Commencement Issue

VOLUME CXLVI COMMENCEMENT EDITION

FRIDAY, M AY 19, 2017

AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS

COMMENCEMENT CXCVI

Photo by Spencer Quong ’18

THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

Schedule Events of

FRIDAY, MAY 19 - SUNDAY, MAY 21

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

1 p.m.-9 p.m.

Check-In Alumni House

8:30 a.m.-7 p.m.

Check-In Alumni House

5 p.m.

Commencement Rehearsal Main Quadrangle (Johnson Chapel in case of rain)

9 a.m.

Phi Beta Kappa Meeting Stirn Auditorium 10 a.m.

Baccalaureate Celebration Johnson Chapel 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.

Conversations with Honored Guests See College Website 12:30 p.m.-2 p.m.

Luncheon Valentine Quadrangle

1 p.m.

Sigma Xi Meeting Lewis-Sebring Dining Commons 2 p.m.-3 p.m.

Conversations with Honored Guests See College Website 3:15 p.m.-4:15 p.m.

Conversations with Honored Guests See College Website

SUNDAY 8 a.m.-3 p.m.

Reception Center Open Alumni House 10 a.m.

The 196th Commencement Main Quadrangle 12:30 p.m.-2 p.m.

Luncheon Valentine Quadrangle

4:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

President’s Reception Garden of the President’s House 9:15 p.m.

Choral Society Concert Buckley Recital Hall, Arms Music Center

STAFF EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Drew Kiley, Jingwen Zhang HEAD PUBLISHER Emily Ratte EDITORS Justin Barry, Gabby Bishop, Megan Do, Paola GarciaPrieto, Julia Pretsfelder, Julia Turner, Nate Quigley, Spencer Quong CONTRIBUTORS Shawna Chen, Kelly Chian, Claire Dennis, Ariana Lee, Brandon Medina, Veronica Rocco, Mark Simonitis, Emma Swislow, Isabel Tessier PHOTOGRAPHERS Julia Pretsfelder, Spencer Quong

2 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

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Table of Contents SENIOR PROFILES

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Lola Fadulu A Writer with a Sincere Voice and Critical Eye Minjee Kim Scientist Leaves Impact Beyond the Lab Bench Amir Hall Becoming a Writer, Valuing Vulnerability Karen Blake AAS President Makes Students Feel at Home Ali Doswell Queen of the Court and Quantitative Thought Siraj Sindhu Walking Along Amherst’s Alternate Paths Sophie Murguia An Ethical Thinker Dedicated to the Press Yen Nhi Truong Vu A Mathematician with a Penchant for People Ruben Valera RC and EMT Brings Heart to Neuroscience Lauren Tuiskula A Writer and Softball Star Evolving at Amherst Niyi Odewade Aspiring Doctor Keeps Focus on Community Tomal Hossain A Musician Drawing from Diverse Influences Bonnie Drake Drake Takes Amherst with Drive and Style Anthony Spina Outfielder Leads with Enthusiam and Faith Chico Kosber At the Intersection of Economics and Medicine

OTHER CONTENT PAGE

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8

28

The Year in News

Fellowships and Scholarships

Honorary Degrees

The Year in Sports

4

6

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May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 3

The Year in News

←

Acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke at the college on Sept. 13.

Coates was the first of several prominent figures to visit the college this year.

→

Members of the college community protested President Trump’s proposed immigration policy on Nov. 16. Student-led demonstrations through the second semester continued to show dissatisfaction with the new administration.

SEPTEMBER Students moved into the newly built Greenway dormitories in the fall. Construction of the four-building complex finished over the summer, during which the social dorms were torn down to make way for the new science center, which is scheduled for completion before Fall 2018. The new dorms were built with several key sustainability features, including rainwater harvesting and radiant heating. In addition, they were built with beach volleyball and basketball courts, an event space, a demonstration kitchen and a small outdoor amphitheater.

Norm Jones, the college’s new Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, began his first semester at Amherst. Jones’s selection, which President Biddy Martin announced to the college community in an email over the summer, came after a nearly yearlong search following the resignation of the previous chief diversity and inclusion officer. Prior to coming to Amherst, Jones was the associate chief diversity officer and creator of an office of diversity and inclusion at Harvard.

Award-winning writer and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates gave a talk titled “Race in America” on Sept. 13. LeFrak Gymnasium was filled to capacity with students, faculty, staff and members of the community who had turned out to hear the 2015 MacArthur Fellow and National Book Award winner speak. Coates read an excerpt from his book, discussed his experiences as a black person in America and participated in a Q&A session after his speech.

The college’s career center received a seven-figure gift from Michael Loeb ’77. It was renamed the Loeb Center for Career Exploration and Planning on Sept. 14. The exact amount of the gift to the center – which is heavily reliant on donations and gifts – was not disclosed.

OCTOBER Five political journalists on the campaign trail participated in a panel discussion on Oct. 6 in Johnson Chapel. Julia Ioffe from Politico, Abby Phillip from The Washington Post, Jessica Taylor from NPR and Byron Tau from The Wall Street Journal, with moderator Tim Murphy from Mother Jones, discussed the unusual politics of the 2016 election, broader changes in the United States and their experiences in political journalism.

NOVEMBER Hundreds of students participated in a walkout on Nov. 16 in protest of President Donald Trump’s promise to “deport all criminal aliens.” The protesters aimed to declare the college a sanctuary campus and were joined by some faculty and staff on the steps of Converse Hall. The protest’s organizers presented

Photos courtesy of Takudzwa Tapfuma ’17

Martin, who was present at the demonstration, with a list of demands and requests, including for the school to refuse voluntary sharing of records and documents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to continue supporting the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and to prohibit campus police from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status or working with ICE and other policing agencies.

Martin responded to the demands in an email to the college community on Nov. 20, writing that the college “will do everything [it] can within the limits of the law to support them and fulfill our promise of educational opportunity.”

DECEMBER The college launched an investigation of the men’s cross country team after student-run magazine The Indicator reported that several members had exchanged multiple emails with explicit and derogatory comments about female students. The Indicator also published an editorial condemning the team’s actions and calling for an examination of athletic spaces on campus. After the investigation concluded, the team was placed on athletics probation until the fall of 2018, and certain members were suspended for varying lengths of time or removed from the team.

JANUARY The college released a report on athletics at Amherst, the first of its kind since the 2004 Diver Report. The committee that conducted the examination was comprised of administrators, faculty, staff and students. The investigation emphasized several major divisions and distinctions between athletes and non-athletes in diversity, socioeconomic status, social life and field of academic study. The report recommended that the number of athletes at the college be reduced, or at the very least not increased.

Former Florida governor and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush visited the college on Jan. 31. Bush, who is now the chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, addressed issues such as immigration and education reform. The talk was followed by questions from audience members in a packed Johnson Chapel, covering topics such as Bush’s unsuccessful presidential primary campaign and the protection of voting rights.

FEBRUARY To protest President Trump’s executive order restricting nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., students organized a walkout and march on Feb. 1. In front of Converse Hall, student organizers demanded that the college pub-

CONGRATULATIONS INDUCTEES

ΦΒΚ

The following students of the class of 2017 have been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa for their show of academic excellence, based on their cumulative grade point average. Asterisks indicate nomination at the end of junior year.

4 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

Megan Adamo Christopher Baldi Brian Beaty Fraser Binns Katherine Bres Wai Cheung Chan Samuel Chen Matthew Choi Sophie Chung Aaron Cooper-Lob Kenton Eliot Siyu Feng Liam Fine

Rosemary Frehe Jamie Gracie Yvonne Green Kimberly Greenberg Noël Grisanti Camille Herzog Cassandra Hradil Khishigsuren Jargalsaikhan Caleb Ki Ayoung Kim Sun Jae Kim Caroline Kinsley Lindy Labriola

David Lane Terry Lee Hutomo Limanto Victoria Luizzi * Caroline Magee Brennan Marsh-Armstrong Emily Masten Paul McClean Kathryn McHenry Sophie Murguia Ji Hong Park * Amanda Patsis Mitchell Skiles

Sarah Smith Myles Tang Wanjing Tang Yen Nhi Truong Vu Katerina Von Campe Corry Wang Kate Wyeth Qi Xie Zachary Yanes Fanhao Yang Yi Zhou

←

After a vote in the end of March that involved over 9000 participants, the Mammoth came out on top as the college’s first-ever official mascot. A display of a mammoth dominates the space on the first floor of the Beneski Museum of Natural History.

→

Students moved into the Greenways, the newest residence halls on campus, this fall. The Greenway buildings were largely constructed last year and finished this summer.

Photo by Isabel Tessier ’19

licly denounce the executive order, provide legal and material support to those affected by the ban and fix the perceived shortcomings of the International Students Office. Martin emerged from Converse and said that she condemned the executive order, but added that she believed the crowd’s anger toward the college’s administration was aimed at the wrong target.

The Amherst Student reported on a new housing policy for the upcoming year that designated most rooms on campus specifically for male students or specifically for female students, which received backlash from students who criticized the change as sudden, lacking transparency and restrictive, as well as potentially discriminatory toward transgender students. After students expressed their discontent via social media and emails to administrators, the policy was withdrawn.

MARCH President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Cornell Brooks spoke at the college on March 24. Brooks discussed

contemporary challenges that marginalized groups face and the need for a multigenerational social justice movement before taking questions from the large crowd that came to hear him speak in Johnson Chapel.

A committee of five Latin American studies professors submitted a proposal for a new major in Latinx and Latin American Studies (LLAS) to the Committee on Educational Policy on March 25. The proposal is currently under review, and if approved, will go on to the Committee of Six and the Committee of the Faculty. If ultimately accepted, the major will be offered beginning in Fall 2018, allowing students to receive major credit and recognition for courses offered in academic departments relating to Latino and Latin American studies.

APRIL The Mammoth became Amherst College’s first official mascot. The decision, based on the results of a vote held in March in which 9,260 students, faculty, staff and alumni participated, was officially announced on April 3.

Photo by Spencer Quong ‘18

It marked the end of a six-month mascot selection process after the ouster of unofficial Lord Jeff mascot last year.

The college’s academic curriculum will experience two major changes and is under review for several more. On April 4, the faculty voted to pass a proposal to relax official policy about extensions and make-up exams during finals period and another proposal that will extend the “Freshman Drop” policy to allow first years, sophomores and juniors to drop a class without penalty. Other changes that are being discussed include offering minors, making changes to the First-Year Seminar program and giving additional credits for time-consuming courses such as lab classes.

The controversial AAS presidential election, which involved a runoff vote between two final candidates, ended on April 12 with Aditi Krishnamurthy ’18 narrowly beating out rival Phillip Yan ’18 by a twovote margin. After the initial vote, complaints were filed against Yan and another candidate, Will Jackson ’18, regarding their violation of an article of the AAS constitution that prohibited

campaigning for or posting information about the election “within reasonable view of a public Amherst College computer.” The complaints were deemed invalid by the Judiciary Council, but not before Yan challenged the validity of the complaints and alleged that Paul Gramieri ’17 had filed the complaints on Krishnamurthy’s behalf. Yan questioned Gramieri’s motivations since Krishnamurthy was the only one unaffected by the complaints. Krishamurthy denied discussing filing the complaint with Gramieri and rejected accusations of collusion, while Gramieri also denied the allegations.

Vince Staples and Tritonal took the stage at this year’s Spring Concert on April 22. Vince Staples is a rapper from Long Beach, CA, most known for his singles “Norf Norf ” and “Lift Me Up.” Tritonal is a producer and DJ duo from Austin with members Chad Cisneros and David Reed. They have played at major festivals and collaborated with other well-known electronic and dance acts. Tritonal opened the show, which was free for Amherst students, in LeFrak Gymnasium, while Staples followed him as the headliner.

Crimes (and Criminals) of the Year Aug. 11, 2016 3:58 a.m., McGuire Life Sciences Building Officers and the fire department responded to an alarm and found it was caused by excessive humidity in an entry way.

Sep 10, 2016 9:53 p.m., The Lord Jeffery Inn A parent called from Colorado after their daughter complained about loud music.

An officer discovered the music was coming from a registered event at the Lord Jeffery Inn. Sept. 17, 2016 2:35 p.m., Campus Grounds Officers responded to a report of a small fire in bark mulch near Webster Hall. It was extinguished.

Sept. 20, 2016 8:26 a.m., Mill Lane An employee of the Book & Plow Farm reported the theft of an electric fence charger valued at $180.

Oct. 2, 2016 2:47 p.m., Jenkins Dormitory A resident reported the theft of a mounted boar head. It is valued at $200.

Oct. 17, 2016 12:30 a.m., College Street An officer responded to a report of five people standing on College Street yelling.

Upon arrival, several students were found on the sidewalk and they apologized for their actions.

Oct. 22, 2016 1:43 a.m., Lipton House An officer investigated a report of food found strewn around in a basement room and three holes made in the walls.

A registered party had just ended. A report was filed with Student Affairs.

Nov. 6, 2016 2:07 a.m., Seelye House While in Seelye an officer discovered that an excessive amount of alcohol, including hard alcohol, had been available at a registered party in violation of the party policy. Cake was also splattered on the kitchen wall. Student Affairs was notified.

Nov. 8, 2016 1:21 p.m., Pratt Field An officer responded to a report of approximately 20 “youngsters” roaming around Pratt Field. They were gone when the officer checked the area.

of the Evergreens museum was issued a “no trespass” order.

Nov. 30, 2016 12:45 a.m., North Dormitory While in the area of North dormitory, an officer encountered an unclothed male outside the building. The male was identified as a student and the matter was referred to Student Affairs.

Dec. 11, 2016 7:48 a.m., Seelye House An officer investigated vandalism to a restroom stall door, which had been torn off.

Dec. 18, 2016 12:53 a.m., Memorial Hill A group of people sledding on Memorial Hill was advised that the activity was prohibited.

Nov. 12, 2016 6:37 p.m., Jenkins Dormitory While outside of Jenkins, an officer heard the sound of furniture being smashed. The activity was found in a first-floor suite, where three students were engaged in smashing a chair. They were identified and the Student Affairs office was notified.

Jan. 30, 2017 11:17 a.m., Hitchcock House A student reported that her black North Face parka, valued at $350, was stolen during a party at Hitchcock. She also discovered that her college ID, which was in the pocket of the parka, had been fraudulently used: nearly $50 was charged to her account at a vending machine. After an investigation, the responsible person was identified. Restitution was made and the matter was referred to Student Affairs.

Nov. 25, 2016 11:16 a.m., The Evergreens A person found sleeping on the grounds

Feb. 6, 2017 3:08 p.m., Mill Lane An employee reported that a vehicle

had damaged a field of carrots.

shut down and people cleared out.

Feb. 22, 2017 3:20 p.m., Valentine Dining Hall A student reported the theft of a new pair of pants left in a bag in the coat room.

They were purchased that day for $40.

The investigating officer identified the person who took the pants.

Apr. 2, 2017 1:28 p.m., Humphries House A student reported the theft of his wallet from his pants, which were left unattended in a stairway.

Feb. 26, 2017 12:11 a.m., Valentine Dining Hall An officer investigated a report that the east roll-up gate at the Dining Hall was open. An officer secured the gate, and after reviewing a video record, found that seven people had entered after opening the gate about an hour earlier. No one was found inside.

Mar. 14, 2017 03:19 a.m., Greenway Building B A resident reported an unknown female entered his suite, urinated on the floor and then went to sleep in a vacant bed.

The responding officers identified the woman, who had been drinking, and assisted her back to her room.

Apr. 2, 2017 12:17 a.m., Humphries House A party sponsor requested assistance in shutting down a registered party. Upon arrival, officers located approximately 600 people. During this time a town resident complained about the event and someone pulled a fire alarm station for no reason.

After considerable effort, the event was

Apr. 14, 2017 5:31 p.m., Quadrangle A caller reported a group of people on the main quad, including one person who was spraying alcohol from a bottle. An officer located the group and found the person with the bottle was of legal age and had sprayed the alcohol as a celebratory act.

Apr. 22, 2017 6:35 a.m., Greenway Building D A caller reported an unknown male asleep in their dorm room. The male had apparently entered the room earlier in the night through an unlocked door. Officers identified the man as a visitor. He was transported to his host’s room in Morris Pratt.

Apr. 22, 2017 9:20 p.m., Greenway Building A Officers and the fire department responded to a report of people stuck inside an elevator. They were released.

Apr. 23, 2017 12:11 p.m., Jenkins Dormitory A student reported the theft of an iPhone from a suite. It was found later in a trash bin.

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 5

Fulbright & Watson Scholars Fulbrights CLARQUE BROWN Clarque Brown will spend her year on the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in South Korea. Brown brings extensive language learning and teaching experience to her ETA. She speaks Spanish and French and is learning Korean and Chinese, and she has taught English in both China and France. Her previous work experience has enabled her to hone her teachings skills — she has practice crafting les-

son plans with pedagogical research in mind, while still keeping the class environment comfortable and fun. Beyond Brown’s has sharp technical skills, however, her underlying motivation, however, is to find sites of cross-cultural connection.

Her curiosity about Korean culture stems from her close friendships with Korean students at Amherst, and she hopes to engage with the Korean Christian community and study classical Korean voice performance. As she writes in her application, “What I will discover under all those lovely layers of difference will be similarity that draws us together.”

SAMUEL CHEN Samuel Chen sees his Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in Indonesia as the next step in a progression of cross-cultural learning experiences. In his application, he described his time studying abroad in Germany as a critical moment in his education — a time when he immersed himself in German culture and found companionship with his Indonesian roommate. Chen also reflected upon his teaching experience

SOPHIE CHUNG Sophie Chung will bring her passion for interdisciplinary cross-cultural exchange to South Korea for her Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA). During the summer of her sophomore year, Chung taught English at a school in the village of Lepan on the Yucatán Penninsula in Mexico. Through this experience, she learned how to improvise and engage students. Chung and also enriched her understanding

of her own Korean ethnic identity as she discovered the largely erased history of Korean migrant labor exploitation and enslavement in the Yucatán during the early 20th century.

She applied her thoughts surrounding ethnic identification to her English thesis, focusing on Asian-American and Asian-Caribbean personal narratives on digital platforms and as a features writer for Soompi, an English language site about Korean pop culture. While living with a homestay family and teaching in South Korea, Chung hopes to incorporate technological innovation to foster cross-cultural storytelling.

SOHAM GUPTA On his Fulbright project, Anthropology and Biology double major Soham Gupta will review the preventative healthcare non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and government efforts aimed at rural populations surrounding the Indian city of Udaipur. Gupta has already worked there one summer with an NGO, Seva Mandir. There, he found that ethnographic research on efforts to improve the water

EMMA HARTMAN History of Art and Chemistry double major Emma Hartmann has been offered a Fulbright to study conservation techniques in India. India’s harsh climate made conservation of indigenous texts necessary for hundreds of years before contemporary methods were developed. Yet, Hartmann notes in her application that the “climate-controlled” spaces of Western museums, where she has extensive experience in conserva-

JiaMei Huang will bring her bilingual skills to Mexico for her Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA). In her low-income Latino and Asian-American neighborhood, interracial tension and her father’s stories about racism he experienced when living in Venezuela tainted her relationship with Spanish. Yet, once she began to learn Spanish in high school, she fell in love with the language.

Robert Kwark will teach English in South Korea on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA). A physics major at Amherst, Kwark hopes to draw on his experiences of teaching other students as a physics teaching assistant in his new position.

Through the ETA, he hopes to gain more classroom experience as well as further his understanding of the differences in educational

6 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

supply came with many complications, as Udaipur has a large tourist population and lack of social mobility.

In his essay, Gupta observed that the tendency to frame NGOs apolitically “serves to obscure the partisan implication of NGO action,” which can inhibit or overlap with local government efforts. Through participating in the community as a volunteer for preventative health organizations, Gupta hopes to find ways for programs to better serve the locals they intend to benefit.

tion, do not aptly reflect the work’s heritage.

Due to the value she places in cross-cultural exchange, Hartmann will be learning Hindi while working at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi and visiting other regions to engage with original materials. Hartmann conducted “a kind of personal record keeping” across her childhood, filling shoeboxes with objects. She wrote in her personal statement, “Conservation permits me to do for global histories what I have long done for my own personal history: to preserve memory through materials.”

JIAMEI HUANG

ROBERT KWARK

in Lima, Peru. “That summer, my students and I stood on opposite ends of a racial, socioeconomic and linguistic spectrum, yet managed to forge a strong connection through a love of learning and a passion for play,” he wrote in his personal statement.

As an anthropology major, Chen values cultural disorientation and plans to immerse himself in his new community by stepping outside of his comfort zone as much as possible. He also plans to draw on his experiences as a college athlete to create an active after-school program.

Huang deepened her passion when she studied in Spain and Chile and researched the açai tree in the Bolivian Amazon for her biology thesis. Given the highly politicized relationship between the U.S. and Mexico today, she hopes to encourage cross-cultural understanding through language and develop sensitivity for community health issues facing Mexican immigrants. In the future, she hopes to work in health education in underserved Latino communities. “Teaching English in Mexico would allow me to further develop my communication abilities and cultural sensitivity, two invaluable skills for this career path,” she wrote in her application.

atmosphere and classroom experience between the U.S. and Korea. His interest in these differences stemmed from interactions he had with a Korean exchange student he hosted at his home two summers ago.

“I aim to create a hands-on, interactive approach to teaching English,” Kwark wrote in his application. Upon his return, Kwark plans to pursue a Master’s Degree in Education and become a secondary school educator in physics. Kwark also hopes to share his love for adventure and exploring the outdoors by planning field trips for students.

LINDY LABRIOLA Lindy Labriola’s Fulbright open study grant will take her to Bodø, Norway to study climate adaption methods and the effects of climate change upon the indigenous Sámi people. The Norwegian Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo has reshaped approaches to climate adaptation through the concept of “transformation,” which encourages addressing climate change’s most pressing effects through local

action.

Having incorporated Native American Studies in her English thesis on North American indigenous origin stories, Labriola plans to study both Norwegian and Sámi at Nord University to enrich her cultural literacy.

She will also work with the Nordic Centre of Excellence, which studies climate-sensitive infections that change their course due to climate change and affect reindeer health. Thinking comparatively about socioeconomic and cultural change, Labriola’s interdisciplinary approach to climate adaptation is an exciting approach to addressing this globlal threat.

