Issues like anxiety, depression, PTSD, and male relationships can make for sensitive topics of conversation for some, but two nontraditional students in the KU College have built a podcast devoted to tackling those subjects and more.

Preferred Name: Everyone calls me A-A-Ron, but Aaron works too!

Major(s) & Minor(s): I’m not going to lie, I’ve been jumping around in the Biology field quite a bit, but I’m currently majoring in microbiology pre-medicine.

Where are you from? And why did you choose to come to KU? 

I’m from El Paso, Texas originally, but as a child we moved quite a bit and settled in Newton, Kansas. My mother wanted me to stay in state and study Engineering. KU had all of those and the distance from home made it the best fit.

Ask Insia Zufer why she studies biology, and she'll give you an answer that extends far beyond a passion for fieldwork. By exploring how and why humans, animals and even a blade of grass work, Insia discovers the connections that unite us all to each other, and to the planet. She added minors in psychology and film to gain new ways of looking at the world, and to explore her love of the arts. For this Jayhawk, the subjects she studies help shape her worldview.

Growing up in a town of less than 150 people tends to leave an impression on a person.  Emily Lenherr’s experience was such a positive one, she planned her future around returning to it. Lenherr, a senior from Windom, is a neurobiology major on her way to the University of Kansas Medical School in the fall. She’ll be part of the Scholars in Rural Health and Kansas Medical Student Loan programs with the plan of returning to her rural roots as a doctor. Lenherr has always been fascinated by the brain and the way biology affects illness. She fell in love with KU after visiting campus on a high school Junior Day, and then fell hard for neurobiology, for its vastness and mystery. Lenherr plans to use that mystery to shed light on mental health in rural Kansas communities.

Leaving her home on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota to study at KU changed Jordyn Gunville’s life in more ways than she ever imagined. Her move to Lawrence led her down an eye-opening path to her future in community health. Gunville grew up in Eagle Butte, South Dakota in the poorest county in the United States. A county where the suicide rate is double the national average and where the life expectancy is 45. This served as motivation to get a great education. “I was surrounded by oppression. I wanted to change the cycle of oppression, the cycle of hopelessness,” said Gunville, a senior in applied behavioral sciences. Regardless of the poverty surrounding her childhood, she believes that growing up in those conditions fuel her drive to be a catalyst for change. Gunville immediately fell in love with campus when she first visited.

Marcus Florez, B.S. in chemistry, Class of 2015