Senior neuroscience major Audrey Bebensee knew she would receive an excellent science education at Kenyon, but wondered if she would still be able to pursue the country-girl interests she acquired growing up on a Kentucky horse farm. As it turned out, knitting, ceramics, and gardening have been as much a part of her Kenyon experience as her laboratory work investigating expressions of autism in a mutant strain of mice.

Among her extracurricular activities, Bebensee helps manage the Kenyon Craft Center and serves as a lead student assistant in the Biology Department's greenhouse. She also has helped organize craft-making fundraisers, such as the Empty Bowls Dinner and Knitting for the Homeless, to benefit the hungry and displaced. "I like combining my interest in the arts with community service," she said. "It's a natural marriage because people who do crafts usually want to reach out and help others."

"I like combining my interest in the arts with community service."

At the craft center, Bebensee has expanded the number and variety of classes to accommodate increased attendance. At the greenhouse, she has revived the community open-potting sessions and complemented the local-foods sustainability program, Food for Thought, by organically growing fresh basil for Peirce Dining Hall. "We deliver a four- to five-pound bag every week," she said. "The food service workers at Peirce call me the basil lady."

Raised in the "middle of nowhere" among chickens, sheep, home-sewn blankets, and homegrown vegetables on a 180-acre farm, Bebensee credits Kenyon for keeping her in touch with her roots while advancing her drive to become a National Institutes of Health researcher. "Kenyon opened up all these opportunities for me because professors and advisors put me in positions where I could do what I wanted," she says. "The arts are a stress reliever for me, but they also require a different use of my brain that enables me to see my research in a new way."