‘Very grateful and humbled’

An OUWB alumnus from the Class of 2019 recently was among Oakland University’s 2024 Young Alumni 10 Within 10 award recipients.

Jessica Dzubnar Barker, M.D., was recognized during the Oakland University Alumni Night of Excellence on June 1.

The Young Alumni 10 Within 10 Awards are awarded to exceptional young alumni who make an impact within their professions and throughout their communities. Recipients have graduated within the last 10 years and are 35 years old or younger.  

Any OUWB alumni can be nominated to receive the award. (Nominations are submitted to Jordan Nash, development associate, OUWB.)

Nominees are reviewed and selected by an alumni committee that consists of OU alumni.

“I was really surprised,” said Barker, currently a general surgery resident as University of California San Francisco, East Bay. “It was very nice to receive the recognition and helped me feel like I’m headed in the right direction. I’m very grateful and humbled.”

‘A good fit’

Barker grew up in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. She attended University of California, Berkley, for her undergraduate degree.

The sciences and medicine were always of interest to her.

In high school, for example, she participated in Medical Explorers, a program offered to all youngsters by the Boy Scouts of America. Barker says she was able to learn more about how hospitals operate and had opportunities to talk with various clinicians.

At the same time, Barker — a middle sibling — says she always felt a calling to help others.

“Those pieces added up to me wanting to be in the medical field,” she says. “And I knew that I wanted to be the one who had the training and was the one making decisions and serving as the leader of a team.”

“That’s why it was always worth it to keep applying to be able to become a physician,” she adds.

It took her four years, three application cycles, and retaking the MCAT (due to an expired score), to make it in, she said.

Her persistence and hard work paid off as she was accepted by OUWB as a member of the Class of 2019.

It was an especially exciting time when she learned she had been admitted because just days later her younger brother, Nick Dzubnar, was signed as an undrafted free agency by the NFL’s San Diego Chargers.

“(OUWB) really ended up being a good fit,” she says. “Because I viewed it as such a great opportunity, I embraced it and really got involved. I think that made a huge difference.”

At OUWB, Barker’s participation in student government, intramural sports, and peer tutoring underscored her dedication and commitment to make the most of the opportunities that came her way.

She was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society — further evidence of a desire to make the most of what OUWB had to offer.

It’s also where she met her husband, Chase Barker, M.D., OUWB ’20. (They welcomed a baby, Jack, in April.)

“Coming to OUWB, I really wanted to make sure that I felt a part of it,” she says. “Getting involved with student organizations and student government really helped me understand the bigger picture about medical education.”

Jessica Dzubnar Barker, M.D., Chase Barker, M.D., and their son, Jack.

‘A full circle moment’

Today, Barker is a general surgery resident at UCSF East Bay. (She notes that there are two other OUWB alumni also now in the program.)

The program offers an option to take two years of research, which she recently completed at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center near Los Angeles.

She has two more years of general surgery residency and plans to soon apply for a breast surgical oncology fellowship at the same program.

Barker says OUWB prepared her in many ways for this stage in her career.

“At OUWB, one of the biggest things for me was a sense of community…not just within the school, but also the overall community,” says Barker. “That was something that I really looked for in my residency.”

Barker says her residency “has been a good fit… tough, but very fulfilling.”

“One of the biggest takeaways I had from OUWB was the focus on high level of compassion,” says Barker. “Coming to a community setting (for residency), it was really easy to apply those skills that we had learned.”

In just one example, Barker points to her intern year, when she had to have many difficult conversations with loved ones of patients who had COVID-19.

“I definitely felt prepared in terms of being able to face some of those emotional challenges and being an advocate for patients,” she says.

Barker says OUWB not only prepared her for clinical procedures, but in other ways, too.

“How do you cope with certain clinical procedures? How do you interact with other people? How do you care for people beyond just treating the disease?” says Barker.

Additionally, says Barker, OUWB prepared her for leadership roles because “I enjoy teaching others and I always so appreciated when somebody took the time to teach me.”

“That was very much a part of the OUWB culture, so it was very easy for me to translate that into my residency,” she says.

One of her favorite memories at OUWB is when Founding Dean Robert Folberg, M.D., chatted with her right before she took her Step 1 exam.

“He saw that I was really stressed out and we had this nice talk about Step 1 and how you’re more than a score,” she says. “I just remember feeling very supported on every level at OUWB.”

And, of course, there are the many fond memories she has of her classmates, like Camden Burk, M.D., and Jacquelyn Cameron, M.D., both OUWB ’19. In fact, when Burk got married at Meadow Brook Hall, the trio recreated some of the same kind of photos they took at their White Coat Ceremony.

“It was definitely a full circle moment that was really special,” she says.

And it’s the kind of memory that often reminds her of what OUWB meant — and continues to mean — to her.

“All of these memories add up…OUWB was a really great experience,” she says.