While Meredith Lum graduated from Otterbein in 2011 with an extensive knowledge in veterinary medicine, molecular biology and women’s studies, she couldn’t speak a word of Spanish. Yet she found herself in Guatemala, nursing baby monkeys back to health, just a few short months after receiving her diploma.

During her time at Otterbein, Lum juggled an equine pre-veterinary and molecular biology double major with a women’s studies minor, and also served as the president for VOX, Otterbein’s Voices for Planned Parenthood.

She said that she managed to accomplish all of her goals by overloading on credit hours every quarter and by appropriately managing her time.

“If you’re really passionate about something,” Lum said, “you make time to do it.”

The recent graduate’s passion for women’s studies was evident when she said, “I still have my feminist studies textbook that I read for fun.”

To apply her interest in women’s studies, Lum involved herself in VOX and became president. She said that her happiest Otterbein memories came from her involvement in the organization. “It came naturally to me,” she said, attributing her willingness to discuss sexual health to the fact that her father is a gynecologist.

When she wasn’t preoccupied with VOX, Lum spent a portion of her last year at Otterbein studying gene variation in primates for her senior research project. The project, combined with her honors senior year experience class, provided the push for her to study animals abroad after graduation.

“I was looking for some sort of international internship opportunity that dealt with (veterinary-related things) or wildlife conservation,” she said.

Lum chose to work with an organization called ARCAS. “They do really incredible work,” she said. “The animals were from illegal pet trade.”

ARCAS is based out of Guatemala, where she stayed for three months and acted as a surrogate mother to baby spider monkeys. According to Lum, the babies needed a parental figure after people involved in illegal pet trade murdered their mothers. “It wasn’t a very glamorous job. (I did) a lot of cage cleaning,” she said.

In spite of the dirty work and the fact that she also got sick on the trip, she found the experience to be gratifying. She said that one of the most rewarding moments of her trip was when the babies first accepted her as their parental figure. According to Lum, when the monkeys first arrived at the facility, they were terrified and had a difficult time transitioning to their surrogate mother.

About four weeks into the trip, the babies automatically came to her one day when she went to bring them inside after being out in the rain. “It was really cool to see (the babies’) full development … I would go back in a heartbeat and I would do it again,” Lum said.

Since returning from Guatemala, Lum is currently in the process of looking for a laboratory position at a zoo, where she can apply her experiences from Otterbein and abroad.