CARA LEMBO Cara Lembo will be using her Fulbright science research grant on a one-year Master of Science program in geology at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Lembo, a geology major at Amherst, is passionate about studying the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate with an emphasis on carbon dioxide accumulation. During her Fulbright year, Lembo will conduct an independent study project that

CATHERINE LOWDON An art history and English double major, Catherine Lowdon will spend her next year in Malaysia on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA). She is interested in Malaysia’s multi-ethnic community and the potential for cross-cultural discourse. In her application, she wrote at length about her research on the Mead Art Museum’s Rotherwas Room and how that experience ignited her interest in thinking

about spaces as more than structures, focusing instead on atmospheric qualities. “As a person who studies visual objects and the effect these objects have, I’m curious to see how a landscape wholly different from the U.S. shapes how people feel and see themselves,” she wrote in her application.

Drawing on her experiences as a Folger fellow, an au pair in Sweden and a captain of the women’s cross country and track team, she hopes to bring English language and culture to life in the classroom.

VICTORIA LUIZZI Bringing her passion for ecology and evolutionary biology to the field, Victoria Luizzi will conduct an open study Fulbright at the Magne Friberg Department of Ecology and Genetics at Uppsala University in Sweden. At Amherst, the biology major discovered a passion for ecology after taking a class in tropical biology, which involved a trip

KATHRYN MCHENRY Kathryn McHenry will return to Tanzania for the third time on her Fulbright to raise awareness about pediatric cancer in the country. An interdisciplinary public health major and advanced Swahili speaker with extensive knowledge of healthcare in Tanzania, McHenry enters the program with wide-ranging of the country and its culture. While most public health initiatives within and outside of West Africa target communicable

looks at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, focusing on the Holocene era. Her methods include examining sediment cores from a fjord in New Zealand.

Lembo also hopes to become involved in the community of earth science experts in New Zealand, having noted in her application that “international collaboration is particularly critical in environmental sciences … [A]s global temperatures continue to rise each year, international partnerships are becoming imperative.” This, she hopes, will prove beneficial for pursuing a future doctorate.

to Costa Rica, during her sophomore year. She also studied interactions between plants and pollination at the Chicago Botanic Garden last summer.

Luizzi plans to use her Fulbright to continue studying plant-insect interactions and to gain more experience for her future study of chemical ecology. She also hopes to collaborate with scientists outside of the U.S., which will expose her to other researchers in the scientific community and develop her Swedish language skills.

diseases, “cancer kills more people each year than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS combined,” she wrote in her application. She also noted that 90 percent of childhood cancer deaths occur in developing countries.

Tanzania, for example, is poised to improve its pediatric oncology initiatives through the development of three new cancer centers, but these opportunities are not commonly known. McHenry will conduct a media campaign to enhance public knowledge about cancer while learning about cultural barriers in order to facilitate early diagnoses and disrupt acute inequalities in medical care.

Watsons SHEILA CHUKWULOZIE Sheila Chukwulozie grew up in Nigeria and remembers watching Mmanwu masquerade from a hidden vantage point inside her house.

Her project, “Dressing Culture: Learning to Create West African Things for West African People,” is partly inspired by this experience of witnessing masquerade. In her application, she describes how it ignited “a deep curiosity within me about the distance between women and the

culture we are supposedly part of, but not in control of.”

Her Watson year will take her to Senegal, Sierra Leone, Trinidad, Ghana and Liberia, where she will apprentice with artisans.

Throughout her travels, she will think about how objects reveal culture and spend time documenting different creative processes, adapting her method of documentation according to each cultural context. Eventually, she hopes to become the first woman from either her mother’s or father’s village to create her own mask and full-bodied masquerade.

TOMAL HOSSAIN Tomal Hossain, a music and computer science double major with a Five College certificate in ethnomusicology, will become a Watson Fellow and work on his project “Music Cultures of Muslim Majority Communities.”

From his childhood in Little Bangladesh, Los Angeles to the present, music has been a vital part of Hossain’s studies and interests. He

JINJIN XU History of Art and English double major JinJin Xu will spend her Watson year listening to and writing about the narratives of mothers with her project “A Daughter’s Journey: Rewriting the Narrative of Dislocated Motherhood.” Growing up in Shanghai, Xu had personal experiences with women in various motherhood roles shaped by unique situations. Now, as Xu wrote in her application, she hopes to

is interested in understanding the place of music in Islam and the intersection of music and religion. “How has music been patronized or censored by organized groups or religious doctrine?” he asked in his application. “What is at stake when individuals challenge orthodox beliefs with regards to music’s place in Islam?”

Hossain, who won and declined a Fulbright to India, will start his Watson year in Senegal. He then moves on to Morocco and India before ending in Indonesia.

“rewrite the ways we tell and listen to these women’s stories, reclaiming their experiences from the static, gendered narratives of motherhood,” particularly for mothers who are refugees or migrant workers.

Xu will begin her exploration at a Burmese refugee camp in Thailand before heading to India, Australia and Germany. She will spend her final three months in the writing community of Cape Town, South Africa, finishing a book and writing project that she has already begun, titled “Mami’s Tail.”

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 7

Honorary Degrees Esther Duflo Reseacher

Yanira Castro ‘94E Artist Yanira Castro ’94E is a dance, performance, theater and visual art artist who has been working in New York for 20 years. Originally from Puerto Rico, Castro received her B.A. in English and theater and dance from Amherst.

In 2009, she founded a collaborative group that she later named “a canary torsi,” an anagram of her name. A number of prominent groups have commissioned and presented her work, including The Chocolate Factory Theater, The Invisible Dog Art Center, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC). She received a 2009 Bessie award for her duet dance “Dark Horse/Black Forest.” She is also a 2014 Returning Choreographic Fellow at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, the 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellow, a 2017 Gibney Dance DiP Resident Artist and a current participant in LMCC’s Extended Life program.

Steven Chu Physicist Steven Chu is a Nobel Prize laureate and currently the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Physics and professor of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Chu won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research at Nokia Bell Labs and Stanford into laser cooling of atoms.

Throughout his career, he has published more than 275 scientific papers and holds 11 patents. Chu served as the 12th secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy from 2009 to 2013, the first scientist to hold the position and longest-serving secretary. He has numerous recognitions, including his Nobel Prize, 29 honorary degrees and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the UK’s Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Korean Academy of Sciences and Technology. Chu graduated from the University of Rochester with a bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and physics and received a doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. Chu will not be able to attend Commencement, as he suffered an injury that prevented him from traveling.

Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, Duflo studies the economic lives of the poor in order to help devise and evaluate social policies. She wrote “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty” with Abhijit V. Banerjee. The book won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011 and has been translated into 17 languages. Duflo has won a Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, a John Bates Clark Medal and a MacArthur Fellowship, amongst other awards. She is also the founding editor of the “American Economic Journal: Applied Economics” and the current editor of the “American Economic Review.” Duflo received degrees in economics and history from Paris’ École Normale Supérieure and a Ph.D. in economics from MIT.

Barrett J. Rollins ‘74 Scientist Barrett J. Rollins ’74 is chief scientific officer and faculty dean for academic affairs at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) in Boston, and the Linde Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Rollins joined the DFCI faculty in 1989 and has developed groundbreaking methods of studying white blood cell trafficking and the relationship between inflammation and cancer. His research into genetic mutations for a rare form of childhood cancer has led to effective methods of treating that cancer. Rollins has also led an effort at DFCI to develop a broad genetic profile of its patients and share this information with other researchers and providers. After graduating from Amherst in 1974, Rollins earned his Ph.D. and medical degree from Case Western Reserve University. He completed his residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston before joining DFCI for his clinical fellowship.

Peter Rubenstein ‘64 Rabbi William Cronon Sociologist William Cronon is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin — Madison.

Cronon focuses on American environmental history and the history of the American West in his teaching and writing. His book, “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West,” was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won multiple awards. He has also authored “Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England” in addition to editing numerous other works. Cronon previously worked on the faculty of the Yale University Department of History. He served as president of the American Historical Association in 2012 and held leadership positions with The Trust for Public Land and The Wilderness Society. He graduated from UW-Madison in 1976 before obtaining a master of arts, master of philosophy and doctoral degrees from Yale. He was also a Rhodes Scholar and received a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Oxford.

8 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

Peter J. Rubinstein ’64 is the Director of Jewish Community and the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at 92Y in New York. Rubinstein is also Rabbi Emeritus of Central Synagogue, a congregation where he served as the Senior Rabbi for 23 years. He made Newsweek’s list of “America’s 50 Most Influential Rabbis” all six years the list was published and The Jewish Daily Forward’s “2014 America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis.”

Rubinstein is co-president of the U.S. Board of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and a founder and chair of the Rabbinic Council of the world Union for Progressive Judaism, amongst other leadership positions. He has taught at Manhattanville College, Colgate University, San Jose State and the Hebrew Union College — Jewish Institute of Religion. After graduating from Amherst in 1964, Rubinstein was ordained by the Hebrew Union College — Jewish Institute of Religion and received a doctorate of divinity in 1994.

Images courtesy of Amherst College

Senior Profile | Lola Fadulu

A Writer with a Sincere Voice and Critical Eye Writer and tennis player Lola Fadulu’s honest reflections on campus life and devotion to her friends have altered the way students relate to one another at Amherst.

—Julia Pretsfelder ’18 Writing the Writer It’s nerve-wracking to approach writing about Lolade (Lola) Fadulu.

One of the most prolific yet modest writers at Amherst, she has played an invaluable role in articulating what she has faced as a black woman on this campus in her attentive, clear and deeply honest style. Her writing has particular qualities I love — a meta-textual attention to the materiality of note-taking and honoring writers who have come before her.

Fittingly, she asserts at the end of our interview, “I write because my mother wrote.” In her poignant approach to reading, writing and listening she is a writer’s writer. Attempting to address her thoughtfulness in my own words is daunting.

When she talks about herself and her work, she switches between delicately prefacing comments about academics with “I worry this is too philosophical and pretentious” and self-assuredly noting that “I think of myself as a black woman writer or a black writer before I think of myself as a woman writer or just a writer.” Fadulu is patient, direct and confident in her own way. She knows what is important to her but treads thoughtfully around expressing and reconsidering it from multiple angles and for her intended readers.

Even before meeting Fadulu in person, the experience of reading her work reflected this meditative quality. I have stumbled upon her writing intermittently across the years and studied it like a fan-girl before our interview. Her articulation of lows and jitters offers solace in a place like Amherst. Ironically, my neurotic self-circling when hesitating

about whether or not I can do her justice in this profile provides a perfect example of the overly internal thought processing that she believes people at Amherst need to move past. As she told me during our interview, “If you want to write, write!”

Methodical Methodology: Directness and Detail Upon first glance, Lola’s focus and drive make perfect sense. Growing up in Vero Beach, Florida, known by teenage locals as Zero Beach because there can be so little to do, Fadulu was heavily committed to tennis, supporting her own expenses and undergoing a simultaneous “Bible-pushing” phase. Yet, writing and tennis seem to set a tempo to the life she approaches with determination and detailed thought.

Throughout her life and during her time at Amherst, she has always researched her next steps with great attention. Amherst not only permitted her to keep playing tennis but offered the diversity she sought when researching schools after attending a majority-white school in Vero Beach.

After arriving, however, she felt very closed off in her ability to share her feelings. As a black woman on a sports team, Fadulu’s situation at Amherst still left room for questioning and alienation. As she put it in “Varsity Athletes: Detriments of Team Bonding” — one of her first conversation-starting articles on this very issue — “if some members of our community, when in a situation in which they are the minority, feel subdued, well then Amherst can’t really pride itself on its diversity because it wouldn’t be achieving

anything other than the appearance of inclusion.” Fadulu steadily developed her critical eye to raise concerns across her writing, later bringing her voice to Amherst Uprising.

Amir Hall ’17 mentioned how much she contributed by critiquing the movement at pivotal moments and focusing on providing mental health support for students of color.

Fadulu distinguishes herself from others in the Amherst community and beyond through her attention to detail. Hall said, “She is the master of small acts of kindness.”

She texts friends quotes that remind her of them, and repeatedly asks them precisely what they think she should do with the next stages of her life. Her favorite thing to do when she is stressed is head to CVS and intensely research the products she should buy. Accordingly, one of her main, detail-oriented concerns as a writer is documenting black experience and black women’s existence. She changed her major three times from English to Theater and Dance and ultimtely to Philosophy, but only after considering Political Science and Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought as well. “I am happy I chose philosophy, because it helps me with argumentation and separating truth from bullshit,” she said.

Even in our hour-long conversation, Fadulu demonstrated a refreshing frankness. Hall recalls how, when he lived next door to Fadulu in Drew their sophomore year and would sing or talk to himself too loudly, she’d bang on the wall to tell him to quiet down. “That is so Lola,” he joked.

Her bluntness is not harsh but forthright and caring. She lovingly chides women on hair care at Head Games, the natural hair salon in downtown Amherst. If she asks how you are, and you tell her you are doing fine, she may give you a knowing look that asks how you really feel.

“To me, Lola is funny, creative, annoying, stubborn, insightful, easily excitable, persistent, fickle and selfaware,” her best friend Elaine Vilorio ’17 describes her. “She’s someone who has challenged me to be better and to be vulnerable. She’s my friend and my sister and, while I rarely tell her this, I do love her a lot.”

Resilient Vulnerability: Sensitivity to Audience

While tennis once dominated her life, Lola views her role on the team today as a humbling experience that taught her persistence.

Fadulu is practiced in addressing avoidance, point-blank telling me she was surprised I did not ask about her mother’s passing last fall while wrapping up our interview. Fadulu has written about her mother’s passing extensively in AC Voice and found that beyond learning how she could survive on the bare minimum, the lack of perspective at Amherst shone through all too clearly. As she said in her stunningly sincere article “The Stages of Grief Explained,” which largely tackles relating to others on

Photos courtesy of Lola Fadulu ’17

Fadulu has written extensively about mental health as well as the marginalization of low-income students and people of color. a college campus while mourning, filled with joy, love and accomplish“Know also that if you tell them your ment,” wrote Professor of Law, Jurisentire life aches, they’ll struggle to re- prudence & Social Thought Austin spond. They’ll panic at their inability Sarat. After taking multiple courses to offer you solace because losing a with Sarat in her time here, Fadulu parent in college is rare. Remember conducted year-long research with that. Reassure them that they’re do- him on the American Death Penalty. ing just fine even if it annoys you.” This was one of her favorite academShe does not think that certain prob- ic experiences. lems are more important than oth“It was a small and engaged ers, but rather believes that our place group where we were treated like at Amherst is still privileged, and it’s scholars, not students,” she said. important to have perspective on his “The dynamic was interactive rathnot texting you back when there are er than unnatural and performative, bigger issues in the wider world. which I feel often occurs in a classEven with this perspective and room setting.” grief, Fadulu related to others’ conIt’s not only easy to feel encerns remarkably well. Hall notes, sconced in a bubble but also awash “The main quality that comes to in a sea of self-affirmation in a small mind when I think about Fadulu is space of so many engaged, intellihow she is so intentionally caring. I gent people trying to be right — or keep returning to that. Even after more right than the next person. In her mother passed she would always such a sphere, Fadulu provides the check in on me and be there to lis- honesty and advice of someone with ten. She lets her friends know they wisdom surpassing an average colare loved.” lege experience. She is one of the She also lets her readers know rare, intentional writers who makes that they are loved. She often tailors a personal reach and recognizes her her work to an audience, directing audience. “I want my writing to be articles such as “Toni Morrison and accessible to my intended audience the White Gaze” to students of col- without being patronizing,” she said. or at Amherst who care about their Most seniors shy away when I ask school in spite of its flaws. There is them about how they feel regarding a not-so-secret English majors’ rule their legacy, but she has a thoughtful of writing that you are not allowed and deserved response. “I am hapto refer to someone’s writing as “re- py to see more black women in the latable,” but it’s tricky to avoid when Philosophy department,” she said. “I thinking about Fadulu. Her work also think my teammates and I have is comforting. It feels lovely to pore begun sticking up for ourselves, and over the arc of her writing from year our coaches have learned to recogto year and think about how much I nize the importance of having playcould have benefitted from reading a ers of color from different socioecopiece like “You Can’t Hurry Love” as nomic backgrounds on our team.” a first year. Noor Qasim ’18, Fadulu’s We will be lucky enough to read former AC Voice editor, praises the more of her work after Amherst. humor and humility in her writing. She will be working for Quartz — a “She is able to tackle the most diffi- digital media publication owned by cult of issues with a critical and in- Atlantic Media — alongside a White sightful eye,” Qasim said.

House Correspondent on issues pertaining to Jeff Sessions and the DeEducation and Dedications partment of Justice, and she hopes Fadulu is an extraordinary and to work on more think pieces. As she multitalented person. She is, in ad- put it in her article, “What Should dition, one of the most thoughtful We Do?”, she believes in following students I have encountered at Am- her heart. “In doing what you love, herst. Fadulu has really taken advan- you act as a representation to othtage of the opportunities Amherst er people that doing what you love provides, and she has simultaneously is legitimate. I don’t know what is pushed the college to live up to its more freeing than that, especially for aspirations. “I will miss her beyond college-educated black people who what I can express in words and often feel an overwhelming sense of am confident that her future will be obligation.”

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 9

Senior Profile | Minjee Kim

Scientist Leaves Impact Beyond the Lab Bench Before Amherst, Minjee Kim was not confident in her leadership ability. Four years later, she has proven herself to be an accomplished scientist and devoted leader and mentor.

—Jingwen Zhang ’18 Rarely does one find an undergraduate scientist and future physician with a list of high science honors and accomplishments. Rarer still is such a scientist who also has a deep passion for providing support and resources to help her peers. Yet, this elusive ideal describes Minjee Kim perfectly. The Seoul-born, Seattle-raised biophysics major has left a mark in the hearts of faculty and students who have experienced her simultaneous dedication to scientific excellence and to helping her fellow students advance in their own intellectual journeys.

Changing the World from the Lab Bench Kim’s scientific exploration arose out of her early interest in medicine. As a high school student, she was determined to be a doctor, but also wanted to do something to help others with the skills she already had.

In her sophomore year of high school, Kim took the initiative to email nearby cancer research laboratories, asking to work and learn with them.

Her parents were supportive of their only child’s independent endeavors, and Kim adds that they never pressured her to pursue science or medicine, even though her father is a doctor.

Interest in research led to curiosity about the basic sciences, and Kim knew Amherst was the right school for her after attending an introductory chemistry course during admitted students weekend.

“I went to Chem 161 … and it was Professor Leung and Marshall,” she said, laughing. “It was the day when Professor Marshall was lecturing and he was jumping up and down. And other colleges were more like a general lecture, but I felt like Professor Marshall made it a lot more … interactive.”

In her sophomore year, Kim de-

clared the biochemistry and biophysics (BCBP) program with a focus in biochemistry, later switching to biophysics after taking linear algebra. She also took quantum chemistry, taught by chemistry professor Mark Marshall, “for the fun of it.”

This past year, Kim completed a thesis with chemistry professor Sheila Jaswal, studying and developing a procedure called hydrogen-exchange mass spectrometry (HXMS) and verifying its usefulness as a tool for studying protein folding and stability. Kim has worked on this with Jaswal, who is also her advisor, since her sophomore year.

As with most scientific research at Amherst, Kim was conducting basic science research. However, Jaswal added that Kim’s work can advance researchers’ understanding of human diseases, which leads back to Kim’s foremost interest in health and medicine.

“I think writing a thesis is really nice your senior year, actually, because it makes you be in charge of one big project,” Kim said. “It gives you something that you can present as your work.”

Jaswal described Kim as “[taking] complete ownership and initiative” of her thesis with “the ability to understand the big picture of the science combined with a natural intuition at the bench.”

Perhaps it was out of her characteristic humility that Kim did not recount the numerous accolades that arose from her academic and research endeavors, but Jaswal detailed her impressive accomplishments in an email.

“Although there are some final experiments and analyses to complete, we are already drafting a manuscript with Minjee as the first author for submission to the top journal in chemistry,” Jaswal wrote, adding that Kim shared the BCBP senior award and won the

Kim has garnered recognition from both within and outside of Amherst for her dedicated research in the Jaswal lab.

10 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

“Best Undergraduate Poster” award at the Annual International Protein Society Symposium last July. Kim was also a Michael Kauffman Fellow for biomedical research and the first-ever undergraduate to speak at Amherst’s annual Fink Bioscience Symposium.

With all those experiences and honors under her belt, Kim’s thesis defense, which took place a few hours after I spoke with her was a piece of cake and the perfect capstone for her years of dedicated research.

Photos courtesy of Minjee Kim ’17

Supporting Fellow STEM Students Kim also left a deep impression as a mentor and problem-solver who sought to build support where she perceived a lack. She was one of the first students involved in founding Amherst’s Association for Women In Science (AWIS) chapter.

Originally, Kim said, the effort was faculty-driven, specifically by physics professor Ashley Carter. One of the major accomplishments of AWIS was hosting a series of lunch talks with STEM faculty, which Kim described as a hit. AWIS initially only invited female faculty to these events, but Kim opened them to male faculty as well.

Support for women in STEM, Kim said, was “a conversation that needs to happen with the entire community rather than just select female members.”

Kim also sought to improve the experiences of Amherst students seeking to gain entry to the world of scientific research by constructing an AWIS internship toolkit — a readily accessible booklet containing advice from upperclassmen who had had prior research experience.

“Because I started working in a lab from a pretty early age, I had a lot of opportunities when I applied to internships because I had experience,” Kim said. “But I realized that it’s so hard for a lot of students to get that first internship experience.” Kim added that Jaswal had noticed that it was also challenging for some to adjust to their first internship experience after landing the position.

The booklet of resources and advice was one way in which Kim accomplished her goals for her involvement in AWIS, which she described as “really the mission statement — it was to create a student network for female students, and also to provide research for underclassmen, for them to come to AWIS as a support network.”

Biology professor David Ratner calls Kim’s leadership in AWIS “a clear example of her devotion to the success of her peers.”

“This male professor certainly appreciated Minjee’s clarifying insistence that all faculty who support the success of women in science were invited to attend the events she organized,” he added.

