Featured Students

Nathan Ansbaugh

A student from Boulder, Colorado, Nathan Ansbaugh’s interest in medicine was fueled at a very early age with a veterinarian and a pediatric nurse for parents. Now, nearly ten years after he first considered a career in medicine, Ansbaugh is a senior premedical student with a major in human physiology and a minor in chemistry.

He graduated from Boulder High School, where he was given recognition for his skill at baseball from several schools, including Stanford, Washington, and Army. However, after suffering several injuries leading to knee and elbow surgery, his baseball career diminished. After graduating, he attended Auburn University in Alabama “for my last chance at a college career in baseball,” recalls Ansbaugh—and to begin a path in veterinary medicine. His experience with his own injuries began to direct his interests toward human medicine, which led to his transfer to the University of Oregon and the Department of Human Physiology.

Ansbaugh is currently a peer adviser in the department, a teaching assistant in the anatomy cadaver lab, a lifeguard at the student recreation center, and a member of the UO Triathlon Club. In addition, he works at the Oregon Urology Institute, where he and a fellow classmate have helped develop and run a research project on the new da Vinci robotic surgery for retropubic prostatectomies as well as other prostate cancer treatments, such as open surgery, radiation, cryotherapy, brachytherapy, and hormone therapy. Ansbaugh comments, “This research, which is still in progress, is truly one of a kind and is intended for publication in the near future. Its goal is to supply patients as well as doctors with information that will help to better guide decisions regarding treatment of prostate cancer for each individual patient.”

After graduating in spring 2008, Ansbaugh is spending his summer in Chile, where he will work with several neurosurgeons and other physicians to provide much needed health care to the local citizens. He then plans to work as a wilderness emergency medical technician and continue to do medical research before attending medical school in fall 2009. Eventually he plans on becoming either an emergency physician or a surgeon.

“The human physiology department here offers not just a challenge in academics that pushes students to reach their potentials, but it also offers an environment that rewards character and balance in life,” Ansbaugh says. “The key to success, in this department as well as outside, is finding that balance and being physically and mentally present in each aspect of life. It is a constant learning experience that the department recognizes and rewards. True success here is not only based on academic achievement, but also on performance as a person in this community and life outside the classroom.

Susan Ewers

Sue Ewers graduated from the University of Washington with a B.S. degree in prosthetics and orthotics in 1996. After her residency at Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, she completed the American Board of Certification in Orthotics, Prosthetics, and Pedorthics examinations. In 2003, she taught orthotics and prosthetics in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where her interest peaked in gait analysis through work with young polio-affected individuals. “It’s fascinating to try to understand how the body is able to maintain balance and adapt to changes in bony alignment and weakness,” she says, “and it’s rewarding to provide an effective tool to allow an individual greater mobility.”

Ewers met Associate Professor Li-Shan Chou through work with Eugene-area rehabilitation clinics. One of the rehabilitation clinics requested that the department’s motion-analysis laboratory provide quantitative gait-analysis data for a teaching seminar. Ewers appreciated Chou’s style immediately and applied for admission to the master of science degree program in his motion-analysis lab. Ewers comments, “His measure for balance makes sense to me and this is one of the main variables that we need to explore regarding the effectiveness of orthoses and prostheses. This balance measure is intuitive, using the relationship of the center of mass (COM) of the body to the center of pressure (COP) of the foot on the ground. If the COM is over the COP, the body is balanced, whereas if this deviation is too great, then the body is out of balance.” Ewers recently completed her master’s thesis, which examined how balance differed between two different orthotic styles on individuals with diabetes and partial foot amputation. This is a growing segment in the population today as the prevalence of diabetes increases and as partial foot amputation also becomes more prevalent. As a result of living in Track Town, U.S.A., Ewers has started running more, and finished her first marathon last year. She also enjoys any outdoor activities including hiking, cross-country skiing, and sailboat racing.

Ewers says that the experiences gained at the UO prepared her well for a position she recently accepted in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington, where she’ll begin teaching prosthetics and orthotics in March 2008. Good luck Sue!

 

Nana Dickson

A 'desire to help those in need’ aptly describes the motivation underlying Nana Dickson’s pursuit of a dentistry career. Dickson, a graduate from human physiology, was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to Ghanaian parents. She moved to Montreal, Quebec, at eleven months and to Vancouver, British Columbia, at seven years old. "My father studied chemical engineering at Concordia University in Montreal," she says, "and he gave me a solid understanding of the sciences and pushed me to explore it further. My mother, a nurse, inspired me to look at health science as a career."

After graduating in the top 10 percent of her class from St. Thomas More Collegiate High School in Burnaby, B.C., Dickson began studies at Oregon, where she majored in human physiology and minored in business administration and chemistry.

Among Dickson’s goals is to work with other professionals to open schools in rural areas of Africa, "so that young people can better realize their potential," she says. As part of her career, she also hopes to offer free dental care in rural Africa. "Often, people silently bear with oral health problems because they don’t understand that oral health is just as important as overall physical health. Many Africans place a higher importance on medicine than dentistry, so there simply aren’t many dentists. Providing dental care there will allow me to reach out and help those who need it the most."

"To whom much is given, much is required," says Dickson. "The Department of Human Physiology has given me the opportunity to learn from a very knowledgeable faculty, and it is up to me to take what I have learned and continue along the road of education, and to give back to those in need."

Nana is currently enrolled at Howard University College of Dentistry in Washington, D.C.

Taylor Bushnell

"Teaching people to take care of their own bodies", is Taylor Bushnell’s professional goal as he enters physical therapy school at the University of St. Augustine, San Diego. Taylor is a 2007 graduate from the University of Oregon with his bachelors in Human Physiology.

At the University of Oregon he became involved in his Department as an undergraduate peer advisor, which he did for three years, and as an anatomy teaching assistant his senior year. Taylor also involved himself in scuba diving and cycling while in school. "When I’m not studying or in class you can find me on my bike, or playing with my dog, a boxer named Logan," says Taylor.

In closing Taylor said, "All the faculty and staff of the Human Physiology department are outstanding, but I do have to give a special thanks to Chris Minson, PhD., Richard Troxel, and Britta Torgrimson, PhD."