But one Fordham student has beaten the odds.

Callan O’Shea, a graduating Fordham College at Lincoln Center senior, studied in Paris for six months last spring. For O’Shea, an integrative neuroscience student on the pre-med track, the trip was not only a “transformational experience to get a bigger scope of the world,” but also a unique step in his path toward becoming a neurosurgeon.

The Value of Human Relationships

Before O’Shea became a college student, he knew he wanted to become a doctor. Outside of his schoolwork during his first two years at Fordham, he volunteered at Mount Sinai West Hospital (formerly known as Roosevelt Hospital), located just a block away from the Lincoln Center campus. In the rehabilitation unit, he worked with elderly patients who had physical injuries, people recovering from stroke and spinal cord injuries, and patients with Parkinson’s disease. In the emergency room, he recorded patient needs and relayed their requests to medical staff.

It was there, he said, that he learned about the importance of connecting with patients—not just as clients, but as people.

“Speaking with patients in these often vulnerable conditions … they place a lot of trust in you, and it really touched me,” O’Shea said. “Then moving to emergency medicine, seeing the pace of that, and having the ability to do so much good so quickly—having that responsibility reinforced that.”

Nurturing a Passion for Neuroscience Abroad

Through online research, O’Shea began to look for research topics that connected his hospital volunteer service with his surgical interests. That’s when he learned about neural engraftment in Parkinson’s patients: taking skin cells from patients, turning them into new neurons, and implanting them into the same patients to rehabilitate motor skills.

“Being able to grow healthy neurons and insert them surgically into patients to restore function is something that really sparked my interest,” O’Shea said.

At the beginning of 2018, he studied abroad in Paris, where he conducted hands-on neuroscience research. At the Université Paris Descartes Centre de Psychiatrie et Neurosciences, he examined social memory in the brains of mice. He also traveled a few days a week to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, where he analyzed how information is recorded and communicated within a hospital unit.

In those six months, O’Shea also got to take in Parisian culture. He lived with a host family, improved his fluency in French, and took a tap and jazz dance class at the Paris Marais Dance School.

It was his first time traveling abroad, thanks to the Center for University Programs Abroad—an independent organization introduced to him by Fordham’s study abroad office. This month, O’Shea returned to France for the annual Cannes Film Festival.

“[Studying abroad] was really important for me, as someone who didn’t really travel at all growing up and as a science student who doesn’t usually have the opportunity to incorporate language classes and things like that,” O’Shea said.  

When he returned from France, he wanted to extend that same potential to his classmates in the integrative neuroscience department, many of whom haven’t yet studied abroad.

“He set up a meeting with me and the chair of his department so the three of us could talk through how we could make [studying abroad]easier for his classmates,” said Joseph Rienti, Ph.D., the director of international and study abroad programs at Fordham. “One of the most remarkable things about Callan is that he does things not just for himself—there’s a real altruistic and broader vision that he has.”

Combining Neuroscience and Medicine

When he returned to New York, he began working as a research volunteer at the Icahn Medical Institute at Mount Sinai. O’Shea’s experiments spanned different strains of science: genetics, genomics, and neuroscience. In one research study, he and his colleagues took skin cells from schizophrenia patients and converted them into stem cells, then analyzed their potential.

“We essentially had cultures of patient neurons in a dish that we could test for certain drugs and analyze for genetic effects,” O’Shea explained.

After he graduates from Fordham this May, he will return to the Icahn Medical Institute at Mount Sinai; this time, though, he’ll be working as a full-time research technician. Once he gains enough out-of-classroom experience, he plans on applying to dual M.D./Ph.D. programs in neuroscience and neurosurgery next year.

But for O’Shea, the most rewarding part of being in the medical field is more than translating research into real-life applications. It’s the relationships—the intimacy of patient-doctor interactions and the special camaraderie shared among doctors, nurses, and technicians in difficult situations.

“The relationships that the medical field builds are really, really special,” O’Shea said.