Kim values community and support in STEM fields, with these ideals

Kim’s mentorship will extend beyond Amherst, as she hopes to be a role model to younger scientists as well as a physician. serving as important motivating factors. She became keenly aware of the intensely human aspect to Amherst’s STEM departments after Amherst Uprising, a student protest against racism in the fall of 2015.

“It was then that a lot of professors expressed how much they cared about the students,” Kim said. In her conversations with Ratner and biology professor Jeeyon Jeong, who taught her molecular genetics course, she was “surprised at how moved they were, and how they were so willing to stand on the side of the students in terms of the movement.”

Ratner recalled that shortly after Amherst Uprising took place, he and Jeong, along with several other students in the molecular genetics course, went for a TYPO (Take Your Professor Out) that Kim had coordinated.

“Sitting in Pasta E Basta at the end of that exhausting week … I was mightily impressed by the love and support this very diverse group of students showed for one another,” Ratner wrote. “For me personally, that dinner was one of the most moving ‘silver linings’ to be found in the critical challenges those days highlighted.”

The Growth of a Leader Kim’s support for other students went beyond STEM into other areas as well. She is a leader of the Amherst College Public Health Collaborative.

The group’s mission, Kim said, is to work with the local community, a mission which faced challenges like the inability of college students to provide community health organizations with certain much-needed resources like funding. Recently, Kim and several other students developed a way to survey town residents’ health needs and provide the information to Amherst’s fledgling community health center.

Despite these limitations, Kim’s leadership helped make the Public Health Collaborative a space for students interested in public health to act on that interest. She has also been part of a joint effort with leaders of four other pre-health organizations — GlobeMed, Project Salud, KDSAP and the Charles Drew Pre-Health Society — to foster community among students who plan to work with health and medicine in the future.

“Minjee doesn’t shy away from facing challenges,” wrote Richard Aronson ’69, health professions advisor.

“When she sees a need to make our pre-health community better, for example, she takes the initiative to address it.”

Kim has also worked one-on-one with other students as a three-time mentor in the college’s pre-health peer mentoring program. Outside of the pre-health community, she is involved in Big Brothers Big Sisters, a Hampshire County organization that connects adult volunteers with local children in a mentoring relationship.

Through these experiences, Kim has developed the capacity to be a leader in her own way. Surprisingly, there was once a time when Kim did not think she could lead a student organization.

“I’m usually not the most talkative person or not the most extroverted person, so I didn’t think that I could be a good leader as a non-extrovert kind of a person,” she admitted. “But … I learned that I have those qualities in me.”

Kim’s leadership style, as Aronson described, is “uniquely humble but strong.”

Aspiring to Be a Role Model Reflecting on her undergraduate career, Kim said, with a laugh, that she has become “nerdier,” or more “intellectually curious.”

“Asking questions became a large part of me, I think, whenever I learned new things,” she said.

After graduation, Kim will stay at Amherst for a year as a chemistry pedagogy fellow, during which she will be a TA in upper-level chemistry courses and support the integration of Jaswal’s project, titled “Being Human in STEM,” into an introductory chemistry course.

During this gap year, Kim will also be applying to medical schools. She wants to be a surgeon, or perhaps a pediatric oncologist. Such specifics are still up in the air. However, Kim’s future as a mentor and a leader are certain. She hopes to be a role model and help those like herself — younger female scientists, especially Asian women scientists — overcome stereotypes and difficulties.

Senior Profile | Amir Hall

Becoming a Writer, Valuing Vulnerability When Amir Hall speaks about his friends and family, the sound of his voice is already indicative of how deeply he cares for them.

—Spencer Quong ’18 Amir Denzel Hall writes the way he speaks. Regardless of his medium, his voice always carries warmth, humor and vulnerability. With a gift for storytelling, he has the ability to make any person feel comfortable.

I became friends with Hall during an English class my first semester at Amherst. In “Reading, Writing & Teaching” with Professor Rhonda Cobham-Sander, we spent a significant amount of time outside regular class meetings for various trainings. I recall driving with Hall and a few of our classmates to Holyoke, listening to the way his voice could fill the car.

We laughed at his self-described ridiculous jokes as he pretended to analyze a street sign for its meaning, telling us, “It’s a commentary on itself.”

Hall was certainly a significant part of making that classroom feel like a cohesive community, and his presence has made other clubs, classes and rooms feel more open and full of life.

But perhaps even more than his spirit, I admire the way in which Hall is able to find words for specific experiences. In our interview, I noticed the specificity with which he recalled his memories — all the names of the people present in a scene, the temperature or the particular motions of bodies. His creative thesis with the English department, “Who Love You?” is also filled with such detailed and particular language. It is this attention to life and relational thinking that makes Hall so distinctive.

“A Legacy of Tardiness” Hall grew up in several places around Trinidad and Tobago with his mother, father and brother. Before applying to Amherst, he spent a gap year preparing to apply for colleges while working at a bar.

His classmate in Trinidad, Jayson Paul ’16, was the first person to suggest he apply to Amherst. Hall noted he was drawn to the idea of the liberal arts because of the opportunity to explore multiple fields. “I liked the idea of the liberal arts because our system is very, like, rigid and very career-oriented,” he said. “You do the subjects

that you think are in line with whatever career you do, so you have to choose pretty early.”

When the time came around to apply, however, he forgot to submit his application. “I don’t know what happened, why I forgot, because I was very intent on applying, but I just didn’t get it in on time,” he said.

Luckily, he sent an email to the admissions office, which still accepted his application. “Ever since, I joke around that I’ve continued my legacy of tardiness,” he said.

First Impressions Hall recalled feeling a sense of openness during his first weeks at Amherst. “I was so free, and that’s probably why I know most of my class, because there was nothing holding me back from asking the questions I was interested in asking,” he said.

However, he also spoke about navigating unfamiliar social dynamics on campus. In some ways, the unfamiliarity allowed him to be more open, but it also raised points of uncertainty.

“I didn’t have the whole idea of an athlete/non-athlete divide or even a heightened sense of race,” he said.

“Even though I had inhibitions and I knew that there were things going on, and I knew that I was black because I was raised to be black … I just didn’t know how that functioned here or the depth to which it functioned here.”

A critical moment, Hall noted, was befriending his first-year residential counselor, Sarah Vickery ’15. “She was just so chill and we got along so well,” he said. “It proved to me that close friendships were possible across racial lines.”

Resonance Across Generations Hall has a special ability to forge relationships with any person he encounters. His auntie, Michele Basquiat, said that he possessed this relational talent from a young age.

“The Denzel that we know now is the Denzel I quite expected to turn out to be,” she said. “As a child, even then, he had an unusual ability to acclimate and fit in.”

When I asked Hall about the warmth with which people describe his personality, he was characteristically humble. He credited his social prowess to his family. “The charm isn’t mine,” he said. “It’s definitely my father’s and my mother’s.”

He also spoke about how he is intentional about when and how he uses his charisma. “I try to not let the charm be surface level, and I try to insert vulnerability into the charm so that people can enter into that space with me,” Hall said, “So it’s not just a warmth, and a smile, and a laugh, but it could also be something more.”

Basquiat agreed that the entire family shares this particular spirit.

However, she did point out that Amir stands out. “He fits right in with the bunch, but he’s just a little ‘extra,’” she said. “And the ‘extra’ is that it’s not just within the family but he has the knack to incorporate anybody, even outside the family.”

Lifelong Friendships Hall treats his friends like family and described lifelong friendships in the same manner as he did his relationships with blood relatives. He talked about the fluency between individuals in particularly close relationships.

“Often, love is just something like, ‘Oh, I’m stuck with this person.

You know what I mean? In the same way mothers don’t know who they’re going to birth. If you choose to love, you’re choosing to stick it through,” Hall said.

Within these friendships, Hall spoke about moments that seem to echo across time. He recounted one memory of cooking with friends.

“That’s when the moment began — that’s when the echo began to ring and I started looking around,” he said. “I was standing by the sink and the sink was running. There was food on the pot. I just panned the area because that seemed so familiar to me that they would be somewhere in this house with me.” In recounting this and other memories, his voice was certainly filled with a depth and tenor, which reflected the love that must

After writing a novella for his thesis and dancing with the African and Carribbean Students’ Union, Hall hopes to continue creating art that will engage his audience with vulnerability and movement.

Photos courtesy of Amir Hall ’17

Known for his warmth and talent for language, Hall was selected by his peers to deliver the Commencement address. have filled these moments. “I think it’s a blessing to inhabit that space with friends, and I think lifelong friends are like that — they’re just there.”

Indeed, Hall’s friends appreciate and return his love — and then some.

Elliot Cassutt, a former classmate, characterized Hall as unconstrained and multifaceted.

“Amir is difficult to define,” he wrote. “There are so many sides of him that I’m not even going to try to explain, and most of them are good.”

He also noted how Hall brought him to unexpected places. “There are a hundred things I did or experiences I had while at Amherst that I never thought I’d be able to do, and almost all of them were with Amir.”

Lolade Fadulu ’17 spoke about the way in which Hall is attentive to his friends. The first time they met, Hall “asked me questions and listened intently to my answers,” she said.

“Since then, he hasn’t stopped asking me questions and listening intently.”

It is this sort of attunement to others that permits his friends to bring themselves to the table. Although it is difficult to pin down the exact feeling Hall brings out in each of them, perhaps the exact gift of the feeling is that it cannot be specifically defined.

Fadulu said one of the special things about Amir is that no one needs to overthink themselves around him.

“Amir helped me become less of a brain in a body and more of a full person completely embodied,” she said.

Becoming a Writer Hall has navigated his academic career with the same sensitivity, knack for understanding emotion and attention to detail that characterizes his social life. He spoke highly of a number of professors who have all helped him shape his writing in their own specific way.

“One thing I’m really grateful to Amherst College for is allowing me the space to grow creatively,” he said.

“Although I think I always would have written, I don’t think I would have believed myself to be a writer or to possibly become a writer had I not been here.”

Friends and family certainly value his eye for good writing. His auntie Jocelyn King said, “Every book he recommends I read, I read.”

Hall has even influenced his professors’ teaching. From his first fiction course, his voice began to change the shape of classes at the college. Judith Frank, an English professor, wrote about how Hall inspired a change in her rule about not writing in dialect in her course, “Fiction Writing I.” “Amir came into Fiction I and saw that rule, he was worried, because as it turned out, he wanted to write entirely in Trinidadian Creole,” she said.

“That was the semester I changed the rule ... I realized that if I wanted to support my students’ efforts to portray lives like theirs as fully as possible, I needed to become a skillful teacher of writing dialect.”

At the end of his senior year, professors and friends felt that he created a certain kind of magic with his thesis. Cobham-Sander wrote that after reading his project, “It made my heart ache, in the way I sometimes feel when I confront a particular kind of pain that I know will never really go away. I don’t think a piece of student writing has ever made me feel quite that way.”

An Artist and his Audience Next year, Hall will stay on at Amherst as the graduate design assistant for the theater and dance department.

He hopes to pursue either a Master of Fine Arts in performance studies or a Master of Theology. Regardless of his choice, his studies will ultimately inform his future work as an artist of many mediums.

“I just want dedicated time to making work,” he said. Specifically, he envisions work that will truly engage with its audience.

“If you come to a show of mine, you would leave sweaty because you would be dancing at some point and time, but also that sweat would merge with tears,” he said. With his art, he desires to reflect a range of emotion and wants his audiences to be able to be vulnerable.

Many people, including myself, look forward to seeing what Hall will create. As I interviewed friends and family for this article, I was moved but unsurprised by the sheer amount of love and support that has and will always surround Hall. In the words of Basquiat, “I don’t think enough good and wonderful things can happen to him.”

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 11

Senior Profile | Karen Blake

AAS President Makes Students Feel at Home A Michigander known for her energy and presence, Karen Blake is a master of creating community both in residential spaces and the broader campus.

—Claire Dennis ’20 Whether she is caring for a group of eager first years or leading the entire student body, Karen Blake always acts with bravery, poise and an infectious smile. A friendly and familiar face on campus, Blake has left her mark on Amherst academically, socially and politically by building community wherever she goes.

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A native of Farmington Hills, Mich., Blake arrived on campus in September 2012 as a participant in the Diversity Open House (DIVOH) program, but recalls that she felt less than excited to visit. However, after meeting friendly Amherst students, she grew more hopeful about the possibilities at Amherst.

What stood out most to her during her DIVOH visit was sitting in on the Sociology course, “Reproducing Social Order: Prisons, Schools and the Military,” taught by Professor Hannah Holleman.

“I was like, ‘This is amazing! I’ve never thought about the world like this!’” Blake said.

Socióloga A sociology and Spanish double major, Blake arrived at Amherst with very different academic intentions. She planned to be a doctor and set out on the pre-med track. However, during her first year, Blake took advantage of the open curriculum to explore other departments along with the pre-med requisite courses, including Spanish, history, black studies and sociology.

Her positive experience in Holleman’s class during DIVOH weekend spurred Blake to enroll in the same course during the spring semester of her first year.

“Ever since I took that class at DIVOH, I literally wanted to take that class when I came to Amherst … I was like, ‘I am getting into this class,’” Blake said.

Holleman recalls Blake as a part of a passionate group that was adamant about taking that course.

“They argued that because they

cared about the world and were committed to understanding the subject, they would do better as freshmen than some of the seniors,” Holleman said. “They had already worked to form community amongst themselves, thought through what mattered to them, and acted collectively, rather than individually, to pursue their goals.”

After completing that class, Blake had solidified her passion for sociology.

“Sociology is great because you are literally just talking about the world around you,” Blake said. “It gave me language for things that I already knew but didn’t know exactly how to say.”

Her interest in sociology is reflected in her positive contributions to the classroom environment. Blake’s professors consistently recognize her attention to detail.

“Karen is committed to nuance,” Professor Leah Schmalzbauer said.

“She appreciates difference and fluently and enthusiastically seeks opportunities to work across social difference.

She is a bridge in an era in which we need bridges!”

“Karen’s contribution, along with others, showed how different learning can be when real community is valued and nurtured not just by the faculty, but by conscientious students, committed to collaborative learning and common cause, taking each other’s concerns as their own,” Holleman said.

In addition to her coursework in sociology, Blake continued to take classes in other departments, especially Spanish. She pursued Spanish even further by studying abroad in Madrid during the fall semester of her junior year.

“I kept taking Spanish because I realized I love people, and sociology allows me to study people. But I also want to be able to communicate with different groups of people, so Spanish was another avenue to do that,” Blake said.

A Call to Action

During her first-year orientation, Blake stumbled upon several events hosted by the Association of Amherst Students (AAS). While attending a

barbecue, as well as a “tea time” dedicated to women in AAS, Blake had the opportunity to discuss Senate with several current senators, who strongly encouraged her to run, even offering her campaign tips. Despite being nervous, her class selected her as one of eight senators out of 21 candidates.

“I was terrified. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! I’m just putting my name out there with all these people,’” Blake said.

Her campaign strategy of wearing a decorated “Vote for Karen” t-shirt on election day paid off. Blake would go on to serve as a senator for the next three years. As a senator, she worked as part of the Budgetary Committee and First-Year Orientation Committee, among others.

Running for AAS President was not a part of Blake’s plan initially. After a friend suggested that she run, Blake began to consider the option more and decided to run, with the goal of fostering a better understanding of what AAS does and how its work can benefit students.

“I feel like in my time at Amherst, unfortunately, the AAS has become maybe, less favored or looked down upon by students, and they don’t really see it as a vehicle to create change,” Blake said. “My whole thing as president is trying to remind people that the best thing you can do is collective action and one of the best ways to do that is through a body like the AAS.” Blake noted a shift in the culture of the senate over her four years. She has worked to build a more approachable organization, with a willingness to be more responsive and accommodating. “[Before] they [took] themselves too seriously. Now senators kind of realize that we’re just students, and we want to help other students,” Blake said. “I think that [before] they worked really hard but it could come across really negatively if people came to talk to Senate. Now we’re much more receptive.”

Blake describes her role as president as a sort of “spokesperson,” using her extracurricular involvement to promote AAS.

Photos courtesy of Karen Blake ’17

Blake double majored in Sociology and Spanish because these disciplines help her observe the world around her and communicate.

“Any space that I am in, where people are talking about a problem or something that is going on, I always try to listen to them and figure out what’s going on and give them advice on how they can best do something and always trying to interject, ‘Oh, well, the AAS can do this or do that,’” Blake said.

Her goal of bridging the AAS and Senate to student needs has carried over into initiatives that she has encouraged the senators to take on. For example, Blake implemented a dorm senator program and encouraged senators to attend tea times to make the senate and the AAS more accessible to students.

“I’m trying my best to come to students and meet them where they’re at,” Blake said. “I try to use my daily life to bring Senate to people.

Blake’s commitment to public service has been recognized by her fellow members of the AAS. “Karen is one of the kindest and most socially aware people I know,” said Chico Kosber ’17, AAS vice president. “It was a pleasure working with her on AAS. She has the amazing ability to read a room and effectively and eloquently summarize what everyone feels and put it into action.”

Over her four years as a member of the AAS, Blake also noted a shift in the demographics of AAS. The AAS has seen an increase in women, specifically women of color. As a sophomore, Blake was part of one of the first senates to have equal representation of men and women in recent history.

“This year, something that I’m really proud to see is how many women of color are a part of Senate ... I think a lot of women have seen that they can take on these sorts of roles,” Blake said.

Queen of the North

Beyond her public role as a spokesperson for the student government, Blake has built community on an individual level while serving as a resident counselour for first-years living in North Hall.

12 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

A resident counselor (RC) for two years, Blake brought her leadership skills and love for people to North Hall.

As a sophomore and senior, Blake has called the same third-floor room home.

Blake was motivated to become an RC because of her positive residential experience as a first year. Due to the small size of Appleton Hall, she built close friendships with neighbors.

“I feel like I have a special tie to every person that lived there,” Blake said.

“Since I had that experience living in

Appleton, I just really wanted to help someone else have a really, really good first year because I feel like something so critical to the first year is how your floor and dorm is.”

Encouraged by her first-year RC, Blake applied for the position. Although she did not initially receive the job offer, she was selected as an alternate. While studying for a midterm, Blake received a call. She was offered the RC position and enthusiastically accepted, despite never having stepped foot in North Hall.

Blake’s leadership and kindness as an RC is evident in the long-lasting friendships she built with her residents.

“Karen was always full of life and a super fun and positive RC,” Mia Natsis ’18, a former resident of North Hall, said. “She loved her job and treated us like friends.”

However, Blake is adamant that she learned just as much from her residents and from her experience as an RC. “One of the biggest things I learned from being an RC is just how to interact with different people, people who have very different outlooks on the world ... and realizing you can still develop a really meaningful connection to someone even if you don’t necessarily agree with everything they think or stand for,” Blake said. “By being an RC, you really learn how to listen to people and talk to people and so I think I’ve learned just to try to understand someone from where they’re at.”

And Beyond In the coming fall, Blake will return to Spain, this time to teach English.

She is also considering law school.

In true fashion, Blake has set for herself an ambitious goal: to become a leader at a higher level and be elected for public office in the next five years.

According to Blake, the many leadership roles she has taken on at Amherst have helped her to recognize her ability to be “a good connector for different types of people.”

“There’s a lot of voices that are missing from dialogues generally in this country,” Blake said. “I’ve had a lot of different experiences but I’m also still a low-income, black woman who is a young person … It’s such a critical section of our country that’s just not being represented.”

Senior Profile | Ali Doswell

Queen of the Court and Quantitative Thought Most of campus knows about her sportsmanship and award-winning basketball skills, but physicist Ali Doswell offers more than meets the eye.

—Julia Turner ’19 When I asked Ali Doswell’s family, friends, coaches and professors to describe her, the most common word was not “athletic” or “talented” or any of the typical superlatives you would expect for the reigning Division III Player of the Year for women’s basketball. Instead, the common trait attributed to the Richmond, Virginia native was “grace.”

The elegance and poise that this physics and psychology double major has demonstrated throughout her historic success on the basketball court at Amherst are matched in the classroom. As Ali’s physics advisor Professor Kannan Jagannathan succinctly put it, “What is common to her role in physics and in basketball is her high intelligence, skill and grace.”

The Doswell Family Ali Doswell grew up in a dynamic, female-dominated household.

Doswell’s family, which included her three older sisters and twin sister Meredith, was constantly involved in athletics. Meredith and Ali excelled at basketball from a young age, and both knew they wanted to play in college.

Initially, the sisters wanted to stay close to home, mainly looking at Division I programs in Virginia, when Amherst head coach G.P. Gromacki stumbled upon them at a tournament in Washington D.C. “I was set to watch another player on a particular court, and when I arrived early, Ali’s team was playing

before my scheduled game,” Gromacki said. “I noticed how skilled she was and how much she competed. I also noticed she had a very talented sister in Meredith. I only watched her play about 10 minutes in the game. I checked her schedule and came back the next day, and I was completely sold on both of them.”

From that moment onward, Gromacki knew that he had to have the Doswell sisters in his program. After weeks of ignoring Gromacki’s phone calls, Ali and Meredith decided the academic reputation of Amherst was worth considering and flew north to visit campus. Gromacki’s perseverance ended up paying off, as the twins fell in love with the school and, in their four years at Amherst, have taken the program to new heights.

“My first impression of Ali was that she seemed pretty normal,” said close friend and former teammate Rachel Boyette ’17. “Boy, was I wrong, but in all the best ways. Over time I’ve found that she’s overachieving, kind and incredibly mature — far away from just ‘normal.’”

Listening to Rachel talk about Doswell, the exceedingly poised senior’s lighthearted, goofy side started to shine through. To her closest friends, the graceful exterior gives way to “a bit of a weirdo” who is impossibly easy to love and admire.

Team Games and Individual Awards In a fairytale ending to a histor-

ic career, Doswell led the Amherst women’s basketball team to a dominating National Championship performance this year. The Mammoths completed their undefeated 33-0 season in Grand Rapids, Michigan by taking down NESCAC foe Tufts 52-29.

Doswell led the charge in the National Championship game, recording 21 points, five rebounds and four steals, to earn her the honor of Final Four Most Outstanding Player.

In addition to garnering national recognition, Doswell’s achievements won her the Howard Hill Mossman trophy from Amherst College.

The annual award recognizes both achievement and sportsmanship. It is presented to the athlete who, during his or her four years at Amherst, “brought the greatest honor in athletics.” Doswell was the first female athlete to receive the award since 2013.

