An active scientist who is also Montana's WWAMI Program director, Linda Hyman investigates yeast cells' adaptation to microgravity in her lab at MSU.

At the helm sits Linda Hyman, who directs the splashing and the students during their medical school careers. On a May afternoon, Hyman's normally well-coiffed ebony hair and blouse drip river water. And the normally highly focused students soak in both the spring sunshine and the chance to have some fun as they journey through medical school in MSU's WWAMI program, a cooperative program of the University of Washington School of Medicine and the states of Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho, which lack stand-alone medical schools. Montana's WWAMI medical students spend their first year on the MSU campus before continuing at the University of Washington.

As MSU's Vice Provost for the Division of Health Sciences, and the head of the Montana WWAMI Medical Education Program, Hyman leads the med students down a river to their chosen profession. Just as the students' route to medical school follows sometimes challenging currents, her career and arrival at MSU in 2004 has not followed a predictable path.

Born on a failing chicken farm in 1956, Hyman's earliest memories focus on a one-bedroom apartment and gritty New York streets where her parents retreated after the farm failed. Yet it was those hardships upon which Hyman honed skills to balance her empathy, enthusiasm and drive to expand and perfect the WWAMI program.

Both of Hyman's parents fled their native Poland during Nazi invasions of World War II. Her mother survived a series of Hitler's concentrations camps, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald, before coming to the U.S. Hyman's father, Joe, who escaped to Cuba at age 11, then America, stitched together an immigrant's livelihood in New York's garment district as a tailor. He died when Hyman was 16 years old.

"As children of (Holocaust) survivors, (there is) a sense of burden and responsibility," says Hyman of her background.

Hers is a complicated persona, Hyman admits. She could be cynical, or hard or pessimistic, yet because of hardships or despite them, neither Hyman nor her Florida-retiree mother chose that course.

"My mom is the most patriotic person I know," says Hyman. "She credits America with providing her the opportunity to educate my brother and me. In one generation, she's gone from losing everything to having her children go to grad school, and grandchildren, my nieces and nephew, graduate from Dartmouth, Vassar and American University."

While attending college at State University of New York, Hyman "caught the biology bug," ultimately completing a doctorate in molecular biology at Brandeis University. Hyman then taught and conducted research in molecular biology and the biochemistry of the genome at Tulane University in New Orleans, until arriving in Bozeman to lead the WWAMI program as its first woman and first non-physician director.

With equal parts compassion, fervor and resourcefulness, Hyman connects with students, often underprivileged themselves and from medically underserved communities. She finds them extremely capable if given opportunities.

"I completed some of my rotations in Montana," says Missoula native Cameron Phillips, currently in his third year of medical school in Seattle. "WWAMI is a tremendous deal for Montana students. We attend University of Washington, ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the best primary care for a medical school for the past 14 years, yet we pay in-state (tuition) -- it's a gift. I'll always feel indebted to WWAMI. And then to practice in our hometown or state is just icing on the cake."

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