CHS Announces Fall 24 Commencement Honor Roles: Austin Blake, Undergraduate College Banner Bearer

Published December 13, 2024
By Darlene Muguiro
UTEP College of Health Sciences

This December, three CHS students will serve in honorific roles at the Fall 2024 commencement ceremony at the Don Haskins Center. These students were selected for their positions based on academic achievement, extracurricular participation, and community and University service. Our final story features Austin Blake, Undergraduate College Banner Bearer.

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Austin Blake, a candidate for the Bachelor of Science in Rehabilitation Sciences (BS-RHSC) degree says that an experience receiving physical therapy as a high school athlete cemented his decision to pursue a career in health care.

“Soccer was the most important part of my life at that point, but I tore my ACL, and not being able to play really made an impression on me,” he said. “The physical therapy I received helped me to get back to what I really wanted to do, and I decided that I wanted to be that person for someone else.”

After graduating from high school, Blake began the BS-RHSC Program, with a concentration in Physical Therapy. Shortly after declaring his major, he decided to pursue a position in the Department of Chemistry as a peer leader for the Peer Led Team Learning (PLTL) program, working with younger students as a tutor for Chemistry courses. He had the opportunity to present at the PLTL International Society conference and also led the editing process for a published workbook. He says that the PLTL program helped him develop leadership skills and also drove him to seek out new opportunities on campus, including a spot in Dr. Arshad Khan’s laboratory and a fundraising position in the Student Association of Rehabilitation Sciences (STARS).

“Seeing the other peer leaders and how involved they were in other research labs and clubs really inspired me; it’s like iron sharpening iron,” he said. “It made me reach out to do the same thing.”

As a member of Dr. Khan’s lab, Blake presented the results of the mapping of neuroanatomy within rat brains at UTEP’s COURI symposium for undergraduate students, and participated in a poster abstract that was selected for presentation at the Society for Neuroscience. He says that he was “pretty lucky” to have discovered the opportunity to join the lab – a TA in his Anatomy and Physiology class mentioned that the lab needed new members.   

“I learned more about the lab’s work and thought I could really benefit from the topics they were working on, so I emailed Dr. Khan, and shortly thereafter, was part of the lab,” he said. “Although I had never encountered some of the things we working on before, being there put me in an environment where I had to learn really fast, and I loved it.”

Blake says that the thing he will remember most from his undergraduate experience is the community of care at UTEP, and specifically within the BS-RHSC Program.

“I was with my peers for the last two years and really got to know them,” he said. “While we’ve all had our ups and downs, I’ve made really strong connections, and I’m excited to know that they’ll be with me as we move into graduate school.”

After graduation, Blake will begin the UTEP Doctor of Physical Therapy program. He plans to focus on therapy for individuals with neurological conditions.

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Go Miners!

For more information about the Bachelor of Science in Rehabilitation Sciences Program, please visit: https://www.utep.edu/chs/bsrhsc/