Doswell has garnered more titles, awards and honors during her time at Amherst than most athletes earn over a lifetime of competition, but the one that meant the most was the team win.

“Doswell is the type of person who cared more about winning a championship with her teammates than winning individual awards,” Gromacki said. Doswell herself acknowledges the vital importance of teamwork and chemistry.

Still, however much Doswell might play down her own individual

Doswell recalls the physics department’s party for the women’s basketball team after their National Championship as one of her fondest memories at Amherst, bridging her two worlds and passions.

Photos courtesy of Ali Doswell ’17

Doswell comes from a family of five sisters, including classmate and twin Meredith Doswell ’17, who all participate in athletics. successes, her place in the spotlight the basketball season straddles both is well-deserved. She concluded her semesters and the winter final exam career as the Amherst women’s bas- period, this was truly a remarkable ketball program’s all-time leading feat, and it was this unassuming outscorer with 1,572 points. look that made her stand out.

Doswell also ranks eighth in As one of only three varsity athprogram history with 664 rebounds letes in the physics major, Doswell and sixth in assists with 334 dimes. said that all of the new people she She set the program’s record for connected with and the friendships three-pointers made, finishing her she formed with her fellow physics career with 273 buckets from behind majors made her experience at Amthe arc. herst special.

She worked to stay engaged in Greatest of All Time the department throughout her four Her success, combined with her years, serving as a teaching assistant leadership on the team and sports- for introductory physics classes, colmanship on the court, has arguably laborating with faculty on job searchmade Doswell one of the greatest es and volunteering her time to tutor athletes ever to put on an Amherst underclass students. jersey. In the classroom, however, Ali Doswell’s worlds of physics and is just another hardworking physics basketball came together when the major. physics department threw a party “If one had just observed Ali as a honoring the women’s basketball member of the physics department, team after their national championone would not know that she also has ship win, an event that was one of this other major commitment on the her favorite memories of senior year. basketball court,” said Jagannathan, When Doswell talked about what who spoke at length about her com- she will miss most about Amherst, mitment to her schoolwork and to she always returned to the friends the department. she has made and the people she has In addition to having an advi- met. She talked about her nine suitesor-advisee relationship, the two mates like they were a part of her have also become close friends over family and noted how her classmates Doswell’s time at Amherst. The pair have impacted her time at Amherst spent most of their time together immeasurably, thoroughly “challengtalking about Ali’s career aspirations, ing” her perspectives. her experience at Amherst and, of Doswell, Gromacki said, “cares course, about basketball. about the individual person.” Jagan“Ali has had a very mature medi- nathan echoed this sentiment, citing um-term and long-term perspective, her natural inclination “to treat evand beneath the easy-going exterior, eryone kindly and well.” has the fierce discipline of superb As much as the people at Amscholar-athletes,” Jagannathan said. herst have meant to Doswell, she has Doswell worked hard to make meant just as much, if not more, to sure that basketball didn’t interfere those around her. “Ali has meant evwith academics, striving for excel- erything to our program,” Gromacki lence in both pursuits. Certainly, the said. choice to play a Division III sport is a Doswell’s impact on her friends is commitment to academics and a fu- just as clear and tangible. “If I had to ture off the court. Doswell perfectly describe Ali to someone who didn’t embodied this commitment. know her, I’d say it’s a shame they Jagannathan emphasized that haven’t met her yet,” said Boyette.

Doswell was an example for her “There’s a lot more than what meets peers. “Ali never asked for exten- the eye with Ali, which is saying sions, rescheduling, or any special something, because even on the surconsideration,” he said. Given that face, she’s a fantastic person.”

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 13

Senior Profile | Siraj Sindhu

Walking Along Amherst’s Alternate Paths Noted for his empathetic and creative personality, Siraj Sindhu has always been a critical thinker.

—Mark Simonitis ’19 Siraj Sindhu is a testament to Amherst College’s ability to change its students. Throughout his four years at Amherst, Sindhu found himself challenging his identity, philosophy and priorities at every turn.

When asked to describe the impact that Sindhu had made on her life, his friend MacKenzie Kugel ’19 said, “Siraj is an extremely kind human being, and his sensibility about the way he lives his life is like no one I’ve ever met. He’s completely himself in a way that I haven’t ever encountered before. He’s authentic, creative and caring. He expresses himself beautifully in everything he does, whether that’s art, music or conversation.”

Early Life in a Small Town Born to Punjabi immigrants who had come to America in the 1990s, Sindhu was raised in upstate New York. Living what he calls an unexciting life in “a town that had seen its best days in the early 1900s,” Sindhu spent most of his time reading philosophy and poetry. “I was raised with a Punjabi work ethic, valuing individual and moral responsibility,” Sindhu said.

He was told to be proud of his status as a Punjabi and as a Sunni Muslim, two labels that would have a massive impact on his early life.

Relative to the rest of his family, Sindhu “grew up whitewashed,” living in an American town that had virtually no other people of color and surrounded by professional conservatives.

“My entire extended family is made up of bourgeois professional conservatives, and my attitudes

towards that were slightly more complicated during my childhood because of my upbringing in smalltown America without any other people like me,” Sindhu said.

Challenging Identities “A lot of my time at Amherst has been interrogating who I am and what makes me who I am,” Sindhu said. In particular, Sindhu found himself interrogating his racial and religious identities. He was raised as a proud Pakistani and Sunni Muslim, with all of the trappings and ceremonies that came with those labels, such as fasting or attending mosque.

“At Amherst, I’ve learned skills that have allowed me to contextualize those experiences into broader social patterns,” Sindhu said.

Eventually, the identities that Sindhu had grown up claiming became more limiting in describing how he came to understand himself.

He has begun to think of himself in a more multi-faceted way and has attempted to broaden his identifications as much as possible.

“I believe identities are useful for identifying along lines of oppression, but I find myself reaching for more universal identities,” Sindhu said.

In terms of academics, Sindhu found himself questioning his identities through philosophy, studying concepts such as historical materialism and enlightenment humanism.

Eventually deciding to double major in English and Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought, Sindhu has a singular sensitivity to the way the individual relates to society.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the way in which enlightenment humanism posited a kind of ideal for the human, which was based off a 18th century model of the European white man,” he said. “Through scientific studies of societies, other groups became measured by deviations from that norm. Since Amherst, I’ve tried to flatten those differences. I’ve been caught up in ego minimalization and have been trying to limit my use of identifying terms.”

His hesitation to embrace identities narrowly ironically resulted in him standing out from the crowd.

When The Amherst Student asked different departments for their recommendations for seniors to profile in the Commencement Issue, LJST professor Adam Sitze, with whom Sindhu has worked throughout his Amherst career, wrote, “Without question, I would recommend the one and only Siraj Sindhu. There’s no way you could do this section without featuring him.”

This distinctiveness transcends the penchant he has for climbing trees or his sharp dressing, a style his friends jokingly refer to as “twee,” which misleadingly suggests that he may be a professor. More than his stature and academic prowess, however, Sindhu’s confident curiosity shines through.

“On a campus marked by division, Sindhu seemed to trespass happily on the boundaries that preserved unhealthy social spaces,” said political science professor Andrew Poe.

Off the Beaten Path

Sindhu described his experience abroad as a critical part of his education. While studying in Berlin, he found himself situated within a diverse community of artists and activists.

14 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

Photos courtesy of Siraj Sindhu ’17

A pensive figure on campus, Sindhu may be largely known for his kindness and affinity for extra-large mason jars.

When Sindhu first arrived at Amherst, he was eager to jump into the fray and get involved with all sorts of extracurricular activities.

He became involved in Amherst’s ultimate frisbee team, AC Voice and the AAS Senate. He lived in Marsh his sophomore year and was a Coffee Haus regular — reading his poetry and occasionally singing. This changed after spending a semester in Berlin during his junior year.

He returned to Marsh, where he covered his room in film photography from his trip, but living in Berlin changed the way he encountered the world, “It opened my eyes a lot as to what kind of lives were off the beaten path,” Sindhu said.

In Berlin, Sindhu found himself surrounded by young people from the Middle East, Africa and former Soviet states. He met students, artists and activists, many of whom felt for whatever reason that they lacked a place in society.

“I came back from Berlin wanting to do my own thing. I had a change in priorities and wanted to do things by myself or with smaller groups of people,” he said. “Instead of running from meeting to meeting, I try to foster a relationship with nature, art and those around me.

It is a far more meditative life than what I had before.”

Sindhu’s change in priorities was apparent to those around him. As he shrugged off many of the burdens that he had been shouldering back on campus, many began to see what was truly inside him.

“A lot of people have asked me if he’s ‘fake.’ The short answer to that is ‘no,’ but the long answer is a lot more simple than you might think,” Sindhu’s friend Bryan Zayatz ’18 said. “I think that he just constantly tries to conform himself. He always acts as though no one was watching him, so you might catch him randomly singing or dancing. The thing

is, it is not an act. He genuinely feels that way.”

Putting Theory into Practice Perhaps the best way to express Sindhu’s new priorities can be found in his living situation. He spent his senior year living in the Humphries House, or as it is more commonly known, the Zu. In this dorm, students have the responsibility to work together to maintain the house.

They cook meals for one another, order food and organize house events collectively.

His abroad experience compelled Sindhu to explore himself unfettered by his context. Simultaneously, he encouraged others to similarly examine themselves, too.

“Siraj will always engage you and ask questions in a way that others rarely do. He tries to empathize with you and connect to you on a personal level,” Aaron Cooper-Lob ’17 said.

“Amherst College has always focused on the intellectual,” Sindhu said. “The mandate of the liberal arts college is to bring together the brightest minds from across the nation. While all that is great, doing cooperative living at the Zu means that you don’t just care for your fellow students as intellectual beings who come together in the library or the classroom. You acknowledge their physical existence and take steps to physically care for them.”

Sindhu now leads his life uninhibited by what had previously held him back. He rejects being painted into a corner, has his priorities in order and genuinely cares about the physical and mental well being of those around him.

Sindhu epitomizes self-critique on both a personal and a societal level. He is a model for other students not just to consider this decontextualized reflection but also to put it into actionable steps.

Senior Profile | Sophie Murguia

An Ethical Thinker Dedicated to the Press A longtime leader of The Amherst Student, Sophie Murguia’s passion for journalism extends beyond the page to questions of ethics and social responsibility.

— Emma Swislow ’20 Sophie Murguia isn’t usually on this side of an interview.

“I’m so nervous right now,” she said.

For the past four years, Murguia has been heavily and integrally involved in The Amherst Student. She was managing news editor as a first year and editor in chief from her sophomore year to the end of her junior fall semester, after which she served as executive advisor to the editing staff.

When I asked her about other extracurricular activities Murguia did during her four years at Amherst besides The Student, she replied, “This is where I’m boring. Most of it’s the newspaper.”

In reality, Murguia had other commitments outside of The Student. She wrote for the Circus, a student-run literary magazine, worked for the Common, an Amherst College-based literary magazine, and performed in Amherst Dance. Still, none of these took priority over her work for The Student, which sometimes superseded even academics.

“I would block off all of my Tuesday,” she said. “I wouldn’t do any schoolwork and I would just do the newspaper. It has to be your first priority. I often had to push aside classwork or find a way to make it work because whatever the problem, you’re the person responsible.”

Friends like Kiana Herold ’17 know Murguia for her passion and dedication to journalism.

“It’s so nice to see people in their element, and she’s so in her element in the news office,” Herold said. “I remember a lot of different issues that came up that she had to deal with, and just seeing the degree to which she cared about those different things and how determined she

was to handle the situation was rather inspiring.”

Roots As A Writer Murguia grew up near Silicon Valley with two parents involved in the tech industry, and her younger sister is now a computer science major at Barnard. Murguia, however, has always retained a love for writing. “In high school I definitely felt like everyone wanted to be an engineer or a doctor, and I liked English,” Murguia said.

She has known that she wanted to be a writer in some capacity since first grade. “When you’re a kid who likes books, you think, ‘I’m going to write fiction,’ and that’s what I thought for a very long time, probably up until high school and maybe through my first year at Amherst,” Murguia said.

“Eventually, I realized that what I had more of a compulsion to do was journalism. It was more of a gradual realization, but I always knew that I liked books and liked to write.”

Murguia was particularly interested in using journalism as a tool to serve the public good.

“I think my personality type is that I need to be out in the world doing things and talking to people,” Murguia said. “Part of the appeal of journalism for me is that I realized I felt more of an ethical compulsion to do it.” Journalism, Murguia said, “holds the powerful accountable” and “creates an informed citizenry,” all of which are priorities for her.

A Faith in Ethics Murguia’s interest in ethics carries over into the classroom. She took several classes, including her first-year seminar, with Professor

Nishiten Shah in the philosophy department at Amherst.

Shah’s first impressions of Murguia were of a quiet student, but her first paper left him “stunned.”

“It was far superior to anything I’d seen, and it wasn’t just superior for a first-year student,” he said.

“Her final paper in that class, I now use as an example of how to write, not only with my first-year students, but with all of my students. It’s not only amazing how much she is able to absorb in class, but also how well she thinks with her pen.”

Murguia continued to have an interest in philosophy throughout her time at Amherst. “I actually took, depending on what you count, about six philosophy classes,” she said. “I didn’t want to be a major just because I didn’t want to do the requirements. All I care about is ethics.”

Friends like JinJin Xu ’17 would even use the word “ethical” to describe Murguia. “It’s a strange way to describe her, but she literally wrote her thesis about ethics,” Xu said.

This reflectiveness stands out to Xu, both in and out of class. “In classrooms where a lot of students, especially freshmen, are hoping to impress, she was not like that at all,” Xu said. “When she does speak, it’s always with such thoughtfulness, weight and passion that it’s almost a force that gushes out. That’s true for both inside and outside the classroom. There’s always a kind of thoughtfulness and passion driving what she says.”

Murguia’s passion for thinking deeply and reflectively is infectious, as Herold can attest.

“One night we went to Antonio’s at ten because we were hungry,”

Murguia’s passion for deep and critical thinking has also impacted her friends, who can also attest to her devotion to journalism. Murguia is headed to Columbia to study journalism after graduating.

Photos courtesy of Sophie Murguia ’17

Though Murguia is an English major, she has also taken many philosophy courses on ethics at Amherst.

Herold said. “We ended up sitting there, having a really long, reflective conversation for three or four hours and realized it was two in the morning and we were like, ‘What are we doing here?’”

A Process-Oriented Thinker Murguia’s interest in ethics and its connection to literature came together in her thesis, the idea for which she has since senior year of high school, titled “Reading Experimentally: How Short Stories Cultivate Ethical Thinking.” It explores the connection between ethical thought experiments and works of short fiction by Alice Munro and Lydia Davis.

“Basically, these kinds of short stories, these literary thought experiments, teach us to read experimentally,” Murguia said. “And by that, I mean they teach us to take an experimental attitude toward our own ethical lives that are playful, hybrid, iterative. Analytic philosophy tends to be very universalizing and abstract and impersonal, and so much of the literature I’ve read at Amherst tends to be the opposite of that.”

Murguia’s work on her thesis, along with her time in Professor of English Geoffrey Sanborn’s “American Extravaganzas” course, has taught her how to view life, especially intellectual life, in a more unfinished and process-oriented way.

“Embracing that unfinished-ness has been a big thing that I’ve learned,” she said. “I’m decently proud of the final product, but I don’t think it’s amazing. I can think of issues with it as a larger project and also on a sentence-by-sentence level. I’ll go through it and cringe.

But the process was really worthwhile and taught me to see the world in new ways.”

This mentality is one of the most important things Murguia will take away from her time at Amherst.

“Before I came to Amherst, I was much more focused on achieving things in the sense that all high schoolers are taught to do,” she said.

“That mentality is a really good one to be freed from. I’m just a lot more focused on being in the moment and focusing on what I’m learning every day. That’s something I’ve learned from people at Amherst.”

An Investigative Future After she graduates from Amherst, Murguia will head to journalism school at Columbia University, although she doesn’t know exactly what sort of journalism she’ll focus on yet.

“Some days, I think I could be an immigration reporter or a health policy reporter or report on women’s rights, and I want to start to explore what kinds of journalism I’m interested in,” Murguia said. “I want to be more intentional about where I’m going after grad school.”

When I asked Murguia where she sees herself in 10 years, she first laughed, but then proceeded to answer the question quite confidently.

“I hope that I’m working as a reporter doing some kind of meaningful journalism that is holding the powerful accountable, doing all that,” Murguia said.

“I can see that taking a lot of forms. I’ll be happy as long as I’m doing work that has an impact of some kind, and as long as I’m a reporter and I get to be out in the world talking to people and learning something new every day.”

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 15

KEVIN, NICK, ANTHONY, DEVIN, ROB, EVAN, AUSTIN, AND NICK FOREVER TEAMMATES AND FRIENDS

CONGRATULATIONS AND GOOD LUCK! LOVE, YOUR AMAZING PARENTS 16 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

The wheels of your career are spinning in full speed...

Keep going and don’t hit the brakes now!

Congratulations Nela!

-Your Lovely Family

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 17

Congratulations Lauren!

You’ve worked very hard at all that you do and have accomplished so much in your 4 years at Amherst.

We are so proud of you!

Love, Mom & Dad

Destin, We are so proud of the person you are And your many accomplishments.

Keep reaching for the stars – Knowing we are behind you all the way!

We love you to the moon and back again!!

Mom, Dad, Dylan, Etai, and Maya

Natalie, congratulations on your graduation!

GOOD LUCK to you as you as you move toward the next chapter of your life!

With much love, Papa, Mom & Jacqui you move toward the next GOOD LUCK to you as you as chapter of your life!

With much love, Papa, Mom & Jacqui

18 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

Congratulations Diego!

Congratulations to our darling daughter Bronwen Foreman on her completion of her degree “The vault and scope and schooling And mastery of the mind”………..a stage completed.

You bonded with your crew of eight and shared so much together. May it leave you with great memories and enduring friendships.

Love Mum and Dad

Congratulations on your success and achievements. Keep up the good work and many more wonderful things will keep coming your way. We are so proud of you! Mom, Francesca, Nicholas and your Defagoga Fans…

Congratulations to our former Editors-in-Chief

Congrats Beaujie!

Congratulations Graduate from the Amherst Student Staff

We love you

♥

Big Squig!

Love, Mom and Dad

Good looks, brains, heart, and now a diploma too!

You’ve got it all!

Love, Your Family

Dear Sam, Congratulations on graduating from Amherst. Great job! We can’t wait to visit you in NYC and to read your first novel.

No pressure.

We love you. Mama, Papa, Mollie, and of course, Clover Your biggest fans since day 1!

We are so proud of you!

Congratulations!

Love, Mom, Dad, Claire, and Caroline

Congratulations, Henry!

We are proud of you!

Love, Mom, Dad and Leslie May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 19

Senior Profile | Yen Nhi Troung Vu

A Mathematician with a Penchant for People As humble as Nhi Truong is about her talent, her unparalleled mathematical brilliance has left an imprint on everyone with whom she has interacted.

—Drew Kiley ’18 On campus, I have heard Yen Nhi Truong Vu described as a “math god.” And why not? As an undergraduate, Truong Vu plowed through the core of Amherst’s mathematics major in four semesters before studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After writing a spectacular math thesis and graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst, she was accepted to Princeton, Harvard and Stanford’s prestigious mathematics graduate programs.

When I asked Truong Vu about the nickname, however, she chafed at the suggestion. “I wouldn’t even enjoy that because everything comes to me at a cost, and that’s a cost of time and effort,” she said.

From Vietnam to Singapore Truong Vu grew up in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. As a child, she cultivated an interest in math, which she attributes to her teachers. Truong Vu then took a test administered in various Southeast Asian countries that was designed to identify the brightest students in these countries and bring them to the prestigious St. Joseph’s Institute International High School in Singapore.

After excelling in the exam, she moved to Singapore alone at the age of 15, which taught her to be independent at a young age. At her high school, students lived in apartments with ten to twenty other students and one caretaker, but Truong Vu and the other students in her apartment soon found out that their caretaker was embezzling money from the students’ funds for food.

Truong Vu was forced to cook for herself every day and study for the school’s international baccalaureate program without the aid of a parent figure.

Her Style of Learning From a young age, according to Truong Vu, her education exposed her to topics that would scare math majors in the United States, such as

discrete math, elementary number theory and combinatorics. Yet, she emphasized that the ideas behind these topics were no more complex than those behind the typical high school history class in the United States.

At the age of ten or eleven, Truong Vu said, her teachers showed her proof by induction, a math technique that depends on a domino effect of positive integers. She compared this to a common topic in American high schools.

“Probably in grade 9 or 10, you should learn about the Vietnam War and then there’s this whole domino effect,” she said. “If you could understand it then, I’m pretty sure you could understand proof by induction.”

Truong Vu was quick to dismiss the notion that math is an onerous subject reserved for socially averse shut-ins. For her, learning is best when it is collaborative.

“I feel like learning is about sharing and talking to people and doing problem sets together,” she argued.

This constant curiosity and teamwork is evident throughout Truong Vu’s life, and she enjoys math research above all due to the opportunities it provides for collective learning.

Truong Vu was attracted to the United States due to its excellent reputation for higher education. She didn’t want to go back to Vietnam, because she felt that good placement in the Vietnamese economy required connections and money, which she did not possess. In Singapore, there were only two universities — Nanyang Technological University and National University of Singapore — and she hadn’t enjoyed the learning environment in her high school, as it was competitive and not collaborative.

Truong Vu thus sought the tightknit community and close interaction with professors that the liberal arts experience provided. With Amherst’s excellent academic standing and em-

phasis on providing an education for those without the financial means, she found a match in the college.

Seeking Walls at Amherst Throughout her Amherst career, Truong Vu has been a constant presence in the math department. She took her first-year seminar with Professor Tanya Leise, who has been her advisor throughout college, and has worked closely with math professors Amanda Folsom and Gregory Call, amongst others.

Truong Vu found role models in her professors at Amherst. For her, they are inspirational because “they know a lot of things; they are very nice to you; and they are hardworking also.” She recalled one instance in which she found Call working at 2 a.m. in Seeley Mudd and other times when, after pulling an all-nighter, she found Folsom in the math department early in the morning.

