… graduated from Kalamazoo College in 2015 with a double major in biology and religion.

She came to K from Mount Pleasant, Michigan and studied abroad in Strasbourg, France.

Her Senior Individualized Project investigated the effect of the emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle that kills ash trees, on the biodiversity of a family of beetles known as Carabidae.

And today Sara is a graduate student at work on her master’s degree in entomology (the study of insects) at Purdue University.

But this just scratches the surface of her liberal arts story.

Sara took a brief break from bugs in West Lafayette this year because she was one of only four people in the country invited to present undergraduate work in San Francisco at the 2016 annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). That work was research Sara did on Kleopatra Selene (the daughter of Mark Antony and Kleopatra VII) for a junior year K seminar in Classics!

“I’ve always been very interested in history, particularly dynamic historical women,” said Sara. K’s open curriculum is fertile soil for such widespread passions, and it provides the opportunity to meet influential professors outside one’s major…like Anne Haeckl, senior instructor in classics.

Anne said: “At K we value the breadth and depth of academic course work. It’s hard to find a more dynamic example of that than Sara, with her curiosity and hard work in biology, religion and classics.”