At Muhlenberg, Benjamin Liebov, Ph.D. ’11 took a beginner jazz-tap dance class, a class in printmaking, a 200-level political science course called Utopia and Its Critics, and guitar lessons. He studied abroad in Spain. He came in wanting to be a pre-med music major — “I really wanted to go to med school, and I thought having an oddball major would help me get in,” he says — but he ultimately landed on a dual degree in chemistry and English. Still, he never stopped exploring, and there are still classes he wishes he’d had time in his schedule to take.
“I’ve never been an exceptional, straight-A student, but I just love to learn,” says Liebov, who’s now a market access writer for the pharmaceutical consulting company Evidera. “I knew I was only going to be at Muhlenberg for a short period of time. I wanted to soak in as much as I could.”
As a first-year student, he took an EMT course atop a full course load in order to join Muhlenberg EMS and quickly discerned that medicine was not for him: “It nearly killed me,” he says. “I was so stressed out.” He also didn’t love biology, but he found a passion for a subject that strikes fear into the hearts of many students.
“I have never loved a class the way I loved organic chemistry. Organic chemistry was one of my favorite classes in all of college. It was the first time in my life that something came naturally to me.”
—Benjamin Liebov, Ph.D. ’11
“I have never loved a class the way I loved organic chemistry,” says Liebov, whose English major came about just because he kept finding classes that sounded interesting and taking them. “Organic chemistry was one of my favorite classes in all of college. It was the first time in my life that something came naturally to me.”
He conducted summer research with Professor of Chemistry Joseph Keane and ultimately chose to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Virginia, studying under the same mentor Keane had. He missed the variety he’d enjoyed at Muhlenberg and found ways to create it himself, taking an extracurricular drawing class and getting into triathlons.
His path since grad school has been a winding one — “when you start out your career nowadays, it’s very unlikely that’s where you’re going to end up,” he says — but after trying out various research, project management, and writing roles, he found his current position in 2023.
“My job now is a nice balance,” he says. “I can be creative, but I’m still using my scientific background.”
In his free time, Liebov writes science fiction and fantasy for fun. He credits his time at Muhlenberg for providing a strong starting place for where he is now.
“Muhlenberg was a safe place to write badly and learn from it. It made me less afraid to make mistakes,” he says. “And it really developed the chemistry side of things — Muhlenberg was a good foundation that left me ready to go learn more.”
