From rowing to research
“I wanted the possibility to pursue interests in a lot of different areas without feeling like I needed to choose one track. Mount Holyoke has given me the opportunities to do that. I’ve always felt like a whole student at Mount Holyoke.”
There’s something about predawn sculls on the Connecticut River that foster friendships, no matter what the odds.
Celeste Keep ’24 entered Mount Holyoke at the height of the pandemic, but the strength of the campus community was so vibrant that it eased the transition. Keep found a home on the varsity rowing team, which offered a welcoming atmosphere during an alienating time.
“It was definitely a complicated transition between high school into college. From the get-go, the rowing team offered a fantastic community for me as a first year who was going through a year that I hadn’t been expecting,” she said. “I deeply love it. It’s incredibly early in the morning, but getting up at 5 am fosters a lot of community — and it’s a space to push myself in a way that’s different from pushing myself academically.”
She does plenty of that, too, as a biology major and anthropology minor with several impressive internships. In 2023 Keep served as a research intern at a Mayo Clinic physiology and biomedical engineering research lab in Rochester, Minnesota. Additionally, she joined the Vascular Function Research Lab at Smith College to investigate cardiovascular health markers in menopausal women and young women with amenorrhea.
“These are populations that have been historically underserved by research and medicine,” she said.
On campus, she works as an athletic training aide, supporting athletic trainers in addressing injuries and ensuring safety.
“This work has made me feel like an even bigger part of a community that really cares how I’m doing,” she said.
After college, Keep aims to pursue public health research, although her immediate postgraduation plans have a fun (literal) twist: she plans to work in research and development for a California winery, applying her molecular biology knowledge to their growing practices.
“I love being outdoors. I spent a while in high school working on a sheep farm, and through my time rowing, I still love having that connection. This seems like a really interesting way to combine the outdoors with molecular biology,” she said.
It’s a well-rounded plan for someone whose Mount Holyoke experience was full-bodied indeed.
“When I was looking at colleges, I really wanted a liberal arts school. I wanted the possibility to pursue interests in a lot of different areas: academics, personally and athletically, without feeling like I needed to choose one track and sacrifice everything else. Mount Holyoke has given me the opportunities to do that,” she said. “I’ve always felt like a whole student at Mount Holyoke.”
