Briana: Hello, and welcome to Gators on Purpose, where we talk with ÃÛÌÒapp alumni who show us the power of combining what you love with what challenges you. At ÃÛÌÒapp, being a Gator on purpose means shaping your own extraordinary path, and those unusual combinations lead to extraordinary outcomes: meaningful careers, and lives built on purpose. I'm Briana Lewis, associate professor of French and faculty liaison to the Center for Career and Professional Development, and I'm talking today with Alexander Mericli, ÃÛÌÒapp class of 2005. Alex is currently associate professor of plastic surgery and director of clinical research at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Today we'll learn how his broad liberal arts education has helped him become a successful surgeon. Alex, welcome back to ÃÛÌÒapp, virtually, and thank you for joining us for Gators on Purpose.
Alex: Thank you, Briana, and thank you for the invitation.
Briana: To start us off today, I'd like to begin at the beginning. What first brought you to ÃÛÌÒapp?
Alex: That's a great question. So, I was born and raised in Pittsburgh and my parents had run into a number of people throughout their professional lives that had an undergraduate degree from ÃÛÌÒapp, and they felt that ÃÛÌÒapp was a really great school to go to if you had aspirations of becoming a physician. It had a great track record with getting students into medical school, high acceptance rate, etc. And more importantly, a number of the physicians that they knew that had gone to ÃÛÌÒapp, they respected quite a bit. I had always been interested in going to medical school. So that was the primary motivation.
Briana: Yeah. So you were focused on medicine from the beginning then. What drew you to that when you -- if you can think back to when you were a high school student looking at colleges -- what drew you to the idea of medicine?
Alex: Yeah, I've wanted to be a surgeon since I was in fifth grade. My grandmother, at the time, required a coronary artery bypass surgery when I was 10. Very common surgery, even more common back then. And at that time, we had a very engaging science teacher in my grade school. And so I remember that coincidentally when my grandmother and my family were going through this, we just so happened to be learning about the heart at the same exact time. And part of that was dissecting a heart from a cow. And we, you know, learned about all the parts of the heart that we had read about in a book. And that was probably the first time in my life where I was able to combine something that was happening outside of school in my life with something that I was learning about in school. And I just thought that was the coolest thing. [That you] could do that, as a human, operate on somebody's heart. And from that point onward, I was, that was my goal in life. And then I was planning on doing cardiac surgery until I went to medical school and changed my mind.
Briana: And I'll probably ask you more about that in a moment. But I'd like to go back to your first year at ÃÛÌÒapp now. So you decided to come to ÃÛÌÒapp. Tell me a little bit about your first year here. What was it like as a new student?
Alex: I remember my freshman seminar class. My professor was Dr. Ken Pinnow. He had created this class called Plagues and Peoples. It combined the disciplines of, you know, medicine and history. So, I was really excited about that class. I also remember being very nervous just about all the typical things: making new friends, being in a new environment. And then to top it all off, September 11th happened within like the first [month] of class. So, it was, I would say it was a relatively stressful start to college. Also, I remember feeling like -- there was definitely a learning process that I went through, with figuring out the best way for me to study, figuring out what is necessary in order to excel in these classes, because the bar is a lot higher, and in particular, I think, at a rigorous liberal arts school like ÃÛÌÒapp. So it took some trial and error to kind of figure out what I needed to do in order to perform at my peak.
Briana: Yeah. Yeah. I know that's the case for a lot of students. And so you -- your major was biology, correct? And then English was a minor for you?
Alex: Correct.
Briana: What led you to that combination? Why did you choose that combination of a major and minor?
Alex: I was always interested -- as far as the sciences biology was far more interesting to me and obviously would contribute to a future career in medicine. I liked the research tools that were present in biology, in particular, like, molecular biology and cell biology. I enjoyed the techniques that you learned for that. And then as far as English is concerned, I always was particularly good at writing and I liked the creativity that writing and being an English minor provided to balance out the hard sciences. It provided for me a very broad education, but one that was complimentary because writing is-- although it's not creative writing, but writing in general is a big part of medicine, especially if you're in academic medicine. Not that I was dead set on that specific type of a medical career at that time, but I recognized written communication as an important skill, really in any career.
Briana: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, of the things you did while you were here, thinking both inside the classroom and outside the classroom, it sounds like maybe there were some extracurriculars as well. What do you think had the greatest impact on you overall?
