Alumni Updates
Harper assists with new college of
osteopathic medicine
The Alabama Medical Education Consortium has a mission to establish
and maintain an osteopathic primary care physician pipeline for rural and
underserved Alabama. The consortium accomplishes this mission by sending
students from participating osteopathic medical school programs from all over
the country to various locations throughout the state of Alabama for classroom
education and hospital training. Currently, there are 16 sites in Alabama.
Dr. Clay Harper, zoology/entomology ’92, is the core site director for
Opelika. He attended the University of Alabama School of Medicine
followed by a surgical residency at Carraway Methodist Medical Center in
Birmingham, Ala. For the last nine years, he has worked as a general and
vascular surgeon for the Surgical Clinic in Opelika, Ala. As core site director,
Harper coordinates the clinical-setting training in Opelika for students of the
Alabama Medical Education Consortium.
“A new campus will be built in Dothan, Ala., the name of the school will
change to the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine, and the first full
class will arrive in Dothan in 2014,” Harper said. “At that time, the admissions
process will be identical to what students do for any other medical school,
but the osteopathic school’s training is set up a little differently. Historically,
students would go to UAB or South Alabama in high numbers. In this kind of
training environment, they would do two years of classroom-based instruction
and two years of hospital instruction, but all of the instruction would take
place in Birmingham or Mobile. The Alabama College of Osteopathic
Medicine will allow students to do their two years of classroom instruction,
just like any other medical school, and two years of hospital instruction, just
like any other medical school, but all of the hospital instruction will not take
place in Dothan. The students will be all over the state.”
The hope is that by exposing the students to private medical practices
outside of large medical teaching centers, they might decide to pursue careers
in the primary care disciplines in more rural settings.
“If you look at where healthcare has gone in the last 15 to 20 years, we
have seen a phenomenal increase in sub-specialization. This has left rural areas
without many doctors. The Alabama Medical Education Consortium, and
in the future the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine, gives students
an opportunity during their training phase to get exposure to physicians,
hospitals, and locales that they may not otherwise see. This exposure opens
up practice opportunities for them down the road that they might not have
known existed or been attracted to if their only exposure was in a large
metropolitan, large academic teaching center,” Harper said.
Alumnus named Rhodes Scholarship finalist
Dan Mazzaferro, a graduate student in the College of Business and a
2010 COSAM Honors graduate in chemistry, was invited to interview for the
Rhodes Scholarship. Mazzaferro was recently presented with the Cliff Hare
Award, the highest honor that a male student-athlete can receive at Auburn.
He was the 2011 Southeastern Conference H. Boyd McWhorter Award
winner, which is the top male scholar-athlete of the year in the conference; and
a recipient of the President’s Medal for COSAM. A four-time Academic All
American, Mazzaferro spent four years as a diver on the Auburn University
Swimming and Diving Team.
College of Sciences and Mathematics
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