WVU MD accelerated program graduates accepted for competitive fellowships
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Although medical school requires strong commitment, at West Virginia University School of Medicine, it doesn’t have to take as much time or money as traditionally expected.
The Mountaineer Accelerated Track to Enter Residency (MATTER) Class of 2023 proved that point by being the first to earn their MDs in just three years and completing their residency within the WVU Health System. Now, they’re rising to the next level. Beginning fellowships in competitive fields this summer are: Dr. Arlie “Britt” Dolly, rheumatology; Dr. Nolan Holley, hematology and oncology; Dr. Josh Kirkpatrick, gastroenterology; and Dr. Hangyu “Helen” Watson, cardiology.
Additional members of the Class of 2023 are Amanda Rahman, who specializes in family medicine, and Courtney Rosencrance, who is joining the WVU School of Medicine faculty in the Department of Pediatrics.
The MATTER program was launched as a pilot project for the Class of 2022 and shaved one semester off students’ experiences. With additional changes to the curriculum, administrators prepared a pathway that allowed students to graduate in three years, beginning with the Class of 2023. Since then, three more classes have participated in the program. In August, 15 members of the MATTER Class of 2026 will receive their MDs and begin their residencies.
“The key is that the accelerated track program prepared them for a seamless transition to graduate medical education training,” said Scott Cottrell, associate dean for student services and curriculum in the School of Medicine. “This program also positions graduates to be competitive for additional fellowship training.”
In addition to saving a full year of tuition costs, the benefits of graduating a year early are multifold. Students are guaranteed residency placement in WVU Medicine, so they don’t have to worry about relocating or paying fees associated with applications and interviews. Ultimately, being one year ahead of their journey means they can start their careers sooner and plan for their futures on a personal level.
Students in the MATTER program select a core specialty in either anesthesiology, emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, neurology, obstetrics/gynecology, internal medicine/pediatrics, pathology, pediatrics or psychiatry.
While the academic period is shortened by one year, students still gain the same knowledge, skills and attributes as traditional pathway students. They must also acquire and demonstrate proficiency of all the WVU School of Medicine Outcomes for the Competent and Reflective Physician.
The classmates agree that the concentrated structure of the program helped them become more efficient and effective in their studies and clinical training while fueling their determination to pursue fellowships. Staying in that mindset, they believe, will carry into their careers and personal lives.
“I am where I am in my life because of MATTER,” said Dr. Josh Kirkpatrick.
A new father and native of Pleasant Grove, Utah, Kirkpatrick is headed back to his home state where he and his wife can raise their child closer to family members. There, he’s set to begin a fellowship in gastroenterology — the most competitive for internal medicine — at the University of Utah. After three years of practicing his specialty, he plans to stay in the vicinity, treat the people he grew up with and possibly get involved in academics.
“If not for MATTER, I’d be a year back in applying to fellowships and with how competitive GI is, I don’t know if I would have matched for a fellowship at the University of Utah or whether my career would have progressed in the same way,” he said. “I’m grateful that I started residency when I did and the timeline worked out.”
Being able to set the course he envisioned for his career and personal life can be attributed to MATTER, he said. The program is what caught Kirkpatrick’s eye when applying to medical schools after earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from Utah Valley University.
“For life planning, MATTER is better in general,” he said. “You’re completing medical school in three years and then not worrying about where you’ll match for residency. It saves you almost a year of tuition and a year in your life.”
After weighing his options for specialties and deciding on gastroenterology — one he describes as “a good blend of procedural and medical management” — MATTER helped him easily move into his residency.
“I immediately started working with a clear direction of what I wanted to do in medicine,” Kirkpatrick said. “I had just taken Step 2 (a clinical knowledge licensing exam) right before I started residency, so everything was fresh for me. I didn’t have a big learning curve, and I could really dive into more of the things that make residency challenging like how to function as a physician within a system.”
Although MATTER smooths the path between school and clinical experience, neither come without time demands and perseverance. For helping him cross those hurdles, Kirkpatrick credits his wife.
“She is 10 times more efficient and patient than I am,” he said. “In residency, I am gone a lot of the time. In med school, I had to study all day. Having someone that’s not only understanding, but supportive makes all the difference. I think it all starts at home.”
Family is important to Dr. Nolan Holley, too. Along with that comes the responsibilities of finances, a worry that eased when he was accepted into MATTER.
“I knew I wanted to be a husband and a father. One of the big concerns I had was how was I going to do that financially,” said Holley, a native of Ripley. “The financial benefits of MATTER cannot be understated in terms of not paying for the last year of medical school, but instead you’re in residency and starting to take off with your career. Knowing that allowed us to start a family quicker.”
The couple’s son was born in Holley’s first year of residency.
The family will move to the Columbus, Ohio, area where Holley has been accepted into a fellowship at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. The combined specialty of hematology and oncology is an area of medicine he’s had in mind since he began his college career at WVU.
“My uncle is a community hematologist oncologist,” Holley said. “He became a huge mentor for me over the years by telling me about his encounters with patients, the care he provides and the new things coming out in that area of medicine.”
Holley’s enthusiasm intensified when as an undergraduate he worked with research in the WVU Cancer Institute alongside Dr. Laura Gibson, professor emerita and retired senior associate vice president for research and graduate education at WVU Health Sciences and associate dean for research at the WVU School of Medicine.
“She really gave me the passion for the science in terms of what happens at the microscopic and molecular level, what causes patients to have cancer and what we can do about it in the laboratory,” Holley said. “My uncle showed me what it is like in the clinical setting, taking care of patients and what they need from a physician.”
