When Maren Loe was starring for the University of Chicago volleyball team, she believed she got the most done during the playing season. “I don’t know how many other athletes are like this, but a lot of volleyball players felt most productive in the season,” she said. “You had to be more organized with so many constraints on your time.”
Maren’s first volleyball photo, circa 2003
That mode has facilitated her pursuit of an MD and PhD through the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Washington University. “I am so much more efficient when I am balancing things. I am just like this,” Loe commented.
In addition to studying computational neuroscience, the third-year MD/PhD student is involved in the revision of the Washington University medical school curriculum, 500 Women in Medicine, and recently became a member of the university’s Title IX Advisory Committee.
UCHICAGO
Vanessa Walby, current head volleyball coach at Washington University, was the head coach at Chicago for Loe’s first two seasons. “Maren is truly one of a kind. She has been since I started recruiting her,” Walby stated. “She has never been one to go through the motions. When she wakes up every day, she is going through her day with purpose and meaning, and trying to make things around her better. In college, she always went above and beyond in her training in and out of season. She never skipped workouts and was always encouraging her teammates to join her and to keep improving. Everything for Maren was always for the betterment of the team and program. She was one of the most selfless players I have ever coached and she always knew it was ‘bigger than just her.’ It was her mission to leave UChicago better than she found it….and she definitely did!”
Maren and her UChicago teammates listening to then head coach Vanessa Walby
When Walby left Chicago for St. Louis, 23-year veteran NCAA Division I coach Sharon Dingman took over the Maroons’ program and coached Loe in her final two seasons. “Maren succeeded because she put herself in the best position to succeed,” Dingman remarked. “Athletically, she managed every aspect of being a high-level athlete to perfection. She ate right, she slept right, she took care of her body in the strength and conditioning area, and in the training room. She did this every day of the year. Add to that the most important characteristic – she is fiercely competitive.”
Walby did not relish her new team competing against Loe. “When you played against her, you knew you had to be prepared for everything,” she recalled. “She was relentless, smart, and would find a way to make things work no matter what.”
Loe ended her career as the Maroons’ all-time leader in kills (1,960), while finishing sixth in digs (1,378), and eighth in aces (150) and block assists (189). The four-time UAA All-Association selection earned first team honors as a junior and senior, and was named the UAA Most Valuable Player in 2014.
There is one week that sticks in the memory of both Loe and Dingman. During her senior year, the first weekend of UAA play coincided with the beginning of classes at Chicago, which is on the quarter system. “We played in Wisconsin over the weekend and got back late Saturday night,” Loe recollected. “I flew to New Jersey on Sunday morning for a medical school interview at Rutgers University on Monday, flew back that night and went to classes on Tuesday. The next day I flew to Baltimore for an interview at Johns Hopkins University on Thursday and then Friday I flew to New York to meet my team at the gym for practice.”
“She missed that entire week of practice and met us in New York ready to compete,” Dingman added. “Before she left, she got a workout from our strength coach, instructions from our athletic trainer, and suggestions from me on what she should do while traveling to be the most prepared she could be for the weekend. That displays the level of commitment she had to herself and to her team. She was so dedicated to her craft as an outside hitter that she was still learning and growing the last practice of her senior season. She approached every match the same, as the biggest and most important match. No detail was too small, no moment too big. Maren Loe is one of the most uniquely gifted student-athletes I have coached in 35 years.”
What made Loe’s career even more remarkable is that she tore a labrum at the end of her sophomore year. “My shoulder popped backwards from the shoulder socket and went right back in on a dive,” she recalled. “I figured it’s all in one piece, I’ll keep playing. At the end of my junior year (a season in which at one point she led the Division III in attempts), I told our athletic trainers that something was wrong and I had an MRI done.”
The MRI confirmed the torn labrum diagnosis and it left her with a decision to make about when to get it repaired. “I could either get the surgery and rush through rehab or I could play with it and get the surgery later,” Loe stated. “I’m glad I didn’t get the surgery before my senior year because I would not have been able to play at the same level. I spent a lot of time in the training room, didn’t swing in practice, and even got a libero jersey in case all I could physically do was play defense.”
