A fresh start leads to finding his people

After transferring to Wright State, biological sciences major Landon Perry found his community, excelled academically and became a peer mentor helping other students succeed. (Photos by Erin Pence)

Landon Perry began at a university where lecture halls routinely held 300 or more students, and he felt like one more face in a system that did not know his name. The paperwork felt just as impersonal, and just as confusing.

By the end of his first semester, he was on pace to eclipse $20,000 in debt for one year — a steep price for Perry, who is the first in his family to attend college.

Then a friend attending Wright State told him something he couldn’t ignore: After scholarships and financial aid, she was paying about $1,000 out of pocket for an entire semester. Perry took a close look at transferring and made a decision.

“For my past three semesters here at Wright State, I’ve only paid $6,000 total out of pocket — less than what I paid for one semester at my last school,” Perry said.

He became a Raider in the summer of 2025 and did what he had learned growing up in Rossburg, Ohio, a village of about 150 people with a volunteer fire department, a church and a bar: he showed up.

Since arriving, Perry has started most mornings at the Center for Health Professions before 6 a.m. — studying, helping classmates map out schedules, prepping friends for finals. He was not assigned to be there. He kept showing up.

“If you want to be seen, you have to make yourself seen,” Perry said.

And with the financial pressure eased, Perry found that he was also able to get more involved in campus life, joining the Anatomy and Physiology Club, Biology Club, Compassion in Action, Hand to Hunger and Pre-Health Society.

“At Wright State, you find your people — people who align with what you care about.”

The involvement did not go unnoticed. This past year, Perry was inducted into Tau Sigma, the national honor society for transfer students, and selected for the Dean’s Circle. The acting director of the Center for Health Professions, Alycia Ketter, also asked him to apply to become a paid peer mentor.

Landon Perry regularly arrives at the Center for Health Professions before 6 a.m. to study and help classmates map out schedules and prepare for finals.

“Landon is the kind of student you notice because he doesn’t just look for opportunities for himself — he looks for ways to contribute and help the people around him,” said Ketter.

Perry is now a junior majoring in biological sciences, minoring in psychology and pursuing the pre-medicine track, weighing careers in dermatology or plastic surgery — fields he’s quick to defend against assumptions.

“There’s so much more to plastics and dermatology than Botox,” he said, crediting an unlikely source for his career aspirations: watching “Dr. Pimple Popper” with his uncle, and seeing the look on a patient’s face when they left more confident than they arrived.

He has also become, by his own account, the person who makes sure others do not feel overlooked — a role he’s grown into naturally as a peer mentor.

“At Wright State, you find your people — people who align with what you care about,” he said.