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Haya Safar matched to a urology residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, part of Harvard Medical School.

College of Medicine Class of 2026 Celebrates Matches Across 30 States, D.C.

March 30, 2026 | Senior medical students on the verge of receiving their medical credentials from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) gathered March 20 in central Arkansas and Fayetteville to learn where they will spend their next three to seven years of training.

An impressive 99% of UAMS’164 seniors — which includes 146 on the main campus in Little Rock and 18 at the Northwest Regional Campus in Fayetteville — matched to a program to begin their residencies following graduation in May. Nationally, just 93.5% of senior medical students found matches, for the third year in a row, according to the National Resident Matching Program, which uses an algorithm to pair seniors with available postgraduate positions.

While nationally, only about 28% of senior medical students remain in the same state for their residency training, 45% of UAMS’ matching seniors will stay in Arkansas for their residencies — an encouraging sign that efforts to retain Arkansas-trained physicians are working. According to the American Medical Association, more than half of physicians continue to practice in the state where they completed their residency.

The other members of the UAMS College of Medicine Class of 2026 are leaving to begin residencies in 29 other states and the District of Columbia, including at very competitive programs at Stanford University in California and Harvard University in Boston.

Altogether, the class represents 23 specialties including emergency medicine, neurosurgery, pediatrics, anesthesiology and more.

UAMS is Arkansas’ only academic medical center, with a proud history of training the great majority of Arkansas doctors while focusing on a three-part mission of providing clinical care, education, and research.

One of those Arkansas-trained physicians, Douglas Ross, M.D., from the UAMS College of Medicine Class of 2000, returned to Arkansas for the Class of 2026 Match Day ceremony to support his son, Noah Ross, who was born while his father was in his fourth year of medical school.

While the younger Ross matched to a three-year internal medicine residency at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and is thinking about a career specializing in cardiology, his father went from UAMS to an emergency medicine residency at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia. Later he became president of CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs Hospital and is now president of Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix.

“I think he’s really proud of me,” Noah Ross said. “It’s been awesome to follow in his footsteps. I’ve always been able to go to him for advice.”

Meanwhile, Noah Ross’ mother is a dietician, his older sister is a physician’s assistant in Phoenix, and his younger brother, Will Ross, is in his first year of medical school at UAMS.

Noah Ross said he chose internal medicine because “it gives you so many opportunities after residency.” He added that, like his father, he is considering eventually teaching at an academic hospital like UAMS.

Class President Jared Canonigo, who gave the welcome address at the central Arkansas ceremony, held in Benton, received thunderous applause when he announced he matched to a pediatrics residency at Stanford Health Care in California, a private hospital that is part of Stanford University School of Medicine. Cheers also went up for Haya Safar, who matched to a urology residency at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, a teaching hospital at Harvard Medical School.

For senior Erin Smith, who had her first child, Daniel, in November — matching to a pediatrics residency at UAMS was a dream come true, as it will allow her to stay in Little Rock and work at Arkansas Children’s.

“I originally wanted to do OB/GYN, from high school on through college,” said the Bryant native. “My uncle is an OB/GYN, and I love the idea of watching babies be born. But I shadowed a hospitalist at Children’s as a random assignment in my first year of medical school, and right away, I knew I loved pediatrics, and that’s always where my focus has been ever since.”

Smith got married just before starting medical school, and said her husband, a software developer from Magnolia who could work remotely from about anywhere, is also thrilled that they will stay in Little Rock. After her residency, she said, she hopes to work in a general pediatrics outpatient facility where she can focus on helping underserved kids who don’t have proper access to medical care.

Andrew Delo matched to a four-year Med-Peds residency at UAMS, a program that combines internal medicine and pediatrics. He said that growing up, he always wanted to go to medical school. However, he ended up taking a seven-year detour by serving in the U.S. Navy in Charleston, South Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia, where he was an officer on a submarine.

Though the detour meant he didn’t start medical school until age 30, he said his military experience only reinforced his desire for a career in medicine, making him realize he wanted to be in an intellectual environment where morals are important and tough decisions often need to be made under pressure.

Makenna Madden of the Class of 2026 is heading for a different type of primary care residency — in family medicine, at Louisiana State University Health in Shreveport.

She said she has been excited about a career in family medicine since getting involved during her first year of medical school in the Honors in Underserved Primary Care (HUPC) program, a four-year guided track designed to enhance the practice of primary care.

