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Match Day for Graduating Medical Students Held in Bethlehem

March 15, 2024

The moment when Temple/St. Luke’s medical student Eva Munshower learns her match. Her father, Thomas Munshower, D.O., a family medicine physician with St. Luke’s, gives the thumbs up.

Local medical student Eva Munshower says she is “so happy” to learn that she will spend her next five years training as a new doctor in a general surgery residency at St. Luke’s University Health Network. She got the news at noon, today, March 15, when she opened an envelope at the Match Day ceremony.

Match Day is a national rite of passage for fourth-year medical school students moving onto residency programs. A complex algorithm matches the students’ top choice of residencies with the programs’ top choice of students. Post-graduate medical education can last three to eight years, including residency and fellowship.

Making this year’s Match Day extra special, the Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine celebrated Match Day in Bethlehem. At precisely noon, the 38 students from the St. Luke’s campus simultaneously opened the envelopes that contained the letters identifying their residency programs.

Munshower is following in the footsteps of her father, Thomas Munshower, D.O., a family medicine physician with St. Luke’s University Health Network. Dr. Munshower attended Match Day with his daughter and the rest of their family at the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks.

Eva Munshower was one of 11 of the class of 38 to match to residencies at St. Luke’s.

“The most meaningful part of this day was that our students learned of their futures right here in the community that supported them from day one,” said Shaden Eldakar-Hein, M.D., Senior Associate Dean and professor at the Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine. “Every student means so much to us, and when they opened their envelopes, we were so incredibly happy and proud of them.”

A Lehigh Valley native, Munshower will graduate in May and fell in love with general surgery when, while a student at Central Catholic High School, she was invited to watch an operation in the OR of Sacred Heart Hospital.

The Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine in Fountain Hill is the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school, where the region’s brightest young minds go to become doctors. By cultivating home-grown medical talent, the Katz - St. Luke’s campus is helping the region to secure its health and well-being amid a doctor shortage nationally.

Hellertown resident Kate Arner’s envelope revealed that she has matched into a St. Luke’s four-year neurology residency, a dream come true. Her love of medical science dates back to seventh grade and the influence of a science teacher who included anatomy and physiology lessons in the curriculums. Arner, who majored in neuroscience and pre-med at Moravian University, is excited to be staying in the Lehigh Valley as a Neurologist to serve the community she grew up in and to be surrounded by her family and friends.

“I’m excited to be on this life-enriching journey at St. Luke’s where I have learned so much over these past four years,” said Arner, whose family—including her 96-year-old grandmother—attended Match Day. “When I opened my envelope, my grandmother cried.”

Her classmate, Josh Elmer, a Watertown, New York, native, matched to an internal medicine residency at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He has his sights set ultimately on practicing gastroenterology (GI) medicine, with St. Luke’s as one of his possible career destinations. Discovering where he has matched at the ceremony in Bethlehem added a special synergy to the culmination of this first stage of his medical training.

“I’m feeling overwhelmed, excited, and really appreciative,” he said after opening his envelope. “St. Luke’s prepared me phenomenally. St. Luke’s is all about the people, and medicine is all about the people.”

Added Dr. Eldakar-Hein, “Any hospital and residency program will be fortunate to welcome one of our graduates. Each member of our 2024 class has demonstrated repeatedly that they will make skilled, thoughtful, and compassionate physicians.”

Eva Munshower’s professional role model has always been her Dad, and she is sure of her passion as she continues on her chosen path: “Medicine is my calling; it’s how I want to give back to the community where I grew up.

It’s what I’ve always dreamed of doing, and it will be a gift to practice here at St. Luke’s like my father.”

Full list of Matching Institutions, St. Luke’s Class of 2024:

Anesthesiology

University of Maryland, MD

Penn State Med Ctr, PA

NYU Grossman SOM, NY

Diagnostic Radiology

Albert Einstein HTH Center, PA

Stony Brook Teaching Hosp, NY

Dermatology

SLUHN

Emergency Medicine