Georgetown Magazine Spring 2024

SEEKING PERSPECTIVE

10 years with the Calcagnini Contemplative Center

Cover photo: Courtesy of Georgetown ESCAPE

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Lately I have been thinking about what it means to be part of a community. From neighbors to colleagues, from book clubs to religious congregations, from teammates who compete together to college friends who met in a first-year dorm, communities are sometimes formed by chance, but they are sustained by something more—lasting memories, a mutual commitment, a shared passion or vision. Sometimes all of the above.

In this issue’s The Last Word, Director of Residential Ministry Dr. Shazetta Thompson-Hill (affectionately known as Dr. Z) says “within our [residential ministry] community, we commit to learn from each other.”

I found this articulation really meaningful. Community members rely on one another and trust one another, and ideally, they learn from one another. In the end, all members of a community benefit from this fellowship, this shared kinship. They make a commitment to one another, and their lives are richer for it.

This issue explores the concept of community from different angles. You will read about collaboration in the Hoya music community. You will get a window into the Calcagnini Contemplative Center and how retreats there build community at critical times in people’s lives. And you will read about a renowned Georgetown couple, one of whom describes the university as “a learning community, a service community, a community of people who care about the world.”

In the GUAA Corner, Executive Director Julia Farr talks about how a physical space can support a community—in this case, the community of alumni who visit the Robert & Bernice Wagner Alumni House, whether dropping by during a reunion weekend or attending a special event. Recent renovations have improved upon this special place, a “home away from home” for all who have graduated from Georgetown.

Scanning the QR code will send you to a brief survey about the magazine. Thank you in advance for your feedback.

And among the stories in our Campus News section, you will read about the DC Schools Project, just one of the many ways that Georgetown students serve as people for others in the larger community of Washington, DC.

One of my communities is the editorial staff at Georgetown University. We work together to produce a twiceannual magazine that highlights the best of Georgetown, but we can’t do it alone. Please share your thoughts and suggestions. What kinds of stories do you most enjoy? Do the pictures and online videos help you feel connected to your alma mater? Let us know by responding to our survey. Help us ensure this magazine best serves the Georgetown community.

—Camille Scarborough, Editorial Team Lead

Georgetown University provides equal opportunity in employment for all persons and prohibits discrimination and harassment in all aspects of employment because of age, color, disability, family responsibilities, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, matriculation, national origin, personal appearance, political affiliation, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other factor prohibited by law. Additionally, the university will use goodfaith efforts to achieve ethnic and gender diversity throughout the workforce. The university emphasizes recruitment of women, minority members, disabled individuals, and veterans. Inquiries regarding Georgetown University’s nondiscrimination policy may be addressed to the Director of Affirmative Action Programs, Institutional Diversity, Equity & Affirmative Action, 37th and O Sts. NW, Suite M36, Darnall Hall, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, or call 202-687-4798.

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Milestone year for the Baker Scholars Program

Every five years, the Baker Scholars Program hosts Father Davis Weekend, a reunion which invites the Baker alumni community and their families to return to the Hilltop. The Fall 2023 event was even more special, as the program celebrated its 50th year at Georgetown.

The weekend is named in honor of the program’s chief architect, Royden B. Davis, S.J., who served as dean of Georgetown College of Arts & Sciences from 1966 to 1989. In 1973, he brought the Baker Scholars Program to Georgetown, supported by philanthropist George F. Baker, who strongly believed that future business leaders needed to be educated in the liberal arts and inspired with a social conscience.

The program, administered by the College of Arts & Sciences, gives students the opportunity to interact with business and nonprofit executives, building confidence and connections across a range of industries and functions. Mentorship is one

of the hallmarks of the program. A new database makes it easier for scholars to stay in touch with one another.

“There has been terrific camaraderie among the scholars,” says founding trustee Vince Wolfington (C’62). “The culture we built was to be in service to one another as well as the people with whom we are working.”

At the 2023 reunion event, current and former Baker Scholars assembled emergency hygiene kits for the homeless clients of Friendship Place in Washington, DC.

Through community service activities, exploration of nonprofits, and education about corporate responsibility, the Baker Scholars Program prepares students to be agents of positive change in the business world. •

—Hayden Frye

At the October event, Xaivier Ringer (C’08) live-painted a canvas designed to capture the essence of the Baker Scholars Program with images of legacy, diversity, tradition, and vibrancy. A Baker Scholar alum, Ringer now works as an international muralist, community facilitator, and program consultant.

Photo: Landen Buckson

Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues crosses disciplines

Since its 2021 launch, the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues has fostered cross-disciplinary research and dialogue on critical and emerging challenges affecting children around the world, with a particular focus on children in adversity.

The evidence shows that investing in children, youth, and caregivers is a primary means of achieving sustainable human, social, and economic development, all of which are vital to ensuring international peace and security. The Collaborative’s partners are scholar-practitioners engaged in child-centered work—explaining the “why” and unpacking the “how”—ultimately impacting the way students, faculty, policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders think about and engage on global children’s issues in Washington, DC, and around the world.

Exemplifying the interdisciplinary nature of the work, the Collaborative has focused on a range of global issues that impact children, including climate change, displacement and migration, child-family separation, COVID-19, and conflict. Gillian Huebner, the Collaborative’s executive director, emphasizes the critical importance of centering children in our response to these challenges.

“We can’t effectively address any of the global crises of our time if we are not grappling with how young people are impacted. They bear the brunt of these difficulties in their daily lives and will inevitably inherit all the problem-solving these challenges require,” Huebner says.

After training in conflict studies and humanitarian work, Huebner felt reasonably equipped to enter the field. Then she went to Angola, where her assignment with the United Nations involved working with child soldiers. She quickly realized her education never included a focus on young people.

“That’s a pretty extreme oversight,” Huebner says, “if you recognize that half of the global population is children and youth.”

With initial seed funding from an anonymous donor and support from the Office of the Vice President for Global Engagement, Huebner is excited to be building the kind of training program she wishes she had received.

“Georgetown is particularly well-suited to provide this training,” Huebner says. “Washington, DC is an epicenter of global politics and a hotspot for advocacy and public service.”

Now in its third year, the Collaborative has facilitated a series of solutions-oriented initiatives that are grounded in the lived experiences of children, their families, and communities.

“We bring young people and those with lived experience into everything we do,” Huebner says. “Creating opportunities for children and youth to share their views and experiences in research, policy, and practice is not only their right—it is critical to their resilience and to the efficacy of our approaches.” •

—Gabrielle Barone

Little Amal, a 12-foot puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee child, is a global symbol of human rights, especially those of refugees. Georgetown community members escorted her from Freedom Plaza to the U.S. Capitol as part of an event co-hosted by the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues.

Photo: Shimeng Tong

Nurturing creativity at the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice

An interdisciplinary program housed in the Office of the President, the Lannan Center is dedicated to literary art and the issues of our time, from human rights to environmental stewardship to social justice.

The Center’s programs have been serving and inspiring the university community since the early 1990s through grants bestowed by the Lannan Foundation, a family philanthropy that includes a number of Georgetown alumni, most notably the late J. Patrick Lannan Jr. (C’60), its founder and President. In 2006, the Lannan Center was established, and in 2014 it received an endowment from Lannan Foundation, which was increased substantially in 2022.

Since its founding, the Lannan Center has held events that are open to students, faculty, and staff throughout the university and the community. A popular event each spring is the Lannan Center Symposium: writers, journalists, poets, and other intellectuals from across the United States and abroad discuss social and cultural topics pertinent to present time.

After serving as director for nine years, Carolyn Forché—who has been instrumental in the center’s growth over the years— moved into a new role as director of the center’s Readings and Talks Series. These events, all free and open to the public, have featured such luminaries as Viet Thanh Nguyen, Margaret Atwood, Ilya Kaminsky, and Mark Strand.

“Through the visionary generosity of Patrick Lannan and the Lannan Foundation, we have been able to build a unique cultural institution at Georgetown University during the past 20 years, realizing the convergence of literary art, activism, and public intellectual life,” says Forché.

Award-winning author Aminatta Forna became the first endowed director of the Lannan Center last August. Forna has already been forming many cross-campus collaborations, including recent work with Georgetown’s Medical Humanities Initiative and Laboratory for Global Performance.

In partnership with the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Lannan Fellows Program is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. During their one-year term, Fellows immerse themselves in the world of literary art by participating in informal seminars with published authors, a reading series, receptions, and more.

For Max Zhang (SFS’23), the fellowship experience during his junior year made a profound impact, especially given the post-pandemic timing.

“My time as a Lannan Fellow [2021–2022] was characterized by seismic impact. My creative work flowered; I found a new cadence and comfort as a poet; I grew closer to my own humanity,” shares Zhang, a Business and Global Affairs major in the School of Foreign Service, with minors in English and philosophy.

“Done in a year when I faced great personal turmoil, my Lannan Fellowship was a life-affirming hearth, a place where I had the time, mentorship, and community to nurture a portfolio of poetry written just for its own sake,” adds Zhang. •

—Camille Scarborough

FACES IN THE CROWD

The university has started a new storytelling series called Georgetown Faces. Visit g.town/faces to learn about the unsung heroes, beloved figures, and dedicated Hoyas who make Georgetown special.

Sharron Lannan (C’90, G’91), daughter of the late J. Patrick Lannan Jr. (C’60), speaks during an event at Riggs Library. The Lannan Foundation’s ongoing philanthropy helped the university establish and grow a center dedicated to the literary arts.

Photo: Lisa Helfert

Sharing her story via podcast

Marissa Nissley (B’24) started at Georgetown thinking she’d eventually become a lawyer. She used this as inspiration in November 2020 when she started a podcast called “Legally Blonde & Blind” while learning remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now Nissley, who is blind and has albinism, will soon graduate from the McDonough School of Business with a whole host of accomplishments and experiences she never imagined. Her podcast, which posts monthly, has episode transcripts for accessibility and features her 2023 TEDTalk with TEDxGeorgetown, “Miss Interdependent: Perspectives on Disability and Independence.”

