February 2009
WISE student profile: Fei ChenThis month, WISE focuses on Fei Chen, a senior in psychology who's going for a biology minor. "I always planned to be a cell and molecular biology major but then I took a psychopathology course and fell in love with clinical psychology," says Chen. "At the same time, I didn't want to give up biology completely so I decided to turn it into a minor." Chen is wrapping up all her requirements this semester. As she looks back on her years at UM, Chen says her favorite class by far was the developmental biology lab. Says Chen: "Where else could one possible be able to follow up an organism's development from fertilization to becoming a frog or chick? There's just something really fundamentally beautiful about watching an embryo grown and differentiate and become an animal we recognize from a ball of cells." Outside the classroom, Chen has also stayed active. "I came to UM underestimating how large and diverse the student body and activities were. It took me a good year to find out exactly what I liked and the type of groups I wanted to become involved in. One of these is the UM WISE program which I've been involved with throughout the past year, from the summer camp to Robotics teams, to their various programs for undergraduates interested in sciences." "Another group I've been involved with for quite a while is the UM Autism and Communications Center (UMACC), where we work with children with autism and hold social and playgroups for toddlers to adults and is one of the foremost centers of its kind in the nation. In my spare time, I try to tutor because I feel no one is that bad at any given subject, you just have to find the right way for you to learn it." After graduation Fei plans to take the next year to work, study for the MCATs and apply to medical schools. |
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