ALEX, the artificially intelligent medical mannequin and current star of Monongalia County Schools’ MedEd program, can do a lot of things.
Board of Education members discovered that during their meeting Tuesday night.
For the benefit of aspiring medical techs, nurses and physicians enrolled in MedEd, ALEX can present – as a real-life patient in the emergency room would – with a bevy of medical maladies.
He can be a small child with big case of the flu.
He can be a middle-aged woman, complaining of back pain and breathing issues.
Or, an elderly grandfather in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s.
MedEd students showcased the mannequin’s abilities during that meeting.
Sadie Braun, a Morgantown High School junior enrolled in MedEd, said ALEX is filling a prescription of academic success for her.
“I’m glad I’m not sitting in a classroom looking at videos,” said the student, who wants to be an obstetrician focusing on high-risk pregnancies.
“That’s not how I learn,” she said. “This is hand-on, interactive.”
However, what ALEX can’t do is create more learning space, with more of the actual diagnostic equipment, that all those aspiring techs, nurses and doctors can continue to use while still in high school.
Mon citizens, though, can help that prognosis, board members said – during the primary election in May.
That’s when taxpayers will be asked to support a $142.6 bond call come May 14, an outlay that would build the district’s first school devoted solely to science, technology, engineering, and math pursuits.
Students from MHS, University High and Clay-Battelle would be able to rotate in and out of the stand-alone STEM school for specialized training and in-depth courses, everything from medicine to automobile mechanics, related to their career goals and interests.
And, students wouldn’t have to sacrifice core requirements or extracurricular activities at their respective home high schools – as can be case with current models of career technical education in Mon and everywhere else.
BOE members, fresh off a road trip Monday to Leesburg, Va., and the Academies of Loudoun, a similar school that inspired the proposed Renaissance Academy, wanted to showcase what a popular program in its first year could really accomplish with such infrastructure.
The Dominion Post was part of the entourage and an exclusive account of that trip, with photographs, will run this weekend.
There’s already a waitlist for MedEd for the 2024-25 school year – and not all of those students will get in, because of the aforementioned, space limitations.
Mike Kelly, the BOE’s vice president, likened the circumstance to that of a ship churning away from a dock with people left behind.
People, he said, who might not ever get to board.
“I don’t want a waitlist,” he said. “I don’t want to see students meld into society with their dreams unfilled.”
Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr., meanwhile, hopes that voters can dispense with another conventional image, as they regard the ballot come May 14.
Don’t, he said, consider the proposed academy through the lens of a conventional high school.
Morgantown is already the signature medical hub for the Mountain State and the region, the superintendent said.
Think of what MedEd graduates on a large-scale could bring to that homegrown industry, he said.
Ron Lytle, the BOE president who founded his own contracting firm, agreed.
The Renaissance Academy, Lytle said, could partner with a host of local business partners, as the Academies of Loudoun, to enhance quality of life, and the local tax base, at the same time.
Young graduates, he continued, who wouldn’t have to live somewhere else – to make a living.
“And healthcare is just one example. I don’t think it can be over-stressed, what we’re trying to do here.”
