Assistant Professor Shantel McNeill sits next to an ultrasound scanner during her introductory Medical Sonography class. (Matthew Burns/Wake Tech)

The first-semester Medical Sonography students are excited to begin their clinical rotations at area hospitals, but Wake Tech Assistant Professor Shantel McNeill still wants to drive home the do's and don'ts they need to remember to have a successful learning experience:

• Do whatever is asked of you
• Don't take a lunch break or head home without telling a supervisor
• Observe as much as possible and take notes
• Ask meaningful questions during slow times
• Be professional and courteous to both staff and patients

"Try to remain calm around patients," she added. "None of them has ever done an ultrasound before. They don't know that you don't really know what you're doing unless you look nervous or scared."

McNeill has been instilling her brand of quiet confidence in Wake Tech students since she launched the college's Medical Sonography Associate in Applied Science (AAS) degree program in 2020. Before that, she started a similar program at Central Carolina Community College (CCCC).

"Community college is the best place to learn to become an ultrasound tech," she said. "You're paid according to your experience and specialties. You don't need to go through a four-year program [at a university] unless you want to be a manage a program or move into administration."

McNeill not only has a four-year degree in business and health care from Liberty University, she also has a master's degree in health care administration from UNC-Charlotte. Although she is proud of the program she's built at Wake Tech, her administrative duties as program director don't leave her as much time in the classroom as she would like.

She does teach "the babies," her nickname for first-semester students, and assists other instructors in labs. Students say they appreciate her experience and frankness.

"She has great stories," student Wilson Escobar-Lopez said. "[Classes are] very real with her. It's not like looking at a textbook."

"Some things stress us out, and she lowers the stress level," student Soheyla Talebi said. "She practices with us the simple things we need to know but don't know until we get started."

McNeill says she always knew she wanted a career in health care but didn't know what path to take until she was stricken with pneumonia in the seventh grade.

"A lady came in and took my X-ray, and I told her her job was cool," she said. "I could see my inside chest – my lungs, my heart."

The technician wrote down her job title, and McNeill kept it for future reference. Years later, she followed up on it, earning a Radiography AAS at Johnston Community College. But during her clinical rotations, she discovered something she found even cooler than X-rays – ultrasound – and returned to school to earn an AAS in Diagnostic Medical Sonography.

"It always keeps me on my toes," she said of sonography, noting she has to think critically and adapt to different patients. "It's challenging. What you do on one patient is likely different than the next because it's based on their size and condition."

As a sonographer, McNeill says, pediatric patients are the toughest because they tend to squirm. Meanwhile, her favorite moments were whenever she could tell a woman who came in for follow-up screening after a mammogram that she was cancer-free.

After five years at WakeMed, she was ready for a new challenge. She moved into teaching at CCCC and has never looked back on the career change.

"[Teaching] allows me to give back to the profession I love," she said. "I also can affect many more people as an educator than I ever could as an ultrasound tech."