所有的东西

If a liberal arts 教育 is defined by gaining broad experience across multiple topic areas and opportunities, 萨米娜 Soin-Voshell ’21 could be writing the definitive 九州娱乐官网的书. A double major in biology and environmental 科学, she is also an active participant in theater, dance, and this past summer landed an REU (研究经验 for Undergraduates), fully funded by the National Science Foundation, 在麻省大学波士顿分校.

 

“That’s what I love, having the opportunity to be involved in so many different things and take classes you want to take just because you want to take them. 这是 我来这里的原因，”她说.  

She started as a biology major but quickly realized that her passion lay more in environmental 科学. She chose to double major though she readily admits, “It’s a lot of labs!” In 环境科学 and Studies, “the department is really supportive. 我有 not met a professor in that department who is not someone I would sit down and have a conversation with, or feel comfortable stopping by their office during office hours 关于一些随机的东西. I’ve emailed them and said, ‘Hey, I need advice on this thing’ and everybody is super responsive and supportive which is really fantastic.”

During fall of her sophomore year, she enrolled in the Center for Environment & 社会的 切萨皮克学期, which she calls “one 我做过的最好的事情.“长大了 up in Annapolis, and with family in the farming community on the Eastern Shore, she knew the Bay well already, but the intense, multidisciplinary focus of Chesapeake 学期让我对它有了全新的认识.

“I am a pretty hard-科学 person, so I was surprised how much I enjoyed the social 科学 and the history of the Bay, whether that was the natural history and the formation of the Bay and why it flows the way it does, to the use by Native Americans and early settlers…We did a whole section on food and industry and agriculture especially on the Eastern Shore, and so learning about all of that from both an in-class perspective and getting to talk to farmers and watermen and hear it from their perspective was 很酷的. And then I went talked to my grandpa and I was like, ‘So what are your thoughts on these things we’ve been talking about?我们聊得很愉快 和他在一起.”

The comparative study of 切萨皮克学期 also came up last summer when she was 为了她的REU. Her principal investigator was researching how to make seawalls 更有利于水生生物. Complementing her PI’s work, 萨米娜 studied marine 不同混凝土基材上的生物污垢.

“There would be moments where it was like, oh, so this is how this ecosystem parallels 我在家里学到的东西，”她说. 

Active in dance and theater long before college, 萨米娜 quickly got involved with theater productions at WC in her freshman year. 她上过表演课，表演过 in several plays, and after taking a theatrical design class, this semester she’s assistant costume 设计师 on a faculty production with a visiting professional costume 设计师.

She’s also a peer mentor, a biology teaching assistant, and a tutor in The Writing Center. All of those experiences have her thinking about the role of environmental 教育. She’s looking forward to taking the 环境现场经验 course, in which students can shadow environmental and outdoor educators at nearly a dozen partner organizations to give them a feel for what being an environmental educator 可能是一种职业. Next summer, she hopes to get an internship closer to home, 也许重点是户外教育.