A native of Fort Collins, Myanne Hamm is a tall, gregarious CSU student. She has a captivating smile and a friendly personality, able to talk with anyone.

“I grew up with CSU. I came for summer camp, sports camp, and played tournaments here in high school,” says the guard/forward for the women’s basketball team. “When I got recruited to play for the women’s basketball team I became excited to call it my college.”

Hamm’s excitement for CSU is not only evident on the basketball court, but also in the classroom and in the many extracurricular activities she’s taken advantage of as a student at CSU.

As a first-year student, Hamm was a member of the KEY sports community, a first-year learning community designed to assist students with their transition to and through the university, and it was through a class the community took together – Contemporary Race-Ethnic Relations from the sociology department – that Hamm discovered her academic interest: communications. Initially a food science major who wanted to be a dietician, Hamm says, “It [the class] made me realize that there were other majors and areas of study besides food science. I started taking more sociology, communications, and ethnic studies courses and really found my place.”

That place, with a major in communication studies and a minor in ethnic studies within the College of Liberal Arts, has shown Hamm the value of the skills and knowledge one learns in liberal arts classes. “Being exposed to the potential of communications, realizing how much room I had to explore, I realized that my degree will apply to everything. Whether I do something in the health world, engineering, or agriculture, there is always a need for someone to help communicate ideas,” she says.

Hamm isn’t waiting for graduation to apply those communication skills; she’s using them now on campus, on the court, and in her extracurricular activities. Hamm is a Student-Athlete Committee representative for basketball, providing a voice for student-athletes when it comes to NCAA regulations. She’s also a member of PMSAC, President’s Multicultural Student Advisory Committee, which has representatives from the different cultural centers on campus. “We talk about things like how to prepare for the “culture is not a costume” campaign at Halloween and how to make the stadium accessible to all people,” she says. She is a KEY community mentor for 20 first-year students and she’s had several internships on campus, including one in the Advancement office where she wrote feature articles about students who received first-generation scholarships.

The college junior continues to stay active on and off the court. “I learned early on to take every opportunity that came my way,” she says. “This mentality has changed my college career. I’ve taken classes I would never have taken and met so many people I wouldn’t have had the chance to become friends with.”

Green & Global: CSU Student-Athletes on a service trip in Jamaica, Summer 2017

CSU athletes volunteered with AOC, Association of Clubs, in Jamaica where they completed service projects like community clean-up, cultural exchanges, and education. Myanna Hamm, our Student Spotlight feature, participated in the trip.