Sept. 26, 2007

By Mike Foley, Greenville News

Running late for an appointment to interview Furman University senior Page Bridges, guilt sets in.

With her demanding full schedule of athletics, academics and work in a high-profile research lab, every minute of Bridges' life is precious. Who wants to be responsible for wasting a second of it?

When she's not in class, studying, running, or doing research, she's usually trying to get some much-needed sleep. But when the reporter arrives, the flaxen-haired student is reviewing notes, making the best of a short break between class and cross country practice.

Furman Track and Cross Country Coach Gene Mullin, in fact, marvels at Bridges' skill at balancing hers roles as student and athlete.

"As a student-athlete, she exemplifies what you want one to be," he says. "Kids like her are rare. I'd like to have many more." Mullin is downplaying Furman's history a bit. His runners during his 25-year career have gone on to successful careers as doctors, lawyers and business leaders. And he expects no less from Bridges.

"As a coach, you have to promote running," he says, "but there are so many more important things than running around an oval."

Certainly, Bridges' years at Furman have not found her running in place. She practically flies from one task to another. And that whirlwind schedule hasn't prevented her from succeeding at everything.

Well, almost everything. The 21-year-old's grade point average this fall stands at a healthy 3.97, the perfect 4.0 spoiled when she earned back-to-back A-minuses in her freshman humanities classes.

"There were a lot of essays," she says with an easy laugh. "I've since learned that I'm better at writing lab reports than essays."

The minor glitch in her academic record did nothing to derail her future. When she graduates from Furman this spring, she'll head to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to work on a combined M.D./Ph.D. degree. She'll do two years of medical school, then spend three or four years getting her Ph.D. before returning to finish the last two years of med school.

In her personal race for the cure, she hopes to one day do extensive research -- and work with patients.

"Everyone wants to cure cancer," she says. Her current lab work, as part of her stint as a Beckman Scholar, is focused on performing analytical research on chromium complexes.

Furman researchers have learned that by binding chromium to DNA, cancer cells can be eliminated by simply shining a light on them. The next step is refining the process so that tumors are destroyed, but the tissue surrounding them remains healthy.

Furman chemistry professor John Wheeler, Bridges' teacher and mentor, says the potential appeal of the process is that it isn't like chemotherapy, which makes people healthy, but sick at the same time. But right now, his group isn't even looking toward making a marketable drug as that is years down the road.

"We like to compare it to the difference between guided missiles and atomic bombs," he says, about his group's technique.

Bridges has been performing the research for three summers and two academic years. The research that Wheeler and his wife Sandy have been doing -- funded by grants from the National Institutes for Health and pharmaceutical giant Merck, among others -- is 10 years old, and nowhere close to being complete.

"Right now it's working. It's working really well," Bridges says. "It's still a long way from ever being given to anyone. But it's neat to do something and think no one has ever done it before. It's like I'm the world's expert on this one little corner of science."

That Bridges was named a Beckman Scholar puts her in elite company, Wheeler says. The award is given by the Beckman Foundation to top students from schools such as Princeton, Yale, Duke, and now Furman.

Bridges will present her research at conferences this fall and spring, and then at a national conference in California next summer, before a group that includes Nobel Laureates, Wheeler says.

"What sets her apart is that she's bright and quick in terms of picking up new information and techniques. Most students can do one or the other, but she does both," he says. "She seems to excel in every facet of her life."

While she's intense in classes and the lab, she utilizes the same focus in sports. She decided to try the unique challenge that the steeplechase presents after a less-than-stellar showing in her first track meet.

"I was doing the 800 meters on a 280-meter indoor track," she recalls about a meet at Eastern Tennessee State University. "I went out in the first 400 meters in something like 69 seconds, and barely did my last 400 in 85 (seconds). After that, Coach Mullin says, `Why don't you try the 3,000 next week?' "

It may have been the only time in her life when she wasn't able to maintain pace. She soon found the steeplechase a nearly 2-mile race that includes 28 barriers, and 7 water jumps, all over 30-inch, fixed hurdles to be a complicated event well-suited to her temperament, and her 5-foot, 9-inch physique.

"It's so much fun," she says. "It makes you focus, because every 80 meters you have to either clear a hurdle or fall down."

The steeplechase requires a balance of technical skills, endurance and speed. Its mixed bag presents an athletic and mental challenge.

"You can't count laps," she says. "You just have to run. It's not that hard to get through a race, but I haven't mastered it yet."

Hurdling and hurtling through life, Bridges credits her success to the very fact that she does divide time on the track and cross country course with time in class.

"Sometimes my brain works and my legs don't," she says. "And sometimes my legs work and my brain doesn't. I don't think I'd be as good at either sports or academics if I didn't have both."