Portraits of Impact
Sneha Sharma
McDermott Scholar Creates Program to Aid Local Elementary
Sneha Sharma, a sophomore neuroscience student, is not from North Texas. She’s not from Texas at all. Her home and family are over 1,500 miles away in Boise, Idaho. But, after her mother told her about The University of Texas at Dallas and the many scholarship opportunities available to students, she applied.
“I saw a lot of potential for me at UTD,” Sharma said. “It’s different from other schools. It’s newer, so there’s a lot of work to be done and it’s easier to start new projects.”
She was accepted into the Eugene McDermott Scholars Program, a full-ride undergraduate merit scholarship program awarded annually to select students who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement, leadership skills and a dedication to service.
Being a first-generation student, Sharma worried about difficulties and barriers that her family would not have been able to guide her through. Although her parents are both college graduates, they attended school in India. If all goes according to plan, Sharma will be the first in her family to graduate from medical school.
“There are so many things you have to do to get to medical school,” Sharma said. “You must take all these extracurriculars and pursue leadership opportunities and I don’t have anyone in my life who is older than me to guide me through this. The McDermott Scholars Program helped me find alumni and older students who can help me with this stuff. The network you get from it is truly something else.”
As part of the McDermott program, students are required to participate in a summer of service immediately following the spring semester of their first year. This requirement entails volunteering about 20 service hours a week to local charities. Five of those hours must come from an organization that partners with the McDermott program, such as the Vickery Meadows Summer Reading Academy at McShane Elementary School in Dallas. Students like Sharma can volunteer at multiple places in one week to fulfill the 20-hour requirement.
“I would go to McShane maybe once or twice a week in July,” Sharma said. “This reading program is designed to help students improve their English literacy skills because they come from different countries. Overcoming a language barrier can be so hard to make friends and feel safe, so I was able to help them feel a little more loved and make learning English fun.”
Sharma loved volunteering with the reading academy and wanted to keep the momentum going into the fall semester by bringing more students to McShane Elementary. She brought the idea of a mentorship program to Dr. Donal Skinner, the Mary McDermott Cook Chair and dean of the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College. With his assistance, she founded Comets Read, an organization that matches college students to children at McShane Elementary School in a mentorship program designed to tutor the young students.
Comets Read was an immediate success. The program trained 30 UT Dallas students last semester and sent 15 regular volunteers to McShane Elementary. In the future, Sharma hopes to bring Comets Read participants to UTD’s campus for a tour.
“I do it because I love the kids,” Sharma said. “I’m from Idaho and I grew up going to a predominately white school. Being Indian, I already stood out a lot and I know it was hard for me to make friends in school. These kids have so many different languages being spoken at one school, and they come from so much trauma. School should be a safe place and if I can make even just a single student feel better about this new community then that’s the best feeling of all.”
Sharma also works in a clinical neuropsychological research lab led by Dr. John Hart Jr., the Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience and professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. She is helping research PTSD in veterans and how trauma affects speech, memory and other brain functions using transcranial direct current stimulation.
“UTD is growing the research we need to keep up with new and advancing technology,” Sharma said. “Investing in the youth is investing in our future, so if we can get the money to fund these projects it will not only benefit the donor but everybody else in the community, too. I’m grateful for our donors because it shows people really care about this school and our students.”
After graduating, Sharma has plans to look at the intersection of medicine, health care and environmentalism while working towards a doctoral degree.