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A Solid Foundation

Two Celebrated Alumni Share Memories of the Morsani College of Medicine

By Kim Franke-Folstad

Dr. Joseph Pecoraro doesn’t sugarcoat his reason for choosing the University of South Florida as an undergraduate student back in the 1970s: He was motivated more by the school’s location than its reputation.

Pecoraro had a part-time job pumping gas in New Jersey while attending community college. It was cold. His brother lived in balmy Bradenton. When Pecoraro looked into USF and learned it also had a medical school, he thought it could be a perfect fit.

Turned out he was right. Not only because of the school’s proximity to the beach. Or because he met his wife, Rhonda, ’81, here.

“Going to USF was a great experience because it was a comfortable environment for learning that was competitive but not cutthroat,” says Pecoraro, zoology ’80 and MD ’84, this year’s recipient of the prestigious Morsani College of Medicine Alumni Society’s Outstanding Service Award. “You were encouraged. You were driven to do better. But students also helped students.”

As USF Health ushers in a new era with the opening of the medical school, Heart Institute and Taneja College of Pharmacy in downtown Tampa, Pecoraro and Dr. Sylvia Campbell, MD ’77, reflected on what made – and continues to make – their alma mater a cut above the rest.

Being part of a new medical school, which opened to students in 1971, was invigorating, says Campbell, a 2017 recipient of the alumni service award. “You have the opportunity to write the pages of the book. It’s an exciting place to be. A new beginning. A new endeavor. … There weren’t a lot of women in medicine back then and we kind of stuck together.”

Like Pecoraro, Campbell says the support of her peers, both men and women, was important.

“Whether you’re a medical student or a resident, you have this bond that builds with the people you go through it with. And those bonds never break. They make you a community that’s kind of unique in many ways,” she says. “As hard and gut-wrenching and emotional and exhausting and terrifying as it all was, it was wonderful and rewarding and just built you in a way that was a privilege to be part of.”

A Florida native, Campbell came to USF to study medicine after earning a bachelor’s in biology and a master’s in genetics at Emory University. Like Pecoraro, location played into her decision-making: Her parents and in-laws would be close by while her husband, Robert, ’79, MPH ’86 and PhD ’98, served in the military, including a stint in Korea.

The two surgeons, both of whom still practice in the Tampa Bay area, also recalled faculty members who helped them along the way.

As an undergrad with his eye on medical school, Pecoraro remembers meeting with the late Julian Dwornik, a founding med school faculty member and its dean of admissions. Everybody had told Pecoraro he had to know somebody to get into the college, but he had no helpful connections. Dwornik suggested Pecoraro show that he could handle the heavy academic load by signing up for 18 hours of science classes in one quarter.

Pecoraro thought he’d already taken just about every challenging science class he could, but he heeded the dean’s advice. “I remember I took biophysics. I took bioorganic chemistry. I took a lot of high-level classes in order to be able to prove myself,” he says. “And I think he went to bat for me.”

Campbell recalls Greg Nicolosi, MBA ’83, an associate professor of physiology, as a positive influence on everybody in the college. And during her internship and residency at USF, the late Dr. Roger Sherman, chairman of the department of surgery, provided an excellent example of how to be a healer.

“That doesn’t mean just healing the body,” Campbell says. “You have to heal the soul. You have to heal the spirit. It’s important to remember that as you travel the journey through medicine, because it’s easy to get a little bit jaded. And it’s easy to get lost in the things that really aren’t important. That’s been a lesson I’ve tried to hang onto through these years.”

It’s a joy to give back, Campbell and Pecoraro say. Yes, they’re busy, but “part of what we’re called to do is not to treat this as a job,” Campbell says. “It’s a calling, an art; it’s an honor and a privilege to be able to interact with people in a way that some people never get to do. Part of that, given that gift of being able to live your life that way, you need to give a little back, too. You have the ability to do things that can really change people’s lives.”

The list of charitable and professional organizations Campbell is or has been involved with in Florida and around the world, and the honors she’s received for her work, goes on and on. She’s been volunteering with the Judeo Christian Health Clinic in Tampa since her medical residency and is now the medical director and president of its board. The free clinic has been providing health care to the working poor since 1972.

She’s also board president for Village Partners International, which joins with impoverished communities in Haiti and Africa to develop sustainable systems to improve lives. The group also assists migrant farmworkers in Hillsborough County and does disaster relief work.

As a general surgeon with a special interest in breast cancer treatment, she’s been involved with charitable efforts such as the Susan G. Komen 60-mile fundraising walk for years. Campbell joins members of her Komen team to deliver care bags to the homeless in a volunteer effort they call Kindness Matters.

Pecoraro found his love for mission work during a trip to El Salvador. “I came back completely different,” he says. “There’s no other way to put it other than I got a big whack from the Holy Spirit. I was so moved by what I saw, I was just driven to go back.”

He didn’t want to return alone, so he began gathering others from his church. In 2006, Pecoraro, his wife and Dr. Vilma Vega founded Hearts Afire, a Christian humanitarian organization that helps under-resourced people worldwide. Their work has included mission trips to Africa, India, the Philippines, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as well as disaster relief around the world.

These days, the group is focused on building the Hearts Afire Mountain Hospital, scheduled to open in August 2020 in Eldoret, Kenya.

“We’re not finished with the rest of the world, we’re just focusing on Kenya right now,” says Pecoraro, who performs vascular and general surgery in the Bradenton area and – after losing more than 100 pounds and keeping it off for several years – trains entrepreneurs who hope to become health coaches.

Both of these celebrated alumni are excited about the Morsani College of Medicine’s new downtown digs – and particularly that growth has occurred on multiple fronts.

“It’s possible to grow in size without improving,” Pecoraro says. “It’s nice to know that alongside the growth of the campus has come growth in reputation and the quality of what’s deliverable.”

Campbell, USF’s Running with the Bulls Homecoming Parade grand marshal in 2018, wonders if med school students will lose some of their connection to the university. But, she says, “Expanding the knowledge base, expanding the research, expanding the ability to look into the future and see what you can do to make things better is a really positive step. The university is taking it, and I’m really proud of them.”

For more information about the charities Drs. Pecoraro and Campbell support, visit:

Hearts Afire, Inc.
(941) 552-1584
P.O. Box 14759
Bradenton, FL 34280

Judeo Christian Health Clinic
(813) 870-0395
4118 N. MacDill Ave.
Tampa, FL 33607

Village Partners International
(813) 875-2655
217 S. Matanzas Ave.
Tampa, FL 33609