Naperville School District 203 held its inaugural Student Medical Conference.
Around 150 high schoolers explored professions in the healthcare industry during the all-day event at NIU’s Naperville campus.
“Personally I’m really interested in the medical field, specifically neuroscience, but don’t really know where I want to go with that or do with it. And I thought this would be a great experience to see different health professions and experience what it would kind of actually be like to do it,” said Jordan Young, a junior at Naperville North.
“It was the same for me. I wanted to do nursing for a really long time but thanks to this I figured out that there’s different options as well and that nursing isn’t the only thing I can go into. I just really like that,” said Jasmine Simpson, a senior at Naperville North.
Students sat in at breakout sessions focused on specific fields within medicine, where they could ask professionals questions and learn about what led them to their careers.
“Education for these young kids is really important to me. I do a lot of training and education of students and residents in my own practice where they rotate through and shadow. So I thought an opportunity to come in and educate them about what I do, which is podiatry, which I love very much, was a great opportunity. Because at this young age they don’t usually get exposed to this type of information, to be able to make some decisions about where they want to go,” explained Dr. Leonard Vekkos representing Foot & Ankle Wellness Center at the conference.
District 203 organizers say with such high interest in the inaugural conference, it’s sure to return next year.
Naperville News 17’s Christine Lena reports.