For Shawna Kaye Lester, a Jamaican girl of modest means, the chance to pursue medical school was quite a reward. And Lester had rightly earned the opportunity by working hard at Immaculate Conception High School in Kingston.
But Lester turned it down.
"It was the hardest and most defiant decision I have ever made," she says of her 2004 decision. "I wasn’t ready. I craved desperately to learn more about the world."
She chose Bates instead. Four years later, having just won a major graduate scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, Lester is flexing the power of her liberal arts education. "I am able to do a lot of things," she says. "I can go wherever I want."
Prominent on campus as a musician, dancer, volunteer, admissions fellow, and peer-group study leader, Lester says her friends buoyed her during a hectic final year. "They were key to me succeeding this year, through every job search, paper and thesis chapter," she says. "One even dragged me to a Boston Celtics game to help me relax."
A double major in Spanish and biochemistry who won several Bates awards to travel and study abroad, Lester says that Bates helped refine her interests in journalism, healthcare and social justice.
She recalls moments that clarified and expanded her career hopes, like a job-shadowing experience at a pharmaceutical company arranged by a Bates alum. Lester realized that "there are a lot of stakeholders" in healthcare "and a lot of work to be done."
She will use her multiyear Cooke award, worth up to $50,000 annually, to hone her leadership skills in
healthcare management. Her multidisciplinary graduate plan, which she intends to include journalism, epidemiology, medicine and business, reflects Lester's career outlook.
"I don't have to choose just one" path, she says.
