J.S. Ward Society hands-off passion for health care to future generations

Since 2016, the society has awarded various student scholarships and research fellowship opportunities, and the numbers keep growing.

Janel Shoun-Smith | 615-966-7078  |  06/17/2025

It’s the rare undergraduate student bound for medical or other health care professional schools that gets the opportunity to work hands-on with scientific research before earning their bachelor’s degree. Even fewer  have the opportunity to work on both bench research and clinical research at three different universities before graduating.

That’s the path, however, that student Carolyn Tran (BS ’25), trod during her years at Lipscomb thanks to opportunities brought her way through the J.S. Ward Society and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. 

And she’s not the only one.

Since 2016, the society has awarded various student scholarships and research fellowship opportunities, and the numbers keep growing as students each year take advantage of Ward and other summer research fellowships and opportunities both on and off campus.

In 2025, the society honored 15 undergraduate students at the annual Ward Society Dinner, awarding 11 summer Ward Fellowships to work one-on-one with faculty at Meharry Medical School, Vanderbilt University and Lipscomb and recognizing four Langford-Yates Summer Research Fellows who will work with Lipscomb professors.

New additions to the Ward Fellowships this year were the Mitchell Scholarship and the Herman G. LaVelle Endowed Scholarship for Research.

The J. S. Ward Society is an alumni affinity group that supports Lipscomb’s health sciences programs and the university’s students to help them enter medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and many other allied health professions. The cornerstone of the program is the support of undergraduate research fellowships. 

“Undergraduate research is a transformative educational experience that offers students lasting and far-reaching benefits,” said Florah Mhlanga, executive director of the Ward Society and vice provost. “It cultivates essential skills such as problem-solving, communication, cognitive flexibility, creativity and collaboration, while deepening learning through close faculty mentorship. Students who participate in research are more likely to persist in their studies and are often stronger candidates for graduate and professional programs.” 

In the past few years, the Ward Society has also strengthened its professional mentoring, with a one-on-one option called Bison Docs and a small-group option with pre-health students gathering in homes to share a meal and informal discussion with health care specialists. In addition, the physician-in-residence program invites health care professionals to campus for afternoon “office hours” with students followed by evening seminar presentations on health care topics. 

Tran, a molecular biology major from Nashville, graduated in May having carried out research that hopefully leads to less toxic chemotherapy drugs (with Lipscomb’s Dr. Josh Owens (BS ’16), assistant professor of biology and undergraduate research coordinator for STEM); a better understanding of the causes of African sleeping sickness (with Dr. Minu Chaudhuri at Meharry Medical School); and a better way to diagnose lung cancer (with Dr. Eric Grogan (BS ’95) at Vanderbilt University Medical Center).

“I’ve been able to get a broader insight on different specialties and understand why each mentor wanted to practice in their respective fields,” said Tran. “The research experiences have helped me think more like a scientist and network with amazing professionals in the health care field.”

Grogan, associate professor of surgery and vice chair of research at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Department of Thoracic Surgery, has mentored at least 10 Ward Fellows over the years in Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s MASLAB, a biobank storing blood and tissue specimens and clinical histories that one day may fuel earlier and less invasive detection of lung cancer.

He mentored Tran at the biobank in 2024, is now mentoring 2025 Ward Fellow Jackson Head, a rising-senior from Brentwood, Tennessee, this summer, and mentored 2023 Ward Scholar Timothy Khalil (BS ’23), who worked full-time in Grogan’s lab as a clinical/translational research coordinator in a gap year before heading to medical school.

“Health care is the field that I love and that I want to pursue, but by doing research, I can hopefully improve some aspects of health care, both now and in the future,” said Head.

Dr. Scott Guthrie (BA ’95), a specialist in neonatal-perinatal medicine, professor at Vanderbilt, and chair of pediatrics at the Ayers Children’s Medical Center at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital in Jackson, Tennessee, took Lipscomb Ward Fellow Kaylee Wu (BS ’23), a biology graduate from Oregon who is now at Wake Forest Medical School, on a global research trip to India to prepare doctors for a clinical trial of a new technique to treat respiratory distress syndrome in premature infants in summer 2022.

He also took Wu along to make a presentation about the India clinical project to the 2023 Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) meeting in Washington D.C., a very unusual opportunity for an undergraduate, he said.

“It’s fun to be able to influence the next generation and to see them get the opportunities and tools to succeed,” said Guthrie, a U.S. Fulbright Scholar Specialist who has traveled to Azerbaijan at the request of their government to teach neonatology and improve outcomes.

This summer, Parmida Fard, a rising-junior in molecular biology from Brentwood, Tennessee, and a 2025 Ward Fellow is working with Lipscomb’s Amanda Williams (BS ’03) on her project exploring the role of the innate immune peptide called HD5 and its presence in the colon in Crohn’s colitis patients. Fard has already been working on the project with Williams during the school year.

“Cell biology class allowed me to learn about different researchers and how their experiments shaped how we view different diseases,” said Fard. “This fellowship is a unique opportunity to engage in research on a deeper level and learn more about its clinical importance.”

Williams said that summer research, in particular, gives undergraduate students a more realistic and comprehensive glimpse of life in a research or health science career.

“They get the opportunity to see what it is like to work in a lab full-time. So many undergraduate students doing research in the school year are balancing classes, jobs, shadowing and student life,” said Williams. “Through a summer research project, they are able to focus full-time on that project, which means they are able to progress much further and get a lot more done.”
 

Local physicians are just as involved in the Ward mentoring programs, such as Bison Docs and Physician-in-Residence, as they are the research fellowships, said Mhlanga. Many of them have participated in the dinner conversations hosted by Dr. Raye (LA ’81, BS ’85) and Elise Mitchell in their home, providing invited students a meaningful window into the realities of life as a health care provider.

Tran’s mentor, Dr. Daniel Wakefield (BS ’12) , a partner with Tennessee Oncology and medical director for the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Sarah Cannon Cancer Center at TriStar Centennial Hospital, said he had a summer internship in college and now wants to pay that experience forward. 

“I think any exposure is really world-shaping, but specifically seeing oncology patients is really intense and complicated,” he said of students’ shadowing experiences. “The experience sticks with them for a long time. I try to show the students a really humanistic way to work with people, and whether they go into health care or not, they benefit because a life of service is a life well-lived.”

2025 J.S. Ward Society Honorees
 

Ward Summer Fellowships
 
Parmida Fard (Lipscomb with Amanda Williams [BS ’03])
Trey Haralson (Meharry with Dr. Amos Sakwe)
Jackson Head (Vanderbilt with Dr. Eric Grogan [BS ’95])
Kai Lam (Vanderbilt UCRIP)*
Morgan Martin (Vanderbilt UCRIP)*
Vina Nguyen (Meharry with Dr. Jermaine Davis)
Riley Robertson (Vanderbilt UCRIP)*
Kiomi Tanakura (Meharry SuRP)**

Herman G. LaVelle Research Grants

Ellie Griner (Lipscomb with Beth Conway [LA ’98])
Rezheen Taher (Meharry with Dr. Jermaine Davis)

Mitchell Scholarship
 
Maddie Brazelton (Lipscomb with Beth Conway [LA ’98])

Langford-Yates Summer Fellowship
 
Lavin “Vivi” Radiro (Lipscomb with Amanda Williams [BS ’03[)
Malak Hauter (Lipscomb with Brian Cavitt)
Mario Y. Faragalla (Lipscomb with Joseph Weinstein-Webb)
Elena Harvey (Lipscomb with Morghan Morris)

*Vanderbilt Undergraduate Clinical Research Internship Program
**Meharry Cancer Summer Research Program