When cancer treatment center CARTI contacted Dr. Stacy Smith-Foley ’96 last year to ask if she would join The Breast Center, its new clinic, there was no hesitation in her saying yes.
“I had this realization that everything I had done in my life leading up to this has prepared me for this very moment,” said Smith-Foley, who left a post in Greenville, South Carolina, to become medical director and breast imaging specialist at The Breast Center at CARTI.
A native of Hot Springs Village, Smith-Foley graduated from the University of Central Arkansas with a bachelor’s in biology and minor in honors interdisciplinary studies. Upon graduating and finishing her studies at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, she completed a diagnostic radiology residency in Tennessee, a fellowship with a focus on breast imaging at the University of Washington, worked in private practice in northwest Arkansas and began the first 3D mammography program in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, metropolitan area.
As medical director of The Breast Center at CARTI, which opened this year, Smith-Foley reads screening mammograms and breast MRIs, completes image-guided needle biopsies and meets with diagnostic patients.
Her goals include breaking down the barriers that prevent women from having a mammogram and increasing the number of Arkansas women who do screening mammography.
“It’s critically important for us to find breast cancer in the very earliest point of its development so patients can receive treatment as soon as possible,” she said. “When we diagnose breast cancer at an early stage, treatment is less invasive and less aggressive and less costly.”
Smith-Foley’s time at UCA, during which she was a member of Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority and an oboe player, was positively impacted by the Schedler Honors College and encouragement from its founder, the late Norbert O. Schedler. The Honors College awarded her a grant that allowed her to volunteer at Arkansas Children’s Hospital on a nearly full-time basis, helping her determine that medicine was the field for her.
“When I got to UCA, I felt a little lost, and I didn’t have a lot of confidence about my own intellect and academic performance, even though I had performed well in high school,” Smith-Foley explained. “The support I received from the Honors College truly allowed me to continue on successfully through college.”
Now, as a UCA Foundation board member for the past few years, Smith-Foley has been able to reconnect to the campus. She’s witnessed the foundation be able to award millions of dollars in scholarships and has given back to her sorority.
“I’m very proud of my undergraduate university, and I’m very grateful to UCA,” she said.