Growing up on a dairy farm in south-central Pennsylvania, Lily Stenning learned the values of perseverance and hard work. She dreamed of becoming a veterinarian.
This December, she moved one step closer to fulfilling that goal when she received her Bachelor of Science in biological science from Old Dominion University. Graduating from the University also fulfilled one of her father’s dreams.
Her dad started at ODU in 1976. “He was always very proud of the fact that he sat next to Nancy Lieberman in his English course,” Stenning said. But for financial reasons, he did not finish his degree. He did earn an associate degree from Northern Virginia Community College and became an airline pilot and flight instructor.
“I went to ODU because my dad initially went here,” Stenning said. When she got her acceptance letter in 2019, she and her dad were ecstatic. But in the fall of 2019, during her first semester, her father lost his battle with cancer. Being so far from home during his passing was a struggle, but Stenning relied on her upbringing to focus on her goals.
Originally from Winchester, Virginia, Stenning moved to Pennsylvania when she was 6.
“We had a beef operation in Virginia, and we moved because my dad grew up working on dairy farms and always wanted to own his own farm,” she said. She and her mother and younger sister all worked on the farm. “We milked cows for almost 14 years,” Stenning said.
In rural Pennsylvania, farming was a normal way of life. “We were a part of a small group of students in our school whose families owned dairy farms, so our chores at home included milking regularly before and after school,” Stenning said.
As her father’s cancer progressed, Stenning and her sister were their dad’s sole help in milking cows in the mornings and evenings.
Stenning pulled long days throughout high school that started at 5 a.m., so adjusting to life on campus at ODU was relatively easy. “I was very lucky that I got to go to ODU and experience something different,” Stenning said.
Choosing biological sciences made sense for her because she knew she wanted to go into veterinary medicine or be a medical doctor. “It's also something I greatly enjoy learning about, and my mother has a degree in biology, too, so it's something that I've kind of been surrounded by my whole life,” she said.
At ODU, Stenning was a member of the Honors College, revived a student organization and took advantage of traveling and learning in Europe as part of her Spanish minor.
In the spring of 2022, she studied abroad in Valencia, Spain, living with a family that didn’t speak English. While she was in the country, she also did an internship in Calpe for two weeks where she worked with pinna nobilis, a large mollusk. “They are a very important filter feeder in the Mediterranean, and the scientists are trying to figure out how to save them because they are endangered,” Stenning said.
Source: odu.edu
Photo Credit: gettyimages-peopleimages
Categories: Pennsylvania, Livestock, Dairy Cattle