John Wilcox, Class XVIII
John Wilcox
Age: 22
Hometown: Rockledge, FL
Year: Senior
Major: Biological Sciences; Chemistry minor
“I gain the most from the interactions I have with my challenges and my difficulties.”
While confronting the realities of college, Biological Sciences major John Wilcox has carried this sentiment throughout his time in the Service Scholars program to make him into the person he loves today.
As a fourth-year serving a part of the program’s 18th cohort, Wilcox is in the process of wrapping up his journey project as mandated by the curriculum.
His project revolves around the work he’s done recently within the past year and a half with a rising program called the University of Choice, which is looking to create a PRL between the student disability resource center (SDRC) and student government.
“My involvement with this organization encompasses pretty much all the lessons I’ve learned from service scholars in the past three to three and a half years,” Wilcox said.
Those lessons being the importance of representation, diversity & inclusion, and empathy, Wilcox discussed. “With empathy being the most important one,” he said.
Living as a Type 1 diabetic who wants to help people with chronic illnesses, Wilcox said that this is why he lives off of connecting to people through empathy.
“I am a type 1 diabetic who wants to help other people with chronic illness and work to represent them as an identity group that doesn't get classified as an identity group,” he said. “So providing a space for that group of students is the most important thing that I think I've been able to work with.”
Through his service, Wilcox has dedicated over 120 hours towards this project, even inviting campus speakers from the professional world who self identify with disabilities to talk to campus leaders.
“We invite these speakers to share that despite the challenges they face with their bodies or minds that they can still accomplish the same, if not more than someone who doesn't have that issue,” Wilcox said.
A part from his involvement with the Service Scholar program, Wilcox has been an avid participant in center programs including LOGIC, LeaderShape, Alternative Breaks, PeaceJam, Community Outreach and others.
Impacting his life in all equally important ways, Wilcox credits the Outreach program specifically for the lessons he learned.
He said, “Outreach told me what area of volunteering I wanted to be a part of.” Wilcox continues, “Now I volunteer every Friday at a pediatric endocrinology clinic and those things were the results of me doing the outreach program solidifying what my service was for the last two years.”
By gaining a much fuller understanding of who he was and what he wanted to do, Wilcox co-founded a biotech startup company, DiaTech, with three other biomedical engineering students. DiaTech has already won multiple grants and is currently nominated for the ACC InVenture prize.
Their current venture is improving insulin pumps for people with diabetes, with their work being based off of empathy trying to fix the struggest that millions of users experience.
“It is an amazing and collaborative and innovative young group of management that is looking to optimize and improve diabetes and medical technology as a whole,” Wilcox said.
Post graduation, Wilcox plans to attend medical school then continue his service though work with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a very prominent research foundation for raising money and awareness for a cure for type I diabetes.