Shelly Vitanza:
Welcome to the LU Moment. Thank you for listening. I’m Shelly Vitanza, the director of public affairs at Lamar University. Each week, we showcase the great events, activities, programs, projects, and people at Lamar University. Well, Merry Christmas and happy New Year. The campus is closed but will reopen January 4th for faculty and staff to come back on campus to prepare for the Spring 2021 semester. Classes will resume the Tuesday after MLK day which is January 19th and will run through May 11th.
So, the last show of 2020, I’m excited. I’m doing a happy dance. I think we’re all ready for 2020 to be over. Even though it’s been one of the most challenging years that I’ve ever lived through, there were some good things that happened at Lamar, so I thought we would revisit those from the past twelve months. In January, we hosted a saxophone summit, and we hired the new CFO, Jeremy Altop and Jeff Forret, one of our history professors and distinguished faculty research fellows introduced a new book, the fifth of his books called Williams’ Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and his Cargo of Black Convicts and it got national recognition.
In February, Lamar University announced a partnership with Lumberton high school to help two students create an experiment that would be performed on the International Space Station. Also, in February, journalist John Dickerson spoke at the Fisher distinguished lecture series and our band, the Showcase of Southeast Texas performed in the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans for the first time ever. It was kind of the last fling before the pandemic and kind of had a little bit going on in February and in March, things got a little bit slower, but we did break ground on a new welcome center and Online U ranked Lamar University’s online engineering bachelor’s degree the best in the nation in two specific categories.
In April, we named Thomas Kalb, the director of our midstream management and science and our science and technology building received a design distinction from lab managers in a lab design and excellence awards competition. Also, in April, our students got really busy creating PPE including incredible face masks.
In May, the Lower Neches Valley Authority awarded Lamar University $100,000 to help initiate the Southeast Texas Blood Coordination study. We hosted our first ever virtual graduation, and we launched our geographical information systems certificate, a GIS certificate for students. In June, the American Chemical Society awarded Sylvestre Twagirayezu, assistant professor of chemistry a $70,000 grant to develop an advanced analytical technique that could have a tremendous impact on the Southeast Texas petrochemical industry.
Exxon Mobil presented Lamar University with $309,000, an employee gift match in an annual event and the Sabine River Authority of Texas awarded Lamar University $100,000 to also help initiate the Southeast Texas Blood Coordination Study. In July, we launched our Resiliency and Recovery Building Tomorrow Summit. It was a full day online conference and more than a thousand people participated in that conference to talk about resiliency to natural disasters here in southeast Texas and we also received a grant from the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center in southeast Texas, the federally funded research center that received $460,000 to study technology in our area.
In August, the Beach Watch funds were awarded to LU professor Dr. Ashwini Kucknoor to facilitate the Texas Beach Watch program in Jefferson County. It’s a daily event where we test the waters around the area to make sure that they’re safe for southeast to swim and visitors as well. Our physics professor, Dr. Philip Cole, chair of the physics department was awarded $225,000 from The National Science Foundation. In September, our community, the entire Lamar University community went to help out with hurricane Laura recovery and our drones were used to survey hurricane Laura’s damage to the coastal area.
In October, Lamar University received a grant from the Stevens Initiative to connect our youth in the U.S. and the middle east and north Africa through a virtual exchange program and our nursing students coordinated that effort. We also expanded our deaf education and deaf studies through a strategic partnership with the School of the Deaf in Austin. In November, we mourned the loss of legendary coach Billy Tubbs. He passed away on November 1st.
We also celebrated the awarding of $141,000 to Dr. James Henry, assistant professor of chemical engineering from the Center of Operator Performance for his research and we got a general grant for our chemistry and biochemistry from the Welch Foundation for $200,000 that would go to undergraduate research. Very exciting.
In December, the Junior League of Beaumont established the Julie Richardson Proctor Scholarship and gifted Lamar University $71,000 to endow that scholarship. We also announced that Dr. Helen Lou would take on the position of Lamar University’s Center for Midstream Management and Science associate director of research. Amazing year, and that was just some of the highlights. Even though it was a challenging year, we had some great things happen here at Lamar University.
Okay, so now if you listened to last week and the week before, you’ll recall we launched this new series: “What Have You Done with Your LU Degree?” So many great things I hear here in the public affairs office. I wanted to share what some of our alumni are doing. We visited with Hannah Rumsey who’s a brand-new grad and has full-time employment at Exxon Mobil. I visited with Sharita Gardner. She’s a business development representative at Mobil Oil Credit Union. She graduated from LU in 2012 and I had to bring back Cade Johnson who is attending medical school. Cade, welcome!
Cade Johnson:
Hi! Thanks for having me!
Shelly Vitanza:
I’m so glad you could join us! So, you’ve been away from Lamar for a year now?
Cade Johnson:
Coming up on that, yeah!
Shelly Vitanza:
So, talk to us, Cade about first of all, how long were you at Lamar and what degree did you get?
Cade Johnson:
I was at Lamar a total of six years and I finished with a bachelor’s degree in biology, a bachelor’s degree in exercise science, and I got my master’s degree in business with a concentration in leadership.
Shelly Vitanza:
Okay, now why did you do all that, Cade?
Cade Johnson:
So, I originally thought I might want to do sports medicine. I knew I wanted to do medicine but thought maybe I want to do sports medicine, so let me look into that and so I started off with an exercise science or athletic training degree and I didn’t feel like it was really for me to do that in terms of the medical field, but it was stuff that still interested me. The classes were interesting, so I thought, I’ll keep that and add a biology degree because why not.
