Georgetown Magazine Fall 2019

ALL-INCLUSIVE Committed to a wholeinstitution approach, Adanna J. Johnson leads the new Office of Student Equity and Inclusion

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ABUZZ

Meet the honeybees of Hoya Hives.

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A WALK ON THE GREEN SIDE

Take the campus sustainability tour.

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LIGHTS, CAMERA, GEORGETOWN

From St. Elmo’s Fire to Scandal , fictional Hoyas play starring roles in movies and on TV.

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ALL-INCLUSIVE

Committed to a whole-institution approach, Adanna J. Johnson leads the new Office of Student Equity and Inclusion.

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LANGUAGE LAB

Georgetown’s pre-eminent program in languages and linguistics translates into global citizenship.

03 CAMPUS NEWS

34 ALUMNI NEWS AND PROFILES

50 LIVES WELL LIVED

52 THE LAST WORD

FROM THE EDITOR

Georgetown has amazing alumni, and probably the best part of my job as editor of this magazine is the chance to meet you and, when I am really lucky, to have in-depth conversations about the great work you are doing in the world in gestures large and small.

Starting on page 40, we highlight several alumni. While we didn’t intend to select people who are dedicated to social-impact careers, it’s no surprise that they have all taken Georgetown’s emphasis on social justice into the world with them. They have interesting stories: a career changer seeking more meaning in her life; a man who turned a short-term service trip into a three-decade (and counting) commitment; a woman who is making a difference in maternal and child health in Washington, DC’s African-American community; a man who refused to accept that he would never walk again after a tragic accident and now is on a crusade to help others; and an MBA graduate who turned his class project into an innovative way to use the skills of immigrants and refugees.

A few issues back, we launched Lives Well Lived, which shares stories of alumni who passed away in recent months. This is another group of people who acted out Georgetown in the world: a doctor who occasionally made house calls; a law student and residential minister whose life and potential was cut short; a woman who touched thousands of young lives as a school librarian; and a business leader and philanthropist whose care for Georgetown and its students was limitless. That business leader and philanthropist was Arthur Calcagnini (C’54), who passed away in June. I call him out because I had several opportunities to meet and talk with him and his wonderful wife, Nancy, over the past decade or so. The Calcagninis funded a contemplative center on 55 acres about an hour from campus. With beautiful views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Calcagnini Contemplative Center is home to ESCAPE, a nondenominational overnight getaway for first-year and transfer students of all faiths or no faith. The Calcagninis fully endowed the program in 1991, and Arthur himself was a frequent attendee, sharing his life stories with students. The Calcagninis were also generous supporters of scholarships and the Office of Mission and Ministry.

Georgetown has an endless supply of wonderful alumni stories for which this magazine is grateful.

—Jeffrey Donahoe

Office of Advancement

R. Bartley Moore (F’87)

Vice President for Advancement

Amy Levin

Associate Vice President for Communications

Georgetown Magazine Staff

Jeffrey Donahoe, Editor

Kate Colwell, Campus News Editor

Chelsea Burwell (G’16), Alumni News Editor

Editorial Team: Omar Abubars (G’19), Brittany Matter, Tierney Monahan, Richie Mullaney (C’18), Patti North, Sara Piccini, Camille

Scarborough

Erin Mary Greene, Executive Creative Director for Communications

Elisa Morsch, Creative Director

Phil Humnicky, University Photographer

Paul Jones, University Photographer

Design courtesy of Washingtonian

Custom Media

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Email: magazine@georgetown.edu

Address changes: 202-687-1994 or email alumnirecords@georgetown.edu

Fall 2019, Volume 51, Number 1

Georgetown Magazine (ISSN 1074-8784).

Georgetown Magazine is distributed free of charge to more than 185,000 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 University provides equal opportunity in employment for all persons and prohibits discrimination and harassment in all aspects of employment because of age, color, disability, family responsibilities, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, matriculation, national origin, personal appearance, political affiliation, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, veteran status or any other factor prohibited by law. Additionally, the university will use goodfaith efforts to achieve ethnic and gender diversity throughout the workforce. The university emphasizes recruitment of women, minority members, disabled individuals and veterans. Inquiries regarding Georgetown University’s nondiscrimination policy may be addressed to the Director of Affirmative Action Programs, Institutional Diversity, Equity & Affirmative Action, 37th and O Sts. N.W., Suite M36, Darnall Hall, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, or call 202-687-4798.

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What Is the Color of High-Tech Police Surveillance?

American police departments are purchasing facial recognition systems that can be misused in violation of civil rights and civil liberties, according to the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law Center. When installed at busy intersections and in other public places, these taxpayer-funded surveillance systems often make errors, likely misidentifying a disproportionate number of women, people under the age of 30 and Black people, which can lead to harm, harassment and false arrests.

“This is a transformative technology for police,” says the Privacy Center’s Founding Director Alvaro Bedoya. “It gives them power they’ve never had before, and the way it’s being used in local communities is deeply concerning.”

Facial recognition systems also infringe on people’s constitutional right to privacy. They can be used to track and log people entering places of worship, schools, businesses and community centers without their knowing. Bedoya explains how this covert power poses ethical concerns: A law enforcement agency cannot look across the street and secretly fingerprint everyone standing in a crowd or take a cheek swab of everyone in a community center, but it can photograph every person walking into a mosque without their consent and automatically identify them.

“This is a threat to almost any value we hold dear: the right to be safe, to believe in what you want to believe, to be with whom you want to be with,” says Bedoya. “It lets powerful people secretly track you from afar without your knowledge.”

The Privacy Center—a think tank focused on privacy and surveillance law, policy and affected communities—found a home within Georgetown’s social justice mission. Its members are engaged in ongoing policy conversations with legislators on how to regulate emerging technologies.

Despite voters never having the chance to weigh in on these surveillance powers, the Privacy Center’s research finds that more than half of adults appear in criminal face-recognition databases. Simply having a driver’s license means law enforcement can search for a person’s face in more than 30 states without any oversight. In addition, any system is only as good as the people who enter the data from which the algorithm learns; when biased officers feed data into untested and unregulated AI systems, those systems produce biased outputs.

“It’s the most invasive surveillance technology in the 21st century, and it operates in a legal vacuum,” says Bedoya. “There are no rules.”

These systems have been known to catch criminals under very specific scenarios with high-quality face images, such as comparing a driver’s license to a passport. Successes stem partially from the high volume of data that the systems collect. The Privacy Center does support the use of these systems under court order in public emergencies as a last resort to investigate violent crimes. But police departments that purchased these systems have input sketches, photo-shopped images, even celebrity look-alikes to falsely identify suspects, which Bedoya likens to collecting a partial fingerprint and drawing in the rest.

The Privacy Center is asking for a moratorium on police use of facial recognition until the American people can vote on the technology’s legal applications and government representatives can regulate the systems. As Bedoya puts it, “This Wild West has consequences.”

For more information, visit law.georgetown.edu/privacytechnology-center.

Photo: maikid

How Studying Literature Produces Better Physicians

Poetry by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Novels like The Handmaid’s Tale and Sing, Unburied, Sing. These works are required reading for Georgetown School of Medicine students in the Literature and Medicine track.

“The class is an anatomy lab of the mind,” writes program creator and co-director Daniel Marchalik, M.D. (G’16), in The New York Times. “We examine cultural conventions and conflicting perspectives, and reflect on our own preconceived notions about life and work.”

Student Johan Clarke (C’15, M’19) presented his work at this year’s American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting. “The most important lessons I’ve learned from the track are empathy and awareness,” he says.

“We read several books where it was hard to empathize with the narrator, and we had to discuss why it was difficult,” Clarke continues. “I think that’s going to help me when I’m having a rough day or working with a rough patient. I’ll be able to sit down and think about how my identity is clashing with their identity.”

At Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Marchalik missed the introspection provided by his undergraduate English

studies. So he created the precursor to the Literature and Medicine track at Rutgers, then launched the Georgetown program in 2013 during his urology residency.

Today, as an assistant professor of urology, Marchalik runs the program with fellow faculty member Dennis Murphy, M.D. In addition to producing physicians with a more holistic view of medicine, he believes that the track helps prevent burnout.

“Reading for pleasure is one of the few activities that’s really protective,” said Marchalik, who is also medical director of physician wellbeing for MedStar Health.

For her capstone project, Bethany Kette (M’20) wanted to better understand the lives of the people who donated their bodies to medical education. She enlisted Emily Langer, a Washington Post reporter, to create an obituary writing workshop, which is now part of the Anatomical Donor Program.

The track is helping to train physicians with skilled bedside manner. “It rounds out my ability to understand myself in the context of society,” says Victor Wang (NHS’15, M’19), “but also to understand my patients in the context of their own stories.”

Is Uber Taking Its Drivers for a Ride?

After two years of interviewing 40 Uber drivers in the Washington, DC, area, Georgetown’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor found that many stressors on Uber drivers keep them living and working below the poverty line and drowning in work-related debt.

According to the initiative’s study, drivers have extreme difficulties with both predicting earnings and calculating actual earnings due to Uber’s built-in gamification elements that change incentives and rules by the hour, much like a casino. In addition, despite working 16-hour days, some drivers do not earn enough to pay off their car debts. Thirty-two percent of drivers in the study reported falling into a “debt trap;” given the costs of an Uber lease, car insurance and Uber’s 25 percent commission and booking fees, some drivers net less than $5 an hour. Half of drivers live at or below the federal poverty level. Moreover, 30 percent of drivers reported safety concerns and physical assaults against them.

The initiative, founded in 2009, develops strategies and public policy to improve workers’ lives in a changing economy. Katie Wells, a postdoctoral fellow with the initiative, presented findings to the DC City Council in April. She and her study partners at City University of New York and George Washington University aim to equip city officials and the greater public with

“clear data about what is, and what is not, happening to workers in the on-demand ride-hailing industry,” Wells says. Currently, DC laws allow Uber to keep their ride-share data private. “No data on how Uber operates is readily available, which isolates the workers and policymakers,” says Wells.

This report is one part of an ongoing, five-year Georgetown project examining Uber’s effects on urban development, vulnerable and marginalized workers, public transit services and government policymaking.

“We didn’t realize before the study how dangerous it could be for workers,” Wells says. “We hope that our findings are not systemic throughout the Uber workplace, either in DC or in the country at large, but we don’t have evidence to the contrary.” This study will continue over the next two years with the same 40 participants along with DC policymakers.

Since Uber has not raised its drivers’ commissions in response to driver protests in May, the study targets policymakers to create a commission to assess how DC benefits from these entities.

The initiative is “bringing research to practice,” Wells says. “Progress is wonderful if it pushes us into a world we actually want.”

Photo: Tero Vesalainen

Scientists Mark First Evidence That Dolphins Give Birth in the Potomac

The first evidence that the Potomac River is a breeding area for wild bottlenose dolphins has been gathered by graduate students working with Georgetown biologist and dolphin expert Janet Mann.

The evidence was gathered as part of the Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project (PCDP), initiated by Mann nearly five years ago to conduct the first-ever study of dolphins in the Potomac. Mann created the project after studying bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia, for more than three decades.

“I have spent 32 years studying wild bottlenose dolphins—logging tens of thousands of hours observing them, particularly mothers and calves,” Mann says. “Yet I have never seen a birth or even evidence of a recent birth. This recent sighting is really exciting.”

While bottlenose dolphins are the most-studied species worldwide, she says there has been only one other documented birth, in 2013 off the coast of Georgia.

Two graduate students—Ann-Marie Jacoby (C’13) and Melissa Collier (G’23)—were following a group of about 50 dolphins in the Potomac River near Lewisetta, Virginia, when Jacoby noticed a cloud of blood; shortly afterward a small calf with a “slightly bent and wobbly fin” surfaced and then swam alongside its mother. At birth, the calves’ fins, which straighten out within a few hours, are completely flopped over to one side.

