Dr. Chris Campbell Takes a Unique Pathway to Pharmacy

Most pharmacy students remember brutal exams in biochemistry, pharmacology, and the like. Not as many can recall attempting to study while securing Red Cross relief sites during Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. Chris Campbell, PharmD ’11, overcame both types of challenges and more, completing undergraduate studies and a doctorate of pharmacy at UIC while serving in the National Guard.

This mix of military service and medical training gave Campbell a unique perspective on his career, he said.

“It definitely set me on a nontraditional pathway,” he said. Campbell added that he can reflect back on and apply his nontraditional background to everyday problems in the medical field today.

Military service also presented its fair share of obstacles as Campbell pursued his pharmacy education. He had to leave UIC for two years of active-duty service in the U.S. Army at Fort Carson, Colorado, where he was reclassified as a military police officer in support of Operation Noble Eagle. Shortly after returning from active duty, in the middle of the semester at UIC, Campbell got called away again, this time to assist after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Serving as military police in New Orleans, Campbell even saw floodwaters destroy the school books he’d brought along to study.

“At that point, I just threw my hands up in the air [about finishing school]—like, I just quit,” he said. Despite these challenges, however, Campbell made it through his classes, largely because UIC professors were understanding about his situation, he said.

The hurricane also left Campbell with an inspiring vision of the human spirit. In New Orleans, he saw people who had lost everything face their difficulties with optimism.

“ It showed me just how much people are able to take, and I think I actually learned a lot from the people of New Orleans,” he said. “I don’t think I’d ever seen anybody that hopeful in that type of a situation.”

DR. CHRIS CAMPBELL

Today, after completing two postgraduate residencies, Campbell works with people facing a different type of harrowing situation. He counsels cancer patients in early stage clinical trials at Northwestern Medicine. Campbell said he gravitated to oncology because he is passionate about speaking to patients facing critical situations and giving them information that really matters to them.

“It’s an art counseling them, because they’re scared. They’re anxious,” he said. “It gives me a little bit of job satisfaction knowing that I can give them hope.” �