Perimeter College alumnus Tshibambe Nathanael Tshimbombu is one of 14 medical students chosen for an international fellowship examining medical ethics.
Tshimbombu, a student at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College, will participate in the 2018 Medical Program of the Fellowships at Auschwitz (Germany) for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE). The two-week program in Germany and Poland this summer uses the conduct of physicians in Nazi-occupied Europe as a way to reflect on medical ethics today.
Now in its ninth year of operation, FASPE provides a unique historical lens to engage graduate students in professional schools, as well as early-stage practitioners in five fields (business, journalism, law, medicine and seminary), in an intensive course of study focused on contemporary ethical issues in their professions.
“The virus of unethical behavior demonstrated by Nazi-era professionals has survived and can lead to contemporary moral challenges,” said Tshimbombu, in reflecting on FASPE, “Everyday lapses of ethics, as was the case in Germany, can harbor and gradually feed the virus within one’s character and turn a member of an honorable profession into a modern perpetrator.”
A native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tshimbombu began his medical education there at the Lovanium School of Medicine, but withdrew after his second year at the age of 20 and came to the United States because of unstable conditions in the DRC.
While adjusting to a new life in a new country and language, he earned an associate degree in 2014 from George State University’s Perimeter College, where he followed a chemistry pathway. He continued his education, receiving a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Dartmouth College and a certificate from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.
Currently, he is a first-year student at Geisel.