MMC’s Center for Health, Human Development, and Creativity Helps Students Find Their Way
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Caitlyn Garofalo ’23 thought she had her career path all figured out. A Biology major and Dance minor, she’d decided in high school on becoming a physical therapist after foot surgery required her to spend months in rehab. It was a physical therapist, she recalled, who offered her the encouragement she needed when she worried about her progress and possibly not being able to dance again. “She really helped me, and it made me want to be that kind of figure in other people’s journeys,” Garofalo said. “So, pursuing physical therapy after college was always in the back of my mind.”
That changed, however, after internships during her senior year at MMC gave her a taste of what working in the field was like. “I realized, wow, I just can’t see myself doing this. I didn’t enjoy it at all,” Garofalo said.
Confused about her next steps, she did what the College encourages all students interested in the helping professions to do: She turned to MMC’s Center for Health, Human Development, and Creativity.
Garofalo was no stranger to the center, having worked with its Pre-Health Advisor, Eugene Rubin, to find internship opportunities and strategize for classes. He helped her home in on what she most enjoyed about past work experiences, particularly a stint at a nursing home. This month, Garofalo will begin an accelerated nursing program at Pace, one of several Rubin helped her research and apply to. “I love helping people—it was just a matter of finding the right fit for me,” she said. “I’m so grateful to Mr. Rubin and the center for helping me figure it out.”
That’s the kind of impact the center has sought to have since it was established in 2022 to aid students, regardless of major, in exploring career opportunities in health or how health and well-being intersect with their creative goals. As just one measure of its success, MMC graduates and post-bac students the center assisted in applying to medical schools had a 100 percent acceptance rate during the 2024 application cycle.
Now, as it marks its second anniversary, Rubin and the center’s director, Psychology Professor Nava Silton, Ph.D., are celebrating those achievements—and hoping to engage even more students with an ever-growing list of programming. One of the center’s offerings, a Pre-Health Peer Mentorship Program, has even earned national recognition, with pre-health counselors at other schools looking to it as a model.
The initiative pairs juniors and seniors with incoming first-year students whom they meet with throughout the academic year under Rubin’s guidance. The center recruits for it widely across the College but has also done targeted outreach to MMC’s Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), resulting in a high rate of participation from HEOP students.
Dr. Silton said the program, which she and Rubin launched last year with 30 participants, stands out as one of the center’s crown jewels.
“The Pre-Health Peer Mentorship Program gives students two layers of scaffolding,” Dr. Silton said. “That way, not only will first-year students be able to connect with a faculty advisor but also with this wonderful peer mentor, who has been in their shoes and can offer helpful information from a student’s perspective.”
In addition to helping first-year students see the road ahead, the program also bolsters upperclass volunteers, Rubin said. “Our peer mentors are thrilled to be getting leadership experience, which increases their confidence in other areas.”
I love helping people—it was just a matter of finding the right fit for me. I’m so grateful to Mr. Rubin and the center for helping me figure it out.
–Caitlyn Garofalo ’23
Indeed, peer mentor Misha Puello Brasil ’25, a double major in Psychology and English, said the role is good practice for becoming a professor—one of her career goals—and a useful way to make connections. Moreover, she remembers how helpful it was to befriend an older peer in her major as an underclass student. “I became more confident and gained a lot of experience and connections through that one association and friendship,” she said. “Now, I get to have the opportunity to be that guiding friend for someone else in a big city like New York.”
Rubin pitched the program after participating in a webinar for new advisors organized by the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions (NAAHP) in 2022. The topic of peer mentoring came up in the discussion, and seeing its promise, he dove into developing training materials and recruiting participants. In June 2024, he was invited to give a presentation on MMC’s peer mentorship program at NAAHP’s national conference and offer colleagues guidelines for launching their own efforts based on MMC’s model. “It was a full circle moment,” he said.
In addition to peer mentoring and pre-health advisement, the center also manages linkage agreements with graduate programs at Thomas Jefferson University and Touro University, bringing an added layer of support for MMC student applicants. Under the agreements, the two schools offer additional admissions assistance and priority consideration to MMC students considering programs such as Osteopathic Medicine and Art Therapy.
And, as perhaps the center’s most visible initiative, there’s the monthly speaker series, which invites practitioners, educators, and other experts to shed light on career paths in health, the grad or medical school application process, and entering the job market. This semester, Rubin is teaching “Health in New York City,” a new NYC Seminar that examines how NYC has overcome health challenges; he plans to anchor one of its classes around an upcoming speaker on LGBTQ+ health. “It’s a nice opportunity for our students to learn more about the topic and also about the work of the center,” he said.
A path to publishing
Another benefit for those served by the center is the opportunity to collaborate on projects with Dr. Silton, who has a strong track record for helping students publish the work they produce.
Dr. Silton’s 2023 textbook, Exploring the Benefit of Creative Arts Therapies for Children, Adolescents, and Adults, featured eight student and alumni contributors; her ninth book, Challenges and Opportunities for Women, Parenting, and Child Development, published this summer, does the same. The book includes work from students in Dr. Silton’s senior seminar class, as well as students from the Center for Health, Human Development, and Creativity, who either served as peer reviewers or submitted research reviews.
As part of the process, they learn the skills needed to become scholarly authors. “They’re learning how to properly cite studies, how to engage 15 to 30 research articles, and how to really integrate the research,” Dr. Silton said. “Some of them actually do experiments or surveys that go along with their literature review.”
Moreover, their inclusion in the book is likely to be helpful to them when they apply to graduate school or for jobs later on—one reason Dr. Silton encourages them to create deliverables that have lasting impact.
“I always like to take students to the next level as opposed to just leaving their work as a class submission,” she said. “If they’re dedicating so much time and effort to it, why not give them the extra tools they need to make it publishable so that they can use it for journal articles, conferences, graduate school applications, interviews and more!”
Published: September 18, 2024
MMC Psychology Professor Channels the Power of Creativity in New Children’s Game, Textbook
What do a college textbook and a tabletop children’s game have in common? As two of the newest projects from Nava Silton Ph.D., an MMC psychology professor and director of the Center for Health, Human Development, and Creativity, they share a similar mission and supporting cast—even if they’ll wind up in the hands of very different audiences.
