Melissa Zurla

What’s your favorite class? Why?

Gamelan Ensemble with Mindy Johnston. I really enjoyed this class because learning to play so many cool and unique instruments was a wonderful learning experience. I also enjoyed learning about the music and historical culture of Gamelan. It was such a peaceful and almost meditative class. I enjoyed playing the gong and kempul instruments the most, and I was able to take the class with a lot of my friends, making the class even better.

What made you want to come to Lewis & Clark?

I knew I wanted to study abroad during college and I knew that Lewis & Clark had great financial options for study abroad. I also knew I would thrive with smaller class sizes and more personal relationships with professors. I wanted the professors to be able to know my name and for us to have personal interactions, and this is what drew me in to the smaller size of the school and the very high faculty to student ratio. The allure of living in a new state in the PNW was also very appealing, especially because I wanted to live somewhere new but not deeply entrenched in the snow.

What do you like or find most interesting about your major?

I love the biology major because I feel that so many of the students in the same grade know each other and have similar struggles/successes. For instance I know almost every person from the large 60 student organic chemistry class I took sophomore year because it was really a shared learning experience. Now I get to take all my upper level classes with the same students as well, and it’s nice to know a lot of students in your classes. I also love how you can get involved in the various labs on campus and work on your own projects with professors during the school year, or in the summer.

What do you like or find most interesting about your minor?

The chemistry minor is unique because I can take lots of small two credit classes for the minor. These classes are really the professor’s personal research or subject material that they are best at, which is fun to take because the professors are all very excited to teach them. Right now I am taking a pretty niche chemistry class that has to do with a technique known as NMR, and this is not really a class that would be offered without a professor who specializes in this area.

Tell us about your support systems and social outlets on campus: people, activities, clubs, res halls, etc.

My teammates in cross country and track & field are by far my biggest social outlet. I love being on a pretty large team on campus because coming to school I got to automatically befriend a lot of them and have a group of people to hang out with in and out of class. We also always eat meals together in the dining hall which is one of my favorite things because I love having social meals. I also love participating in Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) on campus. I get to help plan events with the other board members to share Vietnamese culture and food with students at L&C and it is always so fun to have a successful event and expose people to new cultural things. I love meeting new people this way and also collaborating with other culture clubs to learn more about our cultural overlaps or new events/holidays other cultures celebrate.

If you have studied or will study overseas while at Lewis & Clark, how did you choose your program? What did your overseas study add to your L&C experience?

I decided to learn Mandarin upon coming to Lewis & Clark because I grew up around a lot of Asian languages, mostly Cantonese and Vietnamese but also a decent amount of Mandarin. After taking Chinese classes my first year, I decided that I would love to go abroad with a language intensive program because I had the flexibility in my schedule. Looking at the programs, I chose to apply to the Taipei, Taiwan program so I could take language classes and also take on an internship while abroad. My goal is to intern with the Fulbright program so I can hopefully intern with them in the future after graduation. I will go to Taiwan in the 2026 spring semester.

What advice do you have for incoming students?

Take advantage of your peer resources! For instance, I absolutely love tutoring students in the Symbolic and Quantitative Research Center (SQRC). There is free tutoring there for STEM classes and there is free 1-on-1 tutoring for most classes through the Student Academic Affairs Board (SAAB) which I have done before for Chinese, and loved it every time. It is sometimes intimidating to ask for help straight from your professors, so definitely take advantage of the various student helpers that are free to you.

What’s one of the best spots on campus?

My favorite spot on campus is behind Frank Manor House because I love on a sunny day sitting on the lawn chairs up there and looking at the view of Mt. Hood and the reflecting pool. It is also a great place to hang out and play hacky sack, or build a snowman in the one snowy week of the year.

Have you had the opportunity to do research with a professor? 

I am currently participating in my third semester of on campus research in a biology lab. Every year I have worked one semester in a practicum, or this year in an independent study with Dr. Velazquez-Ulloa in the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly research lab. I have been able to work with the DNA of fruit flies and conduct research with molecular biology techniques to study different mutations and the genetics of the flies. I think working in a lab is a really cool experience and it helps me learn at a really fast rate because there is less instruction and more problem solving than taking a full lab course. I also think this is a really good experience for me to have before graduate school because I now know that I want to get a PhD and continue participating in research in graduate school.

Why do you love participating in cross country and track & field at L&C? How do you balance athletics and academics?

I think the student-athlete experience at L&C is really unique and special, especially now since student-athletes are about 20% of the whole student body. Being on a team, I feel that I have my own community of people like me who can bond together and experience things together. I also really like how the team is both men and women and the team dynamic is very connected even though the teams are separate from each other, competition wise. I find that being on a team has made my time management skills a lot better. My days are a lot more organized since I move from class to practice and sometimes back to class or to another activity. Knowing that I have a tight schedule that is fixed, makes the time I spend doing academics more about quality time. I have been able to gain better studying skills to spend less time doing homework because I am doing more quality rather than quantity hours. I also always try to dedicate a whole day or half a day during the week to not do any school work if I can, because it really lets me reset mentally for the next week ahead.

How are you involved in the arts at L&C?

I recently got involved in the music programs at L&C. I am currently a member of the symphony orchestra playing bass, and I am also a part of the guitar ensemble class playing classical guitar. In the spring of 2025 I was a member of the Gamelan ensemble, and am now playing in the community ensemble. I really enjoy these 1-credit music classes because they are so different from the rest of my STEM classes and provide a nice variety to my schedule. I highly recommend taking advantage of the free ensemble classes because they are designed for beginners and people who have never played the instruments before to learn about a new culture and get skills learning to play a variety of new instruments. 

Biology Chemistry Chinese