SOCIAL SCIENCE
Major: Psychology
Graduated in 2016
The Adventure Seeker
Mongolia’s rugged desert terrain and wide skies were the backdrop to Kepriah Davis’s first trip abroad, when she went there to survey groundwater pollution through U-M’s Minority Health and Health Disparities International Research Training Program. The experience, she says, “opened up a new outlook,” not just about other people and cultures, but about Davis’s own path after graduation.
“Some things you don’t even think are possible until you’ve seen them,” she says of meeting people from the United States who were doing research in Mongolia and working to improve public health. “It got me thinking about that model and how that could shape my career goals. I started thinking about a master’s in public health—how I can add to what we know about mental health disorders and disparities and look at it from a public health standpoint.”
That’s a long way from where Davis started in LSA. The first-generation college student says she “came in as a biology major looking to enter dentistry.” After a slew of science classes, she began to question whether this was the right fit. Her interest in mental health led her to psychology. “I declared right before junior year,” she says. “It was a better fit, because it allowed me to explore a wide variety of things.”
