Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
I’ve lived in Phoenix my whole life. It’s given me so much, I feel like I need to give back to it.
What began 20 years ago as one-month rotations in Phoenix for Creighton medical students has blossomed into a health sciences campus, a centralized medical quarter and a robust four-year medical program, which celebrated its first graduates in May 2025. In recognition of this milestone, we profile the experiences of four of these graduates.
By Glenn Antonucci
Born and raised in Phoenix, Lucas Fornefeld, MD’25 taught high school biology in an underserved community after graduating from Arizona State University, first with a bachelor’s in biological sciences, then a master’s in education.
The teaching gig started as a two-year commitment through Teach For America, but he “loved everything about it” and extended two additional years.
In his mid-20s, he decided to pursue medical school. Five years into a relationship with his now-fiancé, who was staying in Phoenix to finish a doctoral program at Arizona State University, location played an outsized factor.
“But Creighton was also a place I really wanted to go,” he says.
“When you know, you know. When I interviewed, it felt so natural, the people were so engaging and so different from other places."
—Lucas Fornefeld, MD’25
“I also knew that being a part of that first class would set a tone, set traditions, set structure. We’d be the guinea pigs. But ‘safe’ guinea pigs, because I knew Creighton would do everything right.”
Once in the program, he says it was the people who made the experience special for him — classmates became friends for life, and faculty became compassionate mentors.
That especially included times when he faced significant misfortune in his personal life, including the death of a friend. It happened while on a surgical rotation during his third year.
“It was extremely difficult to navigate that,” he says. “Creighton worked with me. There were days I just couldn’t make it to my rotation. I never got any flak about it. They worked with my schedule. They would proactively give me a day off.”
Fornefeld, like other classmates, was drawn to service. He did a rotation in the health unit within a juvenile detention center. He also spent time with fellow students on the streets near downtown Phoenix where homelessness was rife.
“We’d go out, take our wagons filled with healthcare and hygiene products, ask them if they needed anything or had any medical issues going on,” he recalls. “It gave them a sense that someone cared about them. It was a great way to spend a few hours on a weekday morning.”
As a Phoenix native, he takes service to his community extra seriously.
“I’ve lived in Phoenix my whole life. It’s given me so much, I feel like I need to give back to it,” he says.
Nowadays, Fornefeld is interning in pediatrics at Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
“I knew I wanted to be a doctor since I was very young,” he says. “I used to drive by that hospital and say, ‘I want to work there someday.’ I do now. I love it. It truly is a dream come true.”
