Lehigh University Athletics
The deep end of the academic pool
12/23/2003 6:00:00 PM | Men's Swimming and Diving, Swimming and Diving, Women's Swimming and Diving
 |
Among the undergraduate majors offered at Lehigh, few are as rigorous as the new program in bioengineering.
The program, administered by the College of Arts and Sciences and the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, leaves little time for electives. All students take courses in thermodynamics, genetics, engineering materials and processes, and electrical engineering. Courses required by the program’s three tracks range from modern optics to bioinstrumentation and sensors, and from laser and nonlinear optics to microelectronics.
Among Lehigh’s sports, few demand as much commitment as women’s swimming. Swimmers practice six afternoons a week for three hours and three mornings for 90 minutes.
Linda Hendrixson ’06 is embracing bioengineering and swimming, and enjoying the challenge.
“I’m a very self-motivated person,” says Hendrixson. “If I set out to do something, I devote myself to it completely.”
On the swim team, Hendrixson competes in the breast stroke and the individual medley, swimming the butterfly, the backstroke, the breast stroke and the freestyle in succession. Last year, as a freshman, she won the Patriot League championship in the 200-yard IM and finished third in the 400-yard IM and the 100-yard breast stroke. She set Lehigh records in the 200-yard IM with a time of 2:05.95 and in the 400-yard IM with a time of 4:30.65.
Hendrixson, who swam at West Chester East High School, says her fellow swimmers and her coaches help her maintain her enthusiasm.
“We push each other continually to do better. Our coaches keep our minds on academics, because classes come first.”
Hendrixson, who wants to become a physician, believes bioengineering will prepare her as well for medical school as a pre-med program while giving her more options if she chooses another career. She has enrolled in the program’s cell and tissue engineering track, which encompasses molecular and cell biology, materials science, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. The other tracks are biopharmaceutical engineering and bioelectronics and biophotonics.
As a high school senior, Hendrixson’s interest in medicine deepened when she took a health programs course and worked in the neonatal unit of a hospital caring for premature babies.
Hendrixson has her own health-related challenge. In the past six years, she has lost about 60 percent of her hearing for reasons doctors cannot determine. Her handicap is hardly noticeable – she wears hearing aids and has learned to read lips. At swim meets, she gets the jump on rivals by watching for the flash of the strobe light rather than waiting for the starting gun. In class, she sits up front, watches her professors closely, and listens through an FM radio receiver that amplifies what they are saying.
“I really have to concentrate,” she says, “especially if a professor has a mustache that blocks his lips.”
-Story by Kurt Pfitzer, Lehigh University Relations
