Recent University graduate Tomasz "Tommy" Stryjewski is finally being recognized for his volunteer work in the field of medicine. Stryjewski was named to USA Today's All-USA College Academic Team. The team consists of 20 college students who were chosen by a panel of judges from 500 junior and senior applicants. The judges picked team members based on academic excellence and community service. Stryjewski and his fellow team members will each be given an award of $2,500. Stryjewski began volunteering for the Baton Rouge Emergency Medical Service during his senior year of high school. "From then on, I didn't feel like medicine was a 'career choice,'" Stryjewski said. "It was so exciting, and it captured me so passionately that I really felt like there wasn't anything else I could do." Medicine has been a topic of conversation in the Stryjewski household, according to Wieslaw Stryjewski, Tommy's father. Barbara Stryjewski, his mother, is a physician who works with leprosy. "Medicine has always been one of the things we talk about," his father said. "He's been thinking about medicine since he was a young boy." After high school, Stryjewski continued to volunteer in the medical field. He joined the Baton Rouge Regional Eye Bank where he salvages corneas from deceased donors. Stryjewski also established Tigers for Donating Life, a University organization that works to inform people of the need for organ donors. Stryjewski said his time at the University helped him determine his career path. "One of the biggest things was I determined that I didn't want to work in a traditional private practice, but rather in some capacity that would help me affect more than just one person at a time," Stryjewski said. Stryjewski will be attending John Hopkins University, the University of Chicago or Harvard Medical School in the fall. He hopes to become a global health leader. "More people are dying from diseases that we have cures for - tuberculosis, malaria, dysentery - than those we don't" Stryjewski said. "I think many of these issues are under-addressed, so I hope to obtain not only an M.D. but also an MPH or MPP to try to combat them in my career as a physician." For now, Stryjewski is traveling to Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe with his fiancee, Katie Faust, a recent biological sciences graduate.
---- Contact Ashley Lopez at alopez@lsureveille.com
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