Vicksburg High seniors Angel Rhodes and Zachary Moore are blazing a new trail in Mississippi.

During a ceremony Thursday at Hinds Community College the two students earned their white coats as the first two students in the state of Mississippi to enroll in Project Lead the Way’s Biomedical III course. The course is part of a national curriculum designed to introduce high school students to the medical field and give them hands on experience.

“These courses gives them a four-year leg up,” course instructor Leslie McGee said. “My students in the third-year course got to do a lab as seniors in high school that I didn’t get to do personally until I was a senior in college. They are being exposed to the equivalent of the tools and procedures that they wouldn’t get to see in college until they were juniors or seniors.”

In Biomedical III the students will follow a fictional family as they research and treat diseases impacting the family. In Biomedical II students built their own human body piece by piece using clay and in Biomedical I they investigated a mysterious death.

“I’ve always been interested in the human body,” Moore said. “I’ve always found it fascinating how humans work the way they do and when this opportunity was offered to me I thought it would be amazing to get work with all the different medical professions. I’ve gotten lot out of this course. I’ve gotten the ability to see hospitals. I’ve gotten the ability learn all this in depth research about the human body. Things most high schools students wouldn’t even dream of.”

As part of the Biomedical III course the plan is to work with Merit Health River Region and other local doctors to give Moore and Rhodes the opportunity to job shadow.

“It means a lot because I actually sold the program,” Rhodes said. “I am really happy and excited to know that more students can do it now. Last year they were going to end biomedical, but the district came and talked to us and asked us what we would like to change about biomedical. I said I wouldn’t change anything, but we would like to add part three. There is no need to give us half a course when you can give us the whole course. We have time to finish the whole course.”

Rhodes said before taking the biomedical course her plan was to be a hairdresser. Now she plans to attend Prairie View A&M to study pre-med in hopes of becoming a gynecologist.

“My best friend begged me to be in it with her and then I ended up liking it and then I fell in love,” Rhodes said. “This year we are learning about babies more and I want to be a gynecologist so hopefully I will do more this year so next year when I go to pre-med school I will know a lot already.”

Moore plans to attend Mississippi College and hopes to become a neuroscientist.

“These are the top of the top,” McGee said. “These are two of our best students in this district and I think for them that they are the pioneers is exactly what we needed as a school district. We needed to see the initiative from those types of students to know that there are students in this district that would like this opportunity.”

There are 18 Biomedical II students in VWSD and 35 Biomedical I students.