Taking a Shot at Oxford’s Dreaming Spires

“I vividly remember this,” said Juzych, a biology major from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., whose family is part of the Ukrainian diaspora. “I remember my dad grabbing me, telling me this should be interesting.” Leaving your own birthday party early would be hard for any kid, but it didn’t take long before Juzych understood why it was important. At the hospital,he and his father met 17-year-old Dima, who had been shot in Kyiv during the mass protests that took place during 2014’s Maidan Revolution. The bullet hit his eye, ultimately causing him to lose it, and was millimeters away from causing his death.

The Ukrainian brothers lived with the Juzych family during Dima’s months-long recovery process. “At 12 years old, that really opened my eyes to the realities of the world.

First off, I realized how incredibly lucky I am to be living in the United States,” Juzych said. “I also started realizing the value of medicine, and how having that skill set can really have a positive impact on people’s lives.”

Dima’s story also caused Juzych to want to make the world a better place. That value is critical to the Rhodes Scholarship program, which offers recipients a fully funded graduate education at the University of Oxford in England. Beth Throne, dean of DavisConnects, said Juzych is an exemplar of the kind of leader the trust is seeking.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war there has led to an increase in eye injuries, but a lack of trained physicians and donor corneal tissue means those wounded aren’t able to access needed treatment. Juzych, whose minor is in science, technology, and society, has sourced such equipment as microscopes from places like the United States. He’s also figured out how to use technology to connect the microscopes used by Ukrainian surgeons with international eye experts.

“It’s been such an honor to help,” he said.

He also traveled to Ukraine twice since the war began, finding it a very different place than it had been when he visited family in earlier years. On one recent trip, he entered through a military checkpoint, and the first time he heard air raid sirens at night it was a jarring, frightening experience. A trauma specialist invited him to visit a hospital operating room. There, a medical team was aiding a man who had suffered a bomb-related injury that left him with a missing arm and a bacterial infection in his leg.

The surgeon asked Juzych to scrub in and hold an external fixation device on the patient’s leg and rotate it so the doctors could get to the infection. As Juzych held on, he realized that the injured man was not much older than he was.

It is an indelible memory of his time in Ukraine, and it has helped to shape his vision of the future.

Months into his new reality, he still expresses surprise and deep appreciation for being chosen by the selection committee. He is also humbled by the many emails and notes of congratulations he has received from people he’s met throughout his life, from members of the Ukraine community in Michigan who knew him as a child all the way to Colby professors he’s never had in class but who wanted to reach out to him all the same.

“I’ve been incredibly touched by that,” he said.

He also prepared for his time at Oxford, where he will pursue a master of science in Modeling for Global Health, a program that uses high-level math and coding to predict disease trends and improve healthcare policy worldwide. It appealed to him in part because it includes a term abroad, where students can go almost anywhere in the world and apply the skills they’ve developed in a global-health setting. It’s a challenge that speaks to his yearning to be of service.

“I’m very, very excited by the opportunity to get to do something like that,” he said.

Juzych, who played hockey for two years after high school with the North American Hockey League, was delighted to learn that there’s a hockey league in Oxford he can join.

“The big game is against Cambridge, which just seems like the most posh thing ever,” he said.