Emily Stutheit MDEmily Stutheit

Emily Stutheit’s desire to become a doctor started with helping her father, a single dad, raise her younger sister, Kate.

“That’s when I realized that helping people made me feel really valuable,” says Ms. Stutheit, 22, a first-year medical student at EVMS. She received the 2022-2023 MD Alumni Scholarship, which provides tuition assistance.

“I want to be a doctor and help as many people as I can,” she says. She wants to form long-term connections with patients and play a role in the community.

While she’s keeping an open mind about which field of medicine to pursue, she is interested in obstetrics and gynecology. She enjoyed working as a doula at North Carolina Women’s Hospital in Chapel Hill while she was an undergraduate studying biology at UNC Chapel Hill with a double minor in chemistry and medical anthropology. She also interned with an addiction treatment program while in college.

Ms. Stutheit wanted to attend EVMS because of the school’s emphasis on community. “A lot of medical schools talk about ‘community is really important to us, service is important to us,’ ” she says. “At EVMS, I really felt it.”

EVMS integrates community volunteering into the curriculum, she says. “It really seems like, ‘We want to teach you how to be a good person, and that will make you a good physician,’ ” she says.

Ms. Stutheit is very grateful for the scholarship because it means she doesn’t have to worry about finding the money to pay for school, allowing her to fully focus on her studies as well as volunteer. She’s part of REVIVE!, a Community-Engaged Learning program in which medical students lead trainings and research projects to better define Hampton Roads’ opioids crisis and barriers to care.

She also is excited about getting to meet alumni through the scholarship and learn as much as she can from them. “These are the people who have been where I am and they are already at places I am dreaming of being way, way down the line,” she says. She values the peace of mind that comes from knowing that these alumni “already have my back.”

Emily Stutheit’s desire to become a doctor started with helping her father, a single dad, raise her younger sister, Kate.

“That’s when I realized that helping people made me feel really valuable,” says Ms. Stutheit, 22, a first-year medical student at EVMS. She received the 2022-2023 MD Alumni Scholarship, which provides tuition assistance.

“I want to be a doctor and help as many people as I can,” she says. She wants to form long-term connections with patients and play a role in the community.

While she’s keeping an open mind about which field of medicine to pursue, she is interested in obstetrics and gynecology. She enjoyed working as a doula at North Carolina Women’s Hospital in Chapel Hill while she was an undergraduate studying biology at UNC Chapel Hill with a double minor in chemistry and medical anthropology. She also interned with an addiction treatment program while in college.

Ms. Stutheit wanted to attend EVMS because of the school’s emphasis on community. “A lot of medical schools talk about ‘community is really important to us, service is important to us,’ ” she says. “At EVMS, I really felt it.”

EVMS integrates community volunteering into the curriculum, she says. “It really seems like, ‘We want to teach you how to be a good person, and that will make you a good physician,’ ” she says.

Ms. Stutheit is very grateful for the scholarship because it means she doesn’t have to worry about finding the money to pay for school, allowing her to fully focus on her studies as well as volunteer. She’s part of  REVIVE!, a Community-Engaged Learning program in which medical students lead trainings and research projects to better define Hampton Roads’ opioids crisis and barriers to care.

She also is excited about getting to meet alumni through the scholarship and learn as much as she can from them. “These are the people who have been where I am and they are already at places I am dreaming of being way, way down the line,” she says. She values the peace of mind that comes from knowing that these alumni “already have my back.”

Katie KolbKatie Kolb smiles at the camera wearing her white coat

Katie Kolb, MD Class of 2025, hopes to one day start a specialty clinic to care for rural patients in southwestern Virginia. Thanks to the EVMS MD Alumni Scholarship, Ms. Kolb now has additional support to help her achieve that dream.

Giving back isn’t new to the second-year medical student. Ms. Kolb’s strong commitment to community service set her apart from other competitive applicants. In her application, Ms. Kolb highlighted two youth-focused programs she helped to establish in her home county of Lee, Virginia.

The first program, Mentoring Lee’s Future, draws on partnerships with local government officials and nonprofits to connect 9- to 18-year-olds from at-risk backgrounds with trusted adult role models. Before the program was created, “there was not a local mentoring program for youth in the general population,” Ms. Kolb says. Mentoring Lee’s Future is currently training its first group of mentors. Thanks to Ms. Kolb’s efforts, the group also was selected to participate in a pilot program for MentorHub, a start-up app that provides resources for mentors and mentees.

While launching Mentoring Lee’s Future, Ms. Kolb also worked on her undergraduate senior project at William & Mary. From personal experience, Ms. Kolb knew that high school students from her hometown lacked access to higher level STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) courses. “I felt very unprepared compared to my peers who attended high schools with more funding and who had access to opportunities at local colleges,” Ms.Kolb says. She created BEECH (Biology Enrichment & Career Help), a website designed to help students access high-level science activities online. Ms. Kolb hopes her site inspires more students from rural Virginia to build their skills and eventually pursue careers in STEM fields.

Ms.Kolb’s personal dedication to her community makes her an ideal recipient of the EVMS MD Alumni Scholarship. Founded by the community for the community, EVMS remains a service-based school with an enduring commitment to improving health outcomes and reducing health disparities in Hampton Roads. Providing financial assistance to promising members of the next generation of providers is an investment in that commitment.

“This scholarship allows me to move toward my goal of helping rural patients,” Ms. Kolb says. “It also helped me gain more confidence in myself since starting medical school.”

To support EVMS MD students such as Ms. Kolb, give now. Select the EVMS MD Alumni Scholarship from the drop-down menu. Your donation will help future alumni continue to make a community impact.