Trey Bateman ’08

When Trey Bateman ’08 arrived at UNCG, he had more on his mind than the typical college student. He believed excelling academically would provide an answer to his family’s financial problems, but a medical career in behavioral neurology was far from his radar. 

Bateman’s mother had just lost her job at Pillowtex, a casualty of North Carolina’s textile industry decline, so she decided to enroll in the local community college to improve her job skills just as Bateman was heading to UNCG. To keep costs down, he commuted from their home in Eden, parking near the First Horizon Coliseum and taking the bus to class every day.

“It was a really tough time,” he explains. “We were struggling financially, so I had a Pell grant my first two years. At UNCG, I found opportunities and a college that never felt overwhelming. It was a big school, but it had a small program feel, which was the best of both worlds for me.” 

Bateman thrived at Lloyd International Honors College as a double major in biology and psychology with two minors, sociology and chemistry. He was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude. During his time at UNCG, medical school morphed from a lofty goal to an achievable reality.  

“Navigating the hard prerequisites can be daunting, but it’s remarkable how many UNCG students reach their dream,” Bateman says. “The premed advising program is a real jewel at UNCG.” 

Attending medical school at UNC-Chapel Hill, he was thankful for how UNCG “set him up for success” as he kept up with classmates from prestigious schools like Harvard and Middlebury. He noticed peers changing their interests as they were exposed to different specialties in medical school, but Bateman was focused from the start. 

“I chose my specialty because of a biological psychology class I took at UNCG, and from sophomore year though the end of my training, my path was a direct arrow,” he says. “I was fascinated by understanding how our brain provides the foundations for our daily behaviors, and how those behaviors go awry in the context of disease.” 

Today, Bateman is a clinical researcher treating and studying neurodegenerative causes of cognitive decline and dementia in adults. He works at the Salisbury Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist. He’s also the Clinical Core Leader of the Wake Forest Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and a faculty member at Wake Forest University.  

As our population ages, caring for people in cognitive decline and developing better treatments and understanding of diseases like Alzheimer’s is critical. Without the opportunities he found at UNCG, Bateman wonders if he’d be serving this important cause today.  

“We need people in health care with diverse backgrounds, and UNCG serves the needs of all kinds of students,” Bateman explains. “Instead of being told ‘You don’t get to be a doctor,’ I was asked ‘What can we do to help you?’”

Rooted in Science,
Thriving in Service

Learn more about how UNCG’s culture of access opens doors for medical careers.