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Kathleen “Katie” Kinder and her niece, Eloise, celebrate Kinder's match into an orthopaedic surgery residency at UAMS. Image by Bryan Clifton

UAMS College of Medicine Applauds 168 Seniors Heading to Residencies in 30 States and Washington, D.C.

March 28, 2025 | The tension at the Statehouse Convention Center was palpable just before 11 a.m. March 21, as 160 senior medical students from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) sat waiting at large round tables to open the sealed envelopes they had just been handed.

As the countdown clock on a large screen at the front of the hall ticked down to zero, the students unanimously ripped open the envelopes and peeked inside. Some released shrieks and cheers, some thrust their fists above their heads and others jumped up to hug family and friends beside them.

And just like that, after four arduous years of medical school and weeks of applications and interviews, the long-awaited question of where each student in the UAMS College of Medicine Class of 2025 will complete their next three to seven years of training was answered.

Each student who wanted to share their news was then welcomed to walk across the stage and announce it to the group.

Becky Latch, M.D., associate dean of student affairs for the college, said all 160 seniors who participated in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) found a match. This includes students who attended the UAMS main campus in Little Rock and those who attended UAMS’ Northwest Regional Campus in Fayetteville.

The NRMP uses an algorithm to match lists of seniors and institutions across the country after each student and institution ranks their choices. Nationally, 47,208 seniors who are on the verge of becoming medical doctors or doctors of osteopathic medicine, including graduates of foreign medical schools, matched to just 40,041 available residencies in the United States. Envelopes were opened simultaneously across the globe.

In addition to the students who participated in the NRMP, eight UAMS seniors who are pursuing careers in ophthalmology, urology or the military participated in separate, earlier match programs. So altogether, 168 UAMS College of Medicine seniors will be moving on to begin their residencies after receiving their medical degrees in May.

“This is our medical school’s Christmas,” Latch told the seniors just before they learned where they had matched. “This is our biggest celebration, and what makes us the most happy all year. We’re so excited to see the results today.”

Steven Webber, M.D., dean of the College of Medicine, congratulated the seniors in a recorded message because he was with his daughter, who is pursuing a residency in pediatrics, in a simultaneous Match Day celebration in another state. Webber, a pediatrician, became dean at UAMS just two weeks before last year’s Match Day celebration.

“For all of you parents who are watching,” he said, “I have an idea of what you’re thinking right now: ‘Please don’t be too far from home.’ I have an idea how you are feeling as well — super excited but very anxious.”

Latch said 74 UAMS seniors matched to residency programs in Arkansas, while 94 matched to residencies in 29 other states and the District of Columbia.

She said 48%, or 79 students, are headed to residencies in a primary care specialty: internal medicine, pediatrics, Med-Peds (half internal medicine and half pediatrics), family medicine and obstetrics/gynecology. This is the same percentage of primary care residencies as attained by the Class of 2024.

Another 38 seniors are entering surgical residencies, while 13 are heading toward emergency medicine residencies.

“We have 26 students who are going into an internal medicine residency, with a close second in family medicine at 24 students,” she said.

Internal medicine at UAMS includes cardiovascular medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology, hematology and oncology, infectious diseases, nephrology, pulmonary and critical care, and rheumatology and immunology, among others.

Eight seniors obtained residencies in anesthesiology, and 10 are headed to psychiatry residencies.

Among the seniors is Kathleen “Katie” Kinder, a direct descendant of UAMS’ founder, P.O. Hooper, M.D., who matched to an orthopaedic surgery residency at UAMS.

The Cape Girardeau, Missouri, resident didn’t know when she applied to UAMS that she is Hooper’s great-great-great granddaughter. She said she applied because of UAMS’ proximity to her parents in Missouri and her maternal grandparents in Hot Springs.

It wasn’t until she told relatives on her father’s side of the family that she had applied at UAMS that she discovered her connection to Hooper. She also learned she is the great-great-great-great niece of another co-founder, James A. Dibrell Jr., M.D., also on her father’s side, and that she is the great-great-great granddaughter of E.R. DuVal, M.D. DuVal served with Hooper on the original school’s board of trustees.

Kinder described it this way: “Dr. Hooper and Dr. DuVal had children who married, and that couple had a granddaughter who is my grandmother.”

Recently, Kinder said, “I did not come into medical school with a specific specialty in mind, but I started shadowing the orthopaedic surgeons here early on during my first year. After seeing the unique impact they had in helping their patients remain mobile and get back to their favorite hobbies and activities, I knew it was the career I wanted to go into.”

She said her ancestral heritage didn’t really have an impact on her time in medical school, “but it has provided a unique perspective in just how much has changed in only five generations.

