Vanessa Volpe: The Scholar

In the humanities, an opus is a singular work of art tied to a specific genius — think Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony," Homer's "Iliad," Dante's "Inferno." But Steinhardt senior Vanessa Volpe is a psychology major, and her OPUS, she hopes, will be a platform for the work of many others.
Volpe is the founder and editor-in-chief of OPUS, the Online Publication of Undergraduate Studies.

"I wanted to be a psychology major because I was really interested in identity — how people come to understand who they are and what they want in life," she said.

Cognition, though, was not where she wanted her studies to end. After a concerted look, Volpe found a connection with programs in Steinhardt and decided to refocus her concentration.

"I realized that I wanted to study psychology in context," she said. "It's more culture context and for me — identity."

Volpe came up with the concept for OPUS in the summer between her sophomore and junior years. She wanted to create a new platform for students to publish their works on psychology at the undergraduate level.

"I called my mom up one day with the idea and suddenly it just happened," she said, reflecting on how she began the publication. "People don't realize that people will listen to you. You just got to do it and push through all of the red tape."

Launching the first issue was fraught with challenges. Volpe, along with two colleagues, drafted multiple proposals for review, worked with department heads and a legal team to gain recognition and go to print. OPUS has become a self-sustaining journal, with dozens of writers submitting pieces for publication each year.

In addition to managing the publication, Volpe also founded Inside SCOOP, a mentoring program for NYU psychology students.

"I had the idea after one of our applied psych programs," she said, "It's such a small program and there's a lot of things I didn't know while coming to NYU, a lot of things about the program, a lot of things about psychology that I wish I had known and so I talked to a few of my friends, again, and we founded Inside SCOOP."

Volpe is not just dedicated to OPUS and Inside SCOOP for academic reasons. A dancer for 15 years and the daughter of a sculptor, she has a natural inclination and passion for expression.

"There's such different ways of expressing and for me it's all about identity and how to express things," Volpe said, also noting that she had taught her own slam poetry class and was a photography teaching assistant.

She had also worked with various publishing companies, and when she shifted her major to psychology, producing a publication seemed natural.

"It was really cool to combine the two in my opinion," she said. "I think that the fact that people are paying more and more attention to it, the pay off is huge for the students."

As she finishes her honors theses and readies applications for graduate school, Volpe's push to empower those around her is still ever present.

"I just want to tell people that there is so much you can get out of college and so much you can do."