Maria Ruiz Cortes thought she wanted to be a dermatologist. But after she landed a two-week shadow experience offered by the MedStaircase program, everything changed when she stepped foot in the operating room.
Undergraduate research transformed Kieran King from a student interested in space into an aspiring physicist advancing clean-energy technology. He will continue studying organic semiconductors this fall as a Ph.D. student at Wake Forest University.
McKenna Crise graduated from Oregon State in winter term with a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology and a minor in chemistry. She is now beginning her career at CCRM Fertility in Denver, where she hopes to make the world of genetics less intimidating and more approachable for patients and families.
Warren Johnson is a husband, father and a transfer student from Linn-Benton Community College, already working on his accelerated master’s degree. He is also a top scorer in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, one of the most difficult undergraduate math exams in North America.
One might think Oregon State senior Riley Whisler has more than 24 hours in a day. Her schedule reads like someone determined to use every precious second.
When she returned to college, senior zoology student Cierra Freese never expected she would feed a nocturnal kiwi chick in New Zealand or a barred owl in northern Michigan.
After growing up in Fairbanks, Alaska, Ella Bailey answered a calling that made others smile: training to be a dentist. But after her mother received a breast cancer diagnosis, Bailey wanted to drop out.
There’s the store, the gas station and fields that stretch to the hills. Describing his home in Scio, Oregon, physics senior Kyle Gourlie emphasizes its small-town lifestyle. Getting access to science in his rural community, however, proved to be a challenge.
