Sister Michaela Serpa has been a member of the HPU family for just under a year. She is an associate professor of Clinical Sciences and teaches in the specialized areas of Internal Medicine (inpatient hospital care), sterile products (making IV doses) and bioethics.
How do you contribute to HPU’s mission to ensure every student receives an extraordinary education in an inspiring environment with caring people?
I have the privilege of teaching second and third-year pharmacy students. However, student impact is not just on one professor — it’s the team. As a new faculty member, I support our pharmacy faculty team with new energy, new ideas and new experiences. A strong team makes all the difference.
How do you help students develop life skills that they will use to achieve lives of success and significance after they graduate from HPU?
Having worked in patient care for 12 years, I have seen the content taught in the classroom implemented in the lives of real patients. When teaching, I can share these real-world cases and examples. This helps students approach the content, not just to get a good grade, but to really save a life.
What is a way that you provide students with experiential learning opportunities?
At the beginning of the year, I worked with students on a service project where we assembled naloxone kits, which are used in the setting of an opioid overdose. The kits have saved countless lives. I shared with the students stories about patients I’ve cared for who struggle with drug addiction and how much they appreciated speaking to a pharmacist about ways they can take a step toward recovery.
What are you looking forward to most for this academic year?
Seeing the growth of the students in both knowledge and confidence when caring for patients. Our program is rigorous.While the students are in the thick of it, they can feel like learning all of it is impossible. But at the end of their third year, before they transition to rotations, the students are challenged with a complex patient case, and it is so rewarding to see them apply the things they’ve learned in such a comprehensive way.
What’s one thing you want students and parents to know about HPU?
If you are a student seeking to be challenged academically and personally to become the complete version of who you are, High Point University is where you belong.
What is your favorite quote?
“True transcendence enables us to integrate and lift to God all we do, all we see, all we love and all we are. Prayer is not always easy, in fact, it is often very, very difficult. How to silently be in God’s Presence at such times demands real trust that His grace carries during those times. And finally, it is only prayer that will enable each of us to preserve a deep sense of the Sacred in the midst of all that we experience each day.” – Mother Rosemae Pender, FSE Foundress, Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist
What is your favorite place on campus?
The Kester International Promenade. My colleagues and I take a walk around campus each day. I love music and appreciate the music played on the promenade as we walk. When the students are between classes, there is hustle and bustle, but always a smile to share.
What do you love most about working at HPU?
To have a beautiful environment cannot be just for beauty’s sake. God is the fullness of beauty, truth and goodness. Whether or not we realize it, the beauty around us bespeaks God and His goodness. We have a beautiful campus. The men and women who work to maintain the buildings and the land do this with such joy and kindness is another example of the beauty which surrounds us. So, what I love most about working at HPU is the beauty all around us — in creation, in the facilities and most of all, in our fellow brothers and sisters. This reminds us that God loves us and shines His beauty in and through our lives.
Original source can be found here.
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