Meet Charles “Casey” Frye, by all means, an EXEMPLAR student.  Casey was introduced to me by Dr. Nicholas Grahame and Dr. Drew Appleby a few weeks ago.  Casey works in Dr. Grahame’s research lab and is a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Appleby’s B103 course.  When I asked more about Casey, words like full of enthusiasm, an encourager, committed, relentlessly optimistic were used to describe him. I wanted to learn more. 

When Casey entered college originally in 2001, he was not what he considered a very focused student.  He reports that he had trouble making the transition from high school (where teachers kept you accountable for your work) to college (where students are expected to hold themselves accountable for their work).  “It took me a long time to develop time management strategies that worked for me,” Casey explains.  Casey started at Ivy Tech, and then took a couple of years off.  He then transferred to Illinois Central College and finally landed at IUPUI, first studying Philosophy and finally Psychology.  Casey was determined at this point to commit and focus. 

Casey did focus and learned to balance a lot of responsibilities in the process both on and off campus.  In addition to working about 20 hours a week in the research lab, serving as a TA in B103, and taking a full time load of classes (also noteworthy is that he’s on the Dean’s list), Casey works on the weekends to help make ends meet.  Casey and his fiancé, Nicole, also have the added responsibility of raising their adopted daughter, who is 3 ½ years old.  They adopted Lilly after Nicole’s sister passed away after a fatal car accident this past September. 

As you can imagine, Casey is a selfless and compassionate person.  That’s exactly what Dr. Appleby observed in Casey as a B103 TA.  “I have been very impressed with Casey’s outstanding abilities to work with students generally – he’s a great communicator, evaluator and advocate for students, however, what impresses me the most is his compassion and ability to serve as an encourager to others.”  Casey continues to encourage in his new role as a volunteer with the Star Program, which matches upper-class mentors with students who are struggling and are on academic probation.  “It makes me feel good to share my strategies of becoming a successful student with others who are struggling the way that I once struggled,” says Casey. 

Casey is a dedicated student and scientist.  Dr. Grahame is impressed that Casey “understands that half the battle with science is simply showing up day after day and running the experiments.  Casey is incredibly serious about his commitment to research, and is always there when you need him.  In addition, he eagerly takes on and masters new tasks in the lab, such as helping out when we needed to manufacture some supplies we use in the lab.”  “But that’s not all,” Grahame goes on to say, “Casey is well on the way to having an understanding of what he would need to succeed in a scientific career, but he brings something rarer to the table:  a real joie de vivre (translation:  zest for life), and a real interest in what he’s doing.”

Casey has heart for helping others -- whether it’s his family, serving his classmates, or conducting research for the greater good -- it shows in his attitude.   Again from Dr. Grahame, “Casey is one of the most relentlessly optimistic people I know.  He always has a smile, and even when he’s really busy (which is a lot of the time), he’s always excited to get into a scientific discussion and to learn more about why he’s doing what he’s doing.”   I asked Casey to elaborate on his journey and here is what I learned.

MJ:  Tell me a little about yourself.
CF:  Right now my life pretty much consists of school, research, work and spending as much time as possible with my family, and my quest to win the lottery. 

MJ:  What are you working toward after graduation?
CF:  My goal is to go to graduate school in the fall of 2010.  I plan on getting my PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience Psychology and becoming a professor and researcher.   I am especially interested in Alzheimer’s disease, and plan to focus much of my career toward Alzheimer’s research.   I want to focus on the molecular reasoning for memory loss in Alzheimer’s.  The literature seems to suggest that memory loss comes from synapse malfunctioning in neurons.  This causes the neuron to function similar to a mentally retarded person’s neuron, but the literature has yet to discover how this leads to memory loss.  I guess I shouldn’t have said Alzheimer’s research.  That has been a recent interest of mine.  But the overall focus behind my interests in research is MEMORY including: spatial memory (how humans are able to form memories about a novel environment), memory formation of specific life events (episodic memory), and memory depletion as a result of a dementia (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and natural causes of dementia). 

MJ:  Briefly describe the research you’ve been doing with Dr. Grahame.
CF:  The research I am doing with Dr. Grahame is extremely interesting.  We are interested in the relationship between alcohol drinking and impulsivity.  We know that there is a neurological relationship between the two, but we are interested in the direction of causation between them and how drugs compare to and alter this relationship.  Since I have worked with Dr. Grahame we have assessed the relationship between alcohol and impulsivity through a delay discounting task.  This is a task that measures cognitive impulsivity.

