Alum Spotlight: Chelsea Osuji, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

Chelsea Osuji is currently a fourth year medical student at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She utilized her time at Rutgers School of Graduate Studies to undertake various leadership roles and strive toward academic excellence, ultimately culminating in her acceptance into Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Osuji recalled that she enrolled in the Master’s program “to extend my knowledge within the health sciences, particularly in the courses most relevant to medical school. I believe these classes have solidified my foundation of the sciences, addressed areas of understanding that were lacking, and allowed me to become knowledgeable in areas that I personally found interesting.” One of her favorite electives, Topics in Pharmacology, taught by Dr. Lester Sultatos, gave her a “great understanding of concepts in immunology and cell biology as well as the connection between them. While much of science can often feel abstract, I really enjoyed how everything we learned in this course felt directly applicable despite being taught on a molecular level.”

Osuji also worked as a Case Manager, and ultimately the Case Manager Director, for the New Jersey Medical School’s Student Family Health Care Center (SFHCC), a free clinic which offers yearly positions to Master’s students from the Rutgers School of Graduate Studies Newark-RBHS. Additionally, Osuji was elected president of GSBS Squared, a tutoring and mentoring partnership between Rutgers and nearby Science Park High School. To further maximize her time, Osuji utilized her summer to pursue her interests in research, working as a research assistant at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Prior to her matriculation into Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Osuji worked as a full-time research associate at the Yale School of Medicine. Osuji said that in this position she used “techniques that were first introduced to me in the program on a daily basis and am able to apply knowledge from my coursework directly to my research.” Osuji believes that with hard work and dedication “there is nothing that you cannot accomplish.” At the Newark Health Science Campus of Rutgers, she turned her dreams into reality through hard work and now it is your turn to do the same!