Division III is remarkable. The student-athletes who attend and compete at DIII colleges do so without monetary compensation and often in conjunction with rigorous academic schedules and a good deal of extracurricular activities thrown in as well. Over the course of my own collegiate career, I shared pool space with athletes who developed robots, helped with political campaigns or competed in foreign countries. It is these stories and these athletes who best exemplify what it means to be a student-athlete at the Division III level.
What follows is a tribute to the athletes of Division III, showcasing seniors from across the country who have brought their own passion to swimming and academia. This series of articles strives to capture some of the many incredible, interesting or quirky things our swimming and diving seniors have done while out in the wider world.
All hail Division III.
Take it to the Limit
Claremont Mckenna Senior Alex Mendoza (Image courtesy of CMS Athletics)
Claremont McKenna senior Alex Mendoza has made trips outside his comfort zone a habit. This past summer, he spent on campus working with the neuro-psych lab and also made a trip out to Cape Town, South Africa.
During his sophomore year, Mendoza had spent time working with a professor doing decision making simulations using the stock market. “We would look for brain activity regarding good decisions, bad decisions,” he said. “It was a little bit different from my major, but I thought it was really cool […] and I liked it so much that I asked around if there was any kind of neuro-psych research.” The professor Mendoza had originally worked with was not doing research, but suggested a colleague who was.
“I focused on brain stimuli activity with positive and negative emotions,” Mendoza said of this past summer’s work. The data was collected in EEG wave form. “We would check how the brain responds to positive versus negative stimuli, how quickly these stimuli occur – how long – and any major differences.” His time in the lab also included some decision-making experiments.
But what really catches the eye is the second half of Mendoza’s summer, especially considering how reluctant a candidate he was.
Most adventurers abroad have known for a while that they enjoy travel, that they like visiting different places, or have a thirst for thrilling escapades that the home country simply cannot fulfill. Whether it’s interest in other cultures or geography, something draws international travelers away from home. For Mendoza, visiting South Africa with One Heart Source was a little different. “I wasn’t sure if wanted to do it, but I’m glad that I put myself out there,” he said. “I try to do things that kind of made me a little bit uncomfortable; you know, just try[ing] new things.”
A friend of Mendoza’s had known someone who participated in One Heart Source. “She kind of just told me to look into it,” he said. “Just put my foot in the door. And I decided I might as well.” That “might as well” led him to Cape Town, Africa, teaching children between third and sixth grade math and English.
“In these townships, because of the effects of past apartheid programs that have been instituted in South Africa, there’s just a huge education gap. And so, some schools are where they should be, some schools are a little bit below, and some schools – like the school that I worked at –are not even close,” Mendoza explained. He worked on a daily basis with the third graders, teaching math and working on reading comprehension. The fourth, fifth and sixth graders received attention more akin to a tutoring style. “[Teaching] was a good experience and thinking on my toes and really trying to adapt to meet the challenges,” he said.
Yet while the challenge might have been difficult, Mendoza – out of his comfort zone and in a foreign country – embraced it all. “Regardless of where [the children] were at, they were very receptive to learning,” he said. “They were willing to learn. They had so much hope going into every day of school. And so in the end, I really just liked engaging them.”
While Mendoza hadn’t considered himself a “likely” candidate for applying to One Heart Source to begin with, he certainly retained some lessons he’ll use later in life. His original qualms about being an effective teacher were silenced. “What I found out is that if you want to help, you can help. […] Showing up and giving it your all makes a huge difference,” he said. “It’s important to push yourself.”
With Mendoza’s experience pushing his own limits, it’s a given that he’ll also push his teammates in the pool this year. Last year, the CMS team finished seventh at the NCAA Championship. “I think we can always improve,” Mendoza said of his team. He’s looking to get a similar group of athletes to the big meet again this year. “I really want our senior class to step up. We have a huge class, and I think we make up some good depth on this team and I really want us to set a tone early. Not just in the pool, but out of the pool.”
As a senior, Mendoza also will play a key role in leading his team. “I’m in my prime emotionally and physically,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy it, most of all. […] When I really sit back and enjoy the process and enjoy the team atmosphere and push myself, push my teammates to do as well, that’s when I have the most success in the pool and out of it.”
