Renee Sandoval: The science of creativity

Languages of creativity

From her earliest memories in New Berlin, Sandoval has always possessed a creative spirit: reading, drawing, making music — and even writing science fiction since she was 5 years old.

“I felt just like an idea factory. So many things would pop up, I’d start writing it and get a whole plot outline and just build worlds,” Sandoval says.

As a teenager, Sandoval’s self-expression took a European turn, when French became more than a creative outlet du jour. She took classes for six years and entered UW-Eau Claire with her French major nearly complete.

She convinced herself she would major in English, too, or music, because of her love affairs with arts and languages. But during the last years of high school, Sandoval’s evergreen spirit of open inquiry grew toward the sciences. She took Advanced Placement Environmental Science during her senior year, and she describes the “click” of realizing how important sustainable science would be to her future.

“It's kind of corny, but I kind of just felt like, oh, this is what I want to do with my life, contribute to science that helps sustain our planet.”

Sandoval enrolled in UW-Eau Claire as an environmental biology major, but — little surprise — soon fell more specifically for the art and science of composition: chemistry. With a double major in chemistry and French and a certificate in Chinese, Sandoval seems to have found the global language of creativity.

Making music: Blugold Marching Band and the Blugold Fellowship

Although science became Sandoval’s trade, no love was lost between her and the arts.

“I always loved band and music, and I feel like marching band is the coolest thing ever. It just hits you in the face, and it’s one of my favorite art forms. It’s physical and artistic.”

Selecting UW-Eau Claire was a relatively simple decision, she says, when she heard the Blugold Marching Band at a conference in St. Louis, Missouri. Still in high school at the time, Sandoval knew this was her future marching band.

Sandoval now serves as a rank lieutenant and social media coordinator for the mellophone section. She is grateful for the opportunity to help further the reach of the organization that first captured her spirit, and she plans to continue with the BMB for the remainder of college.

Science, though, has never been far behind in the race for Sandoval’s creative affections. She received an offer to join the Blugold Fellowship, an opportunity for first-year students to collaborate on paid faculty-student research.

She explored many science-related projects but eventually settled on a biochemistry project with Dr. Bridget McGivern, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry. It had just begun, and Sandoval recalls the exhilarating feeling of joining and helping to create something new.

"I became one of the first people on her research team, which was really, really cool. As a freshman, I was like, ‘Whoa.’ The first semester was us both figuring out the research student and mentor thing together, and I learned a lot.”

Their work grew quickly, due in part to Sandoval’s intellectual curiosity. She consumed every piece of critical literature, learned to code in the programming language R, processed microbiological data on the university's supercomputer and began to study the art of scientific storytelling.

Sandoval now partners with four other students, one of whom she now mentors, and this spring will present at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research and give a talk at UW-Eau Claire's Celebration of Excellence in Research and Creative Activity.

And none of this, Sandoval insists, would have been possible without the careful mentorship of McGivern, whose guidance and constant push is helping Sandoval flourish as an artist in this new scientific medium.

Honors: Where art and science collide

The Cosby Honors College, which Sandoval joined during her first semester at UW-Eau Claire, encapsulates her competing curiosities. In-major classes, as Sandoval details, allow her to dig deeper and more narrowly into the fields of her future profession. Honors classes, however, are where she discovers intersections she never knew existed, and where her ranging creativities feel most “at home.”

“Going through discussions, I realized that the community is super strong. [...] The interdisciplinary piece, I feel like, has been the most influential in how I think about other coursework. Obviously, I study language and science, which are pretty different, but if you start thinking about the intersections, those can be really interesting.”

Among other fond honors college memories, like the class on post-apocalyptic fiction taught by honors college director Dr. Heather Fielding, Sandoval mentions volunteering for "The Amazing Eau Claire Clean-Up" in spring 2025. The event, organized by the student-led honors leadership organization Honors Student Council, was an effort to clean up campus grounds.

The honors college also led Sandoval to wider national efforts, including a role as an associate editor for the National Collegiate Honors Council’s Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity Sandoval holds this position and represents UW-Eau Claire, collaborating with peers nationwide to read, edit and eventually publish the journal’s 10th anniversary edition of undergraduate research.

During her trip to Montana for an NCHC meeting, Sandoval felt more connected to her honors college training than ever before. She was surrounded by scholars from different fields and academic interests, discussing openly shared ideas and finding among one another mutual understanding and common ground.

“We would sit and talk about one little thing that we all read, and we could just go on and on and on about it. I was like, ‘Who are these people? We’re so crazy!’ It was really cool because I wanted to go on about it, and so did everybody else.”

Although her time at UW-Eau Claire is less than halfway complete, Sandoval is already preparing for graduate school and a future in an environmental science industry — to continue, as her life’s work, that rare art of interdisciplinary connection.

Written by Zoe Eineichner, a third-year junior at UW-Eau Claire double-majoring in psychology and organizational communication and pursuing a graduate degree in industrial-organizational psychology. Her hometown is Mukwonago.