Giving Thanks: Scholarship Helps Triple-Majoring Student Researching the Effects Music Has on Human Behavior

This holiday season, members of our Fulbright College Family are sharing expressions of gratitude, letters of thanks and their appreciation for those who have helped make their educational journey possible. 

Meet Lucas Bellaiche, who thanks to the David E. Johnson and Wilda S. McMurry Endowed Scholarship, is one step closer to his dream career as a music-psychologist researcher, studying the effect music has on human psychology, behaviorisms and mental health.

David E. Johnson and Wilda S. McMurry Endowed Scholarship Recipient Lucas Bellaiche

Hometown: Fayetteville, Arkansas
Graduation: 2021
Major(s)/Minor(s): Triple majoring in Math (Statistics), Music and Psychology
Activities/Interests: My activities and interests include music (performance in saxophone and piano, research in music-psychology fields, and creating music in music software), mathematics, psychology, tennis, and traveling across the world.
Career Aspirations: I hope to be a music-psychologist researcher, studying the effect music has on human psychology, behaviorisms, and mental health across the world. I hope to use my mathematics degree as a statistical support for these studies, ensuring high-quality research. Further along my career, I see myself working at companies like Spotify, Shazam, or Google, applying real-world uses of these studies to programs focused on data analysis of music features (another use of the mathematics studies).

In his own words:

Dear Ms. McMurry,

I cannot express enough gratitude and appreciation for your very generous gift towards my academic studies. This award helps me propel into my future with the dreams I hold, giving me support for studying what I truly want to study.

My name is Lucas Bellaiche, and I am now a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas (my hometown).

I am currently a triple major in Mathematics (with an emphasis in Statistics), Music (Saxophone), and Psychology, pursuing honors in these degrees.

As seemingly-odd of a collection of subjects this seems, I hope to combine all three: I am currently studying music-psychology, analyzing the amazing effects that music, simple strings of sounds organized in some fashion, has on the human brain and psychology.

My statistics major intends to support the testing and analysis of reliable data from this research field, which has already proven to have incredible results: in one case study, music has helped a man with movement disorders walk again, while another man with Alzheimer’s could not remember his family member’s names, but could remember the lyrics to his favorite song decades ago.

This is this kind of research I hope to pursue.

After my undergraduate years, I hope to attend graduate school to pursue a master’s or doctoral degree in this field, all while traveling the world and studying how music and its effects changes across cultures.

As a career, I hope to either become a professor in this field, with an emphasis in statistical analysis, or work in major companies like Google, Spotify, or medical companies that track music information and provide real applications to society.

As you may know, tuition for one major is often difficult for young students like myself; you could imagine the cost of three majors. Your extremely generous gift lets me study the classes and subjects I am eager to learn and apply to my future career.

Every cent of your award goes towards my tuition costs, and for that I cannot thank you enough. I now have the ability to take more classes, learn more, and apply more to my future. You have truly aided in paving a road for my future.

Again, my family and I thank you so very much for this gracious gift. It is these kinds of awards that provide inspiration and motivation for students to follow their academic desires.

Thank you so much,

Lucas Bellaiche

For more information about the David E. Johnson and Wilda S. McMurry Endowed Scholarship, or to make a year-end gift to support it, please give online now, or contact Fulbright College’s Office of Development and External Relations at 479-575-3712 or email fulbright@uark.edu.