, Eddie Ramirez learned his financial aid fell through. Still, he was able to attend PSU because one of his high school teachers paid for his first year.
Ramirez went from being high school valedictorian to a PSU senior and now has his sights set on the school of dentistry at
Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), which he now attends.
Along the way, he's had internships geared toward dentistry, earned a degree in organismal biology, minored in chemistry and took predental studies; he hopes to someday be in private practice and provide dental care to low-income families.
His story is just one example of the growing number of students who are choosing PSU for preprofessional health care education. The number enrolled in such majors has exploded in recent years.
Between the fall of 2011 and fall 2013, PSU had a 28 percent increase in students enrolled in preprofessional health care tracks, according to statistics provided by the university. That is more than twice the growth rate of all student enrollment during that same period.
The number of students who chose biology as a major grew even more -- nearly 60 percent since fall 2008.
Karen Marrongelle, PSU's dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said perhaps the main reason the campus has seen such a high number of students seeking preprofessional health care education has to do with economics.
"Nearly every major economic report indicates that health care continues to be a top growing industry in Portland and around the country, and our students recognize that," she said. "Students are looking at PSU, and they see opportunities to conduct undergraduate research ... that focuses on solutions to real world problems."
Statistics show that Oregon is on track to add 43,030 health care jobs between 2010 and 2020. That's a 30 percent growth rate over the decade, compared to 17 percent for all other jobs statewide.
Meanwhile, jobs in the health care industry tend to be recession-proof. Numbers show that from the pre-recession peak of the economy in 2007 to the low point of the recession in 2010, health care and social assistance gained employment while job numbers in other professions declined.
In response, the campus has ramped up its offerings for those seeking classes - and ultimately careers - in life sciences in recent years.
Marrongelle said one advantage of studying at PSU is the opportunity that students have to connect with the local professionals and an array of students in different majors.
She pointed to the opening of the Collaborative Life Sciences Building as one example, as well as the college's partnerships with OHSU and Oregon State University that she said "help ensure that we are engaging our students in the preprofessional curriculum that will give ... the foundation they need to succeed in graduate school."
Construction of the Collaborative Life Sciences Building was completed last year on Portland's South Waterfront.
The $295 million building combines facilities - including the most advanced life sciences labs in Oregon - of PSU, OHSU and Oregon State. It has been dubbed the largest educational building in the state and the first on this scale to combine such resources.
Here, preprofessional health care students from PSU receive exposure to the professions they are studying while learning alongside nursing and medical graduate students.
Marrongelle said the facility allows PSU students to participate in undergraduate research collaborations that are "unlike any other in the country." In addition, she said, students are guided by faculty and preprofessional health care advisers who are "dedicated to helping them succeed."
"They see opportunities to learn in flexible, modern classroom spaces that are designed for the way they learn, and access to faculty and advisers that are dedicated to their success in preprofessional health care," she said.
Additionally, she feels one advantage of studying at PSU is the opportunity to connect with the community, and she said the Collaborative Life Sciences Building offers another way to foster those connections.
"Students are excited to walk into the CLSB and see other undergraduate and graduate students in all phases of their education and health care careers," she said.
However, the new building is not the school's first -- or only -- collaboration with OHSU and Oregon State. The schools have a long history of partnering with each other. PSU officials said the school has more than 6,000 students in its prehealth partnership with the two other campuses.
This is the result of PSU and OHSU forming a strategic alliance in 2010 to integrate and expand academic and research activities. In fact, OHSU admits a good number of medical, dental and nursing students from PSU.
Part of that is due to the proximity of the two schools, but some of the collaboration stems from efforts on the part of campus leaders to work together.
For instance, PSU President Wim Wiewel and OHSU President Joe Robertson wanted to formalize the partnership five years ago to see how the schools could do more together. The result, campus officials said, has been greater collaboration among faculty, the new joint Collaborative Life Sciences Building, a new joint school of public health and a new Viking pavilion and academic center that will break ground in January.
In addition to adding new facilities such as the Collaborative Life Sciences Building, PSU had a $46 million makeover of its largest science building, the Science Research and Teaching Center, in 2011.
The work resulted in big upgrades of the building's lab and lecture spaces to accommodate the school's 4,000-plus preprofessional health care students.
Marrongelle said the Science Teaching and Research Center serves students across the sciences from biology to physics. It also houses research centers such as the Center for Life in Extreme Environments. The renovation created new, modern lab facilities and classrooms and provided students with bigger, brighter and more comfortable study spaces.
And aside from new facilities, the school recently received a $24 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to help underrepresented students pursue careers in the health sciences.
Marrongelle said the grant should help even more students find their way into careers in health care. "We have many students that matriculate into medical, dental, and nursing programs at OHSU," she said.