Truong Vu started her Amherst career with a course in intermediate calculus. She initially explored applied math, completing research with Folsom in the summer between her first and sophomore year through the SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) program, but soon found herself more intrigued by the rigor of more theoretical math. In the spring of her sophomore year, she took Analysis; Groups, Rings and Fields; and Number Theory all in one semester, in addition to a 400-level economics course.

“I think that semester I was just on steroids for some reason,” Truong Vu said. The semester proved critical to turning her passion for math into a potential career.

Since then, Truong Vu has jumped headfirst into mathematical pursuits. She spent her entire junior year away from Amherst, with one semester at MIT and the other at France’s Université Paris Diderot.

Truong Vu has also served as a math tutor or TA for seemingly every class in the department, and her

Photo courtesy of Yen Nhi Troung Vu ’17

From her early days in Vietnam, Truong exhibited an incredible passion for mathematics, one that has only deepened at Amherst. accolades include the Alice T. Shafer Mathematics Prize, awarded by the Association of Women in Mathematics, the Walker Prize in each of her first two years and the Charles W. Cole Scholarship.

She has also taken many classes in the economics department, where she serves as a peer tutor and collaborates extensively on research with professor Brian Baisa.

In her senior year, Truong Vu wrote a math thesis on mock modular forms, a topic in analytic number theory pioneered by famous Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.

“Her honors thesis … is as exceptional as any thesis I’ve reviewed (which includes all the theses recommended for summa cum laude across the College in my fourteen years on the Committee of Six),” Call wrote.

Truong Vu is exceptionally intelligent, but what sets her apart as a student is her willingness to try and fail.

“When most students try to solve a problem, they stop when they hit a wall,” Baisa said. “They consider that a good day’s work. In contrast, Nhi is out there looking for walls because she really enjoys building new kinds of ladders that no one ever thought about making before.”

In his classes, Baisa noted, Truong Vu acted as a de facto TA for her classmates. Further, she led not just as a tremendous student but also as a community leader and a model of enthusiasm for scholarship.

In teaching or tutoring, perhaps the most difficult aspect is retaining an awareness of how difficult some topics are for others, no matter how easy they may feel personally.

Truong Vu possesses the ability and work ethic to comprehend almost anything, but also the patience and awareness to understand others’ difficulties.

Balancing Contradictions

Photo courtesy of Amherst College

Truong capped her Amherst career with a cornucopia of awards at the college’s Senior Assembly, including The Addison Brown Scholarship for overall academic excellence and both senior math department prizes, The Robert H. Breusch Prize and The Walker Award for Leadership.

20 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

Truong Vu’s humility is perhaps the only thing more impressive than her accomplishments in math. When complimented, she quickly shifts the focus to others. In reflecting on her summers of research, Truong Vu highlights the extraordinary aptitude

of her professors and collaborators.

She does not merely acknowledge others’ accomplishments, but she eagerly seeks to learn from them as well.

“I know very little,” she said.

“The more I know about math, the worse I feel.” This stands in stark contrast to her enormous accomplishments and the plentiful compliments on her character, aptitude and work ethic from professors and friends.

“As fine a mathematics student as I have taught in my 29 years at Amherst, Nhi is special,” Call said.

Truong Vu does not simply impress others in math study and research. She also brings passions that others might find surprising. Roger Van Peski, a Princeton undergraduate who worked with Truong last summer, claimed, “She has no patience for decadence and wasting time, but this does not mean she follows the stereotype of the mathematician with no worldly experience or practical skills.”

One of these skills is cooking, which Truong Vu sees as both a break from the precision for math and an opportunity to have a meal and talk around the table.

She balances traits that seem deeply contradictory. Truong Vu is remarkably independent but also most attracted to Amherst by the community. The stereotype of her field suggests she would feel most at home when lost in her own head, but Truong Vu is most vitalized when surrounded by others.

Her friend An Hoang ’18 said, “It is incredible that someone can be so smart and so silly at the same time.” This silliness is evident immediately in talking with her. When I asked Truong Vu about her passions, she cheekily answered, “I like watching YouTube.”

She has decided to attend Stanford mathematics graduate school next year, where she hopes to study analytic number theory. Upon leaving Amherst, Truong Vu is most sad to leave the relationships she has built over the course of four years, but that sentiment leaves me confident that she will only build more in the coming years.

Senior Profile | Ruben Valera

RC and EMT Brings Heart to Neuroscience Ruben Valera’s time at Amherst exemplifies his warmth, friendliness and dedication to helping other people.

—Paola Garcia-Prieto ’18 Amherst College Emergency Medical Services (ACEMS) superhero, Charles Pratt resident counselor (RC), neuroscientist, rat whisperer, writer and one of the funniest guys you’ll ever meet, Ruben Valera stands tall at Amherst. The love people have for Valera is boundless, mainly because he has such a big heart and cares so deeply about all his friends as well as the groups he’s joined while on campus.

Valera, like many students, has also struggled with his sense of belonging and self-doubt. However, it is his empathy that has made him a mentor for first years at Amherst and a comforting sight around campus for so many others.

Joining ACEMS Since joining ACEMS in his first year, Valera has put his heart and soul into the team, which he views as an opportunity to give back to the community. After answering over 70 calls and saving two lives, Valera feels he has affected important change in ACEMS and ranks it as the most important part of his Amherst experience.

“Showing up on call and being able to help someone in a moment of need and work with someone through their difficulties has been the most amazing thing, because it’s something where I feel 100 percent confident,” Valera said. “I don’t feel confident super often, but leading a call is somewhere where I feel in control and think yes, this is me.”

The way he got into the group is a bit of a “Ruben-esque” saga, as he tells it. The application for the ACEMS EMT course was due on a Friday, and Valera started it Friday morning — procrastination, he said, is a vice he still struggles to kick. He finished the whole

thing by 8 p.m. and went to turn the application into the ACEMS mailbox, only to arrive in the mailroom and realize the mailroom had already closed.

He was initially not accepted into the class, but when someone else dropped out, the program offered Valera the spot — though he could not land the financial aid for the course.

Valera went to every family member, calling “everyone and their tía,” ultimately scraping together enough money to get through the EMT course.

Once in the program, though he, passed with flying colors.

“I personally don’t think I deserved to be in that class,” Valera said. “I should have probably waited a year and filled out my application on time, but I got lucky. And I worked my ass off, I worked so hard. I crushed every test and I worked really hard to be the best ACEMS member I could be.”

He loves the community that ACEMS members have. They can be goofy and mess around, but ultimately, he said, they take their responsibility seriously because the stakes are so high.

“I don’t pretend we’re out here saving lives [every day],” he says, joking about how people complain they can’t even give patients Tylenol. “But anytime you call, three people will show up, and they’ll take your concerns seriously.”

Valera, a neuroscience major, is also pre-med. Emergency medicine emerged in other parts of his life, as he spent the last year and a half volunteering in the emergency room at Springfield’s Baystate Medical Center.

Valera calls himself a “people person” above all else, and face-to-face interaction with patients attracts him most to the medical profession. Valera’s

empathetic nature allows him to make meaningful connections with everyone he meets, whether it’s his residents over the course of a year or ACEMS callers with whom he spends half an hour.

“I think RC and ACEMS have been my big identities that have helped me get through certain issues,” Valera said. “It made me feel confident in who I am and what I can do. You know, I may suck at chemistry, but I am good at being ACEMS.”

Coming to Amherst Valera credits his high school biology teacher for seeing potential in him and mentoring him through the college application process. He also felt thankful toward his counselor for pushing him toward schools of a higher caliber.

Valera went to a magnet high school in Orlando, Fla., where he was one of few students from a low socioeconomic background in the International Baccalaureate program. While there, he found out about Questbridge, an organization aimed at bringing low-income high-achieving students to elite colleges and universities that offer need-based financial aid, through friends.

Through Questbridge, he ultimately faced a decision between Amherst and University of Southern California.

Valera’s family, who originally encouraged him to just go to community college like his sister, didn’t want him so far away, so he chose to stay on the East Coast.

Through the struggle of the college application process, where he again fell into the trap of starting things at the last minute, his biology teacher edited his essays. Ultimately, he was immensely proud of his main Common Application essay.

Photos courtesy of Ruben Valera ’17

Valera manifests his commitment to helping others through offering both mentorship and friendship to his residents.

Becoming an RC Valera’s potential as an RC was seen by his own first-year RC before he even considered applying for the position. “I didn’t want to be an RC,” Valera said.

“I didn’t think I’d be good at it.”

However, Daniel (Bunky) Merenich ’15, a Charles Pratt RC at the time, approached him and told him he had to apply because he had already written a recommendation letter for him. Valera applied with three recommendation letters, two from his Pratt RCs and one from Doralinda (Dora) Puente, with whom he worked in Schwemm’s Café.

Valera became a Charles Pratt RC for the next two years and claims he now knows the ins and outs of that building better than anyone else — secret custodial closets and all.

Valera thought of his residents as his friends, but talked about the difficulty balancing life as an Amherst student and providing enough support for his residents. “Honestly, being an RC could be a full time position ... because you’re kind of like a friend, a helper, a mentor, a tutor,” Valera said.

One of his former residents, Andrea Sanchez ’18, praised Ruben’s dedication as an RC. “Even though he was super busy, if you needed something he would always be there.”

After becoming an RC in Lipton during his senior year, he realized how different being an RC to upperclassmen is. While he appreciated being able to relate to his residents asthey all went through the challenges of senior year together, he missed taking on mentorship role of a first-year RC. “For upperclassmen, it’s more like I’m a building nanny,” he said. “Is the building on fire? No? OK ... I was given a storage key and access to a budget.

I don’t find that fun. I’m not an event planner. I’m more of a people person.”

On Thesis and Medical Research

Although he may spend many hours toiling away in Merrill, Valera is a “people person” and values face-to-face interaction. His friends know him for his warmth and compassion.

When not in his residence halls, Merrill was Valera’s home. He jokes about spending the past year living in a basement with rats as roommates while

he worked on his neuroscience thesis.

Valera studied rats’ feeding behaviors through chemogenetic inhibition, which involved inserting brain receptors activated by drugs that he would inject into the rat’s brain through a tube sticking out of their neck. He assured me that they didn’t feel anything, as I visibly cringed at the idea of 52 rats with tubes sticking out of their necks.

When I asked if he thought he’d continue doing this type of research, he said he’d like to continue with research, but with real people.

“I spend a lot of time by myself down there, really wishing I was with people,” Valera said. “Every time I’m at the hospital, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is why I like doing research.’ Because I get to interact with people. And I get to ask questions and do bigger things and help people. I wasn’t helping the rats, really.”

Family and Life After College After graduation, Ruben will stay in New England for at least a year, conducting clinical research in neuroendocrinology. During this time, he’ll also be applying to medical school. He hopes to attend a school in New England, “Unless I hate Boston, and then I’ll go back down south.”

His parents, who are from the Dominican Republic, have a harder time understanding why he’s taking time off before medical school — as most aspiring medical students now do — but insist they will support him. His abuela, on the other hand, keeps sneakily comparing him to a cousin who graduated from community college in New Jersey with four honors, while he is only getting one. He laughed it off, though, and said, “Do you know all I did for this? I’ll just be happy to get cum laude.”

Despite having struggled with his sense of belonging, Valera has become a well-known figure on campus beloved by many. He said that he wrestles with the question, “Am I Amherst?”

Ask anyone and the answer will be a strong and undeniable “yes.”

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 21

Senior Profile | Lauren Tuiskula

A Writer and Softball Star Evolving at Amherst A thoughtful writer and team player, Lauren Tuiskula has left her mark on each person she has met during her time at Amherst.

—Shawna Chen ’20 Julia Turner ’19 first met Lauren Tuiskula when Turner visited Amherst on a softball recruitment trip as a high school sophomore.

“I remember being intimidated by all of the players,” Turner said, “except Lauren.” Tuiskula put Turner at ease with a “full smile on her face.”

“She kept asking me everything about myself,” said Turner, who also works with Tuiskula on The Amherst Student. “I remember her saying, ‘Oh my gosh, you like to read, you like to write, you play softball, we’re basically the same person!’ Lauren is just one of those people who takes you under her wing.”

At Amherst, Tuiskula has been involved in The Student, the women’s softball program, Amherst Splash, Campus Activities Board and Native American studies research. She led the newspaper as editor in chief, captained the softball team, served as co-president of Splash and produced a critical digital humanities thesis. But across all these interests, nothing was more clear than her heart for other people.

to become involved in any way possible. She worked at Leicester Cable Access and reported play-by-plays of recreational games. She also joined her high school newspaper, which was “literally eight pages of printer paper stapled together, monthly,” she said.

But the experience was valuable, and she began concentrating her college options on schools where she could play softball and study journalism or communications.

She happened upon Amherst by chance, when the softball coach sent her an email about recruitment. “But then I did some research, went on the tour and just fell in love with everything that makes Amherst Amherst,” she said.

In that moment, Tuiskula believed she would still be able to follow her communications plan by majoring in English and Film and Media Studies. “But in hindsight, I’m very happy that I did not go to a communications school,” she said. “I’m happy that I’ve had the opportunity to branch out.”

Childhood in “Very Small” Leicester

In her first few months at Amherst, Tuiskula was “really, really nervous.”

“I had good grades in high school, but it’s that feeling everyone has — ‘you don’t deserve to be here’ — that type of thing,” she said. “People from my high school don’t usually go to NESCAC schools, so I was really nervous coming and felt like I couldn’t do it.”

She soon found, however, that Amherst had supports in place for her to succeed. Her Learn, Explore, Activate and Participate program, a three-day Community Engagement Orientation Trip (CEOT), ignited a curiosity for hearing other people’s stories. Tuiskula’s CEOT group was “weirdly intimate right away.” Sitting in a circle telling stories, Tuiskula realized the significance of making connections with people from different backgrounds.

“That was when I was like, ‘Whoa, this is what I’m getting myself into.

This is awesome,’” she said. “Just hearing stories did this huge thing.

First of all, you connect with people

Tuiskula grew up an only child in Leicester, Massachusetts, a “very small town — not very diverse in terms of composition — composition of opinions or background.” Excluding some fluctuation, her academic class was composed of the same 100 kids through all 12 grades.

She participated in a variety of sports, but softball was always her favorite and best sport. She played in youth leagues in Leicester, forming relationships and learning the nuances of the sport. One summer, she ended up playing on a travel team and, from there, continued playing in high school for college recruitment.

Her passion for sports led to another development. Having grown up watching sports shows with her dad, “I remember thinking, ‘I want to be a sports journalist — I’ll be on ESPN,’” she said.

Like her other interests, once Lauren developed a passion for sports journalism, she went out of her way

Making the Most of Amherst

In addition to playing as the designated hitter, Tuiskula’s leadership helped foster an open and supportive team culture.

22 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

on a different level because you know where they’re coming from but also you learn so much.”

As a student whose favorite subject was English all through high school, Tuiskula knew she enjoyed writing and wanted to major in English. “Reading, Writing and Teaching,” a course she took in her first year, became a community in which “you were coming together for school but also because people genuinely enjoyed material and wanted to talk to each other about it,” she said. “That’s where that possibility opened up for me, and those classes actually felt like a community that I had never ever experienced in a classroom before.”

Stepping up to the Plate When she first joined the Amherst softball team, Tuiskula was extremely shy. “There’s a joke that I didn’t talk at all until April,” she said. “It was probably some of these feelings of inadequacy, and also being a freshman and being afraid.”

Since her first year, however, Tuiskula has grown more confident. Now, as captain, she looks back with pride on the program’s transformation in her four years here.

In her first year, Tuiskula said the program was rather contained. The members of the team tended to keep to themselves, and the team wasn’t very active in supporting interests outside of softball. But as the team changed and evolved, so did the team culture.

As one of the softball leaders who helped create the impetus for pursuing networks outside of softball, Tuiskula said she feels like a “proud mom” seeing the ways her teammates have shown initiative in stepping outside their circles and speaking up.

Newspaper: the Highlight of her Amherst Experience Tuiskula joined The Student in the fall of her first year as a sports writer, covering field hockey, squash and track and field for a year and a half before being promoted to managing sports editor in the spring of her sophomore year. In the spring of her junior year, she took over as co-editor in chief with Elaine Jeon ’17 and continued as sole editor in chief her senior fall after Jeon left to focus on other activities.

Spencer Quong ’18, who came to see Tuiskula as an older sister and role model through working on the paper together, said he admired the way Tuiskula “was always so assertive but in a way that wasn’t too overbearing.”

“She always stuck to her opinion on edits and didn’t let you push back too much, but while still being reasonable,” Quong said.

For Tuiskula, journalism is all about having the power to take underrepresented narratives and put them on a platform. It was during Amherst Uprising, a sit-in that occurred in her junior fall and — according to its web-

Photos courtesy of Lauren Tuiskula ’17

Tuiskula will be a post-baccalaureate fellow for the English department, both assisting professors and pursuing her own research. site — expressed solidarity with black college students nationwide “who experience the daily effects of white supremacy in academia,” that Tuiskula realized the power of the press and began to play a larger role on the paper.

“Because we had all these outside outlets trying to spin the story, even if people were, ‘Oh, it’s just a student newspaper,’ we knew how important it was to get a real story out there of what was actually happening,” she said. “The spotlight was going to be on our story.”

What she will remember most from newspaper, however, isn’t the big stories or exciting transitions. What she will remember are the conversations she shared with the people on The Student. On Tuesday nights in the newspaper office, Tuiskula said that despite the late hour, the editing staff would still be carrying on deep, meaningful conversations.

“Doing the work is great and interacting with people and getting editing skills and things,” Tuiskula said, “but what actually matters is those moments in Keefe where you’re all together and you’re working, but you take a break and talk about things that are happening on campus — that was the best part of newspaper.”

Expanding her World of Possibilities Tuiskula made it a point to take advantage of as much as she could at Amherst, seeking out different experiences, different friends, different voices and different stories. In her sophomore year, she took a Native American studies course with Associate Professor of English and American Studies Lisa Brooks. The material in the course, which was about history that has traditionally been silenced and marginalized, struck a chord with Tuiskula.

“This is the history no one is supposed to know,” she said. “And I didn’t get that in high school, that’s for sure.”

She stayed on as a research assistant, working with Brooks on a book project that retells King Philip’s War from the Native American perspective and maps colonial space as Native space. Leicester, her hometown, was one of the places she mapped for Brooks.

“Being exposed to things I either

wasn’t supposed to know or didn’t know and knowing that truth was out there, I just became very curious in learning as much as I could,” she said.

Brooks referred to Tuiskula as a “brilliant mind and a great team player.”

“It was easy for her to ask other students for help if she could see that they had skills in some area she wanted to learn; she never had any qualms about that,” she said. “But at the same time, she was also completely willing to do the same [for other students]. …

She’s somebody who just really thrives where she can think and work with other people.”

This year, Tuiskula continued her exploration of different narratives by writing a thesis on the novel “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Focusing on the digital aspects of the novel, Tuiskula looked at how the digital affects identity and composed her thesis entirely online, hoping to “give readers some sort of agency in the way they interact with it — that’s the merit of the digital.”

After Amherst Throughout her four years at Amherst, Tuiskula chose again and again to step out of her comfort zone and pursue differences. Next year, she will remain on campus, working for the English department as a post-baccalaureate fellow.

She hopes to eventually go to graduate school and pursue a career in journalism. But no matter where she goes or what she does, Tuiskula will always remember the people she has gotten to know when she reflects on Amherst.

“The relationships that I’ve been able to form and the people I’ve gotten to meet and the things I’ve gotten to learn through these people, from professors, staff and students — you’re not going to get that through studies,” she said.

Outside of the classroom and academic spaces, the activities that have been dear to Tuiskula, such as newspaper and softball, have also paved the way for her to form defining relationships.

“The people here are absolutely incredible,” Tuiskula said. “And being able to make something out of it, I think, is really special.”

Senior Profile | Niyi Odewade

Aspiring Doctor Keeps Focus on Community A singular drive has brought Niyi Odewade success as both an All-NESCAC lineman on the football field and an aspiring medical expert in the chemistry lab.

—Nate Quigley ’19 Niyi Odewade is a standout on the gridiron, a brilliant scientist poised to excel in medical school and a leader in all of his endeavors at Amherst.

Through his excellence in multiple fields and the charisma he conveys in his interactions with everyone he meets, Odewade has used his passion for medicine and his football career to leave an impact on the Amherst community beyond wins and admission to medical school.

He fondly remembers how stepping foot on campus reminded him “how diverse the world really is” after four years at the all-boys Delbarton. However, the quiet back roads of western Massachusetts were certainly no Newark, and Odewade was forced once again to adapt to new surroundings, this time with the added pressure of college athletics.

New Schools, New Challenges

Odewade has myriad accomplishments, and some of the obvious ones are on the football field, where he’s led the Mammoths to a 27-5 mark over his four years at the college. Since his first year, when he eked out a half sack and five tackles in a smattering of playing time, Odewade has matured into a team leader on and off the field. In each of the last three years, he has started all eight games, notching 6.5 sacks and 12 tackles for loss through the 24 games to spearhead a dominant Amherst defensive line that keyed the Mammoths’ back-to-back perfect seasons.

For Odewade, his two hours of game time each Sunday still hold a special place in his heart. His eyes lit up as he reminisced about his memories on Pratt Field. Indeed, his immediate response when asked for his most cherished memories of Amherst was to recount the story of his sophomore year homecoming game, when the Mammoths closed out their perfect season under the Pratt Field lights against the rival Ephs. He especially remembers “the crowd [and] the amount of fans we had there,” which created an atmosphere that was, as Odewade put it, “unreal.”

Even more notably, Odewade took it upon himself to assume a greater leadership role on the team in his senior season. Entering his final year in the program, Niyi felt he could make the greatest impact through mentoring the young team that had been assembled.

Odewade did all of this even without

Odewade grew up in Newark, New Jersey. Knowing that his community was underserved, Odewade wanted to cultivate skills or expertise that would allow him to give back in some way.

Soon, his ambitions would take Odewade away from his roots, but football helped him find community away from home and medicine provided him with a means to give back.

But for Odewade to continue to pursue these goals, he had to abandon the comforts of Newark, where, as he joked, “[I] only saw people that looked like me.” Instead, he headed to a new and unfamiliar place: the elite Delbarton School in Morristown, New Jersey.

