Meet Andrew Wallis, aspiring bioethical specialist

Would you please tell us about yourself?

Hey! My name is Andrew Wallis, and I am a sophomore from Charlotte, North Carolina. I did not know much about Auburn when I was first looking at colleges, but knew I wanted to attend a college with a collaborative and welcoming environment. When I toured Auburn, I knew that I would find these things here, and have not been disappointed!

I chose Interdisciplinary Studies because I wanted to study bioethics, and since there was no direct “Bioethics” major, the program let me create a hybrid major where I could do just that. My emphases are Biological Sciences and Philosophy, which I chose because I love studying both subjects, and want to understand more about the vast connections between them.

What has your experience as a student at Auburn been like?

My experience at Auburn so far has been warm and welcoming! Auburn has an amazing way of getting you plugged into a community and into things you are passionate about, and I am fortunate to have gotten involved with lots of these things early.

I am a Christian and am a member of Grace Auburn Church. Grace Auburn has blessed me with a strong community, opportunities to teach Sunday School, and the ability to develop close relationships with people and families in the Auburn area whom I would not have normally met. I also attend RUF, a campus ministry, where I am able to engage in Bible studies, regular meetings, and fun retreats with the group. Currently, me and a good friend of mine are creating a service group at RUF, and recently gained lots of support from the RUF group for this endeavor.

Serving others is something that I am very passionate about and have been blessed with the opportunity to do so through volunteering at Esperanza House. Esperanza House is a tutoring and mentorship organization based in the Auburn-Opelika area, and I have been blessed with the ability to interact with a group of fantastic families and children. I also volunteer with Big House, which is an organization that helps out foster families in the area by putting on fun events for the kids to go to.

I also am a director of Pi Lambda Sigma, the Auburn Pre-Law Society. This has allowed me to meet many awesome people and to learn more administrative skills like checking people into meetings and planning PLS events and socials.

Overall, my experience as a student has been jam-packed with all sorts of different things and opportunities (which, combined with classes and social life can be pretty tiring). Fortunately, the things I have gotten involved in all mean a lot to me, and I can enjoy my work as I go through my day.

What has been your favorite class so far and why?

My favorite class so far has been Ethics and the Health Sciences with Dr. Stephen Shortt. This class really sums up exactly what I want to do with my future career, so I have loved diving into this class! Dr. Shortt is an excellent teacher, and I have really enjoyed hearing him speak on many different topics of ethical debate within the medical field. Since I hope to one day discuss these things myself, I am glad that I can take this class to get a taste of what it would be like to discuss bioethics in the future.

What do you want to do when you graduate from Auburn?

When I graduate from Auburn, I hope to go to law school. After law school my goal is to enter the legal field as a bioethical specialist, focusing on the ethical applications of new and unregulated biotechnologies. I would love to work specifically with the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology. CRISPR is essentially a micro pair of scissors that goes into an organism’s DNA and changes it. The changes CRISPR makes to DNA are permanent, and can be done to any plant, animal, human, or even a baby in the womb. Although it was created a few decades ago, it recently received FDA approval in the U.S. to treat Sickle Cell Anemia and Beta Thalassemia (a lightning-fast turnaround in the medical world.) CRISPR has been successful in fighting genetic disease, but where should we draw the line on its usage? Should we legalize CRISPR’s use for the public so they do not have to pay medical bills? Should we ban it completely before some errant user tries to change his eye color? Should we be able to change the color of our eyes? Our height? The color of our skin? These questions are necessary to answer before CRISPR is used further, and our answers must be paired with legal action in order to enforce the decision. My goal is to enter conversations like these to offer a hybrid, interdisciplinary voice to the medical and legal sides of the discussion in order to best use CRISPR (and new, powerful technologies like it.)

Do you think your education and experiences in Interdisciplinary Studies have prepared you for success?

My experience in Interdisciplinary Studies has absolutely helped prepare me for success in my future career because it has taught me how to most effectively take two separate subjects and combine them towards achieving a goal. This will help me specifically, because my future career (hopefully) will cause me to use the disciplines of biology and philosophy together as I discuss and determine the ethical uses of different biotechnologies. But, regardless of my future career, Interdisciplinary Studies will have still prepared me for success because I believe that it is important to know how to bring unrelated skills or subjects together in order to solve a problem at hand. In a world that emphasizes specializing in one specific (and often narrow) subject, it is important to practice working together with other subjects or opinions because each of these different subjects and opinions will have special insight that is unique to itself. It is important to know how to bring different people or subjects together to achieve a goal or solve a problem, and Interdisciplinary Studies has not only highlighted that importance, but has taught me how to most effectively do so.

Is there any advice/wisdom you’d like to share with new students?

If I could tell new students one thing, it would be to find what you are passionate about early on. This does not mean that you have to know exactly what your major or your future career will be (though it may lead to that), it just means that you should try and get involved with the things you find most interesting and enjoyable. You will be most productive if you think your work has purpose, and you will find the most purpose doing things that you enjoy or believe in. It’ll also naturally help you find community, build up skills for the future, and help you enjoy college life! You will do lots of things in college, you don’t have a choice about that. You can, however, choose the things that you do. Identify what you like, what you are passionate about, what makes you smile, and get involved in those things! Auburn does a great job of getting you involved where you want to be involved! It will make your college process a lot more enjoyable and will show you more clearly what you want to involve yourself with (or not involve yourself with) in the future.

What is your favorite thing about IDSC?

I love the creativity behind the Interdisciplinary Studies Program! It is perfect for students who want to study multiple different topics and find unique ways to combine them, which takes a lot of out-of-the-box thinking. It gives students the right amount of guidance to help them create their hybrid major and the right amount of independence to best reflect what the student wants to study. Interdisciplinary Studies is all about inviting students who are interested in multiple (and sometimes unrelated) things to find creative ways to combine their interests into something new and unique. I love how the Interdisciplinary Studies Program encourages creativity and allows the student to chase multiple interests and passions while teaching them to connect them.