Though living with her parents and attending classes remotely wasn’t the first-year college experience she’d envisioned, “it gave me more time to be introspective about my experiences as a disabled student, and I think that’s where the idea for the podcast came from,” Nissley says. “I saw examples at Georgetown where many students were proud to be part of the disability community, and considered it part of their identity and culture. That made me want to connect virtually with others and share my story.”

Nissley, who doesn’t drive, was initially attracted to Georgetown because it’s so easy to explore DC from campus, but has found even more to love.

“I think Georgetown has changed me in ways that I never could have expected,” Nissley says. Before, “I never thought I’d make a podcast, have a guide dog, ride a bike, or walk Jack the Bulldog as part of the Jack Crew. Being here has given me a lot of confidence to explore new interests and embrace my identity.”

Nissley is currently serving as the director of client engagement for Hilltop Consultants, a student-run marketing consulting program for external clients, and was able to secure the New York-based Guide Dog Foundation as a client.

“I think Georgetown has changed me in ways that I never could have expected... Being here has given me a lot of confidence to explore new interests and embrace my identity.”

“Not only do our consultants get to see the tangible impact of what they’re doing through my guide dog, Smalls, but they get to go beyond that DC bubble,” Nissley says.

“They get to feel like they’re making an impact.”

A fan of SoulCycle, she’s participated in both annual BellRinger races: first 50 miles in the inaugural 2022 event, and then the 100-mile race in 2023. She also enjoys walks around DC, particularly on Theodore Roosevelt Island or the Georgetown Waterfront. And in November, she hosted a ‘Snuggle with Smalls’ Booth on Giving Tuesday, with proceeds going to the Guide Dog Foundation.

—MARISSA NISSLEY

“Georgetown has taught me that I’m valuable and that my perspective is meaningful and worth sharing. Going into college I had a lot of imposter syndrome, which doesn’t go away, but I think Georgetown does a lot to build confidence in students and help us find career opportunities and platforms where we can advocate for what we’re passionate about.”

“I’m really happy I ended up at a school with a very vibrant disability culture.” •

—Gabrielle Barone

Photo: Courtesy of Marissa Nissley

Nissley got her guide dog, Smalls, in January 2023. “Sometimes the labrador’s tail gets in the microphone,” she says of her podcasting pal.

Street Law at 50

Street Law, launched at the Law Center in 1972, was founded on a simple premise: bringing law students into high school classrooms to teach the basics of the legal system.

Starting with a single class at Washington, DC’s Eastern High School, the Street Law model has evolved into an international program, adopted for use in law schools across the U.S. and in 45 countries. Among the program’s alumni is Vice President Kamala Harris, who taught Street Law at Fremont High School while a student at University of California Law San Francisco.

The program’s impact for Georgetown has also been profound. One of the first experiential learning courses at the Law Center, Street Law helped to set the foundation for Georgetown’s national preeminence in clinical education.

Johnny Barnes (L’73, L’76), one of the student founders of Street Law, credits the vision of faculty members, including initial Street Law instructor Jason Newman and constitutional law professor John Kramer, for championing the program. “They fought for clinical instruction as a legitimate part of legal education,” says Barnes.

Working with Newman and adjunct professor Ed O’Brien (L’73), Barnes laid the groundwork for the broader national program, writing original course materials, securing grant funding, and introducing Street Law into other law schools.

From the start, Street Law was designed to be pertinent to the lives of high school students living in the District. Barnes recalls telling Newman, “These students need to learn that the law can be a tool to help, rather than an instrument to hurt.”

“We serve a majority of Black and brown students, so teaching them about the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, how they can comport themselves in an interaction with police officers, is especially significant,” adds Charisma Howell (L’11), current Street Law director.

Street Law faculty and students strive to create topics for coursework and cases that are directly relevant to high schoolers. Tarik Barrett (L’14) wrote a number of mock trial cases as a Street Law Teaching Fellow between 2018 and 2021, covering emerging issues like the effects of rhetoric in social media and the treatment of trans athletes under the D.C. Human Rights Act.

“The point of Street Law is to empower these students with the tools, resources, and skills they need to become active citizens,” said Barrett. “We want to create safe spaces for them to engage in meaningful conversations, so when they go out and have these conversations in real life, they know what they feel and how to articulate it.”

“The greatest joy is when somebody comes up to you and says, ‘I took Street Law [in high school] and I’m now a lawyer,’” Barnes added. “There’s no better feeling.” •

—Sara Piccini

TIME TO FLY

During your next long commute, tune into “The Fly,” GU Politics’ studentrun podcast. Guests include senators, media personalities, political analysts, and more.

Street Law founders and leaders reunited at the 2023 anniversary celebration: (left to right) David Wilmot (L’73), Jason Newman, Johnny Barnes (L’73, L’76), Charisma Howell (L’11), Adjunct Professor Richard Roe, and May O’Brien, wife of the late Ed O’Brien (L’73).

Photo: Michelle Frankfurter/Georgetown Law

Analyzing altruism

When Abigail Marsh was a teenager, she was on a busy highway one night and swerved to miss a dog. Her car spun into the fast lane and the engine died. A stranger stopped his car and ran across four lanes of traffic to help her.

She never saw him again, but that experience inspired her to become the psychologist she is today, researching and teaching about altruism and psychopathy—both ends of what she calls the “caring continuum.”

Her research, featured on 60 Minutes, is unlocking the mystery of why some people, with nothing to gain, risk their lives for a stranger. Marsh is studying what is known as “extreme altruism” in people who have donated their kidneys to strangers or have committed extraordinary acts of heroism, as well as humanitarian aid workers.

Marsh found that extreme altruists have a larger than average amygdala, and their brain scans show more activity when looking at photos of fearful people. She and her co-authors study

identified traits that are common in extreme altruists: honesty, humility, reduced levels of social discounting (where generosity doesn’t decline as social distance increases, as it does for most people), high valuation of other’s outcomes, and reduced personal distress in emergencies. Marsh says there are some gender differences in altruists—men are more likely to undertake heroic acts, but women are more likely to donate a kidney to a stranger. In risky situations, “Your brain can quickly calculate what your chances for success are,” she says, “and men tend to be stronger, less anxious, and more impulsive.”

Her research also suggests that as people’s health, wealth, and education improve, they become more altruistic. Altruism and empathy are generally increasing, though many people nonetheless perceive the world as increasingly cruel and inhumane. It may be that our perceptions don’t match reality because media coverage of crime and violence has increased substantially, though violent crime has been steadily decreasing for the last 30 years. “People are convinced they are seeing big increases in immoral and violent behavior, even though the real trends show the opposite.”

Are there ways to make people more altruistic? Marsh thinks so. “Empathy induction doesn’t work,” she says “because we only empathize with people we care about. We have to find more ways to get people to care about each other, and empathy will follow.” Marsh also says that, contrary to most people’s perceptions, altruists aren’t “nicer” or more agreeable than anyone else. “But they do look for the best in people, genuinely care about others’ welfare, and think they should be even more altruistic. I’ve learned a lot from them,” she says. •

—Patti North

Abigail Marsh, professor of psychology and co-director of Georgetown’s Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Concentration in Cognitive Science

Photos: Georgetown University

Mission & Ministry co-sponsors global conference featuring address from Pope Francis

Last summer, Georgetown’s Office of Mission & Ministry co-sponsored the Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination conference at the Villa Malta in Rome. The three-day conference featured a special address from Pope Francis, in addition to presentations by Cardinal José Tolentino, Prefect for the Dicastery on Education and Culture, and Martin Scorsese, acclaimed American writer and director.

Father Mark Bosco, S.J., vice president of Mission & Ministry, co-led the conference to highlight the importance of literary expression in Catholic tradition. It is connected to the biennial Catholic Imagination Conference, an international meeting of poets and novelists focused on examining the Catholic imagination in literature and the arts.

“Georgetown’s reach is global,” shares Bosco. “We wanted to host a symposium that brought together participants from Africa, South Asia, Europe, and America, to understand and celebrate the way Catholicism shapes the literary imagination of writers and poets from around the world.” •

—Lauren M. Poteat

40 years of supporting local immigrant communities

For nearly 40 years, Georgetown’s DC Schools Project (DCSP) has provided youth and adults of immigrant backgrounds with English language tutoring, mentoring, and advocacy programs aimed at improving literacy skills and academic performance, and supporting acculturation.

DCSP began in 1984 in response to the Salvadoran civil war and a significant increase in Washington, DC’s immigrant population. Today, the program has over 150 student volunteers and Federal Work Study-funded tutors, led by 15 Georgetown student coordinators.

Each semester, DCSP volunteers serve approximately 200 newcomer migrant students and their families throughout the District, providing tutoring at schools, in students’ homes, on Georgetown’s campus, and at community-based organizations.

“The DC Schools Project is a manifestation of Georgetown’s value of being a ‘Hoya for Others.’

For nearly 40 years, the Georgetown DCSP community has formed deep relationships with migrant families, children, and workers,” says Jessica Lee (G’22), associate director for the immigrant justice initiatives at Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service. DCSP tutors provide “high-impact English language tutoring and support for low-income newcomers, but beyond that, they are learning about themselves and discovering a shared love of social justice work.” •

—Lauren M. Poteat

Father Mark Bosco, S.J., greets Pope Francis in Rome for an event that asked, among other questions, for the ways Catholicism explores the human condition and responds to the hunger for some transcendental significance.

Caroline Vail (C’24) interned with the Summer Immigrant Rights and Advocacy Program through Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice. Vail and her fellow interns helped migrant families move through the U.S. immigration system.

Photo: Courtesy of Vatican Media

Photo: Georgetown University

Evolving from scholastic and sacred roots, music at Georgetown today showcases a vibrant range of forms and genres

BY SARA PICCINI | DESIGN

BY ETHAN JEON

OVERTURE

“A musical reckoning allows us to consider hard things in a different way—it gets at things we feel before we have words for them.”

