Sosnoski enrolled at WCSU as a Biology/Pre-Med major. She applied for and received financial aid, commuted from her grandmother’s house and worked the entire time she was in school. She also found time to join the WCSU Women’s Volleyball Team and Swimming & Diving Team, where she loved the camaraderie with her coach and teammates. What she enjoyed even more was getting patient care experience as an undergraduate.

Sosnoski said that opportunities like the one at Yale, coupled with the support of the WCSU Biology Department, made a major impact on her studies. “The small student-to-faculty ratio at WCSU was highly influential in my success,” she said. “I was always asking questions, utilizing the faculty office hours. The resources and knowledge in that department are amazing and surprisingly underrated. So many professors just go out of their way to be encouraging and make you feel supported.”

After graduating in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology, Sosnoski re-enrolled as a graduate student in WCSU’s Master of Science in Addiction Studies program, from which she graduated in 2021. She was hired by Bristol Myers Squib as a Clinical Research Coordinator conducting leukemia research at Yale New Haven’s Smilow Cancer Hospital.

Now in her first semester of medical school, Sosnoski said courses like “Molecular Basis of Disease” that she took at WCSU totally prepared her. “The genetics and cell biology I had as an undergraduate student are areas I am able to review now as opposed to learning about them for the first time,” she said.

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Charlee Cordle

My name is Charlee Cordle, and I am a senior here at WCSU studying Biology. I had the exciting opportunity of going to Greece this summer to learn about the history of Macedon and Thrace! We visited countless museums, theaters, and sanctuaries, hearing from experienced guest speakers in addition to the expertise of the trip leaders. It was astonishing to visit the burial mounds of Phillip II of Macedon (although there’s speculation that it was Phillip III) at the Museum of the Royal tombs of Aigai and the exorbitant wealth that royalty and upper-class citizens were honored with in the afterlife. I also loved visiting the marble quarries on Thasos and how this marble was coveted because the larger-sized crystals gave it a shinier appearance. The Wiener Lab at the American School of Classical Studies was particularly interesting to me as a biologist because of the work that they’re doing to explore the skeletal remains, fauna, ceramics, and geography of ancient Greece. This experience broadened my horizons as a person as well as professionally and increased my appreciation of the cradle of Western Civilization!