07/01/2020
Hello, SCMA med student members! If you haven't already met me, I'm Maggie Oliver – an M3 at USC Greenville and your new Chair of the SCMA Med Student Section. Just wanted to drop by to introduce myself and the rest of your newly elected SCMA MSS Governing Council (GC):
• Dory Askins (M4 at USC Greenville) – Board of Trustees representative and former MSS Chair
• Yianni Bakaes (M2 at USC Columbia) – Vice Chair
• Tristan Mackey (M3 at USC Greenville) – Policy Chair
As many of you know, SCMA also has a year-long fellowship program where one student from each SC med school acts as a link between their schools and our statewide GC. Below are this year’s fellows:
• VCOM – Norah Mubarak
• MUSC – Will Randall
• USC Columbia – Alex Giakas
• USC Greenville – Kate Hoffman
I also wanted to take a moment and acknowledge the elephant in the room – that these are strange and stressful times. A global pandemic has put unprecedented stress on our healthcare system and healthcare workers (not to mention drastically changed medical education), meanwhile recent, highly publicized acts of violence against the Black community have exposed some of the many racial inequities built into practically every institution in our country, and sparked worldwide calls for meaningful change. Your voice - and this work - is more important than ever.
I hope to dive more deeply into these urgent issues with all of you in the future, including by highlighting some of the incredible work our student members are already doing to address Covid crises and health disparities in their communities now. But in the meantime, please share this page with all your classmates so we can use it as a platform to communicate important SCMA announcements and advocacy opportunities. (Also huge shout out to Norah, who will be helping manage this page this year!)
Lastly, please don’t hesitate to message/email me at any point if you ever have questions, concerns, or ideas for your SCMA GC!! My email is oliverma@email.sc.edu Hope to meet you all (or at least see you on Zoom) one day soon!