3D Magazine :: October 2020

DARTMOUTH IN ALL ITS DIMENSIONS NO. 10 | OCT 2020

ADMISSIONS.DARTMOUTH.EDU

Comet NEOWISE, photographed looking northwest over the Connecticut River and Vermont from the Dartmouth Organic Farm

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First Hand

D-Plan

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Funding Outside the Lines

It’s a Fact

The Rocky Roundtable

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Teaching to the Moment

Onward & Upward

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On the cover: Kevin Donohue ’21, a classics and linguistics double major from Long Island, NY, pictured at the Ledyard Canoe Club.

Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

Photograph by Don Hamerman

PHOTOGRAPH BY NAME

OCTOBER 2020 // ISSUE 10

Dartmouth College is defined by its people, and 3D is a magazine that tells their stories.

It’s not meant to be comprehensive, but an evolving snapshot as vibrant and prismatic as the school itself. 3D is Dartmouth in all its dimensions.

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BY ELI BURAKIAN

Dartmouth College is located on traditional, unceded Abenaki homelands.

Admissions Editorial Board

Student writers

Topher Bordeau Erin Burnett Sara D. Morin Isabel Bober ’04 Irma Encarnación Kate Domin ’19

Lobna Jbeniani ’23 Caroline Cook ’21 Estelle Stedman ’23 Gabriel Gilbert ’23 Jimmy Nguyen ’21

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Lee A. Coffin Vice Provost for Enrollment and Dean of Admissions & Financial Aid

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PHOTOGRAPH BY DON HAMERMAN

“Give yourself permission to explore, even when some voices around you are less convinced.”

Today, Michelle Obama is widely celebrated as one of the most admired women in the world. But as she recounts in her memoir Becoming, her high school counselor saw things differently when the teenaged version of herself—a student ranked in the top 10 percent of her class—outlined her admissions plans in the fall of 1980: “I’m not sure that you’re Princeton material.”

“It’s possible, in fact, that during our short meeting, the college counselor said things to me that might have been positive and helpful,” the former First Lady writes, “but I recall none of it.

Because rightly or wrongly, I got stuck on one single sentence the woman uttered…She was telling me to lower my sights, which was the absolute reverse of every last thing my parents had ever told me.”

Mrs. Obama’s admissions journey from the South Side of Chicago is familiar to many first-gen kids. Comments like those from her guidance counselor are like a slow leak from a bicycle tire: you realize you need to pedal even harder to reach your destination. Sadly, too many of you hear similar things as the application deadlines inch closer, or perhaps you are doubting yourself as you peer into the future.

In an episode of The Search, the admissions podcast I hosted earlier this year, a Dartmouth-bound student from a low-income urban school recounted a story similar to the one Mrs. Obama shared. His peers wondered why he was even considering “a place like Dartmouth.” They told him, “No one from here goes to a place like that.” It gave him a moment’s pause, but my young friend held true to his own goals. He applied despite the cloud of doubt he encountered, and today he’s a Dartmouth ’24.

Determination counts.

Remember, it can happen. It does happen. As a student in 2020, you certainly have far more admissions information available to you than existed in 1980, when Michelle Obama was navigating a pre-internet search of higher education. If you’re reading this column, you’re already in the right zone. Give yourself permission to explore, even when some voices around you are less convinced or when the selectivity of a given college intimidates you.

“Failing to try...is the source of some of our deepest regrets,” UVA President and Dartmouth parent James Ryan advises in his book, Wait, What? “What we don’t do often haunts us more than what we actually do.” Bottom line? “What if...” should be a scenario you work to avoid.

Yes, the public health crisis continues to scramble the norms of how we’ve imagined college admissions over the decades. It’s now cliché to say we’re in “an unprecedented moment.” We are, but don’t let that stop you. You’re still you. Use each element of your application to introduce yourself, to unmute yourself, in the lingo of our virtual communications context.

College is opportunity. Step towards it confidently. Reach.

Listen to the voice that guides your own ambition. And remember Michelle Obama, who met resistance with determination: “I’ll show you!”

It’s a fact.

BASIC FACTS

ENROLLED CLASS OF 2024 AS OF SEPTEMBER 2020

4,417 % 96 % 100

Number of Undergraduate Students

50

Region of Origin

6-Year Graduation Rate Demonstrated Financial Need Met, Regardless of Citizenship

US States Represented

18%

9%

New England

Midwest

68

22%

19%

Countries Represented

Mid-Atlantic

West

20%

56

South

5 388

Languages Spoken at Home

Fall Term Classes with More Than 100 Students

12%

27

Outside the US

vs.

Tribal Nations and Communities Represented

Fall Term Classes with Fewer Than 20 Students Type of School Attended

7:1

15

%

Student-toFaculty Ratio

29

%

First Generation to College

INDEPENDENT

59% 12% PUBLIC

RELIGIOUS

AFFORDABILITY AT DARTMOUTH

60K

$

AVERAGE GRANT FOR CLASS OF 2024

59

% of Class of 2024

offered financial aid

Financial aid travels with you when you study abroad

108.5M

$ FULL TUITION GUARANTEE

Families with typical assets and incomes under $100k are guaranteed a full tuition scholarship at Dartmouth

given in scholarship aid 2019–2020 Students from

88

countries offered aid in the past two years

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Food Chain Reac Pictured outside the Solar Greenhouse at the Dartmouth Organic Farm

EDUARDO HERNANDEZLOPEZ ’22 MAJORS: ECONOMICS AND FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES, MINOR: GERMAN HOMETOWN: HOUSTON, TX

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tion

Whether investigating sustainable agricultural practices at the Dartmouth Organic Farm, studying food insecurity, or using film for social change, Eduardo Hernandez-Lopez ’22 never stops drawing from his origins to create a more sustainable future.

A first-generation low-income (FGLI) student, DACA recipient, and QuestBridge scholar, Eduardo joined the Dartmouth Organic Farm (O-Farm) during his first year at Dartmouth. “My passion is combating food insecurity to ensure that people in low-income areas have access to healthy food,” Eduardo says.

“It’s important that voices like mine, voices from people who’ve lived in food deserts, are present in the growing sustainable agriculture industry.”

Eduardo adds that his connection to food is rooted in his childhood. “One of my most formative experiences was seeing my mom work in the kitchen to provide food for us, turning the kitchen into a place of freedom and creative expression.”

