Barry S. Rothman, Ph.D.
Biographical Information
I was born and raised along the western edge of Philadelphia, PA, in a mixed blue-collar, white-collar neighborhood. My father was a salesman and small business-owner; my mother was a home-maker who later became an accomplished businesswoman and arena-manager. I attended Overbrook High School, a highly diverse public school, and was a member of their citywide championship track team for two years. I then attended Haverford College, a small liberal arts men's school at the time. My college education was paid for by a combination of scholarships, loans and money I earned through tutoring high school students and taking on summer jobs in factories. I majored in Biology because I loved the way life could be understood in such intimate chemical detail. Despite being only 5 miles from my high school, Haverford was separated from Overbrook by a huge cultural gap; most Overbrook students came from working class families, whereas most Haverford students came from affluent families and about half of them had attended private high schools (prep schools).
I then moved to Pasadena, CA, to attend CalTech, from which I received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry with a minor in Neurophysiology in 1976. My entire graduate school education and a modest stipend were paid for by training and research grants awarded to CalTech by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). I am deeply grateful for this support and the opportunity to participate in a superb research environment. My doctoral thesis explored the roles of RNA and protein synthesis in the maintenance of circadian rhythms, using the marine snail Aplysia as a model organism. The cultures at Caltech and Haverford were also vastly different; Haverford was small, offered a large array of majors and was located in an idylic, affluent suburban setting, whereas CalTech was larger, focused almost entirely on science and engineering and was located within the huge LA basin. While living in Pasadena, I visited the San Francisco Bay Area on a number of occasions. The culture and physical beauty of this area affected me so powerfully that I vowed to live there.
After CalTech, I was a Post-Doctoral Fellow from 1976 to 1978 at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, TX. My research was divided into two projects: 1) interactions between neurons and glia in tissue culture, and 2) investigation of the neurophysiology of the swimming behavior of a local Aplysia species; it was supported by NIH- and NIMH-funded reasearch grants to my PIs and a National Research Service Award (NRSA) that paid my stipend. Here I taught my first college class, Circadian Rhythms, at a branch of the University of Houston located in Clear Lake City (UHCLC). Yet again I had to make adjustments to a very different cultural setting, as Galveston was a small southern town that had become overshadowed by Huston, its neighbor 60 miles to the north.
My dream to live in the San Francisco Bay Area came true when I met Earl Mayeri at a Society for Neuroscience meeting. In April, 1978 I became a Post-Doctoral Fellow and later an Assistant Research Physiologist in Earl's lab within the Department of Physiology at UCSF. This was a very productive partnership because we were able to combine biochemical and electrophysiological approaches to the identification of peptide neurotransmitters in Aplysia. In 1986, wanting very much to remain in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was quite fortunate to obtain a tenure-track faculty position in the Biology Department at SFSU.
At SFSU, from 1986 until 1993, I ran a research laboratory that investigated the degradation of peptide neurotransmitters, a continuation of the work done at UCSF. This work was supported by a Resaerch Career Development Award and an RO1 grant from NIH. Because of my intense research focus during this period, I taught only one or two classes per year. However, by 1993 I realized that although I could supervise undergraduate and graduate research assistants, get grants and co-author journal articles, conducting research was not deeply fulfilling. Having become a tenured Professor in the Biology Department the year before, I shifted my focus to teaching, which I had greatly enjoyed as a tutor at Haverford and as an instructor at UHCLC and SFSU. Looking back over my 25 years at SFSU, I have taught courses at all levels of the curriculum: non-major's, lower-division major's, upper-division major's, and graduate major's.
In 1995, having taught within the Physiology curriculum at SFSU, and having by then developed a strong interest in molecular medicine, I was invited to become SFSU's Health Professions Advisor. At the time I thought this was an interesting "sideline" to my teaching and would require a small amount of effort. But, as I began to understand the health profession school preparation and application processes, and work closely with pre-health students, I realized that I was well suited for this undertaking - I knew how to teach effectively, I understood group dynamics (my wife is a psychotherapist and I've been in a men's group for 28 years) and I felt a strong connection with underrepresented and socioeconomically disadvantaged students.
