The Corp celebrates 50 years of ingenuity, flexibility, and independence
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GREEN FOR THE BLUE & GRAY
Georgetown’s ambitious new interdisciplinary institute, Earth Commons, takes its inspiration from Laudato Si’, the powerful 2015 encyclical by Pope Francis on the pressing need to reshape our relationship with the environment.
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STUDENTS SERVING STUDENTS
Learn more about the growth and evolution of The Corp, the world’s largest entirely student-run 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
22
KING IN THE CLASSROOM
An annual teach-in brings Georgetown students, faculty, and staff together to discuss the timeless speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The result: fresh inspiration for classroom projects and Hilltop initiatives.
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GEORGETOWN WOMEN IN SPORTS
Celebrate the accomplishments of female student-athletes for the past 70 years.
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Togetherness—a concept that has taken on a new importance since the pandemic began. Whom have you spent extra time with? Whom do you miss? As we slowly return to a new normal, what events and experiences are you most looking forward to?
For me it has been a treat to get some extra time with my husband, my college-age sons, and busy daughter, but I do miss my colleagues: the brainstorming sessions, the water-cooler chats, the lectures and special events on the Hilltop. I know I’m not the only one. Those reunions and gatherings have an even greater significance now because they were impossible for so long. Many alumni interviewed for this magazine recalled with a smile that line from the Fight Song: “It’s been so long since last we met.” What an understatement!
In this issue of Georgetown Magazine, we’ve gathered stories of students, faculty, staff, and alumni working together for a common goal. Sometimes that work is done remotely, sometimes in person, but the togetherness is the constant and the foundation of success.
From students creating The Corp 50 years ago to faculty members studying the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. each year to the university’s new interdisciplinary Earth Commons Institute, Georgetown is best when its people come together to meet ongoing challenges and to meet the moment.
The editorial team and I hope that the features and all the stories in this issue provide you with some inspiration and even some laughs during a time when we are all feeling a bit weary. Two of the stories highlight anniversaries of ground-breaking moments in Georgetown’s history: nursing students pushing for women’s sports and, 20 years later, entrepreneurial-minded students meeting service requests made by their peers, from a record co-op to an ice cream parlor, a travel agency to a dating service. Firsthand recollections and archival photos bring these pivotal moments to life and further emphasize that working together, we can improve ourselves and our communities.
As we return to our normal publishing schedule of two issues per year—and web stories throughout the year—we want to hear from you. How have you connected with your Georgetown community since the pandemic started? What plans do you have for what’s next? Please send us an email at magazine@georgetown.edu with your feedback and story ideas.
—Camille Scarborough
Office of Advancement
R. Bartley Moore (SFS’87)
Vice President for Advancement
Amy Levin
Associate Vice President for Communications
Erin Greene
Assistant Vice President of Creative
Georgetown Magazine Staff
Camille Scarborough, Editorial Team Lead
Jane Varner Malhotra (G’21), Features Editor
Elisa Morsch (G’20), Creative Director
Editorial Team
Karen Doss Bowman, Kate Colwell (G’20), Rosemary Lane, Patti North, Sara Piccini, Bhriana Smith
Design Team
Wanda Felsenhardt, Shikha Savdas
Project Manager
Hilary Koss
University Photographer
Phil Humnicky
Georgetown Magazine
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Spring 2022, Volume 53, Number 1 Georgetown Magazine (ISSN 1074-8784)
Georgetown Magazine is distributed free of charge to alumni, parents, faculty, and staff. The diverse views in the magazine do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or official policies of the university.
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Georgetown’s Dharm ā laya, a meditation center for students of Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Hindu, and other Dharmic traditions, celebrated its unveiling last fall. The center offers a safe, comfortable space for varying Dharmic traditions to gather in groups, practice religious and spiritual traditions, and meditate. It is the first of its kind to be opened on a U.S. collegiate campus.
Sannidhi Shashikiran (NHS’22), president of the Hindu Student Association, uses the center during the weekly Sunday Aratis held by Dharmic Life. “As someone who has been involved with the Hindu Students Association and has heard about a theoretical Dharmic prayer space since my first year, I am beyond excited that the space has come to fruition during my time at Georgetown,” Shashikiran says.
“Along with other members in the Buddhist Student Association, I have used it as a meditation and social space,” says Yalin Wu (C’24). “We have weekly meditations on Thursdays led by V. Yishan and student-led meditations on Fridays. After meditation, we come together to discuss our experiences with Buddhism under themes like compassion, relationships, and inner peace.”
The Hindu Student Association, Buddhist Student Association, and Sikh Student Association collaborated on the planning and use of the Dharm ā laya. They wanted a communal space to practice ritual-based meditation while at Georgetown.
“I cannot wait to see how the space serves as a home to students at Georgetown in the coming years,” adds Shashikiran. •
—Bhriana Smith
The new Dharmālaya, housed in the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center, is a testament to Georgetown’s commitment to religious diversity.
School of Continuing Studies bolsters artificial intelligence offerings with experts from Google, Cambridge
When students asked the Georgetown School of Continuing Studies for more industry insight into how to leverage artificial intelligence, Professor Frederic Lemieux, faculty director of the master’s in applied intelligence, tapped into his network to update the Certificate in Artificial Intelligence Management.
“One of the recurring demands we heard from students was to establish better connections with AI industry leaders,” Lemieux says. “So we revised the curriculum to involve and engage more with those giants in AI that are innovating the field,” from business leaders to ethicists.
Through the revamped certificate program, professionals can learn directly from AI experts at Amazon, Google, Accenture, Hewlett Packard, and the University of Cambridge about how AI provides solutions for challenges related to processing massive amounts of data, finding patterns, and producing insights.
Now in its third year, the program attracts working professionals from government, business, and defense sectors. Over three days, students develop a business case for installing an AI solution to an institutional program, present their cases to a panel of industry experts for feedback, and make revisions before showing it to their organization.
One student working in pavement infrastructure proposed that their organization deploy surveillance drones to capture the texture of asphalt on roads and bridges. In this way, they could better plan which sections of the U.S. transportation infrastructure would need repairs first. Another student addressed the problem of their company losing profit due to a slow response when items were claimed missing. They proposed using an AI system to process claims, identify shipments, and track, retrieve, or reship items faster.
Professionals also took the class to improve their arguments for project proposals. An AI lead at the U.S. Postal Service took the course to mount a justification to modernize the agency’s AI to better read addresses on letters and packages. Two professionals in the Department of Defense took the class: one to convince leadership to use AI to improve intelligence sharing among the branches of the military, and another to gain support for leveraging AI into more complex and realistic cybersecurity training.
“It’s an important challenge to make the use of AI more respectful of humanity and more transparent.”
Students also survey the laws governing AI with experts from Wiley Law, ponder moral dilemmas in AI with an ethicist from the University of Cambridge, and explore how AI integrates with cloud technology with a technologist at Microsoft. Finally, the program emphasizes the areas in which AI is no substitute for human judgment. For example, an AI program cannot reduce the bias in organizational hiring if it is trained using biased data; accountability lies with HR professionals to train hiring managers to recognize and address implicit biases.
“It’s an important challenge to make the use of AI more respectful of humanity and more transparent,” Lemieux says. “That’s why we are tackling the most pressing issues related to ethical AI.” •
—Kate Colwell
The power of history
Q&A with Pulitzer Prize-winner Marcia Chatelain, on her career at Georgetown, her research, and what it means to be a Hoya
Marcia Chatelain, professor of History and African American Studies, received Georgetown’s 2022 Distinguished Leader Award. In 2021, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History for her book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
What drew you to teach at Georgetown University?
When I came to Georgetown, I was yearning for a place that could support my research. I wanted a place that not only had the intellectual contributions of faculty, but a place that truly believed in making those contributions, not just in the academic space but in the public space and in a broader context.
How did you become interested in history and in food as a reflection of racial inequality?
I’ve always had a general interest in storytelling and a deep interest in history. I enjoy studying the context in which people emerge and the ways that history can be an active tool for social change. In the early 2000s, I was introduced to many food justice projects at Brown University, while I was earning my doctorate. I started to learn from people who were grappling with this issue. I saw that many had policy solutions and other ideas, but they never seemed to use history as a way to understand the conditions in which people were forced to make decisions about what to eat.
What could be a viable solution to the problems of food selection within lower socioeconomic communities?
We have to understand that the way we eat is a direct result of the way we live our lives. Having an economic disadvantage puts so much pressure on every decision. Why don’t we start with the end of starvation wages? Why don’t we have an eight-hour workday, high-quality public housing, access to health care, good schools, free college, and free child care?
Typically, when I ask these questions, people will respond “Well, you didn’t talk about food,” but these are all of the things you really need to have in order for food to be a conscientious choice. You won’t have the ability to follow the diet your doctor wants you to follow, or to exercise as much as you’re supposed to, if
you’re living in this highly stressful environment where your economic viability is always in question. The more resources that everyone has access to, the more thoughtful decisions people can make about what they eat.
What would you like to see Georgetown do to further highlight racial injustices and promote inclusivity within the university?
Georgetown has made some bold and important steps around the issue of the university’s history and slaveholding. Considering that it has been seven years since that work was initiated, I think it’s time to evaluate some of those plans and to implement a university-wide course for all students to help them understand what it means to be a Georgetown student. What does it mean for us today to benefit from this incredible and heartbreaking human sacrifice? How does that inspire us to learn from and relate to each other in a more thoughtful way? •
—Bhriana Smith
POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE
Government, finance, and international politics were the top three majors for last year’s graduating class.
Prisons and Justice Initiative launches bachelor’s degree program
In Spring 2022, Georgetown’s Prisons and Justice Initiative launched its inaugural bachelor’s degree program for incarcerated students, a one-of-a-kind program at a four-year university. The degree-granting undergraduate program in liberal arts builds on the initiative’s success in bringing credit-bearing courses to incarcerated students at the D.C. Jail through the Prison Scholars Program.
“We’re responding to a crisis that has locked an unprecedented number of our fellow citizens behind bars when they are needed in our communities,” says Joshua Miller, who serves as assistant teaching professor in the Department of Philosophy, director of education for the Prisons and Justice Initiative, and managing director for the Georgetown Pivot Program.
Three hundred incarcerated individuals in the Maryland state prison system applied for the B.A. in liberal arts program, and 25 were selected for the first cohort through writing samples and interviews. All admitted students convene at Patuxent Institution in Jessup, Maryland, where they started the semester in COVID-19 quarantine, submitting reflections on the nature of authority and
the abuse of power via paper letters to Miller, who teaches Philosophy and Intellectual History.