Though Delbarton was only 25 miles away from home, the environment was completely foreign to Odewade, with access to a wide range of resources and an overwhelmingly white student body.

This place, he found, was a far cry from the streets of Newark. He remembers how he was “one of the only black kids in the school.” This stark contrast to the town he called home manifested itself in extreme culture shock. However, like most challenges that Odewade had faced in the past and would face in his future, he quickly rose to the occasion.

Excelling in the classroom and on the football field, Odewade earned admission to Amherst as a standout student and athlete.

Arriving at Amherst, to Odewade, proved both a relief and a challenge.

A Mammoth Mentor On and Off the Field

the label of “captain,” inspiring great admiration from Coach E.J. Mills.

Noting Niyi’s leadership abilities and enormous charisma, Mills praised his stud defensive lineman for his “ability to reach out to those who need it most.”

In his time at Amherst, Odewade garnered several regional awards.

Twice-named to All-Conference teams, including a First Team All-NESCAC nod his senior year, Odewade also received high praise for his accomplishments as a student-athlete. During his senior year, he earned a spot on the Capital One College Sports of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-District First Team and won the prestigious Desmond “Tuss” McLaughry Award.

An M.D. and an M.P.H. Odewade complemented his tenacious work ethic and drive on the football field with his prodigious academic ability in the sciences, as he most recently demonstrated by completing a chemistry thesis. Odewade entered Amherst with a passion for the sciences and a desire to become involved in the health professions. Much of this stems from his younger brother’s heart surgery, through which, Odewade said, he learned the impact medicine can have not only on the patient but also those closest to that patient. His dream of attaining both an M.D. and a M.P.H. (Masters of Public Health) stems from a desire to impart his own knowledge to others and to truly give back to the community, especially in medically underserved locations like his hometown, Newark.

This passion for improving public welfare is apparent to all who know Odewade, including Health Professions Advisor and Assistant Dean of Students Richard Aronson ’69. “[Niyi] shows great promise to become an extraordinarily humane and inspiring physician who will provide exquisite care to his patients and leadership at the community and societal level to make healthcare more equitable and

Odewade has anchored Amherst’s defensive front over the last three years. The league recognized his play with First Team All-NESCAC honors his senior year and Second Team honors his junior year.

Photos courtesy of Niyi Odewade ’17

Odewade has developed a passion for public health, and he hopes to complete both an M.D. and a Masters of Public Health. just,” wrote Aronson.

Such high praise is well deserved, especially given Odewade’s success in Amherst’s pre-health community, where his leadership once again rose to the surface. He is deeply involved in both the Amherst College Public Health Collaborative (ACPHC) and the Amherst chapter of the Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program (KDSAP). As part of ACPHC, he transformed the interests that first drove him towards the medical field into real actions. With his chapter, Odewade entered local communities and taught soap-making sessions as a means of encouraging hygiene and taking part in club-sponsored discussions on epidemics and the field of public health as a whole.

However, perhaps the most impressive achievement of Odewade’s fledgling medical career was co-founding KDSAP at Amherst. After spending the summer of 2015 at the Harvard Summer Research Program in Kidney Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he learned from doctors how to screen for kidney disease and provided free screenings for local communities, Odewade returned to Amherst as a man on a mission. He worked with a plethora of allies — including local health professionals, mentors at Harvard and the National Kidney Foundation, and fellow students to get the initiative off the ground during his junior fall. Now, less than two years into its existence, the KDSAP has already sponsored numerous events on campus and two free community screenings, a remarkable run of success that has left Odewade looking forward to the potential for this pillar of civic responsibility.

Aronson attributes much of the club’s success until this point to Odewade. “[Niyi’s] remarkable ability to make to people around him feel affirmed and honored has been abundantly evident in KDSAP,” he wrote.

Cameron Wade ’17, a leader of ACPHC, KDSAP member and Odewade’s close friend, likewise credits Odewade’s “laser vision [that] he sets on any goal” for the club’s growth, noting his unparalleled work ethic in all endeavors, “even if it jeopardizes the number of hours he spends sleeping or eating.”

The Drive In all of Odewade’s endeavors, from his time on Pratt Field to his founding of KDSAP, he displays one defining characteristic: tenacity. Wade wrote, “There is nothing he cannot do once he sets his eyes on it.” Both Aronson and Mills also noted his unmatched dedication in all aspects of life.

Odewade, for his part, wishes for this drive to define his legacy at the college. He hopes that his story will help “motivate others to realize that if you have the drive to do something, it can be done, but you need to realize you want it first.” In our conversation, rather than talk about his countless accomplishments on the field or in the classroom, Odewade instead chose to provide advice to future Amherst scholars, again demonstrating his great ability to lead, mentor and connect with those who need guidance.

Undoubtedly, Odewade’s drive will serve him well in his future, which he hopes will include medical school soon.

Odewade is about to begin applying to schools, having just taken the dreaded MCAT, and he looks set to attend one of the country’s top medical schools. In the far-off future, he seeks to specialize in cardiothoracic surgery.

Odewade’s intelligence and unmitigated desire to serve his community, which he has already demonstrated many times over, will certainly endear him to future patients. And if he doesn’t end up changing people’s lives through heart surgery, then he might, as Wade quipped, “cure cancer as a backup plan.”

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 23

Senior Profile | Tomal Hossain

A Musician Drawing from Diverse Influences Tomal Hossain expanded his lifelong passion for music during his time at Amherst, valuing both collaboration and his family heritage in his work.

—Kelly Chian ’20 A music and computer science double major with a certificate in ethnomusicology, Tomal Hossain ’17 immersed himself in the Amherst music community through his ability to reach people with his art and his personality.

Hossain will spend the next year traveling around the world as a Watson Fellow, exploring the intersections of music and culture.

Before Amherst Since childhood, Hossain has grown up in the same apartment his parents lived in after immigrating to Los Angeles in 1990. “The locals in L.A. called it ‘Little Bangladesh,’ which is in the confines of Koreatown,” Hossain said. “I grew up with a ton of cultural diversities. It was a mishmash of different Asians [and] Latinx.”

At a young age, Tomal discovered his passion for music in Saturday classes. “We would get together as groups of children growing up, like a Saturday school, where I would learn Bengali and traditional Bengali music and instruments,” Hossain said.

His love for music differentiated

him from the other students.

“Most children were super restless and were anxious to leave the confines of the classroom in this recreational center because there was a playground near by,” he said.

“I always remember that I would always request the teacher ‘Can we do it again?’ People usually hated me for that.”

Hossain spent most of his time growing up practicing “traditional music-making — either in rehearsals, teaching, learning or performing.” After the age of eight, Hossain started learning classical music of South Asia more seriously with private lessons throughout middle and into the beginning of high school.

Hossain’s brother is also a musician, so the two of them often performed together.

“We did really well for our community both presenting music to other communities and traveling to other places [to perform],” Hossain said. “It was really nice to hear positive feedback from our elders, and, as a kid, you eat that stuff up.”

The positive encouragement motivated him to keep practicing and trying. “There was obviously a

phase of wanting to quit and being fed up with things because it’s too much work, which probably happened around six or seventh grade,” he said. “That’s just a part of being a weird middle school student and going through puberty.”

Academics Outside of music, Hossain used to run cross country and track. His academic interests were centered on STEM subjects, specifically math and chemistry.

“I would say back then I really didn’t think I would gravitate towards what I concentrated in here at Amherst,” Hossain said. “Coming in here, there was all this musical and humanities activity that I [was] attracted to. I still kept up with whatever inspired me to do the math and chemistry before, because I am a computer science major on top of being a music major.”

After becoming interested in computer science during the second semester of his first year, he continued to take these courses. For him, the material was interesting, and he enjoyed his summer internships related to web development.

“I decided that [I] didn’t want to go out on a total limb on the music major, so I would be well suited to have another degree to put on my resume,” Hossain said.

As for the ethnomusicology certificate, “I was a total nerd, especially in high school, so I had a bunch of interests like anthropology,” Hossain said. “The best way of bridging music and anthropology is ethnomusicology.”

Expansion of Music

A computer science and music major, Hossain consistently transcends genre—singing acapella and playing Hindustani and Jazz.

24 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

Hossain’s extracurricular activities at Amherst have focused primarily on music. “My freshman year, I kind of dove right into the majority of my musical involvements: The DQ , Amherst College Jazz Ensemble for which I was the main singer,” Hossain said. “I did one Amherst College Jazz combo, and Glee Club, and I did side projects with fellow Hindustani, and South Asian classical music, with trio and duo things with people.

The other club-related thing was the South Asian Student Association, and that was really it.”

As a sophomore and junior, Hossain kept the heavy focus on music, but switched out some clubs for others like Gamelan Ensemble, conducting lessons and individual voice lessons.

Hossain spent his second semester of junior year abroad at a music program in Vienna.

“It was a nice break from the divided lifestyle of a computer science and music double major,” Hossain said. “It was nice to go all out in the music scene, and I was reading a lot of piano music, which I didn’t grow

Photos courtesy of Tomal Hossain ’17

Hossain fell in love with traditional Bengali music at classes he took while growing up in “Little Bangladesh,” Los Angeles. up doing because I’ve always been an oral musician. That is where I started composing my senior thesis about a year before it premiered.”

However, in Vienna, Hossain also faced a major challenge: losing his voice. As a result, he had to drop his singing activities and took speech and voice therapy.

The wide range of musical genres countered the tendency to just stick to one thing nicely, but Hossain sometimes wishes he had done a wider variety of activities such as theater or dance. “Once you really get into something you become blindsided that prevents you from seeing the benefit [of] doing other things,” Hossain said. “I was just so into doing different types of music.”

He recommends that music majors branch outside of one genre and explore more.

“It’s super rewarding to think about things comparatively and to create a meta-comparative experience of my life. Choral music is really good for fostering a sense of collectivity and demonstrated to me that the importance and the benefits of really engaging others not only in a musical context but a whole bunch of collaborative contexts. Improvisation in general is a great skill, so it extends beyond music making. If you are an improviser then you are more poised to gage a social situation or a job application to make it work,” Hossain said.

Earlier this year, Hossain premiered his thesis performance, “Kundalini Rising.” Hossain tried to highlight Hindustani music as well as other influences.

“I tried to synthesize the very influences that affect my music-making up to the present day, so I hope to inspire not only ... South Asian [people] to do what I did, but to inspire [people] regardless of their background to engage with their entire background as human beings.”

“I really did want to make a statement of where I come from and what I’m interested in,” he added. “I hope that would serve as a model regardless of your back-

ground and discipline.”

Long You ’17, who has lived with Hossain all four years, has gone to nearly all his shows in the past four years and described Hossain’s thesis presentation as “amazing blends of classical, South Asian, electronic.

[Hossain] took a clash of all these different cultures and experiences and put them together. He speaks about his experience in a way that really connects with people.” “[Hossain] added so much love and joy to the campus. He has also added so much beautiful music,” You said.

After Amherst Hossain, who recently won a Watson Fellowship, will spend the next year traveling to Indonesia, India, Senegal and Morocco to work on a project, “Music Cultures of Muslim Majority Communities.”

“It’ll be a bunch of learning traditional music and studying the cultures in which they are produced with truly no expectations of any final project or presentation,” he explained.

Ayoung Kim ’17, Hossain’s friend since their first year, finds Hossain’s passion addictive and inspiring.

“I feel like Tomal is the kind of peer who, in a decade or two, [you can see] become a giant in their field and you feel really good about it,” Kim said. “You have seen them grow and accomplish and you know how passionate they are in that field and they are continuously growing.

I’m really excited for his post-Amherst life.”

Hossain’s talents have gained recognition beyond the Watson program, as he also applied for and won a Fulbright Scholarship.

However, as Hossain can only take one offer at a time, he has chosen to decline the Fulbright in favor of exploring his interests with the Watson Fellowship.

After his Watson year concludes, Hossain plans to apply for more fellowships, including reapplying to the Fulbright. He is also considering attending graduate school for ethnomusicology in the future.

Senior Profile | Bonnie Drake

Drake Takes Amherst with Drive and Style As an activist and economist, Bonnie Drake brings determination and intelligence to all of her endeavors.

—Isabel Tessier ’19 Many students will remember the stressful days spent looking at colleges during junior and senior year of high school — but not Bonnie Drake. For her, the process began much earlier.

“I was that weird kid in eighth grade who started looking at colleges,” Drake said. “[Attending Amherst] was my goal since eighth grade.”

Drake’s parents both attended Amherst. “They never pressured me into coming here or anything, but … since I knew that they went here, I included that in my search. And I just fell in love with Amherst all on my own,” Drake said.

Drake approaches most things in life with this determination, energy and preparation. She works in the economics department as a department assistant and as a research assistant for Professor of Economics Katharine Sims and is a Peer Advocate for Sexual Respect. This is the third time she has served as a research assistant and only one of many roles she has played in enhancing gender justice on campus — serving as Sexual Respect Officer and member of the sexual respect task force. In the past, she has also been a resident counselor, co-chair of Pride Alliance, communications director for the Association of Amherst Students and a student worker at the Women’s and Gender Center. And she does all this while being, as her friend Noël Grisanti ’17 put it, “impeccably dressed.”

But the most impressive thing about Drake is not her academic drive, impressive list of extracurriculars or her ability to make a champagne-infused smoothie. It’s her compassion. Drake stands out as person whose core value is to serve and help others — whether it’s spending time with her friends on campus, her commitment to advocacy work or simply her warm presence.

A Qualitative Mind Flexibility and openness to change have defined Drake’s academic and career trajectory at Amherst.

As a first year, Drake thought she wanted to pursue majors in English

and Sexuality, Women and Gender Studies. However, after taking two Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought (LJST) classes with a visiting professor and with Professor Adam Sitze, she discovered the department in which she would decide to major.

“It felt very practical and tangible and relevant to things that I could use to apply to the world and try to do good work,” Drake explained.

But then, Drake attended the Career Center’s “Careers in Government and Nonprofit Trek” in D.C. during her junior year. Alumni there advised her to try out economics. Drake took an economics class and “fell in love with it instantly.”

“I was like, ‘This is what I should’ve majored in,’” she said.

As a first-semester junior who had already declared LJST, it was too late for her to change her major or add another. But instead of becoming discouraged and writing off economics as a missed opportunity, Drake jumped headfirst into her newly discovered passion. Economics professor Jessica Reyes, who taught Drake in the fall of 2016, said this is what makes Drake’s story special.

“As a junior, she was open to a whole new way of thinking,” she wrote in an email.

Drake echoed these sentiments herself. “It just opened up this whole new way of looking at the world,” she said.

Finding economics was more than just an academic discovery — it changed how Drake would think about herself, her abilities and her future.

To take higher-level economics classes, Drake took a calculus class with Professor Harris Daniels in the math department. She had not taken a math class in four years, but she took the challenge in stride. She bought the textbook over winter break, talked with Daniels about the chapters they’d be covering, worked through over 100 pages of the textbook and did all the online reviews during interterm.

Somehow, she was still nervous.

“I think as a woman, nobody expected me to be good at math or any-

thing quantitative,” Drake said. “And I didn’t really like it, because it didn’t come as naturally to me as the rest of subjects I did in [high] school.”

Although she kept up with the course material, Drake was nervous for the first exam and doubted her ability to handle the class. She recalled that when she told Daniels this, he responded, “I am going to call you out every time you’re psyching yourself out, and eventually you’re going to stop doing it.” Daniels was true to his word, and by the end of the semester, she saw herself and her mathematical ability in a new light.

Her professors continued to push her to be confident. In her first economics class, she said Professor Caroline Theoharides “looked at me and was like, ‘Bonnie, you have a quantitative mind. You can do this.’” It was the first time anyone had told Drake that she had great quantitative skill, and that impacted her greatly, opening new doors for her as she thought about what she wanted to do in the future.

Two years later, Drake is now about to start a job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an independent government agency responsible for consumer protection in the financial sector, where she’ll do qualitative economic and statistical work. In order to get the job, she had to undergo intensive consulting-style interviews where she had to do mental math on the spot.

“I don’t think I would’ve had the confidence to do that if it wasn’t for my classes and my professors here,” Drake said.

Drake will graduate Amherst this spring as a proud LJST major but will look to pursue her more recent interest in economics. At graduation, you can find her at the economics majors reception, and she’s now strongly considering pursuing a Ph.D. in economics.

Advocacy From All Different Sides Drake committed herself to advocacy work from a young age. In high school, she was involved in LGBT ac-

Drake’s approach and commitment to activism has evolved over the course of her time here. She fell in love with economics during her junior year and has since shifted her gaze to policy work.

Photos courtesy of Bonnie Drake ’17

Drake, the daughter of two alumni, wanted to come to Amherst since eighth grade, but did not follow the exact path she expected. tivism, serving on the board of directors for LGBT nonprofit Outholder for two years.

At Amherst, Drake immediately joined the Peer Advocates of Sexual Respect and was introduced to a new side of activism, which involved consent and sexual respect.

“Nobody had ever sat me down before that and had a conversation about consent,” Drake explained. “So when I got here, I was like, this is so empowering, to be able to talk about these things and have this language and really figure out what you want on your own terms.”

“We aren’t taught how to communicate about our desires, about sex, about our relationships, about anything,” she added.

As a Peer Advocate, Drake often works with survivors of sexual assault, something she understandably described as “really heavy work.”

But ever the proactive thinker, Drake said that her favorite part of the job is holding workshops on consent and bystander intervention.

“When you get to do workshops that are trying to prevent [sexual assault], it’s so cool because you get to be just so aspirational,” Drake said. “You get to be like, ‘what would a world that was filled with consent look like?’”

Her experiences as a Peer Advocate, as an economics student and in other advocacy roles have led her to pursue working on the policy side of activism, rather than the nonprofit side like she had once imagined. Ultimately, a genuine care for others remains central for Drake. When I asked her to describe the CFPB, it wasn’t the economic or financial aspect of the work that she discussed first; it was the people. She passionately described cases the bureau has investigated of corporations taking advantage of consumers, like Honda’s racially discriminatory interest rates and the Navy Federal Credit Union’s illegal freezing of service members’ and veterans’ bank accounts.

“When I got here I knew that I wanted to be involved in making change … but I didn’t know how that would happen,” Drake said. “Econ really was the glue that cemented every-

thing together and pulled it all together for me.”

People Come First Unsurprisingly, Drake’s commitment to people isn’t just a part of her career goals — it’s how she centers her entire life.

“My guiding motto throughout my whole time here has been that people come first,” Drake said. “I always tell my friends, ‘I keep my phone on at night. You can call me if you’re not okay. Two in the morning, you need something, I’m there.’ And that’s been just so ... important for getting through here.”

Grisanti, one of these friends, completely agreed. “You will be hard pressed to find a more attentive, invested friend,” she wrote. “Bonnie remembers every major event in your life, will text you before and will be there with a cake.”

Drake has also learned to rely on her friends. Over the past year, she faced multiple medical problems, including a severe concussion that left her unable to do work. Her friends helped her manage back pain by taking her for walks and, if necessary, yelling at her to stop working.

“Having friends there ... is just so key to getting through Amherst,” Drake said.

Drake has also found a home away from home in the economics department. “I literally live in Converse,” Drake joked.

Sims wrote that Drake is “the only student I have hired to work on economics data, give advice on writing, and be with my kids while I was in meetings.” Sims praised Drake’s personality and attitude, calling her “a positive presence around the Econ department.”

Throughout her career, Drake has epitomized the Amherst student trope of participation and activity. Perhaps more than anyone else on campus, she has combined this boundless enthusiasm with a passion for advocacy that manifests itself in her classes, activities and friendships. Drake’s approach has helped her “find her community here,” and she embodies dedication to this community.

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 25

Senior Profile | Anthony Spina

Outfielder Leads with Enthusiasm and Faith Anthony Spina takes on mathematics, baseball and matters of faith with the same fierce passion, which inspires others to take his lead.

—Veronica Rocco ’19 Anthony Spina inspires enthusiasm in everyone that he meets. In the classroom, Spina brings an earnestness that professors and classmates alike find magnetic. On the baseball diamond, he brings lightning-quick bat speed and an equally quick ability to put his teammates at ease in the clubhouse. In Amherst Christian Fellowship (ACF), he speaks and reads with a presence and wisdom that belie his youth. This enthusiasm is simply a mirror image of his own approach to life.

When we sat in Val and I met Spina for the first time, I was struck by how greatly his enthusiasm for Amherst and his faith have influenced him. His advisor, Professor of Mathematics Gregory Call, agrees.

“I know Anthony will do well,” he wrote. “Most importantly, I know he’ll strive to make a positive difference for all with whom he works.”

Brooklyn to Amherst When Anthony Spina arrived at Amherst as a first-year, one of his first thoughts was, “This place is enormous” — not the typical reaction to a college of 1,800 students.

Spina graduated from a class of 17 students in middle school and 51 in high school, making his entering class of 466 at Amherst seem gigantic. Since arriving as a first year, the Brooklyn, New York native has developed into a leader on Amherst Christian Fellowship, on the baseball team and in the classroom.

The youngest of four, Spina stayed in Brooklyn for middle school and high school, attending Gateway City Academy, a Christian school, and Berkeley Carroll prep school afterwards, where he played soccer, basketball and baseball.

In his junior year of high school, Spina knew he wanted to play baseball in college and set his sights on Division I. During his junior year, he attended the Headfirst Baseball Showcase, which is marketed for baseball players of high academic standing. At the

showcase, Coach Brian Hamm, who was his dugout coach, started to tell him about Amherst, but Spina was not really interested. After the showcase, Hamm sent a follow-up email.

Spina and his family researched Amherst and “were astonished” by Amherst and its opportunities.

“God really closed doors in different directions, but opened the door of Amherst College,” Spina said. “The combination of academics and athletics really led to me wanting to be here.”

When he came up to Amherst to do his overnight visit, he was sure he was going to attend Amherst if he was admitted, but stepping on campus solidified his desire to wear the purple and white.

After being admitted early decision, Spina said he was “a little naïve, and had no idea what to expect” upon entering Amherst. Living in Stearns, Spina initially struggled to adjust to living on a floor with other people and having a roommate.

His roommate was Denison Marsland-Rello, the son of Amherst’s Director of Sports Medicine and Senior Women’s Administrator Maria Rello. Spina’s friendship with Rello had a positive impact on his time at Amherst and his adjustment, calling her “like a second mom” who “made my transition to college much easier.”

