oteworthy
Scot Mitchell ’85 – Rural to Frontier Healthcare, Adventure and Discovery BY LINDSEY BYARS
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ary Scot Mitchell grew up in southern West Virginia between the towns of Oceana and Baileysville, an area referred to as Crouch’s Farm. Scot’s father worked in the coal mines in Kopperston, a career he did not want for his son.
“He actually took me into the coal mines and showed me what I would end up doing if I didn’t get my act together, and it taught me a lesson,” Scot says. “Being underground with the water dripping from the ceiling and the mountain popping and cracking and things like that, I figured I didn’t want to do that for a living and decided I better get my act together and get an education.” Scot graduated from Oceana High School in 1981 with his sights set on medical school. Growing up in a rural area a good distance from any major city, Scot saw his grandmother struggle to receive the care she needed, inspiring him to pursue medicine. “I watched my grandmother go through all kinds of health care problems and seeing that there was really no system for health care. She was going to multiple doctors for different things. I think some doctors didn’t know what the other doctors were doing and I think it really
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NOTEWORTHY CONCORD UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE
made an impact on me to look at ways I could help rural communities and help people not have to deal with those types of issues,” Scot says. Scot started his college career at WVU as a chemistry major, but an advisor told him that biology majors at Concord had one of the highest rates of acceptance into medical school. Scot took his advice to heart and transferred. “I ran into Organic Chemistry class, and that ended my medical career.” Scot laughs now thinking back, but the CEO of the Robert C. Byrd Clinic in Lewisburg has made a meaningful impact on medicine with a career that has carried him across the United States, to a remote fishing village in Alaska, and back home. Even when Scot wasn’t sure about medical school, he never doubted that the medical field was where he belonged. In high school, he took an EMT class, and between his junior and senior year at Concord, took a paramedic course at Bluefield State.