—Benjamin Harbert Chair, Department of Performing Arts

In Fall 2023, Georgetown’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Its Legacies held a launch event with music as the centerpiece—a live performance of the powerful and haunting “Requiem for the Enslaved.”

Composed by Carlos Simon, an associate professor of music at Georgetown, with a libretto by hip hop artist-in-residence Marco Pavé, the requiem was commissioned by the university in 2021 and nominated for a Grammy the following year. Honoring the lives of the people enslaved by the Maryland Province of Jesuits and their descendants, the piece infuses African American spirituals into a Catholic liturgical musical form.

The use of music to launch the center, whose mission focuses on remembrance and reconciliation, was especially fitting. Perhaps no other form of human expression can evoke joy, sorrow, longing, and passion as directly and immediately as music.

“That was the first time we actually performed the piece on this soil. Georgetown soil,” says Simon. “It felt surreal. The ghosts are here, the ancestors are here, and I can see them being happy that we’re here and finally made it great.”

Recognizing music’s integral role in all our lives, Georgetown’s Music Program—part of the university’s Department of Performing Arts—offers students and the broader community a rich variety of opportunities to explore diverse musical genres, as well as to learn about the music industry as a whole.

“We’re here in Washington, DC, and our students are engaged in real-life issues that musicians are facing, studying the crossover between music and public policy,” says Benjamin Harbert, chair of the performing arts department and director of undergraduate studies in music.

Music is fundamentally collaborative, and Georgetown’s alumni involved in the music industry have been generous in sharing expertise and inspiration. Multiplatinum songwriter Jim McCormick (C’90), for example, has hosted students in Nashville for an insider’s look at both the artistic and business side of music.

McCormick’s words about songwriting can aptly be applied to music at Georgetown in all its manifestations: “It’s about creating something remarkable.”

Photos: Elman Studio Professor, composer, and pianist Carlos Simon (above) performs “Requiem for the Enslaved” with Hub New Music in Gaston Hall.

ÉTUDES: MUSIC IN THE CLASSROOM

“Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace.”

—Professor Anthony DelDonna (quoting Plato’s The Republic)

Beginning with the ancient Greeks, the study of music has been an essential element of a liberal arts education. “It’s historically part of the quadrivium, along with arithmetic, astronomy, and geometry, so it’s a foundational pillar,” says Anthony DelDonna, the Thomas E. Caestecker Professor of Music.

“More specifically, music—like these other disciplines—stresses critical thinking, logic, collaboration, and creativity,” he continues. “These are the skills that we try to nurture in our students, whether they’re in the sciences, or the business school, or SFS.”

As DelDonna explains, many students come to the Music Program simply looking to fulfill a humanities requirement. “Then they get hooked,” he says. “I think it’s because so much of the work we do is student-centered, student-driven.”

Cameron Newman (C’24) is among those students who became captivated by the program. Although she grew up performing in musical theater, she applied to Georgetown with the intent to go straight into government and politics.

Intrigued by Georgetown’s performing arts curriculum, she took a class called Writing About Music in her first year. “I was so impressed by the professor, Anna Celenza. I saw how seriously Georgetown treats music as a scholarly undertaking,” Newman says.

Newman went on to declare a major in American Musical Culture, pursuing the

musicology/ethnomusicology track. Now in her senior year, she is working with adviser Benjamin Harbert to write a thesis on how songs have shaped the mythos of California.

Established in 2008 through a collaborative faculty effort, the American Musical Culture major is unique to Georgetown. “We wanted to leverage the fact that our students are so strong in the liberal arts, and so many of them have some touchstone to music,” DelDonna explains.

“But we also wanted our students to focus on music that is creative, that is practiced,” he continues. The result is an interdisciplinary major focusing specifically on American musical traditions, incorporating history, anthropology, linguistics, social justice issues, and much more.

HARMONIC PROGRESSION

“For the Friday Music Concert Series, we had to learn pretty quickly how to record all different genres—bluegrass, classical, Latin. It’s been a remarkable experience.”

—Ian Devine (C’24) Recording Arts teaching assistant

The American Musical Culture major has three tracks—musicology/ethnomusicology; music and media studies; and sacred music—which reflect the program’s comprehensive approach to music as an academic and creative pursuit.

“Performance is part of our program—it’s not the end goal, but if you study music it’s really important to have that musical experience,” Harbert says. “I teach a rock history course, and I require all my students to learn basic rhythms on a drum set.

“While they’re studying the history and evolution of styles, they’re also getting a

sense of a history of Black contributions to rock and roll.”

DelDonna also notes that the program emphasizes skill acquisition. “Students in our music and media track, for example, take courses in recording techniques using a professional recording studio,” says DelDonna.

Through coursework and faculty mentoring, Ian Devine (C’24) has become so proficient on the production side of music that he is now in his second year working as a teaching assistant for the Recording Arts class.

Similar to Newman, Devine came to Georgetown with a love of music but no intention of becoming a major. In what he calls a “blessing in disguise,” Devine applied to and was rejected from the business school. “I did some soul-searching, and realized I’d probably be more successful in life if I did something I’m really interested in,” he says.

“I started with classes like experimental audio production with Professor Jay Hammond,” Devine explains. “I also took the music industry seminar with Professor [Anna] Celenza—she retired afterwards, so I was lucky to be in her class. It was sobering to hear about the exploitative nature of the music business, but also inspiring to understand the mechanics of the industry.”

Devine’s work as TA is twofold. First, he supervises students on individual projects where they learn how to record their own performances. Equally important, he oversees the class as they record each performance in the Music Program’s Friday Music Concert Series—a huge responsibility, especially given the prominence of the artists involved.

“They learn how to use the gear, then record and mix the performance with the help of Professor Hammond and me,” Devine says. “It’s been very, very cool getting to do real, hands-on work with both students and artists.”

“I’d always seen music as connected to theater and storytelling,” says soprano Cameron Newman (C’24). “The faculty here opened my ears to the magic of purely instrumental music.”

Photo: Phil Humnicky

“As a composer, I want to use music as a platform to talk about issues of our time,” says professor Carlos Simon, whose “Requiem for the Enslaved” received a 2023 Grammy nomination.

Photo: The Washington Post /Getty Images

JOYFUL NOISE

“When we go to Dahlgren, there’s the full orchestra, the soloists, the audience, and it’s just so many voices filling the room. It’s absolutely glorious.”

—Cameron Newman (C’24) on performing Handel’s “Messiah”

Devine describes the diversity of artists performing for the Friday Music Concert Series as “jaw-dropping” and a glance at the lineup over the past several years confirms that description.

Recent performers have included the Argentinian Alejandro Brittes Quartet performing in the 400-year-old chamamé musical genre, born of the encounter between European Jesuits and native Guaraní cultures.

Premiering the Fall 2023 series, violinist David Kim, concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, performed Carlos Simon’s “Loops”—commissioned by the New York Philharmonic during the pandemic—along with more traditional works.

The lunchtime concerts are held in McNeir Hall, an intimate venue in New North. They are free to all Georgetown students, faculty, and staff, as well as local residents. “There’s no financial barrier—it’s a great way of making music more accessible to the community at large,” says Newman.

Complementing the Friday concerts are regular performances by Georgetown student instrumental and choral ensembles, including the Georgetown University Orchestra conducted by Professor Angel Gil-Ordonez, and Georgetown Concert Choir, led by Frederick Binkholder.

Newman, a soprano in the choir, singles out one concert as an especially memorable experience—a presentation of music by 20th-century Black composer

Margaret Bonds, performed in Gaston Hall in Spring 2022.

“The Concert Choir had the opportunity to premiere some of her works, including an awesome song cycle called ‘Simon Bore the Cross,’ synthesizing Black spiritual and classical Western music traditions.

“It was a superb selection of music, and a huge honor to share this music with everyone.”

WORLD MUSIC

“I tell students that a musical career doesn’t come without a price—time, money, and sacrifice.”

—Carlos Simon

Associate professor and composer

The Georgetown Music Program provides many opportunities for students to “go on the road.”

In addition to an internship with the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, for example, Newman had the once-in-alifetime chance to study abroad in Milan.

“Being in Italy showed me how American musicals are very much grounded in the Italian operatic tradition of connecting music and storytelling on the stage.”

Newman took five music courses and went on field trips to Milan’s famed Teatro alla Scala opera house, as well as the State Opera House in Prague. “The biggest influence was my incredible voice teacher. I did operatic singing for the first time, which was very humbling. In choir, you’re always trying to blend in. My teacher told me that my voice needed to be bigger,” she says.

“The voice is a muscle, so it was like strength training—like boot camp.”

Devine has spent the past two summers gaining industry experience at studios in New York City. He got one of those lucky breaks musicians dream of this past

summer as a post-production freelancer at Gigantic Studios, working on the indie horror film Crumbcatcher

“The music supervisor was waving the red flag, looking for more affordable options,” Devine says. “Through persistence—and charging a lot less for my work—two of my songs ended up in the score.” The film went on to win the Gold Audience Award at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. “I was incredibly grateful the director gave me a shot.”

DelDonna expresses particular gratitude to the network of alumni, especially those involved in the Georgetown Entertainment and Media Alliance (GEMA), who help place music students in internships at high-profile arts and media organizations—including Teddy Zambetti (C’80), one of GEMA’s founders and the senior director of music production and in-house composer for Sirius XM Radio.

“Teddy is incredibly fair and always very helpful,” DelDonna says, noting that Zambetti provides clear feedback on students’ potential in the field.

Music students at Georgetown also have the invaluable benefit of gaining advice from practitioners on the faculty such as Carlos Simon, currently composer-inresidence at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

“I tell students that a musical career doesn’t come without a price—time, money, and sacrifice,” says Simon.

LYRICAL INSPIRATION

“The biggest gift of this whole journey has been the fact that now, 25 years later, I still love getting up in the morning to write a song. I’m so grateful the fire still burns.”

—Jim McCormick (C’90) Songwriter

During his musical career, Jim McCormick has written hit songs for a pantheon

of stars—Trace Adkins, Tim McGraw, Trisha Yearwood, Harry Connick Jr., Kelly Clarkson. The New Orleans native has garnered multiple Grammy and Country Music Association nominations; McCormick’s song “The Good Ones” won Favorite Country Song at the American Music Awards in 2021.

