When Marco Allodi '08 was an Oriskany (N.Y.) high school senior applying to colleges four-and-a-half years ago, he was convinced that he wanted to study pre-med. So the schools to which he applied were all over the map. "People were telling me to apply to the Ivies, to large research universities and small schools, local schools and out-of-state schools, so where I applied covered a pretty wide spectrum," he recalled.
But after the acceptances were in and it came time to choose where he would ultimately go to college, his decision was easy. "At Hamilton I clearly saw the opportunities available; I saw the student-faculty interaction that I didn't see at other schools, and the Hamilton students I knew were happy," Allodi said.
Now he is about to graduate from Hamilton at the top of his class and is currently weighing offers of where to attend graduate school from among such prestigious schools as MIT, the University of Chicago and Cal Tech.
Allodi sat down with his advisor George Shields, the Winslow Professor of Chemistry, and communications office staff to discuss how his experiences at Hamilton not only influenced him to change his career track, but also helped make him a true scientist who plans to pursue a Ph.D. in chemical physics and go on to teach.
Allodi said students' ability to conduct science research throughout their Hamilton career – not just as upperclassmen – distinguishes a Hamilton education. "My undergraduate research gave me the opportunity to decide that science was the career I wanted to pursue," he explained. Allodi said it was important to him that he could start doing research right away, as a first-year student. That enabled him to build a body of work that resulted in him being first author on a paper that was published in 2006 in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A, a premier journal of the sciences.
Shields said that establishing a program of undergraduate research opportunities was one of the Chemistry Department's goals when he joined the department as chair 10 years ago. "We wanted to offer as many research experiences as possible and wanted to get freshmen into the lab and working with professors so they could find out what they wanted to do and experience discovering the unknown," he explained.
Another department goal was to offer more sections of lower-level classes "to give students as much individual attention as possible to keep them from falling through the cracks," Shields said.
Allodi is convinced that that kind of faculty attention contributed to his success at Hamilton. "I cannot imagine having a better college experience," he said. "Because of the small class sizes and attention I got, I was able to pursue science but other activities too."
Allodi is the recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship, the premier national undergraduate award in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. He was recently named to USA Today's annual All-USA College Academic Team third team. "These opportunities are things I'd have been hard-pressed to achieve at a school other than Hamilton," he said.
But after the acceptances were in and it came time to choose where he would ultimately go to college, his decision was easy. "At Hamilton I clearly saw the opportunities available; I saw the student-faculty interaction that I didn't see at other schools, and the Hamilton students I knew were happy," Allodi said.
Now he is about to graduate from Hamilton at the top of his class and is currently weighing offers of where to attend graduate school from among such prestigious schools as MIT, the University of Chicago and Cal Tech.
Allodi sat down with his advisor George Shields, the Winslow Professor of Chemistry, and communications office staff to discuss how his experiences at Hamilton not only influenced him to change his career track, but also helped make him a true scientist who plans to pursue a Ph.D. in chemical physics and go on to teach.
Allodi said students' ability to conduct science research throughout their Hamilton career – not just as upperclassmen – distinguishes a Hamilton education. "My undergraduate research gave me the opportunity to decide that science was the career I wanted to pursue," he explained. Allodi said it was important to him that he could start doing research right away, as a first-year student. That enabled him to build a body of work that resulted in him being first author on a paper that was published in 2006 in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A, a premier journal of the sciences.
Shields said that establishing a program of undergraduate research opportunities was one of the Chemistry Department's goals when he joined the department as chair 10 years ago. "We wanted to offer as many research experiences as possible and wanted to get freshmen into the lab and working with professors so they could find out what they wanted to do and experience discovering the unknown," he explained.
Another department goal was to offer more sections of lower-level classes "to give students as much individual attention as possible to keep them from falling through the cracks," Shields said.
Allodi is convinced that that kind of faculty attention contributed to his success at Hamilton. "I cannot imagine having a better college experience," he said. "Because of the small class sizes and attention I got, I was able to pursue science but other activities too."
Allodi is the recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship, the premier national undergraduate award in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. He was recently named to USA Today's annual All-USA College Academic Team third team. "These opportunities are things I'd have been hard-pressed to achieve at a school other than Hamilton," he said.
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View the entire interview of Marco Allodi and Winslow Professor of Chemistry George Shields |
