Leading the Way

Brianna Muncy ’18 hails from a small town in northern New York. Her high school graduating class was 30 students.

“It’s pretty slow pace,” she said, of Copenhagen, N.Y., a town nestled on the sparsely populated Tug Hill Plateau region. The town boasts a significantly higher annual snowfall amount than Oswego, and, in 2015, it received international attention as America’s snowiest town.

Muncy isn’t fazed by the designation. While her Oswego classmates marvel at lakeside snowfall amounts, it’s just life as usual in Copenhagen, where Muncy played sports and earned the salutatorian spot before choosing SUNY Oswego as her college.

The business administration major—who plans to add a second major in applied mathematics—is the recipient of a number of scholarships to support both her short-term and long-term goals. She’s starting a softball club on campus, and she hopes to pursue a career as an actuary, or possibly in pharmaceuticals.

Muncy is the 2016-2017 recipient of the Timothy ’02 and Andrea Barnhart Emerging Leaders Scholarship, as well as a SUNY Oswego Presidential Scholarship. She is also the recipient of a prestigious national World Association Advancing Cooperative & Work-Integrated Education (WACE) Scholarship, for which she will take part in a co-op in 2016-17.

Active in hall council, Math Club, intramural sports and charitable events for underprivileged children, Muncy sees leadership as a quality that is both admirable and accessible.

“I think a leader is someone people can look up to and can take guidance from,” she said. “But a leader can also be a follower; it’s not always someone in charge or with power. It’s someone who always does the right thing, no matter what.”