Rattling off a list of unique opportunities it provided, Madden cited an “amazing” preceptorship — a structured one-on-one training period under the guidance of a physician that allowed her to spend four weeks gaining clinical experience in a rural community — in her case, in Camden. She said she worked alongside the same physician during her fourth year that she had worked with for two weeks just after her first year.

Madden said that through the honors program, she discovered a love for obstetrics, particularly in performing regular deliveries and Caesarean sections. She said she will “definitely” return to practice in a rural Arkansas town after her residency, especially after her guided curriculum made her keenly aware of the state’s higher-than-usual incidence of maternal and fetal mortality.

Among several Couples Matches this year in the UAMS Class of 2026 were Megan Schutte, 28, who matched to a three-year internal medicine residency at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital, and Michael Hahn, 27, her fiancé, who matched to a five-year otolaryngology residency at the same location.

“We met the first week of medical school, at orientation,” Schutte said “Who would have known UAMS would be our matchmaker?”

The couple’s wedding is planned for June 5, 2027.

“I came into medical school thinking I wanted to do GI,” Schutte said. “He thought he wanted to do plastic surgery,” until he learned about the broader spectrum of opportunities available in the UAMS Department of Otolaryngolgy-Head and Neck Surgery, which includes facial cosmetic and reconstructive surgery among its 13 divisions or specialties.

To ensure they could find a match in the same city or in nearby cities, Schutte said, “We ended up ranking over 220 options.”

Savannah Hickman-Callaway, a native of Little Rock who grew up in El Dorado, was among 15 students who in 2021 comprised the inaugural class of a post-baccalaureate pre-med program at UAMS called Medical Scholars in Public Health. It is a collaboration between the UAMS colleges of Medicine, Public Health and Pharmacy, and is intended to serve as an educational bridge to a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree and/or a medical degree for Arkansas residents from socially, economically, or geographically disadvantaged backgrounds who faced challenges in the medical school admissions process.

Through the program, all students work toward their MPH degree. After the first year, those with a Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) score of at least 505 and a grade point average of at least 3.5 receive fast-track admission to medical school.

Hickman matched to a four-year OB-GYN residency at UAMS, which she called “a dream come true.”

“Having the opportunity to get my MPH and then my medical degree has been one of the most gratifying experiences ever,” she said, calling the program “wonderful.”

Luke Tollett, a member of the Class of 2026 who attends the Northwest Regional Campus in Fayetteville, matched to a family medicine residency at UAMS in Fayetteville, thanks in large part to the UAMS Rural Practice Scholarship Program. It funded part of his tuition in return for him agreeing to practice primary care in a qualified rural community in Arkansas for at least four years after completing his residency

Tollett, a native of the tiny Howard County town of Dierks, said he is excited about continuing to practice in a rural area, possibly his hometown, after his residency.

After spending his first two years of medical school in Little Rock, he said, “I realized rural living and small communities are where my heart is. Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of access to care, and a lot of people wouldn’t be willing to travel to Little Rock for care. Also, I feel like rural doctors get to practice the full scope of medicine — more of a wider scope of interest.”

Even if he pursues a fellowship after his residency, he said, “I just want to go straight into serving a small, underserved community.”

Mara Campbell, who will graduate in May with an M.D. and a Ph.D., said she has been in the dual doctorate degree program at UAMS for eight years, and “ultimately, I’d like to do infectious disease, as a researcher and a clinician.”

She matched to an internal medicine residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania. Campbell, who is married, said she has a twin sister, Jessica, who graduated from UAMS with a medical degree three years ago and is now in a psychiatry residency in Kansas City. Someday, she said, they may end up practicing in the same city, with their families in tow, wherever that may be.

“The whole reason I wanted to get an M.D. or Ph.D. was because of an interest in infectious disease,” Campbell said. She said she initially couldn’t decide which degree to pursue, “but then I found out I could do both. So, I can treat infections, and at the same time work to understand them better. I want to do everything all at once! I’m really excited for the future.”

While Campbell’s medical degree is in internal medicine, her Ph.D. was in microbiology with a focus on studying infections in bones.

Campbell said her interest in infectious disease began when she was in high school.

“I’ve always been a big reader, and a teacher of mine noticed that I also had a general interest in science. She suggested I read some infectious disease outbreak books, which I loved. To me, they’re kind of fantastical. They’re so weird and grotesque.  It’s almost like the diseases are monsters, and I’m studying different versions of monsters.

“It’s like a mystery where you put all the pieces together, but there’s also this intimacy with the patients, getting to know them well and being somebody who they can trust and who cares about them,” she added.