From Metatarsals to Neurons: Earlhamites at 2024 HOSA Conference

Earlham College students won big over the summer during the annual international HOSA conference in Houston, Texas. Earlhamites Jasmyn Meeker, Ashutosh Mishra, Linh Nguyen and Luticia Youssef all represented the College over the summer in the respective categories of sports medicine, medical terminology, behavioral health, and pathophysiology.  Meeker placed second place in Sports Medicine in the International competition, with Nguyen and Mishra both placing within the Top 10, but all achieved significant success at this exciting competition.

“I found the conference pretty interesting, it’s different than anything I’ve done before,” says Meeker, a Biochemistry major and junior at Earlham. 

HOSA is a global student-led organization that prepares high-schoolers and collegiates to become the next leaders in the health professions. In addition to providing a unique program of leadership development and recognition for students, HOSA annually holds competitions at the regional, state, national and international levels where students can test their mettle and medical know-how against other schools and institutions. 

“We want to make sure our students have a career-discerning experience while here at Earlham, and HOSA serves that role,” says Peter Blair, Earlham’s Director of the Center for Global Health and a professor of biology. He thanks Earlhamite and current global programs coordinator Megan Bennett, alongside Earlhamite Brittany Timmerman, both graduates from the Class of 2020, for being the students to lead the charge for establishing a HOSA chapter on campus. For Bennett, she and three other Earlhamites competed in the international conference in Dallas, Texas.

Prep for the conference includes lots of studying, on top of other plans.  “All of us had to be proactive in studying,” says Nguyen, a pre-med neuroscience major at Earlham. “There are plenty of subjects you would never know if they would cover, and we had two months to prepare for the state level, and around the same amount of time to prepare for the international level. Honestly, it was a bit intense in terms of what we had to learn in two to four months.”

Intense? Absolutely — but also rewarding, and a staple for Earlham, with this being one of several placements in the top performers at the HOSA international conference over the years.

The competition is fairly simple in practice; participants have the option of either a multiple choice or activity test, depending on the category they’re competing in. Outside of the competition, attendees can visit expos where vendors display and demonstrate new medical technologies, or schools advertise for upcoming programs. There’s also the opportunity for sight-seeing, which Meeker, Nguyen, and Mishra absolutely took advantage of. The NASA space center in Houston was a fan favorite of the trip.

Nguyen credits Blair for getting her involved, saying that she was curious and just wanted some additional career experience. As Meeker would tell it, with a smirk on her face, she didn’t really know what she was getting into until after the fact, but joined purely for the experience and out of curiosity.

“Especially with it being an academic competition, that was new for me, I’ve never really experienced anything like that before.  I really enjoyed it and I learned things as I went along,” says Meeker.

All three agree that the experience was intense but are grateful to Earlham for preparing them to thrive at the conference.

“Resources to prepare for the conference aren’t free, and that’s one of the biggest hinderances for participation,” says Mishra, a sophomore Biochemistry major who had previous experience with HOSA through Richmond High School. 

Specifically, Mishra placed fourth in medical terminology at the international conference, and is next in line to be Earlham’s student leader for HOSA. Its former student leader, Nico Quijano Franco, has since graduated and become a career coach and pre-health adviser for Earlham’s Center for Career Education. Blair is also preparing for sabbatical, so Mishra will have big shoes to fill this upcoming year. It’s no sweat for him, though, and he’s eager to get more students involved.

“I really wish and feel like more students should get involved,” says Bennett, “especially if they’re interested in medical humanities, global health, and social justice. HOSA conferences have a habit of emphasizing those in their programming. I love HOSA, it opened doors for me and made my master of science degree possible.” Bennett was able to pursue a Master’s in Global Health with a focus on International Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim after graduating from the College in 2020.

“As far as the academic side and being prepared, I feel like my coursework prepared me, especially the ones steered towards my interest in sports medicine,” says Meeker. “It wasn’t just knowing stuff, it was understanding it and knowing how to apply it.”

Blair agrees and notes that he’s impressed by how young our students were for this year’s competition. The youthfulness of this year’s participants is something to celebrate.

“The students who went on to the international conference in Houston are still early in their careers at Earlham,” says Blair. “I think that’s remarkable. They’ve already gained enough experience, exposure, and intellectual capacity to compete at the highest level. That excites me as the director of the Center for Global Health and makes me especially proud of their accomplishments.”

Story by Earlham writer/editor Jay Kibble, for Earlham’s Office of Marketing and Communications

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About Earlham College 

Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion foster a collaborative learning community that inspires and motivates students with transformative opportunities and experiences so they can become catalysts for good in a changing world. Located in Richmond, Indiana, Earlham is one of U.S. News & World Report’s Top 100 national liberal arts colleges and offers one of the top 20 classroom experiences in the nation, according to the Princeton Review.