South Winston Salem News

Park City, Utah, isn’t the most common hometown of Davidson students, but Siena Senn ’22 might have started a trend. She was the first in her high school to choose Davidson but, since then, a couple more students have followed, and her brother’s planning to apply, too.

Recruited for the swim team, Senn had a successful career in the pool and in the classroom, graduating as her class’ valedictorian. 

“I was looking for a small liberal arts college, and when I went to Davidson on a recruiting trip, I immediately fell in love,” she said. “I thought that was such a cliché thing to say until I stepped foot on campus and felt like it was the perfect place for me—a school with exceptional academics where I could compete on the Division I level.”

One might assume a D1 athlete with top grades wouldn’t have time for much else, but they’d be wrong. Senn was a member of the service board at Rusk Eating House, conducted several research projects in public health and biology, was involved in Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Health Justice Committee and even found time to teach Spanish at the local elementary school, which was her favorite activity of all.

Now in graduate school at George Washington University, Senn will earn her Master of Public Health degree from the school’s accelerated one-year program. She’s pursuing a concentration in epidemiology and is most interested in infectious disease. And just to make things more interesting, she’s using her Covid year of eligibility to swim for GW.

“I have to be busy all the time, and I love school so much, so the schedule isn’t too hard on me,” she said. “I’m really excited to have a reunion with the Davidson swim team at A-10s this year.”

Senn crossed the Commencement stage at Davidson in May and was fully entrenched in life at GW the very next day. That whole I-like-to-be-busy thing sure is fortunate.

“My dad and I drove to DC immediately after graduation,” she said. “I had to start classes the next day because of the accelerated program. We just moved everything straight from my Davidson dorm to my new dorm.” 

Senn’s long-term goal is to earn a Ph.D. in population health sciences and work for a federal agency, so DC is likely to remain her home for a while. But maybe not forever; she hasn’t ruled out becoming a professor and bringing her talents back home to Davidson.

Original source can be found here