ALUMNI NEWS 2012

Kyle Barbour

Bio 100A - Spring 2009

My name is Kyle Barbour (the one on the right), and I studied biology at City College of San Francisco from 2008 to 2010. This program allowed me to transfer to UC Berkeley, where I graduated in 2012 with a BA in neurobiology, having earned a 3.97 GPA, highest honors in general scholarship, and honors in the demanding Molecular and Cell Biology major following completion of an extensive honors thesis based on my research into infant anesthesia at UCSF. I received two competitive research awards, the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship and the Biology Fellows Program scholarship, which I was awarded twice, as well as being granted the Alumni Association Leadership Award in both of my academic years at Berkeley. My honors research project was based on the two years of research I performed at the Stratmann Laboratory at UCSF, where I worked on cognitive deficits induced by pediatric anesthesia, work which will likely make me a coauthor on two papers to be published in the next year.

I love medicine. I have been working as a volunteer professional in mountain rescue for almost eight years, currently with the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit, and I am about to begin volunteering with San Francisco Suicide Prevention as part of my continuing belief in the importance of crisis intervention. Currently, I am working in two emergency departments as a technician while preparing to apply for medical school in June 2013. My passion is in emergency treatment of all types, and I intend to work as an emergency physician in humanitarian medicine abroad and research the emergency treatment of psychiatric disorders, an important but unfortunately neglected field. When not in the hospital or studying for the MCAT, I can often be found surfing in the Pacific or climbing one of Yosemite's granite faces.

None of this would have been possible without City College. When I entered City College, I was a high school dropout with no academic credentials. But I worked hard, and City College believed in me. I was encouraged, nourished, loved, and given space to bloom. These things would have been impossible in any other way; I had been rejected from traditional four-year programs due to my lack of academic preparation. Instead of high school, I had worked in Ireland as a housepainter, volunteered in the tsunami relief following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, lumberjacked in northern California, exploring the world trying to find my place. City College helped me find that place. I still don't have a high school diploma. Instead I have a fiery passion for medicine and service that City College helped to burn and grow brightly.

Every person has a right to that education. I can think of nothing so important to San Francisco as ensuring that City College continues to allow others to blossom as it did for me.

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Last updated September 8, 2012 by Crima Pogge, all rights reserved.