“At first, I was very alarmed by the cloud of blood, but there were no apparent signs of injury or predation—the dolphins

were just traveling down the river,” says Jacoby, who has worked with Mann since her undergraduate years at Georgetown. “I ran through the possible reasons for the blood and told my team to look out for an extremely small newborn.

“To me, it’s the most compelling evidence we have to date that dolphins are coming into the Potomac River to give birth, which is amazing,” she adds.

Collier, a graduate student in Georgetown’s biology department, also witnessed the birth. “There’s something really special about being one of the few researchers studying this unique and understudied group of dolphins, and I’m excited to continue working with them for my dissertation work,” she says.

“We have been trying to understand why dolphins come into the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay,” Mann says. “We see some very young calves and we see lots of mating behavior, but this is the most definitive evidence we have that they have their calves here.

“It is thought that these animals are from multiple populations because dolphins seen in the Potomac River have also been sighted off of North Carolina and New Jersey,” Mann says, “and some groups have population-specific characteristics not shared by other groups of dolphins.”

Professor Janet Mann looks off the side of Ahoya, the Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project’s boat, to observe a group of dolphins traveling through the Potomac. | Photo: Caitlin Karneski (C’11, G’19), taken under NMFS Permit No. 19403 for the PotomacChesapeake Dolphin Project

Colleges Convene to Improve Equity in Higher Education

Teams from 18 colleges and universities convened at Georgetown University in June to tackle the toughest questions in higher education at the first annual Summer Institute on Equity in the Academic Experience. This event, hosted by Georgetown and the University of Texas at Austin through the American Talent Initiative, drew schools from around the country, including Princeton University, Rutgers University, the University of California-Santa Cruz, Ohio State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Franklin & Marshall College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Smith College.

Focused on increasing successful outcomes for low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students, teams workshopped their projects while also learning from peers and experts in the field.

“It’s a moral imperative for us to do this work,” said Heidi Elmendorf, senior advisor to the president for equity in education and co-director of the institute. “Universities and colleges tend to evolve rather slowly while the world around us changes rather rapidly.”

Randy Bass, vice provost for education, served as institute co-director with Elmendorf. The university ’s Red House Incubator for Educational Innovation and the Hub for Equity and Innovation in Higher Education were also responsible for the institute.

The three-day institute comprised guest-speaker presentations, concentrated deep-work time for each institutional team and moderated inter-team problem sessions to discuss national issues in the field of access and affordability. The institute also fostered a sense of community by connecting participants through a dinner and three receptions. Cross-team problem sessions delved into topics such as how to develop a vision for equity, define and measure equity, structure the work for tackling equity and scale and sustain the equity agenda. Topics included how to rethink approaches to teaching and coursework to promote inclusivity in STEM, how to ease transfer students’ transitions and how to increase students’ wellness and sense of belonging.

“We say lots of glorious statements about the importance of equity, but I see in the work of my colleagues here actual action, and that is so refreshing,” said Cassandre Giguere Alvarado, executive director of student success initiatives at UT-Austin. “To be in a space where we’ve said we’re gonna say some tough things, we’re gonna reveal some truths about our campuses that we’re not necessarily proud of, but we’re doing so in the spirit of committing to doing better—I think that’s what’s really encouraging about this work.”

For a video recap of the institute, visit provost.georgetown.edu/ atisummerinstitute.

Heidi Elmendorf, co-director of the first annual Summer Institute on Equity in the Academic Experience | Photo: Chris Enochs

MAGIS

Immersion

Trips Provide Ways to Do ‘More’

You won’t be on campus long before you encounter the word magis, one of our core Jesuit values. Magis means “more,” and in practice it leads people to strive for excellence, to be more. How can Georgetown help students embody and live out magis and other Jesuit values, such as a faith that does justice, a commitment to academic excellence and cura personalis —care for the whole person?

To enable students to do more, and be more, for others, the Office of Mission and Ministry offers MAGIS Immersion programs that integrate real-life experiences with Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit mission and values. MAGIS Immersion programs are also open to faculty and staff.

MAGIS Immersion programs have two frameworks: social justice and pilgrimage. In collaboration with the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service, MAGIS participants can witness first-hand the issues at the U.S.-Mexico border, work with socialservice agencies in Lima and Cusco, Peru, or immerse themselves in other national and international locations to reflect on and work with the principles of social justice.

The Office of Mission and Ministry has recently begun offering MAGIS Immersion pilgrimages as well. This past year, one such immersion trip was a pilgrimage through the Eternal City—Rome. Vice President for Mission and Ministry Mark Bosco, S.J., in collaboration with the Office of Global Education, taught a threecredit theology course called Rome: A Theology of Pilgrimage. It combined six weeks of in-depth classroom study on the theories, theologies and spiritualities of pilgrimage with an intense, oneweek immersive experience in Rome over students’ spring break.

From San Clemente to the Scavi, from St. Peter’s to St. Paul Fuori la Mura, this course connected learning and experience.

“This was not just a trip to Rome,” says Andrew Straky (C’20). “It was a remarkable exploration of faith and history in light of my broader experience at a Jesuit university. It felt like the culmination of my encounter with the Jesuit values at Georgetown, which have ensured a lifelong commitment to using my faith as a tool for helping others.”

In addition to Rome, the MAGIS program has brought students from the School of Nursing & Health Studies to the healing water of Lourdes, France. NHS students not only served as volunteers at the baths, but they reflected on how service and spirituality could impact their own understanding of what it means to be a nurse today.

“Going into the experience…spirituality wasn’t a part of my goal as a nurse really,” Nicole Chen (NHS’20) said in a Catholic Standar d article about the trip. “It has really informed the way that I go through clinicals [in] nursing school. It’s the presence of being with a patient, just taking extra time to be with them and ask them how they’re doing. It’s very tangibly a part of how I practice nursing now.”

The Office of Mission and Ministry also coordinates immersion pilgrimages to Taizé, France, and continues to explore opportunities for future MAGIS Immersion pilgrimages.

To learn more about the MAGIS Immersion programs, visit missionandministry.georgetown.edu.

MAGIS Peru Immersion Experience, 2018 Machu Picchu | Photo: Greg Klass

Providing a Resource for Short-Term Food Needs

Sometimes students skip a meal. A study group might run late, ending after dining hall hours are over. Their work schedule that day might not sync well with the dining hall schedule. Perhaps they didn’t budget their time or money well that week. Or it’s late and the closest grocery store is a mile away. And sometimes they might not have enough money.

These are all examples of short-term food insecurity, says Erika L. Cohen Derr, assistant vice president for student affairs. Nationally, universities are adding campus resources to address this need. The Hoya Hub food pantry, now in its second year, makes sure that no student goes hungry or skips a meal by offering meal-based food, like pasta and soup. This summer, Hoya Hub moved into a larger, more accessible space in the Leavey Center.

Hoya Hub got its start from a student-led grassroots campaign in early 2016 and opened in October 2018. The food pantry offers anonymity and runs on the honor system; there is no screening or barrier to receive an access code to use the pantry. Undergraduate and graduate students can use Hoya Hub, and it doesn’t matter if a student is on a meal plan. Since the opening, about 200 students have taken the access code.

When Hoya Hub co-chair Julianne Licamele (C’21) started stocking the pantry along with co-founder and chair Caroline Barnes (C’19), she was afraid that cans of food would sit unused, collecting dust. She and Barnes had borrowed a small SUV, driven to a BJ’s in Northern Virginia and packed every square inch of space from the floor mats to the rear-view mirror full of soups, pastas and breakfast bars.

Two weeks later the shelves were almost bare. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling,” says Licamele.

While some students skip a meal or go hungry because of scheduling or planning, some Georgetown students face financial need and stress. They might not take a full meal plan to save money, leaving them more schedule-dependent. They might be sending money home to family. And an unforeseen event, like an emergency computer repair, can wreak havoc on anyone’s budget, Cohen Derr says.

Hoya Hub is supported by philanthropy. In addition to holiday canned food drives, Hoya Hub has support from students, staff and alumni. By donating their expiring campus currency, students gave $8,500, enough for the organizers to establish a purchasing account with the campus grocery vendor to buy food in bulk and have it delivered. Students also donated their dining hall meal swipes, which are turned into physical vouchers that are left in the pantry.

Licamele and Sam Dubke (F’21), co-founder and chair, see Hoya Hub as crucial to Georgetown’s cura personalis mission to care for the whole person.

“The fact that students are willing to donate money out of their pockets and cans off their shelves to help their fellow students shows that we’re somewhere special,” says Dubke. “We’re not just building structures here. We’re building a strong community.”

To support Hoya Hub, visit hoyahub.org.

60+ Years of Fulbright Program Success

This year, 45 Georgetown students will participate in the prestigious Fulbright international exchange program—an all-time record.

Established in 1946 through legislation introduced by Sen. J. William Fulbright, the program promotes intercultural understanding by enabling students to study and conduct research abroad. In Fulbright’s words, “Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations.”

Georgetown has consistently ranked among the top three producers of Fulbright scholars in recent years.

Contact: fulbright@georgetown.edu

Top 5 countries since 2014

1946

Fulbright Program established by the U.S. Congress

429

Number of awards to Georgetown students since the beginning of the Fulbright Program

No. 3

Georgetown’s ranking of universities earning Fulbright awards in 2018, behind No. 1 Brown and No. 2 Princeton

Map: freepik

Sustainability focus

Ally Smith (NHS’21) holds a frame to check on a Hoya Hives bee colony. The hives were added to campus in 2018 to help increase biodiversity. | Photo: Lisa Helfert

ABUZZ: THE HONEYBEES OF HOYA HIVES

Who are 50,000 of Georgetown’s hardest workers?

To find out, Georgetown staff member Tierney Monahan, herself an amateur beekeeper, paid a visit to the hives.

In July, I put on my bee suit and sought out these very active female worker bees (and a few male drone bees) along with their caretakers, mentor Professor William Hahn and students Ally Smith (NHS’21) and Billy Maguire (C’22).

As we walked up to the Observatory grounds to inspect the hive on a sweltering afternoon, I asked Billy and Ally how they became involved in caring for the bees. Billy came to the group by way of the campus Environment Club. Ally accepted the invitation of her friend Elizabeth Nguyen (F’21), who leads the student group, also known as Hoya Hives, to come to a bee class and learn more about these fascinating creatures. It turns out Ally, Lizzy and I all took the same beginner beekeeping course, only a year apart, from the DC Beekeepers Alliance and the University of the District of Columbia Extension Program.

The students care for the bees by feeding them—especially when they are first installed and throughout the fall and winter— treating for pest management and checking the pattern of the comb to make sure the hive is healthy and the queen is laying well.

This past spring, Georgetown’s Laudato Si’ Fund approved a grant to the Bee Campus committee. The Laudato Si’ Fund takes

its name from Pope Francis’ encyclical on environmental justice and supports sustainability projects and programs that respond to Francis’ call to “care for our common home” by creating a healthier and more biologically diverse local ecosystem. One of 11 grant winners across campus for the 2019–20 academic year, the Bee Campus committee will focus on establishing a habitat plan to improve the climate for pollinators, hosting awareness events— particularly during Pollinator Week in late June—sponsoring student service-learning projects, posting signage to educate the campus and broader community and partnering with faculty members to offer pollinator-focused courses.

Professor Hahn later mentioned that we assume a lot out of nature, its products and its processes. Without pollinators, we would not be able to grow the diversity and quantity of plants in our region. Pollinator health is also an important measure of overall environmental quality. Hoya Hives members will continue to highlight the importance of how our human actions greatly impact our ecosystem.

