2025 ANNUAL REPORT / OUR DONORS: MAKING A POSITIVE IMPACT 47
Its goal? To spark an interest in medical careers among its most promising, high-achieving students.
SSTRIDE – Science Students Together Reaching Instructional Diversity and Excellence – is one of several pathway programs of the College of Medicine. It finds the best and brightest in select middle and high schools in Florida and provides an intensive science curriculum( chemistry, biology, etc.) taught by teachers in the local classrooms beginning in eighth grade all the way through high school. In Immokalee, each class has an average of 20 students.
Yaneli Morales Velasquez, a senior SSTRIDE student at Immokalee High School, is one of those promising students. Bright and high achieving, her interest in medicine began after her own health scare when she was only in seventh grade. Velasquez had a serious heart condition which required her to be life-flighted from Naples to Miami.
“ This was very unexpected,” Velasquez said in an interview with NCF.“ This is when my passion started for medicine. One of the nurses had told my mom,‘ Oh, you have one of the brightest daughters. I see her working here one day.’ And that kind of brightened my eyes, and I really wanted to be like them.”
Immediately after being released and sent home, Velasquez knew the deadline was approaching to apply for SSTRIDE.
“ I was a little lost for a couple weeks, but I knew my pathway, and so that’ s when I applied … because I knew SSTRIDE was going to lead me down my path,” she said.
It’ s this kind of outcome that motivates the team at NCF and is a reason for its long-standing partnership and support of the College of Medicine. NCF made its first gift to the college in 2007 and, since then, the partnership has grown.
“ We are so very happy with the impact this program has made and being able to track those outcomes,” said Sarah Kelly, NCF’ s senior vice president, Grants and Community Impact.“ We are all about investments and looking at the return on investment, and SSTRIDE definitely shows that high return.”
The SSTRIDE program is diligent with tracking success, constantly measuring what works and what does not, which contributes to the ongoing success of the program. That’ s especially true in Immokalee.
“ The data is the data,” Kelly said.“ I mean, that’ s what we must use to benchmark, right? A lot of times, when you look at success stories, you look at the broad view, but you also have to look at individual stories about the human impact the programs have.”
Kristen Dimas( M. D.,’ 16), a family medicine physician at Lee Health in Fort Myers and a core faculty member in the FSU Family Medicine Residency Program there, grew up in Immokalee. She became involved in the SSTRIDE program as an FSU undergraduate during the summer between her freshman and sophomore years. At that time, SSTRIDE was just a two-week program in Immokalee and Dimas got one of only two positions available to teach and mentor students on-site.
“ I really loved interacting with the students in that way,” Dimas said.“ And now, SSTRIDE has grown into such a bigger program that runs all year long, all through the school year. Students really get a lot more support and education and I think it’ s so much better for them to be immersed in that experience. They get to see so much more. I’ m just really proud with how far it has come.”
Photo: Kristen Dimas( M. D.,’ 16), now a family practice physician at Lee Health, served as one of the very first mentors / instructors of the SSTRIDE program when it began more than 10 years ago in Immokalee. She is now a faculty member in the FSU Family Medicine Residency Program at Lee Health and continues to lend her support to SSTRIDE.
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