Miles making an impact on and off the field

COLCHESTER, Vt. — As a junior during the 2015 season Monica Miles, a resident of Dover-Foxcroft and 2013 graduate of Foxcroft Academy, had a breakout season for the St. Michael’s College field hockey team. Miles started all 18 games on defense for the Purple Knights, but she has been making a big impact off the field for even longer.

During the 2014-15 school year Miles helped her team become affiliated with Donate Life Vermont, which works in organ and tissue donation, a topic in which she became interested after her cousin’s organs were donated upon his death in 2012. Thanks to her, the St. Michael’s field hockey team has raised awareness about organ donation among the campus community the past two years through a week-long drive where the squad members look to inform people but also add names to the organ donation registry.

This summer Miles is working in the Harvard Medical School Summer Research Program in Kidney Medicine, doing research in Dr. Sanja Sever’s lab at Mass General Hospital in Boston. Her research initially focused on chemotherapy-induced kidney damage but has since shifted to kidney damage caused by chronic kidney disease. As she says, “It definitely ties in with my interest in organ donation and transplantation as it is much better to try and treat the kidney successfully and prevent the need for dialysis or a transplant in the first place.”

To cap her summer, Miles will present her research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. during the KUH Summer Undergraduate Research Conference. Miles, who has already been offered a job as a lab manager in Dr. Sever’s lab for the 2017-18 academic year, plans to apply to medical school this coming spring for the 2018-19.