Albany High alum headed to med school at UNC

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Albany High School alumna Chelsea Fitzhugh is still settling into her new digs at the University of North Carolina. The ink on her diploma from the University of Georgia is still drying as she contemplates a future career in medicine in her new home away from home.

After graduating UGA with a BS in Biological Science, the magna cum laude graduate will attend UNC on scholarship. She was accepted at four other medical schools — Morehouse School of Medicine, the Medical College of Georgia, Case Western School of Medicine and Mercer School of Medicine — before selecting UNC.

“I am really passionate about helping underserved communities, and UNC is famous for helping underserved populations and focusing on improving primary health care, so I thought that would be a really good place for me to go,” Fitzhugh said. “I’m also looking at getting a Masters in Public Health alongside my medical degree.

She is at the beginning of a journey along a road with many forks, and only experience and time will light her path.

“I’m not really sure what I will do after I graduate,” Fitzhugh said. “I wouldn’t mind coming back to a rural health area like Albany. I’m also thinking about academic medicine. I’m really thinking about a lot of different things. I want to understand what kind of impact I could make. I want to see where I can help make things better in health care, whether it’s treating patients or teaching other physicians.

“I just need to know my position, my role of making health care better.”

If she decides to pursue the medical route, Fitzhugh says it will probably be in family or internal medicine, or OB/GYN.

“But basically right now I’m wide-open,” she said.

During Fitzhugh’s tenure at UGA, she received several honors and recognitions, including the Blue Key Student Leadership Award (one of UGA’s highest academic honors), the Crane Scholarship, the Black Faculty and Staff Organization Founder’s Scholarship, and the Burk and Cordelia Ann Ellis Scholarship.

She participated in several undergraduate research programs, projects, organizations and extracurricular activities. Many of her diverse experiences included medical shadowing and service-learning through Jamaica Volunteers Program in Kingston, Jamaica, and participation in Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s SMDEP program in Cleveland. She also served UGA as an honors teaching assistant and as a career development intern in the university’s Career Center.

She is the daughter of Gregory and Verona Fitzhugh and the granddaughter of Willie and Bernice Hamilton and David and Vickie Robinson.