Alex: I was in a fraternity in college and that was a big part of my life in school. And a lot of the guys that I was in the fraternity with had serious career aspirations. And so I was able to kind of find a similar group of guys to associate with in college where, you know, studying hard was not looked down upon. You weren't peer pressured to party or anything like that. Although we did have a good time that was primarily for the weekends, but weekdays and the week nights everybody studied pretty hard. And through that fraternity that's kind of where my social life came from. That's where I met my now wife was through like a fraternity/sorority mixer. That was probably the biggest. 
Briana: Yeah. And so you graduated in 2005. What was your next step? So, medical school, correct?
Alex: Yes.
Briana: Yeah. So tell me about that transition. 
Alex: You know, Western Pennsylvania, I think, is interesting in that it happens -- I think a lot of people that grow up in Western Pennsylvania, or maybe it was just my family, are very, like, regionally minded. And so, when I applied to college, I only applied to ÃÛÌÒapp and like University of Pittsburgh, like that was it. I wasn't encouraged to apply anywhere else. I didn't have any particular motivation to apply anywhere else. And so similarly when I applied to medical school, I really only applied to maybe five or six medical schools. And I ended up going to Jefferson Medical College which is in Philadelphia.
Briana: Okay.
Alex: Couple of my fraternity brothers that were older than me had gone there, and there's a big surgical history there. The heart-lung bypass machine was invented there. And I liked the setting like right in urban Philadelphia. So I immediately, you know, as soon as I graduated from ÃÛÌÒapp, I had the summer off. I went to Spain. I ran with the bulls in Pamplona and then I started medical school.
Briana: Cool. And so you said earlier on you said that you had started medical school interested in being a cardiac surgeon, and then that changed over the course of your medical training. Tell me about that.
Alex: So there's a couple of things that influenced that decision. First, within my first semester of medical school, I took it upon myself to shadow some of the cardiac surgeons and to watch some cardiac surgery. And the cardiac surgeons that I shadowed were mean. Like they were so mean. Like constantly berating the nurses and the anesthesiologists, throwing things, cursing. And it was like a traumatic experience.
Briana: Wow.
Alex: And I was like, I couldn't imagine enduring that for 10 years like day in and day out. So that was the first thing. Second, the field was going through a big change then. A lot of the operations that historically were done-- or a lot of the problems that were historically treated with surgery were now being able to be treated in a more minimally invasive way by cardiologists, not by cardiac surgeons with coronary stents and things like that. And I wanted to be a surgeon. So all of those things kind of came together to make me realize that, you know, maybe there would be a different field out there that technically allowed me to do some of the same maneuvers but without it being, you know, specifically cardiac surgery. So I then kind of started to explore other options during my first, you know, couple years of medical school whenever I had free time, to shadow other surgeons. I would read medical journals trying to figure out what would pique my interest. The things that I liked about surgery in general were very fine motor meticulous tasks. And I liked the idea of immediate gratification. I like making people happy. I like being able to see my result, and I like options, like in terms of my career and so that kind of led me to plastic surgery. My idea of plastic surgery then was what most people's idea of plastic surgery is, which is what you see on TV right-- cosmetic surgery, breast augmentations, nose jobs, that sort of thing. And that never really interested me. But when I saw the reconstructive side of it like this is, I had no idea that you could do this as a physician, and I was immediately hooked.
Briana: Yeah. It really was about discovering elements of the field that you just didn't even know existed, sort of learning about the landscape of the-- what may seem from the outside like already kind of a specialization in plastic surgery. But that within that there's even something more specialized that might appeal to you in a way that another part of that specialty doesn't.
Alex: You start broad and as you go down you narrow your interests. I'm always very skeptical of even a medical student that tells me that, like, I'm only interested in this very specific thing. And I think that students should push back against that. You know, when you're in college you should know that you like the idea of being a doctor, philosophically. Like that's all you really should be responsible for understanding or knowing about yourself at that point.
Briana: Yeah, interesting.
Alex:  If you like using your hands, maybe you also like the idea of being a surgeon, but you really have no idea, at that point, that you would want to be a plastic surgeon or a cardiac surgeon or a neurosurgeon. You like the idea of it, but the idea is just like 1% of it. And so I think it's important, you know, to maintain an open mind, and you know, obviously a liberal arts education aligns with that concept.
