New Honors College Initiative Explores Faith and Vocation in Medicine

The Honors College has launched Micah Scholars, an initiative for pre-health students who seek to integrate faith, service and professional formation in their preparation for healthcare vocations.

Rooted in the biblical call from Micah 6:8 to “do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God,” the program helps students explore medicine as a calling shaped by compassion, justice and humility. Participants are selected for their commitment to serve others and their desire to approach healthcare as both an academic pursuit and a morally and spiritually shaped vocation.

“The Micah Scholars initiative strengthens the Honors College’s ability to support pre-health students who want to unite faith, service and academic rigor in meaningful ways,” Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the Honors College Erika Abel, Ph.D. said. “It gives students space to discern vocation, learn from mentors and envision healthcare as a place where both excellence and empathy are essential.”

Micah Scholars builds on the Honors College’s mission to form students whose intellectual and spiritual development lead to lives of leadership and service. The initiative engages students in coursework, mentoring and community partnerships that cultivate a deeper understanding of what it means to care for the whole person, body, mind and spirit.

“The Honors College is responding to the challenges facing healthcare practitioners and communities in need in the current landscape of healthcare,” Chad Thompson, M.D., Clinical Assistant Professor of Pre-Health Education and a physician at Waco Family Medicine, said. “Micah Scholars provides opportunities in and outside the classroom for deeper formation and preparation to sustain faithful yet difficult work in medicine.”

Students in Micah Scholars participate in service-learning opportunities and guided reflection through partnerships with local organizations such as Waco Family Medicine. These experiences help them understand the broader context of health and illness while learning from practitioners who serve patients often overlooked by the healthcare system.

“Community health centers serve an essential role in providing care to individuals and families often neglected by our healthcare system,” Thompson said. “Students will have an opportunity to see more clearly the landscape of health and illness in underserved communities, observe the challenges and barriers to healing, and learn from examples across a variety of healthcare professions of what sustained faithful presence and care in such contexts might look like.”

For students in the inaugural cohort, Micah Scholars is helping connect faith with future work in healthcare.

“I’ve always felt a calling toward missions in many different contexts, and I had been wrestling with the question of how to integrate medicine into that,” Becca Lui, a senior neuroscience major in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core, said. “Micah Scholars gives me the perfect opportunity to find ways to integrate my faith into medicine.”

Lui said her experiences have helped her think more deeply about vocation and joy in the practice of medicine.

“This experience has shown me how physicians can both practice medicine as a career and account for the overlooked and underserved in the community,” Lui said. “Through Micah Scholars, I’ve been able to interact with physicians that not only serve the disadvantaged daily, but do so with a deep and abiding joy.”

Thompson said he hopes students will deepen their commitment to walk with those experiencing suffering and learn to draw upon the moral and spiritual resources of the Christian faith as they care for others.

“In my work in medicine, I have found my patients to be my greatest teachers. By accompanying vulnerable members of their community at this stage of their personal and professional formation, I hope that students will deepen their commitment to walk with and bear witness to those experiencing a disproportionate share of suffering in their community,” Thompson said.  I hope that together students will begin to grapple with the complexities of caring for the whole person, drawing on the moral resources of the Christian faith and expanding their imagination for what it might look like to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God in healthcare.”

Micah Scholars advances the Honors College’s strategic plan in partnership with Baylor in Deeds, the university’s new strategic plan focused on forming graduates who integrate learning in the light of Christ, leadership in the shadow of the Cross, and service to the glory of God and the good of the world.

Applications for the next Micah Scholars cohort open in mid-February for first-year pre-health students in the Honors College. The program seeks students who demonstrate academic excellence, a heart for service and a desire to view medicine as a form of ministry.