Emma Forbes shares her Be Known story

“I am a student, an athlete and a Young Life leader, but I am also someone who lives with a visual impairment.

This impacts my day-to-day life in numerous ways and also creates significant difficulty for me in a laboratory setting. When using a pipette or measuring into a beaker, I can’t read the measurements or even gauge properly what level the material has filled to. I am also unable to see through a microscope. Throughout high school my incredible biology teacher did her best to accommodate me by printing off images of what the other students were looking at through the microscope, but I was never able to experience what it was like to look through a microscope and watch the slide come to life as the lens got adjusted to the perfect setting. That is until John Schmitt came in to check on my biology lab at Fox.

When he realized that I couldn’t see what the rest of the class was working on (in this case it was observing the effects of different drugs on a goldfish’s circulatory system), he immediately hooked up a microscope to a monitor, grabbed a slide and focused it for me. Then, for the first time, I was able see a live specimen! This may seem like a small gesture, but the fact that Dr. Schmitt came into the lab, noticed that I was unable to participate, and then actively worked to resolve the situation meant so much to me. Not only did it allow me to be included in the experiment, it showed me how much my professors here at Fox truly care about knowing me and making sure that I succeed!”

– Junior Emma Forbes