For Shreya Kamath, research has more than one dimension. Living in Singapore, she had to conduct her search for American colleges entirely via Web sites. And she was seeking a college where she could engage in research. She settled on St. Lawrence because it was one of the few liberal arts colleges that offered a biochemistry major, of which research is a major component.

“I knew I wanted to both diversify and specialize in my studies,” she explains. “At St. Lawrence I’ve had incredible opportunities to do both.”

Shreya earned a University Fellowship to spend last summer examining the chemicals that certain medicinal plants release into the soil, work that was heavily influenced by her earlier ethnobotanical fieldwork in a Malaysian community alongside one of her St. Lawrence mentors, Assistant Professor of Biology Aswini Pai. Shreya also took science courses in Denmark for a semester, on St. Lawrence’s program there, and undertook an additional research trip to Turkey on a St. Lawrence Travel Enrichment Grant to study the ethnobotanic composition of the spice markets, a study that also incorporated the other half of her double major, economics.

Shreya has further added to the breadth of her experiences by participating in Model United Nations, joining Amnesty International, founding the SLU-ACT service organization and serving as a community assistant in a residence hall. “The opportunities to develop my thinking have been most valuable of all,” says Shreya. “The St. Lawrence faculty are encouraging and have given me the confidence to explore my ideas, which has positioned me well for graduate school.”