M A R I A.  R O S A R I O.  C.  C A M P O S '00

The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in November, 1999.

TAKING DEAD AIM AT A CAREER IN MEDICINE

It's fair to say that Maria C. Rosario Campos ’00 is a determined individual who doesn’t often miss her target once she sets her sights on a goal. She’s a firefighter, an emergency medical technician, and an expert markswoman who was invited to train for the U.S. Olympic Rifle Team. She’s also a dedicated student who is now pouring almost all her energy into reaching a career goal: to be a physician.

Campos’s interest in medicine took root when she was a young child growing up in the Philippines. There, she witnessed the profound effect a close family friend and doctor had on the underprivileged of her community, whom he treated for free. Campos also experienced firsthand the challenges and limitations of modern medicine when her father was diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, a rare disorder that in extreme forms is characterized by multiple involuntary tics and uncontrollable verbalization.

There is no cure for the affliction, but Campos is determined to find one. She began to learn about medicine and saving lives shortly after she and her parents emigrated to Middletown, CT, in 1985. While a senior at Mercy High School in Middletown, she became certified as an emergency medical technician, responding to fires, car accidents, and other medical emergencies. In order to become an EMT, Campos was required to learn fire-fighting techniques. By the time she was a first-year student at Trinity, Campos had become a certified firefighter for the Westfield Fire Department in Middletown, in which role she battled structure and forest fires on weekends. After progressing in her studies and becoming a neuroscience major, she traded in her firefighter’s coat and hat for a lab coat, and has spent countless hours in the College’s biomedical electrophysiology lab working as a research assistant to Vernon Roosa Professor of Applied Science Joseph Bronzino, studying how different stimuli affect freely moving animals.

In pursuing her academic and career goals, Campos has taken full advantage of all the opportunities the College offers. For example, as a first-year student, she served as a research assistant to Associate Professor of Chemistry William H. Church and began to study medicine at the molecular level through research into the neurochemical cause of Parkinson’s disease. Says Professor Church, "Maria is a very determined individual. Her greatest strength is her passionate desire to contribute to the improvement of the lives of individuals with Tourette’s syndrome."

A Health Fellow
Last semester, Campos was selected as one of the first students to participate in the new Health Fellows Program, an innovative program that gives students, who are contemplating careers in health-related fields, a taste of clinical experience. As a health fellow, Campos worked with Dr. Gregory Javornisky at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and studied the effect of traumatic brain injuries on the IQ’s of children and young people. Through her research, she observed that, regardless of which area of the brain was damaged, IQ scores are lower following a traumatic brain injury.

Campos’s interest in the workings of the human body has now reached beyond earth into outer space. Last semester, she submitted a proposal to the Connecticut Space Grant College Consortium and was awarded a $2,500 Connecticut Space Grant Undergraduate Fellowship to study ways in which NASA could minimize the effects of microgravity on the sleep cycle. "One focus of space technology is building a space station," Campos explains. "How humans would be affected in the long term by the microgravitational effects of living in a space station is unknown." Her research focused on ways in which the negative effects of a zero-gravity environment could be minimized through various drug and physical therapies.

An accomplished markswoman
The focus and determination that drives Campos in her academics is also evident in her extracurricular activities. A case in point: When Campos and her parents arrived in this country, her father purchased a firearm for their house. As a high school student, Campos began going to a local firing range to learn about gun safety, which included firing and a maintaining a firearm. After firing her very first round with a .22 caliber rifle, she shot a score of 99 out of 100. She nurtured her interest in riflery and progressed to shooting semi-automatic rifles. In 1996, after being the only woman selected to compete on the Connecticut State Junior High-Power Rifle Team, she won second place in the National Colt Cup High-Power Junior Division, and was asked to train for the U.S. Olympic Rifle Team. Opting not to divert her focus from academics and career goals, she declined the invitation. She has, however, continued her interest in marksmanship, founding the Trinity College Rifle and Pistol Club in 1996 and serving as its head until this year. And although Campos no longer routinely responds to fires, she has continued her life-saving efforts as a member and former head of the Trinity College Emergency Response Team (TCERT), a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week service formed and run by EMT-certified students.

Now in her senior year, Campos is focusing her energy on completing her yearlong senior thesis, "The effects of varying paradigms on long-term potentiation (LTP) in the freely moving rat." Through her project, she plans to show how the frequency and duration of an electrical stimulus affect the brain and learned behavior. She has also been busy applying to medical schools and exploring research positions at graduate schools. And, still focusing on her ultimate goal, she continues to be an active board member of the Tourette’s Syndrome Association of Connecticut, working to raise public awareness and support for the illness she one day hopes to help cure.

                                                                                                                                    Simeon R. Ketchum ‘00