Mount Allison’s 57th Rhodes Scholar Claire Wilbur ('25) grew up knowing she wanted to pursue medicine.

“It's probably a cliché to say that I've always wanted to be a doctor,” she says. “But it’s true.”

Now, after spending the past four years working as a research assistant at the New Brunswick Heart Centre in the summers and finalizing her honours biochemistry research at Mount Allison, she is pursuing a career as both a researcher and a physician.

“A single physician can only do so much,” she says. “But research is sort of the path forward to figure out these gaps in knowledge and start trying to solve them, to be able to achieve better outcomes with the limited resources that we have.”

At Oxford, she will be pursuing a PhD in Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics with a focus on cardiovascular sciences. She hopes to return to her hometown of Saint John, NB to attend medical school at Dalhousie’s Saint John campus and then practise in New Brunswick.

Wilbur is not the only female Rhodes Scholar from Mount Allison to pursue a career in medicine. In fact, Mount Allison’s first female Rhodes Scholar Dr. Sarah (Maybee) Crowe (‘81) from Fredericton, NB is now an ophthalmologist in private practice at Eastern Eye Centre in Sydney, Australia. After Mount Allison, she completed her honours thesis in physiology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and PhD in molecular biology at Oxford, then attended medical school at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Jacqui Wong (‘89), Mount Allison’s 41st Rhodes Scholar, also pursued medicine after Oxford at Queen’s and then did a rural family medicine residency in Thunder Bay, ON. She is currently practising family medicine in rural Ontario and has been the chief of staff at the local hospital for more than 20 years.

“Mount Allison was a wonderful experience and I obviously would not have had the opportunity to attend Oxford without the amazing support of many people there who promoted and supported my application,” she says. “The educational excellence and personal relationships with professors and other educators was similar to what I experienced in Oxford and in medical training.”

Wilbur firmly believes she would not have received the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship — valued at more than $100,000 to study at the University of Oxford — if it wasn’t for her undergraduate research experience at Mount Allison.

“I feel very well prepared going into my next research degree and eventually my first year of medical school,” she says.

• Read Mount Allison's 57th Rhodes Scholar news release
• Read more about Wilbur’s Rhodes’ journey with childhood best friend Alyssa Xu: Saint John BFFs off to Oxford after winning Rhodes scholarships (CBC New Brunswick)