Students from FHC Take Biomedical Innovations at FHN

Credit to Michaela Erfling

Cooper Redington and Sophia Couteranis work on designing an emergency room floor plan in their Biomedical Innovations class. To take this class they both must travel from their school, FHC, to FHN due to the class not being offered there. This is the first year BI has been offered at FHN.

By Paige Prinster
Published: November 8, 2017

Senior Sophia Couteranis’ mornings are spent like many other high schoolers. She wakes up. She gets dressed. She eats breakfast. She hops into her silver Ford Fusion and makes the drive to school. A 15-minute drive from her house to FHN, only to leave after her first hour, get back in her car and make a 15-minute drive to FHC for the rest of the day. Couteranis makes the drive for one reason: Biomedical Innovations.

She, along with senior Cooper Redington, are in Matthew Riffee’s first hour Biomedical Innovations class. FHN offers all four of the biomedical courses. Only the first three are offered at FHC, leaving students with two options: not finishing the course or making the drive to FHN on a daily basis.

“Many Central students stop halfway because they’re not sure what they are going to do,” Redington said. “But once you make it this far, this is pretty much what you want to do. You kind of want to finish what you started and use all that information you learned.”

This isn’t the first year the students have had to make the daily drive to FHN, however. Couteranis and Redington took the third biomed course, Medical Interventions, at FHN last year. FHC has finally started offering that course, but still has yet to offer Biomedical Innovations due to a lack of students signing up. But FHC plans to add in the course next year.

Another FHC senior, Melanie Faron, is coming to FHN for a different reason: Medical Interventions. Even though the course is now offered at FHC, it is only offered for one hour and it didn’t fit into Faron’s schedule. After talking with her principals, they made the decision to let her come to FHN for the course.

“Genetics and chemistry have always been a passion of mine,” Faron said. “It’s just what I want to do. The class doesn’t even feel like a class. It feels like I’m taking it for fun.”

Despite the daily commute, the course helps students like Redington, Couteranis and Faron prepare for futures in the medical field.

“If you are dedicated to go into the medical field, this course is worth taking,” Couteranis said. “It’s going to make everything in the future a bit more comfortable, and I’ll be able to get the most out of what I learn in med school.”