(gentle music) - My love for physiology is based on the fact that physiology is how the body functions.

My senior year in college, I was fascinated by the neurophysiology content and I was fascinated by the cardiovascular content.

When I got accepted at Loyola, it was at a time when there was gonna be a change from one faculty member to a different faculty member.

One day he put all the files out for admission to the graduate program.

And at the very top of that pile was my application and written in red, across the first page, in very large letters, was "reject female problem".

But they made the decision, well, we can't use her being a woman as an excuse to not let her in.

Let's go ahead and give her a try.

(upbeat music) Jump forward, when I was finishing the program, the person who was chair at the time, it was one of the people who had said that reject female problem.

He said, if every woman that applied to this program was a Sue Barman, I would have no problem filling the entire program with her.

(gentle music) The very most simple way of describing what my research is, is how does the brain control blood pressure?

And my main interest is actually recording the nerves that are controlling your blood pressure.

Dealing with the actual activity on the nerves, going to the blood vessels and heart, as opposed to just looking at the blood pressure.

One of the leading causes of death are cardiovascular problems, hypertension, heart disease, heart failure.

Even though I'm not directly studying disease states, we're studying something that's going to help inform other people, how to develop a new drug to treat this.

One of my favorite courses that I've been teaching is a course that is called Neurobiology of Disease.

And I limit the class size.

Welcome to smoking cessation guys.

The students write about a topic.

They can choose whatever disease they want to write on.

I have had so many students say to me, this has been my favorite course.

I learned more.

Yet, I never had to take an exam to memorize something.

I love mentoring junior people.

They learn so much because I'm right there, I'm in their face, but we have a good time in the class.

That's really been a fun part of being here at Michigan State.

What I've always liked is being part of a community and to help.

There are family to me.

Today, if someone came up to me and said, I just saw in my application, "reject female problem", what should I do?

Prove to them that you're a female success.

(gentle music)