Now co-manager of the O-Farm, Eduardo fights food insecurity locally by coordinating food donations to organizations like the Upper Valley Haven and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Moms in Recovery Program. “I fell in love with the Dartmouth Organic Farm precisely because it was fighting food insecurity. The O-Farm is where I do my own learning and unlearning.”

In a course called “Mexican Cinema,” Eduardo discovered inner-city activists using urban agriculture to bring about socioeconomic change. He soon realized that the intersection between two of his greatest passions—economics and film—had powerful academic potential. “Professors really reward borrowing from other disciplines to learn more about the problems at hand.”

To celebrate his birthday on campus one year, Eduardo brought a taste of home to Hanover. “I prepared tacos the best way I knew how. All my friends from around the world were amazed. One said, ‘They’re so good, man! You should open a taco truck!’ That was a joke, but I started considering ways I could use a taco truck to alleviate the burdens placed on families of FGLI graduates.”

After spending the winter writing a business pitch, Eduardo secured funding from Dartmouth to launch a taco truck that would use its profits to help bring the families of FGLI students to Hanover for Commencement. Eduardo adds, “I figured that we could create a little system of positive goodness and awesomeness to alleviate the concerns of FGLI graduates and their families.”

— Gabriel Gilbert ’23

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ILLUSTRATION BY FEDERICA BORDONI

TEACHING TO THE

Run toward the problem. The Dartmouth faculty turned that philosophy into an object lesson this spring when abruptly presented with the move to online classes. But just making it all work virtually, they thought, would have been anticlimactic, a cop-out.

They wanted the virtual experience to feel more than just acceptable. They wanted it to feel enhanced—supercharged, even. admissions.dartmouth.edu | 7

istory department professor Cecilia Gaposchkin turned challenge into opportunity when she created a collective writing project in which her students wrote a book together about Joan of Arc. The experience gave them the opportunity to learn about medieval history, expository writing, creative collaboration, and the ins and outs of Google Docs, all in one lively term. “It seemed like a mad gambit,” Gaposchkin notes, “but a really interesting project to try.”

Molecular and Systems Biology Department Chair Marnie Halpern realized that many renowned scientists were confined to their homes during the quarantine and perhaps more available than usual to meet with Dartmouth students. She created a seminar series with some of the leading scientists in molecular and systems biology, a big draw for students. Meanwhile, over in the Epidemiology Department at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine, faculty worked closely with quarantining Dartmouth undergraduates around the world to investigate and report to global partners of the Dartmouth Center for Health Equity about the state of the pandemic in their countries—a real-time, real-world global research project.

Thayer School of Engineering professors were particularly inventive—they had to be, given that their courses are so heavily lab-based. “Within a time span of four days,” reports engineering professor Petra Bonfert-Taylor, “we sent out 300 FedEx packages. If undergraduate students couldn’t go to the engineering labs, we would bring the engineering labs to them.” Inside the care packages were lab tools like 3D printers, oscilloscopes, programmable circuit boards, LEGO MINDSTORMS kits, even prepaid credit cards for purchasing off-theshelf supplies.

Conducting experiments from their kitchen tables Like their faculty counterparts, Dartmouth students ran toward the challenge.

In Intermediate Biomedical Engineering, one student team considered it imperative to respond to the problem at hand: COVID-19 and the threat of a ventilator shortage. Kate French ’20, Rose Gold ’20, Shannon Kossmann ’20, Becca Thomson ’20, and Haley Richards ’20 realized that it might be possible to convert a BiPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure) system—an off-the-shelf device for treating respiratory problems—into a ventilator. “Ventilators are expensive devices,” French notes, “so we wanted to work on something that is not only critically important, but also a cheaper alternative to a ventilator that might be more accessible to rural hospitals or countries with different medical systems.”

Engineering professor Ryan Halter, also an adjunct professor at the Geisel School of Medicine, plans to keep the project moving, perhaps through partnerships with industry or nonprofits. “I was extremely impressed with how this group of students worked collaboratively in a remote setting to actually design, fabricate, and test a complex, multi-component system,” Halter says.

“The team was able to design a system that has true translational potential.”

The students in introductory engineering classes also tackled pandemic solutions, including an affordable gym device for the quarantine-bound, an

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ionic mask sanitizer, and an apparatus that will alert the visually impaired when their six-foot physical distance zone has been compromised. Over at the Cook Engineering Design Center, director Sol Diamond has been heading up Thayer’s high-performance mask project, a collaboration among students, faculty, and staff. Diamond and his team are developing masks that offer a higher level of protection than standard cloth masks. The effort is extensively interdisciplinary and includes team members working remotely from all over the world in design, production, assembly, quality control, logistics, and distribution.

The “breakout queen” While Dartmouth students could see the Spring term as a fascinating new educational frontier, members of the faculty won’t soon forget the colossal effort that went into those online experiences. “When I first realized we’d have to move online, I didn’t sleep for a week,” says Bonfert-Taylor. “I kept trying to figure out the answer to the core question: how could we make the technology work to give students an interactive experience that would actually bring new dimensions to the learning experience? Videos can be terribly boring. That’s not what we’re about at Thayer. The engineering way is not just to find a solution, it’s to find an inspired solution.”

Associate Professor of Engineering Doug Van Citters, too, remembers the daunting moment when he and his colleagues were faced with the stark reality of moving their courses online. “We had roughly 300 hours to figure out how to transfer our hands-on engineering education to the virtual realm,” he remembers. “If you peeked under the hood of each class to see what made it run smoothly, you’d see the painstaking work of a team of technical, pedagogical, and subject experts.”

Van Citters adds that he and his colleagues resolved not to sacrifice the basic components that distinguish a Dartmouth engineering class.

“All lab courses would remain lab courses. All project courses would still require projects. All small courses would stay small. And office hours? We’d offer more of them. More teaching assistants, too…supported by Learning Fellows, undergraduates offering peer-to-peer support. Most important, we would not simply adapt our signature education to online learning. We would tap our rich internal resources and ingenuity to make online learning adapt to us.”

