{"id":39362,"date":"2016-01-04T09:01:15","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T14:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=39362"},"modified":"2016-01-04T11:21:38","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T16:21:38","slug":"doctor-doctor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2016\/01\/04\/doctor-doctor\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor, doctor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Medical<\/a>

Medical school and medical careers are shaping up as a family affair for Wright State students Kayla Crager, Kyle Hazlett and Mark Crager. (Photos by Will Jones)<\/p><\/div>\n

It promises to be a busy summer for Wright State biology students Kayla Crager and Kyle Hazlett. In April they get their college degrees. In June they marry each other. And in July they go off to medical school together.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the plan. And it\u2019s all happening in front of Kayla\u2019s proud father, Mark Crager, who is taking courses at Wright State that he hopes will get him into medical school as well. Next semester, he and his daughter will be in the same Wright State class.<\/p>\n

Pull up a chair.<\/p>\n

Mark Crager is an internal medicine physician\u2019s assistant who co-owns a Chillicothe company that provides health care to post-acute and long-term care patients in central and underserved southern Ohio. He is on-call 24 hours a day, and since August has put 10,000 miles on his car making calls at nursing homes and attending classes.<\/p>\n

Crager is also the father of four children, who range in age from the 21-year-old Kayla to a 16-month-old baby. And Crager looks young enough to be Kayla\u2019s older brother. (More on that later.)<\/p>\n

Kayla Crager and Hazlett both attended London High School, but Hazlett is two years older so the two of them didn\u2019t really know each other at the time. Hazlett went on to attend Mount St. Joseph University, a private Catholic college in Cincinnati, and is introduced to Kayla at a friend\u2019s house in London when he was home from school. She is preparing to attend Mount St. Joseph and play basketball.<\/p>\n

\"Kayla<\/a>

Kayla Crager and Kyle Hazlett, right, both major in biology and will attend medical school together next summer, while Mark Crager is working on his Post-Bac Certificate in Pre-Medical Studies.<\/p><\/div>\n

She and Hazlett become good friends at Mount St. Joseph. Both were initially thinking of becoming physical therapists, but Hazlett decides the field is too narrow for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ultimately decided I wanted to go as far as I can and go to medical school,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were some late nights talking to Kayla, and she seemed to express the same desire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Kayla\u2019s father is doing a little research and gently suggests the couple consider transferring to Wright State.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d been in school all my life. I have four degrees, and I understand the huge amount of student loan debt that comes with that,\u201d he said. \u201cYou spend a lot of money to go to a private school, and I\u2019m not sure you\u2019re benefiting from a better education. I didn\u2019t want my kids to have to experience that same kind of burden.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hazlett and Kayla transferred to Wright State in 2013. Both are majoring in biology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Wright State. It was like the perfect medium between a big school and a small school,\u201d she said. \u201cClasses are more challenging, but it prepares me to do what I want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

What she\u2019ll be doing is going to medical school. Both she and Hazlett have been accepted at the University of Pikeville Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine, where classes begin July 25. She wants to become a family physician; Hazlett is leaning toward internal medicine.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Kayla\u2019s father is working on his Post-Bac Certificate in Pre-Medical Studies<\/a>, a Wright State program offered by the College of Science and Mathematics<\/a> that enables students to prepare for entrance into competitive professional programs in the health sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir biology program here is quite challenging,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a couple master\u2019s degrees, and to be honest the professors here are challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crager has an associate degree in respiratory therapy, a bachelor\u2019s degree in business and finance, a master\u2019s degree certifying him as a physician\u2019s assistant and a master\u2019s in family medicine from the University of Nebraska.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about the letters after your name. The truth is it\u2019s what you do with those and how you serve humanity,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to work until I can\u2019t work anymore and continue to serve. If I wasn\u2019t willing to do that, I would surely not be going back to medical school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next semester, Crager will take a class at Wright State with his daughter. Blessed with youthful looks, Crager often gets double-takes when students learn he is Kayla\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents don\u2019t typically realize I\u2019m my age, and they definitely don\u2019t think I\u2019m Kayla\u2019s father,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we\u2019re together, they think we\u2019re friends or brother-sister.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crager doesn\u2019t believe he\u2019s too old to launch a career as a doctor in family medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany years ago, God called me to do something, and I was never able to step into that. I feel like this is something I was called to do,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want some day to have that one regret.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Medical school and medical careers are shaping up as a family affair for a Wright State father and his daughter and son-in-law. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":39366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,2064,725,715,2109,746],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-biology","category-home-news-sidebar","category-news","category-pre-health","category-science-mathematics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39362"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39368,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39362\/revisions\/39368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}