His advice to aspiring musicians is similar to Simon’s. “It’s a joyful path to take, but it’s full of heartbreak. If you love it enough, though, it doesn’t feel like heartbreak. It feels like part of the route that you’ve got to take to get there.”

McCormick’s career in music had, as he puts it, “a longtime gestation.” He’d played in bands in high school and especially loved songwriting. As a Hoya, however, McCormick started out in the business school. Then he enrolled in a poetry seminar with poet and professor Roland Flint, and everything changed. “The lightbulb went off. I knew what I should study.”

He received a Lannan Fellowship at Georgetown and the Academy of Americans Poets poetry prize, going on to earn an MFA in poetry at the University of New Orleans. But music still called him, and he went on the road, playing in a rock band he started with childhood friends. “We were eating 99-cent menus, sleeping four to a room in Motel 6, and barreling across the Southeast to every college town playing original music. I had the time of my life,” McCormick says. “And it was there, in that band, that I learned how to write songs with other people.”

During tours, he’d encounter older musicians who encouraged him to make a go of it in Nashville as a professional songwriter. Eventually he decided to spend a weekend there, checking things out.

“I just fell in love with it, all of it,” he says. “In Nashville I saw a respect and care for the lyric that equaled the respect and care

for the poetry that I’d been part of for so long,” he says.

After four years of sleeping on friends’ couches, he got his first break—one of his songs appeared on a major record label. Publishing houses took interest, and he subsequently signed his first deal with a music publishing company and his career took off.

McCormick has returned to the Hilltop a number of times to guest lecture and appear on GEMA panels, as well as performing at the Friday Music Concert Series. Despite constant change in the music industry, he tells students that the old adages still hold.

“It still comes down to remarkable melodies and remarkable lyrics. You’re not going to luck into it—you’ve got to fight for it.”

REQUIEM

Isaac ran away

Why was he captured in the first place?

Runaway slave is a crime for the brave

Please give me death instead of new chains

—Lyric by Marco Pavé from “Requiem for the Enslaved ”

Composer Carlos Simon’s “Requiem for the Enslaved” is both inspiring and angerprovoking, lyrical and harsh. Above all, it is a call to action.

As Simon emphasizes, “It’s a sendoff for those in the audience to reflect on what they heard, and ask the question of themselves, ‘What can I do, what is my duty?’”

The requiem’s evolution began with Simon’s extensive research about the 272 enslaved children, women, and men sold by the Maryland Province of Jesuits to benefit Georgetown. He pored through

the university’s Slavery Archives and traveled to Louisiana’s cotton fields to walk in the steps of the enslaved.

He also felt it was imperative to speak to members of the Descendant community.

“I wanted to get their blessing,” he says.

“I wanted to make sure I was telling the right story in a way that honored them.”

Simon, whose father is a Pentecostal minister, decided to employ the traditional Catholic Requiem Mass as the vehicle to celebrate and mourn the community’s departed ancestors. Rather than working with a full orchestra, Simon—a pianist— collaborated with the chamber ensemble Hub New Music, creating a more intimate sound, and recruited trumpeter MK Zulu for additional accent and texture.

Fortuitously, Simon joined the Georgetown faculty in the same year that Memphis-based hip-hop artist Marco Pavé began his residency. The two artists joined forces.

“Marco is the griot, the storyteller, the keeper of the truth,” says Simon.

As he was composing the requiem, he also brought pieces of the work into the classroom to share with students. “Students get feedback on their work, and I’m not exempt from that. They’re of a different generation, and they receive and consume music in a different way than I do. Understanding how they listen to music really helps me to craft my compositions.”

Although Simon had performed and also recorded the piece for Decca Records prior to the requiem’s premiere at Georgetown, taking his seat at the piano in Gaston Hall brought him to a different spiritual place. “Nothing really prepared me for that performance. It resonated with me in a way I wasn’t expecting. Even in rehearsal I could feel something different.”

“It’s an honor to be a vessel to tell the story.” •

“In a very direct way Georgetown prepared me for my career,” says Jim McCormick (C’90). “It required a lot of self-discipline, a lot of sacrifice. So did breaking into Nashville’s songwriting business.”

Photo: Phil Humnicky

How

By Jane Varner Malhotra | Design By Ethan Jeon

nurse-bioethicist Christine Grady (N’74, G’93) and her husband, new faculty member Anthony Fauci, live their commitment to public service, health, and each other

Photo: Lisa Helfert

In May 2023, the World Health Organization declared an end to the COVID-19 public health emergency. It marked the official close to a difficult chapter in human history, with nearly seven million deaths from the virus, and immeasurable hardship that impacted people the world over.

Countless Hoyas played a part in pandemic preparedness, biomedical research, and critical health care delivery during this time.

In particular, two individuals helped shape the public health response in the U.S. and they happen to be married to each other. They are double Hoya Christine Grady (N’74, G’93), who heads bioethics at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and her husband, Anthony Fauci, who recently retired as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH and is now Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown.

Photo: Lisa Helfert

After more than 50 years with the NIH, Fauci had tempting offers to share his expertise at leading institutions across the country. In July 2023 he officially joined the faculty of Georgetown University School of Medicine’s Department of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, as well as the McCourt School of Public Policy.

Fauci, an immunologist, infectious disease researcher, and advisor to seven U.S. presidents, deeply values his education at Jesuit schools. Grady and Fauci were married in 1985 in Dahlgren Chapel, and they celebrated the births of their three children at Georgetown’s hospital.

Grady, an accomplished scientist and nurse bioethicist, studied biology at the School of Nursing and earned her Ph.D. in bioethics at Georgetown. Known internationally for her thought leadership on ethical issues in clinical research and clinical care, she is a senior investigator at the NIH, where she serves as chief of their Clinical Center’s Department of Bioethics and head of the department’s Section on Human Subjects Research. From 2010–2017 she was a member of the President’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

Staying connected to her alma mater, Grady is currently a faculty affiliate at Georgetown’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics. She has contributed extensively to biomedical and bioethics literature, on topics such as informed consent in clinical research, measuring moral distress, and the ethics of vaccine development.

As dedicated public servants and leaders in the national and global health arena, Grady and Fauci share a deep commitment to the common good. In their personal and professional lives, how do their individual views and expertise inform one another? How do they support each other while retaining their individual identities, especially after the challenges of the last four years? What role do Jesuit values play in shaping their work?

Georgetown Magazine sat down with the doctors to talk about their partnership—where they’ve been, what’s ahead as they deepen their connection to Georgetown, and what they do for fun.

Dr. Grady, you were a Georgetown student in the early 1970s. What memory stands out from your time on the Hilltop?

Christine Grady (CG): It was a tumultuous time in the world. During my first year, May Day brought Vietnam War protests all over the city and the campus basically shut down, surrounded by the National Guard. I went with friends to protest downtown and had trouble getting back on campus. Some classmates were worried about participating because it was exam week. But in those days it seemed like there were bigger, more important things to do.

It was an extraordinary experience—not only the demonstrations themselves, but on campus they set up soup kitchens on the lawn behind the dorms. People were in DC from all over the country so we were serving soup, they were sleeping in tents on the lawn…

Anthony Fauci (AF): I was a young physician at NIH in Bethesda at the time and was involved with helping to drive an ambulance around, picking up people who got tear-gassed.

CG: We didn’t know each other at all.

AF: But we were both here.

CG: At the School of Nursing there was a lot of change in the way we learned about being nurses. The new curriculum had a more holistic, more autonomous focus with interesting faculty role models. Because this activism surrounded us, everybody was very engaged in these curriculum discussions.

When did your paths cross?

CG: Almost 10 years after I graduated from Georgetown, I was a new nurse at the NIH. He had already been there for 15 years. I had just returned from spending two years in Brazil with Project HOPE, and a Brazilian patient with vasculitis was in my unit, so we spent a lot of time chatting in Portuguese. He had been there a month and was homesick. He said, “Can you convince my doctors to send me home?” So I called a meeting with the two fellows and the attending Tony.

Tony has a style that’s very serious and professional. He said the patient could go home, if he promised to do his dressings every day, keep his leg elevated, and take it easy. So I told that to Pedro, and he said, with a very straight face, in Portuguese, “I can’t do that. I’ve been in this hospital forever. I’m gonna go to the beach every day and go dancing at night.”

So I thought, okay, now what do I do? I turned to them and said, “He says he’ll do exactly what you said.” So they discharged him.

Two days later, Tony comes to me on rounds, and says, “I’d like to see you in my office.” And I thought, whoops! Caught. But when I went to his office, he said, “How’d you like to go out to dinner?”

AF: Something we could not do today!

CG: So that’s our origin story.

AF: Chris has phenomenal clinical judgment. She figured the psychological advantage of the patient going home outweighed the disadvantage of him possibly being too active.

CG: He really wanted to go home. His recovery was going to be long. I knew that if he was in pain, or if he needed dressings, he wasn’t going to dance all night. He was kind of teasing.

How does bioethics factor in both of your worlds?

Is it your dinner conversation, or is it off the table when you’re home?

AF: The way I have guided my career is that you maintain the highest level of integrity and ethical conduct in the care of your patient, which should be the underlying driving force of every physician. But my sense of ethics was “the instinct to do the right thing.”

As a professional ethicist, Chris opened my eyes to the complexity of the discipline of ethics. The nuances and the questions you ask—that I learned from her.

CG: As a practicing nurse, there were interesting issues that I ran into, complex decisions and actions that I didn’t know were bioethics. As I started to learn and think more about it, I realized that there is an area of gray in a lot of what we do in life. It’s not like you know what to do right away.

Over the last 30 years, health care professionals think more about bioethics. There are also more resources available to help providers.

We talk about bioethics at home. But we also talk about science. His world and my world have enough overlap that there are things that we do talk about quite a bit. But it’s not the only thing we talk about. We also talk about politics and the weather and the neighbors and birds—

AF: We love birds!