The interconnection among people, pollinators and the broader environment is extremely valuable and I, for one, am thankful for these busy bees.

“

Campus Sustainability Tour

Why are there plants on the roof of Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Residence Hall? How does permeable pavement work? Can you tell me how to get to Solar Street?

Get the answers to these and other questions by taking the new Campus Sustainability Walking Tour. Each stop highlights Georgetown’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect the Potomac watershed, create pollinator habitats and generate clean energy.

From some of the oldest buildings on campus to the newest, above ground to below, campus reflects the university’s commitment to sustainability.

With the tour, we hope to increase visibility for the great work that our community is doing to advance healthy and sustainable outcomes—from energy efficiency to integrative landscape design, clean transportation and more—while providing educational opportunities for all,” says Audrey Stewart, director of Georgetown’s Office of Sustainability.

The new Campus Sustainability Walking Tour is sponsored by Boland. Visit sustainability.georgetown.edu/tour for more information and guided tour dates.

Key Georgetown’s most common sustainability efforts

LEED CERTIFICATION

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a worldwide green building certification. A rating of gold is second only to platinum.

PERMEABLE PAVERS

These allow stormwater to filter through, then be piped to an underground reservoir to reduce runoff to the Potomac River watershed.

RAIN GARDENS

Gardens reduce runoff to sewers, provide natural habitat, help regulate building temperatures; some provide social and educational opportunities.

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01 02 04

Healy Gates 01

“Solar Street” is a student-led initiative that brought rooftop solar panels to six university-owned townhouses nearby on O Street to generate clean energy.

Ida Ryan and Isaac Hawkins residence halls 02

Adaptive reuse by repurposing existing buildings; permeable pavers; LEED Gold.

O’Gara Terrace 03

Green roof absorbs rainfall, helps regulate temperature and provides pollinator habitat.

Healey Family Student Center 04

Living green wall improves indoor air quality and reduces heating and cooling costs; exterior garden reduces rainwater runoff; LEED Gold.

Leo J. O’Donovan, S.J., Dining Hall 05

Trayless dining conserves about 145,000 gallons of water annually; food sourced locally as available; food waste composting: LEED Silver.

Campus Shuttles and Bus Turnaround 06

Free university-provided bus connections to two Metro stops and other locations promote public transportation use; bus turnaround has permeable pavers and a rain garden.

John R. Thompson Jr. Intercollegiate Athletic Center 07

Uses 38 percent less potable water and 29 percent less energy than conventional buildings; 10,000-gallon cistern collects stormwater runoff for use in lower-level bathrooms; LEED Gold.

Heating and Cooling Plant 08

Efficient temperature control to Main Campus buildings; centralized boilers and chillers reduce energy costs.

Observatory 09

Garden habitat for 200 species of pollinators, including bees, butterflies and birds. See page 12 for more information

Medical School 10

Department of Pharmacology and Physiology gardens in underused areas feature medicinal plants and culinary herbs for student education.

Regents Hall 11

Uses rainwater from roof and ground in bathrooms; teaching garden; LEED Gold.

Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Residence Hall 12

Green roof; permeable pavers; cistern to reduce runoff; demonstration kitchen for nutrition education; LEED Gold.

05 15

The 1985 film St. Elmo’s Fire starred Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Mare Winningham and Andrew McCarthy as seven close Georgetown alumni facing adulthood together. Although the titular St. Elmo’s Bar was modeled after The Tombs, it was filmed on a set crafted to look like The Tombs’ interior. The popularity of the film made Hoya Tombs regulars complain they couldn’t get a seat. | All Photos: Sony Pictures, Columbia Pictures and other studios and distributors

BY JEFFREY DONAHOE

FAMOUS— IF FICTIONAL— HOYAS ON SCREEN

Stanford has Chelsea Clinton. Yale has Barbara Bush. Harvard has Malia Obama.

Georgetown has Zoey Bartlet .

The fictional first daughter of President Josiah Bartlet on the TV show West Wing graduated from Georgetown in 2003—a scene shot on Healy Lawn in the first on-campus filming since The Exorcist in 1972.

Zoey Bartlet is one of many fictional Georgetown alumni you’ve seen in TV shows and on film. They are characters who desperately want to attend Georgetown, who enroll, meet, fall in love and graduate, especially in a popular 1985 film in which the plot hinges on recently graduated “alumni” suffering great angst about their post-college fates and encroaching adulthood.

Why do producers choose Georgetown? What does the university represent in the public’s imagination? Why is pop culture drawn to Georgetown?

“I think that Georgetown appeals to Los Angeles-based producers because it is East Coast, old and prestigious, but not an Ivy,” says Bernie Cook, (C’90, G’91), associate dean and founding director of Film and Media Studies in the College. “Both LA and DC are company towns,” Cook adds. “LA is fascinated with DC, its opposite.”

John Glavin (C’64), professor of English and himself a screenwriter, says, “Georgetown— neighborhood and school—is a code word in the larger world for ‘elite.’ So if you want to suggest a story with an elite edge, Georgetown is a much more likely place to do that than almost any comparable school.”

Elite, but not snobbish, Glavin adds. “Georgetown manages to come across as both elite and accessible, apparently a winning combination.”

HORROR CLASSIC

Georgetown doesn’t have a history of allowing filming on campus, so The Exorcist and West Wing are rare exceptions. John Glavin says what he’s heard is that The Exorcist filming on campus was a special favor to the film’s screenwriter, William Peter Blatty (C’50), who developed the screenplay from his bestselling horror-thriller novel of the same name.

Blatty, who died in 2017 at age 89, always told the story that in a New Testament class in White-Gravenor he heard about a case in the DC area of a boy who seemed to be possessed by a demon. After months of rites of exorcism by priests—including Georgetown priests—the demon appeared to be expelled. Blatty never forgot.

The film, which was released in 1973, is a horror classic. It’s set in Georgetown, both neighborhood and campus. With an official go-ahead, the fall 1972 filming included several campus scenes—Healy Hall, Lauinger Library, Dahlgren Chapel, the upper tennis courts and the Medical Center campus—and used hundreds of student extras.

As noted in a university history written by now-professor emeritus of history Emmett Curran, “the film crew virtually took over campus for two months in the fall of 1972, and many faculty and students had walk-on parts in the various campus scenes.”

The Exorcist and its university connection still resonate on campus. In the film’s shocking climax, the protagonist, Father Damien Karras, takes the demon Pazuzu into his own body and hurls himself to his death down a steep set of steps near

campus, making them an instant landmark. The eerie and dark stairway, once known as the “Car Barn Steps,” famously became the “Exorcist Steps.”

GRADUATION DAY

Let’s rerun that episode of West Wing, filmed on campus 30 years after The Exorcist

First daughter Zoey Bartlet didn’t suddenly show up at graduation; she had been written as a Georgetown student since season one, graduating in season four. Her attendance at Georgetown had been a recurring story line in West Wing scripts.

“We wanted to tell a story about how [Zoey] starting college would affect the president and first lady,” West Wing producer Lou Wells told Hoya reporter Justin Dickerson (F’06) at the time of the filming. “We picked Georgetown because Bartlet is Catholic and Georgetown is a great university and a great place to send [Zoey] to school in our fictional world.”

“Commencement” was filmed on Sunday, April 27, 2003, with the show’s crew constructing the set in front of Healy Hall starting the Thursday before. The mock graduation set was smaller but similar to how the university stages real graduations.

With the set ready, cue the extras.

Hania Luna (C’06) can’t quite remember how she heard about the chance to be an extra. (A Hoya article in university archives reported that the campus Lecture Series conducted a lottery.) She does remember spending most of a hot day sitting in front of Healy.

Filming campus scenes for The Exorcist took more than two months in fall 1972, including a production crew in Dahlgren Quad. West Wing First Daughter Zoe Bartlet, played by Elisabeth Moss, graduated from Georgetown summa cum laude in 2003. In College Road Trip, Georgetown is the first-choice school for Melanie Porter, played by RavenSymoné Pearman shown here with Kristian Kordula. Unlike The Exorcist or the West Wing commencement episode, College Road Trip was not filmed on campus.

That morning, she and some friends reported on set and picked up their cap-and-gown costumes and a time to come back later. “They suggested that we try to create a character different than ourselves,” Luna recalls. Back in her dorm room, she straightened her curly hair.

Luna’s appearance mattered far more than straight or curly hair. She lucked out as one of a few Georgetown extras able to find themselves in the two-minute segment that the day of filming yielded. When the camera pans, Luna is in the same shots as Zoey Bartlet, played by Elisabeth Moss. Luna says the crew purposely placed her near Moss. “They were looking for Zoey to be surrounded by a diverse group of students,” says Luna, a Mexican-American.

Luna wasn’t much of a West Wing watcher, so the fun of being an extra with friends was the draw. But there were plenty of fans on campus. “Many of us were poli-sci and foreign-service nerds who came to Georgetown to be in DC and be part of political activism,” Luna says. “Zoey Bartlet was indicative of the kind of student you’d run into on campus.”

‘I WANT YOU TO WRITE THAT LETTER’

While Zoey Bartlet was the type of character any school would be proud to call its own, Tracy Flick is another story.

In the 1999 film Election, a dark satire on politics, Reese Witherspoon portrayed Tracy Flick, a high school striver with few friends but tremendous drive and ambition. She knows what she wants—and that includes admission to Georgetown, her dream school. To round out her overflowing list of high school extracur-

ricular activities for her college applications, she runs for student body president against a popular but dim jock, a campaign that turns dark and absurd—and serves as sociopolitical commentary.

Georgetown didn’t turn out to be Tracy’s dream. She’s ostracized by her fellow Hoyas, even as she ingratiates herself in Washington, DC’s halls of power. “A lot of them were just spoiled little rich kids who didn’t know how lucky they had it,” Tracy complains.

In contrast to the darker themes of Election , 2008’s College Road Trip mines the college-admission process for laughs. It features an ambitious Melanie Porter, played Raven-Symoné Pearman, whose college-selection process serves as a proxy battle for independence from her overprotective father. Melanie is eagerly looking forward to a girls-only road trip from Chicago to the East Coast to check out colleges—including an interview at Georgetown, her top choice.

Comedy ensues when her father makes his own plans—mostly to detour and visit Northwestern University, only 30 minutes away from home, and convince Melanie to attend. There’s a lot of movie wackiness along the way: Melanie ends up skydiving onto “campus” (not filmed at Georgetown) to make her interview in the nick of time. And yes, she gets in.

Meadow Soprano’s parents, by contrast, are dying for their daughter to attend Georgetown. In season two of the HBO classic The Sopranos , Carmela Soprano (Edie Falco)—wife of mob boss Tony Soprano—asks their neighbor to approach her sister Joan, a Georgetown alumna, about writing a letter of recommendation for Meadow.

CINEMA CARROLL CONNECTION The film plots in this article are contemporary, but at least one film starring a fictional Georgetown alumnus has historical roots. In the 2004 National Treasure, historian and amateur cryptologist Benjamin Franklin Gates, played by Nicholas Cage, has an American history degree from Georgetown. Gates is searching for a legendary lost treasure trove—its location to be revealed in a coded map on the reverse of the Declaration of Independence. Whoever steals The Declaration first and decodes the map will find the “national treasure,” hidden by the Founding Fathers.

The first clue was given to one of Gates’ ancestors by Charles Carroll, the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. In real life, Charles Carroll, indeed the last signer, was a cousin of Georgetown founder John Carroll.

When Joan declines, Carmela stops by her office unannounced with a pineapple ricotta pie, Meadow’s school transcripts and a thinly veiled threat—“I don’t think you understand. I want you to write that letter”—knowing that Joan is well aware of the Soprano family’s Mafia connections. The letter gets written.

