Dr. Mary Cope '16 Turns Her Passion Into A Career

Dr. Mary Cope '16 has the career she always dreamed about. She turned her passion for animals into a profession, working as an Animal Nutritionist for BSM Partners, a consulting firm with a primary focus in the pet care, nutraceutical, and human food/nutrition industries.

Her love of animals began at an early age. She started raising poultry when she was 3 years old, and began training and competitively showing dogs at the age of 6. She worked at Lime Hollow Nature Center in Cortland County, began studying falconry at age 14, and became a General Falconer after a four-year apprenticeship. She was also a licensed wildlife rehabilitator and would spend her free time helping sick, injured, and orphaned wildlife.

Dr. Cope graduated from Homer High School in 2014, enrolled at Onondaga Community College, and commuted so she could live at home and work with her birds daily. While completing her Mathematics & Science degree with an Honors minor, she was inducted into the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and was a member of the History Club.

Two OCC Faculty members had a lasting impact on her; Dr. Christopher Thuot who taught Honors Political Science, and Dr. Arnaud Lambert whom she had for Anthropology. "Dr. Thuot really helped to cultivate critical thinking in his students. This was a skill I used throughout my academic career, especially in grad school, and my experience in that class laid an excellent foundation. Dr. Lambert's classes were always incredibly interesting and thought-provoking. I learned about other cultures, definitions of societies and families, ways of thinking, and more. It helped me to be a more empathetic individual and look outside my relatively small, sheltered view of the world. It is so easy to judge the world and its many different people and cultures through a lens biased by our own society's definitions, views, and values. Dr. Lambert's classes gave me the information to understand, respect, and appreciate the different peoples of the world. So much prejudice and hate in this world is born from a simple lack of understanding and subsequent fear. Dr. Lambert's classes offered an opportunity to remedy that."

After completing her degree at OCC, Dr. Cope transferred to the University of Georgia where she earned a B.S. in Avian Biology and a Ph.D. in Animal Nutrition. Today, while working for BSM Partners, she's also pursuing her Masters of Business Administration and is in her final semester.

Outside work she is still surrounded by animals. Dr. Cope has two dogs which she shows competitively and plans to get a hawk this fall. She's doing exactly what she wants to do both professionally and at home and says, "Attending OCC was one of the best choices I made."