Morphing Zoom capabilities to Dartmouth’s needs was Bonfert-Taylor’s objective, and she spent long hours with tech support at Zoom. While the platform was fairly straightforward, she was insistent that classes didn’t lose the ability to break out into predetermined small groups. What would make these classes work, she believed, was the mix of learning experiences. Students would watch videos in advance of a class, work as a larger group with the professor, work one on one with teaching assistants as needed, and break out into small groups to work on a project together with the assistance of an undergraduate Learning Fellow.

Given that students were confined to their homes, Bonfert-Taylor felt strongly that the intimate social interaction within those small groups was essential to the quality of the learning experience. “I wanted to provide a social network for my students by having them work in fixed groups during class time.” Happily, her work with Zoom paid off, and she was able to create pre-assigned breakout groups within the larger class—a lesson she passed on to colleagues. “I became the breakout queen!” she laughs.

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BY FEDERICA CELYN BRAZIER

For Van Citters, the experience was every bit as exhilarating as it was disorienting. “Yes, it was different from the way I learned engineering in 1999.

For that matter, it was different from the way my students learned engineering in 2019, but the experience was not lesser, just different. Although we were forced by unforeseen events to reinvent our courses, we’re changing the way we teach for all the right reasons. We’re creating new ways of learning that are different, maybe even better.”

Disorienting—but exhilarating For both Bonfert-Taylor and Van Citters, the reward was the response of students. “I saw the success of our efforts in the course reviews,” Van Citters says.

“We surveyed students about the online experience three times during the term so we could course-correct as needed. When the reviews were so positive the first two times, I worried that the students were just being charitable, but by the end, it was clear that our flipped classroom approach was working.”

Jonathan Gliboff ’20 was frankly surprised at the triumph of Dartmouth’s virtual experiment. “I think this was probably my best-ever term, weirdly enough. The faculty did a great job of adapting their courses,” he says.

“Professor Ezzedine Fishere, who taught the Middle Eastern Studies class 'America and the Middle East,' really knew how to drive a conversation, but he was also good at helping students overcome any awkwardness of participating on Zoom.” All of Gliboff’s other activities quickly went virtual, too, including

bad-movie night with the editorial staff of The Jack-O-Lantern, the student humor publication of which he was editor-in-chief.

For Van Citters, the experience was every bit as exhilarating as it was disorienting. “Yes, it was different from the way I learned engineering in 1999.

For that matter, it was different from the way my students learned engineering in 2019, but the experience was not lesser, just different. Although we were forced by unforeseen events to reinvent our courses, we’re changing the way we teach for all the right reasons. We’re creating new ways of learning that are different, maybe even better.”

Bonfert-Taylor agrees. “The imagination and ingenuity displayed by everyone, students and faculty alike, were mind-blowing. We made amazing progress in pedagogy—a leap of ten years.” But more exciting still, she says, is the feedback from students. “When a student told me my class was the high point of her week, I knew we were on to something.”

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ANCA BALACEANU ’20 MAJOR: COGNITIVE SCIENCE MINOR: HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN HOMETOWN: RÂMNICU VÂLCEA, ROMANIA

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The Perp Pictured near Anca's hometown in Romania

PHOTOGRAPH BY NAME

Anca Balaceanu ’20 has lots of thoughts about thinking— design thinking, to be exact. The cognitive science major and human-centered design minor was first introduced to the field when she took a class on design thinking at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. The field spoke to her creative side in projects that promised to improve people’s lives. “The ‘human’ aspect of human-centered design is what really matters to me,” Anca says.

Among scenario-building, heuristic problem-solving, and design principles, Anca found her minor—and a passion for understanding and helping people. What solidified this passion was working with classmates in her Impact Design course to craft products that spark delight in teenagers at the nearby Hartford (VT) Autism Regional Program. “Designing for members of a community that is often misunderstood and marginalized,” she says, “was something that made me feel more fulfilled than any paper or essay I’ve ever submitted.”

With her mission of making a positive impact in mind, Anca took a cognitive science class during her sophomore year. “I realized that cognitive science and design thinking were a good match. Both focus on how the mind works. My path of study is a blend of learning about how the mind works then applying design thinking to the creation of products that people need.”

Anca’s research on the neural processing of social stereotypes, which later became the basis for her senior thesis, investigates the human brain’s disposition toward forming implicit stereotypes. In Neural Processing of Social Stereotypes in the Default Network, she argues that our brains form stereotypes while resting after periods of elevated cognitive activity. “In other words, we form stereotypes when we go on auto-pilot, and that’s why it’s very hard to get rid of stereotypes—our brains rely on them.”

Anca has enriched the Dartmouth communities that have enabled her to grow as a designer, including the Digital Arts Leadership and Innovation (DALI) Lab, a digital learning and innovation space. Her work at DALI also inspired her to expand the reach of designers on campus, so she founded the Dartmouth Design Collective, which aims to unlock the creative potential of the Dartmouth community through collaboration, skill-sharing, and mentorship.

When asked for tips for aspiring designers, Anca reflects on the nature of design itself: “You need a lot of bad ideas to reach that one good idea. I think that's really the one thing that makes designers perpetual optimists.”

— Lobna Jbeniani ’23

PHOTOGRAPH BY BALINT HAJAGOS

etual Optimist

D-Plan Jenny Chen ’21

Hometown: Bethesda, MD Majors: Biology and Quantitative Social Science (QSS)

First Year First-year Fall My very first term, I signed up for three introductory courses, including Introduction to Sociology. I loved every single lecture and always came to class excited about what we were going to talk about next. We read intriguing books about power dynamics in surgical residency programs, the 2008 financial crisis, and class privilege.

First-year Winter Have you ever completed a group exam?

How about three? My genetics course involved a flipped classroom where we would watch videos as homework in preparation for a collaborative problem-solving session the next day. I loved the course so much that I became a Learning Fellow (kind of like a teaching assistant) my sophomore summer. My group also grew really close, and we’re all still friends to this day.

First-year Spring I decided to try something different with my First-Year Seminar, which focused on the nude body in Western visual art.

I spent the term refining my writing and visual analysis and learning how artists convey meaning through their portrayal of the body. My final presentation concentrated on the use of women as allegories in art (think the Statue of Liberty) and how that contradicts their historically lesser status in society.

First-year Summer For my first off-term, I interned at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston studying the mechanism behind breast cancer. For ten weeks, I learned the fundamentals of assays, cell cloning, and genomic sequencing (not to mention “how to adult”). This experience confirmed my interest in genetics, which I have continued to pursue in other research opportunities and classes.