It was a lot of classes, but it’s paid off pretty well so far. The biology degree just to understand the basics of the hard sciences going into medical school and taking the MCAT and everything. Then, I think it was maybe my third or fourth year I got an email from the college of business saying that I could essentially tack on one more year at my stay at Lamar and complete my M.B.A. in one year if I took a certain set of undergrad courses in the college of business while I was finishing up my biology and exercise science degrees.
I thought, well they say doctors are bad businessmen, why not make sure I’m not completely illiterate in the realm of business? So, I figured that I would stay another year and get my M.B.A. done. It was very affordable at Lamar and I’m happy I made that choice.
Shelly Vitanza:
Well, you know, a couple of things stand out. First of all, someone was watching your degree plan and they saw that it wouldn’t be that difficult for you to go ahead and pursue your M.B.A. because you had some of those courses. And the other thing that I think that’s notable, Cade in your situation is: I don’t think a lot of people look at Lamar University as a place to go for pre-med.
Cade Johnson:
I don’t think a lot of people look at Lamar University for pre-med either and I’m not entirely sure why. I think the biology department is a great department. The professors there are amazing. Same with the exercise science department. I had great experiences with all my professors in both those departments. Really, the professors are just willing to go above and beyond for me and all of my peers as well to make sure we were successful.
In my particular med school cohort, we placed quite a few, I think more than ever in a single cohort in the history of Lamar into medical schools this past year all over the state of Texas.
Shelly Vitanza:
Well, that is incredible. So, there are quite a few of you who went onto medical school. So, let’s talk about where you are now, so the end of 2020, you are at what medical school?
Cade Johnson:
I’m at McGovern Medical School which is the UT Health Science Center in Houston inside the Medical Center.
Shelly Vitanza:
And how has it been? Have you been prepared? Have you enjoyed the program? Are you pleased with the decision that you’ve made?
Cade Johnson:
Absolutely! And I do feel pleased with the decision that I made by far. I do feel prepared. It’s kind of like drinking from a fire hose when you first start medical school. I don’t think that anybody is used to that volume of information that you’re given during your first semester, so you adjust. You kind of learn along the way and McGovern is really good and has everything formatted to where it’s your first semester, you can really adjust to doing medical school and to injecting that much information and learning how to synthesize it and remember it and apply it.
I think that McGovern does a really excellent job of that. There’s been several times where I’ve felt really prepared just because of a specific class or a specific lecture that was given by professors sometimes in the Biology department, sometimes in the exercise science departments, because the exercise science stuff is clinically applicable, so both of my degrees have actually turned out to be very useful so far this first semester.
Shelly Vitanza:
So, what’s the path forward? How long do you have and what does that look like?
Cade Johnson:
So, I have about three and a half years left. After this semester, I’ll have three years left until I’m finished with medical school. After that, at the end of my third year, during my fourth year, I’ll be doing applications for residency and then I will go through a residency training program which is essentially all your on-the-job training as a doctor.
That program lasts several years, and then, you can, depending on what specialty you’re going into or if you’re going into a specialty or sub-specialty, then you can continue those residency programs with things such as fellowships which is getting a narrower focus as a doctor.
Shelly Vitanza:
And sports medicine is out or that still a consideration?
Cade Johnson:
It’s not entirely out, but it’s not at the top of the list.
Shelly Vitanza:
Got it. So, looking back at LU, what are some of your favorite memories, some of your favorite moments. We talk a lot about, you know, moments here at LU and how important it is to make those memories and those moments. There’s no time like college right? So, what were some of your favorites?
Cade Johnson:
I always thoroughly enjoy the student ambassadors program. I was actually really excited to hear at McGovern that they have an ambassadors program. So, I obviously joined up on that as soon as I could this semester and that’s been a blast even though everything is virtual, it’s still been really fun to participate in those things.
I always think about my time as a student ambassador, working with alumni, working with the school to put on events. That was always a blast for me. I feel like football season was always just a lot of fun, going out and doing tailgating with my fraternity. I still talk to all of those guys on a daily or pretty much every other day basis, so I’m really fond of those memories and then, I talk to the guys that I took most of my classes with on a pretty regular basis as well.
So, doing research in the lab with those guys and hearing what they’re doing at their medical schools and what their plan is based off of how their medical school is set up. It’s always really fun and brings me back to the times we spent in class and late-night studying and all that good stuff.
Shelly Vitanza:
Yeah, perfect. That’s great. Cade, we’re so excited for your success and you make us cardinal proud for sure and you’re welcome back anytime. And hey, football is starting up. We’re going to have Spring football and lot’s of great tailgating of you have time from studies beginning February 20th.
Cade Johnson:
I’m expecting to have a little more free time. They say that the first semester’s the hardest and it get’s easier as you go on and I’m not sure if that’s a product of it actually being a little easier or you just get used to it or a little bit of both. It’s probably a little bit of both. Yeah, I look forward to being able to come back and spend some time at the alma matter LU.
Shelly Vitanza:
We’re proud of you. Thanks for joining us and we hope to see you soon.
Cade Johnson:
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me.
Shelly Vitanza:
Thank you! Looking for something to do? Come on to the LU campus during the holidays December 29th our men’s basketball will take on eastern Louisiana. The game time is 7pm. We’d love to have you here on the Lamar University campus and supporting our men’s basketball team. Alright! Again, Happy New Year! Have a great one, stay safe. I look forward to seeing you in 2021. I’m Shelly Vitanza, the director of public affairs at Lamar University, the pride of Southeast Texas.