Throughout the spring and summer, we'll be honoring our senior student-athletes with a "Senior Salute" series. Today's featured senior is Shane Wallace, a global and international studies major from Waterford, Michigan. Wallace is a member of the men's lacrosse team.

Q: Why did you choose to attend The College of Wooster?
A: I was able to continue my lacrosse career at the next level while getting a great education. I also wanted the flexibility Div. III provides outside of athletics where I'm able to keep doing other hobbies and hang out while still being able to play at a high level.

Q: What does it mean to you to be a Fighting Scot student-athlete?
A: Demand the best from ourselves in everything. Coach (P.J.) Kavanagh uses the four C's – Character, Classroom, Community, Competition. If you try your very best at those four things, you'll be successful on and off the field and represent the school well.

Q: What are some of your favorite memories as a student at The College of Wooster?
A: My favorite athletic memory is definitely beating Wittenberg University with 0.2 seconds left to send us to the North Coast Athletic Conference Tournament in 2019. That was an experience like no other. Our spring break trip to Florida in 2020 right before our season was cancelled was our best one so far and another great memory with the team.

Q: What's the best part about being a student-athlete at The College of Wooster?
A: We get to go and compete every day with our closest friends while getting a great education. It doesn't get much better than that. Off the field, we have a tight-knit community between a lot of other teams on campus.

Q: What else were you involved with on campus besides your sport?
A: I'm involved with the Homework for Hoops program through the Wooster Volunteer Network. We help local middle and high school students with their homework and play sports with them after.

Q: Which College of Wooster faculty or staff member has made the greatest impact on you and why?
A: Coach Kavanagh has definitely been the most influential person. He plays a huge role in the lacrosse team's and my own academic success at Wooster. As a first-year, Kav has us attend academic meetings every week, go to study hall twice a week, and go to our professors' office hours. He gets us in the right habits for the next four years. At practice he has us compete and work hard, which has resulted in great team chemistry. Overall, he just wants us to be great men on and off the field.

Q: What other people or resources impacted your Wooster experience in a positive way and how did these people/resources set you up to be successful at Wooster?
A: All of my political science professors – Drs. (Matthew) Krain, (John) Valdez, and (Jeffrey) Lantis, and Professor Kent Kille – have all been super helpful with pursuing my interests in classes and have aided me a lot with my Independent Study.

Q: Tell us a bit about your Independent Study project?
A: I'm researching the implementation of exclusionary and culturally suppressing policies, like language laws and political exclusion. I'm looking on the policies' effects on the level of violence a group perpetrates in a civil conflict as a result.

Q: Tell us a bit about something cool you did as a student at The College of Wooster? (study abroad experience, APEX Fellowship, summer internship/research opportunity, volunteer experience, research as part of a class, trip to NCAA/NCAC Tournament with team, spring break trip with team, etc.)
A: In 2019, I studied abroad in Freiburg, Germany, and learned all about the European Union and European politics. It was such a cool experience living on my own in a foreign country and visitng a bunch of other countries in the EU. I found my I.S. topic from a class I took over there, so it was cool to take some knowledge I learned abroad and bring it back to work on in Wooster.

Q: Reflecting back on your time at Wooster, what is one piece of advice you would give your first-year (freshman) self?
A: Keep working hard and never be satisfied.

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