Looking back, Jessica Saad doesn’t take for granted how much UMass Lowell —and community health especially— helped prepare her for life outside of college.

Exercise science major Zachary Kyros is one of the first UML students accepted into the Boston University Early Medical School Selection program.

While working for 16 years in an intensive care unit, Margaret Fitzgerald decided that she could do more to prevent patients from ending up in the hospital. So she earned a master’s degree in nursing at UMass Lowell to become a nurse practitioner.

As a young nursing student on hospital duty, May Futrell was struck by the neglect of elderly patients, which ultimately defined her career and helped implement the first graduate program in the U.S. to educate primary-care gerontological nurse practitioners.