Her senior year was an injury-plagued one as she also dealt with a likely stress fracture of the fibula from landing repeatedly. She had issues with a ligament between two lumbar vertebrae that gave her problems when she leaned back too far to swing, and she strained a hamstring before the UAA championship weekend. In spite of all that, she earned first team All-America honors and registered 560 kills, second only to her program-record total of 617 in her junior year.
AMWA/TITLE IX/500 WOMEN IN MEDICINE
In her first two years of medical school, Loe was involved with the Washington University American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA), a national organization that is dedicated to promoting women’s health, improving the professional development and personal well-being of its members, and increasing the influence of women in all aspects of the medical profession.
Among other things, the group addressed smaller level sexual harassment issues, including micro-aggressions in the hospital. Meanwhile, undergraduate students on the campus were holding rallies around reforming sexual assault policies. One of the undergraduate students’ requests was that WashU begin a Title IX advisory committee to review the entire process and make changes to the Title IX policies on campus that address the concerns the students raised.
“I heard about the committee from Dr. Lisa Moscoso, the medical school’s Associate Dean of Students, who suggested I apply,” Loe said. She was chosen as one of 12 members of the committee, which is chaired by Assistant Vice Chancellor for the Academy for Diversity and Inclusion Nicole Hudson. Eventually, the group will report its findings and recommendations to Provost Holden Thorp and the director of the Title IX office, Jessica Kennedy.
“Maren is an outstanding student and will be a successful physician scientist. She is a committed advocate, fiercely amplifying the voice of many who need it – women, students, patients, and survivors of sexual assault and relationship violence,” Moscoso said. “She has been recognized by her peers for her work and she is really a wonderful, balanced, and kind human being. I’m thrilled she is an MSTP student as she will be a part of our community for many years. Her presence, brilliance, and passion will not only make our school and our community better, but she also empowers the people with whom she works to be better, including me.”
“We just had our first monthly (Title IX) meeting and we touched on some of the issues we need to address,” Loe remarked. “We began by talking about changes that have already been made, what changes still need to be made, and what the goals and concerns of the committee are. One of my goals is that we look at the length of time that the process takes for a complaint to fully go through the system and the transparency that needs to be part of it. I also want to make sure people know what happens after the file a complaint, what the possible outcomes are, what resources are available, and what the actual process looks like.”
Loe is also one of five women who created the 500 Women in Medicine initiative, a nonprofit advocacy project to improve visibility and career opportunities for women in health care. The project launched in December as a satellite of 500 Women Scientists. “Kate (Gerull) is a third-year med school student and we have worked together at AMWA and on a research project on gender bias,” she stated. “500 Women Scientists has a database for requests for conference speaking or an expert for a newspaper piece or magazine article. It is about amplifying women in the profession, and Kate wanted to do the same thing for women in medicine.”
“One of the big problems for women in medicine is that for the past 20 years, we have made up 40 to 50 percent of med students, but that is not reflected in leadership positions,” Loe continued. “Department chairs and even leadership positions in more traditionally female specialties like OB-GYN and pediatrics are still predominantly men. We want to make sure that women are more visible and are getting speaking opportunities.”
Loe referenced a self-study done by Adrienne LaFrance, Editor of TheAtlantic.com, where she studied her stories in 2013 and again in 2015. To LaFrance’s surprise, she found that she quoted men about 75 percent of the time and that, in general, news stories quote men 75-81 percent of the time. (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/gender-diversity-journalism/463023/)
“Simply put, you can’t be what you can’t see,” Loe remarked. “I have always recognized the disparity in leadership and have always wanted to change it.” Being the daughter of two mathematicians, she was encouraged to pursue scientific adventures from an early age. “My mom would talk about the need to get girls interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and keeping them in these fields. In a statistics class at Chicago, I was the only woman out of 15 students. In the Electrical and Systems Engineering department, I am one of two women in the 12-person PhD cohort. Medicine is doing a lot better in terms of women being represented in many fields, but there’s plenty of growth still needed for representation in leadership and certain specialties.”
Her mother, Melissa, became the third woman mathematics professor at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota). She also serves as co-director of a five-year, $1,000,000 Inclusive Excellence grant the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to study inclusive excellence in STEM fields. St. Thomas received the award this past summer.
