What Thea Fuschino Dalfino ’99 gained from the experience of volunteering for Geneseo First Response (GFR) when she was a student is what motivates her to support the organization financially.
“It gives the students an opportunity to be in leadership positions and to prepare them for the workplace,” said Dalfino. “For those going into a health care profession, it’s a great opportunity to begin learning about medicine, caring for others, and dealing with emergency situations.”
During her first-year at SUNY Geneseo she asked her biology professor, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Biology Robert W. O’Donnell, what she needed to do to prepare for medical school. The answers O’Donnell shared continue to resonate for Dalfino to this day.
“I went to him and said, ‘I want to go to medical school.’ He said, ‘Okay, if that’s what you want to do, then go get an application to med school, and your job over the next couple years is to be able to put something in every one of those boxes,’” said Dalfino, the chief medical officer for St. Peter’s Health Partners in Albany, N.Y. “The boxes were leadership, research, volunteer experience, and you will need a certain GPA. He really laid it out for me, and then I took it to heart and ran with it.”
To check the box for volunteer experience O’Donnell suggested Dalfino volunteer for Geneseo First Response, the student-run organization providing emergency medical services to the campus community.
“I thought, “Oh, that’s kind of cool. That puts you in a leadership position,’” Dalfino recalls. “A lot of the things that people do to get into medical school involves shadowing medical professionals. Shadowing is nice, but when you have a leadership personality, you’re not one who wants to sit on the sidelines and just watch.”
Dalfino realized that volunteering for Geneseo First Response would provide an opportunity to get involved, enhance her knowledge of health care, and learn to be able to take charge in critical situations. Consequently, during her first year, Dalfino trained to be certified as an emergency medical technician, and volunteered for Geneseo First Response from her sophomore year through graduation.
Dalfino readily credits O’Donnell’s mentorship for preparing her for medical school.
“I ended up going to Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia with a lot of Ivy League graduates, and had no problem keeping up with them in my classes because of the excellent education I had received at Geneseo,” said Dalfino, who received the 2014 Professional Achievement Award from the former Geneseo Alumni Association. “I am so thankful for that education, the people that I met, and the mentorship that I received during those four years.”