That’s the driving force behind a large number of pre-med students and alumni who have made theology a major component of their studies, with some going so far as to major in both theology and biology.

“The cruel reality of medical school admissions is, once you get to the door of your interview, no one wants to talk to you about how you did in biochemistry,” said Ellen M. Watts, assistant dean for pre-health professions advising.

“That’s just your foundation to get in. Then it’s very much a people-person field. The student who has a 4.0 GPA and 120 credits of science, who has never taken their head out of the book, is really not going to be successful going into this profession.”

Psychology and philosophy are also popular choices for students looking for another major to pair with biology, she said. Often, students choose to add another major to their workload after being exposed to it their freshman year.

That was the case for Taylor Jacob, FCRH ’14, who attended Fordham on a full scholarship, majored in biology and theology, and is now working toward a doctorate in Christian bioethics as part of a Fulbright fellowship in Scotland.

A theology course titled Vocation of the Health Care Provider exposed her to the human side of medicine, and inspired her to take a medical ethics class, she said. Her research examines access to womens’ health care in Catholic hospitals, and how it compares to access in other health care systems.

“The trends in medicine today are moving away from just understanding the pure sciences toward trying to understand the person as a whole, which I think a Jesuit education is pretty well suited to do, given the whole message of cura personalis,” said Jacob. She said she plans to enter medical school and work in pediatric medicine.

In his freshman year, Brandon Mogrovejo, FCRH ’15, who is enrolled in Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, likewise found himself enthralled with a subject that he “never in a million years” imagined himself being interested in— African-American studies. He chose it as his major along with biology, and he also minored in theology. He said he was energized by the back and forth among the courses he took.

“I was blown away by how philosophical the theology courses were. They asked questions about why we believe in God, and why certain religions revere a godlike figure at all. I really like asking those questions,” he said.

Although science and religion are often pegged as being at odds with one another, they’re seen as more complementary for students who’ve embraced as their vocation the healing of strangers’ bodies and minds.

Anthony Halko, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior majoring in theology and integrative neuroscience, said his studies have given him the ability to critically compare Christianity’s creation story and Darwin’s theory of evolution. He can understand the ways in which the former is useful, even if not interpreted literally. A volunteer fire fighter and a member of Fordham University EMS, Halko hopes that a theology background will allow him consider how best to treat patients in a way that benefits their psyche as well as their body.

Alyssa Ammazzalorso, FCRH’ 15, a Presidential scholar who is in her second year at Albert Einstein Medical College after majoring in biology and theology, is well acquainted with how the two fields complement each other—her father chose the same path and became a doctor.

“I’m very interested in biology and the mechanisms of life, and theology gives a meaning to life beyond those mechanisms. It’s two ways of looking at life, and you can’t just focus on one or the other in order to have a full appreciation of what life is,” she said.

In fact, Watts said the medical field has been pushing schools to teach pre-med students to excel in humanities for the last decade. In 2015, the MCAT exam even included sections on sociology and psychology. Medical schools want students who are able to deal with patients of different races, religions, cultural backgrounds, and emotional states of mind ethically, and can respect their experiences and their sense of self.

Theology department chair J. Patrick Hornbeck, D. Phil., noted that when the department redesigned the major in 2010, it created a specialization in the relationship between faith and culture. It now offers courses with potential pre-med students in mind such as Introduction to Bioethics, Vocation of the Healthcare Provider, and Moral Aspects of Medicine, Death and Dying.

“Theology courses provide students with the opportunities to ask questions about the ethics of medical care, the relationship between medical care and spiritual and religious beliefs, and about what it means to be human in some of life’s most defining moments,” he said.

“Future physicians and other health professionals who have a grounding in theological disciplines will be able to be more compassionate, more thoughtful and more empathetic towards those they care for.”

Jacob said that theology helped her to pay attention to what people believe at the highest level, and how important it becomes in creating a plan for the health of an individual.

“You have to take [what people believe]into account. If you tell them something that conflicts with their deepest beliefs, it’s going to be wasted time,” she said.