Jan. 8, 2015
By Jerome Boettcher
The art of compartmentalizing is not lost on Jamie Kator.
She balances both ends of student-athlete and loads up her proverbial plate in the process. The Vanderbilt junior is a three-year letterwinner on the soccer team while handling the demands of a molecular and cellular biology major.
“A lot of what I have been doing is constantly juggling the two,” she said, “but it is something I’ve been doing since I was 14. I’m used to it.”
And she thrives and excels while multi-tasking her two passions.
On the soccer field, she has played in all 58 games of her career, making 33 starts with three goals and eight assists. She succeeds in the classroom, too, as the two-time SEC Academic Honor Roll recipient has an impressive 3.847 GPA. If her major wasn’t hard enough, Kator was also one of 60 students – along with teammate Claire Anderson – chosen her freshman year for an honors program in the College of Arts and Science.
Plus, her major offers a directed study, which gives her class credit to serve as a research assistant in the Tuberculosis Center.
“I always knew I wanted to go to an academic institution as well as one that values their athletics,” said Kator, who plans to apply for medical school this summer.
The importance of academia was stressed to Kator at a young age.
Her father, Michael, serves as the chair of a law firm in Washington, D.C. Her mother, Nancy, has been a doctor for nearly 30 years, specializing in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Her older sister, Allison, is a biomedical engineer in Wisconsin.
“They really emphasized academics and I’m glad they did,” Kator said of her parents. “I know it’s going to give me the best opportunities. They never really steered me in one direction. They wanted me to do the best and follow what I was good at.”
At Vanderbilt, Kator has found plenty of challenges and chances to grow – in the classroom and through lab work.
After the first semester of her freshman year, she applied and was accepted into the College of Arts and Science’s College Scholars Programs based on her academic achievement in the fall semester. Through the program, she has participated in honors seminars and earned honors points. A seminar is limited to 16 College Scholars and taught by professors with expertise in that field. Kator, who is currently in a bioethics seminar, will earn honor points by enriching the course and satisfy a writing requirement with a research paper.
“It is a very unique learning environment,” she said. “They are great opportunities and it gives me a lot of connections to professors. We are in such a small classroom environment with so much discussion you really get to know your professors.”
The 20-year-old has also taken advantage of shadowing and learning from professionals.
At the Tuberculosis Center, Kator is a research assistant for Dr. Christina Fiske, an assistant professor of Adult Infectious Disease. She spends three days a week – and earns class credit – in a lab, analyzing immune cells in people with extra pulmonary tuberculosis.
“A lot of science, a lot of immune cells I didn’t really know existed,” she said. “It has been a challenge to really hone in on all this science and biology but it has definitely been very educational and I’ve learned a lot from it.”
Currently, Kator and the Tuberculosis Center are studying why tuberculosis leaves the lungs in some patients and spreads to other areas of their body. Their research has found that patients with HIV or diabetes are more likely to have tuberculosis spread. In 2013, more than 1 million people died from tuberculosis.
“Usually your immune system walls it off and keeps it in your lungs,” Kator said. “Some people, the disease travels and we’re trying to find out what they have in their immune system that is different… I’ve gotten some opportunities to shadow some doctors who work in infectious disease in the hospital and I think it has been really good to really make myself evaluate where I want to be and what kind of doctor I’d want to be.”
Kator has narrowed in on that decision – eying a career in orthopedic surgery. She’ll apply for Vanderbilt University School of Medicine this summer. Before she starts medical school, though, she plans to defer to pursue professional soccer overseas for at least a year.
“Having the medical center so close, there are so many research opportunities and shadowing opportunities to interact with medicine,” she said. “It is another really good experience for me to have going forward with my career. It is a unique experience that puts me ahead of my competition I hope.”
