Emily Fries

Envious of my peers who knew exactly what they wanted to do “when they grew up”, I regularly felt unsure. Although I was successful in art, I pushed it off as a hobby. A high school education class introduced me to the excitement of seeing learning transpire in the classroom, and I finally felt I had found my path. While pursuing my education degree, I discovered my love for science. Prior, I had written off science due to my challenges in math, but through the lens of an educator I realized that the sciences are more creative than often perceived. I cherish my time as a science educator, but facing the systemic issues in education made me explore other ways that I could make science concepts accessible the way I had in my classroom. Stumbling upon science illustration, I had never felt so sure that a path was for me. My hope in pursuing scientific illustration as a career is to ignite the excitement that can be felt when learning about the wonders of our natural world through works that employ any viewer as a scientific mind. Now entering the scientific illustration program I sought after at CSUMB, I am on the way to making that dream possible. View Emily’s work here.