On the right track

One class, one teacher, one book—sometimes that’s all it takes for your future to click into place. For Dayna Kirk, now a senior at Lewis & Clark, the class was Anthropology of the Body. The professor, an anthropologist who also works with AIDS patients. The book, Women, Poverty and AIDS, by Paul Farmer. “The more I read and learned, the more passionate I became about HIV,” Dayna recalls. “It seemed like the perfect way for me to combine my interests in medicine and anthropology.”

Dayna, a sociology/anthropology major and chemistry minor from Scottsdale, Arizona, entered Lewis & Clark with a general interest in diseases related to poverty. Once she found her focus, she says, “things just started to fall into place.” Whenever a professor assigned a research paper, Dayna centered hers on AIDS. When she spent a semester overseas in India, she made HIV her main focus of study. And when she traveled to South Africa to attend the 13th International AIDS Conference, she met the man who wrote the book that started it all.

“Meeting Paul Farmer was the most exciting moment of the conference for me,” says Dayna, who attended the conference on a research grant from the Student Academic Affairs Board.

Dayna plans to pursue a master’s degree in public health and a medical degree. She hopes to work in HIV disease control, either overseas or with the United Nations. “At Lewis & Clark I’ve been able to follow through on the general interest I came here with,” says Dayna. “Now I’m definitely on a path that’s going in the right direction.”

Meet more L&C students.