Graduate Profile: Janine Kwapis
Janine Karbowski Kwapis came to Alma College with no idea what she wanted to major in. Alma's liberal arts education required her to take Introduction to Psychology as a freshman.
That was it. She knew she wanted to major in psychology.
“The quirky and fun team of teachers — Dr. Gwyneth Beagley and Dr. Marc Setterlund — really made the class interesting,” the 2006 graduate says. “Alma is one of the only institutions I know of where students in the introductory psychology course have the opportunity to work with live animals in an operant conditioning lab.”
The Freeland native is now working toward her doctorate in experimental neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She hopes to conduct neuroscience research of a hospital or pharmaceutical company.
“My psychology major gave me the background I need for the learning and memory research that I have been conducting,” she says. “I am also a teaching assistant for the university, and my coursework prepared me to teach undergraduate students.”
Because of the size of the program, Kwapis was able to conduct a full research experiment, from planning to execution to analyzing data, under the on-on-one guidance of Psychology Professor Gwyneth Beagley.
“Alma is one of the only institutions I know of where students in the introductory psychology course have the opportunity to work with live animals in an operant conditioning lab. ”
“This research experience helped me get into graduate school and is truly unique among my peers, most of whom merely aided an older graduate student in conducting an experiment that they had little say in,” she says. “The access to research opportunities really sets Alma College apart.”
Kwapis was drawn to Alma by the personal campus and liberal arts emphasis.
“Alma requires all of its students to take a wide range of distributive courses in all sorts of fields,” she says. “I knew that this would give me exposure to a number of majors that I had never even considered. Both the academic and personal lives at Alma were a perfect fit.”
While at Alma, Kwapis was president of the Alpha Xi Delta sorority, secretary of Psi Chi (the psychology honorary) and secretary of Omicron Delta Kappa (the leadership honorary). In addition, she was a member of the Alma College Choir and Alma Leadership Alliance and a student worker at the Alumni House.
