Senior Spotlight: Emily Tupaj

Coming from a small, rural area in Vermont, Emily Tupaj `21 says that there isn’t much of a difference between Waterville and where she’s from. 

“I’m from Vermont originally, in a small town kind of like Waterville actually, so when I visited Colby it just kind of felt like home.” Tupaj said “[Colby] was in Maine and [there are] these big open spaces but still this small town - I know Waterville’s technically a city - but a small town kind of vibe.” 

But to Tupaj, it’s more than a small town vibe that makes Colby so special— it’s the people as well. When asked what her favorite thing about Colby was, she said.

“The community, and how everybody knows everybody else - it’s really nice.” 

She’s especially close to the people in the mathematics department. After all, she’s double majoring in mathematics with a concentration in statistics and psychology. Tupaj credits her passion for math to her high school teachers. 

“In high school I had some really great math teachers who taught me to love numbers and playing with them and seeing what they can tell us. I knew coming in I wanted to do something with math.”

Her interest in psychology, however, developed a little later and came a bit unexpectedly.

“My dad and I were talking, probably Christmas my freshman year, just about what I might do, and he said, ‘Oh, you’re really good at helping people - Have you ever thought about taking a psych class?’ and so I took a psych class and I loved it,” Tupaj explained.

To Tupaj, psychology and mathematics is the perfect interdisciplinary blend.

“It’s been a really good experience, having the kind of softer science matched with the harder science of the numbers to expand the breadth of my course load,” Tupaj said. 

In addition, as part of a psychology research seminar, she volunteered at Mount Merici Academy in Waterville, and what started off as something for class became a recurring pursuit.

“I loved those kids so much that I kept going back even after the class was done, so that was just a really nice thing for me because I babysat all through high school. Just to be around small kids every week for a couple hours was really nice for me,” Tupaj said. “I’m really grateful that Colby had a class that let us do that.” 

Her favorite class she ever took at Colby was “Surveys, Censuses, and Society,” and through that class she and her classmates did a survey for the Waterville Fire Department. 

“It was just a really fun class because there were only six of us and we just bonded,” Tupaj said.

Although she admits she spends a lot of time focusing on academics, she is still involved in a few extracurricular activities on campus and outside of Colby. She is on the leadership team of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, or IVCF, and she is also in the ballroom dancing club at Colby.

Her journey to IVCF was certainly unique.

“I actually got plugged into the fellowship through my aunt who knew someone at Bates, who knew someone at Colby, who sent me an email,” Tupaj explained. “They invited me to this little welcome gathering they were having in the Mary Low Annex where a bunch of the leaders lived my freshman year - I went there, got plugged in with them, made some really good friends over the course of that year (and subsequent years) and I joined the leadership team my sophomore year and it has been a really good experience in terms of learning how to navigate differences of opinion and how to lead a group with a team.” 

Like with every senior, it feels strange to know that a member of the Colby community will no longer be on campus next school year. Her plans for after graduation? 

“Either to be an actuary or some other data science [job].”

~ Hae Jung Kim `24