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Office of Pre-Health Advising

Meet the Pre-Health Program Director

Dr. Scott Calvin, Pre-Health Program Director at Lehman College

Some Facts About the Pre-Health Program Director for Lehman College

  • He was the bottom student in his high school chemistry class
  • He received an F in a physics course at Brooklyn College
  • He was once placed on academic probation at CUNY
  • He took gap years--eight of them--between his undergraduate degree and entering graduate school
  • He has bounced his share of checks, and at one point had tens of thousands of dollars of debt
  • When he was on the verge of losing his housing, he applied to the 92nd Y. They turned him down because he "didn't do anything productive with his time."
  • He was once fired from a job before he'd even worked one day at it

More Facts About the Pre-Health Program Director for Lehman College

  • He has a bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy, with a minor in classics, from the University of California at Berkeley
  • He has a Ph.D. in physics from the City University of New York
  • He did post-doctoral work on magnetic nanoparticles at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC
  • He has taught at the Hayden Planetarium
  • He was one of the first instructors for the Examkrackers test prep company, and co-wrote 1001 Questions in MCAT Chemistry, a best-selling test prep book
  • He has also written XAFS for Everyone, an advanced textbook on x-ray spectroscopy, We Can Do It! A Problem Solving Graphic Novel Guide for General Physics, and Beyond Curie: Four Women in Physics and Their Remarkable Discoveries, 1903 to 1963
  • He was a tenured professor of physics at Sarah Lawrence College
  • His scientific work has been cited more than a thousand times

Why Bring This Up?

Successful people have rarely, if ever, been successful at everything they have tried from the start. Overcoming challenges and responding to setbacks and changes of course is part of what makes them successful. As the pre-health program director for Lehman College, Dr. Calvin believes in helping students find ways to move forward and excel, even if the line of their career is not always a straight one.