If your child dreams of becoming a doctor, nurse or medical professional, Pickerington Local School District (PLSD) has the perfect program to kickstart their career journey.
Each year, Pickerington’s eighth-grade students are invited to join the district’s biomedical science program ahead of their freshman year at Pickerington North High School or Pickerington High School Central.
While not all students who start in the biomedical program will stay until graduation, those who do can take an innovative job shadowing capstone course at OhioHealth Pickerington Methodist Hospital as upperclassmen. Through the course, students work hands-on with a variety of medical disciplines, departments and laboratories – all in a real healthcare setting with real patients.
Over the years, the number of upperclassmen who take the course has grown exponentially, from less than 40 in 2016 to more than 80 in 2025.
“I always remind people, to get 80-some students rotate through is pretty much unheard of,” Andy Harris, STEM biomedical science coordinator at PLSD, says. “I engage with a lot of other schools and different types of programs around the state and other places, they'll have, like, 12 kids. We have a success problem where it's some 82 kids.”
PLSD’s biomedical science program has been offered since 2012, but, with the opening of Pickerington Methodist in December 2023, students can shadow, learn and assist in even more medical specialties and departments than before. From freshman to senior year of high school, participants in the program learn about more than 360 types of careers in the medical field.
Sasha Williams, an athletic trainer at Pickerington Methodist who is the STEM clinical coordinator, says the program allows them to consider their potential career path in healthcare before attending college or another higher learning institution.
“I wish I had something like this when I was in college,” Williams says. “I think a lot of healthcare workers, they say the exact same thing, these kids are at an advantage to have this during their high school years. It’s so important.”
The program is valuable for guiding students to new potential career paths, but it also helps them identify what they’re not interested in pursuing. “The best thing that we do sometimes is teach kids they don't want to do this,” Harris says. “Like when we get the (cadaver) pigs out, somebody says they want to be a surgeon but they can't be in the room, you might want to rethink stuff. Or, they don't realize that anesthesiology is sitting around sometimes. If you want a chill day for the next 30 years, that's good for you. If you want some action, you might want to think of something else.”
Setting a strong foundation
Before biomedical students can start job shadowing in the hospital, they must take a handful of prerequisite courses. They must be at least 16 to shadow in most departments and 18 to observe surgery. The prerequisite courses teach students the basics, make them comfortable within the medical field and help them practice problem-solving.
Pickerington student, Brayden Blake, committed to the biomedical program in eighth grade and is now a senior learning and shadowing at Pickerington Methodist.
“I was always interested in being active and seeing how the human body worked and all that, so, when I found out there was a program for biomedical science, I knew that was a pretty good route,” Blake says. “My goal is to be in exercise science or be a physical therapist.”
Blake says his underclassmen years in the program not only taught him about biology and health, but also set him up for academic success.
“There’s a second-year class called human body systems, and for me personally, that kind of taught me how to study, and taught me I didn't have the best studying habits,” he says. “It was a difficult class for me, a lot of memorization. So, I think going to this class and then the next three years really helped me understand how to study properly and learn those habits.”

Maisie Fitzmaurice is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at mfitzmaurice@cityscenemediagroup.com.