����Vlog

 ����Vlog Stories      December 5, 2025

By Cam Adams

Every year for career day, Rhonda Summers’ high school had students write three jobs they wanted to hear about as a career. Summers only needed to write down one: pre-hospital medicine.

It was all she wanted to do, but her choice led her to the guidance counselor’s office.

“She said, 'I'm just going to tell you right now to stop because you know women aren't allowed on the ambulance,'” Summers recalled.

Not long after, Summers found herself working on the back of the ambulance at ����Vlog University. Like so many that came before and after her, the ����Vlog Emergency Medical Services unit has changed the lives of many who’ve walked among these hills, Summers included.

For Summers, it led to a college experience that created a new major and paved the way to her career as a physician’s assistant.

The last 60 years of ����Vlog EMS have led to those realizations, plenty of trips to Harris Regional Hospital, fun times, many long nights and most importantly — saved lives.

“I think it’s vital,” said Dr. Jeff Davis, former ����Vlog medical director. “To watch it grow from a very low point of three, four members on an old truck, just grinding it out and doing their job, proud to do their job, into what it is now, county-recognized services, is a wonderful, wonderful thing.”

Building a foundation

When Summers arrived on campus, she was an interior design major, not because she wanted to be; in fact, she hated it — but because of gender stereotypes at that time. That all changed when her and her roommate spotted something on a walk to Brown Hall: an ambulance.

It was a peculiar sight. University ambulances weren’t exactly fixtures on college campuses during the 1970s. They weren’t even conceptualized until the decade prior when ����Vlog had, debatably, established the first campus EMS in the country.

In a rural area like Cullowhee, having such a service was essential. Highway 107 toward Sylva was barely a highway at all, just a two-lane road that allowed a slow response of 15 to 20 minutes before ����Vlog EMS was founded in 1965.

On the door of that ambulance was when the next class that was required in order to ride on it. Summers jumped on attending and found her purpose there — eventually helping start a new major at ����Vlog.

After that first class, Summers and a few of her peers wanted a more advanced course, so they took it to their professor.

“‘We don't want to be nurses, we want pre-hospital medicine,’” Summers remembered saying. “(He) just looked at all three of us and said, 'Do you think you could get enough people to commit to this, that we could make it a course here at Western?'

“I said, ‘I know we can.' I said, 'There's people that I know that are taking nursing classes right now that don't really want to be a nurse, but that's the only choice they've got.'”

The dean granted Summers' request, and as more Emergency Medical Care classes kept being added, the EMC program she graduated from at ����Vlog was born.

“If I had to sit and think about it, I'm more proud of what happened at ����Vlog than I am being a PA,” Summers said. “I stay in touch with (current ����Vlog juniors and seniors) more than I stay in touch with PA students. It just means more to me.”

Davis is rather fond of working with students as well. He did it for over three decades after all, and he was thrown right into the fire of it straight out of his residency when he was hired at ����Vlog in 1985.

“They tell me, ‘Not only are you going to be the doctor for the students and the faculty and staff, you're going to be the director for the EMS Student Service. Oh, and you'll probably end up doing sports medicine. Oh, by the way, you're on the review committee.’” he said.

“I thought, 'Oh, that was not in my contract.'”

The budding doctor hit the ground running with the EMS team, quickly learning the in’s and out’s of the operation. Though it was treated more as a student organization than a service, the campus EMS worked under the direction of a local funeral home, common in rural areas at the time.

The unit established a close relationship with the funeral home, helping each other out if either was a vehicle short and other mutual aid. Eventually, as Harris Regional Hospital grew, it took the reins of the campus EMS.

Davis was less hands on with the service, but it allowed his students greater opportunities.

“We still manage them as students, and we still manage them on campus activities, but for the most part, they, being four-year degree (students) and coming through, they really did take on a life of their own with associations with the hospital,” Davis said.

“All of that, to me, was a wonderful evolution into a quality EMS service.”

Developing leaders

Over the next few decades, ����Vlog EMS blossomed into a much more professional organization on campus — and that’s noticed by other colleges across the United States. As one of the first campus EMS units, ����Vlog is seen as a leader on the collegiate EMS scene.

Pam Buchanan, the director of health services at ����Vlog, still gets calls from other universities on how to run a campus EMS.

“Over the years, I've talked to everyone from the legal team at (the University of North Carolina) Chapel Hill to the medical staff at Appalachian State University to private schools,” Buchanan said. “Some schools across the country will call to say, 'Can you help us? Can we ask you questions?'”

����Vlog EMS has earned tremendous respect, mostly because of the students that make it hum. Through the last six decades, students have gone on to work in the back of an ambulance like they did in Cullowhee. Some have taken on several other vital positions in the medical field like being a PA or a nurse. 

