Portland State Magazine Fall 2019

17 Travis Benson ’18, a Harvard medical student, graduated from the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health with help from the BUILD EXITO program. Elizabeth Perez ’19, the first in her family to attend college, is also at Harvard, thanks to the mentoring from BUILD EXITO. BUILD EXITO empowered Sulema Rodriguez ’19, who has a speech impediment, to earn a degree in speech and hearing sciences at PSU and go into the master’s program. Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard University. Her goal is to become a professor and pursue science policy on the side. Another June graduate, Sulema Rodriguez, earned a degree in speech and hearing sciences with a minor in psychology. She was accepted into graduate schools at New York University and Columbia University, but chose PSU as the place where she will pursue her master’s degree starting this fall. Her goal is to get a doctorate and become a speech pathologist who can work with both English- and Spanish-speaking patients. Her path is partially the result of her own speech difficul- ties—a stutter that presents challenges in her daily life. “Before I heard about BUILD EXITO, I honestly wasn’t sure how I was going to get through college because of my speech impediment,” she says. “The program helped me pay for col- lege, and I got a lot of help from some great people in the process.” Benson’s story is equally personal. BENSON’S father, once an architect in Port Angeles, Washing- ton, became a transgender woman when Benson was a young boy. The change had a profound effect on his father’s profes- sional and personal life. She was discriminated against and lost her job. Even her primary care physician refused to treat her. Benson’s parents divorced, and he hasn’t seen his father in 25 years. Benson thinks his father may be dead. “The transgender community faces disproportionate amounts of interpersonal violence, self-harm and medical ne- glect. Any of these factors may be at play,” he says. Benson’s studies at Harvard focus on the medical needs of the transgender community—a mission that includes research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children’s Hos- pital. He wants to specialize in dermatology because transgen- der individuals have unique dermatologic needs that often go unmet. “If I can help anyone avoid what my father had to go through to get even routine medical care, my efforts will be worth it,” he says. While the stories of Benson, Perez and Rodriguez are inspira- tional, they’re not rare. “These are stories that repeat,” Crespo says, adding that they’re as much a product of the students themselves as the BUILD EXITO program. The disadvantages that the students have had in some ways set them up for success. “All their lives they’ve had to be innovators and survivors,” he says. “We tell them: Don’t leave that behind; it’s a big part of what you are. That’s what scientific investigators want.” For his part, Bangsberg couldn’t be happier with the quality of students coming out of BUILD EXITO. “They’re stellar. They’re breathtaking. They are smart, mo- tivated, inspired and committed to making a difference in the world,” he says.  John Kirkland is a staff member in the PSU Office of University Communications.