May 29, 2003::No.247

Forsaking Footlights for Emergency Rooms, Former Actress Wins Health Professions Award

Heidi Meyer, a former actress on the New York stage who decided to change career roles from musical theater to medicine, has been named winner of the Cal State Fullerton Kenneth L. Goodhue-McWilliams Award for outstanding community service in the health professions field.

Originally from Philadelphia, Meyer earned a degree in theater at Northwestern University, where she also had a strong interest in biological science. After a seven-year stint on the stage in New York, she decided to pursue her love of medicine full time and enrolled in science classes as a postbaccalaureate student at Fullerton. She was drawn to the area because of friends and CSUF’s acclaimed Health Professions Program.

She has been a collegiate volunteer in the emergency room at Western Medical Center, a clinical care extender at Hoag Hospital and an after-school tutor in Orange. Meyer also has served as a volunteer researcher in the university’s Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, and has been a member and vice president of the Student Health Professions Association.
The Fullerton resident has been active in blood drives on campus and plans to apply to medical school in the near future, with an eye to practicing emergency-room medicine.

Meyer, 32, is part of a growing national trend of people who are making career changes to become physicians and other health care workers. About one-third of those in Fullerton’s Health Professions Program are postbaccalaureate students seeking careers in various medical fields.
She will receive the honor, which carries a $500 cash award, at the university’s Honors Convocation on Friday, May 30, in the Portola Pavilion of the Titan Student Union.

The award is named for the emeritus professor of biological science who sponsors the annual prize, in tribute to the student group that honored him in 1985 as its inaugural professor of the year.