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Pick a term, any term. With Dartmouth’s distinctive year-round system, you customize your own academic calendar. Dartmouth offers four 10-week terms per year; within some guidelines, you choose which 12 terms to enroll — and which to have incredible experiences elsewhere. The result: the ability to take full advantage of all Dartmouth, and the world, has to offer.

Sophomore Year.

Sophomore Fall Finally, no longer a first-year! But with great power comes great responsibility.

Not only was I taking trickier classes (say, organic chemistry?), but I also dove into my extracurriculars with enthusiasm after a summer away. I began research at the Geisel School of Medicine as a Sophomore Scholar, became a mentor for the Great Issues Scholars Living Learning Community, and joined a sorority.

Sophomore Winter In addition to my weekly beginner skiing lessons at the Dartmouth Skiway, I poked around in the programming language R as I took a class on applied multivariate data analysis. The class was in both the government and QSS departments, so we looked at demographic factors that have an impact on voting. Though the class was challenging, programming was so satisfying and rewarding that I decided to add a second major in Quantitative Social Science and haven’t looked back since.

Sophomore Spring Approaching the end of sophomore year, I thought I had finished introductory classes. Yet, I found myself in an Introduction to Programming course.

My professor awarded candy bars to students who answered her toughest questions. We designed ping pong games, simulated the solar system, and generated a map revealing the shortest route between two points on campus— very practical!

Sophomore Summer Ah, sophomore summer. I can still close my eyes and feel the sunlight, smell the Farmer’s Market popcorn, and hear the splashes of the Connecticut River. It was nothing less than a magical term.

Ledyard Canoe Club became a favorite spot to sunbathe, swim, kayak, canoe, and paddleboard with friends and family.

I also took my first class in the Women’s Gender, Sex, and Sexuality department, which I loved.

Junior Year

ILLUSTRATION BY STUART BRADFORD

Junior Fall To complete my majors, I enrolled in a four-course term (meaning an additional class). One was Italian 1, with language drill held three times a week. I had no familiarity with Italian and hadn’t taken a language at Dartmouth, but by the end of the course, I could make small talk and speak about Maria Montessori for five minutes. I also took a class on sports analytics, which was co-taught

by Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon.

Junior Winter Eager to apply everything I had learned in my QSS classes to global health, I interned at the Fogarty International Center (FIC) in the National Institutes of Health in my hometown of Bethesda, MD. There, I explored mathematical epidemiology and transmission dynamics. I had previously shadowed the deputy director (an ’83!) for a winterim externship.

Junior Spring I was supposed to attend the Art History Foreign Study Program in Rome, but because of COVID-19, it was unfortunately cancelled. Instead of taking classes, I decided to continue my internship at FIC. I was able to publish an article in The Lancet on the early epidemiology of COVID-19 due to physician crowd-sourced data, as well as a second article on excess mortality estimates, which reveal the true burden of the disease.

Junior Summer While I’d originally planned on working at the National Eye Institute for my final off-term, I decided to continue my internship at FIC for another term (thankfully, the flexibility of the D-Plan allowed me to do so)! We had a few more interns working with us, and I was able to help them with the basics of the programming language R. I also worked as a Learning Fellow for BIOL13 (genetics) again and stayed involved with a campus group called Health Access for All.

The Write Idea

Pictured outside Baker-Berry Library

WILLEM GERRISH ’22

PHOTOGRAPH BY DON HAMERMAN

MAJOR: ENGLISH, MINOR: ECONOMICS HOMETOWN: NEW CASTLE, NH

As the winter term came to a close, Associate Professor of English Jeff Sharlet surprised then first-year student Willem Gerrish ’22 and each of his classmates with the gift of a book. Willem and the members of his Introductory Creative Nonfiction cohort were impressed. “At the end of every term, Professor Sharlet gives each student a book from his personal collection that aligns with what that student has been writing about and who they are as individuals,” says Willem. “He clearly saw me as more than just the assignments I was turning in.” When Willem took a second class with Professor Sharlet during the early part of the coronavirus pandemic, the writing professor went the extra mile to ship another book to Willem’s house.

An active and involved on-campus writer, Willem pens film reviews for the arts section of The Dartmouth, the campus newspaper. “I enjoy reading film reviews by writers like Peter Travers, who writes for Rolling Stone, but I didn’t have an outlet for my own thoughts beyond conversations with friends,” says Willem.

“Writing for The D formalizes that process, which in turn forces me to distill and sharpen my own ideas into coherent arguments.

It’s a lot of fun for me because I love movies, and I love writing.”

Willem also works as a finance manager for Friday Night Rock, a student-run group that receives Dartmouth funding to throw three live indie rock and pop rock shows each term. “Live music has always been a part of my life,” Willem says. “It’s been a great experience for me to find a live music organization in a place where I wasn’t sure it would emerge naturally.” In addition to his organizational role for Friday Night Rock, Willem takes guitar lessons through the music department.

To further explore his interdisciplinary interests, Willem plans to apply for the Senior Fellowship, which allows students to pursue a unique mix of interests over the course of a self-proposed yearlong project. The fellowship will allow him to take on a long-form writing project in the creative nonfiction genre that will also combine his academic and personal interests in economics and music.

Willem attributes his decision to attend Dartmouth to the tour guide he met on his first visit to campus. “When I toured Dartmouth, my tour guide was super casual but clearly intelligent.

I felt a sense of groundedness and liked the down-to-earth nature of the campus,” says Willem. Now a tour guide himself, Willem shares his own experiences with prospective Dartmouth students.

“What separates Dartmouth is the way it cultivates an academically rigorous environment. Everyone here is doing impressive things, but there’s also a distinctly supportive nature,” he says.

“Dartmouth proves that you can make incredible connections and work towards your upward trajectory, but also feel at home.”

—Jimmy Nguyen ’21

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ILLUSTRATION BY TINA BERNING

Rocky Roundtable The

From policy to politics, statistics to strategy, Rocky— The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences—is Dartmouth’s high-octane think-and-do tank for all things political. We sat down with four members of the faculty to probe the Rocky gestalt.

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Mia Costa Assistant Professor of Government

Michael Herron Remsen 1943 Professor of Government

Dartmouth is a magnet for students who are deep into politics— but also for those who are just curious about the somewhat confounding phenomenon that is government.

