Molly gets excited about all things politics. With an interest beginning in high school, she decided to extend her political science education by enrolling at UM-Dearborn. During her four years, she’s taken almost every political science class available and excelled. During her senior year, she was awarded Top Political Science Scholar for the 2020 academic year — an honor that requires nomination from faculty. “A lot of my professors came up and congratulated me in person because I’ve had a class with almost every political science faculty member,” she said. For Molly, her desire to excel is also about being able to encourage political civic engagement. By participating as a panelist on CASL’s Social Science Panel, she helped answer questions for prospective freshman students. 

Molly, in her own words

On her defining moment. “I would say my defining moment at U-M Dearborn was during the second semester of my freshman year. I was enrolled in 18 credits, had an internship at the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office in downtown Detroit, and then my dad got a double lung transplant.

It was an extremely tough semester mentally because I was bouncing between Ann Arbor — he got his transplant at Michigan Medicine — UM-Dearborn for classes, downtown Detroit for my internship, and my job at a bakery in Livonia. I was everywhere and it was a really crazy and stressful time in my life. What stood out to me about UM-Dearborn is that all of my professors were so understanding and so kind. I didn’t really want to come out and ask for extensions on a lot of my assignments because I felt that I should be able to power through and do them, but my professors offered to extend them for me without me asking. They would say, ‘Molly you can turn the [assignment] in, in a couple weeks if you need to.’ It was super awesome, and I think that’s what made me so sure about my decision to come to UM-Dearborn. It was the fact that I had all of that support from the university and all of the political science faculty. Also, what really made me happy was that I came out of that semester with a 4.0 [GPA].”

On her future aspirations. “I'm looking at going to the University of Michigan Law School. Since I was five I wanted to be a lawyer and it's never wavered. It's so close and I can almost touch it.”

Why she thinks she’s a Difference Maker. “I feel that I’m a Difference Maker because I have been really involved in the UM-Dearborn community. I am the secretary of the Political Science Association. I am the secretary of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I’m also involved in La Mensca, which is a cultural inclusion group. I’ve also participated in a lot of community things, like all my internships. At my past internship at the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, I was working on a juvenile lifer’s case where I was trying to help these kids that were sentenced to life in prison when they were young. I reviewed their files to see if the attorneys could have a new case and [see] if they could get a new sentence that may not be life in prison. At my former internship. I was in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office and on her policy team in Lansing where I was specifically working on criminal justice reform.”