{"id":5422,"date":"2013-04-17T14:31:07","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T19:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=5422"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:21:47","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:21:47","slug":"liberal-arts-led-kopp-to-fulfilling-medical-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=5422","title":{"rendered":"Liberal arts led Kopp to fulfilling medical career"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Vincent<\/a>
Vincent Kopp (photo by Dan Sears)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019d known him then, you wouldn\u2019t be able to picture him now.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnybody looking at me in 1969 walking onto the campus of UNC would not have predicted I\u2019d be sitting here now with the kind of career I\u2019ve had,\u201d said Vincent Kopp. \u201cEven I would not have predicted it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a pediatric anesthesiologist at a major academic institution, Kopp trains medical students and residents based on knowledge he amassed not only as a scientist, but also as a lifelong learner who credits a strong humanities education as the foundation for his career.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know when a student is going to come back<\/p>\n

10 years down the road and say, \u2018I had a thought in my English class that helped me create a new product for my company,\u2019\u201d said Kopp, clinical associate professor in the School of Medicine\u2019s departments of anesthesiology and pediatrics. \u201cYou cannot predict now how anyone\u2019s career will take shape.\u201d<\/p>\n

A liberal arts education<\/h3>\n

As a high school student in Raleigh, Kopp performed equally well on math and verbal portions of the SAT, and he arrived at Carolina with an open mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI excelled at the sciences, but I gravitated toward the humanities. I went on to double major in English and religion,\u201d he said. \u201cMy analytical skills were more honed by studying English literature and the world\u2019s religions than my science courses.\u201d<\/p>\n

He liked his science classes, but they were more about developing a certain vocabulary, he said. In his humanities courses he learned the methodology he didn\u2019t know he\u2019d need years later in medical school: how to approach an idea, look for evidence, record that evidence and make an argument.<\/p>\n

Kopp said during the late 1960s and early 1970s, ideas flowed freely at Carolina and he never felt limited to one path. He took required courses in subjects like chemistry and calculus, advanced French and independent studies in literature, and he bonded with many of his professors.<\/p>\n

It was in a religion class with William Peck where \u201cthe world opened up,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just a course in religion, it was a course in how to think, how to withhold judgment on certain topics until you\u2019d looked at them from different perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, he was responsible for administering insulin to a blind diabetic student on his hall in Manly Residence Hall and learned that sticking someone with a needle didn\u2019t bother him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the most natural thing in the world,\u201d said Kopp, who had also become familiar with the medical side of campus by working at the Health Sciences Library.<\/p>\n

As he worked toward his bachelor\u2019s degree, he never put any limits on what he should be when he grew up. \u201cI didn\u2019t let college get in the way of my education,\u201d Kopp joked.<\/p>\n

A continuing education<\/h3>\n

After graduation, Kopp toyed with the idea of opening his own bookstore while he worked at B. Dalton Booksellers in Raleigh where he got \u201ca basic bootstrap education in business.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was during this time that he read \u201cLet Us Now Praise Famous Men,\u201d by the author James Agee and photographer Walker Evans, which documented the lives of people in the Depression-era South.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was blown away by the connection between literature and human need,\u201d Kopp said. \u201cThis was something that attempted to connect written word and reality in a way that was primal and raw and unfiltered. This book worked on me at a very visceral level. My desire was always to help people, and this was something I needed to be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after that \u2013 September 11, 1974 to be exact \u2013 Kopp felt \u201ca clear calling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI woke up and said to myself, \u2018I\u2019m going to medical school.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He returned to Carolina as a special student to complete the necessary prerequisites, and he worked in the neuropathology lab taking care of a rat colony. He was put in charge of anesthetizing and euthanizing the rats before electron microscopy, which he performed, and he published his first paper as a lab research technician.<\/p>\n

Kopp thanks Weldon Thornton, one of his former English professors, for helping him realize the possibilities in combining humanities and sciences. He studied medicine like a language. Numbers, like words, were symbols with meaning.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou acquire the vocabulary, make sure you know the basic meanings of the terms and then develop a sense of how they go together. Then you gain the ability to internalize and master that language,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Following new callings<\/h3>\n

Kopp completed a pediatric residency at Duke and then opened the pediatric practice Chapel Hill Children\u2019s Clinic, which he owned for eight years before returning to UNC for an anesthesiology residency.<\/p>\n

He joined the Carolina faculty in 1993, teaching an undergraduate honors class, starting the hospital\u2019s Pre-Care program to help prepare children for surgery and holding a fellowship with the Institute for the Arts and Humanities.<\/p>\n

By 2002, Kopp was ready for the next step.<\/p>\n

With his children away at school, he followed another calling, this time to a small hospital in Elizabeth City. Like college, medical school and the residencies before, this was one more step down an educational path.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think my education gave me a set of lenses through which to view things, but I quickly realized there are laws of the land, and then there are laws people live by,\u201d Kopp said. \u201cJust being a good person and a good doctor in a good hospital doesn\u2019t necessarily give you the whole picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting to use his skills in an underserved area of the state allowed Kopp to engage with patients in a different way and learn from the hospital\u2019s tight-knit community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very rewarding experience. Going away helped me come back to Carolina with a set of fresh eyes and a new sense of purpose and excitement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lifelong learning<\/h3>\n

Kopp returned to Carolina\u2019s Department of Anesthesiology in 2008 where, in addition to clinical duties, he supervises medical students, residents, fellows and certified nurse anesthetists.<\/p>\n

As an educator, he\u2019s still pulling from a lesson learned in a religion class with Ruel Tyson years back, where Tyson quoted Soren Kierkegaard: \u201cWe live our lives forward, but we understand them backward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kopp was in his 40s, with a portion of his life to look back on, when he suddenly understood what that meant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can remember how that would come back to me over and over through the years. It was one of the most important lessons I ever learned, and I went back to Ruel and told him that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kopp hoped Tyson felt that he had done his job well. \u201cMaybe he thought, \u2018That Vince Kopp, look at him now, he\u2019s OK,\u2019\u201d Kopp mused.<\/p>\n

Because the imprint of Tyson\u2019s lessons had not been immediately measurable, Kopp is not as concerned with what a student thinks immediately after a lecture, class or conversation as he is with its lasting impact.<\/p>\n

He wants the future clinicians with which he crosses paths to take away something bigger and deeper, even if they don\u2019t realize it for years. One of those things: that medicine can be uncertain, no matter where you go, and not every student should be hammered into the same mold.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can live your life in such a way that you\u2019re a taker and not a giver, or you can live your life to help others in a positive way,\u201d Kopp said.<\/p>\n

[ By Courtney Mitchell, University Gazette<\/em> ]<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vincent Kopp, pediatric anesthesiology at the UNC School of Medicine, double majored in English and religion at UNC. Though he excelled in the sciences, his training in humanities enhanced his analytical skills more than he expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,98,2014,63,36,38,39,2745],"class_list":["post-5422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-carolina","tag-english-and-comparative-literature","tag-liberal-arts","tag-religious-studies","tag-unc","tag-unc-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-unc-chapel-hill","tag-vincent-kopp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5422"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45915,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5422\/revisions\/45915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}