College means many things to many different people. Academically and socially, college is a freeing experience. Many students go away from home for the first time and must learn how to do everything for themselves. Freedom is found not only in living without parents to tell you when to clean your room or do your laundry but also in how the professors allow you to think.

     For Miles Rosen, a senior at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, the intellectual freedom he found at college has become a way to continually question the scientific and social world around him.

     To Rosen the freedom of collegiate academics is, “not being told something, but asking a question because you want to know the answer. Questioning how things evolve or how they function allows you to propose your own theories and questions. In this questioning is an aspect of creativity and freedom to go after what you are interested in.”

     Rosen has learned that “you can’t go to a textbook—you have to be curious enough to have ideas and take part in projects that might not be apparent.”  By looking at a variety of situations, scientific and social, Rosen has taken his desire to understand the world to a new level. His greatest endeavors have escaped the pages of textbooks and moved in the lab and onto the streets.

     Currently, Rosen is involved in research that is examining use of a mechanical device to reduce the body’s core temperature. Nearly every August, as football practices begin under sweltering heat, we hear stories about players over-heating and collapsing on the field. Our bodies have natural means of cooling themselves, which in extreme situations fail us. One of the natural responses is through our hands and feet, where the skin is the thinnest. As blood passes through these extremities, it is cooled by the air and then circulated throughout our organs.

     The problem of elevated core temperature is not just a problem for football players. People with Multiple Sclerosis also suffer from elevated core temperatures. Before and after surgeries the body’s internal temperature is also abnormal.

     What Rosen and his group of fellow researchers are trying to determine is how these problems can be regulated through a mechanical device. In the form of a glove, this device will combine pressure and reduced or elevated temperature to change the blood’s temperature at a faster rate. More than just engineering or biology — the researchers are using knowledge from many fields of science.

     “My work with core temperature is appealing to me because it utilizes biology, physiology, and bioengineering,” Rosen said. “I thought that it would be a good opportunity to explore many of my interests.”

     His interests are not just in the laboratory either. When Rosen arrived at Stanford, he quickly realized the clear dichotomy between the rich and the poor. As he walked a street near campus full of expensive restaurants, he was shocked to see many homeless people. Sitting on the sidewalk and asking for assistance, they were nearly invisible to the people passing. Rosen began talking to the men and women living on the street and listened to their stories.

     What he heard from these people inspired Rosen to create an “Alternative Spring Break.” Each year Stanford allows students to submit proposals for trips that become funded by the school. Rosen and a friend created and led twelve, one-day-a-week classes and a one-week trip. During the first twelve weeks the students worked to prepare mentally and intellectually for a week on the streets of San Francisco.

     In San Francisco the homeless were barely invisible. There are over 15,000 homeless people —3,000 of whom are chronically homeless. The students, led by Rosen and his friend, considered both sides of the issue of homelessness. They did service work in soup kitchens and shelters. In the mayor’s office, they talked about and examined current policies while discussing alternative ideas.

     During the week, Rosen’s group met a similar delegation of students from Japan who asked how a country so affluent and powerful could have so many homeless.

     Raising questions is crucial to Rosen, whether it is in the lab or on the streets of San Francisco. Working in a free clinic close to Stanford, he discovered yet another issue of social division, this one even closer to his studies. “It is ridiculous to see how hard it is for people to get medical care or to see a physician,” he says. “I was speaking with a patient who was diagnosed with diabetes. His doctor gave him insulin, but this man lived on the street he didn’t have a refrigerator to store his insulin.”
     Rosen has no clear plans about what he wants to do next in his life but he sees his experiences with the homeless and in the free clinic as formative. They have instilled a desire to make science, like the device that he is working on, more practical and accessible to the general public, especially those who don’t always receive the best care.

     The unknown is exciting to Rosen, something that makes him examine things more deeply. He says that the next year or two will determine whether he continues on for a PhD, medical degree, or a job. Four years ago, when applying to Stanford his field of study was also unclear.

     College is a kind of liberation for many. For Rosen, college has allowed his mind to be free to roam and raise questions. And the answers he has discovered have led him to even more questions to consider.