Jay Mckenzie ’26

History-political science major Jay Mckenzie ’26 has a unique plan for how he hopes to work through law school – as an emergency medical technician.

Mckenzie took Pitt-Bradford’s EMT class in the spring of 2023 and spent the 2023-24 academic year volunteering with the Bradford Township Volunteer Fire Department, which has a station adjacent to campus. While there, he earned firefighting certifications.

During the summer of 2024, he worked for the Bradford City Fire Department, which also runs an ambulance service. With the city fire department, he had a chance to use his firefighting and EMT skills and gain experience helping people in crisis.

Mckenzie hopes to help those people in crisis in another way as a lawyer. “I’m learning to empathize with people,” he said, noting that he also picked up some good study habits from his emergency responder training. He urged other students, especially those interested in medicine, to consider the EMT course.

Training to be an EMT is just one way Mckenzie has taken advantage of all Pitt-Bradford has to offer.

As someone who grew up in Bronx, N.Y., he was eager to attend college where he could spend time in nature. He spends hours outside in the late summer and fall as a member of Pitt-Bradford’s men’s soccer team practicing and playing at the university’s new artificial turf facility, Rathburn Family Field. In the winter, he takes advantage of campus’s proximity to Holiday Valley ski resort by fulfilling his physical education requirement with a snowboarding class.

One of the things he really enjoyed about working with the fire department was seeing corners of the city that most students don’t have a chance to explore and getting to know local people, who invited him to go swimming at Kinzua Beach on the Allegheny Reservoir, fish and go target shooting.