CG: Bioethics is definitely something that comes into our conversation often. Every once in a while, there’ll be a situation at work, and I come home and say, What do you think about this? And he has some good insights, things that I hadn’t thought about. And he does that too.

AF: Sometimes I ask about a scientific thing. She’s a pretty good scientist.

CG (laughing): Pretty good.

AF: She’s internationally known as an ethicist, but she understands science. She asks the right questions. She never lets you fast-talk her to the next step. She says, Time out. What are you talking about? Explain that.

Often I say, Here’s where I want to get to. But before I get there, she’ll ask three questions. It slows you down and gets you to really think about what you’re asking.

CG: That’s how I do bioethics, too. One of the best ways to have conversations with people about what the ethical issues are is to ask questions. The questions help us understand what the situation is. It’s a useful methodology.

When did you earn your Ph.D.?

CG: I started in 1986 and finished in 1993.

AF: By the way, she was doing three full-time jobs at the time, getting a Ph.D., working at the NIH, and raising three children.

Given everything you two have been through in recent years, how do you manage?

CG: I will admit, there are moments that are hard. But I think for the most part, we have a good life, we have a great relationship, and we support each other. I couldn’t have gotten through these last few years, maybe the last few decades, without Tony. We have wonderful children and friends, and work that is intellectually and emotionally stimulating and satisfying.

AF: There’s no way I would have gotten through the stressful early years of HIV, to Ebola and anthrax, Zika and multiple different presidents that I worked with, and then the last three years of COVID—it would have been impossible without her. With credible death threats and harassment, it disrupts the normality of your life. It’s not normal, nor does it feel good, to have armed federal agents with you wherever you go. That’s been a terrible stress on Chris and on me, but if I didn’t have her, it would have been almost impossible.

One thing that’s really important in the story of our relationship is that she’s one of the most respected ethicists in the country. But in the early years, she didn’t do a lot of things that would have hastened her recognition, because she was doing things like being the Brownie mother and filling in as a substitute in school when teachers got sick, or taking the kids to every crew and track meet.

CG: I loved every minute of it. I don’t regret a single thing.

AF: She was doing that at the same time as she was turning down offers of the stepwise academic career that would have gotten her to here 10 years earlier.

CG: Though I would have missed out on a lot.

AF: I think our kids turned out really good, mostly because of Chris.

What’s something that your kids have taught you?

CG: They have taught us that you can work hard and play hard. Some of that is in reaction to watching work, work, work and not enough play. Also our kids are others-centric— they pay attention to other people and the world around them.

AF: You said it well. They are unselfish and not ego-involved.

Where do you have diverging perspectives?

(here they exchange knowing glances and laugh)

AF: There are no substantial divergent things in our fundamental life principles.

CG: I think that’s true.

AF: There are peripheral things…

CG: For example, there may be people I do not like because of their political stances and ideology or what they’ve done. And Tony, sometimes, if he knows them, says, Oh, but they’re fundamentally a nice person. And I’m like, Okay, well, what does that mean, when they do these things that are bad for the world?

AF: I tend to look at the good in everyone.

CG: I do, too.

AF: Another divergence is I am obsessive about being on time. And she usually hangs loose. Like the other night, we were supposed to go sign some books at a big gala. And I said be home at 5:30 so we could get there at 6:00.

CG: And the traffic was terrible!

AF (winking): And she stopped off and had a beer with some of her friends…

CG (laughing): I did not! I do prioritize having fun. I take trips, I go places with friends.

AF: I used to be that way, before I got this disease that when you have an infinite amount of work, you have to put in an infinite amount of time. I got that when I started taking care of HIV patients in 1981. There was so much to do that taking time off was a bad thing.

What about during the pandemic?

CG: He was so darn busy that for a year or more he hardly knew what day it was.

AF: She saved me. One night she said, That’s enough. You’ve got to drink water, you’ve got to eat, you’ve got to get more than four hours of sleep. She really took charge.

What are you both anticipating about your connection to Georgetown going forward?

AF: The Jesuit value of service for others deepened during my formative years at Regis High School and at Holy Cross, and for Chris at Georgetown. When I decided to step down from the NIH, I thought, While I’m still healthy and sharp, what can I offer to society? I believe I can inspire younger people to get involved in science, medicine, public health, and hopefully public service.

CG: When this seemed like the right choice for him, I was all for it. The Jesuit values are consistent with who he is and what he wants to do.

What do you do for fun?

AF: This may sound too romantic, but just being with each other is fun to me. That means walking, watching birds,

discovering and learning about birds. Doing puzzles at night together. Watching movies… although she falls asleep most of the time.

CG: We also love to dance. We don’t get enough dancing in.

AF: We love to dance.

CG: We like to swim. He likes to fish.

AF: She doesn’t like to fish as much as I do.

CG: But I like to go along and be outside.

AF: We also get invited to events with interesting people and almost never do it without each other. We feel this humility —we are very thankful for the opportunities.

Georgetown is a place where people of all faiths, including no faith, are nurtured and encouraged to explore this aspect of our lives. What does this mean to you as scientists?

AF: I won’t speak for Chris, but for me Georgetown is a place that reflects the principles I learned from my parents and which were fortified at Jesuit schools: integrity, honesty, caring for others, and contributing to society. I’ve lived my entire life that way, and I feel fortunate now to spend the last years of my professional career at an institution that is founded on those principles—

CG: And embodies them. The only one I would add to your list is community. Georgetown has a community of people who have like-minded values. I hope students treasure the moments they have there, to be part of a learning community, a service community, a community of people who care about the world. •

Despite their extremely busy and stressful careers, the couple makes time for fun—cooking, birdwatching, fishing—a lesson learned from their three children. “They have taught us that you can work hard and play hard,” Grady says. “We have a good life and we support each other.”

Photos: Courtesy of Christine Grady and Anthony Fauci

Coming together on the mountaintop

Calcagnini Contemplative Center celebrates 10 years

BY JANE VARNER MALHOTRA | DESIGN BY SHIKHA SAVDAS

Late afternoon on a chilly Friday in February, a group of about 40 students climb aboard a minibus parked near McDonough Arena. The setting winter sun casts sideways light on each passenger. Some know each other and chat softly, others are a little quiet, unsure of what to expect at an ESCAPE retreat in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Since 1990, Georgetown has organized these 27-hour getaways for students during their first year on campus. The program has evolved but the core purpose has remained central to the experience: making space to step away from the pressures of academic life, build community, and listen and tend to one’s inner life.

Clockwise from bottom left: Students settle in for the journey from campus to the Calcagnini Contemplative Center, which opened in 2013. Surrounded by mountains and the nearby Appalachian Trail, the center hosts a variety of daylong and overnight retreats including ESCAPE. Students enjoy the opportunity to slow down, share stories, and build community.

Photos courtesy of Georgetown University/Georgetown ESCAPE

In the early years, ESCAPE and other retreats took place at a variety of locations in the region. But transformative gifts from Arthur (C’54) and Nancy Calcagnini (Parents’84, ’85, ’93, Grandparents’19, ’22, ’23) led to the opening of a dedicated site in 2013. Over the past decade, the Calcagnini Contemplative Center (CCC) has grown into a mountaintop oasis, bringing students, faculty, and staff together for the deep reflection and connection Arthur and Nancy dreamed of.

After an hour’s trip, the final rays of sunset cast a soft purple glow on the Shenandoah Valley countryside, and the retreat attendees turn up into the hills of Bluemont, Virginia, to see the center, a series of small buildings that blend into the landscape.

As the students disembark, they breathe in the sharp mountain air and take it all in: the evening sky, the smell of forest mixed with dinner cooking, tall trees that surround a clearing, someone playing guitar nearby. Smiling, the students unload their stuff and head to their assigned cabins, settle in, and gather in the dining hall for the opening meal.

Following a delicious buffet dinner, a Georgetown community member offers a reflection, followed by small group time, and then informal social time—board games, music, s’mores, stargazing. And then to the cozy cabins for the night for a peaceful sleep to prepare for another day of community and reflection and fun, before getting back on the bus.

Madeline Vitek Memenza, the Office of Mission & Ministry’s main campus director for mission engagement, has been coordinating contemplative retreats at the CCC for more than a decade. She notes that before the retreat, many students panic that they have too much homework to do.

“They tell me, ‘I don’t have a day to spare,’” she says. “But invariably they get there and say, ‘this is actually exactly what I needed.’ And on the way home they say, ‘I wish it were longer.’”

A place to nurture the interior life

One of the CCC’s primary goals is to create a space away from campus for reflection, a place for all to slow down and pay attention to what is stirring in the heart and soul.

Chicago-based pediatrician Kathleen Osea (NHS’16) was at the dedication of the Calcagnini Contemplative Center in 2013 as a sophomore at Georgetown. Her first-year ESCAPE experience had been at one of the other retreat centers, and so she had a special appreciation for the new CCC.

“To have the space is itself a blessing,” she says. “ESCAPE and the Calcagninis are integral to who I am as a person. The skills of reflection that I gained over four years at Georgetown would not have been possible without Arthur and Nancy.”

She recalls learning there about the Jesuit idea of discerning a vocation by asking three simple questions: what am I good at, what do I enjoy doing, and what does the world need me to do. “The toolbox you come away with after the contemplative retreats includes those skills of reflection, along with accompaniment, and vulnerability—tools I use every day as a pediatrician.”

Osea values what she learned as an ESCAPE coordinator about how to live as a contemplative. “Otherwise it can be easy to have the experiences but miss the meaning.”

Vulnerability and accompaniment

The CCC also creates and fosters a deep sense of community through carefully designed programs that offer a place for Hoyas to be open-hearted and to accompany one another along the way.

In her leadership role with ESCAPE, Osea recalls the many challenges students carried in their hearts during this pivotal time in life and how the retreats helped them open up and learn from one another.

“Some are dealing with grief, some with loss, some with mental health struggles. And the experience of being shown all those emotions, of being let in, teaches you how to be vulnerable.”