From 1997 to 2004 I was Co-Director (with a faculty member in SFSU's Social Work Department) of a federally funded Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP), which helped disadvantaged undergraduates prepare for careers in health professions. (Note that in September, 2010 I again received HCOP funding in partnership with the Stanford University School of Medicine and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health). Since 2006 I have been the Director of SFSU's Pre-Health Professions Certificate Program, a two-year, self-funded Formal Post-Baccalaureate Program run through the College of Extended Learning that now admits about 110 students each year. Since 2007, I have been the Director of the SFSU - University of the Pacific Dental Post-Baccalaureate Program that serves about 16 disadvantaged pre-dental students each year, and is presently funded in part by a number of small, short-term grants and by HCOP. Since 2007 I have been the Director of The Summer Science Institute that serves about 20 disadvantaged pre-health undergraduates each year, and is presently funded in part by HCOP. The synergistic interactions among these three major programs create an enriched environment and many employment opportunities for SFSU students preparing to enter the health professions. This summer 2012, I will be the Director of the new Pre-Nursing Post-Bac Program at SFSU. I believe that the business settings to which I was exposed as a child, adolescent and young adult provided valuable skills used much later to run these programs.
Recently, due to the increased size of the Formal Post-Bac Program, I have created a Leadership Team to help coordinate it and the three programs with which it interacts (Dental Post-Bac Program, Summer Science Institute and Pre-Nursing Post-Bac Program). The Team consists of Shannon Anderson, Ph.D., Michael Small, Ph.D., Luna Abdallah, Ph.D., Biana Roykh, D.D.S. and Rachel Small, M.S.
Each semester at SFSU, I offer my Health Professions Colloquium (Sci 695), a course that helps seniors and post-bacs prepare for the health profession school application process, with emphasis on writing personal statements and practicing interviews. I multiply my efforts through leading SFSU’s Health Professions Advising Committee (HPAC), a coalition of faculty, staff and about 25 paid and volunteer post-baccalaureate and advanced undergraduate pre-health students. HPAC promotes and monitors most of the health professions activities on campus. HPAC’s major thrusts are: 1) Developing and offering an Introduction to Health Professions course (Sci 239) for freshmen and sophomores, 2) Developing and offering the Health Professions Colloquium (Sci 695), 3) Supporting pre-health student organizations, 4) Coordinating a large number of extramural clinical opportunities for SFSU students, 5) Creating a well trained student staff to offer academic and health career advising that supplements my office hours, 6) Creating a regular Health Professions Speakers Series and 7) funding through Formal Post-Bac Program revenue a variety of upper-division Biology electives and lower-division Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Math discussion classes (Sci courses) open to all SFSU students.
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Looking back at my career, I see that I have not followed a linear path. My decisions have been guided more by intuition and introspection than by obligation or force of will. I sincerely hope that the investments made in my research and teaching careers have paid off through my close work with pre-health students, and that I have made a contribution toward the training of future healers and the improvement of our health care system.
In April, 2012, I was presented with an SFSU Distinguished Faculty Award. This award is presented each year to three SFSU faculty members, one in the area of Professional Development, one in the area of Teaching and one in the area of Service. My award was in the area of Service, in recognition of my creating the Formal Post-Bac Program, Dental Post-Bac Program, Summer Science Institute and Pre-Nursing Post-Bac Program, as well as a number of other contributions.
Courses I Presently Teach
Introduction to Health Professions (Sci 239): provides information on the most popular health professions (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, podiatry, nursing, optometry, veterinary medicine, allied health professions, etc.) in a friendly and safe atmosphere. Includes guest speakers and student activities. Focused on freshmen and sophomores who want to explore their options for entering careers in the health professions. Can be taken twice for credit. 2 units, letter grade, taught every Fall and Spring semester, Tues, 5-7 pm. Syllabus
SSI Colloquia (Sci 231, Sci 232 and Sci 233): provides academic and health career support to students who are members of the Summer Science Institute (SSI). Can be taken twice for credit. 2 units, letter grade, taught every Summer, Fall and Spring semester, time TBA..
Formal Post-Bac Colloquium (Sci 695): focuses on students enrolled in the Formal Post-Bac Program as they prepare to apply to health profession schools. A limited number of other SFSU post-bacs and undergraduates are welcome. Can be taken twice for credit. 2 units, letter grade, taught every Spring semester. (Listed as Health Professions Colloquium on the online class roster).
