Amy Braun Reflects on the Value of the Learning Process

WOOSTER, Ohio - Amy Braun has a unique take on the educational process at The College of Wooster. She describes it as "custom modification of the brain's connections." Knowledge, she says, can only take you so far. "It's what you can do with it that really matters. Innovation comes from being able to take ideas apart and to put ideas together."

A resident of Rochester, N.Y., Braun began elementary school a year ahead of schedule, and skipped another year when one of her teachers, who had just read a report she had written about the planets, advised her parents that she needed to move up at least one grade level.

When Braun graduated from Webster Thomas High School in Rochester, N.Y., she was just 16, so her parents encouraged her to take a year off before heading to college, but she knew she would be bored at home, so she took a chance and began the search process. Oberlin and Hamilton emerged as early favorites, but neither seemed to be the right fit, so she paid a visit to Wooster, which immediately jumped to the top of the list because of the "comfortable feeling" she had when she came to campus.

When Braun arrived at Wooster in the fall of 2004, she was barely old enough to drive, but gradually she adjusted to the reality of being a college student, despite being one of the youngest on campus. Initially, she thought she would pursue a degree in creative writing with designs on becoming a screenwriter or a playwright, but then what she describes as a "huge shift" occurred during her first semester. "My first-year seminar class was about chaos theory and the patterns that occur spontaneously in nature," she says. "It was taught by Dr. (Donald) Jacobs from the physics department, and I found it fascinating. The same trends kept popping up everywhere, from the economy, to ant hills, to city blocks, to neural activity. It made me aware of the invisible forces that shape our world. That one class changed by life."

Braun, whose parents are both chemical engineers, thought about majoring in physics, but after taking a biology course that focused on the central nervous system, she concluded that that would be the perfect fit for her intellectual curiosity. "It just hit me," she says. "Our most complex perceptions and experiences are created from these simple electrical building blocks. I had to understand more about how this works."

Amy Jo Stavnezer, assistant professor of psychology, suggested that Braun self-design a major in neuroscience. "What a cool major," thought Braun. "I figured I was done with science after high school, but when I got here, I realized that was all I wanted to do."

And she did it extremely well. A straight-A student, Braun was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest and largest academic honor society, as a junior. Her Senior Independent Study project (Wooster's nationally renowned senior capstone project, which matches each student with a faculty member in a yearlong research project that culminates in a graduate-level thesis, performance, or exhibition of artwork) focused on the neural mechanisms of learning, and received honors. She also graduated Summa cum laude.

Now Braun is looking forward to her next step in life, which will likely include enrollment in graduate school, where she hopes to pursue a Ph.D. After that, her intellectual journey may come full circle as she revisits her interest in the humanities. "I'm very interested in becoming a science writer," she says. "People are often alienated or intimidated by science because it can be hard to comprehend, but so much of it affects their lives, their bodies, and their environment, and needs to be communicated in a clear and accessible way.

"I love explaining the things I learn here to non-science majors," adds Braun. "I love the way their eyes light up when they realize that, not only does it make sense, but it's also really, really cool. If people can't understand all the great research that's being done, then what's the point? I think I can help."