Keira Cook ’26

The Coleman Family Fund Scholarship has allowed Keira Cook to create her own academic path in both neuroscience and law. The scholarship is awarded to undergraduate legal studies students based on financial need and academic excellence.

Keira began her UMass Amherst journey as a legal studies major. She soon discovered that she had enough time to explore new subjects and expand her knowledge base. She pursued her interest in neuroscience, choosing the Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration (BDIC) program, where students can combine aspects of multiple disciplines.

“Through the BDIC program, I was able to harness my individual interests and put them into this specific major,” she says. “It gave me a lot of exposure to different things that I had always wanted to explore.”

Inspired by her time working as a pharmacy technician, Keira is considering a career in patent or drug law. She first earned the scholarship while working in the sciences, where she focused on drug discovery and biology research.

“The scholarship gave me the opportunity to dive into research,” Keira says. “It allowed me to sharpen my focus as an academic and provided me with the research materials in the lab.”

The second time she applied for the Coleman Scholarship was for an unpaid internship. Through her legal studies classes, she met Judge Gross, then the leading justice on the drug court in Springfield. Keira was interested in the psychology of the criminal justice system.

“The drug court was a big interest of mine in terms of how we used things like neuroscience and psychology-based concepts to better support people in our court system,” she explains. “The drug court works with the judges, the probation officers, with community partners, to help participants rehabilitate rather than to put them just back in jail.” The Coleman scholarship was crucial to gaining this experience.

“As a low-income student, it’s hard to devote hours to something unpaid,” Keira says. “Coleman gave me the opportunity to dive into these topics and see things in real life.”

The communities Keira worked with through that court system have many participants whose primary language is Spanish. She applied for a Gilman scholarship through the U.S. State Department and traveled to Spain this past summer to take intensive Spanish language courses.

“None of these things would be possible for me without the scholarships because I would have to work to pay for school,” Keira says. “These scholarships granted me equal access.”

Keira also worked in the student government for three years, first, as a senator, then a conduct advisor, helping peers navigate UMass disciplinary systems. She then worked as attorney general for about a year and ran that office.