The ethos of a Geneseo experience is deeply rooted in a supportive community and long-lasting relationships. Hannah Visca ’17 knows this well. She is a beneficiary of a first-rate education and the generous support of—at least initially—total strangers.
Visca, a self-professed trailblazer, is the first in her family to go to college.
“I was very academic, and I was surrounded by other students who also wanted to go to college,” says Visca. “My parents were happy to help, but they didn’t really know how to, so I was doing a lot of college research myself.”
Visca’s college search and love for science led her to two potential paths: the University of Rochester and SUNY Geneseo. Although initially committed to the former, a campus visit to Geneseo made her feel at home.
And then, a letter arrived in the mail.
“My parents called me and said I had some mail from Geneseo,” she says. “It was a random letter, totally unexpected.”
That letter offered her a four-year scholarship from the James and Arleen Somerville First-Generation Scholarship Endowment, which provides financial assistance to first-generation Geneseo students who come from a family of modest means. Visca would be the first-ever recipient.
“I felt so relieved,” recalls Visca. “Not only was the financial aid component really helpful, especially to my parents, but receiving this scholarship gave me the confidence that I was making the right choice.”
Visca recalls feeling a great deal of responsibility to the Somervilles after she met them at a scholarship brunch.
“We immediately got along, and it was a very happy, emotional moment when I finally got to see these people who were basically acting as my grandparents,” says Visca. “They are the sweetest people I think I’ve ever met.”
“People having that blind faith in me was a key motivator when I was studying. I was not just doing it for myself and to make my parents proud, but also for the Somervilles.”
With the scholarship as both financial and moral support, Visca excelled at Geneseo as a biophysics major. During her first semester, she was invited to conduct research in the college’s particle accelerator lab. It became a passion she nurtured for over four years. She continued right up to the week she left for graduate school.
Undergraduate research was the cornerstone of her educational journey, providing invaluable experience and skills that would benefit her through graduate school and beyond.
Visca went on to earn her master of science in medical physics and a PhD in physics at the University of Rhode Island.
“When I look back at Geneseo, I think of how we all learned from not just the textbooks and the professors but from each other,” says Visca.
Her time at Geneseo continues to pay dividends. Visca was recently accepted to Yale University for a post-doc to study immuno-oncology, an emerging medical field that utilizes a patient’s immune system to fight cancer. She credits the skills she learned in the particle accelerator lab as essential in her acceptance.
“I had my master’s in medical physics, but I did not have any graduate-level research experience working with radiation,” says Visca. But during my undergrad, I gained a whole list of skills that I could put on there, and I know it helped a lot.”
