Student Profile: Taylor Boehler
As a nursing assistant, Saginaw senior Taylor Boehler is finding ways every day to make a difference in people’s lives. Little did she realize that it also would change her own.
“I needed patient contact hours in order to get accepted to physician assistant school, so I started working at Masonic Pathways,” she says. “I ended up falling in love with working with geriatric populations. Honestly, if you would’ve told me in high school that I would end up in geriatrics, I would have thought you were nuts, but Masonic helped me find my niche.”
The integrative physiology and health science major also has grown personally through opportunities such as her Posey Global Fellowship, which allowed her to go to Sierra Leone last summer. Boehler spent most of her time there volunteering in hospital wards.
“The experience opened my eyes to a whole new side of medicine,” she says. “You know the underserved population exists in the world, but seeing it face to face really reinforced that I want to work in the health field and help serve this population.”
Boehler recently received a Currie Scholarship to do her senior thesis research. Building on her passion for gerontology, she will study the effects of an eight-week aquatic training program on the aged population’s ability to do everyday tasks.
“Alma has given me so many hands-on opportunities,” she says. “I think my Alma experience has shaped me to be a well-rounded person, and because of this, I know I’ll be well-equipped to take on the world after Alma.”