“They are deeply engaged with the material, and they’re finding all these connections between texts,” says Miller, as he was teaching The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant from ancient Egypt and Euthyphro from ancient Greece. “They’re doing close line-by-line analysis and finding contradictions. Any professor in the country would say, ‘that’s a fantastic class.’”
Miller’s course and Life Writing are the first two offered in the cohort model, which will expand course choices as more students join the program. Students take two four-credit, intensive courses per semester, totaling at least 30 courses in about five years. The core curriculum closely mirrors those of main campus undergraduate programs in the College, but with more intensive writing and foreign language requirements. The initiative drew from theology, philosophy, history, and political theory to form new disciplines: students can major in cultural humanities, global intellectual history, or interdisciplinary social science.
When COVID-19 conditions improved, Miller began holding class in person.
“The experience has been electric,” he says. “The students throw themselves into the work in a fantastic way that mixes joy and duty. They have this servant-leadership quality, making sure others are heard and thinking about what would be good for the cohort.”
Miller sees the cohort creating a network and feels their palpable sense of responsibility to all incarcerated individuals in Maryland. He believes that future advocates are among his students.
“The people that we work with inside of prisons are talented, capable, promising human beings,” Miller says. “They are future leaders of the civil rights struggle to end mass incarceration, and they will be solving systemic problems of injustice for decades to come.” •
—Kate Colwell
MORNING FUEL
The most-sold specialty drink at Georgetown’s Grounded café last semester was an iced vanilla caramel latte called U.G. Love. Almost a quarter of them used oat milk.
Joshua Miller (left), director of education for the Prisons and Justice Initiative and managing director for the Georgetown Pivot Program, and Marc Howard (right), director of the Prisons and Justice Initiative, celebrate Georgetown Prison Scholar Jean Remarque, who received a certificate for completing the the Fall 2021 semester at the D.C. Jail.
Project ELEECT advances educational justice in D.C.
Three Georgetown faculty members have initiated a five-year project, supported by a $2.6 million grant from the Department of Education, to improve educational equity for multilingual K through 12 students in Washington, D.C. Grounded in antiracist work, the English Learners’ Educational Excellence Capitol Teacher Training Project (Project ELEECT) seeks to improve outcomes for teachers, students, and entire communities.
Led by Douglas Reed, Sabrina Wesley-Nero (SFS’95), and Crissa Stephens, Project ELEECT uses a two-pronged approach to teacher training. First, it identifies and recruits multilingual aspiring teachers and—when combined with Georgetown aid— covers at least 70% of the tuition costs to attend Georgetown’s Educational Transformation master’s program with a learning and teaching concentration. Second, it provides credentialed D.C. teachers of any subject matter with 80% of the cost of professional training to better meet the needs of students whose first language is not English. The project aims to train more than 130 teachers, partnering with District of Columbia Public Schools and more than 20 charter schools.
Project ELEECT improves the quality of teaching and also helps equip teachers to advocate for equitable, culturally inclusive school policies.
“Schools need support to best meet students’ linguistic and civil rights,” says Stephens, an assistant teaching professor in Georgetown’s Master’s in Educational Transformation. “Our teachers will be trained with an equity lens and deep knowledge of how to support language development in education, so when they see ways that their school could better reflect the identities
of all of its students, they’re able to use that lens as policy actors and have a voice in changes that may need to happen.”
D.C.’s population is linguistically diverse, with many students speaking Spanish, Amharic, and other languages at home. Teachers can better form relationships with students and help them thrive by respecting the linguistic assets of multilingual learners and positioning linguistic diversity as a benefit.
“It’s a tremendous asset within the K through 12 student body to have students who have such an enormous array of linguistic talents,” says Reed, professor of government and director of the Educational Transformation master’s program. “That makes it easier to bridge into English and also deepens their learning in other areas as well.”
Although the Educational Transformation master’s program marks the university’s first foray into U.S. teacher certification, Georgetown has been involved in educational justice for 25 years.
“For me, educational justice is central to the identity of Georgetown University,” says Wesley-Nero, director of the undergraduate program in Education, Inquiry, and Justice, co-creator of the graduate program in Educational Transformation, and faculty lead of the Learning and Teaching concentration. “When we see educational opportunities denied, we see the outcomes in health care, in our economy, in our political activity, and in our communities. To be a place that values cura personalis, we need education that nurtures the entire person. For multilingual students, that means their entire linguistic repertoire.” •
—Kate Colwell
Professors Sabrina Wesley-Nero (SFS’95), Crissa Stephens, and Douglas Reed, the principal investigators of Project ELEECT, stand before the “Language Access for All in D.C.” mural created by Criomatic Muralist Juan Pineda in partnership with D.C.’s Office of Latino Affairs.
Program explores disability as a ‘dimension of human diversity’
The academic field of disability studies took root at Georgetown in 2014 with a cluster of classes in theology, literature, and theater. From that small seed the program has grown and flourished, branching into a series of interdisciplinary collaborations across the university.
In addition to the minor in Disability Studies, offerings include a new M.A./Ph.D. certificate, the Artist/Scholar/Activist in residence, student fellowships, and a Disability Empowerment Endowed Fund.
Founded by Libbie Rifkin and directed by Jennifer Natalya Fink, the program both supports the estimated 14% of Georgetown students who identify as having a disability and seeks to change the way the community thinks about disabilities.
“A disability is a dimension of human diversity, not a deficit,” explains Fink. “Learning about disability is an important component of cura personalis, or care of the whole person. Everyone can benefit from thinking about their bodies and minds—their capacities, functions, and differences. That will make Georgetown an even more inclusive institution.”
Grounded in the humanities and fueled by student interest, the courses explore such issues as ecojustice, epidemiology, the refugee crisis, health inequities, moral leadership, and genomics through this unique lens.
“Our work can’t exist in a silo,” says Rifkin. “We want the program to be a breeding ground for a cultural transformation. That’s why the extracurricular component is essential. Here in Washington, D.C., there are so many opportunities to engage in research, practice, art making, and activism.”
people of color who are exploring, among other things, stuttering, the concept of blackness, and trans rights. It’s a contemporary disability arts microcosm. Students will be able to experience that familial energy along with us.”
Here on the Hilltop, the students have the opportunity to learn from and contribute to the work of renowned choreographer/ dancer/playwright/activist Jerron Herman as he prepares his latest work, VITRUVIAN, for its May 2022 premiere in New York City.
“I’d like to bring academics and practice together for the Georgetown students by giving them a window into the collaborative process of artistry,” explains Herman, an ambassador for the Cerebral Palsy Foundation and trustee for Dance/USA. “Access to artists is rare. The team for VITRUVIAN includes disabled
In addition to open rehearsals, Herman offers virtual office hours, class visits, and public workshops on the artistic process.
The residency was made possible by a gift from Matt (C’02, L’09) and Jenae (L’09) Ruesch. The couple also funded the creation of a three-week disabilities studies module for the Introduction to Ethics course offered through Georgetown’s philosophy department. Ethics Lab Director Maggie Little hopes the module will be incorporated more broadly across the university. •
—Camille Scarborough
Jerron Herman teaches movement from one of his solos in front of dance majors.
Photo courtesy of Marlboro College
Where credit connects with cura personalis
Would it surprise you to know that Georgetown hosts a banking and financial services institution that is federally recognized and guaranteed by the National Credit Union Administration? And that this institution, which services more than 750 loans offered at below market rates, just capped off its most successful year ever with a $5.5 million loan portfolio and $20 million in peak assets, and is presided over by an undergraduate government major with no prior finance or business experience?
Dylan Rothschild (C’22), chairman of the board and chief lending officer of the Georgetown University Alumni and Student Financial Credit Union (GUASFCU), maintains he is not unique. “We recruit from all corners of campus—not just business and finance. Our interns go on to careers in medicine, teaching, government,
technology, and the nonprofit sector, as well as the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps.” After graduation, he will be starting his own career at Google, working to help the company hone its user privacy policy and fight fraud and abuse.
GUASFCU is staffed and operated entirely by undergraduate students, who start out as tellers and advance into roles in marketing, bookkeeping, underwriting, and management, while learning the nuances of financial literacy. Rothschild credits the experience “1000 percent” for giving him a leg up in marketing himself for the career he wanted. “We get hands-on experience honing our communication and cooperation skills, managing peers, and understanding what makes a good leader.”
Grounded in Jesuit values like cura personalis, GUASFCU views loan applications in a holistic way, in hopes of providing access to people who might be turned down by other financial institutions. Most students have little or no credit experience, and what they have may not be the best. “We understand that a lot of people have had financial difficulties in the past. We work with them when another institution might just say ‘no,’” Rothschild says. “We know our community members are doing their best to move into a financially responsible situation, and we want to be that bridge for them.”
In addition to offering budgeting and credit workshops, GUASFCU promotes financial literacy through a unique product called the Credit Builder, issuing a secured loan to any student, alumnus/a, or family member, which is then paid off in their name in order to establish or boost their credit history. Members who have opened Credit Builders with no prior credit history have seen scores rise to the 700s. That can make a profound difference in their ability to rent an apartment or even get a job.
GUASFCU also makes auto and unsecured loans, provides free access to 55,000 ATMS, and even issues rewards program debit cards offering discounts at local businesses. “As a nonprofit business, our utmost goal is to make an impact on the financial lives of all members of the Georgetown community,” says Rothschild. “We are people with a lot of different passions, united by a shared passion for the Georgetown community. At the end of the day, that’s what drives our mission.” •
—Patti North
A PERFECT MATCH
The Corp once ran a campus date matching service each winter. Students filled out compatibility questionnaires, and members of The Corp matched people up before Valentine’s Day.
At tabling events on campus, GUASFCU members describe services and benefits to students.
Georgetown launches new Earth Commons Institute with big goals for the planet and the Hilltop
BY JANE VARNER MALHOTRA | DESIGN BY SHIKHA SAVDAS
In February, Georgetown announced the launch of an ambitious new interdisciplinary institute for study, research, and action around care for our common home.
The Earth Commons, the university’s institute for environment and sustainability, will have innovative graduate degree programs and undergraduate offerings spanning the disciplines and schools. The institute will also elevate impact-focused research at Georgetown, and forge new partnerships with government and nongovernment institutions and corporations around sustainability and environmental education, research, and service.
The institute’s launch capitalizes on increasing faculty expertise across the university, as well as strong student interest in the field, and coincides with a call from Pope Francis for Catholic institutions to make care for the environment an urgent moral priority.
ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME: INSPIRED BY LAUDATO SI’
“We need only take a frank look at the facts to see that our common home is falling into serious disrepair.” (Laudato Si’, no. 53)
Earth Commons takes its inspiration from Laudato Si’, the powerful 2015 encyclical by Pope Francis on the pressing need to reshape our relationship with the environment. The document outlines the problem of global environmental degradation and the impact on all creation, but particularly on the poor.
“With the launch of our new Earth Commons Institute, Georgetown is in an even stronger position to realize the impact that we can make to better understand and respond to urgent challenges facing our global environment,” says Georgetown President John J. DeGioia. “Providing a more sustainable planet for future generations is both a creative and inspiring ambition that requires the collaborative commitment of disciplines of every kind, focused on the larger goal of advancing the common good.”
In April 2021, Georgetown announced the newest “Spirit of Georgetown” value: care for our common home. Others include contemplation in action, people for others, and faith that does justice. In a way, care for our common home weaves together each of these values with the big picture reminder that we are all connected as part of our precious and fragile planet.
The Earth Commons helps make visible both Georgetown and the Catholic Church’s renewed commitment to tending to our common home. Mark Bosco, S.J., vice president of Mission & Ministry, sees it as an extension of the Jesuit way of finding God in all things.
“We can find, revealed in nature, some aspect of this transcendent God who loves us into life and calls us into human agency, calls us to work for the common good and be people for others, to nurture the environment,” says Bosco. “It is absolutely part of the Ignatian ethos. It’s no accident that as a Jesuit, Pope Francis sees this through the eyes of his Ignatian heritage.”
BUILDING ON CURRENT STRENGTH
“Everything is connected. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.”
Care for the environment is a long-standing commitment at Georgetown. The university launched the Center for the Environment in 1996, and the Georgetown Environment Initiative (GEI) in 2012. There has continued to be a strong institutional commitment through the Office of Sustainability and ambitious university goals and achievements around renewable energy, energy efficiency, and carbon neutrality. The university has also made important progress in green building, creating a more circular economy, and investing in sustainability through the endowment.
The new Earth Commons Institute builds on and expands these strengths. Led by renowned bird ecologist Peter Marra, Laudato Si’ Professor of Biology and the Environment, the institute is partnering with a wide range of environment and sustainability faculty across the nine schools, along with the Office of Sustainability. Marra estimates that there are currently over 70 faculty members actively involved in research and education around the topic. Now is the time to harness these resources and create a critical mass to have an impact, he says.
“The Earth Commons is intentionally ambitious because we have this massive environmental issue—the most important thing we are dealing with as human beings on the planet,” says Marra. “If we don’t deal with our environmental problems, nothing else matters.”
The institute is expansive in its vision because environmental problems won’t be solved by any one knowledge domain, says Provost Robert Groves. “The Earth Commons is energizing all of these pieces into a whole to increase the impact at Georgetown,” he notes. Law and policy are critical partners, he adds, as well as the sciences, naturally.
(Laudato Si’, no. 91)
In fact, the Earth Commons’ first degree program is a joint master’s degree between the Earth Commons (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) and the McDonough School of Business. “Combining the environment and business isn’t something most people think of as natural dance partners but they are in so many ways,” Marra says. The Master of Science in Environment and Sustainability Management is a one-year program and includes courses from climate change economics to impact investing, all with the Georgetown values focus on ethics and justice.
Interdisciplinarity is key to the Earth Commons vision: “to catalyze solutions to the world’s most urgent environmental and sustainability challenges as an internationally recognized institute for innovative education, groundbreaking research, and transformative action—on Georgetown’s campus, in our community, and around the globe.” In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis underscores the importance of a necessary deep cultural shift in how people treat the planet. Changing culture around the environment requires partnership not only with the sciences, policy, law, business, and health, but the arts and humanities, as well.
The Earth Commons works with the Humanities Initiative and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, among others, to create the Voices of the Environment. The annual celebration of various aspects of the environment and sustainability grew out of the GEI’s Earth Week events in April. This year’s focus is on intergenerational justice, with a special emphasis on indigenous perspectives.
Georgetown students in the group Hoya Hive maintain eight honeybee hives on campus, caring for 200,000 busy campus residents.
“We can no longer speak of sustainable development apart from intergenerational solidarity.” (Laudato Si’, no. 159)
Today’s generation of Georgetown students shoulders a heavy concern for the environment. It can be hard to envision a healthy future for oneself, let alone one’s children and grandchildren, considering the trajectory humanity is currently on.
“A lot of our generation feels like this is the existential threat of our time,” says senior Shelby Gresch (SFS’22) of Seattle, Washington. Gresch is an active member of Georgetown Renewable Energy and Environmental Network (GREEN) and a student in the School of Foreign Service’s Science, Technology and International Affairs program, minoring in Spanish with a major concentration in energy and the environment.
She has dedicated much of her time at Georgetown to the environment, winning a Laudato Si’ Grant from the Georgetown Environment Initiative (GEI) to design a first-year orientation course on how to live sustainably on campus. As part of her current internship with the GEI, she is helping plan a student-run farm on campus. Happy to see environmental study expand into the much larger, interconnected, interdisciplinary Earth Commons, she says she’s glad that incoming students will have the opportunity to take advantage of the new offerings.
“The institute will focus on different ‘commons’ or specialty areas like food and water, biodiversity, and sustainability,” she says. “Embedding it across all of Georgetown’s campuses is critical because thinking about the environment should be at the top of our consciousness.”
Students like Gresch and senior Rachel Kirichu (SFS’22) of Detroit, Michigan, have dedicated countless hours through student groups like GREEN, internships with GEI and the Office of Sustainability, and informal volunteering to help grow the environmental movement on the Hilltop and beyond. But the good news is they weren’t starting from scratch, says Kirichu.
“I’m thankful that I came into Georgetown with an already established Office of Sustainability and student groups that I can be involved with in environment and sustainability. I didn’t have to establish these—previous students, faculty, and
staff laid the groundwork that I can build up from. So I’m very thankful for that—it gave me the space to cultivate my passion. I hope to provide the same for new students to come in and do the same, to create even more effective change in our community and beyond.”
Gresch notes that the sense of urgency drives their generation to prioritize the environment, but there’s a sadness around it too, because other interests might get overshadowed by it.
“There feels like a loss of choice or opportunity. If I didn’t feel like we all needed to be working on this I wonder if I’d be doing something else. I love the environment and I love what I do but there’s an urgency to this that demands our attention and makes it hard to choose to do something else like be a dancer or something. There are a lot of things we can do to make the world a better place, but we have to do this immediately.”
Photo: Tim Romano courtesy of Smithsonian
“The Earth Commons approach is immersive and experiential,” says Professor Peter Marra, “enriching the lives of students through hands-on learning that emphasizes the interconnectedness of life and actions needed to be better stewards of our common home.”
EMPHASIS ON TEACHING, JUSTICE
“It
is essential to show special care for indigenous communities and their cultural traditions…. For them, land is not a commodity but rather a gift from God and from their ancestors who rest there, a sacred space with which they need to interact if they are to maintain their identity and values.” (Laudato Si’, no. 146)
As a Jesuit university with a strong tradition of teaching excellence, academics are the focal point of the Earth Commons Institute.
“We are leading with education,” Marra says. In addition to the joint master’s degree, the Institute hopes to develop a novel undergraduate bachelor of science degree for Fall 2023. “It will be experiential, interdisciplinary problem solving, and international, we hope, with a global component each of the four years students are here.”
Hiring more faculty is also part of the plan, including climate scientists, geographers, and experts in the social sciences looking at how humans make decisions in interaction with the environment.
“We are in such a challenging time right now with respect to where humans sit in our place with the environment. It provides me hope when I think about one of the most effective ways for us to save humanity, to save biodiversity, is to cultivate minds. To put out the next group of environmental champions,” says Marra.
Georgetown’s emphasis on caring for those on the margins makes the university a natural place for a program that emphasizes environmental justice.
“When looking at what populations are most harmed by environmental damage, it’s disproportionately the poor and disadvantaged,” notes Provost Groves. “Laudato Si’ provided an ethical framework to this, and we have urgent moral obligations to act on this as a university.”
Kirichu wants to help expand inclusivity in the environmental movement. It’s another aspect of the effort that resonates deeply with younger activists, who have grown up with climate change as part of daily conversation.
“We Z-ers need to make big changes because when we hit those benchmark years—2030, 2050—our adulthood will be greatly affected by what we decide today,” Kirichu says, noting the draw her generation feels toward this issue. “Not only because our lives are being directly affected but also to make sure the movement is more inclusive, considering Native voices, Black and brown voices, considering how climate change will disproportionately affect us. Our generation wants to make concrete change that is also inclusive and effective not just for one community or group. We want a movement that elevates different voices.”
The Earth Commons’ first degree offering is a one-year joint master’s program with McDonough School of Business, including courses from climate change economics to impact investing, with a focus on ethics and justice.
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE
“Put simply, it is a matter of redefining our notion of progress.” (Laudato Si’, no. 194)
As a key partner in the work of the Earth Commons Institute, Georgetown’s Office of Sustainability is expanding its reach. Led by Vice President of Sustainability Meghan Chapple, who arrived at Georgetown in 2021, the department is taking the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and the Laudato Si’ goals and combining them into a workable but bold approach for a university. Georgetown currently sources two-thirds of its electricity from a renewable energy power purchase agreement, and aspires to become carbon neutral by 2030 and achieve 100% renewable power by 2035, in addition to its ongoing commitment to divest from fossil fuels, which began in 2020.
Chapple, who has master’s degrees in environmental studies and in business from the University of Michigan, is helping design the future sustainability priorities for Georgetown.
“What will the world—and the campus—look like in 30 years and how do we shape our culture and mindset and buildings to prepare for that?” she asks.
The answer to this question will take the form of “a sustainability strategy for the university that everyone has input into—faculty, students, staff, alumni, experts beyond the university who know how high we should be reaching,” Chapple says. “We’re looking at how we address our climate impact, how we become more a part of a circular, regenerative economy, and how we do this in a way that is inclusive of diverse voices. Our decisions are made with the mindset of equity and justice, so that we know how our decisions are impacting communities on campus and beyond.”
The Office of Sustainability plans to continue student internships directly connected to the Earth Commons curriculum, which offer research opportunities for faculty and students. The plans for joint programming and educational efforts are still evolving. Regardless of how exactly the programs will work together, their goals are naturally intertwined, says Chapple, who adds that Georgetown is uniquely positioned to make the Earth Commons a success.
