While most of their classmates will learn where they will serve their residencies on Friday, March 18, members of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine Class of 2022 who participated in the Ophthalmology Residency Matching Program already know where they are headed. Brian Argus, MEd, matched at Indiana University and Imani M. Williams, MBS, matched at the Stanley M. Truhlsen Eye Institute at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
and Imani M. Williams, MBS, matched at the University
of Nebraska Medical Center, both in ophthalmology.
Students in the National Resident Matching Program will discover their career placements at the Match Day celebration on Friday in the UMass Chan Medical School building lobby, which will be the first time since 2019 that the event will be held on campus. The program starts at 11:15 a.m. and will be streamed live on Facebook and YouTube; the envelopes will be opened at noon. Medical schools across the country celebrate Match Day at the same time, as graduating medical students learn simultaneously where they will begin their medical careers.
Argus is returning to his home state, where his father, William A. Argus, MD, is an ophthalmologist. The younger Argus, who has a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s in education from the University of Notre Dame, taught science for six years, first in Sacramento and then Westwood, while his wife Torie attended Boston College Law School.
“Four years into teaching, a lightbulb went off that medicine was it for me. I realized medicine had all the components of teaching that I really love, plus the hands-on surgical component and the opportunity to form long-term relationships,” Argus said. “I really love empowering a patient with knowledge about what’s going on in a way that’s usable to them.”
At UMass Chan, Argus was a member of the Vaccine Corps and a student representative on curriculum committees. Today he spends a lot of time with his 5-month-old son, Henry, but during the summer of 2021, he had the opportunity to a do a rotation at Indiana University’s ophthalmology clinics. It turned out to be one of the most important months of his medical education.
“I absolutely loved it. It was a phenomenal month. When I left, I said, ‘I want to be there next year,’” Argus said.
Brockton is where Williams grew up, and where she had opportunities to interact with the public through a job at her grandmother’s Jamaican restaurant.
“From an early age I got comfortable working with the general public and interacting with people from all walks of life. And I think that’s definitely been a strength, because in medicine you need to be able to relate to people who are very different from you,” Williams said.
Williams, the first in her family to go to college, majored in health, science, society and policy at Brandeis University before earning a master’s degree in biomedical sciences from Rutgers University. While at UMass Chan, she was accepted into the national Minority Ophthalmology Mentoring Program. She spent a research year at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, working as a research fellow in the David Glendenning Cogan Ophthalmic Pathology Laboratory. She studied how Hurler syndrome, an inherited condition caused by a faulty gene, affects the cornea.
“Global health is really important to me,” Williams said. “I know that there’s a lot of global health and service work that ophthalmologists do in developing countries. I thought becoming an ophthalmologist would give me the tools to be able to take that work further and really make a difference.”
Williams took part in the UMass Chan Dominican Republic Batey Health Initiative, which addresses food insecurity and related health care needs of underserved migrant communities. She also participated in the Sidekicks program, which pairs medical students with pediatric patients for friendship and emotional support, and Cuddle Buddies, where students hold and comfort newborns in UMass Memorial Medical Center’s NICU. She is also a member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society and a past president of UMass Chan’s chapter of the Student National Medical Association.
At Match Day last year, 158 students from UMass Chan matched to placements in 26 states, plus Washington, D.C. Forty-two percent matched in primary care, 51 percent matched in Massachusetts and 61 percent matched in New England.
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