As the state’s only academic health sciences center, UMMC extends its educational mission to health careers students in Mississippi and across the country. Each semester, hundreds of these students converge on UMMC’s Jackson, Grenada and Lexington hospitals for clinical experiences they might not get at their home schools.

(In our best Vincent Price voice:) October is a FRIGHTFUL month for first-year medical GHOULS, with DEVILISH exams at every SCARY turn. (A scream is heard faintly in the background.) What better way to put the BOOks in the GRAVE then to have a GRUESOME pumpkin-carving contest? GRISLY knowledge of vegetable anatomy is not a requirement, but a WICKED advantage. (A werewolf howls.) AHHHAHAHAHA, AHHHHHAHAHAHA!!!

Shawn Johnson East, a 2008 Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics; her husband, Andrew, a former Vanderbilt football player, and PGA Tour golfers Ryan Armour, Austin Cook and Shawn Stefani took a break from the Sanderson Farms Championship to visit patients at Batson Children’s Hospital Oct. 24.

Medical Center leadership is proud to announce the following additions to its faculty and leadership staff.

Almost three dozen Medical Center faculty members and students earn membership in the Phi Kappa Phi national honorary, while an assistant professor of health sciences collaborates with a colleague from Northern University to capture a Beyond the Call of Duty Award.