JAY — Bethany Moore has known since she was 11 that she wanted to do some kind of medical research as a career. In middle school, she added engineering to her goals.
When the 2011 Jay High School salutatorian heads to Boston University in September, she plans to major in biomedical engineering and minor in environmental science. She hopes to work for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency some day.
Her choice of a career was influenced by her mother’s bout with cancer.
“When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, my mother went through cancer treatment. She had Stage 3 cancer. She is a breast cancer survivor,” Moore, 18, said. “After that, I knew I wanted to do some kind of medical research.”
The effects of the treatment on her mother, Rosemarie Freeman, made a lasting impression, she said.
“One of her chemotherapy treatments reacted really strongly with her body and burned the tips of her fingers and the soles of her feet from the inside out,” Moore said. “Watching her struggle with simple acts of walking and touching led me to want to find less intrusive and more effective treatment and cures,” she said.
In her sophomore year, she took a career essentials class and determined biomedical engineering is what she wanted to do. In her junior year, her brother, Nathaniel Moore, took her to visit Boston University, further cementing her decision, she said.
And being on the Jay High School Envirothon Team the past three years and the state championship team in environmental science, and now working as a summer intern at the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service in Franklin County helped her fine-tune her goals.
“I never considered work in government,” she said. “It just didn’t occur to me until I took this internship.” It would give her a chance to do research to combat negative environmental impacts of biological and chemical contaminants, she said.
“My future goal is to do all I can to better the quality of life for future generations,” Moore said. “I want to research treatment. I’m really interested in infectious diseases and finding less intrusive and more effective cures.”
She credits Jay High School and gifted teacher Rob Taylor with helping her make decisions.
“He provided me with the opportunity to explore my interests and discover my future goals,” she said.
dperry@sunjournal.com
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- Bethany Moore of Jay plans to study biomedical engineering to help find less intrusive and more effective treatments for contagious diseases.
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