Immersion 2024
Incoming Medical and Dental Students Participate in Annual ‘Immersion’ of our Borderplex
Note: Check back later for more photos from Immersion.
The school year starts here at Texas Tech Health El Paso with Immersion.
For three weeks, students from the Hunt School of Dental Medicine and the Foster School of Medicine participate in an immersion program that introduces them to the unique lifestyle, culture, and language of our Borderplex.
This annual experience is just one component of the Society, Community, and the Individual (SCI) course. Along with conversational and clinical Spanish classes, SCI are the first courses medical and dental students complete before diving into their studies.
During Immersion, students visit with various stakeholders across the Borderplex, practice their Spanish while touring Downtown El Paso, volunteer at a local food bank, and participate in a poverty simulation that replicates the financial challenges faced by the health care system.
Immersion has been part of curriculum since the Foster School of Medicine opened in 2009. The Hunt School of Dental Medicine also adopted immersion into its curriculum, and its inaugural class completed the courses in summer 2021.
Texas Tech Health El Paso immersion professors Lee Rosenthal, Ph.D., M.S., M.P.H., and Salma Elwazeer, B.D.S., M.D.S., M.P.H., said the one-of-a-kind course sets the Foster School of Medicine and the Hunt School of Dental Medicine apart from other medical and dental programs across the country.