Michael: You’re right. I was at that same event. History was being made.

Dartmouth students get to meet all the candidates. I remember when Barack Obama came to speak. And during the 2020 election season, we’ve been able to meet Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders—

Michael: I think the reason so many politically engaged kids come to Dartmouth is because politics isn’t just theoretical here. It’s a function of both the small size of the school and our location in New Hampshire that students can rub shoulders with influential politicians, speechwriters, and campaign strategists.

Mia: I do think that students here really have a chance to live politics in a way that students at other schools don’t.

Deborah: Dartmouth’s edge is definitely up-close-and-personal politics along with resources like Rocky and the Dickey Center for International Understanding here on campus. Dartmouth students interested in U.S. and global politics have incredible resources and opportunities available to them.

Brendan: I’m very proud of the caliber of students we are able to attract and their commitment to making the world a better place. I just found out that one of my students is taking a term off to work on a voter registration effort in his state. Dartmouth students really are invested.

What is it about New Hampshire that makes it such a great state— exceptional, even—for the politically-inclined student?

Deborah: It can be quite an incredible learning experience to see an election event in person, then see it reported all over the national media the next day. For example, I remember a group of us —faculty and students—attended Jeb Bush’s now-infamous campaign event in February 2016. During a tired delivery of his stump speech, the crowd wasn’t especially enthusiastic when Bush came up for air, so he blurted, “Please clap!” The media went wild with that sound bite, using it as a metaphor for the state of his campaign, which he ended a few days later. It was a fascinating learning experience to dissect with students.

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Brendan: It’s true. You can shake the hand of just about everybody running for president—more than once if you want to (though today it might be elbow bumping the candidates or chatting on Zoom). And students can get involved in the various campaigns as volunteers.

Mia: Being here in Hanover during an election season is also a huge draw for faculty. It’s very exciting for a political scientist to be this close to the action.

But New Hampshire is fascinating for other reasons, too. It has a very unique political climate. There is a saying that everyone in New Hampshire either knows somebody who has served in the state legislature or has served in the state legislature themselves. In fact, several students have run to represent Hanover in the state legislature, and Dartmouth student Garrett Muscatel '20 held that seat until he graduated last summer.

Michael: I can’t imagine many other states that would afford this level of student participation in government. Dartmouth students in the Policy Shop, for example, serve as consultants researching issues for the New Hampshire and Vermont legislatures, pretty much serving the same function as the Congressional Research Service in Washington. It’s an incredible opportunity, and our students have been honored by those legislatures for pivotal reports on issues like juvenile justice.

Speaking of The Policy Shop—officially, the Class of 1964 Policy Research Shop— Dartmouth offers a pretty robust experience when it comes to government and politics.

Deborah: We all do different things to engage students in applied learning experiences. In my Media and Advertising in American Politics seminar, for example, I run a presidential primary simulation in which the students form

Deborah Brooks Associate Professor of Government

Brendan Nyhan Professor of Government

teams of consultants to create a competitive campaign for fictional candidates. Students play the candidates and take selfies with real candidates to use as endorsements, which opposition teams, in turn, use in negative ads on social media. It all creates deeper learning and opportunities for more critical analysis than if they were only watching campaigns from afar.

Mia: And speaking of hands-on, the Government Department just launched a Vow to Act initiative to outline specific commitments towards racial justice, commitments that center student voices. We are teachers, but we also want to learn from our students. We want to hear from students and alumni who have experience with the Black Lives Matter movement and other organizations that work towards racial justice. We are taking seriously the ways we can learn from our students to provide educational opportunities for all of us to have community conversations around this crucial topic.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TINA BERNING

Mia: Research opportunities for undergrads, too, give them valuable experience. I worked with all eight students in my Experiments in Politics Class on a survey experiment about how voters evaluate politicians who have been accused of sexual misconduct. We collaborated on a paper that is about to be published. The entire class participated. Trevor Briggs ’20, Ajaipal Chahal ’20, Jonathan Fried ’20, Rijul Garg ’21, Sophia Kriz ’22, Leo Lei ’20, Anthony Milne ’21, and Jennah Slayton ’21 are all co-authors.

It would seem that one of the outcomes of all this hands-on exposure to activism and the political process is that students leave here and stay involved.

Brendan: That’s a great point, Mia. Undergrads here have unusual opportunities to work on research with faculty, and research at Dartmouth is heavily focused on real-world impact. Mia and I both teach seminars in which students work with us to design, conduct, and analyze an experimental study.

My student coauthors and I have published three so far and have more in the works, including one conducted entirely virtually this year looking at misperceptions about COVID-19 and how to correct them.

Brendan: We punch well above our weight in Congress—on both sides of the aisle. But Dartmouth isn’t just a place for people who want to run for office or do politics in a traditional way. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed ’81, for example, a former Dartmouth board member and Harvard Law professor, is a leading political figure. She’s won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for her research on race and racism.

Deborah: I should point out, too, that it isn’t just hands-on work in politics that can motivate our students to pursue careers in public service. I have been working with students on empowerment issues pertaining to women globally through the IMHER website project. Through that work, the student team members have learned about the empowerment challenges facing girls and women in different countries with different cultural norms. They examine how policies affect the lives of women around the world. They also learn how to effectively promote social progress by conducting quality research and presenting their findings in a way that reaches a broad, multicultural audience. Many have been moving towards nonprofit leadership partly as a result of that kind of experience.

Deborah: Our graduates just never cease to amaze us with the fascinating, important work they go on to do in politics and public service, both in the U.S. and abroad. Beyond the important ways that many go on to create progress in the world, some come back as speakers in our classes to inspire other generations of graduates.

Michael: Then there are those who analyze politics, like Jake Tapper ’91 and Harry Enten ’11 of CNN and Lis Smith ’05, who worked on the campaigns of both Pete Buttigieg and Barack Obama.

admissions.dartmouth.edu | 19

Archival Aspira Pictured near Jordan's hometown in Maryland

JORDAN MCDONALD ’21

tions

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCE WELLER

MAJOR: HISTORY MODIFIED WITH ENGLISH, ART HISTORY, AND AFRICAN AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES HOMETOWN: SEAT PLEASANT, MD

Jordan McDonald ’21 was causing a scene, but she couldn’t help it.

