dean Betty Drees, M.D., said Reaner and Henry Shannon “were such pioneers in the work that they did and left such a wonderful legacy.”
Reaner Shannon began her career at the school as the main research lab technologist. In 1990, she left the laboratory to become the director of the School of Medicine’s minority affairs office. She became the school’s first associate dean for minority affairs in 1998, a post she held until she retired.
Smith served as the keynote speaker for this year’s lectureship, addressing the importance of mentorship, coaching and sponsorship of “underserved-in-medicine health professionals.” She spoke about how Shannon was a champion of supporting and advocating for students.
“Every medical school needs to have a person like a Dr. Shannon,” Smith said. “One of the joys she had was to serve as a mentor to students interested in science and in medicine.”
Mar 01, 2023