MUSC students shelve studying (and books) for MLK Day of Service

Smiling children and morning sunshine filter through the Meeting Street Elementary @Brentwood media center as MUSC student Lane Campbell laughs. She’s holding a newly catalogued paperback book in her hand.

“I remember reading this as a kid,” says the second-year College of Health Professions student. “This really takes me back. I think the last time I was probably in an elementary school library was when I was in elementary school.”

Campbell points to a volume of “Amelia Bedelia” before quickly spotting “Junie B. Jones has a Monster Under Her Bed.” “I totally read all these books,” she says, with more than a hint of nostalgia in her voice.

Lane is part of a larger group of more than 20 MUSC faculty members and students volunteering their time for the university’s MLK Day of Service. The event is part of an outreach effort sponsored by the MUSC SCRUBS (Students Creating Relationships and Uprooting BarrierS) program, which mentors and inspires elementary school children. Today, that inspiration comes in the form of cataloguing books in the elementary school’s media center, grabbing a quick lunch and then heading outside to plant some flowers around the campus.

Dante Pelzer, Ph.D., and Ebony Hilton-Buchholz, M.D., started the SCRUBS program a little more than a year ago with the goal of helping Meeting Street Elementary @Brentwood with projects like this. Pelzer, the assistant director of MUSC’s student diversity program, said he’s constantly awed by how giving and unselfish the university’s students are.

“It’s pretty amazing when you think how busy a lot of these students are, and yet, they still find time to give back. These are just good people,” he says. “These are people who want to help their community, to pay forward some of the good fortune they’ve had in their lives, and just to do something that makes a difference –  no matter how small.”

In addition to providing an actual service to the school, activities such as these help demystify the stigma many of these kids have that MUSC is a place you go for emergencies.

“Many of these kids,” he says, “when they think of MUSC, they think about where they had to go when their grandmother was sick. So we want them to see that we are everyday folks who are active in the community, and we want them to be excited when they interact with someone in health care.”

Malikah Christie — a third-year student in the College of Dental Medicine who participated in several of the MUSC SCRUBS program’s outreach events in the past — remembers reading the “Goosebumps” series as a kid.

“As soon as I heard Dr. Pelzer was looking for volunteers to help with books, I was in. Not only do I love reading,” she says, “but what I think I’m most excited about is I don’t think growing up there were that many books I found that I could relate to. I like that there’s diversity in today’s kids’ books.”

Pelzer says this event is just one of many the program plans to tackle in the upcoming months and years. “This is just the beginning,” he says. “We want to become a normal sight to these kids so that we can make bigger connections with them. And, down the road, when they are deciding if medicine is right for them, they have the proper frame of reference. Plus, when you give back to people, you instill in them a desire to do the same. It’s the best kind of cycle you can perpetuate.”