Mike Baca (Psychology)
Mike Baca graduated from Colorado College in 1994 with a degree in Psychology. While at CC, Mike played four years of Varsity Soccer, and was active in Track and Field.
Mike is currently a graduate student at the University of California-San Diego in the Neurosciences Program. He received his Masters degree last spring from UCSD, and is now working towards his Ph.D. For his thesis project, Mike is conducting behavioral, electrophysiological, and computational modeling experiments in the medicinal leech. The goal of the proposed research is to understand the population code used by the medicinal leech to bend its body wall away from tactile stimuli. Another exciting development in Mike’s lab is the optimization of voltage sensitive dye imaging techniques, which allow researchers to look at small numbers of neurons simultaneously while the animal is performing behaviors.
Mike has also conducted research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), investigating novel antipsychotic agents and possible mechanisms underlying tardive dyskinesia in schizophrenics who have received typical antipsychotics such as Haloperidol.
Mike believes that there were specific required courses in the Psychology program that helped him conduct research. They include Research Design, Neuroscience, Probability and Statistics, and his own Advanced Research Topic. He also enjoyed taking Abnormal Psychology and Human Psychophysiology, which gave him an appreciation for the different types of research and/or emphasis one could take in pursuing psychology.
Mike’s advice to students—take all the physics, math, and computer science that you can, in addition to the required courses in Neuroscience. Increasingly, top tier neuroscience programs require a strong background in several of these areas. (4/30/01)
Angela Peyrouse (Psychology)
Angela Peyrouse graduated from Colorado College in 1994 with a degree in Psychology. Angela believes that getting a degree in psychology exposed her to a very diverse curriculum of study that eventually led to a Neuroscience course taught by Bob Jacobs her senior year. It was at that time that Angela discovered how much she enjoyed the human brain, and how motivated she was to learn more about it as well as to deal with its pathology from a clinical standpoint. This caused Angela to spend the next three years finishing pre-medical coursework on the East Coast where she worked with several different physicians in private practice. When she returned to Colorado, she worked in the oncology laboratories at the Health Science Center in Denver.
While a student at Colorado College, Angela wrote for the Leviathan and the Catalyst. She was also a member of the poetry club her freshman year. For her last two years at CC, Angela worked about 25 hours per week. Angela enjoyed her experience at CC, and wishes all courses could be taught on the block plan. She feels that the small class sizes, the intimate campus, and the focus on a liberal arts education all contributed to her success at CC, as well as her recent accomplishment of gaining admittance to medical school. Angela believes that attending a unique school like CC set her apart from the rest of the applicants, and enabled her to develop the ability to study intensely.
Angela highly recommends for students to remain on-campus, and to keep outside work to a minimum. She believes that there is not an equivalent experience to that of being an undergraduate living on campus once a student graduates. She thinks her undergraduate years were a unique period of life that should be enjoyed and fully explored. In Angela’s opinion, joining clubs and organizations only enhances academic learning, especially if they are helping students apply course material through their activities. (4/30/01)