Cedar Crest College

Chase inducted into honor society

Cedar Crest College is pleased to announce Madelyn Chase, of Whitehall, was inducted into the Delphi Society for the spring 2024 semester in recognition of outstanding academic achievements. Delphi recognizes exceptional students who have completed 86 or more total credits (including at least 60 graded credits of academic work at the college) and maintain a cumulative GPA of 3.8 or above.

Cedar Crest College has been empowering women to smash glass ceilings and achieve their educational goals since 1867. Today, the college continues to open the doors to opportunities for its diverse student body, both in the undergraduate women’s college and in the coed School of adult and graduate education. Located in Allentown, Cedar Crest is ranked by U.S. News & World Report’s 2024 Best College Rankings as No. 9 in Social Mobility and is among the Top 100 colleges and universities in the region.

Arcadia University

Spadaccia named to dean’s list

Skye Spadaccia, of Walnutport, was named to the dean’s list for the spring 2024 semester at Arcadia University.

Missouri State University

Frace named to dean’s list

Each semester, students at Missouri State University who attain academic excellence are named to the dean’s list. For undergraduate students, criteria include enrollment in at least six credit hours during the summer semester and at least a 3.5 GPA on a 4.0 scale.

Virginia Frace, of Bath, made the list. Frace was among more than 1,100 students named to this honor.

Missouri State University is a public, comprehensive university system with a mission in public affairs.

Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine

Sankari, Hess earn white coats

The Class of 2028 was honored Aug. 9 in the 2024 white coat ceremony at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia. Forty-two first-year medical students, who will train for all four years at Bethlehem-based Temple/St. Luke’s, donned their doctor coats for the first time. This rite of passage for all medical students signifies their transition from the study of preclinical to clinical health sciences.

Northampton resident John Sankari is inspired to become a doctor so he can help “bridge the gap between language and medicine” as he improves access to medical care for the Arabic-speaking community in the Lehigh Valley.

Sankari, who is 21 years old, is fluent in Arabic. He’s his family’s first doctor to be and the first to graduate college, which he did in only three years. Between college and medical school, Sankari worked for a year as a landscaper and waiter in a local diner to earn tuition funds and enrich his perspective on the value of serving the community.

Born in Syria, the Muhlenberg College graduate, who majored in neurosciences and worked in a lab focused on preventing the formation of traumatic memories, said, “Taking care of my community will be an honor of the highest magnitude. Medicine has always been the only thing I could see myself doing,”

Twenty-four-year-old Mia Hess moved back to the Lehigh Valley from Boulder, Col., to attend Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine. For two years after graduating from Villanova University with a degree in chemistry, she conducted clinical research at the Integrative Physiology of Aging Laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which has informed her career goals.

As a physician, Hess hopes to eventually specialize in cardiology and dreams of joining St. Luke’s nationally lauded heart and vascular center, named one of the nation’s Top 50 providers of heart care.

Born and raised in Tamaqua, Hess said she wants to return there when she’s a physician.

“I want to be part of this network that provides top-quality care to its community, with a focus on helping to increase longevity through lifestyle changes that improve heart health,” Hess said.

The Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine at St. Luke’s University Hospital in Fountain Hill is the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school, where the region’s brightest young minds go to become doctors. By cultivating homegrown medical talent, such as Hess and Sankari, who have deep roots in the greater Lehigh Valley, St. Luke’s is helping the region to secure its health and well-being amid a worsening doctor shortage nationally.

Thanks to generous donors who support endowed scholarships, all School of Medicine students receive scholarship funding for each of their four years.

Hess said these scholarships will be “super helpful in making it possible to attend Temple/St. Luke’s.”

Sankari said the ceremony, for him, was “very emotional, even unreal,” as he sets out to become the first doctor in his family and one of the few dedicated to treating the sometimes underserved, close-knit community he knows and loves.