“You’re supposed to be very quiet in the archives,” she says, “and any time I go in, I’m the youngest person, I’m typically the only girl, and I’m often the only Black person, so there are already a lot of ways that I stand out when I go into an archive.” But on that fateful day in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History archives, where she was working on a project for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art's blog, Jordan happened upon a certain makeup look-book from the 80s and, well, she had to laugh, scene or no scene.

She came upon the book while researching Revlon’s first makeup line for Black women, called “Polished Ambers,” unveiled 40 years ago. The essay she wrote about the line, published on the Smithsonian’s website, explored how major corporations suddenly called on Black art historians like Judith Wilson to help them find and use imagery that would appeal to Black audiences. Her essay was later read by Wilson herself. “She liked the piece,” Jordan laughs, “which I did not expect!”

Jordan always knew she’d be a humanities student, but the decision to modify her history major with English, art history, and African and African-American Studies unfolded as she explored the curriculum at Dartmouth. She took her first art history course, “Decolonizing the Museum,” her sophomore year while on a study abroad program in a place she never thought she’d end up: Paris. “It was the first time I’d seen a clear connection between slavery and colonialism and the function of museum collections,” she says. “No matter what kind of work I end up doing long term, I’ll always go back to archives in some form.”

Growing up just outside Washington, D.C., Jordan says she’d never been to New Hampshire—or any rural, woodsy environment.

The two main factors in her decision to attend were financial aid and her campus visit. “I was hosted by another Black girl named Jordan! I got to see how she found herself here.” This Jordan has found herself at Dartmouth, too. She leads Music in Color, an a cappella group for students of the global majority, serves as editorin-chief of the Afro-American Society’s digital journal Black Praxis, and has been published in the Huffington Post and Teen Vogue.

She also has been awarded the prestigious Beinecke Scholarship, which will fund her graduate study. As Jordan prepares for her final year at Dartmouth, she's reflective about the transitions that have fostered her growth. “Whenever you leave home, you’re going to lose some of what home provided you,” she says. “At Dartmouth, people have always showed up for me.”

— Caroline Cook ’21

admissions.dartmouth.edu | 21

ALUMNI WHO CARRY DARTMOUTH INTO THE WORLD

upward

onward &

22 | admissions.dartmouth.edu

PRIYA KRISHNA ’13 BEGAN HER FOOD WRITING CAREER IN A SURPRISING PLACE— FOCO, AKA THE CLASS OF 1953 COMMONS DINING HALL AT DARTMOUTH.

As a student “obsessed with the idea of taking limited ingredients and jazzing them up into something cool,” Krishna started The Dartmouth’s “DDS Detective” column, sharing recipes that encouraged students to create innovative meals with the ingredients and equipment found in the dining hall. “It started with The Dartmouth, where I was a staff writer for The Mirror,” Krishna remembers. “I wanted to write a restaurant column, but I realized most real people at Dartmouth are actually eating at the dining hall, so I pitched a column about how to make amazing meals within the perceived limits of dining hall food.”

That concept turned into Krishna’s first cookbook, Ultimate Dining Hall Hacks, published in 2014. These days, Krishna is a regular writer for The New York Times. Her latest cookbook, Indianish, is receiving rave reviews for its creative recipes and family-centric narrative. The book, which Krishna wrote in collaboration with her mother, puts a new spin on classic Indian dishes—from spinach and feta cooked like saag paneer to pulao made with quinoa instead of rice. “I love cooking for people, but more than spending hours on making something really complicated, I love making something that looks fancy but actually only took a few minutes to make. That’s how I derive the most pleasure from food,” Krishna says.

Krishna was a government and French double major at Dartmouth, but those disciplines are sur-

prisingly not as separate from her passion for food as one might think. “I really liked writing about food, so I brought that passion into my academics,” she said. “I took a class on the rise of French cuisine. It made me want to be a French major and inspired me to study food in a more academic way.

I wrote my French thesis on the idea of 'taste' and how you can track that word to the rise of cuisine and restaurant culture in France and around the world.”

Krishna, who also studied the effects of colonialism and migration on regional and global cuisine while at Dartmouth, was heavily influenced by her travels abroad, made possible by Dartmouth’s flexible academic calendar. “I studied abroad in Toulouse, France and London, England, and immersed myself in the food scenes of each country. In my majors, I wrote a lot of papers about food, including one for my government major in which I analyzed how tea culture built the British empire,” she says.

For Krishna, Indian-ish is about much more than sharing recipes. “I hope that my book normalizes Indian flavors and Indian food,” she said.

“I hope that it makes people realize that Indian flavors, and the flavors of any country can be part of everyday cooking. I don’t want to tokenize it, I want it to be part of the mainstream.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY LIZ CLAYMAN

SABENA ALLEN ’20 MAJOR: NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES, MINOR: GEOGRAPHY HOMETOWN: SITKA, AK, AND BIDDEFORD, ME

& VERA PALMER SENIOR LECTURER IN NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES

SABENA ALLEN ’20, A MEMBER OF THE TLINGIT TRIBE OF ALASKA, MET VERA PALMER, A MEMBER OF THE HAUDENOSAUNEE SIX NATIONS CONFEDERACY, ON HER FIRST DAY OF CLASSES AT DARTMOUTH. HERE, THE PAIR TALKS ABOUT DARTMOUTH’S NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM, SABENA’S PLANS FOR GRADUATE STUDY IN ANTHROPOLOGY, AND ALL THINGS THESIS—A CAPSTONE RESEARCH EXPERIENCE FOR SENIORS THAT CULMINATES IN THE FORM OF A SCHOLARLY PAPER, PROJECT, OR PRESENTATION.

How did you two meet?

Sabena: I took a class with Professor Palmer during my freshman year. It was actually my first class at Dartmouth.

Vera: Was it? I didn’t know that. I’m glad I didn’t scare you away!

Sabena: On the first day of classes, you asked us to consider our hometowns and who the Indigenous people were there. I remember thinking, “Oh wow, in Alaska, that’s me.” It was really strange to suddenly think of myself in that context, because in Alaska, it’s just so normal. I remember thinking, “This has to be my major. This is amazing.” I took another class with Professor Palmer my junior year, along with a geography class about catastrophe. As the idea for my thesis developed alongside the theme of oral history, I scheduled a meeting with Professor Palmer, and we decided that it would be really cool to work together on this.

