Senior to Watch: Tyler Green

Ioana Patringenaru | January 12, 2009

Tyler Green

Hometown: Fullerton, Calif.
Majors: philosophy, physiology and neuroscience
Age: 21
Family: parents, Scott and Valerie Green, siblings, Katie, 24, Riley, 18, and Connor, 9

Last summer, Tyler Green, who was about to start his senior year at UCSD, went on a humanitarian mission to the Amazon in Ecuador. The Orange County native, who volunteers in the emergency room at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, helped triage patients, who were waiting for doctors and nurses to see them.

The trip, he said, reaffirmed his commitment to helping people by becoming a doctor. His top choice for medical school is Duke University. “They really believe their students can change the world,” he said.

At UC San Diego, Green has distinguished himself by getting involved in research early on, taking graduate-level classes and becoming an editor at The Saltman Quarterly, an undergraduate biology research journal.

“Tyler is a dream student,” said Monte Johnson, an assistant professor in the philosophy department. “His goals are helping people and healing people.”

There are more and more students like Green at UCSD, who have a solid background in science, but also want to try and understand their discipline’s history and its more humanistic aspects, Johnson said. Green did well in Johnson’s undergraduate course covering ancient Greek philosophers. He was actively involved and sought out his professor after class. Johnson then invited him to a graduate-level seminar on Epicureanism, a Hellenistic school of thought funded in the 4th century B.C. Epicurus and his followers were looking for a way to use philosophy not just to better understand the world, but also as a tool to heal human suffering, Johnson explained.

Green said that he became interested in Greek philosophy and its abstract concepts early on at UCSD. But as time went on, he also found himself drawn to medicine. “I like things that don’t change much,” he said. “The aims of medicine have been the same for a long time.” It’s perhaps not a coincidence that medicine has its roots in Greek antiquity, just as classical philosophy does.

Tyler Green with villagers during his trip to the Amazon last summer.

Green sought out opportunities to do research during his sophomore year. He said he was amazed to find that all it took to get involved in research was contacting the professor who taught his freshman seminar, Larry Squire. Today, Green conducts research under the direction of Robert Clark, an associate professor in the psychiatry department. Some students work in a lab for a semester to round out their resumes—not Green, Clark said. “He kept going semester after semester,” the researcher said. It’s rare to find an undergraduate willing to make that kind of time commitment, Clark said. 

“He’s very reliable and consistent,” the researcher said.  “He’s well-rounded too.” 

Green also applied to become a staff writer at The Saltman Quarterly research journal. He enjoyed writing and peppered at least one of his feature stories with references to Aristotle. He later became the journal’s research editor. Green said he came to UCSD for the weather and the campus’ location. He then found out that the campus offered a wide array for opportunities for proactive students.

“I had a gut feeling that I should be here,” he said.