Who Are Smith Scholars?

Did You Know?

• Smith Scholars head national and international medical societies, volunteer on foreign missions and provide excellent care to patients in their home communities.
   

• Smith Scholars are scattered across the United States and work in all specialties. There are more than 200 Smith Scholars practicing medicine in Virginia.
   

• Smith Scholars have many professional and volunteer accomplishments.
  For example:
  
  Bruce Bodner, M.D., (U.Va.) is a founder of the Lion’s Medical Eye Bank Research Center at Eastern Virginia Medical School.
  
  Maj. Lisa Snyder, M.D. (EVMS) is chief of aerospace medicine for the United States for the Air National Guard.
  
  Michelle Whitehurst-Cooke, M.D. (VCU) is associate dean of admissions for the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
   

Smith Scholar Spotlight

Maj. Lisa Snyder, M.D.

Maj. Lisa Snyder, M.D. shaped her career as an undergraduate at Old Dominion University. The Portsmouth resident worked as a cardiac technician on ambulances and as a 911 dispatcher to pay for college. She continued both jobs while studying at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Snyder’s part-time jobs propelled her toward a specialty in emergency medicine after graduating from EVMS in 1999. In 2006 Snyder was named chief of aerospace medicine for the Air National Guard for the United States.

“My mom was a school secretary and was unable to help me pay for college,” says Snyder, who was the first person in her immediate family to earn a college degree. Having a Florence L. Smith Medical Scholarship helped ease the burden of paying for medical school.

Snyder’s career has taken her to areas “I never dreamed I could be,” she says. She moved to Indiana for a toxicology fellowship and stayed five years as a SWAT team physician for the FBI and Indiana state police. She practiced raceway medicine at the Indianapolis Speedway Park, staffed an emergency helicopter and joined the Air National Guard as a flight surgeon. Snyder has been deployed to Okinawa and Iraq and has done volunteer work in Guatemala.

Click here to read profiles of other Smith Scholars.