Articles

HCC students set precedent at National School of Tropical Medicine summer institute

Jun 26, 2025

Caption: (L-R): HCC Coleman College students Neha Singh, Oyinoluwa Ogunjobi, Shelly Turner and Brittany Clarke.

Four students from HCC Coleman College set a precedent as the first students from a two-year institution to attend the National School of Tropical Medicine (NSTM) at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) Summer Institute June 9-20, 2025.

The four students who participated in the summer institute were: Brittany Clarke, Licensed Vocational Nursing (LVN); Shelly Turner, LVN; Neha Singh, Medical Assistant; and Oyinoluwa Ogunjobi, Medical Assistant. All are members of the Class of 2025.

Headed by internationally recognized physician and scientist Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., NSTM dean at BCM, the institute addresses the most pressing tropical diseases that affect the world’s most poverty-stricken populations.

The intensive, two-week summer institute is designed to introduce students to the field of tropical medicine, covering areas such as global health, epidemiology and public health. It has traditionally been open to health science students from four-year universities.

In addition to lectures and labs, students were required to apply their knowledge and research skills to deliver a capstone project. As a capstone project, the HCC students worked with other health science students on a presentation that addressed an existing global disease and provided healthcare practice solutions.

HCC Coleman College collaborated with NSTM at BCM earlier in the year so students could participate in the summer institute, according to HCC Coleman College President Lutricia Harrison, DNP.

“At HCC Coleman College, we try to provide as many immersive educational experiences as possible,” Dr. Harrison said. “The summer institute was an opportunity for our students to gain hands-on laboratory experience, engage with leading medical experts, and dive into life-saving research. They were able to further their understanding of disease control, biotechnology development and health policy, and they gained career insight in the global health fields.”

Turner, a nursing student, believed the summer institute will help her become a better nurse because it fully exposed her to the field of epidemiology, particularly in the areas of parasitic diseases.

“As a nurse, being part of program allowed me to look at the ‘bigger picture.’ It’s going to help me dig deeper and think more critically when I assess patients,” Turner said. “For instance, we can think a person’s symptoms are just food poisoning, but we may consider that there can be an actual parasite in the person’s intestines.”

“I was able to get a glimpse of global health care, and that made me appreciate my living conditions and health system even more,” she added.

The costs of attending the institute were covered by the HCC Foundation.