Congratulations to Nhen Hunter, Class of 2015, on being awarded one of the 2019-2020 Helen Fellowships through the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Nhen was one of five recent college graduates awarded a research fellowship. Nhen’s research will focus on the amazing genetic uniqueness of spiders and the silk they produce. Nhen earned her Bacholor’s Degree from the University of New Hampshire in Genetics with a concentration in Genomics. You can read more about Nhen’s fellowship at https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/higher-education/helen-fellowship/helen-fellows-2019-2020. Kudos to Mr. O’Brien, he’s that 8th grade science teacher Nhen references in her bio.
In the interested of helping our current students prepare for college, we reached out to Nhen for some advice. So here goes, advice from Nhen:
1. What classes at Hoosic Valley helped you prepare for college? For me personally, the classes that best suited my college preparation included macroeconomics, chemistry, physics, and biology.
2. What were some of the great non classroom experience you had at Hoosic Valley? All of my greatest non classroom experiences involved my amazing friends. Participating in sports was key for me to stay healthy, mentally and physically, practice commitment and connect with pals that I wasn’t able to talk to during the day. I also very much enjoyed participating in student council, helping to host the faculty breakfasts each year.
3. Any HS classes you wish you'd taken or things you'd recommend to help our juniors and seniors get ready for college? I wish that I had taken a computer science class that had been offered through a distance learning program. It definitely would have come in handy with how my career path panned out! I highly recommend that juniors and seniors take as many classes that offer college credits as possible. If they’re able to carry over, they have the potential to lighten your semester requirements significantly.
4. Were you always interested in spiders or is it the genetics behind it? Genetics are definitely the driving factor in my conducting this research. However, spiders have incredibly unique genes that do not exist in other animals, making them particularly interesting as well. I have always had an appreciation for spider silk and its mechanistic abilities but I had not given much thought to the genes that encode them prior! They’re pretty cool.
Again, congratulations to Nhen on her success and thank you for taking the time to answer our questions and guide our future graduates. And next time you see a spider, think twice before squashing it. They’re cool!
Hoosic Valley graduates are awesome!