Stephanie Mami ‘06’s aspirations to attend a large university changed the moment she set foot on the Occidental campus. “I saw the intimacy of the classes and of the campus in general and I fell in love,” says Stephanie, who visited the College as a high school senior. “I went to a couple of classes and saw that professors knew their students by name. That was just beautiful. It was definitely a perk.”

A theater major from Houston, Stephanie says the College has given her opportunities she never would have gotten at a larger institution. As a junior, she studied at the British American Dramatic Academy in London, an experience not typically available to undergraduates elsewhere. “Everything that you would have to postpone to a graduate-level program is at your fingertips at Occidental,” she says. “Being able to study abroad is an experience I would not have received elsewhere.”

At Oxy, Stephanie has acted in stage productions of “Lysistrata,” “A Raisin in the Sun,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and "The Trip to Bountiful." She also helped stage-manage Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” “The fact that Oxy allows students to be part of the stage management team is another big perk,” Stephanie adds.

Students are urged not to limit their horizons, she notes. “For you to be a biology major and still be able to take a film class is an extraordinary opportunity,”  Stephanie says. “I really feel a liberal arts education gives me the chance to pull from all directions and fields to form a broad spectrum of what I want to do with my life.”