What do you do with a justice and peace studies major or minor?

Practice compassionate medicine.

Jennifer Hyer, nee Burger, December 2000, major in Justice and Peace Studies, pre-medicine.

Jennifer studied a semester in Northern Ireland, researching the Belfast wall that separates Protestant areas from Catholic areas, and reporting on her research at the Nobel Peace Prize Conference at St. Olaf College, Northfield. In her senior seminar, she critically researched the U.S. health care system, interviewing physicians, nurses, insurance company representatives, and others.

After graduation, Jennifer volunteered with AmeriCorps-VISTA in Alaska, where she met her husband, Christopher Hyer. They moved to Portland, Oregon, so that Jennifer could do medical studies at Oregon Health Sciences University--a dual degree program that gave her an MD as well as a Master's in Public Health.  It is a 5 year program that focuses on treating people from a social and population-based model. 

In Portland, Jennifer and Christopher purchased and lived in their "first house" - a 30 foot tugboat on the Columbia River.

With the help of her Masters in Public Health, she worked for awhile with a Washington DC group on health care reform. 

Currently she is doing her Family Medicine Residency at Providence Hospital in Anchorage, Alaska and plans to practice "full-spectrum rural family medicine" there--from birth (delivering babies), through childhood, adulthood, and into hospice/end of life care. She focuses on preventative medicine, and combines eastern with western medicine ("integrative medicine").

In 2002, she reported:

I'm envisioning a grand reunion with JPST students in about 6 years, forming an intentional community in the Twin Cities.  Hmmm...we'll have lawyers, doctors, teachers, human rights workers, etc all committed to social justice.  What a community that would be!

Jennifer posts monthly updates on her blog at www.chrisandjenhyer.blogspot.com

The Hyers "roughing it" on their boat, SV High Endeavors, somewhere in Alaska.