Eight medical students at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine each recently received an Outstanding Student Award for 2023-24.

The cohort consisted of four students who are now M2s and four current M3s.

M2 students to earn the award were Tai Metzger, Tate Shepherd, Trenton Reinicke, and Conrad Phelan.

M3s students were Forrest Bohler, Jessica Cummings, Kaitlyn Butzin, and Mark Whitton.

“To me, it means I have found my stride in a difficult career pathway, and I am thrilled to continue building on such achievement and potential throughout the near future,” said Whitton.

“Everyone here works really hard and is involved in volunteering, student groups, and so on,” said Phelan. “I appreciate being selected from this impressive group.”

‘So honored’

The Outstanding Student Awards began in 2012 as course awards and have evolved to what it is today.

The Student Awards Committee uses a rubric to identify recipients. The committee gathers and reviews data obtained from the student nominees related to academic excellence, service, leadership, and activities related to DEI and scholarship.

Cummings, for example, volunteers regularly at the Luke Clinic, which is a free clinic for prenatal and pediatric care in Detroit. She also volunteers with Street Medicine Oakland and the Student Run Free Clinic held at Pontiac’s Gary Burnstein Community Health Clinic.

She also is founder and president of Students for Rare, vice president of the Lifestyle Medicine Interest Group, and volunteers as a tutor for middle and high school students.

Further, Cummings has published research on the benefits of nutrition seminars, plant-based diet education for medical students, and the prevalence of eating disorder risk among medical students.

This is the second time Cummings has been named an outstanding student. (The first time was for the 2021-22 school year.)

“I feel so honored to receive this award again,” she said. “My family and I have been through a lot since my first year of medical school, so receiving this recognition a second time under completely different conditions feels like such a gift, and a testament to the strength and courage we've had to have to continue moving forward.”

Also returning to the list of outstanding students is Bohler.

He has been extremely active in research and has published 31 articles since he started at OUWB. Bohler’s work has appeared in publications such as Health Affairs (the top-rated journal in the category of Health Policy and Services) and JAMA Ophthalmology.

Further, he currently has five others that have been accepted and are in pre-production.

“I love when I’m doing research because it forces me to read other people’s research, which is the best way to stay current or ahead of the game,” he said. “It’s a continuous learning process.”

Returning to the list of outstanding students made him feel “super happy.”

“To get it among my super talented peers was awesome,” he said.

‘Very fortunate’

Other students generally expressed gratitude and talked about what it meant for them to be recognized as outstanding.

Butzin said she felt “honored.” Among other things, she’s participated in the La Casa Amiga Mentorship Program, worked as a group and individual AFCP Peer Tutor for M1s, and was co-founder of CareMed, a program to support caregiving medical students.

“It means a lot to be recognized for my hard work by the OUWB faculty,” she said. “Knowing that I have made an impact at this school in my first two years here is so humbling, and I am grateful to be acknowledged alongside my fellow classmates.”

Shepherd’s accomplishments include co-founding and serving as co-manager/instructor for the nonprofit First Aid Access, a certified BLS instructor with the American Heart Association, M1 representative for the Oncology Interest Group and Emergency Medicine Interest Group.

“I am continually amazed at the intelligence and hard work exhibited by my peers here at OUWB, so even to be nominated for this award was an honor,” he said. “I can only imagine that the award committee had many excellent candidates to choose from and I feel very fortunate to receive this distinction.”

Metzger is OUWB’s delegate to the Michigan State Medical Society, a local delegate representative for the OUWB chapter of the American Medical Association, president of the OUWB Christian Medical Student Association, and vice president of the Internal Medicine Interest Group.

“I'm mainly just very grateful and honored to receive the award since our class is full of so many passionate and accomplished people,” he said.

Over the summer, Reinicke was among 25 medical students from across the U.S. selected to participate in the MD Anderson Cancer Center SOAR program. He also serves as president of the Oncology Interest Group.

He expressed gratitude for being named an OUWB outstanding student.

“When I received this award, I was just thankful,” said Reinicke. “We have a class full of outstanding students and to be recognized for this award is such an honor.”

For more information, contact Andrew Dietderich, senior marketing specialist, OUWB, at [email protected].

To request an interview, visit the OUWB Communications & Marketing webpage.

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