Building relationships with people, career paths and bees

Yeslee Neris ’26 learned about Mount Holyoke College when she was selected to be a Posse Scholar and had to choose a college after high school. She knew she didn’t want to go to school in her home state, but she still found the transition difficult. However, despite some emotional lows during her first year, she decided to “stick it out.”

“I left my parents, and my little sister, who’s one of my best friends. There were times when I wanted to transfer. But I’m grateful that I didn’t because I’ve met some wonderful people,” Neris said.

“Mount Holyoke has given me an experience that I don’t think I would’ve gotten anywhere else. I think because it’s such a small school, you understand each other more.”

Neris credits someone from her Posse cohort with helping her make more friends. She also built connections by joining the Shirley Chisholm LLC and the African and Caribbean Students Association.

“I met my best friends there,” she said. “I introduced them to my Posse and vice versa. Now, we’re this humongous family. We have this ongoing joke, ‘Why is our friend group 20 people?’”

Neris always knew she wanted to work in the health care sector. After taking her first bio class, she realized biological science would provide the prerequisite structure for her entry into nursing. Then, she took a Latin American cultures class and decided to incorporate that discipline into her education. She credits Mount Holyoke’s liberal arts education program with helping her to explore STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) while also developing a niche interest.

In her sophomore year, Neris joined the Woodard Lab, where she began researching fruit flies, which helped her better understand the concepts she was learning in class. Neris is grateful to her advisor, Craig Woodard, for accepting her into his lab when she was a second-year student. She credits him and Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Kijua Sanders-McMurtry for helping her throughout her academic journey.

“Craig has been the most supportive. You need professors that’ll tell you how it is but also understand that you’re a student and you need to take your time. He’s that kind of person,” Neris said. “Kijua is also amazing. I love talking to her because it feels so real, and she’s just a genuine soul.”

Neris plans to study nursing at Johns Hopkins University, and both Woodard and Sanders-McMurtry played an instrumental role in her acceptance there by writing letters of recommendations for her. Neris is also grateful to Katie Lipp of the Jones Career Development Center for helping her tweak her résumé and Jean Janecki, her Language & Culture Commons supervisor, for also writing a letter of recommendation.

As well as being active on campus, Neris has worked at the Language & Culture Commons since her first year at Mount Holyoke, and she has been promoted to supervisor. However, one of her lasting accomplishments at the College was creating the Beekeepers Club.

“I feel we can do a lot on the campus in the future. We’re already weeding out pollinator gardens around the local community, keeping bees to help the population issue,” she said. “I’m excited to watch it grow and to be an alum 20 years later and see how it’s doing.”

Neris believes her most rewarding experience has been the relationships she’s cultivated through Posse, her own club and the student organizations she joined. In fact, she’s so appreciative of her experiences that she convinced her little sister to attend the College.

“Mount Holyoke gave me the perspective of what it means to be in a healthy, flourishing community of people that want to grow and want to make change,” she said. “I hope I can take a piece of everything I’ve learned with me so that when I’m in other communities, I can kind of give the same to them.”