Maggie Landgrebe
New York, NY
Class Of: 2011

Campus: Old Westbury
Major: Osteopathic Medicine, D.O.

Profile courtesy NYIT's Student Update:

White Coat in Training
It's Maggie Landgrebe's second year as an osteopathic medical student, but she's been taught to think like a doctor since day one. NYIT's School of Osteopathic Medicine (NYCOM) runs an innovative problem-based curriculum for a select group of students in each class year. This Doctor Patient Continuum (DPC) curriculum is exactly what brought Maggie to NYIT.

The idea is that the students receive information about a "test patient" progressively, in bits and pieces, just as if they were treating a real patient: first the chief complaint, then the patient medical history, and then the blood pressure and further testing results. The students are expected to form a diagnosis, refine it through lab work, and determine how best to treat the patient. In other words, since her first day at NYCOM, Maggie has had to act like a physician. "As I work through the cases, I learn by asking questions, making inferences, and trying solutions. There's the excitement of discovery, and it also gives me a deeper, more nuanced grasp of the material."

All Together Now
Maggie says the student-learning approach has fostered a great environment in which students aren't driven by competition for grades, but by the desire to learn and serve. "We have to take responsibility for the progress of our education."

Maggie is also active with her fellow students in both the Student Osteopathic Medical Association and the Christian Medical Student Association.

A Passion for Medicine
After earning her undergraduate degree from Columbia University, Maggie was a research assistant at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). She came to NYIT and NYCOM to learn to "become a leader in the medical community."

As a second year in the four-year program, Maggie is still investigating areas of specialty -- everything from psychiatry to cardiology. When she starts mandatory clinical clerkships (or rotations) in her third year, she will get firsthand experience in specialties including family medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, and surgery. She is especially interested in primary care specialties. Wherever she goes, we know she'll be ready.