FOREVER FRIENDS

St. Elmo’s Fire, released in 1985, is an era-defining, time capsule of a film about a group of seven recent Georgetown graduates, played by Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy and Mare Winningham, struggling over their young lives, often in St. Elmo’s Bar, which has a decidedly Tombs-like vibe. With the university’s restrictions on on-campus filming, St. Elmo’s Fire, though explicitly about Georgetown, was filmed at the University of Maryland.

The movie was the breakthrough success for Carl Kurlander, who co-wrote the script with director Joel Schumacher. Kurlander based the script on his short story of the same name, a fictionalized account of his infatuation with a young woman. Kurlander won an internship at Universal Studios and began turning the story into a screenplay. Schumacher was his boss; he read the screenplay and saw its potential.

With Schumacher on board and the film greenlighted, the story needed a location. Kurlander suggested DC. It wasn’t for a backdrop of politics, but for love: He had reconnected with the object of his infatuation, who was living in the DC area.

Kurlander said in a telephone interview that once Schumacher agreed to set the screenplay in Washington, “it had to be Georgetown. It really fit the story.”

The crew filmed in Georgetown for nine days, including the neighborhood and a few campus exteriors. While St. Elmo’s Bar is based on The Tombs, it too was shot elsewhere. “The Tombs people were very helpful and friendly” as he tried to learn what made for a good college bar, Kurlander says.

“I didn’t know a lot about Georgetown when I pushed for it to be the movie locale,” Kurlander says. “I knew its academic reputation,” he says. “I knew the alumni were ambitious.”

No matter why Kurlander picked Georgetown to center St. Elmo’s Fire, no matter that it wasn’t was filmed on campus, Maria Devaney (SLL’90) says what he got right about Georgetown was the strong sense of community. An early line in the film is, “All I can remember is the seven of us, always together.”

“It all comes back to friends,” Devaney says. “St. Elmo’s Fire was only a little about romance—it was about friends, a place and bonds that are special, not just while you are there, but that grow stronger and stronger after you graduate,” she says. “In that way, they really got Georgetown.”

Devaney can’t say that she knows anyone who came to Georgetown because of the movie, but everyone had seen it. “I had seen the movie between the time I’d applied and been accepted. I remember hearing the theme song on the radio again and again, and I so desperately wanted to go to Georgetown.”

Actor Kerry Washington may have graduated from George Washington University, but Olivia Pope, the character she portrayed on Scandal, is a Georgetown Law alumna. Dennis Haysbert plays U.S. President David Palmer, in 24. President Palmer was a political economy major at Georgetown. The storyline of The Good Wife featured two Georgetown Law “alumni.” Julianna Margulies played Alicia Florrick, who remains close to law school friend Will Gardner, played by Josh Charles (left). Chris Noth played Alicia's husband, Peter.

AVOIDING THE TRAP

Georgetown Law has its share of significant screen mentions, too. The Law Center is called out many times in The Good Wife , an award-winning CBS series that ran from 2009 to 2016. The show starred Julianna Margulies as “alumna” Alicia Florrick, the wife of a disgraced politician, who returns to the practice of law to pick up the pieces of her life. Law alumnus Will Gardner, played by Josh Charles, is Alicia’s law partner and a good friend from law school—and maybe more.

Ted Humphrey (C’91) is an Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated writer, producer and director in film and television. He is also the writer for many episodes of The Good Wife , starting with the first season. In a summer class newsletter, Humphrey says he might have influenced the character’s academic chops “perhaps indirectly,” adding, “Truthfully, that was Robert and Michelle King’s idea.”

The Kings are the co-creators and executive producers of The Good Wife. “We made Alicia and Will Georgetown Law alums for a couple of reasons,” Michelle King told Georgetown Law magazine in 2010. “We wanted to highlight that they were smart, highly successful people without falling into the every-bright-fictional-character-went-to Harvard-or-Yale trap. The fact that Georgetown was in the national consciousness because of remarkable alums like Bill Clinton was also a plus.”

Humphrey adds, “Of course, I was happy to add context and verisimilitude to [the show]. I have a fondness for setting things in DC that comes from living there, both during college and after.”

POLITICAL ANIMALS

Of course, it’s logical that any movie or show about the highest echelons of power in the government would feature Georgetown alumni or faculty. Here’s a representative sample: Charlie Young, personal aide to President Josiah Bartlet in West Wing ; Olivia Pope, White House director of communications and fixer extraordinaire in Scandal ; David Palmer, U.S. president, 24 ; theology professor Henry McCord, husband of Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord, Madame Secretary

Like her friend Hania Luna, Laura Dziorny (C’06, L’11) was an extra in the graduation scene in West Wing in 2003. Unlike Luna, Dziorny was “a huge fan” of the series. “I was an idealist and believed the government was a force for greater good, which was consistent with the show,” she says.

During the long, hot day of filming, the student extras cheered when the West Wing cast came onto the set, and Dziorny was especially thrilled to see President Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen. It wasn’t the last time she saw Sheen at Georgetown. A few years later, Dziorny was worshiping at an 8:00 p.m. Mass in Dahlgren. She couldn’t stop looking at a fellow worshiper. “He looked just like Martin Sheen,” she says. It was indeed Sheen, who is a Catholic, in DC for a location shoot.

“He signed my prayer card and added ‘Peace,’” she remembers.

Photo: Lisa Helfert

A WHOLE-INSTITUTION APPROACH

Georgetown is Engaging the Entire Community in the Work of Equity and Inclusion

In May, Georgetown announced the creation of the Office of Student Equity and Inclusion with Adanna J. Johnson, Ph.D., as associate vice president. This might sound like the work to increase equity and inclusion is centralized in just one place, but in fact it’s the opposite. Georgetown is committed to a wholeinstitution approach that makes equity and inclusion a central value to everyone in the university community.

The Office of Student Equity and Inclusion reports to both senior academic and student-affairs leadership, reflecting the threedimensionality of students’ lives.

Adanna Johnson had deep personal and professional roots in Jesuit education. For her, equity and inclusion are at the center of Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and mission. She spoke with Jeffrey Donahoe, editor of Georgetown Magazine, in July about the whole-institution commitment, what makes Georgetown work differently than other universities and what success looks like.

Where does the new Office of Student Equity and Inclusion reside in Georgetown’s organizational structure?

The office has a dual reporting line to the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs. This reporting structure is intentional—it acknowledges that students’ lives happen both inside and outside the classroom. Georgetown is taking a whole-institution approach that engages the entire community in the work of equity and inclusion.

Why is a whole-institution approach so important?

Equity and inclusion can’t succeed being in only one or two offices, with a few people. I don't think that is an effective philosophical approach—saying, “We have this office,” or “We have this departmental liaison, so we’ve got it covered.”

Every dean, every department chair, every faculty member, every administrator, every staff member needs to center this work. We need to ensure that Georgetown’s approach is truly integrated across the campus because it is central to the success of all students and is clear in our Jesuit mission and values.

WYou used an expression, “center the work.” What does that mean in this context?

We must place this value at the center of all departments and schools, as well as units, and not treat it as an add-on. For example, how do deans integrate it into their visions for the schools? There needs to be explicit conversations about what diversity, equity and inclusion look like.

What’s the relationship between access and equity?

In terms of access at Georgetown, more first-generation, low-income students are joining the community each year. But that’s only a piece of it.

It’s not enough to increase applicant diversity or the numbers of people who have historically been denied access to higher education in this country. A critical mass alone doesn’t shift the climate. You also have to think about what kinds of experiences we are fostering for students. What are we doing to ensure their success? Do they feel included? Do they have a sense of belonging in the community? Are we making this a more positive and welcoming experience for people who historically have been shut out? That’s the equity and inclusion part.

How do you approach the work?

I think about it in three different categories. One is integration. This office has brought the Georgetown Scholars Program, the Community Scholars Program and the Center for Minority Equity and Access under one umbrella, but there still is a need for integrative approaches across the institution. (See page 27 to learn more about these programs.)

Another area is collaboration. Integration and collaboration very much go hand-in-hand. We must work together for the equity, diversity and inclusion goals to become intuitive and organic.

The last is consultation. I see my role and the role of the new councils as being consultants for colleagues and units across campus to ensure that they have their own visions for centering this work to create a sense of shared responsibility.

How did the new Office of Student Equity and Inclusion come into being?

It came out of a couple of veins of work. The creation of OSEI has been several years in the making, as Georgetown has been building towards a more integrative structure for our Main Campus support and engagement programs, tying together access, equity, student success and diversity programming and services. In 2017–18, a number of strategic moves took place, including the creation of an ad hoc Task Force on Access, Equity and Success and an Advisory Board on Access and Affordability (ABAA). The ABAA, led by Dr. Andria Wisler (executive director of the Center for Social Justice, Research and Teaching), and Mr. Jason Low (assistant director of the Georgetown Scholars Program), was created at the request of Dr. Todd Olson (vice president for Student Affairs) and Dean Pat McWade (Student Financial Services) and consisted of 35 members from across the campus community; it initiated the “whole-institution approach” language we use to describe this work today. More recently, the work of these groups has led to the creation—and filling—of a reframed position of Senior Associate Dean and Director of Diversity, Equity and Student Success. These two entities examined diversity, equity and inclusion at Georgetown—what was going well, what was happening in various aspects of the institution and what was needed.

Both groups talked about creating a whole-institution approach to equity and inclusion.

How will the campus community be represented in the work going forward?

We have a Council on Student Diversity and a Council on Student Equity and Success. Combined, these councils are about 40 people, representing all the schools, the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access, the Community Scholars Program, the Georgetown Scholars Program, plus programs like the

Center for Social Justice, Veterans Affairs, Counseling and Psychiatric Services and health services.

I see the councils’ goals as continuing to assess and examine what we have. Something that happened beautifully in our council meetings last year was that people across schools and across units talked about the resources they have to support students during the summer who otherwise could not afford to remain in DC between academic years. There was an opportunity for some synergy around this, and a website is being built to facilitate student access in one place online.

Where does Georgetown fit in the overall examination of these areas across American higher education?

I think that being a Jesuit institution and our Georgetown values of community and diversity allow us to really cata-

pult our focus on DEI work. Other universities may have an obligation that is rooted in their values institutionally, but Jesuit universities have a higher calling.

I think that’s why I’ve continued to work at Jesuit institutions. I was at Loyola University Maryland for over a decade before coming here. My master’s degree and Ph.D. are from Marquette University. The value of being a person for others is really important to me.

One example of Georgetown’s calling to work on equity and inclusion is the way we are grappling with our history and involvement with enslavement. It isn’t finished yet, but it’s been monumental work.

What are the challenges for the work in equity and inclusion at Georgetown?

Not everybody has the same socio-political outlook. Not everybody has the same level of privilege and power. So one of the challenges is recognizing that what looks revolutionary for some is minimal to others. For some people it’s not going to feel like enough. There will always be a critique. We need to

We need to ensure that Georgetown’s approach is truly integrated across the campus because it is central to the success of all students and is clear in our Jesuit mission and values.

take the opportunity to say that we are trying to be the best institution we can be.

An important gathering, the Summer Institute, took place here in June. What is the institute and how does it relate to Georgetown’s efforts?

In June, Georgetown hosted the American Talent Initiative Summer Institute on Equity in Education. This event consisted of teams of three to six people from ATI institutions to work on an issue related to equity that is present on their respective campuses. The Hub here at Georgetown has more details (thehub.georgetown. domains/realhub/si/).

We sent a team from Georgetown with ideas generated from the Council on Student Diversity and Council on Student Equity and Success, which I led.

In a joint council meeting, when we were preparing Georgetown’s presentations for the institute, we quickly

what I need to do. Fanon said that every person should ask themselves these three questions: Who am I? Am I who I say I am? Am I all that I ought to be?

