Dean's award recipient Is ambassador at heart

The ambassador program taught her many skills — leadership, communication, organization, time management, and more — but for Luc, the crucial lesson was how to empower people to make a positive change. Luc is motivated by deep passions for connecting members of under-represented minorities with vital resources. “Being able to connect people with the resources I didn’t have growing up, that became the driving force behind everything.”

Luc has been an ambassador for years, before she held the official title. The BME student chose the medical field based on her early experiences with the medical community—she always enjoyed going to the doctor as a child. Luc, who speaks Cantonese and Vietnamese, served as an interpreter for family members who did not speak English well enough for an effective medical discussion. In this vital role, she quickly learned the value of meaningful communication (especially in healthcare), sharing resources and taking consideration for individual needs. Today, she is still driven by connecting people with resources that can improve their lives.

Luc incorporates her empowerment philosophy into her medical device designs, like the one she created for her coop at Cook Medical in Bloomington, Indiana. She worked with nursing students to test a new device that was more inclusive of a wider range of hand sizes for device users. Her responsive design reflects changes in the STEM field (more female practitioners, more device users who are not doctors) and her passion for leveling the playing field.

As she moves on to her next chapter, Luc hopes to see CEAS student organizations centralize resources for prospective and current students. This would help advocates like the ambassadors give students accurate and comprehensive information. She would also love to extend the CEAS undergraduate ambassadors program to graduate students and explore whether the CEAS ambassador model might be adapted for students attending the Joint Engineering Cooperative Institute through UC’s partnership with Chongqing University.

Luc, who graduated this spring, has been thinking a lot about the word “leadership” lately; a lot of underclassmen ask her to explain her recipe for success as a student leader. “The term ‘servant leadership’ really rings true in my head,” Luc said. She prefers to lead from behind the scenes, offering transformative encouragement and guidance. She sees her mentorship as a daily tribute to those who have made her journey more manageable.

Luc plans to continue her education at UC medical school in fall 2019. She currently works at Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center in the Pulmonary Division. She is researching the role of G-protein coupled receptor GPR116 in lung vascular endothelium. The research team believes that regulation of the GPR116 signaling pathway has potential therapeutic consequences involving diseases related to abnormal surfactant levels such as pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).