Because he has a high regard for WVU, it was the only school he applied to for undergraduate and medical school. The MATTER program captured his interest as soon as he heard about it and then completed a summer externship at WVU Medicine Ruby Memorial Hospital with the internal medicine program.
“I just really fell in love with the program and felt this was a place where I could continue to grow, where I could thrive, where I could become clinically strong and become a leader,” he said.
The MATTER program helped him succeed in all those areas and beyond by learning skills for overcoming challenges that he can use throughout his career.
“Finishing medical school in three years instead of four doesn’t mean you’re skipping out on important curriculum. I had to get really good at scheduling and making the most of my time to be efficient and effective,” he explained. “I think those skills have really translated in residency because it’s allowed me to have strong clinical knowledge and understand the things that are important to patients in terms of how you communicate with them.”
Communication was also key to collaborating with MATTER colleagues. For Holley and classmate Dr. Helen Watson, that came in the form of outcome-based research focusing on hypertension among cancer patients.
Officially, the field is called cardio oncology, the study of the side effects of cancer therapy on the heart and cardiovascular system. Watson gained interest when a family member with lung cancer developed high blood pressure as a result of therapy. She wanted to do a study to find out why and brought in Holley to lend his expertise.
Their research was published in the journal Immunotherapy. It concludes that immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy — a drug that re-activates the immune system to allow T cells to recognize and destroy cancer cells — is significantly associated with an increased risk of developing hypertension and supports the need for routine cardiovascular monitoring in patients receiving the treatment.
“It was a great collaborative effort between two MATTER track individuals and shows how we help each other out,” Holley said.
Watson didn’t stop there with the study. She continued it as her research project to earn her Master of Science in Clinical and Translational Science degree at WVU in May.
Advancing her knowledge and career is nothing new to Watson. Before medical school, she earned a master’s degree as a physician assistant at the University of Charleston and practiced at WVU Ruby Memorial Hospital for four years. That’s where a physician she worked with mentioned MATTER, ironically at the time she was thinking about how she “wanted to do more.”
Everything aligned. Saving time and money were priorities in the path she had already laid out toward her goal of becoming a cardiologist.
“I wanted to do cardiology back when I was in PA school because I like the heart,” Watson said. “Intrinsically it’s an interesting organ and I know a lot of people have cardiovascular disease.”
That decision was also influenced by her mother, a cardiothoracic surgery nurse who worked as a perfusionist.
With determination and sharp focus, Watson was ready to make the commitment to medical school and MATTER set the course for her future.
“Once you’re in MATTER track, you have to be efficient,” she said. “You have to stay on top of things to graduate. All that trains you for residency and helps prepare you for a fellowship.”
Although her three-year residency in internal medicine is preparation enough to work as a primary care physician or hospitalist, cardiology requires another three years in fellowship. Watson was accepted into her No. 1 choice program — Mayo Clinic in Florida.
After that, Watson wants to continue training in a sub-specialty, possibly with imaging or advanced heart failure and transplant.
Watson said while she can’t offer a formula for managing life as a wife, mother of two children, medical student, resident and researcher, she says efficiency, focus and discipline build a pyramid for making things work.
“Efficiency is the bottom of the pyramid. The next step is learning how to be effective and more excellent. I also don’t forget priorities. To me, faith is No. 1, family No. 2 and work is No. 3. I separate work time and family time and completely focus on what I’m doing.”
Unlike his classmates, Dr. Arlie “Britt” Dolly isn’t leaving the Mountain State for his two-year fellowship in rheumatology. He’ll stay where he started, in Morgantown, and completed his residency, at WVU Medicine Ruby Memorial Hospital.
Even after that, the Romney native hopes to practice in the area. His choice, marked by influences from undergraduate through residency, has to do with the people he’s encountered.
While it was always WVU all the way for Dolly, he was still on the fence about studying medical science. That was until, as an undergraduate biomedical engineering major, he spent the summer working in a doctor’s office. Medicine won.
“He was a big role model for me,” Dolly said. “The way he formed relationships with patients and how he treated them really affected me greatly.”
Once he decided on medical school and prepared for the MATTER program, a two-week externship in internal medicine was all it took to seal his core choice.
“All the staff in internal medicine really made me feel welcome and were very accommodating,” Dolly said. “They want you to be there. Being around all those people that I still am working with drew me toward definitely wanting to stay here and do internal medicine.”
He admits that the MATTER program is challenging because the third and fourth year of medical school are combined. In the end though, it provided an easier transition into residency.
“You do some of your fourth-year rotations embedded into the third-year curriculum which means you’re juggling multiple things at once,” Dolly said. “That’s really helpful though once you get into residency because that’s when you have to balance a lot of different things at once. Since you did all of your rotations in one year, once you get into residency, you’re fresh with all your medical knowledge.”
Through his residency, he was drawn to rheumatology because he wanted to work in a specialized field that was also outpatient.
“A lot of patients are complex, so you get to form a good longitudinal relationship with them,” he said. “Also, it’s not very formulaic. You have to take things as they come and work through complicated cases.”
Dolly said prospective students who are ready to dedicate themselves to a chosen specialty should consider the MATTER program. Those aren’t ready should still look to the School of Medicine as a place of belonging and true mentorship.
“I've had a great experience here,” Dolly said. “Obviously I've been here all the way through and I’m still going to be here for a fellowship and probably once I get a job after that. I think that speaks for itself.”
-WVU-
ls/06/23/26
MEDIA CONTACT: Linda Skidmore
Health Research Writer
WVU Health Sciences
Linda.Skidmore@hsc.wvu.edu