These questions make me ask myself, “Who am I in this moment?” If I am showing up as best as I can every day, if that’s done in a way that’s in alignment with my integrity and values, that’s what allows me to keep pushing. And then I ask, “What more can I do?”

I feel that I find a balance between feeling “this needs to change today” and appreciating incremental change and the long game. There ’s a continuum. A lot of things have changed in the year that I’ve been here. And there are a lot of things that I may never ever see shift. That doesn’t mean that I’m not contributing to the forward progression.

What does success in equity and inclusion at Georgetown look like to you?

Success looks like Georgetown community members having a clear understanding that equity, inclusion and access are priorities that are taken very seriously. No matter where you look, you see it.

Success looks like both innovation and incremental change. Both the brand-new as well as change that will take one, three, five, ten years to accomplish. Both of those types of change are happening here.

went deep and far into the overall Georgetown student experience, and specifically how advising shows up in a multitude of ways—not just when you go see your advising dean or your faculty advisor. It happens in lots of places across the institution. Some of the advising challenges with regard to first-generation, low-income students are about the people with whom they are interacting and people’s level of cultural awareness. We are also examining our policies and procedures that may make it challenging for those students to navigate our institution.

What keeps you centered?

I have a quote from Franz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth that I keep on the white board in my office. It helps me every day to center myself and think through

Success is having more faculty and administrators and people in positions of leadership and decision-making authority who are from historically socially and politically marginalized communities.

Is Georgetown poised to achieve success?

The far-reaching interest in equity and inclusion at Georgetown exceeds that of any place I’ve ever worked. It’s encouraging. The depth of the talent and commitment here is beyond what I’ve seen. People here really want to deeply engage the work.

There need to be explicit conversations about what diversity, equity and inclusion look like.

Equity and Inclusion Work Across All Campuses

The new OFFICE OF STUDENT EQUITY AND INCLUSION provides senior leadership to create and galvanize a “whole-institution” approach to equity and inclusion through supporting collaboration and providing expertise.

The office is a model for the integrative work Georgetown is striving for. Student Equity and Inclusion has brought key undergraduate programs under one umbrella.

six-year graduation rate for GSP students is 96.4 percent for first-generation college students, compared to the national rate of 30 percent. gsp.georgetown.edu

The COMMUNITY SCHOLARS PROGRAM , founded in 1968, supports first-generation college students, mostly from under-resourced schools across the nation. After they have been admitted, CSP students have a five-week, creditbearing academic summer program prior to their first year. CSP also supports its students—about 75 incoming students each year—throughout their Georgetown careers with academic advising, personal counseling and study groups. The program has a 92 percent graduation rate. cmea.georgetown.edu/community-scholars

THE CENTER FOR MULTICULTURAL EQUITY AND ACCESS supports students of color and other students who have been historically denied access to Georgetown. It provides personal support, academic advice, chances to discuss diversity issues, career advice, mental health counseling and options for finding affordable textbooks, computers and other academic necessities. cmea.georgetown.edu

GEORGETOWN LAW’S OFFICE OF EQUITY AND INCLUSION , launched in 2016 by Dr. Judith Perez Caro, works collaboratively with faculty, staff, students and alumni to develop community programming, educational and training programs and student advocacy and to provide advisory and consultancy services.

The GEORGETOWN SCHOLARS PROGRAM , founded in 2004, helps scholarship students thrive at the university. The program helps create a more equitable experience for low-income and first-generation students through programmatic support including mentoring, wellness activities and support services, including a “Necessity Fund” to cover medical bills and other unforeseen expenses. Since its first graduating class in 2007, GSP has served more than 1,160 students. The

The SCHOOL OF MEDICINE’S OFFICE OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION ensures a learning environment that understands the varied health care needs and the diversity of the populations physicians serve. Programming includes peer education, dialogue and training. The one-year Georgetown Experimental Medical Studies Program (GEMS) equips underrepresented and diverse students for success in medical education.

Logo: Courtesy of Georgetown Law’s Office of Equity and Inclusion

Photo: iStock

FROM HIEROGLYPHICS TO HANGUL

Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown

BY JEFFREY DONAHOE

In 1582, the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci arrived on a mission in China, where he began to study Chinese classical languages, characters and customs. He became one of the first Western scholars to master speaking Chinese and reading Chinese script and, with an appreciation of Confucian culture, was among the first to translate Confucian classics into Latin for Western audiences.

More than 400 years after Ricci's immersion in Chinese culture, languages are still serious subjects in Georgetown's Jesuit education.

“Jesuits were formidably good linguists,” says Josiah Osgood, professor and chair of classics and former convener of Georgetown’s Faculty of Languages and Linguistics. “The study of languages here reflects the university’s tradition in foreign service, Jesuit values and a commitment to being global—it’s very Georgetown,” Osgood says.

“Language is something that binds us, that makes us human,” says Christopher Celenza, dean of Georgetown College, home to the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, who is also a professor of history and classics.

With a commitment to teaching and research, in recent decades Georgetown’s language departments have pioneered closer integration of language teaching and cultural immersion.

BUCKING A NATIONAL TREND

Today, Georgetown offers majors in 12 languages plus linguistics; course work and minors are offered in another dozen languages. Georgetown’s investment in languages goes against the grain in an era when many universities are eliminating language programs in the face of relentless cost pressures and a decline in undergraduate majors. The number of college foreign-language programs fell by 651 in just three years (2013–16), according to a 2019 report from the Modern Language Association.

While over the past 15 years or so Georgetown has seen a decline in the number of language majors, overall enrollments have been stable or increased, and the number of language minors has grown. Some departments have seen an uptick in majors.

The national trend of a decrease in language instruction raises concerns from inside and outside the academic community. The trend has an impact on diplomacy, defense and economic growth and competitiveness.

And beyond political and economic issues, what happens to the personal fulfillment and joy that knowing another language can bring?

TRANSFORMATIVE TEACHING

Languages have always been part of a Georgetown education. Georgetown founder Archbishop John Carroll’s plan for his academy included Latin and Greek—what he called “the learned languages”—plus French if there was sufficient demand. Georgetown’s first professor, a French Sulpician seminarian named Jean-Edouard de Mondesir, taught French and Latin (while learning English). The study of languages flourished at the College, drawing on the Jesuits’ academic rigor and global orientation, and the Washington, DC, location.

Unprecedented conflict in the 20th century led to the creation of a new college at Georgetown in 1919, the School of Foreign Service, founded by Rev. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J.

Walsh toured a devastated Europe in the wake of World War I. Upon his return to Georgetown, he established SFS, hoping that the formal study of diplomacy would prevent future wars. In 1949, he returned to Europe to witness a social and physical landscape laid waste by the Second World War. Walsh concluded that an essential element of his original quest to solve

world problems diplomatically was an increased level of language proficiency. If diplomats were to be successful, they had to speak each other’s languages.

To make a more language-competent American society, Walsh turned to Leon Dostert (F’28, C’30, G’31). The two met at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, where Walsh was an official observer and the multilingual Dostert was chief of the trials’ language division. Dostert introduced simultaneous interpretation and translation at the trials, which Walsh recognized as a transformative tactic for improved international relations.

Walsh recruited Dostert to Georgetown, where they established the Institute of Languages and Linguistics (ILL) within SFS. The language departments, faculty and academic study were in the College, while ILL focused on practical language acquisition and mastery that was highly dependent on technology. ILL had a state-of-the-art multilingual room and language laboratory in Poulton Hall that was filled with tape recordings and soundproof booths, where students worked on their language skills by listening to auditory drills.

In 1967, the institute emerged from SFS as the School of Languages and Linguistics (SLL)—colloquially known as “Ling Lang”—with Robert Lado as founding dean. Elizabeth Zsiga, linguistics professor, department chair and the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics (FLL) convener, says that Lado was among the first scholars nationally who recognized that learning languages wasn’t just listening and repeating; it required an understanding that the structure of languages and

applied linguistics went together. SLL elevated ILL’s auditory drills; students learned languages while examining their cultural contexts.

“Lado’s a big deal in the language teaching and linguistics worlds, and he’s ours,” Zsiga says.

ANCIENT TO MODERN

SLL became the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics within Georgetown College in 1995. FLL includes not only modern languages but also meets strong student interest in several classical languages—including Latin, ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian, known through hieroglyphics.

“It is extremely unusual to be teaching hieroglyphics in North America in 2019,” Osgood says. Georgetown makes it available because historical texts in ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Sanskrit and Arabic, among other languages, are still being discovered.

“We are educating students who will be able to read for themselves what people are saying, in their own words—not just read about what they said,” Zsiga adds.

Georgetown also teaches what are known as “small program” languages, often not widely taught in the U.S. Several are among those recognized by the Department of State as “critical languages” for security and economic development. They include Persian, Turkish, Hindi and Swahili. Georgetown currently ranks No. 1 in the number of students awarded prestigious Critical Language Scholarships by the State Department. See page 32

NO. 1 IN CRITICAL LANGUAGE SCHOLARSHIPS

Georgetown currently ranks No. 1 in the number of students awarded Critical Language Scholarships by the U.S. Department of State. Scholarship awardees spend eight to ten weeks overseas receiving intensive language instruction while also immersing themselves in in-country cultural experiences.

The scholarships are part of a program aimed at increasing the number of Americans studying and mastering foreign languages critical to national security and economic prosperity. Georgetown teaches nine of the 15 critical languages.

“The tremendous success in Critical Language Scholarships is in part a reflection that the students who come to Georgetown are already interested in a global society and have strong language skills,” says Lauren Tuckley, senior associate director of fellowships.

Camille Bismonte, an economics major in the College, is set to graduate in 2021 and was a Critical Language Scholar in Indonesia in 2018, one of two Georgetown students of only 28 scholars in Indonesia. She arrived in Indonesia speaking the language only at a State Department-ranked “novice low” proficiency but left “intermediate high,” which reflects about two years of academic study in eight weeks. Indonesia is also of interest as it is now the fourth-most-populated country and the largest economy in Southeast Asia.

Bismonte’s interests are in the economics of poverty. The country is making huge progress in reducing extreme poverty with policies that may be applicable elsewhere.

Bismonte transferred to Georgetown from the University of Portland. “I never would have heard of the Critical Language scholarships, let alone be awarded one there. This was an amazing and ongoing opportunity that Georgetown fully prepared me for.”

She returned for a year’s fully funded study in Indonesia this fall as a recipient of a Boren Scholarship, funded by the Department of Defense.

Contact: gufa@georgetown.edu.

A UNIQUE APPROACH

To understand what integrating language and culture means, visit an advanced French class taught by Andrew Sobanet, Professor of French and Francophone Studies. Sobanet integrates culture from the first year. “We want to make it so that language isn’t just words on a page,” he says.

Sobanet teaches Modern French literature, including works by the great French poet, dramatist and novelist Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables , The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and other works. Hugo wrote passionately about social conditions, punishment, prisoner rights and the death penalty. “Despair is surrounded by fragile walls, which all open into crime or vice,” he wrote in Les Misérables

“Hugo’s texts are a launching point for us to talk about crime and punishment,” Sobanet says—issues that matter in the world today and that are key among Georgetown’s Jesuit concern for social justice. “We look at contemporary issues and tailor them to Hugo’s texts. It’s not just reading Les Misérables —it’s connecting the work to larger issues.”

All the discussion and writing is in French, and students learn language and culture hand-in-hand.

“The students are with us in teaching this way,” Sobanet says. “It’s work, but it really adds to the intellectual quality of the class for both the professor and student.”

Another example of the department’s emphasis on culture is in part of its name: Francophone Studies—the French-speaking world wherever it is. Likewise, Department of Spanish and Portuguese faculty teach the full reach of those languages around the world, not just a limited canon of European literature.