Faith and Mathematics One of Spina’s first friends at Amherst was Josh Jiang, who lived on his floor in Stearns. When Spina attended his first ACF event, Jiang was there, so they immediately shared more than one connection.

Spina knew he wanted to be a part of the Christian community at Amherst. Although he had doubts as a first year, “the reason I kept going were upperclassmen who kept reaching out to me to get lunch and catch up.”

Spina feels that he was “grafted in [to Amherst Christian Fellowship].

I love that image of being sewn in

and being part of that, I feel that’s so beautiful, with it being a big part of my life, and with people making an effort to make you feel valued and important.”

On his floor in Stearns, there were four or five other Christians, and around fifteen in the dorm, and Spina is still friends with many of them. His friend Kathryn McHenry ’17 also lived in Stearns and has been a member of Amherst Christian Fellowship with him all four years.

“When Anthony leads a Bible study or gives a sermon, it’s like listening to an entirely different person,” said McHenry. “He speaks with the confidence, clarity, love and insight of someone who’s been preaching for years.”

As he entered Amherst, Spina knew he was interested in STEM, so he took a lot of quantitative classes.

He took “Introduction to Calculus” his first fall semester. Professor Steve Olow, who is no longer at Amherst, taught the class, and he had a different style of lectures that Spina found intriguing.

Later, Spina learned that Professor Olow attended the same church that he did in town, and he found their shared faith incredible.

“I never had a relationship like that with a professor, which was awesome,” Spina said.

One Sunday, Olow gave a sermon, and Spina remarked that he spoke in “the exact same way he gives a math lecture.” This further drew him to faith and mathematics, as Olow had combined two of his passions.

In the summer after Spina’s first year at Amherst, as he was considering majoring in mathematics, the baseball team traveled to Japan as part of a cultural exchange trip. On the trip, the team was able to spend time at Doshisha University, Amherst’s sister school in Japan. Call — now Spina’s advisor — traveled with the team to Japan, and the trip introduced the two and played a key role in forging their relationship, ac-

Spina performs at “Heartbeat,” a coffeehouse-style event held by Amherst Christian Fellowship.

Many at Amherst know Spina for his love for others and his faith.

26 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

Photos courtesy of Anthony Spina ’17

In his four years at Amherst, Spina, a math major, has dedicated himself to leadership in baseball and the Christian Fellowship. cording to both Spina and Call.

“Soon thereafter, Anthony declared a math major and I became his advisor,” Call wrote. “A strong math student and a fine player, Anthony has consistently impressed me.”

In the Outfield When Spina arrived as a firstyear student, he said he felt like he was immediately “ingrained in that family” of the baseball team. He was “really competitive, and baseball was everything to me. I did everything I could to get better, and I still do that, but my identity is less rooted in just baseball. Now baseball is a part of my identity.”

For most of his high school career, Spina played in the infield, but he shifted to outfield as a senior in high school and in college. In his first two years at Amherst, the baseball team was incredibly successful, reaching the NCAA Division III Baseball Tournament both years. In Spina’s first-ever start, his teammate threw a no-hitter, and Hamm earned his 100th career win. To this day, his first game with the Amherst team is his favorite college baseball memory.

Spina says that his relationship with Hamm “has been so amazing with the care he’s had for this program, but seeing how he has been a leader for the team and someone we can rally around has been great.”

Most of all, Spina has loved descending Memorial Hill after a hard day of classes and relaxing by focusing on the sport.

As a sophomore, Spina saw limited playing time but followed it up with a standout junior year in which he earned Second Team All-NESCAC and NESCAC Player of the Week honors. In 2016, Spina hit six home runs and was genuinely surprised by the success he has had on the baseball field. When asked how he earned the two honors, he said, “I don’t know where this came from!”

His hard work and commitment have made him an asset to the team as both a hitter and a dugout presence. Hamm called him “one of the most electric baseball players that I have had the privilege of coaching.

He swings the bat as well, if not bet-

ter, as our hitters who went on to play professional baseball. Anthony’s swing is so explosive and powerful that it makes him an exciting player to watch.”

After Amherst As Spina applied for jobs in the fall for after graduation, he found himself deciding between a finance company in New York City and InterVarsity, the national organization with which Amherst Christian Fellowship is affiliated, where he would be pursuing Christian ministry. The senior didn’t tell his parents that he was applying to work for InterVarsity, and once he was offered the position, he had a difficult decision to make.

With his finance position in New York, Spina would be making a solid salary and living near home.

With InterVarsity, Spina would have to raise his own salary by reaching out to members of his Christian community to support him. In December, he talked to Hamm on the phone for more than an hour about the decision he had to make. With Hamm’s help and prayer, Spina decided to work for InterVarsity. “[I] knew that God wanted me to talk to people about Jesus,” Spina said.

For the next three years, Spina will be working for InterVarsity at UMass Amherst and living in the area with David Ruth ’17, who holds the same position at Hampshire College.

Grant Geddie ’17, his roommate of three years, said, “Anthony pours everything he has into his family, friends, school, work and baseball. I don’t think he will be able to afford a fancy car, [but] I know he will be just fine with that, because he will be doing what he loves most: namely, sharing his hope and passion for Jesus Christ.”

“Selfishly, I am excited that Anthony will be in Amherst next year, because his enthusiasm for life is so contagious that he makes me a better person,” Hamm said. “Our motto, ‘Terras Irradient,’ can come across as cliché, but not in Anthony’s case.

He truly brings light into the worlds of all who know him.”

Senior Profile | Chico Kosber

At the Intersection of Economics and Medicine At Amherst, Chico Kosber explored the intersection of his interests in economics and human health while maintaining a strong presence as a leader on campus.

—Brandon Medina ’19 Rashid ‘Chico’ Kosber has always been committed to helping people in need, and this quality is evident to everyone who meets him. No matter where Kosber is, whether at an intense late-night study session in Merrill or just walking around campus, he is always there with a genuine smile.

An economics major on the premed track, Kosber has channeled his passion for resolving real-world conflicts through combining social science and medical science. Kosber also served as a senator for the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) and trained musically, taking solo voice lessons and singing in Glee Club. An aspiring doctor, Kosber hopes to become a physician who promotes economic mobility.

When asked to describe Kosber, his friend Minjee Kim ’17 praised his devotion to learning about healthcare equality and environmental issues.

Kosber, Kim said, is “one of the most dedicated and hardworking people I know.”

Gaining a Global Perspective Born and raised in Cairo, Egypt to a Korean mother and Egyptian father, family was everything to Kosber. Growing up in such a multiethnic household shaped Kosber’s worldview in a nuanced way.

“My cultural heritage has deeply influenced the way I see and interact with the world,” Kosber said. “It’s made me braver, in some ways, to venture out and make as many friends from different backgrounds as possible.”

Since his parents were both international students, he heard a lot about their experiences even before arriving at Amherst. Indeed, Kosber was surrounded by people of many different backgrounds. He attended the International School of Choueifat, where he took classes in English and made friends with students all across the international spectrum, including those from countries experiencing political and economic strife.

One of Kosber’s main high school activities, which prompted his social justice awakening, was working with Seeds of Peace, an international conflict resolution camp. He traveled to this camp along with other teens from countries such as his native Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan. The discussions in this camp were centered around political issues, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, and how they affect the campers’ daily lives.

It was through this experience that Kosber first visited the United States.

Among the many things he learned in this camp, Kosber gained a particular understanding of the complexities of economic thought and mobility, as well as a compassion that would later guide him through his time at Amherst.

“It was an opportunity to listen to how Palestinian voices and Israeli teens spoke about the conflict and their experiences,” Kosber said. “It was very eye-opening for me.”

Through Seeds of Peace, Kosber not only made cherished friends, but also developed a deeply personal connection to conflict and tragedy. In this way, Kosber’s high school years were not simply academic. They were also socially and internationally aware.

Unplanned Amherst Kosber had not originally planned to attend Amherst — the college was simply one more school on his list. “I forgot I applied to this school, actually!” he joked. “When I applied here, I was like, ‘What is this school? Oh wow, it’s pretty good!’ That’s a favorite story for me to tell alums!”

After being accepted and visiting the campus, Kosber immediately fell in love. He made many friends during orientation and was taken in by other students’ willingness to discuss issues centered around both marginalized communities’ social movements and medicine. In his first year, Kosber found his place among other scientifically-inclined people and those committed to advancing justice through policy.

“I remember being really intimidated by how talented and smart a lot of people were,” Kosber recalled.

“But I learned from them how to push myself more to understand their insights and skills, while getting insight into my own abilities and having confidence in that, and then the confidence to admit when I didn’t know something so I could learn.” Kosber has also applied this mentality to the range of activities on campus in which he is involved.

Photos courtesy of Chico Kosber ’17

Selfless Academics At Amherst, Kosber wasted no time and immediately enrolled in economics and chemistry classes.

One of those classes, “History of Economic Thought” taught by Professor of Economics Daniel Barbezat, was “one of the most impactful classes I’ve taken,” Kosber said. In this course, he learned about the nature of self-interest through the lens of political science and public health and about how certain constraints led to different types of behavior. This philosophical insight gave Kosber better guidance on how to pursue his dream of going into medicine.

“It was an eye-opening class,” Kosber said. “The way [Barbezat] talked about economics and the way he spoke, he gave me a lot of insight into my own behavior and the behavior of others, and economics was a good way of studying that behavior … [I]t made me question my own assumptions about human behavior.”

As a pre-health student, Kosber also engaged thoughtfully with the sciences at Amherst, becoming a chemistry teaching assistant and helping students in the intensive sections of both general and organic chemistry.

“The science community at Amherst has been incredibly warm and welcoming,” Kosber said, “And I’ve learned so much from my professors and friends that I’m sad to be saying goodbye to all of that.”

A Musical Leader

At Amherst, Kosber has appreciated and taken advantage of the opportunity to blend his interests and take an intersectional approach to issues such as social movements and healthcare.

Kosber is an excellent pre-health economist, but he has also been deeply involved in AAS leadership and the music department.

As Kosber was developing his skills in these academic areas, he sought to practice leadership through active participation in the AAS, Amherst College’s student government body.

As a sophomore, Kosber was elected vice president of AAS. He treasured his time in this position, as it gave him indispensable collaborative skills through working with senators on their projects.

Kosber remained involved with AAS after his tenure as vice president, serving on the Committee on Educational Policy, which helped him look at ways to improve the way students learn and build bridges between seemingly disparate subjects.

“It’s been a wonderful experience, and it’s taught me a lot about Amherst and helped me connect with people I would not have been able to [otherwise],” Kosber said.

Kosber’s passion for working with others does not stop at politics.

Although he is not a music major, he has loved music since elementary school and is well known in the music department for his solo voice performances and as a member of the allmen’s choir, Glee Club.

“I took Music 111 in my first year, and I’ve been taking voice lessons every semester since I got here,” Kosber recalled. “It’s been one of the best experiences since I’ve had at Amherst College — to go from not being able to sing at all … to being part of an ensemble and working with other people to learning more about chord structure and the joy that comes with making music with other people.”

Kosber was one of the few male students under the tutelage of Junko Watanabe, a renowned sopranoist, and he brought charm to every recital with his uniquely upbeat classical tenor solos. Before Amherst, he had never thought he would be able to join a classical ensemble, but under the guidance of choral society director Mallorie Chernin, he emerged as both a warm presence during rehearsals and a leader in the tenor section.

An Intersectional Thesis Kosber wrote his senior thesis on the Arab Spring and its effects on children’s health, which was a passionate but painstaking culmination

of the driving force behind his studies. The idea for the thesis originated in junior year with Kosber’s advisor, Professor of Economics Prakarsh Singh, when he pointed Kosber to a few data sets that displayed statistics about the Arab Spring. These statistics displayed the intersection of development, conflict and health economics: the great overlap of Kosber’s passions.

“My thesis investigated the effects of the series of 2011 civil uprisings in Egypt on child health,” Kosber said.

“And so I looked at civil uprising exposure in utero on later child health and weight. So it was a great experience — learning how to take broad social phenomena and say something meaningful.”

It was a highly collaborative experience, as Kosber continually sought feedback from his advisor and thoroughly revised large portions of it many times in order to accurately document such a critical health event in his country.

“That was something I didn’t think I would do, but it was a capstone to my entire Amherst experience and something I’m interested in pursuing more,” he said.

The data proved difficult to organize, as Kosber had to parse recent health data from an entire country as well as masses of information about the most important social movement to take place there in recent times.

“Professor Singh had directed me to a few sets, and so I followed the chain of that to Egypt,” Kosber said. “In terms of organizing, it took forever! The first semester was spent cleaning my data, organizing it, and choosing what model I was going to use.”

The Future In his post-Amherst endeavors, Kosber aspires to become a physician in underserved communities. Still as passionate about health and economics as ever, he hopes to take what he learned from Amherst into the real world.

And just like those years spent with Seeds for Peace, Kosber remains a cheerful and fervent advocate for collaboration and friendship as a means of reaching one’s goals.

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 27

The Year in Sports

Photos courtesy of Amherst Athletics

FALL SEASON Men’s Cross Country The men’s cross country team started championship season with a second-place finish to rival Williams at the Little III Championships. At the NESCAC Championships, the Mammoths placed second to the Ephs on the challenging course at Colby.

Mohamed Hussein ’18 led the team with his fifth-place finish to earn First Team All-NESCAC honors. Sophomore Cosmo Brossy placed eighth in a breakout race, earning Second Team All-NESCAC honors.

Seeking their third consecutive trip to Nationals, the Mammoths competed at the New England Regionals, where they finished third and earned an at-large bid to Nationals. Hussein led the team with his fifth-place finish to earn All-Region honors, while Craig Nelson ’18 and senior Raymond Meijer garnered similar plaudits. At Nationals, the team sought a top-10 finish for the third year in a row, but left Louisville with a twelfth-place finish.

In December, after an article from student-run publication The Indicator about emails with derogatory and explicit comments toward women at Amherst prompted a school investigation, the school suspended several members of the team and removed others from the team.

Women’s Cross Country Returning six of their top women from 2015, the women’s cross country team returned to the trails with plenty of experience for their 2016 campaign.

The harriers placed second to rival Williams at the Little III Championships. At the NESCAC Championships, the team finished a disappointing fifth on a difficult course at Colby. Treanor led the way with her third-place finish, which earned her NESCAC Rookie of the Year and First Team

All-NESCAC Honors.

Treanor led the team once again with her third-place finish at the NCAA New England Regional Championships, covering the six-kilometer race in a time of 21:22 to earn All-Region honors. Nicky Roberts ’18 placed 28th to earn All-Region honors for the second time in her Amherst career. The Mammoths placed 7th in the competitive field. With the top-five teams in each region earning bids to Nationals, the Mammoths just missed qualifying for the second year in a row. However, Treanor earned an individual birth to Nationals, where she placed 27th and earned All-American honors.

Field Hockey The fall season presented a mixed bag for the Amherst field hockey team.

Several individual performers stood out but the team underwhelmed as a whole. After starting 2-2, the Mammoths rode a six-game win streak to climb up the NESCAC standings, besting four conference foes over the course of the streak, including the hated Ephs. Amherst then fell in a heart-breaking 4-3 overtime contest to Hamilton before managing three consecutive wins to push the team’s record to an impressive 11-5.

The Mammoths crashed out of the first round of the NESCAC tournament, failing to score in a 1-0 loss to underdog Hamilton. Individually, senior Sara Culhane was named a First Team All-American, while she and Caroline Fiore ’18 also garnered First Team All-NESCAC honors.

Football After three consecutive NESCAC titles, the Amherst football team took a step back this year, finishing 4-4 overall but finishing on a high note with a homecoming win over archrival

28 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

Williams. The Mammoths lost star quarterback Reece Foy ’18 to an ACL tear in August just weeks before the season started and struggled to replace his production. The team managed to start the season 2-0, with a pair of dominating wins over Hamilton and Bowdoin keyed by the strong play of running back Jack Hickey ’19 and quarterback Alex Berluti ’17. Amherst then hit a rough patch, losing four of their next five games, with the sole victory coming in a 41-0 blowout of Colby. Even with the less-than-stellar season, several Amherst performers garnered awards. Wide receiver Devin Boehm ’17 and defensive lineman Niyi Odewade ’17 both made first team all-NESCAC, while wide receiver Nick Widen ’17, defensive lineman Paul Johnson ’17, and linebackers Parker Chapman ’17 and Andrew Yamin ’19 all received second team all-conference nods.

Men’s Golf Riding a tidal wave of youth, the Amherst men’s golf team showcased a series of impressive performances, on both the team and individual levels.

The Mammoths consistently improved their results over the course of the season, culminating in a third-place finish at the NESCAC Qualifying tournament in early October. First-year Cameron Clark, in particular, impressed in his first collegiate season. At NESCAC qualifiers, Clark shot a 69-70-139 to place first overall, earning him both NESCAC Rookie and Player of the Year honors, a rare feat only accomplished five times in league history.

Additionally, both Liam Fine ’17 and Jack Burlison ’19 finished in the top 10 individually, garnering Second Team All-NESCAC bids in the process.

Women’s Golf

In its first year under the leadership of new coach Elizabeth Davis, the Amherst women’s golf team posted one of its most successful fall campaigns in recent memory, finishing in the top three at every event in which the Mammoths competed. Amherst started its run with a first-place finish at the Wellesley Invitational, beating out traditional NESCAC powers Williams and Middlebury. Additionally, the tournament presented an opportunity for Morgan Yurosek ’20 to showcase her enormous potential, shooting a course-low 149, while teammate Jamie Gracie ’17 finished second with a 152.

Amherst closed the season with a thirdplace finish at the NESCAC Championship and another second-place finish at the NYU Fall Invitational. Both Yurosek and Gracie were recognized with end-of-season awards, with Gracie nabbing a spot on the First Team All-NESCAC, and Yurosek claiming conference Rookie of the Year and Second Team All-NESCAC honors.

Women’s Soccer For the first time since 2011, the Amherst women’s soccer team brought home the NESCAC tournament crown. The Mammoths then advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament. After starting the season with a 4-2-1 record in the month of September, the Mammoths caught fire. With a 13-game win streak that extended through the NCAA tournament, Amherst posted a perfect month of October, winning all nine contests before sweeping aside Conn. College and Middlebury in the first two rounds of the NESCAC tournament. Facing Trinity in the tournament final, Amherst scored two second-half goals to clinch the conference’s automatic qualifying bid to the NCAA tournament.

The Mammoths were then chosen to host the first two rounds of NCAA action, in which they scored four goals in consecutive games to comfortably advance to the Sweet 16, where the team fell to an undefeated WilliamSmith squad. For their efforts, several Amherst players picked up individual awards, including star forward Hannah Guzzi ’18, who was named an AllAmerican by both D3Soccer.com and the National Soccer Coaches Association of America. Additionally, Guzzi, Delancey King ’18, Emily Hester ’17 and Caleigh Plaut ’19 were all chosen for All-NESCAC teams.

Volleyball A year after reaching the NCAA tournament for the seventh time in program history, the Amherst volleyball team finished another impressive season with a record of 17-9 before falling in the NESCAC tournament semifinals. The Mammoths rode a pair of four-game win streaks to a thirdplace finish in the conference, highlighted by a pair of thrilling five-set wins over Little III rivals Williams and Wesleyan. After reaching the tournament, Amherst was matched up with Wesleyan again, where the Firedogs prevailed in three sets. However, the semifinal contest against Middlebury ended Amherst’s season when the Panthers swept them aside 3-0.

The loss also ended of the careers of seniors Kate Bres, Maggie Danner, Nicole Gould and Kelci Keeno, a class that leaves Amherst with a 81-29 record in addition to four NESCAC semifinal appearances. Individually, Danner closed her collegiate career with a First Team All-NESCAC nod, the program’s sole postseason award.

— Julia Turner ’19 and Nate Quigley ’19

the 50- and 100-yard iterations. Eric Wong ’20 led a strong Amherst showing in the 500-yard freestyle. The first-year claimed victory in 4:33, while Connor Haley ’17 placed second in a time of 4:34. Sean Mebust ’20 claimed victory in the 200-yard breaststroke. The 200-yard freestyle relay of Sam Spurrell ’18, Spiro, Jack Koravos ’20 and Alex Dreisbach ’17 won, as did the 800yard freestyle relay of Koravos, Wong, Haley and Charlie Seltzer ’19.

Wong, Spurrell, Koravos, Spiro and Mebust competed individually at Nationals, while the 200-, 400- and 800-yard freestyle relays joined them. Spurrell highlighted the group’s performances with an All-American, eighth-place finish in the 200-yard butterfly. The Mammoths finished the season ranked No. 11 in the country.

Women’s Swimming and Diving

WINTER SEASON Men’s Basketball After a Final Four berth in the 2015-2016 season, Amherst this year’s campaign with the No. 1 ranking from D3Hoops and held it until mid-December. The early season for the Mammoths was highlighted by a 99-97 win over No. 2 ranked Babson in double overtime, in which Jayde Dawson ’18 scored the game-winning basket with seconds left on the clock. The Mammoths entered the NESCAC Tournament as the third seed but fell to rival Williams, who later reached the Final Four. Amherst earned an atlarge bid to the NCAA tournament, going for the 19th time in the program’s history and seventh consecutive season. In the first round, the Mammoths fell 69-66 to Keene State University to end their season with a 17-8 record.

Averaging 14.7 points in conference games, Johnny McCarthy ’18 earned First Team AllNESCAC, NABC All-District First Team and D3hoops.com All-Northeast Region Third Team honors and was the 29th player in program history to reach the 1,000-point milestone.

Dawson was named Second Team All-NESCAC and averaged 19.7 points in conference games, while he followed McCarthy as the 30th Amherst player to reach 1,000 points.

Men’s Ice Hockey The Mammoths finished the 2016-17 campaign with a record of 14-7-3. One of the highlights of the season was shutting out Williams 1-0, as goalie Connor Girard ’18 stopped 26 shots to claim the victory over the Ephs. Bolstered by an eight-game winning streak in which the team didn’t lose for more than a month, Amherst earned the No. 5 seed in the NESCAC tournament. The Mammoths ultimately fell 2-1 to Williams, who was seeded fourth in the tournament. Though the team didn’t earn an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, Amherst returns Second Team All-NESCAC forward Thomas Lindstrom ’18, who played in all of the Mammoths’ games throughout the season.

