Year: Senior

School: Tyler School of Art, College of Liberal Arts

Major: Art history and anthropology

Home town: Quarryville, Pa. (Lancaster County)

Why I chose Temple: "I'm from a family of dairy farmers in a small, rural town, but when I came here I knew that Temple was the perfect school for me. I liked the diverse nature of the student body, the fact that Tyler is one of the best schools in the country, the affordability and the urban location. The city has great opportunities for jobs and internships — I work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Temple Performing Arts Center and I give Segway tours around the city. It helps that Temple has a good reputation among employers here."

Transformative moment: "I received a Creative Arts, Research and Scholarship grant from Temple to do an exhibition called 'Anthropology Speaks.' I had the opportunity to put the artifacts of Temple's Anthropology Lab on display, from a Cashinahua monkey tooth belt from Peru to a Samoa boat model that once belonged to the Commercial Museum of Philadelphia, a museum that is no longer in existence. It was a big step for me. Working on the exhibition helped me put my foot in the door with the Philadelphia Museum of Art because I got experience with curatorial work. Now I have a paid job there. I'm doing the work that I want to do. I'm an ethnographer, doing anthropology in the museum and trying to understand more about how people relate to objects and to art."