Written by Jena El-Sabeh, Professional Coach in the Biomedical Master's Program, School of Medicine
When students enter the Biomedical Master's Program, they arrive with ambition, curiosity, and often a lot of uncertainty. They're navigating a rigorous 32-credit curriculum, exploring career paths in medicine, research, or industry, and figuring out who they want to become. No single person can address all of that. That's why the BMP doesn't ask them to rely on just one.
Our model pairs every student with three distinct sources of support:
- an academic advisor,
- a professional coach, and
- an alumni mentor.
Each role is intentionally different. And it's in the overlap, the way these three work in concert, that students find something truly powerful.
Our professional coaches see this firsthand. Their role is not to tell students what to do. Coaching is forward-looking and student led. When a student sits down with them, they’re not reviewing their transcript or mapping out their course schedule. That's the advisor's domain. And the coach is not someone who's walked their exact path before—that's what an alumni mentor offers.
What professional coaches bring is space: space to slow down, reflect, and ask the questions that don't always come up in academic settings. What do you actually want? What's getting in your way? What would it look like to show up as your best self this semester?
Those questions matter more than people often realize, and the impact shows up in how students describe their sessions.
One student shared that coaching helped them lay out all the different aspects of life demanding their attention, then identify what to focus on based on the level of control they had in each situation.
Another said a session gave them "a sense of peace” and left them feeling more prepared to tackle the month ahead.
A third reflected that coaching helped them understand their strengths in a more practical way and that solving challenges isn't just about trying harder, but about using those strengths more wisely.
That kind of clarity is hard to find in a syllabus.
Graduate students frequently know what they're supposed to do. The harder challenge is building the confidence, self-awareness, and emotional steadiness to do it, especially when the path includes high-stakes decisions like MCAT retakes, medical school applications, or entering the job market. Coaching creates a confidential, non-evaluative space to work through exactly those moments.
That's also where the three roles start to reinforce each other in ways that go beyond what any one of us could do alone.
A student might leave an advising appointment with a clear plan for their experiential activities, then bring the anxiety they feel about that plan to a coaching session. Later, an alumni mentor might help them see that the uncertainty is normal because they felt it too and made it through.
Same student, same challenge, three complementary lenses.
This kind of integrated support doesn't happen by accident. It's the result of a shared commitment to seeing students as whole people, not just course-completers or credential-seekers, but individuals with their own lived experiences, values, and potential.
When advising, coaching, and mentoring are aligned around that belief, students don't just succeed academically. They grow.
That, at its core, is what the BMP model is built to do.
Learn more about this program and the biomedical master's program:
Jena El-Sabeh is a Professional Certified Coach in the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She oversees a comprehensive coaching program for biomedical graduate students and teaches three graduate courses. In addition, Jena provides workshops for trainees throughout the Health Sciences.
