Student Profiles

Robert (R.J.) Panganiban

Small College Feel
While UNLV is close to home and undoubtedly flexible in terms of tuition, one of the main reasons I decided to attend UNLV is the Honors Program offered here. I appreciate the small college feel of campus and the accessibility to the faculty. Asking a question to a professor lecturing among hundreds of students probably indifferent to your curiosity can become a wee bit awkward, but not at UNLV. And of course, I've been a Rebel basketball fan since Larry Johnson and Greg Anthony ruled the courts.

Personal and Professional Growth
Until UNLV, I lived in my own small world. I was naïve to other worlds and my small circle of friends had personalities and interests similar to mine. At UNLV, I met people from all sorts of backgrounds, religions, and cultures. Half-baked assumptions about the unfamiliar crumbled and I came to realize how little I actually knew. I met people from a variety of countries and backgrounds, and it's amusing to me how the sciences of all things have given us the opportunity to meet at a common ground. More importantly, I believe I have learned to understand, embrace, and appreciate the unfamiliar instead of attacking it and that has made all the difference.

Favorite Memories
Some of my favorite memories come from Study Week. Every year it's a peculiar event. The library suddenly teems with three times as many students until the wee hours of the morning. Bodies everywhere are splayed across the floor with heads plastered to textbooks, some looking as new as the day of they were purchased. Frantic study groups of all majors are searching all about for that one room to complete the "all-nighter." Despite all of this chaos, there's nothing quite like sleepless studying at one in the morning with friends and a package of Red Bull at your side.

Building a Foundation
My field of study is Biology, more specifically Biotechnology and I hope to attend medical school after UNLV. Growing up in New York, I would visit my aunt who was an internal medicine physician. Every time I visited, I recall her penchant for reminding me about the importance of school (as a child, I'm sure this went in one ear and out the other). I vividly remember her gentle smile and the way my grandparents would speak of her charity. She passed away when I was six from Lupus. Although I barely knew her, her influence is ineffable, yet indelible to me. Maybe it was her smile, her calming aura, or even her liking to lecture me about school that steered me towards my early desire to become a physician.

The College of Sciences offers research opportunities, including laboratory experience working side-by-side with professors.