Kristen Gosselink was a contract employee working on space physiology at NASA's Moffett Field facility when she met Reggie Edgerton, a UCLA Professor of Systems Physiology. She came to UCLA for the opportunity to work with him, but she said ACCESS definitely enhanced her experience.

Instead of going directly into Edgerton's lab, Gosselink first worked in muscle cell biology with Professor James Tidball and in neuroendocrinology with Professor Barney Schlinger. And because the curriculum for the first-year ACCESS students combined the resources of 11 departments, she got to meet perhaps two dozen professors in several fields, instead of a handful in one discipline.

"I was surprised to find out how friendly and accessible the faculty were," Gosselink said. "The professors here are really willing to take time for students."

But perhaps the most interesting side effect of participating in ACCESS was that instead of being the only new graduate student in a department, or one of a handful, Gosselink had a cohort of 69 fellow ACCESS members.

All ACCESS participants meet regularly with the director and other advisers, and they take the same course during their first quarter. That meant "we had a big support network right away," Gosselink said. "There was always somebody going through the same thing I was, and usually 30 or 40 people."

As she planned, Gosselink will continue her studies with Edgerton. Her thesis will probably evolve out of her present work, studying the possible connection between growth hormones and changes in muscles at the molecular and structural levels. The work has applications to any clinical case involving muscle wasting, from aging, to sports injuries, to AIDS.

Research suggests that muscular changes occur as levels of growth hormone decline--or that growth hormones decline as muscular changes occur. "It's kind of a chicken and egg thing," Gosselink admitted. "We don't know which comes first, or if they are even causal, but there seems to be some sort of link there."

"Ultimately, I would like to teach at a small college like the one I came from," Gosselink said, referring to Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.

Published in Fall 1995, Graduate Quarterly