As an emergency medical technician, emergency room technician and now a physician assistant student in the University of Lynchburg’s Master of PA Medicine program, Ashley Seiders ’25 doesn’t help people for the recognition.
Sometimes, though, it’s nice when hard work is noticed.
Seiders, who graduated from Longwood this past May with a B.S. in biology, was one of only 48 first-year graduate students nationwide to receive a Phi Kappa Phi fellowship award, an annual honor created by the national academic honor society to aid first-year graduate students and professionals. The $8,500 prize will go toward her first year of PA school and help fund a health care career the Mechanicsville native has been pursuing since high school.
“I’ve been in health care since I was 17,” said Seiders, who became an EMT as a high-school student in Mechanicsville and continued that work with the Prince Edward Volunteer Rescue Squad (PEVRS) throughout her time at Longwood.
I just love helping people and being able to have this positive impact.
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“I just love helping people and being able to have this positive impact. I grew up in a household that was very service-driven. My dad did a ton of mission trips when I was growing up, and he would go build houses after hurricanes and natural disasters. I’m not quite skilled in terms of building houses, but health care is what I’m equipped to do, so I serve people that way.”
Selection for Phi Kappa Phi fellowships is based on evidence of applicants’ graduate school potential, undergraduate academic achievement, service and leadership experience, letters of recommendation, a personal statement of educational perspective and career goals, and acceptance in an approved graduate or professional program.
Hitting every one of those criteria, Seiders amassed a lengthy academic resume as a pre-med student at Longwood, including membership in the Alpha Lambda Delta and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies, and participation with the Longwood Honor and Conduct Board, Mortar Board and Pre-Health Club.
Her time at Longwood also put her on the fast track for PA school, a career goal she committed to before she set foot on campus.
“PA school was something I very quickly became passionate about,” Seiders said. She told her undergraduate advisor, Dr. Denis Trubitsyn, associate professor of biology, what her goals were: to get her undergraduate degree in three years and then go straight to PA school with no gap year.
Then she asked him the all-important question: “So how do I make that happen?”
It took a village.
Trubitsyn, Dr. Brandon Jackson, associate professor of biology, and several other Longwood faculty made a plan, and Seiders worked it.
[Faculty] were instrumental in making things happen for me and getting everything lined up so I could achieve those goals.
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“They were instrumental in making things happen for me and getting everything lined up so I could achieve those goals,” she said.
Seiders is now at the University of Lynchburg, where she has already begun 27 consecutive months of coursework to become a PA. The program will soon put her back into the field, including a 12-month rotation encompassing different areas of health care that range from general medicine to advanced clinical procedures to emergency medicine. She also gets to choose four electives and plans to fill one of those slots with the familiar subject of trauma surgery.
“I’m absolutely stoked about that one,” she said.
And even with those rotations and her PA training taking place in Lynchburg, she still has an ideal destination in mind post-graduation.
“Honestly, I would love to end up back in Farmville if I could,” Seiders said. “I don’t really know where things will take me and what kind of job offers I’ll get, but Farmville will always be a home to me. Whether that’s right after graduation or after spending a couple years in the city getting foundational experience, I would love to come back.”
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