The retreats helped her realize the type of doctor she wanted to be. “Someone who prioritized people, who could accompany others in their struggles. To fix what I could but acknowledge what I couldn’t.”

An environment for reflection is made possible by the incredible mountaintop location, says Koby Twist (C’25), who along with Alice Chen (SFS’24) and musician Nick Vianna (C’25), coordinates the team of 36 ESCAPE student leaders this year.

“The CCC does so much for setting the tone,” says Twist. “It’s a really quiet, peaceful space. You’re immediately transported from all the stress and movement of Georgetown life. It’s serene.”

Noting satisfaction rates of 95% on post-retreat surveys, Twist says, “I’m blown away by how much people love the program as a whole.”

Twist attributes the retreats’ success to not only the location but also the intentional approach the team takes to retreat design. “We get those satisfaction rates because we put so much thought into everything we do,” he says. “We also continue to experiment, because every generation is different. It’s always an unfinished program.”

Above, top: ESCAPE Team Leader Addison Basile (C’26) joins Student Coordinator Alice Chen (SFS’24) and Team Leader Bahar Hassantash (B’26) in conversation. “Students and staff enjoy the change of pace, coming to a space for them to just be and exist,” says Vitek. Situated on a 55-acre mountaintop campus, the center’s award-winning architecture is designed to blur the boundary of indoors and out, featuring plenty of glass and natural materials.

Community in diversity

The pandemic caused discontinuity and disconnection around the world, and at Georgetown. In response, contemplative programs at the CCC are helping to offer creative ways to repair and reconnect the Georgetown family and nurture a spirit of belonging.

In addition to ESCAPE programs for first-year and transfer students, the CCC hosts a variety of faith-oriented retreats in Catholic, Dharmic, Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox Christian, and Protestant traditions. Other groups gather for interfaith or nondenominational contemplative experiences, including transformative retreats for staff such as the Prisons and Justice Initiative team.

In Spring 2022, four ESCAPE student leaders wondered what a retreat for Black students would be like, as a way to help restore a sense of community after the pandemic. With support from Campus Ministry, Veronica Williams (C’23), Kwabena Sekyere-Boateng (C’23), Annaelle Lafontant (SFS’23), and Saleema Ibrahim (SFS’23) designed the program called The Cookout to welcome Black students of all faiths or no faith for a 27-hour experience at the CCC.

This proved a balm for students who might feel isolated or invisible on Georgetown’s campus, says Melody Emenyonu (H’24), who attended the inaugural event and is now one of the leaders of the twice-annual retreat. One of her favorite aspects of the program is the Affirmation Circle which takes place at the end of the retreat.

“There are two circles of people, an outer one and a small inner one,” explains Emenyonu. “The outer group stands facing out with eyes closed, and the inner circle faces out with eyes open. The leaders invite the inner circle to tap someone who will make a difference or already has, someone who made the weekend better, someone they want to get to know better. It’s entirely anonymous, and everyone gets tapped. It’s a great way to feel closer as a community.”

The program also includes an optional Interfaith service. “It’s very moving because it makes me feel closer to the people who come, but also closer to God. It allows me to see God through other people’s eyes.”

Protestant Chaplain Reverend TauVaughn Toney adds that The Cookout offers opportunities for students to have conversations about shared experiences, while also giving them a chance to appreciate how diverse Georgetown’s Black community is.

Above: ESCAPE Team Leader Raghav “Ragz” Chutani (SFS’26) brings music to the retreat experience. Opposite page, clockwise from top left: The Cookout retreat coordinators include (left to right) Ramses Pena (C’24), Melody Emenyonu (H’24), Lisette Blackstone (C’25), and Akil Cole (C’24). The St. Ignatius Chapel’s austere, modern design offers an intimate, welcoming space for people of all faiths. Launched in 2022, The Cookout was designed by students to create a place of healing, reflection, and growth. Cozy cabins surround a common lawn.

“There are Black students from every faith tradition imaginable, various political affiliations, and from across the country and around the world,” says Rev. Toney. “They are all able to gather together and find joy in the spirit of community. Knowing they have that community empowers and encourages them to come back to the greater Georgetown community knowing that they are not alone and that they belong at Georgetown. That’s what the Jesuit value of Community in Diversity is all about.”

A deep commitment to contemplation

After years of dedication and hard work to find a location and build the CCC, Arthur Calcagnini saw his dream become a reality. He passed away in 2019, but his legacy lives on, with Nancy Calcagnini tirelessly committed to expanding their shared vision for the ever-evolving center. “Arthur was personally invested in building the center, and he spoke at ESCAPE almost every year since its

inception. He believed that young people needed space away from all the pressures of college life, which can be fun but also stressful. They need that quiet place to go into themselves and listen to their own heart. It allows people to discover who they want to be, what gives them joy and pleasure.”

She adds that after Arthur’s difficult health challenges, including cancer, they were overjoyed to be there for the opening of the CCC in 2013. “It was such a thrill for both of us that he got to see it dedicated. A very personal, very emotional experience for both of us and for our whole family.”

Their vision for the center became a reality, and thousands of people continue to benefit from the Calcagninis’ commitment to nurturing the contemplative life of the Georgetown family. •

Welcome to the new Alumni House, your home away from home

By Julia Farr (C’88, Parent’19, ’21, ’24), executive director of the Georgetown University Alumni Association

If you graduated from Georgetown, chances are you grabbed your diploma and left campus through Healy Gates to start your life as a proud alum. No more than 100 steps from those iconic gates, walking along O Street, is Wagner Alumni House. Located at 3604 O Street, it is home to all visiting Georgetown alumni as well as the Georgetown University Alumni Association.

How it started

Blending seamlessly into the federalist-style brick rowhouses, Alumni House seems like it has always been a fixture of the Georgetown neighborhood. But that’s not the case.

Before the association had a dedicated building, the executive director and leadership teams worked in such locations as an anteroom of the president’s office, a former “smoking room” for seniors in White-Gravenor, and the basement of Georgetown Hospital.

In 1951, a nearby building was acquired as an office space for the alumni association’s exclusive use. Executive Secretary

James S. Ruby (C’27) shared the following with members that summer: “Past us flows all pedestrians and vehicular traffic to and from the university. It is ample for our immediate purposes, and if we use it well and purposefully for Georgetown and the sons of Georgetown, we may well expand one day into a real Georgetown Club for our members here and out of town.”

In 1952, 1966, and 1984, the association acquired adjoining townhouses, five in total. If you graduated before 2000, those are the houses you remember.

I first entered the Alumni House when I was very young. My mother, Joyce Farr (G’71), worked as the assistant to Dr. Ruby when she was first out of college. She would take me, along with my siblings, to visit a friend who worked there as the director of financial affairs. When we were old enough, we got to “work” at the Alumni House on our days off from school and eventually during our summer breaks: opening Annual Fund contributions, stuffing envelopes for mass alumni mailings, and running errands up on campus.

Photos: Lisa Helfert

Lower-level lounge

When I began my undergraduate years in 1984, the Alumni House was certainly a home to me. I can remember running up and down the stairs between the houses multiple times a day as none of them were connected. I also remember the house showing signs of wear and tear due to the large staff and multiple, on-site meetings and receptions.

By 1998, Alumni House was in need of serious repair. The association temporarily moved to 2115 Wisconsin Avenue, about a mile away in the Glover Park neighborhood, while raising a total of $7.5 million for the renovation, including steel supports for the sagging lower levels of the 150-yearold structures.

Robert (SFS’48) and Bernice Wagner (Parents’78) made a leadership gift to complete the house’s renovation, and in October 2005, it opened under a new name: The Robert and Bernice Wagner Alumni House.

Through the years, the house has hosted both formal meetings and informal gatherings. Signature spaces include a woodpaneled library, a winter garden room with fun caricatures of members of the alumni community who supported the 2005 renovation, and a welcoming patio that has been the site of many reunion and homecoming celebrations.

But when it comes to an alumni headquarters, there is always more to do. Our membership is growing, and gathering spaces on campus are harder to come by. In the years following the pandemic there’s a desire for connection. We want alumni to connect here.

How it’s going

We looked around the Alumni House during the COVID years and realized that as great as the space was, it was due for an update. The new virtual world demanded a technology update to host hybrid meetings, and the increase in the house’s use for receptions and meetings inspired an interior design renovation to mirror the renovation at Reed Residence, an entertaining space for the university community and the home of the executive director just across the street.

In the summer of 2023, we closed the Alumni House doors for three months to make the house a home again. Edith Gregson Interiors (EGI), the design company that renovated Reed Residence in 2020, stepped in again to recreate the feeling of a modern home. With a two-floor renovation of both the public and office spaces, Wagner Alumni House is now ready for prime-time alumni engagement.

In addition to updated lighting, new navy and gray walls, and renewed floors that exude “the essence of Georgetown,” the house now features elegant meeting and reception spaces, redesigned board rooms, virtual meeting capabilities, and even a wine cellar with a tasting room.

In the September 1953 issue of Georgetown University Alumni Magazine, Executive Secretary Ruby encouraged alumni to “treat the renovated headquarters as their own and to visit often.” On behalf of the alumni association, I echo that sentiment and personally invite you to visit. Alumni may stop by Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to see the space and learn more about the mission and work of the association. Those interested in reserving space at Wagner Alumni House for an event should email alumnihouse@georgetown.edu •

Meeting room

Upper-level lounge

Reception area

Partnering with small farmers

When Eric Pohlman (SFS’04) started at Georgetown, he was excited to move to the nation’s capital and prepare for a career in public service. However, studying abroad at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar during the fall of his junior year inspired him to follow another path.

When he returned to the Hilltop for the spring semester, Pohlman changed his course of study from U.S. politics to Science, Technology, and International Affairs program, focusing on rural economies and agricultural technologies.

“I fell in love with Senegal, and it changed my worldview,” says Pohlman, who joined the Peace Corps after graduation, working as an agroforestry volunteer in a small farming village in Tourou, Cameroon. “I was lucky to have two Georgetown advisors at the time, Professor Charles Weiss and Professor Nathan Hultman, who really encouraged my new passion.”