“The power of the Georgetown name— the positive emotion it stirs in people— is remarkable,” she notes. “When you combine that with the academic accomplishments that the faculty have in their research and teaching and the students have in the education they receive, along
with the reach the university has in the nation’s capital and the Catholic Church, there’s so much influence this university can have around sustainability and the environment.”
She encourages alumni to connect through common interests in the environment, noting that the Earth Commons may offer opportunities for workshops, speaker series, and other ways for Georgetown graduates to be involved, supporting students and making an impact beyond the Hilltop.
Chapple also reminds the students she works with and all people to take heart in what we can do, and not get burdened with despair.
“A lot of times we feel like it’s doom and gloom: climate change is real, everyone is sensing it, feeling it, experiencing it,” she says, noting that it’s particularly acute for people living in coastal areas and regions plagued by wildfires, intense heat, and extreme weather. “That can be overwhelming, especially as we go through this pandemic which many argue is a result of habitat destruction. It’s depressing and so daunting and can feel completely intractable.”
But, she notes, “what’s really important is to remember that every action counts, every word counts, and every thought counts.”
Or as Pope Francis puts it, “Let us sing as we go. May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope.” (Laudato Si’, no. 244) •
Opened in 2016, Arrupe Hall is a LEED-certified sustainable residence hall featuring a green roof, water collection, indoor bike storage, and a demonstration kitchen used for nutrition education.
2020s
In 1973, several members of the newly established Students of Georgetown Inc.—since 1977 more commonly known as The Corp—borrowed a pickup truck, drove to a D.C. library offering free bookshelves, and transported the shelves back to campus.
“A group of us, including Louise Roseman (C’76) and Deborah Lamb (NHS’76), brought them up to a room in New South, then went to a grocery store and bought a bunch of Oreo cookies and other snacks,” says Jack Leslie (SFS’76), then head of the organization. “We got a little metal lockbox, wrote ‘Vital Vittles’ on a piece of cardboard, and stuck it on the door.”
Vital Vittles, still The Corp’s flagship storefront, has fueled generations of Georgetown students, whether it’s coffee for an 8 a.m. class or energy bars for a late-night study session. “I marvel at what something like Vital Vittles has become,” says Leslie. “It was very hard to imagine that our operation, with wooden shelves and a metal lockbox, would turn into the enterprise it is today.”
From low-cost groceries to typing services to shuttle rides to summer storage, The Corp’s enterprises—entirely student-run—have all originated from its founding mission: “Students Serving Students.”
Born out of the student activism of the late 1960s and early ’70s, The Corp brought a pragmatic approach to student advocacy. “There was a belief that to empower students, we needed to help deliver low-cost services that the university and community didn’t provide, like transportation,” Leslie says.
“The demand for these services was so great, our biggest challenge was gearing up for growth,” Leslie says. “It sold itself.”
‘A Tumultuous Time’
Students of Georgetown Inc., was officially incorporated as a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., on March 6, 1972, the result of a student government effort led by president Roger Cochetti (SFS’72) and vice president Nancy Kent (C’72).
Although unique to Georgetown, The Corp was founded in the context of national events, especially controversy over the Vietnam War. “I was elected student body president in 1971 at the peak of antiwar demonstrations. It was a particularly tumultuous time,” Cochetti says.
“There was a parallel consumer rights movement emerging, and an offshoot of that was the concept that students are consumers and they have rights,” Cochetti continues. Underlying all of this, he explains, was the 1971 passage
of a Constitutional amendment lowering the voting age to 18. “It finalized the idea that an 18-year-old is an adult, not a child.”
The precipitating event leading to the creation of Students of Georgetown Inc., was the university administration’s refusal to allow Georgetown students to house antiwar student demonstrators coming to D.C. from around the country. After consulting an attorney, Cochetti learned that Georgetown students had no ability to contravene the administration’s order.
“I realized students needed some legal structure of their own to pursue what they wanted to pursue,” Cochetti says. He and fellow student government members initially considered a cooperative model like the famous Harvard Coop, but the structure was quite complicated and the student body rejected the idea.
“Nancy Kent and I concluded that the most viable, most pragmatic way to pursue this idea was a nonprofit corporation,” he says. “By setting it up as a nonprofit, we presumed its orientation would be towards doing good things for students or the world, or both.”
From the start, Cochetti knew the organization needed seed capital. When Kent had to step down as vice president mid-year, he recruited Mike Connolly (B’74) as a replacement. They raised $10,000 by endorsing a professional tennis tournament held on campus and collaborating with an outside vendor on a student directory.
“I especially want to recognize Nancy Kent, who was there for the takeoff, and Mike Connolly who was there for the landing,” Cochetti says.
Gearing Up for Growth
At the end of his term, Cochetti turned over the reins to newly elected student government president Jack Leslie. (Under the organizational structure at the time, the student government president also served as CEO of The Corp.) “My platform was all about The Corp. In fact, I remember getting kidded about it, because my campaign poster was an organizational chart,” Leslie says.
“I envisioned it as a real corporation that would run real businesses,” he says. Leslie and other members of the student government leadership team—including Bud Colligan (SFS’76), Sal Massaro (B’76) and Dave Ralston (SFS’76)—started a number of enterprises. The team created two major legacies: Vital Vittles and the shuttle service GUTS, which was later taken over by the university (see sidebar).
Within 10 years, The Corp was garnering $1 million in revenue, and selling 60,000 cans of Coke a month. With coffee eventually replacing soda as the beverage of choice, The Corp opened a series of coffee shops, beginning with Uncommon Grounds in 1994.
Today The Corp consists of eight storefronts and services, generating revenues of more than $5 million annually. It employs over 330 Georgetown undergraduates and funds scholarships as well
as community engagement projects. “I had no idea where it would go,” Cochetti says. “When they invited me to the 40th anniversary, I was flabbergasted to see for the first time how large and diverse The Corp had become.”
Well Grounded
The Corp’s impact on Georgetown as a whole has been multifaceted, from the early days of providing inexpensive groceries and sundries in an area of Washington that lacked low-cost alternatives, to becoming an important source of on-campus employment.
“The university really feels proud of the work that The Corp does and sees them as a unique feature of student life at Georgetown,” says Erika Cohen-Derr, interim associate vice president of student affairs, who serves as a liaison to the organization.
“They certainly live out the motto they’ve established, students serving students,” Cohen-Derr says. “They’re a company that pays their employees but also puts money back into the community that they’re fostering.
“When we’re developing a new space on campus, they’re very proactive—they develop bold and creative ideas and they base those ideas in their own experience and the experience of their classmates,” Cohen-Derr continues. “In the case of the Healey Family Student Center, they were an essential partner.”
The Healey Family Student Center, which opened in 2014, is home to the newest Corp storefront, The Hilltoss, a salad eatery that was established in response to student requests for healthier food options. Students also overwhelmingly supported an additional coffee service, so The Corp opened Grounded, a new café within The Hilltoss space.
“The Corp has been one of the drivers of the campus economy,” says Bennie Smith (C’86), who started as a cashier/stocker at the former Saxa Sundries and went on to become Corp VP of Operations (COO). “The Corp has a long history of supporting students and their interests in all manner of ways, including engaging with the Georgetown University Alumni and Student Federal Credit Union. When you multiply that out over time, it results in our being a big driver of the campus economy.”
‘An Incredible Process’
Smith notes that another key aspect of The Corp’s service mission is philanthropic support. “From its earliest days, it wasn’t just about providing low-cost goods and services,” says Smith. “The student service mission also included providing small scholarships for its employees, eventually opening that up to nonemployees.”
Just as The Corp’s commercial operations have evolved to meet changing times, the organization’s philanthropic endeavors continue to evolve as well. “At the beginning of each semester, we create a general outline of how we intend to award scholarships,” says Taylor Harvey (NHS’22), current chair of The Corp Philanthropy Committee. “But while it’s important to plan, we need to recognize that student needs are constantly changing.
“One year ago, everyone thought that with vaccines, COVID-19 would be over by now,” she says. “But lo and behold, things are still pretty pandemic-centric.” In response, The Corp has focused its philanthropic efforts on food insecurity, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic.
“Reading through the applications, and the specific answers that people had, motivated me even more,” Harvey says. “I’ve been able to see so clearly the direct impact that scholarships have. It’s been an incredible process to be part of.”
“The philanthropy and community engagement we do is something just as important as our operations,” adds Matt Davis (SFS’22),
current Corp CEO. “We take a really active approach on connecting with student groups and even organizations outside of Georgetown.
“This year we’ve been involved with Dreaming Out Loud, which is a community-supported agricultural company in D.C.,” Davis says. “I’ve realized that even though we’re just a few students, we can really make an impact. I’m super grateful for the opportunity.”
20-Year-Olds at the Helm
In addition to its university-wide impact, The Corp offers numerous benefits to its own employees, both tangible and intangible. To document students’ experiences over time, Bennie Smith has interviewed more than 500 Corp alumni—part of a larger effort to memorialize Corp history that also includes building a comprehensive archive at Lauinger Library.
“One common thread is people’s enthusiasm for their Corp experience, and their desire that The Corp continues forward so that students now and in the future can have similar positive experiences, both personal and professional,” says Smith.
Because The Corp is completely independent, students at the ages of 19, 20, and 21 run all the operations of a multimillion dollar corporation—supply chain, accounting and payroll, human resources, IT, new product development, and more. They take these management skills with them when they graduate.
“There’s no doubt I got my first job out of college because of The Corp,” says Jillian Duran (C’07). “I was interviewing at a management consulting firm. I could talk about how we standardized the coffee branding when I was there, walking through the process of doing that when I was 20 years old. It really made me stand out as a job applicant.”
Like many other Corp alumni, Duran has also formed lifelong friendships with her fellow employees. “From my first training, I immediately felt like I found my people,” she says. “To this day, the person who managed my shift at Vittles is one of my very best friends.” Her husband, Gregory Zlotnick (C’08, L’11), is also a ‘Corpie.’
As Corp COO in her junior and senior year, Duran was responsible for overseeing the directors of all the storefront services, as well as internal operations.
“One huge role is negotiating leases with the university,” she says. “The regulatory aspect was the other big thing—insurance, certificates of occupancy, making sure we had certified food handlers. When you go in and buy a cup of coffee, you think about who you’re paying, but you don’t think about all the behind-thescenes parts.”
Duran notes that the responsibility can be intimidating at first. “But there’s an element of ‘Everyone before me has done it, and done it well. I can do it too,’” she says. “There’s such a legacy
of reaching out for help.” Long after she left the Hilltop, she remained part of an email chain of former COOs offering support to their new counterparts.
