Pitzer’s Newman Civic Fellow Advocates for Community Health

A person’s health means more than a pill bottle. This conviction drives Oswaldo Romero Vasquez ’27 as a health justice and education advocate. Campus Compact has recognized Romero Vasquez’s passion for changemaking by selecting him as a 2025–26 Newman Civic Fellow.

Campus Compact is a national coalition of colleges and universities working to advance higher education’s public purpose. The Newman Civic Fellowship nurtures students’ development as civic leaders. Romero Vasquez, a biology major, has drawn from his community engagement experiences at Pitzer and from his personal passion to become one such leader.

Romero Vasquez said that his advocacy started with his family’s struggle with healthcare.

“I have witnessed the reality of a biomedical system that abandons the common person,” said Romero Vasquez. “It ignores a patient’s personal experience while reducing their identity to pieces in a machine that is broken, only to provide a pharmacological ‘quick fix’ or the ‘unavoidable’ surgical intervention.”

Pitzer President Strom C. Thacker, who nominated Romero Vasquez for the Newman Civic Fellowship, said:

“Driven by the vision of a medical system that creates space for a patient’s individual experience of illness, he is committed to obtaining academic recognition while advocating for improvement of the biomedical and education systems.”

Romero Vasquez earned an associate’s degree in kinesiology and exercise science from Pasadena City College. With his knowledge, he hoped to reshape people’s conceptions of health and medicine as a physical trainer. He soon realized he couldn’t make the community impact he wanted in that role.

When he transferred to Pitzer, his world split wide open.

“Now I find myself at Pitzer, getting involved in classes and volunteer projects with the simple goal of ‘making change happen,’” said Romero Vasquez. “Achieving academic excellence is my fight for freedom so I can support those who have been oppressed and continue to be.”

Romero Vasquez plans to pursue an MD-MPH track to understand human health in a community-oriented context.