Chloe Smith’s love for learning and teaching others guides her journey toward medicine.
As a kid, Chloe Smith often wrangled her two younger sisters into playing make-believe school — she was always the teacher. In real life, Chloe is just as eager to learn. “I’m always asking why; why this and why that? I have the internal monologue of a toddler,” she laughs.
That curiosity — and a drive to educate others — powers her senior year studying biochemistry and nutritional science at Iowa State University and fuels her goal of becoming a physician.
Chloe was drawn to Iowa State by her love of science, sparked by a high school biology teacher. With support from scholarships, including the Elinor L. Fehr and Walter R. Fehr Endowed Scholarship, Theresa E. Beneke Memorial Pre-Med Scholarship, and Honors Mentor Grant, she dove into research her first year. “The scholarships gave me time to focus on learning everything I could,” she says.
— Chloe Smith
Still, Chloe didn’t always feel like she belonged. “At first, I felt like I was behind everyone else in the lab,” she says. But leading an experiment that revealed zinc could inhibit antimicrobial resistance bolstered her confidence. Rather than reveling in her success, she asked, What’s next?
That question led to diabetes research, exploring whether resistant starch could help prevent vitamin D loss in people with the disease. A family member’s diagnosis inspired the work. “People don’t realize how challenging the disease is until they are diagnosed with it,” she says.
Now working part-time in a hospital emergency room, Chloe is on track for medical school. She hopes to become a primary care doctor focused on prevention and education — where her students will be patients, and the lessons could last a lifetime.
