Cristine Hall
Olivia Marr almost ruled out Chapman University before she even applied. She and her father decided to visit anyway, and they found themselves wandering into Caroline Wilson’s office hours.
Wilson, Ph.D., director of the neuroscience minor at Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences, proceeded to spend nearly an hour talking with Marr about neuroscience, classes, and her goals. It was an unexpected conversation that made Marr feel, for the first time, that a university genuinely cared about who she wanted to become.
Four years later, Marr is graduating with a degree in health sciences and a neuroscience minor. She will soon head to Vanderbilt University to begin a master’s program in biomedical sciences as she prepares for medical school.
At first, Chapman had barely been on her radar. Marr applied to the university at the recommendation of her college counselor and knew little about it beyond the basics. Most of the other schools she considered already felt familiar because friends or classmates planned to attend them. But after visiting campus and meeting Wilson, Marr’s perspective changed quickly.
The people she met at Chapman made all the difference. Professors saw her potential before she saw it in herself. Staff members helped her build confidence. A late-night library security guard became a steady source of encouragement during marathon study sessions that stretched into the next day. Even something as basic as finding safe meals became part of the support system. Chapman was the only university Marr visited that could accommodate the severe food allergies she has managed her entire life.
All of those mentors — including Wilson; Kenneth Sumida, Ph.D., Warren D. Hancock Endowed Chair in Natural Sciences at Crean College; Fredric Caporaso, Ph.D., a professor emeritus of food science at Schmid College of Science and Technology; Cheyennena Bedonie, the library security guard; and Oscar Yustman, design specialist in the Design/Create/Innovate Lab — are invited to her graduation party.
“There are too many people who made a difference, but these four have offered me consistent support across every part of my life — they all care deeply,” Marr said. “I came to Chapman because I knew I’d have a quality of life that was incomparable to anywhere else.”
Marr arrived at Chapman as a psychology major, still figuring out what direction she wanted to pursue. After her first semester she made an unexpected pivot: She changed her major to health sciences and dove into a full load of STEM coursework.
Instead of pulling back, Marr immersed herself in campus life. She took on a leadership role in the chess club, joined Chapman’s First Aid Response team, and interned at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, part of Rady Children’s Health. She also spent 500 hours volunteering in hospital units, where she witnessed both the technical and deeply human sides of medicine.
Together, those experiences helped prepare Marr for the next step in medicine while showing her what kind of physician she hopes to become. Working with patients during vulnerable moments taught her that medicine was about far more than diagnoses and treatment plans.
“I came here not really knowing what I wanted to do,” Marr said. “Now I can’t imagine myself doing anything other than medicine.”