“ It’s extraordinary to have a company of that size turn over its entire upper management every year, and its entire employee base every four years,” Duran says. “The Corp has flourished, and it’s done so by having a bunch of 20-year-olds at the helm.”
Confronting Challenges
Like any organization, no matter how successful, The Corp has not been immune from problems and growing pains.
Shoplifting was an early issue, essentially forcing the closure of its earliest storefront, Diesmusbiedeplaz, a discount record store. A few enterprises failed to take off, such as a short-lived ice cream parlor called the Cone Zone in the 1980s. A 1981 article in The Washington Post [written by Kara Swisher (SFS’84), now a noted tech journalist] reported that an employee had stolen $14,000 from Vital Vittles the previous year. The student was expelled, and a portion of the money was recovered.
Over the years, some students have perceived The Corp as exclusive, particularly because its size is limited by the number of employees it can hire. “As wages grew and The Corp’s prominence on campus rose, job applications began to increase, but the opportunity to hire more people didn’t,” says Bennie Smith. “One of the limiting factors was the commitment to serve people through low prices, so there wasn’t a lot of margin.”
Management teams have taken steps to be more intentional in hiring and promotion, especially in recent years.
This past fall, for the first time, The Corp expanded its voluntary demographic survey to include all applicants, rather than just interviewees.
“The goal of the survey was to serve as a foundation for future growth,” says Taotao Li (SFS’22), Corp vice president of people operations. “We can’t really create effective initiatives unless we know the quantifiable data.”
In February, The Corp released a public report of its findings. Among the positive results: 29.2 percent of the hiring class identified as LGBTQIA+, greater than the university average.
Other results pointed to a need for improvement. “A direct actionable that came about during our spring hiring cycle was mobilizing to increase outreach efforts with our affinity groups for Black and Latinx students, Shea and Incorporado,” Li says. She anticipates that the survey will become a standard practice each semester.
The resilience that The Corp has gained over the years enabled the organization to navigate its most difficult period in its 50year history: the shutdown of its store operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, The Corp pivoted to providing storage services and online ordering. It provided more than $5,000 in emergency
1970s
1980s
scholarship funds and initiated new partnerships with GU Mutual Aid and the Hoya Hub to address food insecurity.
“In this last year, instead of pulling away from the university, we’ve really leaned in,” says Matt Davis. “They’ve been really helpful to us. And then on the flipside, we’ve had to show them that we are responsible enough to reopen, making sure all our employees are following the necessary public health guidance. So in that way I think we’ve built a lot of shared trust with the university.”
A Dynamic Future
All signs indicate that The Corp—having successfully navigated its first five decades—will continue to be a vital presence on campus 50 years in the future.
For Davis, the key to future success is staying true to The Corp’s mission of students serving students while continuing to change with the times. “I have no idea what The Corp will look like in 50 years, but I hope it doesn’t look like it does right now,” he says.
“We pride ourselves on being really dynamic and adapting to student needs. The mission and values of the company will stay the same, but I hope those will guide future leadership into evolving our services, evolving our engagement, evolving our philanthropy, to best serve Georgetown.” •
1980s
GUTS and Glory
Everyone on Georgetown’s campus is familiar with the GUTS shuttle buses that make their way up Wisconsin Avenue and around D.C. But it’s likely very few people are aware that GUTS began as an enterprise of The Corp.
2020s
As with all Corp enterprises, GUTS was created to meet a need. “We had a terrible housing crisis at the time—very few upperclassmen could live on campus,” says Jack Leslie (SFS’76), head of the organization in the 1972-73 academic year. “A lot of kids were living in Arlington because it was cheaper.” With no Metro service into Georgetown, transportation was a big problem for many students.
“We got a $106,000 loan from the university and—as strange as it sounds—purchased four Mercedes-Benz vans. Because they had much longer warranties and they were built so well, the operating costs in fact were less,” says Leslie.
The Corp leadership viewed the service as a stopgap measure, and believed that the university would take over, as it did the following year. “It was called the Georgetown University Transportation Society, so the metropolitan bus authority couldn’t claim we were competing with them,” says Leslie.
GUTS created a personal legacy as well—Dave Ralston (SFS’76), who ran the transportation service as a student, later became head of Reagan National Airport.
Photo:
Few Americans would associate Martin Luther King Jr. with baseball. But Georgetown history professor Chandra Manning kicks off her course, Baseball and American Society, by having the class read and analyze one of the civil rights icon’s inspiring speeches.
“My approach is to use the text to introduce themes of the class,” says Manning, explaining that her course uses baseball as a framework to examine U.S. social, cultural, and political history during and after the Industrial Revolution. “Dr. King’s speeches include issues such as equity and justice, violence and nonviolence. These themes also show up in the history of baseball when we talk about segregation in the major leagues and eventually breaking the color barrier.”
Manning, who joined Georgetown’s faculty in August 2005, was inspired to incorporate King speeches in all her spring semester classes—including Civil War and Emancipation, Biography and History, and What Is U.S. Citizenship?—after participating in the campus-wide Teach the Speech teach-in. The annual event brings together faculty,
staff, and students from the Main, Medical, Law, School of Continuing Studies, and Qatar campus communities to reflect on a selected King speech and share ideas about ways to integrate the text into the classroom.
In Manning’s classes, King’s words inspire deep thinking about racial justice and also serve as a valuable tool for teaching students the technique of close reading, which involves identifying key phrases and word choices, examining structure, and looking for metaphors and imagery in historical documents. Manning uses the opportunity to talk about Georgetown’s Teach the Speech event and the value of a shared experience across disciplines.
“My hope is that they come to understand that university education is a collective endeavor,” Manning says. “This effort can help students see their education as more than the sum of its parts—in other words, to see a whole to their education that transcends more than just four or five classes each semester or adding up the credits to graduate. It’s about entering into a life of inquiry.”
FACING RACISM AND INEQUALITY
The most recent Teach the Speech event, held virtually on Jan. 11, 2022, spotlighted King’s signature “I Have a Dream” speech, which he delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963. Keynote speakers were Veronica Williams (C’23), an American studies major with a minor in psychology; Virginia State Sen. Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond), who has served for 15 years in the Virginia General Assembly; and Neonu Jewell (L’04), a Critical Race Theory Fellow at the African American Policy Forum. The event is sponsored by Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service (CSJ), the Doyle Engaging Difference Program, and the Division of Student Affairs.
Teach the Speech is part of Georgetown President John J. DeGioia’s MLK Initiative: Let Freedom Ring! program that honors the enduring legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through a series of events on campus and in the greater Washington, D.C., community. These activities—which include a service of remembrance and panel discussions on racial justice topics and the March on Washington—reflect the university’s Jesuit values of contemplation in action, care of the whole person, and being people for others.
The university also partners each year with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to host the Let Freedom Ring Celebration, featuring special guest artists and the Let Freedom Ring Ensemble led by awardwinning composer/lyricist, producer, musical director, and cultural curator Nolan Williams Jr. During the event, President DeGioia presents Georgetown’s John Thompson Jr. Legacy of a Dream Award to an emerging leader from Washington, D.C.
The inaugural Teach the Speech event, held in 2013, focused on King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” The first teach-in took place in 2017. Since its inception, Teach the Speech has brought dynamic speakers to campus, including Ibram X. Kendi, award-winning author of How to Be an Antiracist ; environmental and climate justice activist Catherine Coleman Flowers; and the Rev. Brad Braxton, ordained Baptist minister and educator, and founder of the Open Church of Maryland.
For Georgetown faculty, staff, and students who are unfamiliar with King’s speeches, Teach the Speech offers a chance for close examination of his ideals and vision. Though King died more than 50 years ago, his messages are still relevant today, says Patricia Grant, senior associate dean of the undergraduate program at the McDonough School of Business.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for the whole campus community to look inward and think about the enduring lessons that Dr. King’s messages are giving us for today,” says Grant, who served as co-chair for a prior Let Freedom Ring! initiative. “It’s paramount to make sure that his words and his legacy are an integrated feature of everything that we do at the university. That his messages reverberate and find residence within our hearts, spurring us to actions that promote an equitable society.”
As Georgetown continues the long-term process of understanding and responding to its role in the injustice of slavery—including the sale of 272 enslaved people in 1838 by the Maryland Province of Jesuits—the university-wide focus on King’s message is the right step toward healing, says Marilyn McMorrow, RSCJ, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Government.
“As a society, we have been trying to face structural racism as America’s original sin, and one in which Georgetown was complicit,” McMorrow says. “We’re enmeshed in structural racism, but it seems that in some parts of American society, we’re finally trying to take the blinders off. What Georgetown is doing with Teach the Speech is an important part of that conversation.”
TEACHING THE SPEECH
Just as Manning incorporates the teach-in’s selected King speech into her history classroom, faculty across a range of disciplines have found creative ways to teach King’s messages.
For Barbara Leary, omitting King’s speeches in her graduate-level speechwriting course “would be tantamount to instructional malpractice,” she says. By helping students appreciate the “soaring rhetoric and passionate delivery and effective repetition of the phrase, ‘I have a dream,’” Leary touches on the most important aspect of speechwriting: connecting with the audience. One of her assignments requires students to write a speech that would be delivered to an imaginary, hostile audience—one with “wildly diverging views” from the speaker.
“This
effort can help students see their education as more than the sum of its parts—in other words, to see a whole to their education that transcends more than just four or five classes each semester or adding up the credits to graduate. It’s about entering into a life of inquiry.”
CHANDRA MANNING
“This project illustrates an important technique in speech writing: getting the audience to really imagine what that better world might look like if the solution the speaker is proposing were to come to pass,” says Leary, an adjunct faculty member in the Public Relations & Corporate Communications master’s degree program. “Dr. King was a master of the art and craft of speaking, with an electric delivery, and that way he had of just seizing an audience and bringing them in with the message of hope and inspiration. It’s rare to see that.”
J.R. Osborn, associate professor in the Communication, Culture, and Technology master’s program, uses insights gleaned from Teach the Speech both to meet course objectives and to facilitate a greater understanding among students of King’s impact in the United States and beyond. In his Graphic Design Studies class, for example, graduate students’ key aim is to develop skills for the critical analysis of graphic design, including the ability to visually convey a client’s desired messages. Osborn has students design and produce an item incorporating the entire speech. Additionally, they must include reflections on King’s legacy and an essay describing the rationale for their design choices.
The results have been impressive, Osborn says. Students have created a wide range of products, from brochures, posters, and booklets to T-shirts, album covers, English language teaching guides, and a museum shop gift bag.
