Seventh in a series of candidate profiles to be published Feb. 7-Feb. 16. Profiles are being published in order names will appear on the ballot.
A talent for investigating tiny details and a friend’s struggle with cancer changed Maryam Mohammadkhani’s career path while she was in medical school.
“Once I was in a pathology lab, that was it,” Mohammadkhani said. “I loved spending time looking at tissues under a microscope and figuring out — and struggling with the difficult ones. I just fell in love.”
Mohammadkhani, 53, is running for a second term on the Springfield Board of Education. She was first elected in 2021.
She was a pathologist with CoxHealth and Pathology Services of Springfield, a firm where she was a partner. She also worked as an immunology instructor with CoxHealth. Though technically retired, Mohammadkhani considers it more of a sabbatical, and she still maintains her medical license.
Her pursuit of her medical degree stretched from coast to coast. Mohammadkhani earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of California-Irvine and her medical degree from the University of Southern California, earning high distinction. She then joined Harvard Medical School on a pathway at Massachusetts General Hospital.
It was during her time at Harvard that she discovered pathology, she said, as a way to help care for a friend who was facing a terminal cancer diagnosis.
“I just needed to take some time to help him,” Mohammadkhani said. “And he and I needed a little bit of time where I wasn’t working 80 hours a week.”
At the time she was on a track for neurosurgery, but her preceptor recommended taking a pathology rotation, because of a more forgiving schedule. The work hooked her, Mohammadkhani said — she discovered a passion and talent for identifying cancerous characteristics in patients’ tissue samples, and assisting doctors with diagnoses.
“We diagnose the distinctions between normal and abnormal tissues, and then we diagnose what is abnormal with that tissue,” Mohammadkhani said. “We are the doctor's doctor, working behind the scenes. I spent my career communicating with surgeons in the operating room, helping to make decisions under high stress about what to do with a patient.”
Mohammadkhani moved to Springfield in 2001 and continued her career with CoxHealth, stepping back in 2017 to raise her family and get more involved in the community. In addition to volunteering at Central High School, she works through the RSVP program run by the Council of Churches of the Ozarks to assist first and second-graders through one-on-one time reading or working with math.
Getting a chance to work with younger students directly gives Mohammadkhani a satisfaction that comes from research.
“It is irrefutable that if a child is not proficient in reading and computation by third grade, they are less likely to become proficient in the future,” Mohammadkhani said. “I missed those years with my kids because I was working so hard, and I wanted to give back to other children. So I can do the same thing that somebody else did for my kids.”
She is also a board member with the North Springfield Betterment Association.
Motivation for running
Mohammadkhani said she was drawn to the school board because of her own personal experience from removing her youngest child from SPS schools. She decided to run for her first term in 2021, because the district at that time was effectively replacing teachers with computers — something damaging for their mental health and ability to learn, she said. That was part of the reason she supported a scaling back of technology use in classrooms.
She ran for the board because she wanted to help improve schools for those without the same means, she said.
“I could have just walked away and been done with it, but I couldn’t,” Mohammadkhani said. “I couldn’t leave all those kids and all those families, neighbors and friends who didn’t have the resources to do what I did.”
Her time on the board has been tumultuous. She was chosen in ‘22 to be the board’s vice president, but had that title removed by the board in February, 2023 in connection with her conduct at a Missouri State University event.
Now that she learned even more about education and different philosophies about teaching, Mohammadkhani said she is even more determined to keep serving on the school board in a second term.
“I’ve listened and learned, and I’ve done more research,” Mohammadkhani said. “The more familiar I become with the educational system, and the more parents I talk to, the more passionate and dogmatic I become about staying on the board, because it’s about the upward mobility of the students who will become the adults of this community.”
Strongest qualification
Despite her skills in research and her sense of community service, Mohammadkhani said her determination is what makes her the best choice for another term on the school board.
She said she is ready to keep working for educational improvements across Springfield Public Schools.
“I’m not just going to talk educational equity, I’m going to do it,” Mohammadkhani said. “My determination to see this success through, and my belief that it can be done. We can do this.”
Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing series in the Hauxeda’s coverage of the April 2024 election for the Springfield Public Schools Board of Education.
