Mentor Profile

My name is Josh and I am a junior pursuing a major in Biotechnology, as well as minors in Biomedical Sciences and Health Sciences.  I graduated from Hagerty High School (less than 5 miles from UCF) in 2017.  Outside of school, I enjoy lifting weights, reading books, watching movies, and going to UCF football games.  So far, my favorite courses at UCF have been microbiology and quantitative biological methods (QBM).  While microbiology was my first difficult science course at UCF, I really enjoyed learning about the microscopic organisms that are involved in nearly every aspect of our lives even though we don’t realize it.  QBM served as a bridge that finally connected all the science courses I have been taking for years to their real-life applications, and finally seeing that connection is extremely satisfying.  My favorite professor is Dr. Borgon, who teaches QBM and several other upper level biomed courses.  He is an extremely smart professor but understand what it is like to be a student and tries to make the course as student-friendly as possible.  He also puts science-related memes in his powerpoints, which gives the lectures enough energy to survive. 

              When I first arrived at UCF, I was in the COMPASS program and was very confused regarding what I should be doing as a freshman and how I should be doing it.  However, once I decided on a major and joined the EXCEL steminars, I received tremendous amounts of resources and information that are still helping me two years later.   Hopefully, I can provide new COMPASS students with the guidance they need to smoothly transition into the major of their choosing and eventually succeed in their field.  My wisdom for incoming students would be that their first year at UCF will most likely contain their easiest courses, so they should use this time to get extracurricular experiences that will bulk up their resume and help them when applying to graduate school, jobs, internships, or nearly anything in the years to come.