“Students have to read the speech and decide the best way to present it, and the range of creative responses has just blown me away,” says Osborn. “I frame the assignment as a lesson in professional design practice, but I also talk to the students about Georgetown’s commitment to encouraging dialogue on campus about Dr. King’s legacy and social justice.”
Osborn says the challenge to incorporate King’s ideas across curricula also has stretched his skills as a teacher and scholar.
“The value of the teach-in is that it helps those of us who are teaching this material to get a broader sense of the context of the speech and its importance,” Osborn says. “In academia there’s often hesitation to teach about things that are outside of our expertise. The teach-in challenges us as professors to say, ‘I might not be a scholar of Martin Luther King Jr., but these discussions are important.’ I’m willing to put my time into learning about Dr. King and sharing that with my students. And the teach-in gives faculty a chance to discuss ideas for assignments and approaches to teaching this material. That gives everyone a sense of how the speech is being used across campus and how King can be relevant across disciplines.”
Participants in the Teach the Speech teach-in sessions often gain new insights and perspectives on King’s message. Laura Bishop describes Teach the Speech as “uplifting and refreshing” for faculty.
“The experience really reminds us of both the purpose of teaching and the purpose of working together on important issues like justice,” says Bishop, associate teaching professor and academic program director for the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.
Bishop still feels inspired thinking back on the 2019 event, which focused on a speech entitled “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” which King delivered at the Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968, just days before he was assassinated. The content was particularly relevant for her course Climate Change and Global Justice, and she assigned the speech as reading material for her students.
“It’s paramount to make sure that his words and his legacy are an integrated feature of everything that we do at the university. That his messages reverberate and find residence within our hearts, spurring us to actions that promote an equitable society.”
PATRICIA GRANT
“I was struck by how the words resonated with the focus of our course and classroom discussions on climate change and global justice,” Bishop says. “Namely, that the impact of our actions and choices would affect other human beings and non-humans around the world both now and into the future, in very deep ways. Dr. King spoke about how the ‘destiny of the United States is tied up with the destiny of India and every other nation’ of the world. That all of life is interrelated, ‘in an inescapable network of mutuality.’ He was speaking about themes and concerns that are some of the most fundamental in human life.”
Jamie Kralovec, associate director for mission integration at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies, says Teach the Speech offers the campus community “an incredible opportunity to animate our mission of community-engaged learning in service of equity, justice, and the common good.” As a Christian, King drew from his religious heritage to promote the work of social justice and equity. Kralovec says reflecting on King’s words offers new inspiration and hope for today’s challenges.
“Dr. King’s speech is actually a challenging and demanding call, issued then but still reverberating today, to work for justice in a multiracial democracy by directly addressing the roots and effects of structural racism,” Kralovec wrote in a recent blog on Mission in Motion. “As the United States continues to experience social, cultural, and political polarization around persisting racial injustices in all facets of society, MLK’s iconic 1963 speech presents a valuable opportunity to renew the discussion in 2022 and re-commit to tangible actions at Georgetown.”
RECLAIMING KING’S DREAM
Teach the Speech typically focuses on a lesser-known King speech to broaden participants’ knowledge of his work. But the planning committee was inspired this year to select “I Have a Dream” after reading Kendi’s Oct. 14, 2021, article in The Atlantic decrying the “second assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.” The piece condemns exploitation of the iconic speech by politicians and pundits who take King’s words out of context to justify denouncing critical race theory and efforts to facilitate a national dialogue on racism.
“It may seem cliché or obvious to pick this particular text, but we wanted to name that concerted effort to weaponize Dr. King’s words and misrepresent his vision,” says Andria Wisler, CSJ executive director. “We also wanted to lift
up critical race theory because it’s being pummeled in the national conversation. In choosing ‘I Have a Dream,’ we invited the Georgetown community to re-engage with King from that place where most of us first learned of him.”
In her reflections during the recent Teach the Speech event, Williams shared that although she was exposed to King’s speeches during her formative years—primarily at church— she doesn’t remember in-depth lessons about Black history in K-12 classes. She challenged her Zoom audience to educate themselves about the Black experience in America and to take bold steps to fight racism.
“Black people and Black history are too often seen as onedimensional, so much so that it’s treated like we don’t have history or culture,” says Williams, producer of the podcast “Tea With V,” a member of the University’s inaugural cohort of Campus Ministry’s Black Interfaith Fellowship, and communications and outreach lead for ESCAPE, Georgetown’s first-year retreat program. “Prominent Black figures, even those as massive as Dr. King, are cast as background characters in the story of America … Dr. King encouraged us all to dare to dream and to fight against the forces and systems that want us to stay complacent.”
Reflecting on the core message of King’s 1963 address, Williams says, “With radical hope for the future and a never-ending fire and desire for freedom and justice in his heart, King paints a picture of an America where the American dream is for everybody.”
Despite changes to American society since the 1960s, there remain a number of challenges to realizing a truly equitable country. According to Williams, “Progress has been made in the fight for racial justice, but as we reflect nearly 60 years after Dr. King stated ‘the Negro still is not free,’ in 2022 Black people are still not free from racism and discrimination in America.”
Continued activism in the vein of Dr. King is where Williams finds hope for the future of racial justice.
“Dr. King having a dream and seeing it progress to becoming a reality inspires me to continue to dream, as there is power in dreaming,” says Williams. “To dream is to make sense of the past, take ownership of the future, and inspire action in the present.” •
Henry D. Brill contributed to this article.
Celebrating 70 years of women’s sports at Georgetown
Special events honor the contributions of female athletes
BY KATE COLWELL AND CAMILLE SCARBOROUGH I DESIGN BY WANDA FELSENHARDT
In 1952, Georgetown students at the Nursing School established the Women’s Athletic Association, allowing women to participate in intramural sports. The association expanded in 1963 to allow for university-wide participation, a decade before Title IX was passed.
For 70 years, Hoya women have broken countless barriers and represented the university worldwide. The Georgetown University Department of Intercollegiate Athletics is celebrating its female athletes with special stories and events throughout 2022.
“From field hockey in 1952 through the addition of women’s squash in the current school year, our 14 women’s teams engage female studentathletes in the rigor and challenge of intercollegiate sports,” says Lee Reed, the Francis X. Rienzo director of intercollegiate athletics. •
2004
1955: Kathleen D. “Skippy” White (NHS’57) becomes the first Georgetown woman to win a varsity letter; 1969: Women’s sailing poses at Intercollegiate Nationals; 1970: Women’s field hockey represents the Blue and Gray; 1987: Women’s track and field sets a high bar; 1995: Women’s lacrosse celebrates a key victory; 2004: Rebekkah Brunson (C’04) is the first women’s basketball player in Georgetown history to grab more than 1,000 rebounds; 2010: Golfer Eunae Jo (B’12) plays in all 10 tournaments each year at Georgetown; 2020: Georgetown wins the BIG EAST Women’s Soccer Championship in overtime. Photos: Georgetown Athletics
2010
Reed Residence Re-envisioned
By Julia Farr (C’88, Parent’19, ’21, ’24), Executive Director, Georgetown
“All great houses have many tales to tell,” wrote John Courtin (C’70, L’78), executive director of the Georgetown University Alumni Association (GUAA) from 1984 to 1990, in his memorandum entitled “Genesis of the Great House at 3601 O Street.” Courtin believed that a great university such as Georgetown should have a great house, “a place where a warm, personal ‘welcome home’ could be extended to Georgetown’s alumni, special friends, and benefactors.”
Courtin’s inspiration to create a special place for alumni came to fruition in a series of conversations with President Timothy S. Healy, S.J., in the early 1980s, when the two envisioned a Federal Period (1780-1830) house similar to three other major Federal houses in Georgetown, all constructed within a decade of Georgetown’s founding in 1789. In 1984, the Alumni Board of Governors unanimously approved the proposal to build this great house on university property at the corner of 36th and O streets across from the Wagner Alumni House. The Alumni Association, as leaseholders, engaged architect William Cochran to design a 20th century building inspired by the Federal houses standing within strolling distance of Healy Gates.
University Alumni Association
The house was built in 1986 and named Reed Residence to honor GUAA Executive Director James Patrick Reed (C’53), who ran the association from 1969 to 1984. It became a gracious convening place through the years. As home to the GUAA executive director, Reed Residence has served as home to four families who have lived there as stewards of the house, opening its doors for reunion celebrations, Board of Governors meetings, lectures, recitals, award ceremonies, alumni author book signings, holiday parties, and small dinners. In its heyday, an average of 150 events were hosted at Reed each year.
A turning point
As the years progressed, however, so did the wear and tear to Reed Residence. The Alumni Association saw the interruption of COVID-19 as an opportune time to take care of structural work and complete an interior redesign. The Board of Governors approved the renovation investment in Fall 2020, and Reed underwent a year-long renewal. The association engaged D.C. interior design firm Edith Gregson Interiors to transform the first-floor reception space from the 1980s palette in bold yellow,
Donors Tom (B’88) and Karen Gletner (Parents’21, ’22) meet in the Gletner Family Salon with GUMC adjunct professor and fine artist Robin Davisson (center), who created the abstract art piece on the far wall
President Frank Ciatto (B’88, L’94, Parent’21) with Kathie (C’88, MA’89) and Tim (B’89) Fording (Parents’25) in the Fording Family Library
“There’s a great fishbowl-like experience living in Reed,” notes Julia Farr, executive director of the GUAA and parent to three Hoyas. “With the house perched on a corner, we watch and experience campus life happening all around us. From hearing the music tumbling out townhouse windows on Saturday afternoons, to late-night conversations overhead from the streets, we feel like we’re at the center of the student universe.”
greens, and berry tones to the anchor shades of alma mater blues and grays. Secondary tones include splashes of “Springtime on the Hilltop” with greens, reds, citrus yellow, and deeper gold to bring Reed back to vibrant life. The new Reed is a mix of modern lines in furniture, fabric, and lighting with Federal detail in enhanced molding.
Still standing guard in the dining room from the university’s art collection is the portrait of John Vinton Dahlgren Jr. [c.1917], son of Dahlgren Chapel benefactors Elizabeth Drexel Dahlgren and John Vinton Dahlgren, in his World War I uniform, tethering the space to Georgetown’s history. To add a modern touch, the association commissioned works of art by Robin Davisson, a molecular physiologist and adjunct professor, entitled Providence I, II, and III. The new artwork brings dynamic movement, energy, and color to the dining room and the main salon.