Vera: I love this idea of catastrophe and the way you’ve developed it.

Sabena: The main distinction in my thesis is looking at big-C catastrophes and small-c catastrophes. Big-C catastrophes are disasters like floods or fires, whereas small-c catastrophes are ongoing processes, like colonialism or the overfishing of herring, which is an important subsistence food for my people.

All these processes are intrinsically linked to colonialism. So, I’m interested in how ceremonial practice can be used to fight catastrophe.

Vera: She has her work cut out for her! I call it a trampoline piece. It’s going to propel her right into grad school.

Did you come to Dartmouth thinking you were going to write a thesis?

Sabena: I don’t even know if I knew what a thesis was when I first came to Dartmouth. In the fall of my sophomore year, one of my professors asked

24 | admissions.dartmouth.edu

me if I was going to write a thesis, and I said, “No, I’m absolutely not going to do that.”

Vera: Famous last words!

Sabena: I had three amazing women as professors during sophomore spring. I thought, “That could be me. I could do that in the future.” That term, I decided I wanted to write a thesis and go to graduate school. Before I settled on my topic, I knew I wanted to work with Professor Palmer. It worked out really well that the topic was one we could work on together.

What has this relationship meant to you?

Vera: I love working at Dartmouth, and I take a special joy in working with Native students because I know historically, Indigenous people do not have a healthy relationship with Western education—the residential school experience has been very damaging through time. I take a special joy in being an Indigenous academic at Dartmouth because we can support young people from tribal traditions.

Sabena: When I was applying to graduate school, I realized how lucky I was to have worked with so many Native faculty. It was great that I could work so closely with a professor as an undergraduate—that in and of itself was really unique—but to work so closely with a Native faculty member was incredibly helpful.

Any advice for students?

Vera: Start to respect and listen to that internal voice. You’re here. Listen to those big abstract ideas—philosophy, literature, government—and figure out how those pieces fit. You’ve made connections with that personal part of yourself, and it connects to your body, where you live. This is what you’ll always have. That’s your gift.

ABOVE: PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANCO VOGT

BELOW: PHOTOGRAPH BY WEBB CHAPPELL

Pictured in Ithaca, NY

Pictured: Professor Cormen’s Pictured In near Sabena's office, Springin2018 hometown Maine

CRAIG SUTTON ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS

Can you hear the shape of a drum? To Professor Craig Sutton, this question lends itself to a larger quest in the field of spectral geometry. Using the drum as a metaphor, Professor Sutton explains how his research investigates whether the shape of an object is determined by its sound (or natural frequencies): “I’m currently interested in the extent to which I can “hear” the fundamental building blocks of three dimensional manifolds.” Spectral geometry—an area of mathematics that has connections to spectroscopy, quantum mechanics, and dynamical systems—is Professor Sutton’s forte. “What makes mathematics fun is finding these tunnels that connect disparate areas of mathematics and physics, and spectral geometry does exactly that,” he says.

Professor Sutton also makes other powerful connections as the director of Dartmouth’s E.E. Just Program, which offers research funding, fellowship opportunities, and mentorship to historically and systemically underrepresented students. The goal: to help them pursue STEM degrees and careers. “We invite industry leaders to speak on career paths for students in STEM,“ he says. “Dartmouth professors offer students inspiration by discussing their cutting-edge research at the Science Forum. And, students create community through our weekly 'Jam Sessions.'“ Professor Sutton’s work with the program reflects his commitment to another professional purpose: making these fields, which can intimidate many students, more accessible. “I think our curriculum should speak to the diversity of our students’ backgrounds, interests, and motivations.”

Professor Sutton explains that today’s issues require STEM students to be present in the collective effort toward a more inclusive world. “There are aspects of systemic racism and injustice that students in disciplines like math and science can help dismantle,” he says, citing recent applications of geometry to gerrymandering and voting rights. Whether designing relevant inquiry methods or supporting other aspiring scientists, Professor Sutton is confident in the value that studying STEM can bring to students' lives. “Students in STEM disciplines can offer their humanity to social issues. We are all affected by these issues.

What’s important is that we just show up.”

Professor Sutton shows up for his students beyond the walls of the classroom, too. For the past four years, he has served as the house professor for School House, one of Dartmouth’s six residential house communities. “The house system allows me to work with an inclusive community of staff, faculty, and students who are devoted to cross-cultural interactions as well as civic and intellectual engagement,” Professor Sutton explains. “I’ve found it to be one of the most rewarding aspects of my job.”

—Lobna Jbeniani ’23

26 | admissions.dartmouth.edu

You Do Pictured on the first floor of Berry Library

PHOTOGRAPH BY DON HAMERMAN

the Math

FUNDING

OUTSIDE THE LINES

While Dartmouth’s financial aid covers 100% of the demonstrated need of all its students, the opportunity for funding doesn’t stop there. Dartmouth students have access to resources that make all kinds of experiences possible and ensure that every student can take advantage of the diverse opportunities Dartmouth has to offer. We asked current students to share experiences made possible with Dartmouth’s financial support.

Through Dartmouth’s funding, my friends and I had the chance to eat dinner at Pine Restaurant with Visiting Professor Kēhaulani Kauanui after a brilliant lecture about Indigenous sovereignty and the Mauna Kea crisis happening in Hawai'i. In Hanover’s fanciest restaurant, we all talked about our cultures, kinship ideologies, and our future aspirations in language revitalization and the decolonization of education. It was an incredible conversation with some of my best friends, mentors, and leaders in Dartmouth’s Native community and was one of the biggest highlights of my first term at Dartmouth.

— Gabriel Gilbert ’23

I was in the midst of my third class with Professor Sarah Smith when I mentioned to her that I was interested in spending my winter off-term in New Zealand. She enthusiastically explained that her cousin was a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland and offered to connect me.

Fast forward a few months, and I was off to Auckland for an internship funded by the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth. Without my professor and financial support from the Dickey Center, I would not have been able to realize that opportunity.

— Julia Snodgrass ’21 28 | admissions.dartmouth.edu

I decided to fulfill my PE credit my first-year winter by signing up for a snowboarding trip, for which you need a ski pass, a helmet, transport, and, most important, a snowboard. I come from a low-income household and, were it not for financial aid, I could not have afforded to shred the gnar that winter. The PE department evaluated my general Dartmouth financial aid package and, because of my level of need, covered all my expenses.

