Carolina Ramôa: Growing through Difficulty

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Carolina Ramôa | she/her | CLAS’06 | GSAS’13

B.A in Biology and Cognitive Science, with a concentration in Neuroscience

M.S. Biological and Physical Sciences; PhD in Neuroscience

As a high school student in Richmond, Virginia, Carolina remembers her journey applying to college as one of teen angst. Carolina, a native of the bustling metropolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, wanted a college experience outside of Richmond in a big city like New York and California. To make her dream a reality, Carolina applied to many schools in NY and received several acceptances and scholarship offers. After this, it was a no-brainer - she had to go! Her parents; however, had other ideas on where she should attend university. Carolina’s father, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and immigrant from Brazil, convinced Carolina to reconsider. Even though she had dreamed of attending school out-of-state, she knew she needed to abide by her parent’s wishes. The benefits of in-state tuition and the lower cost of living in Virginia made staying in Virginia a compelling option. With the advice and direction of her parents, Carolina, she enrolled at the University of Virginia in the fall of 2002.

When transitioning into her first-year at UVA, she vividly remembers the gorgeous campus, with its beautiful scenery and rolling mountains. Although the landscape was breathtaking, she began to realize that the University was much different than the life she envisioned nestled in the small town of Charlottesville. The University lacked the socioeconomic or multicultural diversity Carolina sought out. In the fall of 2002, only 2.96% of undergraduates were identified as Hispanic/Latinx. She recalls feeling out of place at times in this unfamiliar environment and that it was difficult to feel like the University was equally her home as it was to other students. Despite this difficult reality, Carolina remained focused on her academic goals, later declaring a double major in Biology and Cognitive Sciences, with a concentration in Neuroscience.

“Through difficulty you grow, I only have gratitude for UVA. I felt like I grew very much as a person, I grew as a professional, an intellectual, as an academic while I was there . It was a painful growing experience throughout.”

Despite being one of the few Latinas in her courses, Carolina pursued her passion: a career in neuroscience. Carolina was an ambitious student, and even though she was not on the Pre-Med track, she took all of the large, science lecture classes and prerequisite courses she needed for her double major in Biology and Cognitive Science. She recalls that within these classrooms filled with hundreds of students, it was often hard to feel acknowledged by the professor given the number of students in the classroom. This sentiment, along with other academic rigor, made these courses difficult for most students leading many to switch to other career tracks, but Carolina’s love for the sciences afforded her the strength to persevere towards pursuing her passions.

In the midst of her STEM courses, Carolina capitalized on the opportunity to take a few humanities classes, which is where she discovered an entirely new world - one in which pushed its students toward intellectual curiosity and made her feel excited to learn new things. She loved this occasional escape into other topics and enjoyed the flexibility and freedom her liberal arts education at UVA gave her. When recalling her time, she remembers this cross-over into other courses one of the best things about her UVA experience. UVA’s liberal arts curriculum allowed her to do this and crouses dedicated to people finding their passions have expanded through the UVA engagements.

When she wasn’t studying diligently for her courses, Carolina volunteered by doing research in biology labs both during the year and over the summer. Through this hands-on experience, she was able to apply her knowledge inside the classroom to research. But what she cherished as well were the moments when she could blow off steam with her friends. She loved hanging out with students from both the Middle Eastern and Latinx community. They emphasized the celebration of each other’s cultural differences, and embracing shared experiences. It was not only freeing for Carolina to be surrounded by other multicultural students, but she was grateful for meaningful conversations and friendships she cultivated from the experience.

After graduating from the College of Arts & Sciences in 2006, Carolina stayed at University to pursue a M.S. and Ph.D. joining the ranks of the rare “Triple Hoos.” The graduate student experience, however, was very different from her undergraduate career. Instead of large classes full of Pre-Med students, she was now surrounded by peers that shared her love of neuroscience, in smaller class sizes and with more opportunities for one-on-one interaction with professors. Even though with these benefits, it was still at times isolating to be one of the few, if not the only, Latina in her program. When she started her Master’s program, approximately 1.5% of students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences identified as Hispanic/Latinx, equating to about 33 people in over 2,000 students. Even though this was the reality, the lack of representation did not stop her finding and building community.

As a graduate student, she worked closely with Cheryl Burgan Apprey, the Director of Graduate Student Diversity Programs. Director Apprey directed the Inter-Ethnic Interdisciplinary Mentoring Institute, of which Carolina was a member. Mentoring “trios” were created, composed of a faculty member, a senior graduate student, and a junior graduate student. Carolina was paired with a professor from Material Science and a graduate student from the Curry School of Education . She loved how this program fostered connections between marginalized students and faculty, at a University so large, it likely would not have happened otherwise. This exchange allowed professors to share advice and expose students to new opportunities, but it also allowed students to share their experiences and teaching recommendations with faculty. For Carolina, this exchange promoted a sense of community within her graduate tenure that she hadn’t experienced before. Creating “a nebulous community is a difficult endeavor”, but Director Apprey was able to achieve it and Carolina is grateful for the diversity it added to her time as a UVA graduate student.

Carolina saw the need for additional spaces for Latinx students apart from the Inter-Ethnic Interdisciplinary Mentoring Institute and decided to found the Latin Graduate Student Organization. Her organization had a broad reach across the University community and brought together Latinx students from across graduate programs and schools. They would occasionally connect and socialize as a way to support one another and share experiences as graduate students. Although she was involved with the organization only briefly during her time at the University, she is thankful for the community it created, the connections it facilitated, and the relationships she was able to build with other Latinx students.

“People who were doing PhD’s people doing a Phd in Philosophy could be interested in business, there's no reason why we can't help each other out in grad school especially”

Through these newfound communities, Carolina realized that representation is hugely important. If she had the opportunity to know another Brazilian neuroscientist at UVA, it would have made a world of difference, simply because it makes that reality possible.

“It is with different perspectives, that you become academically stronger.”

After eleven years at the University, Carolina’s journey concluded with her Phd graduation, and the defense of her dissertation in the Rotunda during the Spring of 2013. Carolina had lots of support in this culmination of all her time at UVA. Her relatives and close friends flew in from as far as Brazil to be there, and all her fellow peers and professors from the Neuroscience program came to attend this momentous occasion - a triumph of her time as a Triple Hoo. Carolina had produced something meaningful. She had already published academic papers that have been cited by other scholars, but with this final presentation she felt like she contributed in some small way to humanity. It was also at this moment that Carolina discovered her love for public health, and realized that her journey in the preclinical sciences had come to an end.

When asked what were the things that she realized during her UVA experience, Carolina quoted this phrase: “cara de pau”, literally meaning face of wood in Portuguese. It means that you are not embarrassed and you just go for it, whatever it may be. Similar to the UVA motto that learning is lifelong, you must keep learning and working towards your passions, unwaveringly, By doing this, you can find happiness. This idea encapsulates the way Carolina tackled her UVA experience as a Triple Hoo, and the way she continuously is taking on the public health world.

Immediately following her graduation from the University of Virginia, Carolina became a postdoctoral research fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University. During this fellowship, she completed a prestigious three-month internship with the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Today, Carolina Ramôa, PhD works at the Food and Drug Administration as a pharmacologist at the Center for Tobacco Products.

Carolina’s Advice for students is whatever level you achieve is significant enough, take advantage that you are at a great liberal arts school to do new things, but don’t overwhelm yourself, and make sure that you are doing things to build out your life. Finally, she encourages all students when they are stressed out to go back to the basics: eat better, sleep at regular hours, and get some exercise.