Making a residence a home
Two dedicated alumni families enthusiastically supported the Alumni Association’s investment in Reed Residence’s upgrades. Board of Governors member Thomas J. Gletner Jr. (B’88, Parent’21, ’22) and his wife, Karen Gletner (Parent’21, ’22), generously contributed the stunning new formal reception space in the house. Kathie
McCarthy Fording (C’88, MA’89, Parent’25), a student worker at the Alumni House during her undergraduate years, with her husband Tim Fording (C’89, Parent’25), supported the redesign of the stately library that was originally dedicated in honor of past GUAA presidents.
As you walk up O Street towards Healy Gates, you are first welcomed to campus at the corner of 36th and O streets, with Wagner Alumni House on the southwest corner and Reed Residence on the northwest. The Alumni House is the business center of the GUAA, a meeting space for the university, and a reception space for alumni gatherings. Reed, however, is a home.
Creating a gracious space to gather members of the Georgetown family is at the heart of the Alumni Association’s mission: to generate goodwill and support for the university and to foster a lifelong connection among alumni, our alma mater, and the global Georgetown community. As we step back into life in person after two long years in the virtual world, 3601 O Street will be a place where the spirit of the GUAA comes to life. Extending a warm “Welcome Home,” Reed Residence will most certainly have tales to tell for generations to come. •
GUAA
GUAA Executive Director Julia Farr with Edith Gregson, interior designer of the new spaces
Serving up support for veterans
In 2019, Jordan Foley (L’21) was studying at Georgetown Law when he received devastating news: a friend and fellow Navy veteran had died by suicide while struggling with debts as he launched his startup business.
“After looking into it, I asked, why weren’t there resources available for him? Did he not have support? How can we reduce those startup fail rates?” he says. “I knew there were many nonprofits helping veterans start businesses, but I wanted to help them longterm. I wanted to honor my friend.”
He began considering his longtime passion for food as a pathway to business ownership.
Foley has long been aware of food’s power to connect generations and cultures. He remembers standing on a footstool when he was young, watching his grandmother as she cooked. He remembers sharing a homemade deep dish pizza with a Navy member he didn’t know well in a submarine thousands of feet below the sea. He remembers a friend’s grandmother in China handing him a plate of dumplings and squeezing his shoulder when he felt alone during an overseas stint.
“I decided to hyper-focus on the culinary industry so that we can take a veteran from zero knowledge to business ownership,” he says. “I want them to be able to start a business with a safety net.”
Foley started with a food truck as his training ground. He designed a curriculum to help veterans and their spouses gain business and
culinary training by running their own food trucks. He pitched the idea at the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Challenge and came in first for Georgetown Law.
Using resources from the law school, he launched ChowCorp in 2020. It provides cooking therapy, cookware donations, culinary education, and business advice for aspiring food truck or restaurant owners. Three months after he launched, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Foley switched his model to partnering with veteran-owned businesses to fund cooking free meals on his food trucks for those who needed them. Eventually, he pivoted back to his original model.
ChowCorp has since graduated four participants from its Food Truck Training Program in Annapolis, Maryland. Foley’s next cohort will involve 15 participants working in food trucks in California, New Jersey, and Maryland. He hopes to continue expanding his program and partnerships.
Foley runs ChowCorp at night after his day job as a Navy attorney. He doesn’t consider himself an entrepreneur. Instead, he says, helping veterans like his friend is what drives him.
“It gets back to being a person for others,” he says. “I can’t put monetary value on it. I do this for my friend. I do this for veterans. If nobody is fighting for these people trying to start their own businesses, who better than us to fight for their success.” •
—Rosemary Lane
Photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images
Photos: Georgetown Athletics
Jordan Foley (L’21) founded ChowCorp, a nonprofit that helps veterans become food truck or restaurant owners, in 2020.
Photo: Charlie Magovern
CEO alumnus helps create experiential learning opportunity
In February 2021, Alan Gould (SFS’83, Parent’25), founder and CEO of the AI marketing startup MutualMarkets, pitched a “crazy idea” to Georgetown. He wanted to give students experience in real-time problem solving at a startup. Six weeks later—in partnership with professors Jeff Reid and Randy Bass—Gould’s vision came to life in the form of the Entrepreneurship Journey Fellowship, an experiential learning course.
“I was trying to bridge the gap between an internship and academic knowledge, and I was in a unique position to advance this idea,” Gould says. “I asked my team if they would agree to be observed in real time, and then share the challenges that the company was facing.”
“Academic programs in diplomacy or international relations could benefit from creativity, innovation, and risk-taking.”
Bass, vice president for strategic education initiatives and leader of the Red House incubator for curricular transformation, described the course as a “microcosm of porous teaching between the classroom and real-world activity.” He says the course provided real-time learning, the ability to engage with alumni expertise, an opportunity to be on the inside of the process, and flexibility of modality between the classroom and Zoom. “It was also an experiment that was very much of the pandemic adaptation moment.”
Gould credits the professors he had as a student in the School of Foreign Service for pushing him to think differently. He has served on the School of Foreign Service Board of Advisors for a number of years, and after judging the “Bark Tank” alumni pitch competition at John Carroll Weekend in Seattle in 2018, he began considering ways to incorporate entrepreneurship into the wider Georgetown curriculum.
“Entrepreneurship, at its core, is a way of thinking,” Gould says. “Academic programs in diplomacy or international relations could benefit from creativity, innovation, and risk-taking.”
Both undergraduate and graduate students have taken the course from across Georgetown McDonough, the SFS, the College, and the School of Continuing Studies, and several from the first cohort have stayed involved as teaching assistants for the second and third cohorts.
Students engage asynchronously with MutualMarkets— a fully remote company that holds meetings in virtual reality—via weekly video recordings and may soon interview employees via VR headsets. They have researched how to raise the startup’s next round of
venture capital and how to approach a different market segment, and presented possible answers to both challenges.
Additionally, the students have explored ethical dilemmas, such as how to balance empathy and responsibility when letting go of an employee.
“Georgetown’s version of the entrepreneurial mindset includes values-based entrepreneurship,” says Reid, founding director of the Georgetown University Entrepreneurship Initiative. “The Entrepreneurship Journey Fellowship allows students to walk slowly and thoughtfully through some of these decisions, because that’s where values meet the world.”
Reid credits alumni donors for helping make curricular innovation possible. “We could not have created this course, and delivered this experience for our students, without the philanthropic support that’s been provided by alumni through the Red House,” he says, crediting philanthropy with facilitating programs that are “new and creative and outside the norm.” •
—Kate Colwell
ALUMNA OPENS BOOKSTORE IN THE TOWN OF COLUMBUS, MISSISSIPPI
Originally thinking she would change the world through politics, Emily Liner (C’08), a small-town bookstore owner, “soon realized that I could change the world in my own backyard.” Opened in the challenging environment of the COVID-19 pandemic, Friendly City Books, the only independent bookstore in Columbus, Mississippi, is now thriving.
Liner’s motivation to open a bookstore derived from her strong drive to help transform lives coupled with her passion for reading. A first-generation college student, Liner reflected on her admiration for books. “Growing up, I was an only child, so books were essentially my first friends. I also didn’t have a lot of opportunities to travel, but I could always travel in a book.”
She also was motivated by the desire to make a difference in the world. “In our family we have a saying: don’t complain unless you want to be part of the solution. And I thought ‘well, I can’t complain about not having a bookstore if that’s something I can actually do.’”
After receiving her MBA from the University of North Carolina and working in the political sector, Liner decided to make a difference in her hometown. “I figured that I could have just as much of an impact by going back to the place where I was from and working with people on a
more direct and grassroots level. I just knew a bookstore would be the perfect place to provoke conversations with people about the world that we want to live in.” Following through on her goal, Liner opened Friendly City Books in November 2020.
Georgetown has had a profound impact on Liner’s personal and professional development. Out of countless memories, there were a few names that transformed her way of thinking. “I’ll never forget this one class. It was called Map of the Modern World, taught by Charles Pirtle. He had the class perfectly designed.”
She also recalled her time with J. Leon Hooper, S.J., and Dan Porterfield (C’83), a few of the many members of the Georgetown family who mentored her.
Friendly City Books shines a special light on Mississippi writers. She dedicates a large portion of the store to works by Mississippians like Tennessee Williams, who was born in Columbus. The bookstore also features authors with ties to Georgetown, like John Thompson Jr.’s autobiography I Came as a Shadow, Professor Marcia Chatelain’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America , and Trillion Dollar Triage by fellow alumnus Nick Timiraos (C’06). •
—Bhriana Smith
Photo courtesy of Emily Liner
MAKING MOVIES WITH A MISSION
For as long as he can remember, Ilan Arboleda (SFS’97) was drawn in what seemed like two disparate directions: politics and the arts. After a childhood spent singing, dancing, playing instruments, acting in plays, and watching multiple movies each weekend, as well as serving as a page for Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (L’61, H’89, Parent’21), he ultimately found a way to satisfy both of his interests: filmmaking.
When Arboleda started at Georgetown, he was leaning toward politics. But by the time he was a sophomore, he began to see with disappointment the waning of the bipartisanship he had witnessed as a page and decided to focus on filmmaking.
“I’ve been committed to social action from a young age and had an idea that movies might ultimately prove to be a more effective tool in driving change than politics,” he says. There was only one problem: Georgetown did not have a film school. With the help of his academic advisors, he was able to construct a custom field of study that is close to the Culture and Politics track Georgetown now offers.
For the first two years after graduating, he worked in the studio system under the legendary director Garry Marshall, working on hits such as Runaway Bride. He later ran an international film finance and consultancy called Cinapse, drawing on lessons he credits to his Georgetown education in international business diplomacy. But Arboleda soon struck out on his own, founding his current company, CreativeChaos VMG, in 2010. Since then he has produced a growing body of films that challenge conventional norms, embrace provocative ideas, and
tackle systemic inequities. Thank You for Your Service focuses on the mental health crisis in the military. This Changes Everything and Casting By both expose gender inequality in Hollywood hiring practices. Bleed Out is about a medical error that Arboleda says forced an overhaul in medical transparency policy at the largest health care provider in the Midwest. By his count, CreativeChaos films have helped drive changes in federal law, and the laws of five different states.
But Arboleda remains close to his Georgetown roots and was recently in Washington, D.C., to film a TV series inspired by a class at the School of Foreign Service. The series tells a complex tale about an Italian banker who served both the Vatican and the Mafia before his murder.
Arboleda is also excited about another project he is developing in partnership with the Georgetown University Institute for Women, Peace and Security. It will focus on the role of women in mitigating conflict and bringing peace to countries such as Northern Ireland. Arboleda plans to “mine the untold stories of heroines who are making an incredible difference in countries on three continents.” He hopes to begin filming in 2023.