“UAMS has grown an incredible amount since its founding and has done a lot to expand access to patient care across the state,” she said. “It has also provided so many opportunities for students throughout Arkansas to obtain a medical education. I’ve been really grateful to attend here and look forward to using the knowledge I’ve gained to help care for patients.”

Mason Belue, who matched in diagnostic radiology at the University of California San Diego’s special track for clinician scientists that is funded by the National Institutes of Health, first heads to Baptist Health in North Little Rock for a required transition year.

“I’m super excited to begin my career training as a radiologist,” Belue said. “I’m still interested in pursuing research, specifically at the intersection of radiology and artificial intelligence.”

In 2021, as a second-year medical student at UAMS, Belue was one of 50 students chosen from across the country to participate in a yearlong residential immersion program, the Medical Scholars Research Program, at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

The Fort Smith native ended up staying in Maryland for another year to complete a second fellowship — the Cancer Research Training Award from the National Cancer Institute.

Even though the fellowships delayed the original Class of 2023 student’s graduation by two years, the intense rounds of study were well worth it, Belue said.

For senior Kaersti Rickels, who is heading to an ophthalmology residency at the University of Wisconsin Health System at Madison, finishing medical school was particularly challenging with Match Day and her pregnancy due date (March 31) being only 10 days apart.

As someone pursing an ophthalmology residency, Rickels learned early, on Feb. 4, that she matched to the Wisconsin program. Still, she showed up at the Match Day ceremony with husband Michael Rickels, a fourth-year pharmacy student who is also scheduled to graduate in May and will start a community pharmacy job in Madison.

Being pregnant, she said, “has been challenging — particularly navigating early pregnancy during critical times, including away rotations and interviews. However, I had the benefit of having virtual interviews, the only option for ophthalmology this year, and I also had a wonderfully supportive husband and village that helped me every step of the way. My OB, who attended medical school here, was happy to work around my schedule for all my appointments. I also chose to do away rotations at places where I had close friends to stay with.”

Smiling as she wrapped her arm around her extended belly, she said, “To me, it was very important that I was able to create the life I hoped for all at the same time. I’m incredibly grateful that I’m able to start my two new favorite jobs — Doctor and Mom.”

Will Wilkins, a senior from Searcy who is headed to an internal medicine residency at the University of Utah Health in Salt Lake City, has been busy preparing for graduation while also continuing to provide weekly teaching sessions for second-year medical students preparing to take the national Step 1 exam.

The one-day, eight-hour exam is part of the United States Medical Licensing Examination and is a crucial step in the path to medical licensure. It covers such a wide array of basic scientific knowledge that it can be difficult figuring out how to study for it, Wilkins said.

Wilkins, who created the Student Teaching Network to help students study for the exam more efficiently, said he has such a passion for teaching that he will only ever work at an academic medical center.

In medical school, he said, “students don’t get adequate exposure to Step-1 style questions. You can’t know everything. You need to know what is the most important.”

Wilkins works with six fellow volunteers from the junior and senior classes who focus on “exposing students to the most important topics and narrow what they’re studying. We’re getting subjective feedback from students saying it’s been helpful.”

He said he hopes to focus during his residency on pulmonary-critical medicine in the intensive care unit.

Lauren Clai Morehead, a Pine Bluff native, is wrapping up eight years of study at UAMS that began in 2017, when she started a joint M.D./Ph.D. program. The dual-degree program requires students to spend the first two years in medical school, four years on average to complete graduate studies, and the last two years in medical school.

Morehead completed her Ph.D., which focused on improving response of melanoma to immunotherapy, in 2023 and is now going to a required transitional year at Baptist Health in North Little Rock before heading to a three-year dermatology residency at Stanford Health in California. She said this will be followed by a year-long pediatric dermatology fellowship, though she doesn’t know yet where that will be.

Ultimately, “I plan on doing pediatric dermatology in an academic medical setting,” said the 29-year-old who hasn’t had a summer off in eight years.  “For research, my current interests include hidradenitis suppurative and other inflammatory skin conditions.”

“I decided to pursue both degrees when I was in high school,” she said. “I have always wanted to be a doctor, but I also have an interest in science and answering questions in medicine.”

She credits mentors Alan J. Tackett, Ph.D., deputy director of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at UAMS whose research focuses on immunotherapy treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma; Isabelle R. Miousse, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; and Sara Shalin, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Dermatology and director of the UAMS dual degree program, with providing her with “excellent support” throughout her time at UAMS.

“It’s been a good journey, but it continues,” she said. “I want to keep working hard. I feel like you never fully arrive. This is just the next step.”