Dec. 10, 2008
From Lafayette Athletic Communications
On any given day, junior Kari Horn might be in Easton, working on research in one of the school's labs. She could be in Kirby Sports Center for volleyball practice or in Lewisburg, Pa. for a critical Patriot League match against rival Bucknell. At some point during the day she's probably in the library studying for classes. Over school breaks, she sometimes returns to her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. Come the New Year, she'll be in Denmark to spend the semester abroad completing coursework and research towards her degree in Neuroscience.
Horn, a three-year varsity member of the women's volleyball team, has received attention and accolades for her performance on the volleyball court, all of which are deserved. The minute she stepped on the court her freshman season she saw success, leading all league freshmen in digs while appearing in all 28 of the Leopards' matches. She continued to excel over the next two seasons and is currently second on Lafayette's list of career digs leaders with 1,286.
Horn spends a great deal of time around her teammates during the school year and the memories and victories she shares with them have made all the sweat and two-a-day preseason practices more than worth it.
"The team is incredibly close-knit," she said. "I liked the team immediately my freshman year--it put me at ease. And it's been so much fun competing in Patriot League games. Any league game is huge and there's such a competitive atmosphere surrounding them."
However passionate Horn is about her volleyball career, and her love for the sport is obvious, she is equally as passionate about her pursuits and interests away from volleyball, specifically the research she has been a part of as a Neuroscience major at Lafayette.
She entered Lafayette as a Neuroscience major and despite the demands of playing a sport at the Division I level, never once considered changing her major to one that might require less of her time.
"I like Neuroscience because it's a combination of psychology and biology," she said. "Lafayette has a good, but tough, program, and coach (Terri Dadio Campbell) has been very lenient in terms of allowing me to schedule my labs."
Horn knows that at other schools, some coaches may not have been as lenient or even allowed Horn to pursue a degree in Neuroscience at all.
"I'm incredibly lucky that coach has allowed me to do this and even encourages it, and she's the same with all of the players on the team," Horn said. "She knows academics is our main concern here and I know at a lot of other schools I wouldn't be able to even take these labs or be a Neuroscience major or study abroad."
Horn's days are packed with places to be and things to do, but she finds that the more she has to do, the better she is at doing them.
"My major is tough but I find that when I'm busier, I'm a better student," she said. "I don't have a lot of free time so I just have to make sure I get things done when I can fit them in. Volleyball has definitely helped me with my time management skills, especially with it being a fall sport because you're thrown right into it. I think the upperclassmen have to set a good example on being able to get your work done."
Often times that means doing schoolwork after practice when she might rather be sleeping. Horn and her teammates also frequently do schoolwork on the bus on the way to and from matches.
With so much going on from August through May, Horn certainly could use some down time during the summers to do something she rarely finds time to do during the academic year--relax. However, Horn has chosen to pursue a research opportunity with Manuel Ospina-Giraldo in the Biology department. Horn spent the summer of 2008 on campus conducting research, continued that research into the fall semester and will pick it up again this coming summer when she returns from Denmark.
Horn is part of a research team that is looking at the phytophthora infestans fungus which caused the Irish potato famine.
"It's pretty applicable to every day things," Horn said. "I really like doing it and I have a lot of fun in the lab. It's hard to explain, but I almost feel like the lab dynamic is similar to the team dynamic--the senior members help out the younger members."
One of those senior members is men's soccer player John Griffith '08, who, like Horn, has spent several summers on campus. Both Horn and Griffith would not have spent their summers any other way.
"I really like being on campus during the summer," she said. "It's relaxing. It's quieter. There were definitely fewer outside distractions. It's mostly people doing research so you get to know different people than you would during the regular school year."
She'll get to know even more new people when she embarks for Denmark for the upcoming spring semester. Horn will be on her own in the foreign country but should feel at home in several of the courses in which she's enrolled. Like at Lafayette, a lot of her learning will take place outside of the classroom. Her Human Health and Diseases class is more of a clinical setting and will be taught in a Copenhagen hospital by medical doctors, which will be an entirely new experience for Horn.
A lot of people would face some apprehension about spending several months in a foreign country studying something as intense as neuroscience, but Horn has embraced the opportunity.
"It's going to be an experience I obviously wouldn't get staying here," she said. "It will be really unique being thrown into a city where I don't speak the language and have to get around on my own."
Just as Horn plans out her days, she has also mapped out her future beyond Lafayette. She plans to attend graduate school and continue doing research. After that, the sky's the limit.
"I obviously have a lot of different interests, like neuroscience and genetics, so I would like to go into an interdisciplinary field like public health or epidemiology," she said. "Down the road, I would love to be involved in research for the government at a place like the Centers for Disease Control or the National Institute of Health."
And there's no reason to think her life could not happen just as she envisions. Her education at Lafayette has given her the tools to achieve those goals.
