Bobcat Stories

The E.E. Ford Foundation recently awarded Bosque School one of its highest honors: the Educational Leadership Grant Award, which provides $250,000 for the school’s Medical Reserve Program (MRC). It includes a one-to-one matching fundraising challenge to establish a permanent endowment for the program. This is a next-level, eye-popping, game-changing opportunity for the school and the program.

 MRC is a national program of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Our Bosque School Junior MRC unit was the first of its kind and remains one of only five school-based MRC units nationwide. We are the only MRC program we know of that enables high school students to become state-licensed medical providers who deliver direct patient care under medical direction from the UNM EMS Consortium. Our Bosque School Emergency Response Team (ERT) is a New Mexico EMS Bureau-recognized non-transport EMS agency — the only high school recognized as an EMS agency.

Launched in 2006 by three visionary upper school students, Thomas Cummins (‘08), Chris Quinn-Vawter (‘08), and Ivan Lawit (‘09),  Bosque School’s MRC now has three distinct pillars.  The MRC unit focuses on community health initiatives like vaccine clinics, blood drives, and skills training. The ERT agency allows students to obtain licensure, which otherwise wouldn’t be available to them before age 18. The newest pillar, now in its third year, is the medical and public health capstone program. Five Bosque School seniors — Maddie R., Eleanor, Sina, Lauren J., and Elia — are doing original research on public health and medical topics for their senior capstone project.

Since 2006, several hundred Bosque School students have stepped into roles in public health and emergency medicine while still in high school. About half of our MRC alumni enter medical careers, as documented in an MRC student research project. One of those alumni is Eliot Patton (‘24),  a sophomore at the University of British Columbia. She explained that “joining MRC in high school and getting recertified in college gave me a public health lens on the work I want to do, and this year I declared a major in Population Health. The importance of community impact and hands-on work is essential to what I want to do in my future career.”

The E.E. Ford Foundation describes the requirements for a school to be given the Educational Leadership Grant Award in this way: “These proposals must be generative and transformational. They must be replicable and will often include partnerships and will frequently address the question, ‘What is the public purpose of private education?’”  The Foundation has distributed over $125,000,000 to more than 900 independent schools and associations since its founding in 1957, helping schools launch programs, develop new lines of inquiry, and directly support their students and faculty.

The process for Bosque School to win this award was extensive, beginning with a written proposal crafted by the MRC staffulty leaders Dan Shaw, Amy Dalness, and school nurse Tara Maple, and senior leaders Gray, Maddie R., and Eleanor, with the support of Valery Galanter, director of philanthropy. The Foundation’s executive director, John Gulla, conducted a site visit during which he spoke extensively with MRC student leaders and responders. He asked the students what the program meant to them, where they saw opportunities for growth, and how they envisioned the grant funds benefiting the program and the community. The students identified several areas of need, including improving the quality and quantity of their supplies and equipment and expanding field training and education opportunities. They also identified an opportunity for the program to become a model for other schools, meeting the challenging standard that the program be “replicable” while serving a public purpose. Expanding Bosque School’s MRC program and seeding similar programs in schools across our region are ways to address New Mexico's shortage of health care workers by inspiring this generation of young people to pursue a wide range of medical careers. After Mr. Gulla’s visit, he wrote, “I left campus yesterday with an updated sense of Bosque as a whole, a brimming level of excitement and enthusiasm for your proposal and a heightened level of understanding of the profundity of MRC as something sui generis in the independent school world.”

The grant funds will enable the school to hire a full-time MRC coordinator with both an educational and medical background. Mr. Shaw and Ms. Dalness, along with our school nursing office staff, are eager to see the transformative potential of both the grant funds and the contributions of a new team member who will serve as the MRC unit leader and ERT service director and also lead the medical/public health capstone projects. 

In addition to seniors Gray, Eleanor, and Maddie R., current licensed MRC responders are senior Rowan and juniors Violet, Emma H., Drew, and Marco. Sixteen recruits have been selected this year to take the MRC immersive in May. They have already begun their coursework at Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) School of EMS Services, which provides much of the program’s education and certification, starting with college-level Health courses, First Responder Lab and Theory, Basic Life Support (CPR) certification. 

Eleanor has been an effective and passionate MRC leader. She says, “Through the program, I have learned how to push myself out of my comfort zone for the sake of helping others. The heart of the program lies with one of Mr. Shaw’s sayings: ‘Your job is to be the kind face on the worst or last days of someone’s life.’ Our program first teaches students how to care for themselves in stressful situations, and second, how to care for others with empathy and without judgment.” Her hope for the grant is “that we can use it to impact so many more people in the same way I was impacted, especially if we can help more high school students across Albuquerque have the same access to emergency medical training that we’ve had at Bosque.”

Responder Violet (‘27) believes “this program allows me to be more than a bystander in our community.”  She values being prepared and knowledgeable in emergency medical situations and is confident in her skills. When a sawblade injured a student’s finger recently, Violet was on call. She evaluated the situation, put pressure on the wound, wrapped it, and waited with the patient until help arrived — this time, parents and a visit to urgent care for stitches. Another time, it might be transferred to the nurse, or, in serious cases, to EMS services. Violet then documented the incident in accordance with the protocols she was trained in.

Emma (‘27) takes her responder skills into her duties on ski patrol. Her MRC training supports her Mountain Safety Team refresher courses and her on-slope work, as she recently supervised a concussion protocol and ambulance transfer for an injured skier. Marco (‘27) values how his MRC training made getting his swimming lifeguard license easier, and he, too, is confident that when something happens when he’s on duty at the pool, he’ll be prepared.

Mr. Gulla saw something special in Bosque School and the MRC program. He wrote, “Everyone was generous in answering my many questions, helpful in their insights, and reflective of the many impressive qualities of your community.” The E.E. Ford Educational Leadership Grant Award will make a difference to our students, the future of the MRC program, and its potential to contribute to the world beyond our school. It will save lives. We are grateful.