Pohlman has since dedicated his career to supporting the 50 million families living and working on small farms in Sub-Saharan Africa. They produce 80 percent of the continent’s food. In 2006, he co-founded One Acre Fund, a social enterprise that delivers tools and training to make smallholder farmers more prosperous. The organization offers a full array of services farmers need to succeed, including supplies within walking distance of their farms, financing, training, and market access.

Since its inception, One Acre Fund has grown from serving 40 farm families to more than four million across nine countries. In 2023, One Acre Fund programs created $316 million dollars in impact for the farmers it serves.

The farmers who partner with the organization are seeing larger, more profitable harvests. For example, Pohlman recently met a Rwandan farmer who joined One Acre Fund’s program five years ago. At that time, this farmer was renting the fields where he raised maize and beans. By working with One Acre Fund, the farmer increased his yield and earnings, allowing him to invest in his own parcel of farmland.

“This farmer went from a farm renter to a farm owner,” says Pohlman, who became the organization’s CEO in March.

“We’re proud he is on a path to prosperity.

“We believe farmers have the most important jobs in our communities, growing the food we all need. Farmers are the solution to poverty in our rural economies. And farmers are the stewards of the land our children will inherit. When farmers succeed, whole communities prosper.” •

—Karen Doss Bowman

Eric Pohlman and team members visit one of One Acre Fund’s farming supply distribution points in Rwanda. One Acre Fund is known as “Tubura” in Rwanda, which means “to grow exponentially” in Kinyarwanda. In 2023, One Acre Fund’s service to farmers was boosted by $2.5 million in funding via The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, who awarded their 2023 Humanitarian Prize to the organization.

Photo: Courtesy of One Acre Fund

A leap to the arts

As a government and French major at Georgetown, Marsha Massih (C’84) was prepared for a job in international relations. Though she had always dreamed of being an artist—a passion inspired by her father, an amateur painter—her parents instilled the belief that she should enter a “secure” career.

“Growing up, it was always understood that I could pursue art on the side,” says Massih, who grew up in Iowa. “It was hard for my parents to imagine that anyone could make a living in the arts, so they taught me that a professional degree would be more reliable.”

After graduating from Georgetown, Massih embarked on a dependable, steady career path in government. She earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and worked for several years for the Financial Services Corporation (FSC), now the New York City Economic Development Corporation. For pleasure, she took night classes at The Art Students League of New York.

Though Massih found her FSC job intellectually stimulating, “it didn’t pull at my heartstrings,” she recalls. After taking art classes for about five years, Massih took a leap of faith: she quit her day job to focus on becoming a professional artist, supplementing her income by teaching English and art classes, and ushering at Carnegie Hall.

Massih’s tenacity and devotion to her craft paid off. Over the past 25 years, she has become an award-winning oil painter, exhibiting her work throughout the country and abroad. One of Massih’s paintings was purchased this year for the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building, and displayed in the apartment of actress Meryl Streep’s character. A founding member of the Gardiner Artist Open Studio Tours, she paints and teaches out of her private studio in Gardiner, New York.

Massih credits her perseverance and independence— traits she honed at Georgetown—for her success in the arts. She also spent her junior year at Georgetown studying abroad in Paris, a pivotal experience that exposed her to some of the world’s finest works of art.

“Coming to the East Coast from Iowa to attend Georgetown was quite a transition,” says Massih. “It’s not an easy road to make a living in the arts. It’s a real leap of faith. But my years at Georgetown helped me develop some grit and tenacity, and I’ve been able to apply those experiences and skills to my life as an artist. Those experiences made me who I am today.” •

—Karen Doss Bowman

Through Called to Be: The Campaign for Georgetown, our exceptional community is helping Georgetown answer its calling with action and impact:

First fund for Dharmic Life programming

Inspired by their daughter, Durga Bobba (MBA’96, Parent’23, ’25) and his wife Geetika, both members of the McDonough Parent Advisory Council, established Georgetown’s first endowed fund for Dharmic Life. Thanks to the Bobbas, Georgetown is ensuring that our student community thrives.

New building for Georgetown Law

Daniel Tsai (L’79) made a record $30 million gift to Georgetown Law for the construction of a new 200,000 square foot academic building. Thanks to Daniel Tsai, Georgetown is shaping the future of teaching, research, and learning.

Endowed chair for the Earth Commons Institute

The Earth Commons Institute (ECo) received its largest gift to date from an alumna and her husband. The $5 million gift funds an endowed chair. Thanks to these donors, Georgetown is advancing the health and security of people and the planet.

Inaugural chair for Center on Faith and Justice

Rev. Jim Wallis was named the inaugural Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice at the McCourt School of Public Policy, a chair funded by a gift from anonymous donors. Thanks to these donors, Georgetown is building a stronger, more ethical society.

A self-portrait of Marsha Massih (C’84)

Image: Courtesy of Marsha Massih

Once a Hoya field hockey player, Liz Naiman Moulton (C’00) is now blazing trails in the sports and entertainment industry. “There is power in female representation and inclusivity for historically marginalized groups,” she says.

ALUMNA SEEKS TO ‘LEAVE A LEGACY’ IN THE SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT FIELD

Passionate about providing equitable opportunities for women and people of color within the field of sports, Liz Naiman Moulton (C’00) recently assumed the role of Chief Talent and People Officer for Elevate, an award-winning global sports and entertainment consulting firm. Elevate serves the world’s premier sports, entertainment, and consumer brand clients and counts its investors as among the most innovative in the industry, including the ownership groups of the San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia 76ers, and Washington Commanders as well as Ticketmaster and Arctos.

Moulton, among the minority as a woman in an executive role in the industry, wants to create change and empower individuals and marginalized groups.

“At Elevate I would like to leave a legacy of growing an organization thoughtfully and strategically, and helping it evolve into an even greater, higher-performing company that serves as a model for the industry,” says Moulton. “In an industry that has historically been dominated by men, I would like to help create change that empowers, evolves, and elevates women and people of color into bigger leadership roles and positions.”

Moulton, who resides on the north shore of Massachusetts with her husband, Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA 6), and their two daughters, received her master’s degree in leadership at the Harvard Graduate

School of Education. In 2018 she was honored with the Sports Business Journal Game Changer award for her work diversifying leadership teams and bringing more women into C-suite roles. She also sits on the board of PeacePlayers International, a foundation that utilizes the power of sport to unite young people from divergent cultures.

She attributes much of her inspiration for her career path to her time playing varsity field hockey for the Hoyas and, now, to being a mother of two young daughters. “I loved playing sports at Georgetown,” shares Moulton, who started her career in secondary school teaching and coaching. “Being a Hoya helped me view the world of sports as an opportunity to bring communities of people together for the better, and also provided me with inspiration as I navigated my career path.

“A lot of the connectivity that I have to the industry came through Georgetown, and specifically the amazing alums who lead within it, including Joe Leccese (C’82), chairman emeritus of Proskauer, and Tim Brosnan (C’80) as well as President Jack DeGioia, who entrusted me early on with a project,” continues Moulton. “There’s an incredible network of Hoyas within sports and entertainment to research, network, and learn from. Nothing beats courage and risk-taking.” •

—Lauren M. Poteat

Photo: Jared Charney Photography

FIGHTING INJUSTICE THROUGH ACTIVISM

Rand Hoch’s (C’77) lifelong passion for political activism began in the 1960s, when he was a teenager growing up in Massachusetts. He was a key organizer in studentled efforts to lower the national voting age to 18.

“I realized at an early age that by working with other people and motivating them with a common cause, you can actually get things accomplished,” says Hoch, an attorney and retired judge who has lived in West Palm Beach, Florida, since the early 1980s.

A longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, Hoch founded the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council in 1988. The organization is dedicated to ending discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. Hoch’s work with the council led to the enactment of over 150 local laws protecting the LGBTQ+ community.

In December, Hoch received the President Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement Award for Volunteer Service from Points of Light.

“It was extremely exciting and rewarding for me to receive an award from the President for my volunteer work,” says Hoch, who also has volunteered for presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. “Volunteer service has always been important to me.”

Like many others in the LGBTQ+ community, Hoch has experienced discrimination in his career. While

a student at Stetson University School of Law, for example, Hoch clerked for a law firm that offered him a job upon graduation. However, the opportunity was rescinded when he disclosed to the firm that he is gay. The injustice fueled his activism.

After graduating from law school in 1985, Hoch established his legal practice focusing on labor, workers’ compensation, and election law. In 1992, he became Florida’s first openly LGBTQ+ judge when appointed by Gov. Lawton Chiles to serve as Judge of Compensation Claims. When his term ended in 1996, Hoch returned to his law and mediation practice in West Palm Beach.

Hoch credits his Georgetown education for equipping him with the skills to analyze and resolve issues, which he has applied in his law practice and volunteer work.

“The Jesuits’ educational style taught students to open up and think in front of other people,” Hoch says. “They weren’t just lecturing—they were questioning, and they were listening. I learned a new way of thinking and analyzing, and I applied that to the work I was doing outside of the classroom. Georgetown has helped me in so many ways prepare for the things that I do for my career and the things that I do for volunteer work.” •

—Karen Doss Bowman

Rand Hoch (C’77), founder of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, recalls learning “a new way of thinking and analyzing” at Georgetown College of Arts & Sciences.

Photo: Courtesy of Rand Hoch

Alumna author sets bestselling novel in DC, Georgetown

The Exorcist Steps are among the local landmarks featured in Yellowface, a 2023 thriller about race, publishing, and perception by Rebecca Kuang (SFS’18), who publishes under the name R.F. Kuang.

An international history major at Georgetown, Kuang found literary success during her undergraduate years. She wrote her first novel, The Poppy War, published in 2018, while taking a year off to work in China.

