After graduating from Duke, our hundreds of alumni continue to build an active community and make us proud as leaders in the field. The Duke Medical Physics Alumni Organization (DMPAA) started a new mentoring initiative, which connects our students with alumni for guidance on a medical physics career – both during and beyond graduate school. In their latest newsletter, President of DMPAA Matt Goss MS (Class of 2007) said, “We quickly realized that the immediacy of board preparation, job and residency interviews, professional development and even issues of program and professional inclusivity could benefit from this kind of program, and created a two-way resource for current and future alumni alike. The reality of remote and distanced correspondence made this idea seem all the more obvious, and our progress is something I’ve been especially happy with.” In addition to the focus areas above, mentors can also help students polish job searching skills, get involved in professional organizations, and strive for work/life balance.
Special thanks to the DMPAA, the Alumni Board, Matt Goss, and Titania Juang (Chief Architect) for launching this initiative at such a key time of need. This initiative will be run exclusively by DMPAA and is independent from the Duke Medical Physics Program. The program launched in December, and already 33 alumni mentors and 17 student and alumni mentees have signed up. The matching process for this cycle is now complete with 13 mentor-mentee matches made through the program and 4 mentees provided with a shortlist of potential mentors who align with their professional goals. Each match will last for a term of 3-12 months based on the needs of the mentoring partnership.