If he had to do it over again, would he have chosen film school over Georgetown? “No,” he says firmly. “More than anything I wanted to understand the world and how to drive change— that’s why I went to Georgetown. What I learned there informs not only my filmmaking, but the films I want to make.” •
—Patti North
The totality of motherhood
Using humor and honesty as she addresses some of the tougher realities of parenting, like substance abuse and postpartum depression, as well as day-to-day struggles, author Ericka Sóuter (C’97) seeks to show the totality of motherhood in her new book How to Have a Kid and a Life: A Survival Guide.
Composed of in-depth research from professionals, testimonies from mothers around the world, and her own experiences, the book explores the myriad issues women face, from maintaining an identity to handling mom-shaming to dealing with changes in platonic, professional, and romantic relationships.
Though the book generally focuses on what to expect after you have a child, she notes that one chapter addresses women who opt out of motherhood. “Women who don’t have children, or who wait to have children, are often criticized for that choice, and I don’t think it’s fair. It’s okay if you don’t choose motherhood,” Sóuter says.
A journalist with over 20 years of experience, Sóuter attributes her passion for writing to her time at Georgetown. “When I enrolled at Georgetown, I intended to major in American government and maybe one day become a senator,” she recalls. On her journey to make an impact in government, she encountered English professors like Pamela Fox and Elizabeth Velez, who encouraged her to explore her gift for writing.
“Professor Velez suggested I apply for an internship with People magazine. I had no interest in journalism at the time, but I wanted a job that would pay, so I decided to go for it. They offered me the job, and it was the most amazing experience I’d ever had.”
“I wrote the book I really wanted—and the book new moms will need,” says author Ericka Sóuter (C’97).
Sóuter traces her professional success—from working with media outlets like People, Essence, and Cosmopolitan , to being a contributing editor at Mom.com, to frequently appearing on Good Morning America—to her Hoya roots. “I love Georgetown. It directed me towards this amazing career. It’s where I met my husband. It’s where I made some amazing friendships, especially my Nevils Hall roommates from senior year. It is just a really special place.”
Sóuter currently resides in New York City with her husband, Caleb Pitters (SFS’97), and sons Lex and Aidan. “One of the most important things I hope people take away from the book is that the people you surround yourself with matter.” •
—Bhriana Smith
Photo courtesy of Ericka Sóuter
Futurist alumnus forecasts a nomadic human future
Singapore-based futurist Parag Khanna (SFS’99, G’05) uses the lens of geopolitics to research the forces driving mass migration.
In his new book, MOVE: The Forces Uprooting Us, he forecasts that despite two years of COVID-19 lockdown, the future of human civilization will be defined by mobility.
What drives voluntary and involuntary mobility around the world, Khanna explains, are forces like political instability, imbalances in labor markets, and climate change. His research analyzes trends in civil wars and conflicts, failing economies, technological disruption from AI and automation, and climate change displacement, and then synthesizes takeaways.
“These deep, fundamental drivers of human mobility long predate COVID and will long outlast COVID,” Khanna says. “The mass migrations of the past are not only going to continue, but also expand significantly, because all of these drivers are in overdrive.”
In MOVE , Khanna predicts that more Asian populations will move into Central Asia and Russia, and that both Asian and African populations will move into Europe. In the Americas, he sees Canada taking leadership in accepting migrants, to the benefit of its cultural and economic future. And within the United States, he sees many people becoming climate migrants.
“There’s a large number of climate refugees in America, from forest fires, floods, and rising sea levels,” Khanna says. “America itself needs to think about climate adaptation and migration as a domestic issue, as well as a global one.”
MOVE also explores youth subcultures like #VanLife—in which young people voluntarily forego hyperconsumerism to live sustainably while staying digitally connected—as an important signal of change.
“One of the things I learned in this process of research is to take young people really seriously,” Khanna says. “We need to rebuild our economic, social, and political institutions to cater to their values, because they’re actually the right values to have for the kind of world we’re in today.”
Khanna says his interdisciplinary work was deeply influenced by his undergraduate experiences in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, especially in Professor Charles Pirtle’s Map of the Modern World class.
“Georgetown is one of just a handful of institutions that continue the tradition of teaching classical geopolitical theory. Very few people have the breadth of knowledge across disciplines to actually teach it. And Charles Pirtle was that man for an entire generation.”
Khanna remains close with Pirtle and connects his book to Pirtle’s class in particular.
“One of the most important things that he taught us is the complex layering of physical, political, and human geography,” Khanna says. “That’s really fundamentally what MOVE is about.” •
—Kate Colwell
Photo courtesy of Parag Khanna
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.
You can find a more complete In Memoriam list at alumni.georgetown.edu/in-memoriam.
“His passion, drive, and intellect have helped save countless lives amongst our most vulnerable children.”
George Peckham (M’66)
Internationally renowned physician and humanitarian George Joseph Peckham, M.D., passed away peacefully at the age of 82 at his home in Villanova, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the Malvern Preparatory School in 1957 and Manhattan College in 1961, where he discovered his interest in science and studied pre-medicine. He received his master’s degree in biochemistry from George Washington University in 1962.
He went on to graduate from Georgetown University School of Medicine and completed his pediatric internship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 1967, his pediatric residency in 1968, and his fellowship in pediatric cardiology in 1970. He became a Diplomate of the National Board of Medicine in 1966 and the American Board of Pediatrics in 1971.
George was a father of neonatology, a subspecialty of pediatrics. He established the Division of Neonatology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He founded a regional transport system for neonates and personally attended the first 100 transports. He was also instrumental in establishing a teaching program for neonatal resuscitation that is now taught worldwide.
During his distinguished career in service to others, he worked with Project HOPE and the USAID. He also took part in a project with the U.S. State Department to develop health care systems in parts of Eastern Europe—including Ukraine and Russia—as well as China.
George remained close to his Georgetown roots, and attended both his Gold and Silver Jubilee Reunions, where he was honored for his years of accomplishments as an alumnus. He disliked the word “retirement,” preferring instead “flexible time,” much of which he devoted to consulting on health care management and developing newborn intensive care units in many different countries.
His wife, Anne, remembers him as “the most caring, compassionate, and humble man that I have ever known. These qualities along with his passion, drive, and intellect have helped save countless lives amongst our most vulnerable children.”
He is survived by his wife, four daughters, and six grandchildren.
Erica Magen Pincus (SFS’13)
Graduating magna cum laude from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service in 2013, Erica Pincus’s career was focused on developing technologyenabled, data-driven, and user-centered solutions to society’s toughest challenges. She passed away peacefully at home on June 15, 2021.
After Georgetown, Erica went on to complete an MBA at Stanford University and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she was selected as a Zuckerman Fellow.
From 2015 to 2017, Erica served as a policy advisor and special assistant for the Obama White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, where she supported the development of evidence-based policy solutions to advance economic opportunity, equity, and justice. Prior to that, she was a strategy and operations consultant with Deloitte.
Most recently, she worked as a product marketing manager and public policy advisor at the Everyday Robot Product within X, the moonshot factory formerly known as Google X, reimagining how to design and develop technology in socially responsible ways.
Erica’s parents, Holly Seirup Pincus and Cliff Pincus, have designated a scholarship fund in her name. “Georgetown played an instrumental role in shaping Erica’s life and the development of her passion and purpose. We know she would want us to support other students in finding theirs.”
Stefanie Rothschild (C’90, MBA’95, Parent’22)
Known throughout the Washington, D.C. area for her charitable fundraising efforts, love of pranks, and infectious laughter, Stefanie Rothschild was a double Hoya, graduating from the College in 1990 and receiving her MBA in 1995. She passed away peacefully on July 1, 2021, surrounded by her family, from injuries sustained in an accident caused by a storm. She was 52.
Stefanie was born on November 17, 1968, in Cleveland, though she spent most of her life in the Washington area, graduating from Churchill High School in 1986. She studied abroad in Stirling, Scotland, during her undergraduate years at Georgetown and moved to London after graduation. She returned to the United States for graduate school and then put her creative talents to work as one of the early employees of America Online. Passionate about impacting the lives of young people, Stefanie was preparing to teach a preschool class at the Bannockburn Nursery School.
Her son, Dylan (C’22), remembers her as a devoted Hoya who loved taking the family to cheer with her at basketball games. Along with Dylan, she is survived by her husband, Gregg, with whom she had recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, and daughters Molly and Carly.
Father David Pratt, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Endowed Orthodox Chaplain, on forming values that last
Over 30 years ago, I found myself at a pleasant juncture. I was newly ordained, but my assignment had not been finalized. I suddenly had two semesters for myself, so I decided to increase my theological education. I enrolled at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley for a licentiate in sacred theology, a Roman diploma, not the usual course of study for an Eastern Orthodox cleric. Soon I was in classes with Jesuits from America, Africa, and Asia, and alongside laypeople from all walks of life. The environment was stimulating, to say the least, yet it was always friendly and professional.
My understanding of Jesuit educational values was so limited when I arrived, as my focus was on books and papers, and becoming an academic. However, the interactions in the courses, the thoroughness of the welcoming (what we call accompaniment nowadays) touched my affections and my thinking followed suit. I recall two Jesuits who were unabashedly scholarly, the sort of minds that could get lost in thought, though they always kept our attention on the less fortunate. Their experience in missions certainly informed their teaching, but they also served the poor locally, without fanfare. They modeled the values of the education they were offering us. I had enrolled at the Jesuit School for a diploma, but came away with a formation in values.
What values? For me, the most resonant today is surely the dignity of the human person. A quick glance at world news shows so much inattention and inability to care about people. The statistics on human trafficking, for instance,
I remain hopeful that Georgetown students will acquire the Jesuit values of education and be changed. Academia can touch people for the better.
are staggering. So much to do in this area. I mention this grave sin in order to ground my remarks in God’s poor and to fully admit that I fail to do enough for them. I remain hopeful that Georgetown students will acquire the Jesuit values of education and be changed. Academia can touch people for the better. I still believe that.
I’m now full circle, having joined Georgetown’s Campus Ministry team. I saw this as an opportunity to repay for an unexpected Jesuit formation. It is my turn to speak for values that last. •
Father David Pratt, pictured above in the newly renovated Copley Crypt, directs the Orthodox Christian Chaplaincy. In Fall 2021, Michael Psaros (B’ 89) and his family announced a $ 3 million gift to endow the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Orthodox Chaplaincy at Georgetown. The chaplaincy endowment is the first fully endowed chaplain’s position in the university’s Campus Ministry program.