How did you get involved in Dr. Grahame’s research lab?
CF:   I have always really enjoyed school; it is stimulating, both socially and intellectually.  I was always interested in research, but I never knew how I would go about getting involved.  I took Behavioral Neuroscience with Dr. Jim Murphy, and I was fascinated.  I e-mailed Dr. Murphy to discuss the research that he was doing.  He set up a meeting with me and explained that he didn’t have a place open in his lab, but he knew someone else that may.  This is when he took me to meet Dr. Grahame.  Dr. Grahame and I sat down and talked for a while about the research that he was/is doing in February of last year.  He explained that he would have an opening in the summer if I was interested.   I was very excited and jumped on the chance to work with him in the lab.  I’ve been working for him since May of 2008.  I immediately realized that this was even better than working in the classroom.  I learned more about conducting research in three days in the lab than I have in all of my classes combined (not to downplay how much I’ve learned in the classes, I’m just a hands-on learner).

MJ:  Tell me more about being a TA for Dr. Appleby.
CF:  Being a TA for Dr. Appleby’s class is probably the most helpful thing I have been a part of since coming to IUPUI.  Taking B103 helped me put my undergraduate career in focus and made me realize how hard I had to work to achieve my goals.  The best part about being a TA is that I’m in a position to help students who are struggling and it keeps all of the information that is covered in that class fresh in my mind.  Every semester I find something that I either missed, or forgot.  If I get accepted to graduate school, being a TA for B103 will be the reason, because the information kept me on track toward my goal. 

I decided to be a TA because my TA for B103, Erica Johnston, was awesome.  I asked her one day, “How do you know everything about APA format?” she replied “I didn’t until I became a TA and had to grade other people’s work.” I was struggling through B103 as a student, it’s a lot of a work for a one credit hour class, and I thought I wasn’t doing very well, but then Erica asked me to be a TA for the upcoming semester.  I was thrilled and never thought twice, I immediately applied and she wrote me a letter of recommendation, and here we are.

MJ:  What else has shape who you are and where you’re going?
CF:  As a child my parents, who have been the major positive influences in my life, taught me that anything worth doing is worth doing to the best of your ability.  I didn’t understand the significance of that saying as a child/teen (and hence did the bare minimum), but as an adult I agree with it and try to always give one hundred percent.  I would not be the person I am without the unconditional guidance and support that my parents have always gone out of their way to give me.

MJ:  How do you believe your bachelor’s degree in psychology has helped shape you?
CF:  I originally came to IUPUI as a Philosophy major; reading philosophy is a major interest of mine.  I quickly found that a career in philosophy was not what I had hoped it would be.  I had taken the introductory psychology classes at another campus and thought I would take a few more psychology classes here to explore the discipline.  I signed up for Dr. Murphy’s Behavioral Neuroscience B320 class without really knowing what it meant; I knew it had something to do with the brain and it sounded interesting to me.  I fell in love with it.  I quickly switched to a double major in philosophy and psychology.  Now I’m mainly focusing on a psychology BS. 

I thought that IUPUI would be like any other school, but I was wrong.  Most schools send you through classes and give you a diploma, and then you’re on your own.  IUPUI isn’t like that, my undergraduate career has prepared me for the stresses that I will certainly encounter in graduate school, it has given me the information on how I can get to graduate school, and it has prepared me with experience in research and teaching/mentoring.  I realize now that the hard work my professors have put me through and the knowledge they have required, make me more prepared than the people I will be competing with for those graduate school positions.

MJ:  What advice to you have for current psychology majors?
CF:  The most important thing for an undergraduate to understand is time management.  This was something that took me a long time to get under control.  I can remember early in my career allowing undue stress to become a part of my life because of poor time management.  I find that I am extremely productive as a deadline nears.  However if a deadline is far off in the future, I don’t give it much attention.  Thus, it is important for me to set my own deadlines.  I may go overboard with this (as my fiancé says), but it really helps me accomplish the things that must get done.  Every Sunday evening I sit down with my calendar (which has everything that is due for the semester, along with meetings, talks, and events) and make an agenda for the week.  My weekly agenda includes what I want to accomplish each day.  Then every morning, after breakfast I create an agenda for the day, from my weekly agenda.  This breaks it down further, it consists of goals for the day (e.g. by 10 a.m. the methods section of my research paper done, by 12:30 have it proofread and corrected, etc.).  Organizing my responsibilities into weekly and daily agendas has been the number one reason for my success as an undergraduate, with various responsibilities both on and off campus.