Thanks to San Diego State’s dedicated researchers, students and faculty, the boat of our “trade school” reputation has been seriously rocked. Our BioScience Center has implemented practical futuristic technology in its medical studies, morphing our school into a prestigious and acknowledged place of research. SDSU targets subject matter with precision and purpose, while operating in a humane and efficient mindset, something lacking from neighboring State schools. This humanistic touch is what medicine desperately needs and it’s great to see this success shine on our own campus.
The outdated boundary line that exists between California State Universities and University of California schools breaks down into a “trade school vs. research school” mentality, but SDSU has proven to be the exception to this standard. Commonly known as the most research-friendly campus in the CSU system, for the past “four consecutive years, SDSU has been ranked the No. 1 most productive research university” based on the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index. The BioScience Center is the key to these developments, and has received “$395,000 in federal stimulus funding” to further its groundbreaking discoveries, especially those recently in visually tracking diseases. Physicians now have the ability to track the growth and demise of viruses within a patient’s body. Whether a patient is recovering from a stroke, a common cold or even a serious heart attack, this new video-imaging system allows doctors a frame-by-frame description of the progress.
The center prides itself on its ethics in experimentation, whether the test subjects are human or animal, another quality distinguishing our campus from the rest. For example, in the virus tracking study, a sample group of mice were used with scientists dividing smaller subgroups so the progress could be checked throughout time, rather than using a new subject for each stage of the study. This respectful research conduct adds to our influential research findings, and allows for our success to speak for itself when compared to other CSU schools. Recently classified as a “research university,” we join prestigious universities such as George Washington University, Syracuse University and the University of Oregon as established schools of research and development, closing the established gap between the two collegiate systems. Not only are we producing substantial research results, but the collective hard work of our students and faculty challenge the boundary of the traditional “state school” equals “trade school” stereotype.
&-Alyssa Clark is an English sophomore.
–The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec.