The final hurdle of senior year won’t even be in the water. As a senior at Claremont McKenna, Mendoza is going to be writing a senior thesis as a graduation requirement. His topic is based on the legal studies side of his dual Psychology and Legal Studies dual major. “I had written a paper earlier another year about gun control,” he explained, citing gang violence as the reason for his fascination. “One of the things I found out [while writing this paper is] this kind of loophole – this problem – that 3D printing creates.”
3D printing is exactly what it sounds like – an almost sci-fi technology where a printer moving on an x-y-z axis can literally print just about anything. Scientists have used it for medical purposes to print organs and skin. Builders have made model homes. NASA has printed parts for shuttles. But when you can print literally anything – what happens next?
“There’s not a whole lot of information out there. […] And no one talks about it, so it’s interesting to wiggle my way in there,” Mendoza said. “We can print utensils, we can print food, we can print buildings – really complicated structures. We can print weapons. We can print clothes.”
While guns originally got Mendoza interested in 3D printing, it’s the legal ramifications and product liability that he will focus on in his paper. “[3D printing] opens the door for a lot of legal questions and implications that have never been addressed before. Like how product liability is going to work,” he explained. “It’s really going to blur the line behind bigger businesses and enterprises and consumers.”
The Math of Health Care
Macalester College Senior Alese Halvorson (Image courtesy of Macalester Athletics)
Macalester senior Alese Halvorson has been attracted to math since high school, and is working on giving her interests in numbers and health a real world application.
This summer, Halvorson interned with the Minnesota Department of Health in downtown Saint Paul. Her work was with a branch of health care known as epidemiology. Epidemiology is the branch of medicine dealing with the patterns and cause-effect relationships of health and disease conditions in populations. Halvorson’s description is better: she calls epidemiology “the math of health care.”
Her specific area of interest was suicide in Minnesota. “They’re coming out with a new state plan this year for suicide prevention,” she said. “I was looking for the patterns that could tell us where prevention should be targeted.” Those targets could be whole populations, communities or smaller groups of individuals.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute gave Macalester a grant to fund positions on and off campus. Halvorson, as an applied math and stats major, found the position through the institute connection. “I thought it was a great match because of my interest in math as well as community health,” Halvorson said.
“It was really nice actually to […] get off campus a little bit and it felt more like I was in the real world,” she said of the internship. While doing her work, Halvorson also said that she enjoyed seeing how the government functioned with the health system. “It was very cool to see how things work in the government department such as the Department of Health. And it was wonderful to see the dedication the people have, and the knowledge they’re willing to share with the interns. I took away a lot of life skills that will be useful in the future.”
Beyond life skills, there’s also a possibility that Halvorson will return post graduation for more work in epidemiology. She will be looking for a grad program with a focus in bio statistics, but hasn’t ruled out a return to Minnesota’s Department of Health. “I’m still working through and planning to go to grad school after I graduate,” she said. “But it’s definitely a possibility to either go back to that department or explore other states.”
The possibilities inherent in math are something that Halvorson began discovering when she first went to Macalester. “Yay liberal arts school,” she laughed. “It allowed me to take classes in any department that I wanted. I was always drawn to the math department […] and honestly, before I came to college, I wasn’t really aware that you could combine interests in such a nice way.”
One such example of combining interests is Halvorson’s major, minor and concentration: applied math and statistics, biology, and community and global health. Toss in a pot, stir and out pops bio statistics – her interest for grad school. “It’s very similar to epidemiology in that it’s the math of health care. The bio statistics part is a little bit more technical than epidemiology. It’s more than just patterns. It’s kind of more the background math in finding those patterns,” Halvorson explained.
School isn’t the only place where Halvorson has mixed interests, either.
In high school, Halvorson swam during the swim season – fall – and in the spring competed with her synchronized swimming team. “I was really fortunate because there are not many states that have synchronized swimming at the high school level,” she said. Halvorson competed from seventh grade right up through the conclusion of her high school years. “It was kind of nice to have a little break from competitive swimming every day,” she said. “And it’s just a fantastic sport.”
Once she moved into college, Halvorson let synchro fall by the wayside. There aren’t as many college teams and she admitted that she didn’t look particularly hard for a college with a synchro team either. That gave her the opportunity to focus more on swimming and on her academics.