Rachael Gordon '12

Rachael Gordon ’12

We caught up with alumna Rachael Gordon recently on what she has been up to since graduating from Chapman University in 2012 with a BS in Biological Sciences. She has certainly been busy!

On May 14th, she will graduate from University of Southern California with her Masters of Public Health (MPH), emphasis in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Although, she says her classes were challenging, she managed to maintain an A average.

She also found time to serve as the secretary of the MaPHSA program, which is the Masters of Public Health Student Association.  This organization helps to plan events and mixers for the students, as they are mostly commuters.

Gordon was also named an ambassador for the program.  As an ambassador, she was flown to Boston in October for the American Public Health Association conference, and she assisted current and prospective students.

Gordon has recently finished up her time at HealthCare Partners, where she was working on a study in data entry and was asked to become the project manager for it. This allowed her to both work and complete the required 400-hour practicum for USC’s MPH program.

The project she worked on was funded by Blue Shield and looked at diabetes and how HealthCare Partners can better provide care for its high-risk patients.  One of the focuses of the project was how incentives can help these patients control their diabetes through the use of group appointments. Gordon said, “Being a project manager had its many challenges, but I have learned a lot and the information I have learned at school has really helped me.”

Perhaps Gordon’s most exciting news is that she has been recruited and accepted a Research Coordinator position at Keck School of Medicine of USC.  She was recruited by the GI/Liver department and will be working with two doctors on all of their research studies.  She will be helping write protocols, get IRB ok, recruit patients, help through the study process and help write up the papers to be published on them.  She has just begun this position as a student worker and will be hired on full-time after graduation.  She says she is still interested in going to medical school and potentially doing MD/PhD, but wants to take some time off before diving back into school.  “I feel that this position will really help me for the future, since I will be working in the hospital setting and will be published on multiple clinical trials.”

Congratulations, Rachael, on all your exciting accomplishments!

We love hearing from our alumni. If you have some great news to share, let us know! And if you would like to write a guest blog post for the Schmid College blog- we welcome your submissions! Just go to https://blogs.chapman.edu. click on “Write your story” and make sure to submit it to Schmid College of Science and Technology or the Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences.