By Tucker Carden

For Dr. Meg Seibert Cherry ’04, Mobile native and co-founder of Renew Dermatology in Birmingham, the decision to attend Birmingham-Southern was a simple one. She “loved the feel of the smaller liberal arts campus” and thought it “felt like home” during her campus tour. “After visiting similar sized schools in neighboring states,” Cherry says, “I knew BSC was the place for me.”

What she didn’t know with that level of certainty yet was that her family had historic and well-established roots on the Hilltop. “When I first visited BSC as a high school sophomore, I didn’t know the full extent of my family connection to the College,” Cherry says. “My grandfather, Robert Glass ’49, sat me down for a long history lesson.”

Through this, she discovered that members of five generations of her family had gone to some iteration of BSC. This most notably included John Vincent Glass, Cherry’s great grandfather and the first ever graduate of Southern University.  

Her move to college ended up sparking a family reunion of sorts. “My extended family reconnected with our Birmingham cousins and fellow BSC grads,” Cherry says, “including the late professor Dr. Katherine Glass Kirkpatrick ’64, who became one of my closest confidants.”

She acknowledges that while the connection to Southern University’s first graduate is interesting, “the relationships that developed because of our shared history holds more meaning.”

BSC didn’t just give Cherry knowledge of and a link to generations of her family, it also provided her with a unique lens with which to view her eventual career field of medicine. “While attending BSC, I took an introductory design class,” she recalls. “That led me to add Art History and painting classes to my final semester.”

Despite seemingly being easy add-on classes on the way to a biology degree, they ended up being root causes of Cherry’s attraction to her current specialization: dermatology. “I was drawn to dermatology for many reasons, including the ability to combine both a love for science and for art,” she says. “I use those artistic skills daily in the cosmetic side of my practice.”

After graduating from BSC as the valedictorian of her class, Cherry went on to medical school at UAB, where she also finished as the highest-ranking student in the clinical setting in 2008. After an internship at Baptist Health Systems, a dermatology residency at UAB, spending some time at a local dermatology practice, and even joining the faculty of the Allergan Medical Institute, she opened Renew Dermatology in 2018.

At her practice, she enjoys “the variety of my days” which includes treatments for acne, skin cancers, and cosmetic procedures, as well as “business meetings and spending time with my family.” Cherry and her husband, Brad Cherry ’01, have eight-year-old twin girls. “I always prefer to be busy while working,” she says, “and my career allows for that.”

Cherry credits her time on the Hilltop for refining her skills for this journey, its destination, and where it could go from here. In particular, she speaks of “the opportunity to have mock interviews with the dean of my medical school and prepare for the MCAT.” Ultimately, she feels that “BSC did a great job of preparing me for both the next steps in my education as well as the skills needed for the practice of medicine.”