Supervisor Spotlight: Danielle KarlowiczI am honored to be nominated as an outstanding supervisor! I enjoy working with students and helping them grow their genetic counseling skills. I try to create learning opportunities to meet their specific needs and interests. The students have the opportunity to experience most specialty clinics within Duke Medical Genetics. I aim to provide thoughtful feedback after every case as this was very important to me as a student. This can be difficult at times since the students are already very skilled and I often find I learn new ways to engage with my patients from watching them, especially when it comes to psychosocial counseling. I also try to push the students out of their comfort zone and get them to try tasks that they have not done before. Hopefully, that way there are less things that they are doing for the first time as an independent GC.
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Nominated by Dan Serber
I would say without hesitation that my most impactful supervisor relationship was with Danielle Karlowicz at Duke Peds. The entire rotation was incredible, and I felt like I clicked with everyone there and was incredibly comfortable with the way that they conducted their genetic counseling process. In particular, Danielle and I worked well together, and she made me feel like a junior colleague rather than just a student. The way she assigned me cases allowed me to naturally find my voice. She would ask me to handle elements of the session or an entire session, but never dictated how it should be done. If I wanted, she would let me talk it out, but in general, she let me find my own way of doing things. I never received anything except constructive and helpful feedback from her, and I genuinely looked forward to processing cases together. She worked hard to create a supportive learning atmosphere, and I feel that it allowed me to do my best work and be the most confident of any rotation environment. I truly believe that the opportunity to work with Danielle played an enormous role in preparing me to be a successful genetic counselor as I Ieave UNCG.
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Supervisor Spotlight: Michelle Baric
Looking back on my time as a student, the relationships I built with my supervisors had a direct impact on my style of supervision. My supervisors made it a point to establish an environment where I was comfortable to try new things and ask questions. Building on the positive lessons learned as a student, I strive to create an environment where students feel that they can work through difficult counseling sessions out loud, try to find new ways of phrasing their questions and responses, take on new challenges, and achieve confidence in themselves. I think this approach helps students to grow the most during their training and rotations and ultimately will carry over into their career as a genetic counselor. While supervision is incredibly rewarding, particularly when you can witness growth during a student’s rotation, it also challenges me to reassess my counseling skills. Students can bring in a set of fresh eyes and unique skills to the genetic counseling session – especially when we are presented with an unusual case or question from patients/providers. It really has been a great experience working with the students at UNCG and I am honored to have been nominated as an outstanding supervisor!
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Nominated by Sarah Burzynski
I would like to shout out Michelle Baric at Duke prenatal. Michelle provided me space to try new things, time to process my cases, andgave balanced and constructive feedback. As a student, I appreciated Michelle’s authenticity and care when working with me. Her door was always open for a quick question, or for deeper conversations when tackling challenging cases. Michelle made me feel like a valued member of the team. I have Michelle to thank for being influential in the development of my confidence, openness, and reflectiveness. Thank you, Michelle!
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Supervisor Spotlight: Karen PowellI am truly honored to have been nominated for the Supervisor spotlight, especially considering all the incredible supervisors UNCG has as part of their program. Each Spring, Ilook forward to seeing which student has been assigned to our clinic. I enjoy getting to know thestudents, as well as show them all the wonderful things about cancer genetics. As students grow throughout the rotation, we have them think about each patient, if their diagnosis is new or in the past,and what information we have about them before they come to clinic. They assess for potential psychosocial issues, as well aswhether they currently meet guidelines for testing. They also assess what additional family history would be needed for this patient to meet criteria. Each student will have a different way of presenting similar information, and many times as they are discussing a topic with a patient, I will think “I need to remember how they said that anduse it myself!” As much as supervising can benefit myself and students, it is also a way to pay it forward to the profession. Teaching students about new technology and new ways of seeing patients was thrust upon us this Spring. We had a student with us in March when the Stateshut downas a result of COVID-19. As we quickly transitioned into virtual visits, we were pleased that we were able to continue supervising and allow her to complete her rotation with ususing telehealth.Even though our clinic has opened back up, some of our patients are still seen virtually. I feel that students not only learn about cancer genetics, but also expand their skills by seeing patients virtually and in person. We are proud to offer supervision at our site. Thank you again, for this honor!
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Nominated by Haley Hill
Karen Powell has been extremely influential in my rotation experience. I appreciated the great lengths shewent to in order to ensure that I was able to gain more clinical cancer counseling experience amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, I now have experience with telehealth, which is bound to come in handy for my future career. Throughout my time in-person and via telehealth with Karen, she always allowed me to practice counseling in whatever way was best for me, even if she may have done things differently herself. I always felt that I had total control over sessions which I was grateful for given that I would soon be moving on to practice on my own. Additionally, Karen always gave me balanced, constructive, and incredibly helpful feedback. She also forwarded me webinars, papers, and other resources that she thought I would be interested or would be helpful for my development. Karen made me feel respected, confident, and cared for, and was everything that I could ask for and more in a supervisor.
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