My name is Dara Scolnick and I am the creator of this Individualized Studies Major (ISM) and portfolio website. I am currently a senior at SUNY Geneseo and I am from Long Island, New York. I started to create this major alongside Dr. Lytton Smith because I wanted to go in a new direction academically to lead to the future career I realized I wanted. Originally, I was an education major and loved it, but teaching children their math and reading skills, as important as they are, did not give me passion. What gave me passion and made me excited was when a child would open up and honestly speak with me about how they were feeling mentally. This was when I recognized that the mental health of children and adolescents’ is overlooked by many and something I want to truly make a difference regarding. Therefore, I created this ISM to allow me to learn from different disciplines at SUNY Geneseo in order to get the best understanding of youth’s mental health.
