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The Pre-PA Summer Mastermind is a 12-week, remote, asynchronous, health literacy program that uses a combination of modules and workshops to focus on teaching verbal and visual healthcare communication skills (digital drawing!), improving health literacy education, and providing exposure to 8 different areas of medicine.

The Mastermind is open to all undergraduate students — from freshman to seniors — and to those who have recently completed their undergraduate degrees.

Absolutely not! In fact, this program was specifically designed for non-artists. We teach digital drawing skills because the learning curve is much quicker. With that being said, it definitely doesn’t hurt to have an art background, and we designed the program with the intention that those with previous art skills will also gain super useful skills as well!

The Summer Mastermind starts the first week of June. You will have access to all the fellowship materials for 12 weeks.

Based on the experiences of students in previous cohorts, you can expect to spend about 2-3 hours per module, so if you do about one module a week, it comes out to 2-3 hours on a weekly basis. This timeframe also takes into account time spent practicing and reviewing drawings. Since the program is asynchronous, how much time you want to spend practicing your skills is completely up to you — we believe that the best way to improve your skills is by practicing!

Yes! In fact, we actually recommend our Fellows to participate in other pre-med related activities over the summer in addition to being a part of the Fellowship. The asynchronous fellowship was designed specifically to allow our Fellows to not only get involved in other opportunities over the summer, but also to provide time to have fun as well! We encourage our Fellows to try to find shadowing opportunities throughout the summer as we have seen the Fellowship enhance their experience in clinical settings, and vice versa.

In short, you’ll get an exposure to different areas of medicine, an ability to improve your drawing skills, an understanding of health literacy concepts and strategies to improve your healthcare communication.

It’s best to learn these skills as early as possible and you definitely shouldn’t wait until you’re in medical school to learn them. You can use these skills to help you study for your pre-med classes, draw for research papers, and even draw for patients during shadowing opportunities — the perfect way to give you a competitive edge and to open new opportunities for yourself. And these skills improve exponentially over time! If you wait until Medical school, you’ll be busy studying, taking exams, and doing clinical, and it will be much harder to properly pick up these skills.

Yes, the program is completely asynchronous. However, we do offer opportunities to attend several live, optional health literacy workshops.

Yes, we provide a certification of completion once the Fellowship ends.

You will need an iPad or a tablet, as well as a stencil to draw with. We recommend using an iPad, as the modules are taught through a program called Procreate, which is only available through apple products. With that being said, there are alternative programs available for PC tablets that can be used.