For Fordham sophomore Julia Sosa, it was a summer of immersion in the world of medicine: shadowing doctors, including during surgery; learning how to suture; and working with two other students to conduct research on health disparities in the Bronx, which they presented to a medical audience.
After six weeks, she was hooked. “I’ve been having the time of my life,” she said during the final days of her six-week internship at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. “It had a huge impact [on me], because now I think I am 100% sure I want to go to medical school.”
Sosa is one of many students in Fordham’s Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP) who have benefited in recent years from the University’s network of partnerships in the Bronx that expose them to the health professions.
This summer, Sosa and four other Fordham students and recent graduates took part in programs at Montefiore Medical Center and its teaching hospital, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which provided them with mentoring, workshops, hands-on learning, and research opportunities.
Finding Inspiration and Community
For the students, “it’s enlightening, it’s inspiring,” said Renaldo Alba, co-director of Fordham’s CSTEP program. “You find other folks along the journey that are equally as committed and motivated as you are. You find community.”
This kind of exposure to the medical profession is important for students in CSTEP, said its director, Michael Molina. The program serves students from minority or economically disadvantaged backgrounds who may be less familiar with how to pursue medical careers.
“Many times, they don’t have a dad or an uncle or a distant relative or a friend who does this kind of work, so they really need to have these kinds of experiences,” Molina said.
Bringing Doctors Where Doctors Are Needed
The internships at Montefiore and Albert Einstein hospitals are part of Bronx HOPE, a federally funded program at Albert Einstein that provides academic support and enrichment throughout the academic year to 30 Fordham students in CSTEP. It has also supported students at Lehman College and Bronx Community College.
The goal of Bronx HOPE is to boost the number of health care professionals in underserved areas such as the Bronx by supporting students who come from those areas, understand the local culture, and speak the prevalent local languages, Alba said. It helps students aspiring to be doctors, nurse practitioners, clinical psychologists, and more.
The Bronx HOPE program is about two decades old; the summer programs began more than a decade ago, around the time Fordham, Montefiore, Albert Einstein, and other Bronx institutions launched the Bronx Science Consortium, Molina said.
A Path to Med School
This year, three Fordham alumni who were in CSTEP are in medical school at Albert Einstein, and another just graduated from there—“a great accomplishment” for Fordham’s partnership, Molina said. All four took part in Bronx HOPE, and “when they’ve done a program at Einstein, it’s certainly advantageous to them as applicants,” he said.
Raisa Brissett, a May 2025 Fordham graduate aiming for a career as a pediatrician, took part in Bronx HOPE summer programs last year and this year.
Mentoring from Montefiore doctor Juan Robles was a key part of her experience—“He pushed me to have these leadership roles that I never thought I could have,” she said. “He sees things in you that you don’t realize in yourself.”