Women’s Ice Hockey The Mammoths finished their successful season with a 14-8-5 record. Thanks to their regular season play, the women earned the fifth seed in the NESCAC tournament, where they upset fourth-seeded Trinity with a 2-0 shutout to advance to the NESCAC semifinals. Goalie Sabrina Dobbins ’18 stopped 21 shots in the victorious effort over the Bantams. In the semifinals, Amherst shut out second-seeded Connecticut College as Dobbins stopped 30 shots from the Camels. However, in Amherst’s second consecutive NESCAC Championship game appearance, the Mammoths fell to Middlebury 4-1.

On the individual front, Alex Toupal ’18 earned First Team All-NESCAC honors for the second year in a row with her NESCAC-leading 12 goals in conference play. Toupal also earned

CCM Division III All-American Second Team East and NEHWA All-Star honors. Senior Captain Caitlyn Ryan also garnered First Team AllNESCAC and NEHWA All-Star honors with her stellar defensive play.

Men’s Indoor Track and Field The men placed second at the Little III Championships, led by a strong group of first years in the jumps and sprints, a trend that continued throughout the season. Jordan Edwards ’20 placed well in the long, triple and high jump.

Theo Bates ’20 qualified for DIII New Englands in the 60-meter hurdles. Junior David Ingraham ran a new personal best time of 50.45 seconds in the 400-meter dash.

In the middle distance races, Kevin Connors ’17 led the team in the mile with a season best of 4:14, and a near Nationals-qualifying time of 8:25 in the 3,000. Vernon Espinoza ’19 ran the fastest 800 meters of the season for the Mammoths with a time of 1:54. In the 3,000 meters, Cosmo Brossy ’19 excelled, running a personal best time of 15:01 at the NEICAAA Championships to place sixth in a field of runners from all NCAA divisions. In the same race, classmate Tucker Meijer ’19 ran a new personal best of 15:09 to place ninth.

Women’s Indoor Track and Field The Amherst women’s indoor track team had a strong year, sending three athletes (Kiana Herold ’17, Abbey Asare-Bediako ’18 and Katherine Treanor ’20) to Division III Nationals.

Rubii Tamen ’19 led the team in the 200- and 400-meter dashes, clocking times of 26.96 and 59.69 seconds, respectively. The Mammoths enjoyed great depth in the 1,000-meter run, as Leonie Rauls ’18, Kristin Ratliff ’20, Cat Lowdon ’17 and Lela Walter ’19 all qualified for the DIII New England Championships in the event. Herold reached Nationals in the high jump with a season best of 1.69 meters, while Asare-Bediako had a standout season in the triple jump, qualifying for Nationals with a leap of 11.82 meters.

Treanor won the 5,000 meters at DIII New Englands with a time of 17:37, more than ten seconds faster than her nearest competitor.

Senior Tess Frenzel enjoyed a breakout indoor season, running a time of 18:34 in the event.

Treanor returned to the 25-lap event one week later at the NEICAAA Championships, winning again in a time of 17:12 that her for Nationals.

At Nationals, Herold matched her season best of 1.69 meters in the high jump to place ninth. Treanor was the only first year to qualify for the 5,000-meter run, where she placed 11th in 17:12. Asare-Bediako placed 16th in the triple jump, jumping 11.29 meters.

Men’s Squash The Mammoths entered the season with

a 21st-place national ranking and finished the season with a record of 7-13. Amherst hosted the NESCAC Championships, and finished in sixth place after losing the fifth-place match to Colby.

In the Summers Cup (C Division) of the College Squash Association (CSA) National Championships, the Mammoths lost their consolation playoff to NESCAC rival Colby. Harith Khawaja ’19 earned Second Team All-NESCAC honors with a 6-13 record playing in the first and second position. Both Khawaja and Michael Groot ’17 competed at the CSA Individual Championships, where Groot fell in his consolation final and Khawaja lost in his consolation quarterfinals.

Women’s Squash The women’s squash team finished their season with a 13-7 record, highlighted by winning the Walker Cup (C Division) of the CSA National Championships. At the NESCAC Championships, which Amherst hosted, the Mammoths finished fifth by winning the fifth-place match over Bowdoin 5-4. Rachael Ang ’19 earned All-NESCAC honors for the second year in a row, as she was named to the Second Team All-NESCAC for her 9-8 record on the second court. Kimberly Krayacich ’18 likewise earned Second Team All-NESCAC honors for the second year in a row with her 6-10 record from the first court, and later reached the consolation finals at the CSA Individual Championships. At the CSA National Championships, the women claimed the Walker Cup with a 5-4 victory over Franklin & Marshall College.

Amherst finished the dual meet season with a stellar record of 7-1, only losing to NESCAC rival Williams. During the regular season, a pair of first years, Natalie Rumpelt and Ingrid Shu, earned NESCAC Performer of the Week honors, while Geralyn Lam ’18 also claimed Collegeswimming.com’s Division III Swimmer of the Week honors.

At the NESCAC Championships, Shu won the 50-yard freestyle in a time of 23.62 seconds, Bridgitte Kwong ’19 placed third in a competitive 400-yard individual medley race and the sophomore came back in the 200-yard backstroke to place third and earn All-NESCAC honors in both events. The 400-yard freestyle relay of Rumpelt, Shu, Lam and Stephanie Moriarty ’18 placed second and earned All-NESCAC honors, while the 200-yard freestyle relay of Shu, Lam, Rumpelt and Destin Groff ’17 placed third and also earned All-NESCAC honors. The team, ranked eighth in the nation at the time, placed second at the NESCAC Championships.

Kwong led Amherst at Nationals with a third-place finish in the 400 IM, earning AllAmerican honors in the event for the second year in a row. The 800-yard freestyle relay of Kwong, Moriarty, Rumpelt and Jayne Vogelzang ’19 placed fifth in the final and earned All-American honors as well. Amherst finished the season ranked ninth nationally.

— Veronica Rocco ’19

Men’s Swimming and Diving The men’s swimming and diving team ended the dual meet season with a record of 6-2. At the NESCAC Championships, the team placed second to rival Williams.

Elijah Spiro ’18 swept the short breaststroke events, winning both

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 29

Photos courtesy of Amherst Athletics

SPRING SEASON Baseball

Men’s Lacrosse

Amherst baseball battled to a third-place NESCAC finish before losing their semifinal matchup to Tufts, 2-1. The team finished the season with a record of 20-16 overall and 8-4 in conference play. The Mammoth offense headlined the season and was led by Harry Roberson ’18, Anthony Spina ’17 and Yanni Thanopoulos ’17. The upperclassmen each hit above .400 and combined for 169 hits.

Thanopoulos finished his senior season on a high note, earning his 190th career hit in the NESCAC tournament and surpassing Taiki Kasuga ’14 for the Amherst baseball career hits record. On the mound, senior Jackson Volle and junior Sam Schneider impressed for the Mammoths this season, pitching a combined 85 innings with ERAs of 3.02 and 2.56, respectively.

After a deep postseason run by a young and talented team, the men’s lacrosse season ended with a loss at No. 3 Bates College in NCAA round of 16 action. Amherst finished their 2017 season 13-5 overall and 8-2 in competitive NESCAC play. Their biggest win this season came on senior night, when the men exploded for 25 points against No. 2 Tufts for a 25-15 win. At the end of the season, six players garnered All-NESCAC honors. Senior shortstick midfielder Matt Killian was named first team All-NESCAC after an impressive season in which he totaled 25 points on 14 goals and 11 assists in addition to picking up 59 ground balls and causing 16 turnovers. In addition, sophomores Evan Wolf (attack), Andrew Ford (midfield) and Jamie Smith (defense), as well as first-year Dylan Finazzo (faceoff) each earned second team All-NESCAC nods. Rounding out the accolades, first-year Colin Minicus was named NESCAC Rookie of the Year after a standout first year for the Mammoths. He is only the third player in program history to earn the award.

Men’s Golf The men’s golf program gave their young team critical experience in a strong season this spring. The squad produced several impressive showings this April, finishing tied for third in the Hampton Inn Invitational and fourth in the Williams Spring opener. Coming up just short of Williams, the Mammoths grabbed second place in the Little III Championship, before finishing fourth in the NESCAC tournament. Leading the team were sophomore Jack Burlison and senior Liam Fine, who both garnered All-NESCAC Second Team honors.

Rookie of the Year Cameron Clark ’20 also enjoyed a successful spring season, winning holes one and two in the Little Three Championship. With seven first years on the roster, the future looks bright for the Mammoths moving forward.

Women’s Golf Women’s golf had a breakout spring highlighted by strong individual seasons from Morgan Yurosek ’20, Jessica Jeong ’20 and senior captain Jamie Gracie. After recording an exciting first-place finish at the Williams Spring Invitational, the Mammoths secured a bid to the NCAA Division III Championships in Houston, Texas. After spending the first two days tied for 5th, the Amherst women dropped several places to finish 9th in the nation. Yurosek led the Mammoths and finished the tournament tied for 15th overall with a combined score of 305 (77-78-74-76). Jeong finished tied for 20th overall with four-round total of 307 (77-73-76-81), and Gracie logged her best round of the NCAA tournament on the last day, carding an 80 to finish with a combined score of 331 (82-81-88-80). Yurosek and Gracie earned Regional recognition for their impressive seasons, as they were both named to the WGCA All-East Region team.

Women’s Lacrosse Plagued with several season-ending injuries, the women’s lacrosse team had an uncharacteristic 6-9 season, going 3-7 in conference play. The Mammoths’ season ended with an 8-7 loss at top-seeded Middlebury in the NESCAC quarterfinals. The women put up an impressive effort to keep the game close against the Panthers, with three Mammoths — Kate Wyeth ’17, Kelly Karczewski ’18 and Julia Crerend ’18 — scoring two goals. Junior goalkeeper Kyra Gardner made 12 saves in the tight matchup.

Highlighting the 2017 season were All-NESCAC Second Team selections Claire Cagnassola ’17 and Sabrina Solow ’19. Captain and leader in the Amherst midfield, Cagnassola racked up 20 goals and dished out six assists in Amherst’s shortened season. On the defensive side, Solow registered a team-high 33 ground balls and caused 25 turnovers in addition to eight draw controls.

Not only were these two named All-NESCAC performers, but they also garnered IWLCA All-Berkshire region. The Mammoths will look to forward to a successful 2018 season with a young squad moving forward.

Men’s Outdoor Track & Field The men’s track and field team kicked off their outdoor season at the Tufts Snowflake Classic, in which Clark Ricciardelli ’20E signaled the beginning of his stellar outdoor track season by winning the 10,000-meter run. By season’s end, the transfer from Villanova had the team’s fastest time in the 10,000-meter run with a time of 31:02, which placed him third at

30 | The Amherst Student | May 19, 2017

Open New Englands. Ricciardelli also placed fifth at the NESCAC Championships in the 5,000 meters, and Cosmo Brossy ’19 placed fifth at the NESCAC Championships in the 10,000 with a new personal best time of 31:11.

Soccer standout Aziz Khan ’18 led the Mammoths in the short sprints, running times of 11.28 and 22.51 seconds in the 100- and 200-meter dashes, respectively. Maxim Doiron ’19 and Yonas Shiferaw ’20 led the hurdles events, while Jordan Edwards ’20 continued his success in the jumps from the indoor season to place seventh in the triple jump at the NESCAC Championships.

In a show of range, Kristian Sogaard ’19 led the team in the 400 and 800 meters, running excellent times of 49.00 seconds in the 400 and 1:50 in the 800, respectively. The sophomore, who competed at Nationals in cross country, will compete at Nationals next week in the 800 meters, for which he currently holds the sixth fastest time in the nation for Division III runners.

to the NCAA tournament and blew through their Springfield regional bracket in the first round of NCAA play. The women stand at 31-10 on the season thus far, and are slated to host Ramapo College for a three-game series in the round of 16 this weekend. The regional win in Springfield marked the first time in program history that the Mammoths have reached the round of 16 in NCAA play. The team had a phenomenal conference record of 10-2 this season, sweeping all of their NESCAC foes but Williams. Junior pitcher Gina Pagan has had a standout season, carrying the Mammoths through 144 innings pitched with a 1.31 ERA and striking out 150 batters. Her performance earned the California native NESCAC Pitcher of the Year. Other All-NESCAC honorees included sophomore Kyra Naftel, who was named to the first team, senior Lauren Tuiskula, who garnered second team honors, and Sammy Salustri ’19, who won Defensive Player of the Year.

Women’s Outdoor Track & Field

The Amherst men’s tennis team made a strong NCAA run this year before falling in a heartbreaking 5-3 matchup against Williams in the NCAA regional final. With the loss, Amherst concluded its 2016-2017 season with a 23-6 record. The Mammoths started their season with an undefeated spring break trip, and their first loss of the season came at the hands of No. 1 ranked Emory University in a close 5-4 finish. Amherst’s No. 1 doubles pairing of Zach Bessette ’19 and Jayson Fung ’20 led the team throughout the season, compiling a 12-5 record as one of the top pairings in the country. The purple and white posted a 6-2 regular season NESCAC record in a conference that boasted five of the top ten teams in the country. Bessette and Fung both garnered Second Team All-NESCAC honors in both singles and doubles play, while Fung also won the NESCAC Rookie of the Year crown.

The Mammoths hosted the Amherst Spring Fling for the third year in a row, where Abbey Asare-Bediako ’18 secured a trip to Nationals with a mark of 11.78 meters in the triple jump. Rubii Tamen ’19 ran the top times for the Mammoths in the 100-, 200- and 400meter dashes in 2017, with times of 13.00, 25.94 and 59.44 seconds, respectively. The Mammoths enjoyed nice depth in the steeplechase, where Savanna Gornisiewicz ended the season with a personal best time of 11:19, a top-five all-time mark for Amherst, Kristin Ratliff ’20 placed seventh at the NESCAC Championships, and Cat Lowdon ’17 qualified for the DIII New England Championships.

At the NESCAC Championships, Katherine Treanor ’20 placed second in the 10,000meter run in 36:41. Senior Tess Frenzel continued her standout season by placing fifth in a time of 38:19, while Kiana Herold ’17 placed fourth in the high jump. Asare-Bediako ’18 placed third in the triple jump to earn All-NESCAC honors.

At the NEICAAA Championships, Treanor won again to replicate her indoor 5,000 meter title, running a new personal best time of 35:57 to qualify for Nationals. Next week, Asare-Bediako and Treanor will travel to Ohio to compete at Nationals, where the duo will be looking to improve on their finishing places from Indoor Nationals.

Softball The only Amherst team still alive in NCAA play as of press time, the Mammoths have enjoyed a historic season thus far. After falling to archrival Williams in the NESCAC championship game, the team earned an at-large bid

Men’s Tennis

Women’s Tennis The women’s tennis team’s season ended in the NCAA Tournament Regional Final in a 5-0 loss against No. 2 Middlebury. The women have played a rigorous spring schedule, facing almost solely ranked teams and finishing 7-9 overall. Their most exciting win of the season came in early April, when they won a thrilling matchup against No. 7 Bowdoin by a score of 5-4. Standouts for the women’s team included NESCAC Rookie of the Year Camille Smukler, who garnered All-NESCAC Second Team honors for both her singles and doubles play.

In addition, Kelsey Chen ’19 was also named to the All-NESCAC Second Team for her stellar doubles play this season.

— Julia Turner ’19 and Veronica Rocco ’19

Congratulations,

Rosie!

We are so

proud of you!

Love,

Your Family

It’s been a joy to watch you grow and achieve so much.

Hope you know how proud we are And how much we love you!

Congratulations Kramer Peterson Class of

Congratulations Mattie!!

Congratulations Brian!

Keep on Digging

You ROCK kid!

GO BE GREAT! Love you MEGA

Thanks for taking us along for the ride

Congratulations Emily Hester ’17!

To the most wonderful daughter, grandaughter, and friend

Congratulations on your

graduation!

Love always, Mama, Dad, Buelila, Tío Carlos, and your Angel

Carlitos,

CONGRATULATIONS Erika!

Congratulations!

Mom & Dad

Congratulations

Gabby Edzie, Dan Ahn, Tia Robinson, Elaine Jeon, and Kiana Herold!

Love, The Amherst Student Staff

Erika I am so proud of you.

For all that you have accomplished, and for all that you are.

I love you.

I admire you.

YOU ARE AMAZING. Congratulations!

Love, Mom

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic…”

- Albus Dumbledore

Insert Photo Here

You are amazing in every possible sense of the word.

Love you!

Dad

P.S. You made it, Joan!

Congratulations, Erika!

Love, X

Thank You, Amherst

May 19, 2017 | The Amherst Student | 31

TEAMS OF THE YEAR

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: NATIONAL CHAMPS

Photos courtesy of Amherst Athletics

The women’s basketball team was flawless in the 2016-2017 season, finishing with a 33-0 record for the first undefeated season in program history and their second National Championship. Throughout the season, the Mammoths found their most challenging competitor in NESCAC rival Tufts, whom they defeated three times over the campaign in regular season play, the NESCAC Championship game and the National Championship game.

The Mammoths had the best defense in the nation, ranking No. 1 in scoring defense and field-goal percentage defense, and, for the first time in Division III championship history, limited a team to as few as 29 points.

An excellent senior class of Ali and Meredith Doswell and Jaimie Renner led the Mammoths. Ali Doswell paced the team in scoring with an average of 13.2 points a game. She

was the NCAA National Division III Player of the Year and leaves Amherst as the program’s all-time scoring leader with 1,572 points. She also won NESCAC Player of the Year and Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Final Four in addition to nominations for the 2017 DIII Honda Athlete of the Year and the Jostens Trophy, among other honors.

Meredith Doswell was named Second Team All-NESCAC and to the NCAA Tournament team, and Madeline Eck ’20 was named to the WDIII All-Freshmen Team and garnered NESCAC Rookie of the Year honors. Sophomore transfer Emma McCarthy played an integral role in the team’s success and earned NESCAC Player of the Week honors. Coach G.P. Gromacki was named the WBCA National Coach of the Year for the second time and the NESCAC Coach of the Year as well.

NO. 10 MEN’S SOCCER WINS NESCAC TITLE Although the 2016 season failed to bring another national title to Coach Justin Serpone’s squad, the Amherst men’s soccer team still dominated NESCAC competition, taking home both the regular season and tournament crowns and making it to the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Championship. Returning much of last year’s core, Amherst demonstrated their potential from the start of the season, going undefeated through the month of September, with the one blemish on the team’s record a dramatic 1-1 double-overtime draw at Middlebury.

In October, the purple and white suffered their sole regulation loss of the season, falling 3-0 to eventual national champions Tufts. However, that defeat served as the catalyst for an 11game win streak that saw the Mammoths run rampant through conference and non-conference opponents alike, defeating all but two foes by multiple goals.

The team’s absolute dominance was on full display in the NESCAC tournament, where the Mammoths, as hosts, scored nine goals and conceded only two en route to the program’s first crown since 2013. In the championship game

beat-down of Hamilton, by a score of 3-0, the team shut down the Continentals’ offense while Luke Nguyen ’19 led the team offensively with his first two goals of the season.

This stellar run continued through the start of the NCAA tournament, with the Mammoths receiving a first-round bye, which they followed with a 3-0 destruction of Daniel Webster College in the round of 32. However, the magic came to an end for Amherst in their matchup against Brandeis, against whom they dominated offensively, putting up 20 total shots, 11 of which were on goal. Unfortunately, after tying the game on a goal from senior Andrew Orozco, the Mammoths were unable to find the deciding goal. The game went to penalties, which Brandeis won by a score of 3-1.

Amherst also received a number of individual awards. The senior quartet of defenders Jackson Lehnhart and Justin Aoyama, forward Chris Martin and midfielder Bryce Ciambella all closed their collegiate careers with matching All-NESCAC and All-New England honors, while Ciambella and Lehnhart both received third-team All-America recognition.

MVPs: Best of the Class of 2017

MAGGIE DANNER Volleyball

With a dominant senior season that capped a stellar Amherst career, Danner ensured her standing as one of Amherst volleyball’s alltime greats. For the fourth consecutive season, she was tabbed for All-NESCAC honors, with this year’s First Team nod following similar honors in her first-year and sophomore campaigns and Second Team plaudits as a junior.

Danner’s senior season was her finest, as she led the team in both total kills with 308 and kills per set at 3.35. She paced the team with 339.0 total points, nearly 90 more than her closest competitor. Danner leaves Amherst with 81 wins over her four years at the college and an NCAA tournament appearance in 2015.

MATT KILLIAN Lacrosse

Killian, the Mammoth lacrosse stud from Summit, New Jersey, closed his distinguished Amherst career on a high note, reaching the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA tournament and earning First Team All-NESCAC honors.

As a short stick defensive midfielder, Killian was the beating heart of this year’s Mammoths squad, tallying 14 goals and 11 assists for a total of 25 points. More importantly, though, Killian caused 15 turnovers and won 59 ground balls, totals that were both good for second on the team. Killian leaves Amherst with two All-NESCAC selections in his career, a distinction made even more impressive by the fact that he struggled with injury throughout his junior year.

KIANA HEROLD Track & Field

After impressing as an underclassman, Herold logged her strongest year as a senior for Amherst women’s track and field. An allaround athlete, she competed in sprint and jump events for the program, but the high jump was the California native’s specialty. Herold saw the podium consistently throughout the winter and spring seasons this year, but her most impressive moment came in the indoor track season, when she qualified for NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Coming in as the 16th seed, Herold outperformed some of the top athletes from around the country with a high jump height of 1.69 meters to take home ninth.

YANNI THANOPOULOS Baseball

A four-year starter for the Amherst baseball program, Yanni Thanopoulos has been an integral part of the Amherst offense throughout his career. Holding a career batting average of .353 over 140 games at Amherst, the center fielder from Highland, Calif. capped his senior season by capturing sole control of the Amherst baseball record for career hits. The senior finished the season with 60 hits on the year, bringing his career total to 190, which marks the new Amherst record.

Thanaopoulos is a two-time All-NESCAC First Team selection for the Mammoths, garnering the honor in both his junior and senior campaigns.

— Julia Turner ’19, Nate Quigley ’19 and Veronica Rocco ’19