Sobanet notes that students interested in study abroad are looking beyond Western Europe to Francophone nations. “Students are very interested in this field of study, which in the grand scheme of things is still relatively new,” Sobanet says. “It’s a way of engaging in the whole world.”

CONFRONTING QUESTIONS

When Marcus Dominick (C’14) considered where to attend college, he knew that Georgetown was “renowned for languages and linguistics,” he says. Dominick, who majored in both German and French and Francophone Studies, is now pursuing a doctorate in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and says that Georgetown’s renown is alive and well.

“As I continue my professional development, I’ve come to realize that Georgetown’s academic preparation and faculty mentoring is truly exceptional,” Dominick says. He points to the integration of language and culture in a class taught by French professor Miléna Santoro about FrenchCanadian women writers. Santoro’s approach to writers from the 1960s to 1980s anchors them not only in the literature they produced but also to the broader feminist struggle for respect and autonomy, linking the writers’ inner experiences to the outer political world.

“The abiding value of foreign language, culture and literature departments lies, for me, in their ability to confront us with other ways of naming, thinking and being in the very terms of that other culture, forcing us out of our habitual ways of relating to the world and projecting us out into a new space from which we can reassess personal and societal manners of being,” Dominick says.

“Learning a foreign language means confronting such questions as: What is society, and how do I fit within it? What are my ways of relating to others that I take for granted and assume are unchangeable? What are my society’s assumptions as to what constitutes a good life?”

CONTINUED INNOVATION

FLL’s goal is to bring students to language proficiency, including in Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Persian and Swahili—languages that are particularly challenging for English speakers to learn.

Farima Mostowfi, who created and heads the Persian program, began teaching the first Persian classes at Georgetown in 2006 and has steadily built the program, which now teaches nearly 50 students, with six minoring in Persian.

“Our proficiency goal is as close to native as possible,” she says. “We really want our graduates to be able to communicate in the language.”

Because U.S. students are restricted from travel to Iran, study abroad or immersive language experiences are impossible, making it “even more important to bring language, culture, film, history and poetry into the classroom,” Mostowfi says. Mostowfi also organizes informal events that give students, faculty and the community an opportunity to speak with each other and to share music, poetry and food.

Mostowfi is using contemporary teaching technology to advance students’ education in Persian. Partnering with Peter Janssens of CNDLS—the Center for New Designs

In addition to linguistics* and comparative literature,* Georgetown teaches:

● Arabic*

● Basque

● Catalan

● Chinese*

● Classics* (concentrations in Latin, Greek, Latin and Greek and Classical Studies)

● Ancient Egyptian

● French and Francophone Studies*

● German*

● Modern Greek

● Hebrew

● Italian*

* = Major

● Japanese*

● Korean

● Persian

● Polish

● Portuguese*

● Russian*

● Sanskrit

● Spanish*

● Swahili

● Thai

● Turkish

● Ukrainian

in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown—she also is teaching a “hybrid” class format that brings together students at Georgetown and elsewhere in the U.S. simultaneously. In contrast to recorded content online, the real-time class “gives the same interaction with all the students, whether they are in the room or remote.”

GLOBAL CITIZENS

The study of language is central to Georgetown’s global position and perspective and its mission to educate students to tackle global issues and be part of a global society.

“Language is intimately intertwined with the question: What does it mean to be a global citizen?” says College Dean Christopher Celenza. “The ability to take in and process information, to understand people—language is baked into that.”

Dear Alumni:

In May, we had another highly successful John Carroll Weekend, this year hosted by Boston. It was a wonderful four days with more than 1,300 alumni and friends attending and being inspired by our John Carroll and Patrick Healy awardees.

At the awards banquet, I shared some thoughts as President of the Alumni Association. Boston had last hosted the John Carroll Weekend in 1994, and that anniversary was an opportunity for me to reflect about how the Alumni Association has changed in 25 years and where we are today. I’d like to share some of those thoughts with you now.

The Alumni Association has made a deep commitment to enhancing our global nature, and to supporting diversity and inclusion. This honors where Georgetown already is today—a global university with programs around the world. Alumni living in more than 120 countries reflect this global nature.

When the John Carroll Weekend was in Boston in 1994, the event had been outside the United States only once, in London. Since then, we have gathered abroad four times. Starting in 2013, we’ve also hosted International Alumni Weekends in Doha, Hong Kong and Mexico City.

The Association’s ongoing commitment to inclusion is reflected in many areas, including our leadership. Looking back to 1994, no woman had ever been president of the Alumni Association. Since then, four women have served in that role. And with the appointment last year of Julia Farr (C’88), we welcomed the first woman to serve as Executive Director of the Association.

We’ve created programs targeted to alumnae, including the Women of Georgetown initiative, which launched in 2017 to connect the 83,000-plus alumnae with each other and with the university. We are also now co-sponsors of the universitywide Women’s Forum, which was started at the Law Center in the early 1990s.

Our major events—Homecoming, John Carroll Weekend and Reunion—feature programming that provides a special welcome for alumni of color, our LGBT Hoyas and others. The Alumni Association is for everyone, and our leadership is committed to ensuring diversity and inclusion.

In addition to a robust regional club presence around the world, we are growing networks and alliances based on professional interests. To borrow the words of our executive director Julia Farr, we now link alumni not only by location, but also by vocation. These alliances are bringing together experienced leaders to start-up entrepreneurs to share advice and ideas. They are a great example of the association’s commitment to lifelong learning and connection.

As an Alumni Association, we value change and innovation while honoring the human connection at the heart of our relationships with each other and with the university. I encourage you to stay connected with your fellow alumni through the programs I’ve mentioned and more.

Hoya Saxa!

Richard M. Hluchan (F’71) President, Georgetown University Alumni Association

The Alumni Association has made a commitment to enhancing our global nature, and to supporting diversity and inclusion.

More than a Rivalry

When football Coach Lou Little arrived on the Hilltop in 1924, the program became a campus obsession. Students flocked to see Little’s team dominate the competition. Over the course of his six seasons as coach, Little boasted an impressive 41-12-3 record while also serving as the university’s athletics director. His players at Georgetown included three All-Americans, each of whom went on to be inducted into the Georgetown Athletic Hall of Fame.

Upon leaving Georgetown, Little coached at Columbia University from 1930 to 1956. He was elected president of the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) and served on the college football Rules Committee. His successes earned him induction into the College Football Foundation Hall of Fame in 1960.

Thanks to a new tradition, Little is inspiring Georgetown’s football team once again, nearly a century after he coached

on the Hilltop. Columbia and Georgetown are sponsoring a 10-year series honoring Little’s legendary career. The teams battle for possession of the Lou Little Trophy, which remains on the winning team’s campus for the following year. The series is in its fifth year.

As a student athlete at Georgetown in the 1990s, current Head Coach Rob Sgarlata (C’94, G’12) was taught that he stood on the shoulders of those who came before him. Noting that football has been part of the fabric of Georgetown since the late 19th century, Sgarlata believes the Lou Little Trophy series is a meaningful way to understand the rich history of the program, adding that memorializing Little with a special rivalry game against Columbia honors “what he meant to both schools and helps us to continue that legacy.”

The Lou Little Trophy returned to the Hilltop after the Hoyas' 24-10 victory over the Columbia University Lions on Sept. 28. | Photo: Rafael Suanes

Black Theater Ensemble Tells Stories for Forty Years

While Soyica Colbert (C’01) was not a Black Theater Ensemble member, she was familiar with it through friends who were members. “One of the exciting things about this co-curricular group is that there is now a Department of Performing Arts, which didn’t exist when I was a student.”

Colbert is chair of the Department of Performing Arts, director of Theater and Performance Studies, and professor of African American Studies and Theater and Performance Studies.

“BTE creates a structure that supplements already-existing groups like them, and they ’re able to work together so that there ’s a broader base for mentorship, to support student work and allow what's happening outside of the classroom to merge with the learning that takes place in the classroom.”

Founded in 1979, the Black Theater Ensemble produces the works of Black artists, expands discourse related to the experi-

ence of the Black community and amplifies traditionally underrepresented voices. Students also share song, dance and poetry through coffee-house-style performances.

Fatima Dyfan (C’21), who has been a BTE actor, director and producer, says the work is important because “the depiction of Black people in the canon, the act of portraying Blackness, is perpetuated by tropes of what it is to be Black.”

BTE’s performances encompasses a broad range of works that “gives the opportunity to not only highlight the works of canonical figures like August Wilson, Lynn Nottage, Suzan Lori Parks, but also an opportunity for students’ own voices to emerge,” Colbert says.

In January 2020, BTE will present The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe in collaboration with Nomadic Theatre, another Georgetown co-curricular student-theater group. For information, go to performingarts.georgetown.edu

Yvonne M. Singh (C’82) directed Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf as a fine arts (theater concentration) honors thesis with the newly founded Black Theater Ensemble. The cast included, front row, left to right: Brenda Wright Porter, Tracey Lowe, Angela Prudhomme. Second row, left to right: Susan L. West, Debra Regan, Yvonne M. Singh, Lorette Lee. Third row, left to right: Jackie Copeland, Collette Free. I Photo: Georgetown University Special Collections

Women on the Wall: Honoring an Underappreciated Legacy

The walls of Georgetown’s Leavey Center now tell a wonderful visual story of some of the university’s most inspiring alumnae and female faculty, staff and administrators, thanks to the Women on the Wall project.

The initiative that celebrates and memorializes women on the Hilltop was spearheaded by C.C. Borzilleri (C’19) and the Georgetown Women Alliance. Borzilleri, who served as the organization’s senior fellow, said she was inspired to increase the visibility of influential women at Georgetown after learning about their contributions.

“In many ways, women have largely been left out of Georgetown’s history and the stories that we tell,” Borzilleri says. “This exhibit is really an effort for anyone who walks by to be impressed by these women, and to see women who have made tremendous strides in dynamic fields.”

The exhibit debuted in Hoya Court at the Leavey Center in March 2019. Borzilleri said she is pleased to know that, as it

stands, the exhibit will be a mainstay on campus, where the Georgetown community can be reminded of the contributions and stories of women on the Hilltop.

One of the celebrated alumnae is Artrice Valentine Bader (G’66), the first woman at Georgetown to receive a doctorate in biology.

“It’s a great honor to receive from the university,” Bader says. “C.C.’s two-year effort into this project turned out incredibly. As a woman of color in the field of science, I am happy to be a role model and hope more young people enter the sciences.”

Bader says that she was delighted to learn about the exhibit and was filled with emotion upon seeing her image and accomplishments on the wall.

“To be on the wall of the Leavey Center is wonderful. It’s quite a legacy for me to leave for my grandchildren. It’s certainly made my year.”

Artrice Valentine Bader (G’66) finds her image in the exhibit. Bader, the first woman to earn a doctorate in biology at Georgetown, went on to hold research and administrative positions at the National Institutes of Health.

4.

director of the

program,

including executive vice president for student development.

graduate from the School of Medicine, researched viral links to cancer at the National Institutes of Health.

discovering the Polyomavirus in 1953.

Rita Lenihan, USN (MSFS’45, G’54) directed the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) for four years. She was also assistant chief of naval personnel. 6. Professor of Government Valerie Earle joined Georgetown in 1955 as the first female faculty member in what was then called the business program. Earle helped found and served as the first president the Faculty Senate. In 1972, she became chair of the Department of Government. | Photos: Georgetown University Special Collections

1. Professor of History Dorothy Brown (G’59, G’62) served as department chair,

American Studies

and Faculty Senate president. Brown was Georgetown’s first female provost. 2. Ellen Pollan (C’75), became the first female executive producer of the Mask & Bauble Dramatic Society in 1973. 3. Patricia Rueckel became dean of women in 1961. She had several roles on campus,

Sarah E. Stewart (M’49), the first woman to

She is credited with

5. Capt.

A LIFE-SAVING CALLING

Ebony Marcelle (NHS’05) says that midwives like herself play critical roles in the lives of Black women and their babies. She has dedicated herself to improving their health outcomes through both care and social justice.

