WORCESTER, Mass. — Biology students at Assumption University in Worcester are getting real-world experience in how a virus is monitored and contained.
While learning the history of past pandemics they’re also learning how they can help become part of the solution in beating back COVID-19 today.
Associate professor Aisling Dugan, who came up with the idea for the infectious and epidemic disease course, an upper-level elective being offered this semester said she “wanted to enrich the class a bit and acknowledge that we’re also living through a pandemic, which is a pretty remarkable experience.”
As part of the class, the students will be fully trained contact tracers by the time the semester ends. Students who finish the two online learning modules, one national and one required by the state of Massachusetts, will have the option of working as tracers with the Worcester Department of Health and Human Services.
Temi Falayi, a senior who plans to go onto nursing school, thinks this approach is invaluable. “I’m entering the health care field next year. I wanted to have these extra tools under my belt,” said Falayi.
Contact tracing is the detective work of tracking down who might have been exposed to the coronavirus, and either getting them treatment or into quarantine.
Even as the public focus has shifted to vaccines, Dugan says contact tracing, along with testing, remains an important tool to stop the spread of the virus.
Kelsey Hopkins, the coordinator for Worcester’s Academic Health Collaborative, helped Dugan design the class said incorporating contact tracing into coursework helps prepare students as the pandemic plays out, whether it’s new strains or a spike in cases.
Patrick Travaglio-Romeo, a senior at Assumption, has been volunteering at a test facility where he registers COVID patients. He plans on attending medical school.
He thinks courses like this will get more young people engaged in containing the virus. “I think our generation has been looked down on, we go to parties and we did this and we did that. I think it’s time that we stepped up and do something,” he said.
Dugan too, hopes classes can help facilitate that process: “Showing them that their hard work will make a direct connection to improving the health of people in their community will be meaningful but will also be really important.”
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