In November 2023, I traveled to New York City with two members of our College Counseling Team, Kelly Herrington and Britten Nelson, to connect with UPrep alumni.

While the alumni we met in NYC are pursuing careers in a variety of fields, they each attended the event to share memories from UPrep and meet fellow alumni living in the city. It was such a delight to see current college students networking with alumni who graduated years ago to learn about potential career opportunities. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with alumni who work in publishing and medicine and then turning around and finding myself in conversations with other Pumas about investments and entrepreneurship.

When we returned to the West Coast, we continued our conversations with one of the alumni we met while we were in NYC. It was a joy to hear how his experience as a UPrep student helped shape him as a community builder in his work and personal life today.

 

CAMERON SWOPE ’18 is in a neuroscience PhD program at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. He’s studying how the brain changes during addiction, withdrawal, and remission, while asking how we can fix those changes through possible treatments. He graduated from Northwestern with a BA in neuroscience in 2022.

 

How did UPrep prepare you for college and grad school?

UPrep’s science program encouraged creativity while fostering a confidence in my ideas and inspiring a curiosity in the natural world. I remember staying after school to look at moss under a microscope to find water bears, these tiny little animals that can live in space. These traits help me as I look at data points in existing literature to find the gaps in the world’s understanding and push the boundaries of our knowledge. I need to have creativity, confidence, and curiosity so that I can make new discoveries. UPrep is where I first realized science is applicable to life, and I love studying the brain’s cognitive processes due to this applicability.

 

Tell me about being a bird-watcher and building a bird-watching community.

As I stared out my window during Zoom classes over COVID, I looked at birds and began studying and identifying them. During the spring migrations, I went to Central Park to bird-watch, and I’d tell my friends about the trends I saw. They started coming with me and I realized none of them had binoculars. So, I started a club through school so we could apply for funds. Now 53 people are part of the club. I’m managing tours of 10 to 20 people with enough binoculars for everyone.

 

Why is the bird-watching community important to you?

Community is defined by a shared experience, identity, or interest, or the intersection of one or more of those characteristics. This shared interest group has given me an avenue to meet a lot of people with the same interests. Community provides a refuge and helps people de-stress. As a bonus, the apps we use to track the birds we see collect important data for conservationists.

 

Where and how did you experience a sense of community when you were at UPrep?

My advisory, led by Ty Talbot, fostered a sense of community. It was a safe place to rant or to forget about stressful things. He was very good at listening, and I’d always leave feeling calmer. The Global Link Program helped me experience other communities, and the people who went on these trips created a community, too. I went to Botswana and the people I met are easily some of the coolest people that I know. I’m still in touch with some of them.