Who is Kathy O'Hagan? - Middle/High School

Middle/High School

What is Physiology?
Questions
Physiologists Ask
Explore Physiology
Meet a Physiologist
Careers Brochure
Career Decisions
Awards Available
Minority Resources
Educators & Outreach
Related Links

Who is Kathleen O’Hagan?
A Teacher and a Researcher

Kathy was born in Teaneck, NJ and spent her childhood in Midland Park, NJ, a small suburban village in Northern NJ. She didn’t have a particular fascination with science as a child. Most of the “science” she had in elementary school involved the physical sciences (like rocks, earth, chemistry, physics), which did not interest her much.

Listen to Your Mother
In addition to reading a lot and playing sports, Kathy did like learning about the natural world, an interest that was helped along by many family camping trips and visits to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Two factors in high school pushed her in the direction of a career in science, and especially the life sciences. First, early in high school, she started thinking about what to study in college, like English and psychology. Her mother told her, “You should go into technology. It’s the wave of the future for smart girls”. These words, said in the mid-1970s by a stay-at-home mom, had quite an impact and it opened Kathy’s mind to science as a possible career choice for a woman. Second, she found her high school biology classes far more interesting than chemistry or physics, so biology was what she chose to study when she went to college.

Teachers Make a Difference
Kathy decided to go to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, which is a small liberal arts college. In her second year there, she took a class in animal physiology, and she knew she had found what she wanted to study. In physiology, she saw a way to combine her interests in exercise and in understanding how organ systems (like the heart, lungs, or kidneys) work in health and disease. Being at a small college gave Kathy the chance to work with teachers in their labs to find out whether she liked doing research. When she was a senior, one of her teachers let her do her own research project in his lab. Even though he was studying reproductive physiology, he let her design and complete a small study on exercise training using rats. She graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1983.

Training to Be a Researcher
At that point, Kathy knew she wanted to go on and get a PhD degree. For her graduate work, she decided to return to her home state and get her Ph.D. in physiology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (and yes, that is the official name of the university) in New Brunswick. While she was there, Kathy learned that exercise is a great tool to use to look at the physiological mechanisms that regulate blood flow in the heart and kidneys. The cross-training in renal and exercise physiology she received, which on the surface may seem strange, has ended up being good for Kathy in both her research and her teaching. It was at Rutgers that she had her first taste of teaching, both in labs and in classrooms. She found out she liked teaching a lot. She received her Ph.D. in 1990.

Dr. O’Hagan then moved to Milwaukee, WI where she could get more research training (called postdoctoral training) in the Department of Anesthesiology at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center/Medical College of Wisconsin. The training she got was in a different area. She learned how the brain and nervous system control blood flow during exercise. This led her current research interest in understanding how pregnancy affects the way blood flow is controlled during exercise. Even though Dr. O’Hagan really enjoyed her postdoctoral years and being able to only do research all of the time, she missed teaching. She decided that, for her, she needed to find a job that combined both teaching and research.

Teaching is as Important as Research
Dr. O’Hagan got a job in the Department of Physiology at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine at Midwestern University (MWU) in Downers Grove, IL. MWU is a college that focuses on teaching health professionals. She feels that it was her teaching experience as a graduate student and her broad training in the different areas of physiology that gave her the major advantage in competing for this particular job. A good part of Dr. O’Hagan’s time is spent teaching. Therefore, the college pays her salary. This is different from other colleges that focus more on research, where researchers often have to come up with their own salary money from grants that they’ve gotten to run their labs Dr. O’Hagan teaches students in the Colleges of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, as well as osteopathic medical students. Her main teaching includes classes in renal and exercise physiology and helping lead small-group discussions in all areas of physiology.

However, MWU also believes that research and service to the community are important too. So Dr. O’Hagan has a small lab where she can do her research. She is currently studying what affect pregnancy has on the regulation of blood flow in the uterine artery during exercise.

Family and Fun
Dr. O’Hagan’s family includes her husband Kyle Ramsey (who is also a scientist and works at MWU), their son Matthew, and Kyle’s older children Hannah and Seth. They enjoy playing a variety of recreational sports and spending time outside. They also like to explore the many different Chicago museums. They have a lot of family living in the eastern US, so they travel around visiting them a lot too. Dr. O’Hagan is also involved in her church as a lay reader and as a teacher in adult education.

Advice for a High School Student
Strong skills in written and oral communication are as important as your coursework in the sciences to prepare for college. The ability to develop and deliver an organized and entertaining talk to a group of folks is a skill that will take you far in the sciences or any profession you enter.