Returning to Georgetown, Kuang was named a 2018 Marshall Scholar and pursued graduate study in the United Kingdom. She went on to earn master’s degrees at Cambridge and Oxford, publishing two more novels in The Poppy War series before entering the Ph.D. program at Yale. The cities where she studied play a role in her stories, including her 2022 book Babel: or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution

“Most novels about the publishing world are set in New York City,” Kuang explains, “but alas, I’ve never lived in NYC and couldn’t write convincingly about it.”

In Yellowface, the white narrator steals an unfinished manuscript about Chinese laborers from her recently deceased, more successful friend, who is Asian, and publishes it as her own work. The novel has received widespread acclaim, including praise from Stephen King, who tweeted that the “great read” was “hard to put down, [and] harder to forget.” It’s also been named Amazon’s Best Book of the Year 2023 and a Reese’s Book Club Pick. Kuang is a #1 New York Times bestselling author.

Kuang’s favorite Georgetown memories include running along the Potomac—but not via the Exorcist Steps. “I avoided [them] as a student… and for good reason!” Kuang says. •

—Gabrielle Barone

Photo: John Packman

Book honors beloved founder of an unlikely literary salon

When Constantine Valhouli’s (C’95, G’00) father brought him to Boston’s Andover Shop for a school blazer, the owner Charlie Davidson made the experience more tolerable for the young reader by showing him which blazer could hold books.

“I felt seen,” Valhouli writes in Miles, Chet, Ralph, & Charlie: An oral history of The Andover Shop

Now Valhouli is making sure others see Davidson, who died in 2019, and learn the remarkable story of the tiny store, which Davidson turned into a gathering point for some of the towering figures of literature and jazz.

“The beauty of oral history is that you can put these contradictory points of view side by side and still honor the individual recollections.”

A Boston-born, book-loving man who adored jazz, Davidson ran a men’s fine clothier and tailor shop that served generations of Boston Brahmin as well as United States presidents, musicians Miles Davis and Chet Baker, and Invisible Man author Ralph Ellison. In the days before civil rights, Davidson intentionally dressed a number of Black public figures in patrician Bostonian style.

“Charlie used clothing to signal that people like Miles and Ralph truly belonged in the social and intellectual whirl of Boston,” says Valhouli.

Valhouli’s book employs dialogue-based oral history using multiple viewpoints—or, as Valhouli puts it, “just tell me some good stories and we’ll record it and see what happens.” The book features extensive interviews with three living legends of men’s style: G. Bruce Boyer, former Esquire and Town & Country editor; Richard Press, former CEO of J. Press; and Alan Flusser, who redefined the financier style when he styled the Wall Street film.

Double Hoya Constantine Valhouli (C’95, G’00) favors oral history as a form of authentic storytelling. His latest books focus on Boston history.

Capturing Davidson’s complex—by turns “generous and ornery”—personality proved difficult, Valhouli said. “It was like catching oblique glimpses of someone only through mirrors. You could never look directly at them.”

A double Hoya, Valhouli enjoyed his undergraduate experience so much he came back for a Communications, Culture & Technology (CCT) master’s degree.

Miles, Chet, Ralph, & Charlie’s research and interview process overlapped sources with Eliot House, Valhouli’s upcoming book about the Harvard dormitory and its legendary housemaster that nurtured a truly stunning number of famous figures. Valhouli co-wrote that book with The Paris Review editor Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., author of one of Valhouli’s favorite books, an oral history of the life of George Plimpton. “Nelson suggested telling Charlie Davidson’s story as an oral history,” he says.

Valhouli enjoys the way oral histories offer differing viewpoints while allowing the story to feel present.

“The beauty of oral history is that you can put these contradictory points of view side by side and still honor the individual recollections,” Valhouli says. “Ultimately, this is a form of narrative that privileges the individual storytellers rather than the authorial voice.” •

—Gabrielle Barone

Photo: Courtesy of Constantine Valhouli

Lives Well Lived honors a few alumni who have recently passed away. We share with you these portraits of alumni who have made an indelible impact living day to day as people for others. Memories collected by Patti North.

You can find a more complete list at alumni.georgetown.edu/in-memoriam.

“My dad spoke fondly of his time at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. He relished the opportunities to return to campus to guest lecture over the years, and was thrilled when his granddaughters wore Georgetown gear.”

—COLIN DOBBINS

James F. Dobbins

James F. Dobbins (SFS’63) passed away on July 3, 2023, at age 81 from Parkinson’s disease. An American diplomat and peace negotiator, he was widely regarded as a leading authority on nation-building.

After graduating from Georgetown, he served three years aboard an aircraft carrier in Vietnam. Following his discharge, Jim joined the Foreign Service and went to Paris, where he managed trade negotiations and the movement of nuclear weapons around Western Europe. Through the 1980s Jim held a number of diplomatic positions, including ambassador to the European Community, the forerunner of the European Union. He supervised the U.S. withdrawal from Somalia in 1993 and eventually oversaw all State Department peacekeeping-related issues, including the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. He later served as special envoy in Haiti and managed peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Jim was selected as envoy to the anti-Taliban opposition and then to the new government in Afghanistan, presiding over the reopening of the U.S. Embassy closed in 1989. Following his retirement in 2002, he became the director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation and wrote a series of practical guides for nation-building.

After a decade at RAND, Jim returned to government service in 2013 as the U.S. special representative for Iraq and Pakistan. “He is simply one of the finest foreign service officers of his generation, a man who has dedicated his life to public service and earned respect throughout the region and in Washington,” said John Kerry, then secretary of state, after Jim stepped down in 2014. Jim returned to RAND, where he continued to turn out analyses and reports. He was still working before his death, despite the advanced state of his disease, and co-authored a report on rebuilding Ukraine.

He married Toril Kleivdal, a Norwegian model, in 1968, and after 44 years of marriage, she passed away in 2012. Jim is survived by his sons, Christian and Colin; his brothers, Peter and Andrew; his sisters, Victoria Dobbins and Elizabeth Fuller; and two grandchildren. Colin Dobbins recalled, “My dad spoke fondly of his time at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. He relished the opportunities to return to campus to guest lecture over the years, and was thrilled when his granddaughters wore Georgetown gear.”

Elise Finch

Elise Finch (B’93), broadcast meteorologist on WCBS in New York City for 16 years, passed away on July 16, 2023, at the age of 51. She was born in Mount Vernon, New York, and graduated from Mount Vernon High School. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from Georgetown, and went on to earn a Master of Science degree in journalism from Syracuse University and complete the broadcast meteorology program at Mississippi State University.

Before joining WCBS, Elise worked as an anchor and reporter at various affiliates for CBS, Fox, and ABC. She reported on the Early Today Show, MSNBC, and NBC Weather Plus as a meteorologist. She started her broadcasting career coordinating special projects and live events for E! Entertainment Television.

Elise is survived by her daughter, Grace, and husband, Graig Henriques, a photojournalist at WCBS. At the memorial service celebrating her life, her sister Kiya shared a quote that they both kept on their phones: “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” A GoFundMe page has been set up by Elise’s niece, Amira Johnson, to benefit 6-year-old Grace Henriques.

John Campion Hirsh (entry by Provost Robert Groves)

Professor John Campion Hirsh, who taught in the Department of English for more than 53 years, died December 6 at age 81.

Born on June 26, 1942, John received his B.A. from Boston College in 1964 and Ph.D. from Lehigh University in 1970, when he began teaching at Georgetown, starting as an instructor and rising to the rank of professor in 1984.

A scholar and specialist in two literary fields, as well as education, he published prolifically on Medieval English Literature (especially Chaucer) and Nineteenth- and Early TwentiethCentury American Literature. He authored or co-authored 13 books in his areas of expertise and was at work on a fourteenth.

Since 1989, much of his professional life revolved around the literacy tutoring program at the Sursum Corda Apartments (later the Golden Rule Apartments), which he led until his death. This program had a profound impact on the lives of the lowincome children who received tutoring, as well as the Georgetown students who served as tutors under his guidance.

John is survived by his sister Margo Kelly; sister Professor Elizabeth Hirsh and her husband Charles Farrell; sister Jane Hirsh and her partner Michael Monahan; nephew Jonathan Kelly and his daughter Caterina; and niece Dr. Leah Kelly, her partner Bruce Reynolds, and their daughter Taylor Kelly.

Dr. Shazetta Thompson-Hill, ordained elder in the Methodist Church, on cultivating belonging

Students and most colleagues at Georgetown call me Dr. Z. I serve as director of Residential Ministry, which means that in addition to being a residential minister myself, I have the awesome privilege of overseeing a team of about 25 amazing RMs who represent Protestant, Catholic, Dharmic, Muslim, Jewish, and Orthodox Christian faith traditions. We live amongst the students and aim to provide the ministry of presence. We work closely with Residential Education, but have no disciplinary responsibilities or authority in the dorms.

Residential ministers live on campus at no cost. Our work with students, which is expected to be 10 hours a week, is unpaid. But when a student knocks, we answer. There are no punch clocks in this role. I’m blessed with a committed team who sees the benefit and not the burden of this work. We’re the first line of defense for the student safety net. When there is a crisis, we’re there.

Each residential minister covers about 500 students and has a modest budget of $1,000 per semester to provide food and materials for weekly open houses. When I started last year our budget was just $600 per semester. I am so grateful to our donors whose generosity has helped multiply the “loaves and fishes.”

Within our RM community, we commit to learn from each other. We work hard to live into the notion of belonging, meeting basic human needs like food and

“We’re the first line of defense for the student safety net. When there is a crisis, we’re there.”

shelter but also love, joy, finding common ground, and having hard conversations that stretch us to move beyond mere tolerance to appreciation. We do this by being intentional in our efforts to cultivate spaces of meaning, purpose, and belonging. Our job is to come alongside the students as they navigate this critical time in their lives.

The work we do can be heavy, but it is also rewarding and it is part of who I’m called to be in this particular season of my life. We RMs work hard and often have to remind ourselves to pause and engage in self-care, to refill our own cups… to give ourselves permission to do “the work our souls need.” One of the ways I do this is through documentary street photography.

When you see a residential minister, say a kind word and offer a smile. I promise it will be much appreciated and go a long way. •

—

Interview by Jane Varner Malhotra

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