Summer Moukalled ’25

Welcoming Community

My favorite part of UNE is our community. Everyone from our professors to the students have been phenomenal.

Right off the bat, I felt very welcomed in the College of Osteopathic Medicine (COM) community. I could tell that the professors truly cared about us. The faculty are genuinely passionate about their practice and care about being our educators, which I know isn’t necessarily the case at some medical schools.

The student body is [welcoming] like that too. We are all inclusive. We share resources and help each other out while preparing for exams.

There's a lot of diversity [in COM] and you get people from all walks of life. I’m in my early thirties and we have a wide range of students so no one feels left out.

Beyond the Classroom

Research is something that is very important to me and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to participate in research [at UNE]. It’s definitely a challenge to juggle being a medical student and conducting research at times, but I ultimately want to be a physician who is researching so it’s worth the experience.

I’ve been able to take on a role as a student research assistant [at CEPH]. We are working on a project called Reducing Student Exposure to Digital Food and Beverage Marketing. We are writing a guide for policy use at the state level with recommendations for schools to help reduce student exposure to [harmful] digital food and beverage marketing. I have a background working in a digital wellness lab so it’s been cool to integrate that into my time as a student and research here.