Haley Bernardo '23 Awarded the Rick Pitino Presidential Medal Scholarship

Haley Bernardo 23

The Rick Pitino Presidential Medal Scholarship is awarded to one student annually; the student must be a Massachusetts resident and enrolled in the Commonwealth Honors College at UMass Amherst. Rick Pitino is Head Coach of basketball at the University of Louisville and has coached at Boston University, Providence College, and the University of Kentucky. Pitino holds the distinction of being the only men's coach in NCAA history to lead three different schools (Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville) to a Final Four and the only coach in the NCAA to lead two different schools to an NCAA National Championship (Kentucky and Louisville). In 2013, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. As a student at UMass Amherst from 1971-1974, Pitino played guard for the Minutemen.

Haley Bernardo, class of 2023, is pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in Pre-Veterinary Science. Haley is from Hopkinton, MA and plans to attend veterinary school and become a small animal surgeon. In her sophomore year at UMass Haley was selected for early acceptance at Cummings school of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.

Through high school and to the present, Haley has been working at the Southborough Veterinary Hospital as a veterinary assistant. She has also worked at Massachusetts General Hospital as an animal care intern, New England Wildlife Center as a veterinary intern and volunteered at the Northborough Canine Rehabilitation and Fitness Center. 

For the second semester of her junior year, Haley studied abroad in Valencia, Spain and interned in a marine biology lab. 

Haley has worked in the Gerson Lab at UMass since her freshman year. The Gerson Lab studies avian migration physiology and avian energetics. Haley is currently working on her thesis studying the influence of sex and morph on the usage of endogenous fuels during migration in White-throated Sparrows. 

Haley is also a member of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority, the Animal Science and Pre-Vet club, and the UMass Ski and Board club.