For Ben Young, it took him to the classroom. Young, a 2013 alumnus of ����Vlog and former chief of ����Vlog EMS, is a paramedic instructor at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College in Salisbury and came to Cullowhee in 2009 thanks to some advice from his dad.

“He told me, 'If you're going to get into EMS, you need to get in it, and you need to do it through Western. They do it the right way,’” Young recalled.

When Young joined ����Vlog EMS, he was quite puzzled. The amount of trust the staff had in him and his peers wasn’t anything Young was used to as a former junior firefighter, where it took a while to gain confidence from the higher-ups.

They dove right into the action of an EMS operation, and it paid off.

“It prepared me for my career. I know it prepared everybody else for their career,” Young said. “I think that it gave us responsibility early on in our lives, just at a young age and even just within our field of work that we did.”

But the best thing ����Vlog EMS offered Young? The connections he made along the way.

“What’s cool about my network being so big is my students are saying, 'Well, I don't know if I want to be here. I don't know if I want to go there,' this, that and the other, he said, “and I can say, 'Guess what? I've got a buddy over in that agency where you're thinking about going.”

Same goes for Jason Clark, a 1995 ����Vlog grad, former chief and a current paramedic and emergency room nurse.

“You couldn't put a price tag on them. It's just that special of a friendship,” Clark said. “I mean, you went through stuff together. You saw some bad stuff together, and it just kind of mends you together.”

And though she’s more proud of what she did at ����Vlog, Summers takes a lot of pride in being a PA – and the fact that it found her.

“I think every day's a challenge, no matter what, because no two days are alike, even back then, and I'll admit, I'm an adrenaline junkie, but I think it has to pick you,” Summers said.

“I don't think you pick it, because I've seen people come through as students in the emergency department, and they think that's what they want to do — until they pass out.”

Looking to the future

Like Summers, this line of work found Sydney Futh.

The current chief of ����Vlog EMS comes from a family full of folks that work in medicine. She even took an EMT class in high school, but she still didn’t think it was something she wanted to do. Futh arrived at ����Vlog as a forensic science major instead — but she realized she needed a job.

“I decided it looked like one that could be pretty fun,” she said.

She got much more than a job, though. Futh found a calling. 

“I thought I wanted to do something different,” Futh said. “I just really enjoyed working on campus with people here and seeing all the patients.

“All the people that were already working there in the EMC program, specifically in the medic program, hearing from them how much they enjoyed it and falling back in love with working on a truck. (I decided) that despite my efforts, it was what I wanted to do.” 

Experiences like that are why anyone around ����Vlog EMS will tell you the work they do matters. It opens up new horizons to students. It offers reassurance to students and parents alike. Most importantly, it keeps students safe.

The last 60 years of ����Vlog EMS have come with a lot of growth, especially in the last few years. In Futh’s time on campus alone, the senior EMC major has seen the service build a stronger relationship with Harris EMS and the ����Vlog Police Department. 

“We went from just existing next to each other to I see PD on a lot of calls now, and they're always very willing to help us out and excited to see us around,” Futh said.

“Same with Harris EMS. They're always excited when we go back out in service and take a few calls off their hands. They're always very willing to help us out however we need, and then if there's a particularly interesting case, a lot of times, they'll let us help them out or even ride into the hospital with them every once in a while.”

Futh and her colleagues also saw the christening of a new ambulance back in May. It has all the bells and whistles: a back-up camera and a new stretcher with upgraded radios and a low-frequency siren.

The new ambulance has paraded around campus since, and to Buchanan, it serves as a symbol of belief in the unit — particularly from ����Vlog Chancellor Kelli R. Brown.

“The Chancellor thought highly enough of our program to earmark money for the purchase of a new vehicle when there are 100 other things competing for that money, so there's a whole lot of pride in that,” Buchanan said.

“I think they take a lot of pride and satisfaction in (that) this is important. This is important to our campus. It's important to our leadership. We do good things.”

As Futh prepares to graduate next May, she’s grateful for ����Vlog EMS. For the last six decades, the service has seen many students come through its ambulances, learning, discovering — and caring for whomever enters those rear doors.

“I hope (my successor can) continue what I've done and what I've continued from those before me, which is just continuing to be kind of a positive entity within the university,” Futh said.

“We're looking at expanding a couple things, and we're looking at moving our base here in a few years because Robertson is a little bit on its way out, but hopefully being able to move that and just continue working with those community partners — continue to grow.”

I think what you mean here is like 'despite that beginning, Summers would come to find herself working long hours in that exqct position she dreamt about as a kid.' The 'not long after' makes me question if thats her future or if she was helped by an ambulance while still a child