Maren with her parents on UChicago’s Senior Night. She came to that match directly from presenting some of her research at the Society for Neuroscience conference that afternoon
“Part of the lack of women in STEM fields is the culture,” Loe said. “A lot of women don’t feel supported. My mother has always been really aware of the need to get more women and more people of color in STEM.”
One of the issues that Loe says adds to the problem is stereotype threat. The term was coined by researchers Claude Steele and Joshua Aaronson in 1995. It is defined as “a socially premised psychological threat that arises when one is in a situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one’s group applies.”
“We all have boxes that we’re expected to fit into, based on what society says about people with those identities,” expanded Loe. “If women are told they are not supposed to be as good at something as men, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
COACHING AND THE CURRICULUM
This past season, Loe was able to channel her continued love of volleyball as a volunteer assistant coach under Walby at WashU. “I love that she has been able to help our program. The women love being around her and she has an awesome perspective to give them,” Walby commented. “She has lived the life they are living and she dominated it in true Maren form. The conversations she is having with the women are heartfelt and are game-changers in their perspective to life and the game. They look at Maren and know it is doable to have it all. They essentially think she is Wonder Woman and there is nothing she can’t conquer. What a role model to have right in front of you all the time. It isn’t fictitious… they see it all and are able to bounce ideas, learn, and grow as young women through her example. I love it!”
Maren as part of the 2018 Washington University coaching staff, led by her former head coach Vanessa Walby
“It feels like I have played volleyball forever and it is great to be around it still,” remarked Loe, who understands the irony of coaching at the school that served as her biggest rival at Chicago. “It is funny that I am here now. I remember wearing my Washington University School of Medicine t-shirt during my senior year at Chicago. One time, my roommate, who was on the track team, told me they had a meet that day and I couldn’t wear our rivals’ t-shirt.”
Although the program may be different, she is very familiar with Walby as a coach. “I like her mentality and her approach to volleyball,” Loe said. “The main thing is that she really cares about her players as more than athletes. Whether she is making a pot of coffee for the team or checking in on a player after a break-up, she cares about them as students and people.”
The transition to assistant coaching has mostly been smooth, but still unique considering the rivalry with her college team. “At the first practices in August, I still felt like I was saying ‘Bears’ almost ironically,” she laughed. “It was weird at first, but I was pretty comfortable as the season went on. It was definitely a weird feeling walking into Ratner (the athletic center where Chicago plays its home matches) with WashU for NCAAs.”
Maren’s team that captured a local USA Volleyball tournament title in 2017, which included four former Division III players Erin Albers, Nkiru Udenze, & Allison Zastrow of WashU, and Rebecca (Kamp) Zylestra of Calvin
Loe is also part of an advisory committee rewriting the Washington University medical school curriculum with a target roll-out date of the fall of 2020. The traditional curriculum has remained unchanged with two years of classroom instruction and two years of clinical learning in the hospital.
Last summer, the medical school held a kickoff event with interested parties to discuss the strengths of the current program and what improvements could be made. Two faculty teams were charged with coming up with potential curriculum models. “Part of the monthly advisory committee meeting was to hear what the teams had come up with and give intermediate feedback,” Loe said. “The whole process is very exciting. At the same time, people are understandably nervous.”
A student group wrote their ideal curriculum and, along with the two faculty models, was presented at a nearly day-long event in January that was open to anyone in the medical school. “We had a lot of clinical faculty from the hospital, faculty instructors from the first two years of the current program, and a lot of students,” Loe stated. “It was a very successful day. We announced and discussed the highlights of the three proposals as we saw them and got their feedback.”
A smaller architecture team will use the feedback to come to a consensus. “The main questions revolve around when students start learning in the hospital, and how to balance and organize classroom teaching around that,” added Loe. A final decision is expected by the end of March with more detailed writing on the structure to take place between March and July. The actual content of lectures and other day-to-day classes would then be written over the following academic year.
“The same characteristics that aided Maren in her success on the volleyball court make her succeed in the classroom and beyond,” Dingman said. “She has the ability to prioritize and stay out of panic mode. She loves to learn and be challenged.”
“It doesn’t surprise me that Maren is going above and beyond in her professional life as well. She has always been an amazing role model for all around her, but especially for young women,” Walby concluded. “She wants to always keep improving and make sure the people around her, or following her, are improving and having a better experience. It is important for her to leave things better than she found it.”