Wisconsin Native earns Medical College of Wisconsin’s Zeit Fellows Leadership Award

Emily Sweet, a fourth-year medical student at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), has been named the recipient of the 2012 Walter Zeit Fellowship Leadership Award. This prestigious award is presented to the senior student who has consistently displayed superior qualities of leadership, loyalty, selfless service, initiative and compassion toward his or her peers and the Medical College. It is the highest student honor bestowed by the Walter Zeit Fellowship, MCW’s premier donor recognition society.

Sweet was born in Neenah, Wisconsin and earned a Bachelor of Science degree and election to Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Sigma Nu at Loyola University of Chicago, where she majored in forensic sciences and minored in chemistry.

Starting in her first year of medical school at MCW, Sweet volunteered regularly at the Saturday Free Clinic for the Underinsured in Milwaukee, coordinating labs and imaging, communicating with patients and updating and expanding the official clinic policy manual. She still works in the clinic today, providing continuing health care for two patients under the supervision of volunteer physicians.

On campus, Sweet served as a tutor for human development and cell and tissue biology courses, as well as for the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination Step One Board Review Program, a student-run program that helps second-year students prepare for the national medical licensing exam. As a third-year student, Sweet was elected a class representative on the Student Assembly, after having previously volunteered as co-chair of the Assembly Awards Committee and as a member of the Organizations Committee. She also served as co-president of the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA). She has been involved with several MCW specialty groups and athletic organizations over the years, including Team Apoptosa, an intramural group that plays softball, football, volleyball, soccer and curling.

Sweet is attending medical school through the Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship Program and is a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force Reserve (USAF), Medical Service Corp. She will serve three to four years of active duty with the USAF following graduation from medical school.

“Emily Sweet is a hardworking, exceptional student and a prime example of selfless service," said John R. Raymond, Sr., MD, President and CEO of the Medical College. “The leadership, initiative and compassion she has exhibited during her years at MCW demonstrate what an outstanding physician she will become.”

In 2012 Sweet was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha national honor medical society. She plans to pursue a career in surgery.

The Walter Zeit Fellowship was founded in 1980 by Derward Lepley Jr., M.D., a 1949 alumnus who also served as a distinguished member of the College’s faculty.