Tess Jasinski Receives Term Scholarship

Speed runs, power hits, and team techniques are the bailiwick of top field hockey players, and Tess Jasinski, A09, M14, delivers on all counts. Recruited to play Tufts field hockey from high school in Oak Park, Illinois, Jasinski became a star player - and captain - of a team that reached the NCAA championship and became the best in the university's hockey history.

Jasinski came to college with a passion for field hockey, a burgeoning love for Tufts, an interest in biology, and an inkling that medicine might be for her. To explore that inkling, Jasinski shadowed her grandmother's physicians, who had been treating her for rheumatoid arthritis for decades. "Seeing her relationship with her doctors and what an impact they had on her daily life made a big impact on me," Jasinski recalls.

Post-college, Jasinski volunteered at a high-risk cancer clinic at Chicago's Cook County Hospital. Having been part of a team to figure out what's best for the patient cinched the deal for her. She applied to numerous medical schools; Tufts University School of Medicine's acceptance letter was her first. "Once I got it, there was no other school in my mind."

Jasinski has a long list of teach and team activities on her roster. She has worked with the Office of Educational Affairs to improve curriculum materials and is one of four curriculum class representatives; tutored fellow students in anatomy; taught neuroscience in a prematriculation program; and served on the board of the student-run Sharewood Project, which provides free health care on a weekly basis to Malden's underserved.

When she got word that she was a scholarship recipient, "I said to myself, 'Is this for real?'" When she discovered it was, "I felt how great it was to alleviate some of the debt I'll be graduating with. It made me love Tufts even more."