Originally Posted: Spring 2018 Issue
Growing up in Overland Park, Kansas, Samuel Gage Weber became fascinated with science by watching Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. The first 3-D animated feature film made outside Hollywood was directed by SMU alumnus John Davis ’84. Weber, whose mother is a nurse, imagined being Jimmy Neutron while he played with a child’s chemistry set. Later, when he stumbled upon the Harry Potter novels and films, he says, his interest in science became intertwined with magic.
In seventh grade, after Weber heard a neurologist speak to his class about the wonders of the brain, he began to make the connection between science and medicine. While his fellow students were enthralled with the brain-shaped gummies she passed around the class, Weber locked onto the floating pink blob in a jar she had brought for show and tell. “She said the brain was ‘the last true frontier of science,’” he recalls.
In high school he straddled the two worlds of science and art – taking AP biology and chemistry courses and working downtown at a neurology lab, while participating in theatre, rehearsing for plays and musicals nightly. He thought that when he got to college he would have to keep his two loves – the sciences and the arts – separate.
But when he got to the Hilltop, he says he realized he could successfully combine those seemingly disparate worlds. Weber, a Dedman College Scholar and University honors student, is now on the pre-med track to graduate in May 2018 with B.S. degrees in biological sciences, and health and society, and a B.A. in chemistry, with minors in Latin, classical studies, musical theatre, history and human rights. In addition, through numerous campus opportunities, SMU has enabled him to explore his interests in the performing arts. In his senior year, he has even found interesting ways to fuse his interests. READ MORE