Marcelle is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies and the director of midwifery at Community of Hope–Family Health and Birth Center, the only facility of its kind in the nation’s capital. The birth center, located in Ward 5, provides comprehensive services—including reproductive health care, dental examinations, primary and integrated behavioral health care, and housing assistance—and midwifery care for new and expectant mothers.

Marcelle’s “Aha!” career moment happened when speaking to her own midwife.

“She really stressed how midwifery is about women’s empowerment and trying to make sure that patients feel like informed consumers,” Marcelle recalls. “Most importantly, she listened.”

Not all women are afforded the right of being heard in health care, particularly during childbirth and delivery. The stakes are high for women who look like Marcelle; on a national scale, Black women are disproportionately impacted by high rates of maternal mortality and poor health outcomes, which are exacerbated by limited access to quality health care. In March 2019, Marcelle was appointed to DC’s Maternal Mortality Review

Committee to examine the challenges facing Black and brown mothers-to-be.

Addressing the needs of underserved Black women in DC who historically have a deep-seated distrust of health-care providers, Marcelle says she acts with intention and makes a concerted effort to hire people of color and rebuild trust for the Birth Center’s patients.

“It’s about creating a space where they can feel comfortable and see people that look like them,” she says. “To tackle the system, we have to stop blaming women for these poor outcomes.”

Originally from Southern California, Marcelle always knew she wanted to help bring babies into the world. However, at Georgetown she struggled to balance full-time work and classes and planned to exit until an anonymous donor stepped in. Because of Marcelle’s potential within the medical community, the donor offered her a monthly stipend so she could stop working and focus on her classes.

To this day, Marcelle says she doesn’t know who her angel donor was. As one of the few leading midwives in the District, she’s now paying it forward for women who truly need help.

“This is my calling, and the joy of being a midwife is fantastic. Even on my most tired days, I love catching a baby.”

Photo: Lisa Helfert

FAITH IN FABRETTO

While most of his classmates anticipated their first careers after graduation, Kevin Marinacci (C’89) felt a different purpose. Sparked by Georgetown’s value of service, the then-20-year-old ventured with a small group of Hoyas to Nicaragua on an immersive mission trip founded by theology professor Otto Hentz, S.J.

They arrived in Nicaragua during one of the last chapters of the Cold War, fought between the Nicaraguan government and the U.S.-backed Contras. The civil war caused tremendous economic damage and fatalities.

Marinacci and several volunteers worked at the Fabretto Children’s Foundation, established in the 1950s by Padre Rafael Fabretto, a Salesian missionary priest, to provide quality education to desperately underserved children. In March 1990, Fabretto died, leaving a significant void.

“Though I was only going to serve one year as a volunteer, I called home and asked my parents for permission to stay one more year,” Marinacci recalls. “And that was 30 years ago.”

Driven to help, Marinacci started by contacting organizations and individuals—including Hoya friends—for financial and volunteer support.

“Thanks be to God, a lot of good friends and many Hoyas, little by little we began building the organization,” he says. “My father came down, intent on bringing me home, but he caught the bug and got deeply involved.”

Since the summer of 1996, Marinacci has served as the CEO of Fabretto. The organization once housed 500 orphans and now operates nine educational centers and schools and provides substantive support and services to more than 40,000 Nicaraguan youth and families. Fabretto focuses on education, community development, food security and economic entrepreneurship.

The impact of Fabretto still amazes Marinacci. He shares the example of his colleague, Mariela Robles, who is a former foundation student. “She’s now one of the top leaders in our enterprise incubator, helping students and families with business plans and agricultural entrepreneurship. She truly took advantage of the opportunities that our program gave her and ran with them.”

While returning to the Hilltop this spring for his 30th class reunion, he reflected on the newest Georgetown alumni.

“I’m so excited for these new Hoyas,” he says. “The world has many challenges, but they are walking away with the tools the university has given them and the support of older alumni like myself. They shouldn’t be afraid of jumping in. They’re not alone.”

Photo: Lisa Helfert

Biennial Black Alumni Summit Engages Theme of “People. Passion. Impact.”

Gregory Burrill (C’96) had to think carefully about coming back to campus for the Black Alumni Summit (BAS) in September. He’s a substitute teacher in Portland, Oregon, so attending would require sacrifices. He’s happy he came. “I was moved by the quality of the content and events,” he says. “I was wowed.”

The third biennial Black Alumni Summit drew almost 240 Black Hoyas from all classes and schools to reconnect with each other and the university. The summit featured programming with alumni experts on topics of importance to the Black community, networking opportunities and lots of time to socialize and make new connections.

“I’d never been in as big a group of interesting and powerful Black people before,” Burrill says. “People who are doing big things.”

The summit’s theme was “Passion. Purpose. Impact.” It formed the backbone for eight panel discussions on topics ranging from mass incarceration and prison reform to the benefits of executive

coaching and emerging technologies. There was even an opening panel called “What Does It Mean to Be a Hoya?”

“What’s so special about the Black Alumni Summit is a special sense of community that’s reinforced,” says Mannone Butler (B’94, L’99), BAS co-chair. “We are able to share our diverse experiences in ways that are important and impactful,” she adds.

“The big take-away from the Black Alumni Summit was a call to action about engaging this community,” says Eric Woods (B’91), BAS co-founder and co-chair. “Georgetown is our home, and it is our responsibility as Black alumni to engage and steward that relationship.”

Butler says that there is a hunger among Black alums to connect, a belief supported by first-time attendee Gregory Burrill. “I always hoped to deepen my Georgetown connection, and the summit did that,” he says. “I plan to attend my 25th reunion as well.”

Some of the nearly 240 Black Alumni Summit attendees gather for a photo. | Photos: Phil Humnicky, Leslie Kossoff, Rafael Suanes

Black Alumni Summit included eight topical panels featuring alumni experts, such as Friday’s “The Power of Our Dollars.”

A Saturday morning “fireside chat” brings Eleanor Holmes Norton, Congresswoman for the District of Columbia, to the stage for a conversation with President John J. DeGioia.

James “Ches” Chesley (C’75) shares a laugh with panelist Sam Harvey (L’83), advisor for regional projects at Georgetown. The women of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. are back on the Hilltop!

BAS co-chairs Mannone Butler (B’94, L’99) and Eric Woods (B’91) welcome guests at the closing gala.

RIDING FOR ‘DESPERATELY NEEDED SERVICES’

In March 2019, Janne Kouri (B’97) set off from Los Angeles on a cross-country trip. Two months later, crossing under a balloon arch at Healy Gates, he completed his journey— traveling 3,100 miles in an electric wheelchair.

Kouri, a Hall of Fame Hoyas football defensive lineman, had become paralyzed in 2006 after breaking two vertebrae in his neck. He made the LA to DC “Ride for Paralysis” this spring to raise funds and awareness for the six million individuals and wounded service members living with paralysis in the U.S. today.

Kouri’s wife, Susan Moffat, his doctor and his trainers all tried to talk him out of the idea, “but I was at a point in my life when I needed to do this,” he says. “Before the accident, I was adventurous and spontaneous. I needed to recapture that.”

Following his accident, Kouri had struggled to find the rehabilitation resources he needed. He and his wife moved from California to Louisville, Kentucky, to undergo a year of specialized therapy at the Frazier Rehab Institute. To help others like him, Kouri went on to found NextStep, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing progressive, accessible and affordable care. On average, insurance coverage ends after 31 days of hospital-based rehabilitation, leaving the majority of the six million people suffering from paralysis stuck at home with no access to therapy, Kouri says. NextStep now has seven training centers in the U.S. and two international sites.

Ride for Paralysis was inspired when several of Kouri’s friends completed a bike ride from Denver to Los Angeles to raise money for NextStep’s wounded service members scholarship fund. Kouri and his team made stops in 14 cities and countless towns during the ride, providing quality-of-life grants, donating medical equipment and hosting charity events.

The group traveled east on bike trails and country roads but sometimes had to use highway shoulders, leading to “some scary moments with semis whipping by,” he says.

Throughout the trip, Kouri had Hoyas by his side: More than 40 Georgetown alumni and friends were involved, biking beside him for long stretches. Anderson Bell (B’99) was by his side for the entire trip. “The people I met through the football program, the players and the coaching staff—it’s the people who really made the difference in my Georgetown experience.”

Kouri adds that his Hoya friends were key to his initial recovery, which is why he chose the Hilltop as the finish line for his long trek. “Georgetown has been unbelievably supportive of me and my wife,” he says.

The Ride for Paralysis campaign has raised more than $400,000 thus far. “Our next step is to go global,” Kouri says. “These services are desperately needed everywhere.”

Photo: Rafael Suanes

WATER WITH A HEART

When entrepreneur Kimberly Reilly (SLL’95) decided to develop a new, socially responsible business, she focused on the most basic of human needs: water.

Through her research, Reilly discovered that she could make a big impact by making clean water more accessible to people around the world. It was a way to make possible her dream to “uplift women and girls,” she says. Without clean water coming directly into the home, women and girls in developing countries spend hours a day carrying water. “It’s the biggest thing holding girls and women back,” Reilly says. “It keeps girls illiterate and women unable to earn incomes.”

Reilly teamed up with fellow entrepreneur Megan Hayes, her good friend and neighbor in Cohasset, Massachusetts, south of Boston. Together they created Everybody Water, launched earlier this year.

Everybody Water enables consumers to buy water in eco-friendly carton packaging—at the same time supporting water and sanitation infrastructure projects for the world’s poorest communities to transform lives. The company has teamed up with the nonprofit Water1st International, donating a portion of each purchase to the organization’s work.

Reilly and Hayes personally track the projects they support. Currently they’re helping finance projects in two communities in Honduras and next in Bangladesh. Getting water

into the home is critical to a full solution, Reilly stresses. “When there are only hand-pumps in villages, women will still spend their time transporting water. We want them to have the resource of time to do other things.”

The water system and sanitation projects they fund use local engineers, contractors and merchants to plan, organize and build, so the impact on the community is sustainable.

“We are fortunate to live in bubbles where we can’t even imagine people have these struggles over something so basic,” Reilly says. “Everybody Water is engaging people on this topic when they are buying a carton of water— and getting them excited to be part of the solution in an everyday way.”

Everybody Water is already in more than 200 markets and major hotels in New England. Reilly has found that buyers are eager for an alternative to plastic and identify with socially conscious brands. The paper in the paperboard carton is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council; the cap is made from sugarcane. The carton is 100 percent recyclable. The water itself is sourced from a community system in Saline, Michigan, and is filtered by reverse osmosis.

“The Georgetown community is an inspiring group of mindful people,” Reilly says. “What I love is that the university is driven by Jesuit values across disciplines. It makes me proud that what Everybody Water is doing is aligned with those values.”

Photo: An LeFevre/AnOriginal Photography

What do you get when Georgetown Athletics and Jack the Bulldog join forces with the Law Center, the Georgetown University Alumni Association and the Georgetown Entertainment and Media Alliance? An incredible Hoya road trip across the East and Midwest, bringing together alumni, parents and friends for exciting Big East Tournament basketball-watch parties, intriguing lectures and memorable networking happy hours.

In its premiere year, “Hit The Road Jack” brought Blue and Gray pride to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee, as the men’s basketball team journeyed to the Big East Championship. Along the way, alumni professionals in the fields of law and sports led thought-provoking panels and informal chats.