So, I learned to snowboard for free! I fell in love with the sport and can’t wait for my next Dartmouth winter.

— Robin Martinez ’23

As Dartmouth students, we have free access to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and so many other publications that open my eyes to a wider world of knowledge. Also, Dartmouth offers various student-led publications, such as The Dartmouth, our campus newspaper. I make sure to get copies whenever I can.

— Tulio Huggins ’23

ILLUSTRATION BY JAN KALLWEJT

I found a summer internship through the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact’s Cohort Internship program at a nonprofit in San Francisco, where I learned about real estate, art, and social change in the Bay Area. I researched average rent prices across San Francisco and Oakland and compiled a comprehensive database of funding sources for artists. In addition to the terrific opportunity and an amazing alumni mentor, I received a stipend through the Center for Social Impact that gave me the financial stability to explore my interests in a manner that I had never before thought possible as a firstyear QuestBridge student from the Midwest.

—Love Tsai ’23

I’d argue that it’s pretty hard to replicate a chemistry lab in an online format, but this past spring, Dartmouth mailed chemistry kits to students so that they could conduct at-home experiments. Mixing various chemicals in my kitchen in my pajamas with my seven-year-old sister’s help was great fun. I consider people at Dartmouth my family—and it’s nice to know that even though I’m on the opposite coast, I can share that piece of Dartmouth with my other family while home in California.

— Nicholas Sugiarto ’23

SAYURI MAGNABOSCO ’21 MAJOR: BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING HOMETOWN: CURITIBA, BRAZIL

Sayuri Tais Miyamoto Magnabosco has been called an emerging leader, but she is more comfortable being known for her curiosity.

Perhaps more than anything else, she is an audacious dreamer with the savvy and drive to bring her ideas to life.

Concerned about the environmental threat posed by the widespread use of Styrofoam trays in Brazil’s grocery store packaging, Sayuri—then a sophomore in high school—decided to find a sustainable alternative. Her search for something inexpensive, food-safe, and eco-friendly led her to the realization that the lightweight properties of sugarcane bagasse made it ideal for packing material. After obtaining bagasse from a nearby street fair, she created what has since become an award-winning prototype for a biodegradable alternative to Styrofoam.

Now a biomedical engineering major, Sayuri is a member of the King Scholars program, which gives promising international students interested in alleviating poverty in their home countries four-year scholarships and extensive mentoring and leadership training. It’s not an honor she takes for granted. Remembering the role models who nurtured her own curiosity, Sayuri delights in volunteering as a mentor for high school students with Fundação Estudar, the same program that helped her apply to college.

Sayuri credits her parents with inspiring her academic motivation. “I realize now,” she says, “all the things they have done to prioritize the education of me and my siblings.” She attributes her interest in biomedical engineering to her mother, who works in the healthcare system in Brazil. “Hearing my mother’s stories made me realize that very simple solutions can make the lives of millions of people better.”

Sayuri has extended her commitment to others into her on-campus research. In Professor Jane Hill's engineering lab, she helped prototype a novel breath-collector device for use in under-resourced countries. Later, while working with Professor of Engineering Margaret Ackerman during her sophomore summer, she produced and cloned monoclonal antibodies intended for use in the first cytomegalovirus vaccine.

This past summer, Sayuri interned for Vayu, a startup that reimagines lifesaving medical devices, where she assisted in crafting a machine that helps oxygenate the lungs of patients in early stages of the COVID-19 virus. The idea: eliminate the need for a respirator. “There are so many possibilities,” Sayuri says, “for designing products that make an impact or bring delight to someone.”

A member of Dartmouth’s International Student Association, cofounder and president of Dartmouth’s Brazilian Society, and supporter of women in STEM, Sayuri is always focused on growing strong communities. “To look back and see not just how far you’ve come, but that you’ve brought others with you along the way—that is rewarding.”

—Estelle Stedman ’23

30 | admissions.dartmouth.edu

Acting

Pictured in Boston, Massachusetts, where Sayuri spent part of her summer term

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANA SMITH

Up

At the age of 15, Sydney Kamen ’19 launched a social impact startup that has transformed public health around the world. At Dartmouth, she crisscrossed the globe to amplify that impact.

PHOTOGRAPH BY UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGES

PHOTOGRAPH OF SYDNEY BY BRUCE WELLER

When she was 12, Sydney Kamen ’19 landed in the hospital with a frightening prognosis. Doctors feared she might lose her sight, her hearing, even the ability to walk. She missed a full year of school.

“My doctors’ compassion and life-saving knowledge have given me the opportunity to pursue my passions of global and public health.”

Sydney has devoted every year of her life since to audacious humanitarian efforts. In high school she talked her way onto a college's spring break service trip to Thailand, which turned out to be an eye-opening introduction to the mortality rate of children. “More than 1.8 million children die every year from diarrhea, but this can be prevented,” she says, “and hand-washing with soap could cut infections of Ebola in half.”

Unfortunately, Sydney found that soap was prohibitively expensive in many areas of the world.

Theodor Geisel ’25, better known as Dr. Seuss, was a Dartmouth alum who helps inspire our adventuresome spirit.

That revelation motivated her to create a social impact nonprofit called SOAP—So Others Are Protected. Sydney launched a pilot effort recycling bars of soap from local hotels and partnered with communities to train educators to spread the word about the impact of hand-washing. Under her leadership, 50,000 bars of soap have been distributed across Rwanda, Thailand, Uganda, Burma, India, and Kenya.

As a Dartmouth student majoring in geography and sociology, Sydney continued her work with SOAP and expanded her efforts to other humanitarian causes in Israel, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Kosovo. She served as a War and Peace Fellow, a Global Health Fellow, a Great Issues Scholar, a campus Peace Corps ambassador, a leader at the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact, and the president of the International Development Forum at

the Dickey Center for International Understanding.

Sydney also has been awarded both a prestigious Truman Fellowship and a Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship, which funds two years of her graduate study focused on humanitarian action, human security, and sub-Saharan Africa in exchange for a commitment of five years to the United States Foreign Service.

She believes the experience will be a crucial stepping-stone for increasing her ability to effect change. “I am inspired by the courageous men and women who brave the fight for change, for the rights of the oppressed, for justice against all odds and obstacles—even at the risk of their own lives.”

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