Briana: Yeah. Even if you-- you've known since you were 10 that you wanted to be a doctor that you wanted to go into surgery and even with that, you continued learning new things that shifted your path. I think it's really valuable for folks to hear that even someone with relative certainty about what they want to do still has that experience. 
Alex: Yeah. No, I agree. And I think that, whatever jobs are being advertised for right now, that students, that seniors are applying for, those careers probably won't even exist in 20 years. So, you really cannot restrict yourself to -- either within your own, you know, internal line of thinking or externally how you're being educated -- you can't restrict yourself to a very specific thing because it's only going to make it harder for you to evolve as a professional and as an adult as the world changes around you.
Briana: Right.
Alex: And so it's important when you're in college to learn how to be dynamic to learn how to learn new things. And to equip yourself with the tools to be able to do that. That's what the difference is between a vocational school and a liberal arts education or a highly specific, you know, undergraduate area of study like nursing, or liberal arts education. It provides you with options. 
Briana: Yeah. Let's get a quick bit of narrative, from medical school up until now. How did you get from there to here?
Alex: So the things I --  I touched a little bit about the things that attracted me to plastic surgery, but if I was to be [more] articulate about it, primarily, it's the variety of surgeries and the variety of patients that you get to treat. So I can operate on, I've operated within the last year on humans as young as, you know, two years old, as old as 95. Like, there are very few specialties that allow you to do that. I operate all over the body. I was operating in somebody's intracranial space with a neurosurgeon last week. I did a knee surgery the day before and probably eight breast surgeries in between.
Briana: Wow.
Alex: If I ever decide that, you know, doing complicated reconstructive surgeries are, you know, they no longer interest me, I can very easily go into private practice in Beverly Hills and do that. I mean, I'm trained and educated to do aesthetic surgery also. And so that attracted me, you know, having those options, not being pigeonholed into one specific thing because medicine is always changing. 
Briana: Right.
Alex: And so it's like, you need to be able to be dynamic. And so, I wanted a residency program that would provide a broad experience in plastic surgery that would be very challenging. And so I interviewed all over the country. Plastic surgery was and still is the most competitive specialty to get into. So I had to have top board scores, you know, had to be equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa for medical school which is called Alpha Omega Alpha, and do research, publish original scholarly work, all that stuff in order to have the opportunity to interview to become a plastic surgeon. I think I went to like 18 interviews all over the country. Saw all the most famous hospitals and met all the most famous plastic surgeons through that process. And then there's this thing called a match. One of the programs that I really liked quite a bit was the University of Virginia, where I ended up. For six years. And then I decided that I was very interested in this very specific area of plastic surgery called microvascular reconstruction which is where you transplant tissue with a blood supply from one part of the body to another or even between people like a face transplant or a hand transplant. It's a particularly important technique for reconstructing patients that have disfigurement from cancer. And so because of that, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has the biggest and best training program in microvascular reconstruction. Ended up matching that program. I did a year fellowship in that technique and then I was invited to join the faculty and I've been here for 11 years.
Briana: You mentioned joining the faculty, your title is associate professor. You're an academic as well.
Alex: Correct.
Briana: And you talked about continuing to practice as a surgeon. What other kinds of things fill your work days?
Alex: Primarily, I am a practicing surgeon. When you're in academics part of your responsibility is to train plastic surgery trainees. And so any complex surgeries that I do, I will do that with a Fellow. And so I will teach them through having them assist me in the surgery. And over the course of a year the expectation is by assisting me in these surgeries, and the other faculty members, that they gain enough experience to then be able to do these surgeries independently.
Briana: Okay.
Alex: Alongside the practical aspect of that education is also a didactic one. We have morning lectures throughout the week on various topics related to the types of surgeries that we do. You know I contribute to those lectures a couple times a year. But most of the education that I do in a didactic fashion actually happens at, like, the national and the international level. So, giving lectures at our national conferences to peers and also international ones. And then the third area of academics is research. So I'm the director of clinical research for our department. We as a department probably publish about 105 unique peer-reviewed papers every year, as well as you know books and things like that, and my job, administratively, is to keep that enterprise organized and funded. We've got about $7 million annually of industry and grant funding that we use to power our research enterprise and I, you know, have developed systems to create databases and that provides the fuel to write these papers. And so we're lucky in that our patient volume is so high that almost any clinical question you could think of within the field can be answered with our data. And so it's really cool to be in a place where you can think, hey, why do we do it this way all the time? Like is-- do we really have to do it this way? Like, I don't know. Let's look back at 10 years of data and figure it out. 