MAIN CAMPUS

PHILADELPHIA

PITTSBURGH

MILWAUKEE

CHICAGO

DETROIT

MILWAUKEE

DETROIT

More Than a Meal

Noobtsaa Philip Vang (MBA’16) craved his mother’s cooking. It was 2014, and he had just moved to DC to start his MBA at the McDonough School of Business. He missed the taste and comfort of the Northern Lao and Hmong food that his mother made back home in Minnesota. There had to be a way for him to connect with a home chef in DC.

“The best meals are at someone’s house, where you see them cooking, putting love and passion into the food,” he says. Vang decided to take matters into his own hands. Inspired by the emphasis on social impact that he’d found at Georgetown McDonough and workshopped in his courses, he created Foodhini—a Washington, DC, online restaurant that connects immigrant and refugee chefs directly with customers.

Now in its third year of operation, Foodhini offers more than a meal. It focuses on “the power of food to create sustainable jobs and opportunities in communities of the diaspora,” Vang says. It’s a community he knows well.

Vang’s parents came to the United States from Laos as Hmong refugees after the secret war in Laos, a proxy war that was started when the CIA recruited Hmong soldiers to fight the communist Lao, which supported the Vietcong during the Vietnam War. His family settled in Minnesota, which is now home to a very large Hmong community. He grew up seeing firsthand the chal-

lenges that refugees face in trying to start a new life. His parents had limited education and English-language skills and worked multiple jobs to provide for the family.

Vang praises his mother’s cooking, with a special shout-out to her “bangin’” egg rolls, but starting a food-related business centered around her food was wildly beyond his parents’ financial and physical means.

Vang came to Georgetown McDonough because of the location and its emphasis on social impact. “DC’s the epicenter of everything if you want to be in social impact,” he says. But Vang didn’t see himself working in a traditional business, let alone starting his own business.

“What caught me was the social entrepreneurship emphasis that I felt at McDonough,” he says. “You are surrounded by people who want to fix certain problems the world is facing. It’s a place where you can dream up how you see the world and its potential. You feel like everything is possible,” he says. “That’s what’s really special about Georgetown.”

One of the reasons Vang chose McDonough was the reputation of adjunct professor Melissa Bradley (B’89), who teaches impact investing and social entrepreneurship, among other topics. “I took her class as soon as I could take an elective,” Vang says. The structure of the course was fundamental to where he is today:

Noobtsaa Philip Vang (MBA’16) created Foodhini, an online restaurant, to connect immigrant and refugee chefs in Washington, DC, directly with customers. Foodhini chefs cook the foods of their home countries fresh daily for in-home delivery. | Photos: Rafael Suanes

Bradley has students spend the class working on an idea that motivates them.

“It was a great place to try things because you are free to fail,” Vang says. “It’s a safe place.”

“Noobtsaa’s passion was obvious,” Bradley says. “His fond memories of his mom, coupled with his commitment to helping other immigrants in the food space, was clearly a competitive advantage for him.”

With the help of fellow MBA students, Vang rolled out the first iteration of the Foodhini concept at the annual Startup Hoyas pitch competition. Foodhini draws its name from “food” and famed entertainer Harry Houdini, who dazzled audiences with his stage performances of illusion and magic. Vang began beta testing in 2015 and continued throughout until he graduated in May 2016 and launched in the fall 2016 while a fellow at the nearby Halcyon Incubator. With no food or business experience, he worked his own magic and made Foodhini a reality. Operating first out of a shared commercial kitchen space in DC, he’s now in his own location with a catering-size kitchen in the back. “It’s grown into something I didn’t expect,” he says.

Here’s how Foodhini works: go to Foodhini.com, pick and choose the dishes you want from each of the different chefs, choose a delivery date and time and wait for it to arrive at your

door. Vang currently has four chefs on his team who work in the Foodhini kitchen, making meals to order. Foodhini has a curated multicultural online menu. Customers order by 8:00 p.m. for dinner delivery the following day. Chefs cook dishes fresh every day and the menus are based on the foods of their home countries—Eritrea, Laos, Iran and Syria.

Vang admits to growing pains, including some humorous stories about his own cooking failures, but “we’re building a place that people feel proud of,” he says.

“Our chefs don’t come here just for the paycheck,” he adds. “They come for the meaning and the mission.

Vang’s primary role as CEO is to manage the high-level strategy and vision of the business: marketing, partnerships, fundraising, financials and growth. In addition to the online space, Foodhini also offers traditional catering and recently launched their first mini-restaurant inside of the Whole Foods grocery in Foggy Bottom, with more retail locations on the way. The business demand may soon create an opportunity for more chefs, and Vang works with local immigrant and refugee assistance organizations to identify potential candidates.

Vang says the inspiration behind Foodhini is his mother, who he believes could have been a great restaurateur if she had the resources. Now he’s giving others the chance she never had.

Lives Well Lived honors a few alumni who have recently passed away with short obituaries. We share with you these portraits of alumni beyond the headlines who have made an indelible impact living day to day.

You can find an In Memoriam list at alumni.georgetown.edu/in-memoriam

Cedric Asiavugwa (L’19)

If you were to glance at Cedric Asiavugwa’s appointment calendar, you would marvel that with his array of jobs and service activities he would have any time left for law school. Yet he was a top student and scholar and had been committed to a life of service since an early age. A third-year law student, he planned to return to his native Kenya to pursue a career promoting the rights of refugees. Tragically, his life was cut short on Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, which crashed near Addis Ababa on March 10. He was 32.

In addition to law school, Asiavugwa served as residential minister in New South residence hall and worked in the Office of Campus Ministry, where he offered everyone a warm smile and ready ear. He also was the assistant director of advancement for St. Aloysius Gonzaga Secondary School, a free high school in Nairobi for orphans living with HIV/AIDS.

Asiavugwa was a Blume Public Interest Law Scholar and a Pedro Arrupe Scholar, studying for a J.D./LLM degree in International Business and Economic Law. He also assisted refugee clients seeking asylum in the U.S. for the Center for Applied Legal Studies clinic.

He is survived by his fiancée and 1-year-old son.

Karen Anne Foley Kelly (B’78)

A trailblazer as an undergraduate business student at Georgetown, Karen Anne Foley Kelly (B’78) went on to work as one of the few female stockbrokers at Merrill Lynch in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. There she met her husband, Michael Kelly, with whom she raised three children: Michael Jr., Mary, and Thomas.

“My mother was an original Mary Poppins, she was practically perfect in every way,” said Michael. “Every night she read aloud to us children, inspiring wonder and truth with magisterial delivery.”

Kelly shared her love of literature with several generations of children as a librarian at St. Mary School (now the Basilica of St. Mary School) in Alexandria. Starting out as a parent volunteer, she eventually became head librarian—earning her master’s degree in library science at Catholic University while working full time.

Kelly’s faith and her joy in the beauties of life sustained her through her battle with cancer. Surrounded by family, she passed away on March 16, 2019, at the home of her brother Dr. John Foley and his wife, Dr. Lakshmi Vaidyanathan. She is also survived by her mother, Eileen Foley, her siblings Thomas and Jeanne and their families. Her father, John P. Foley (C’53), died in 2018.

Arthur Bernard Calcagnini (C’54)

Over the years, Arthur Calcagnini (C’54) and his beloved wife, Nancy, received thousands of thank-you letters from the Hoya community expressing gratitude for the couple’s extraordinary gifts—particularly for undergraduate scholarships and the Office of Mission and Ministry.

Committed to the principles of Ignatian spirituality, Calcagnini frequently spoke with students at the retreats. In 2013, he fulfilled a dream with the completion of the Calcagnini Contemplative Center, situated on 55 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains. “Part of this story is not only the transformation of the students, but the transformation of the giver,” he said.

A recipient of Georgetown’s John Carroll Award in 1994, he served on the university’s Board of Directors, Board of Regents, and Board of Governors.

“Arthur’s legacy will thrive in and through the Campus Ministry programs he endowed, the retreats he supported and the gorgeous mountaintop campus he made possible. He will remain a key part of Georgetown’s commitment to being a Catholic home for people of all faiths,” said Rev. Mark Bosco, S.J., Ph.D., vice president of Mission and Ministry.

Calcagnini died on June 12. He is survived by Nancy, his children Arthur III (C’85), Christina (L’93), Regina (L’94) and Victoria (Parent’05), as well as 12 grandchildren.

George A. Tralka Sr., M.D. (C’49, M’56)

Dr. George Tralka spent most of his career practicing internal medicine in Vienna, Virginia. “He was an old-fashioned doctor,” says his son, George Jr. “When patients came to see him, first he would just talk and listen and ask questions.”

After retiring from his practice, Tralka finished his career in civilian health care at the Pentagon—coming full circle from his World War II military service. At age 17, Tralka had signed up for the Army Specialized Training Program and went on to serve in the 103rd Infantry Division in Germany and Austria. Setting his sights on Georgetown following the war, he hitchhiked from his hometown of Amsterdam, New York, to DC to visit campus.

Tralka had many interests, including drawing satirical cartoons, which appeared in his undergraduate and medical school yearbooks. Even as he got older, he “didn’t like to sit still or stop reading or learning,” says George Jr. “He was fabulous with technology,” he adds, noting his father’s attachment to his iPad and Alexa and the films he’d make of his global travels.

Tralka died on May 14 from pancreatic cancer. He was predeceased by his wife, Judith.

In Transition

by Madeline Vitek Memenza, Associate Director, Campus Ministry

If there’s a thread in the work that I have done at Georgetown, it’s been working with students through transitions in their lives, which has been a fascinating lens through which to view the Georgetown experience.

In my first six years here, I worked exclusively with firstyear students. I ran a residence hall, and then I ran the Escape retreat program, a nondenominational overnight getaway for first-year and transfer students that provides a time for reflection. Our retreats are at the beautiful Calcagnini Contemplative Center about an hour from campus, which really gives a sense of being away.

We focus so much on the Georgetown experience while students are having it. But Escape explores what it means to transition into Georgetown. Now I run our senior retreat, and I am spending a lot of time thinking about what it means to transition out of Georgetown.

The senior retreat is fantastic. It’s another liminal space. Students have just finished their last semester and last finals but they haven’t graduated yet. It starts on a Sunday evening as senior week is about to begin, which is incredibly fun and exciting, but I think it ’s also hectic and stressful in its own way.

About 60 to 70 students attend the senior retreat overnights. They introduce themselves and say what they study. But really, it’s already “studied” because it’s done now. I remind them that they are done being undergraduates. There can be some groans around the room and, of course, excitement. The retreat asks them, “What are you going to carry with you from Georgetown? What is going to last?”

What are you going to carry with you from Georgetown? What is going to last?

What is the experience of seniors as they graduate? You’re about to go into a world where Georgetown’s emphasis on cura personalis , on reflection, on the value that who you are is just as important as what you do. These values may or may not be present in the space you’re going to occupy after you leave. More likely, it will not be a central focus.

This transition is a significant part of students’ Georgetown experience, not separate from it. We often hear from alumni who share that they didn’t realize what it meant to leave Georgetown. They are working in a liminal space—the “in-between” space—of “Who am I as I’m leaving Georgetown?”

For the most part, our students eat, work and play on and near campus. That’s their locus. Georgetown is an incredibly tight-knit community—it’s a specific and distinct culture, even in the higher-education space. Now they are moving all over the country—and internationally—and they are starting to think about what that means for the close friendships they’ve made here. They are thinking about who they want to be. What will they carry? Is it still an ability to listen and cultivate a sense of interiority even though they aren’t at 37th and O anymore?

Graduating is incredibly important for students. And it is also a time when they are starting over, very much like when they arrived on campus. It’s a big transition. What I love about Georgetown is that I get to accompany students over their four years of transition— what a privilege.