Briana: Yeah. Yeah. And so what do you see as the most important contributions of all of the work that you do? What do you see as-- where do you see that work contributing to the world?
Alex: I think being involved in the academic aspect of plastic surgery allows whatever work I do to have a force multiplier applied to it. Because of the people I have the privilege of being able to train and the research I have the privilege of being able to publish, my career is not in a silo. I've taught people that now practice all over the world. And so, I think that's probably the most important part of my career is being able to have broad reach and broad impact. 
Briana: Yeah. Yeah. So, it's not only the patients that you treat directly, it's those that are treated by people that you've trained. It's those who are treated by people who adopt the methods and practices and techniques that are in your research.
Alex: Correct.
Briana: Yeah. Yeah. And so thinking beyond work, to life in general, where does work fit into a meaningful life for you? What is the relationship between the work that you do and the general sense of meaning that you have in life? Big question.
Alex: Yes, I mean, work is a big part of my life, but it's not the biggest. My family is probably the biggest part of my life. I'm married to a fellow Alleghenian, and then we've got two boys. I've got a 14-year-old who just started high school and a nine-year-old who's in fourth grade. I hope that my career provides an example to my sons for what a meaningful career looks like. Because I think that if you're lucky enough to have a career that you're passionate about, it certainly makes things a lot easier. I look forward to going to work every day. I hope that that feeling, you know, rubs off on my sons to know that they can, if they put some thought into it and some soul-searching, they can find a career that's meaningful to them and that will, color their whole life, and will color their relationships with with their friends and their family. And I think it makes things a lot easier.
Briana: Yeah. Yeah. And so, one final question before we wrap up. What advice do you have for current or future ÃÛÌÒapp students who hope to build successful lives of meaning and purpose?
Alex: I would recommend to the student really to do a lot of soul-searching when they're in college and to really be honest with themselves about the type of career that they want and their own personal values. I think that those two things really need to be aligned in order for a person to be truly happy and to feel like they've built a purposeful life. Depending on your circumstances, how you were raised, things you were exposed to, your values and your career aspirations may not immediately align. And I think that's always going to create a lot of turbulence. The other thing I read recently, and I started thinking about it was the whole concept of work life balance. If you think of a bal-- like a fulcrum, right, like a see-saw. Ideally work and life have equal parts on the see-saw. But if you don't like your job, the fulcrum is not going to be in the middle of the see-saw. The fulcrum is going to be so far over towards, like, your life, in work life balance, away from the work, that you're going to have to put so much weight, meaning like time, on the the life part in order to balance out how much you hate your work, it's never going to be balanced. So the idea is being able to find a job that integrates well into your life so that work and life kind of meld together. And the easiest way for your work and your life, I think, to meld together is to truly enjoy what you do. And the only way to do that is to really put some thought into it, to be honest with yourself and authentic in your choices. And I think you know, if you can spend some time doing that towards the end of your college career when you're starting to think about, you know, what you want your life to look like, it's going to benefit you immensely, to try to do it with more intent and thoughtfulness.
Briana: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Alex Mericli, it has been wonderful to talk with you today. Thank you so much for the conversation.
Alex: You're welcome. Thank you. 
Briana: I'd also like to thank all the members of the ÃÛÌÒapp community who help make Gators on purpose possible, including members of our alumni engagement and marketing and communications teams. Our digital humanities librarian, Andrew Miller, provides technical support for recordings. Our music was composed by Dominic Juliana, ÃÛÌÒapp class of 2026, under the mentorship of Professor Michael Dolan, and was performed by piano instructor Wendy Plyer. Editing and mixing are done by me, your host, Briana Lewis. From campus to career, every Gator has a story that's uniquely their own. Stories of curiosity and unusual combinations of interests fueled by creativity and a supportive community. These stories remind us that ÃÛÌÒapp doesn't just prepare you for a job. It prepares you for a life lived on purpose.