Name

Bianca Uribe

Hometown

New York City

Major

Minor

Research activity

Received both the Kalorama Fellowship and the Scott MacPherson Stapleton Award.

Developed an independent research project that was conducted internationally in various towns in Peru and domestically in the NYC and DMV areas. The project focused on how Afro-Peruvians (and Afro-Latinos in the US) develop informal systems of healing in response to inadequate health care systems. It was found that health care and treatment can be culturally specific for marginalized communities and how institutions in power need to build cultural competency in order to ensure successful community outreach.

Most influential professors

, , and 

Campus and community activities

Student of Color Alliance (SOCA) Co-chair (2015-2016)

Spanish & Portuguese Club – Director of Publicity (2015-2016)

Beeck Center – GU Impacts Fellow in Lima, Peru (2017)

Post-college jobs/accomplishments

I got married on October 13, 2018.

Advice for other students

Don’t feel pressured by other people’s timelines and societal expectations of success. Build your own timeline of success. All that is meant for you will come your way if you are intentional and deliberate in your actions.

How has your curriculum influenced your career plans

As an Anthropology major with a Portuguese minor at Georgetown, I’ve learned that looking outward often helps in understanding what is within. To me, being a Foreign Service Officer means deepening one’s knowledge of other cultures and nations to further understand our own. I was given the opportunity to learn this at Georgetown, an institution that promotes international service through Jesuit values, such as being a “woman or man for others”. There I was able to strengthen my love of studying and apply my learning in both Latin America and Africa.

Life goals

To become a successful, intersectional, thoughtful and critical U.S Diplomat with years of service in Latin America and Africa. And to make my mother proud.

Favorite spot on campus

The ICC. I had most of my classes there and worked for four years at the African Studies Program.

Maglieri, a Ridgefield, Conn. native, is the only Georgetown undergraduate to win a 2018 Luce Program award. Four other Georgetown students received Luce Program honors, all graduate students in the Department of Chemistry: Jeneffer England, Dorothy Jones, Taylor Watts, and Jen Werner.

We caught up with Maglieri, who also has a minor in Russian, to discuss her time on the Hilltop, her research on using dyes to identify chemical interactions, and her goals for the future.

How did you find Georgetown?

I found Georgetown during my college search because it had strong programs in the physics and Russian departments. I felt it would be the right environment for me when I visited, and I appreciated the idea of a supportive college community. I was also able to speak with the physics department, and I was eager to learn in that setting.

How did you find out about the CBL Program?

I had been participating in the Georgetown Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (GUROP), and I wished to continue working in my most recent field of research over the summer. Professor Edward Van Keuren, in whose lab I worked, nominated me for the CBL Program as a Clare Boothe Luce Summer Research Scholar to support my continued research over the summer.

During the summer, with the support of Professor Van Keuren and Professor Amy Liu, I received the Clare Boothe Luce Scholarship for 2018-2019. GUROP Director Sonia Jacobson helped by submitting materials and relaying information on the decisions of the Luce Program.

Tell us about your research.

Throughout the summer and this upcoming academic year, I am conducting research in the Van Keuren Lab with Professor Van Keuren. My research uses solvatochromic dyes to calculate parameters of interaction for solvents, polymers, and powders, in order to predict interactions between these chemicals and choose components for optimal dispersion.

How do you expect this award to help your research career?

Thanks to the support of the Clare Boothe Luce Summer Research Scholarship, I was able to continue this research over the summer and through my senior year. By the end of that time, I hope to have a strong foothold in the research, having obtained data that will focus my efforts for my senior thesis. I will have the benefit of a more comprehensive research experience to prepare me for the future.

What are your future plans?

I intend to attend a Ph.D. program in physics and to pursue a career in research.

What have you learned in your first year at Georgetown?

One of the most notable aspects of my first year was getting a sense of Georgetown University and the ������̳. There’s this sentiment — beyond affection, it’s a devotion to Georgetown. A lot of it is rooted in our Jesuit, Catholic identity, with its heritage of service and social justice. That all would’ve been hard for me to understand without experiencing it, so a lot of the first year had to do with getting to know that aspect of campus life.

A second thing that was really meaningful was getting to know all our wonderful faculty members. We have 26 academic departments and 12 interdisciplinary programs in the ������̳. It’s been great seeing this vast diversity of interests that are represented in the ������̳’s faculty.

I’ve also really enjoyed discovering just how central the ������̳ is to the Georgetown experience. Our vast array of disciplines — humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences — are central in so many ways to the university’s outstanding culture of research and teaching.

What should returning students expect in the next year?

We’ve come to the conclusion in the Dean’s Office that one of the best ways for students to learn is to do so actively and experientially. So we spent some time last year doing a survey of undergraduate research — where it’s being done, how it’s being done, and so on. This year, we’re planning on taking the results of that survey and using it to inform how we expand research opportunities for our students.

Another thing that a lot of us have been confronted with — and our students and alumni will be confronted with as well — is the problem of information literacy. How do you make meaning when there are so many forms of media through which information comes to you? My hope is that we can think collectively in the ������̳ — with the aid of our excellent academic departments — on how we can do more now to prepare our students to understand the modern media ecosystem. So I’m hoping to engage people more on that front.

Finally, the student experience is incredibly important to us at the ������̳, so we’ve restructured our office to better serve students. Sue Lorenson has taken on a new role as Vice Dean, where she’ll help shape the future of the undergraduate experience, and we’ve added new academic advisors to ensure our students get the attention they need.

What will you be teaching this fall?

I’m teaching an Ignatius Seminar called “Thinking Through Writing.” We’ll be meeting weekly in the in Lauinger library. It’s a seminar with a few different purposes.

First, we’ll be talking about intellectual history — the history of the way scholars think, and what they’ve thought about over time, from the era of Plato to the era of the Italian Renaissance.

But an underlying theme of the course is to see how the enterprise of writing inflected the thinking of the people we’ll be studying. What did it mean to write on papyrus? To dictate your work to someone else? To write on an early codex? We’re thinking about how the medium a person works with inflects how they express themselves — and maybe imposes channels and limits on how they think.

The third purpose is for students to come away with a deeper reflection not only on the issues our thinkers talk about, but also on the linking of intellectual history and the history of media. They’ll look at how changes in how we store information affect their own writing, and their own thinking. So we’ll look at papyri, replicas of papyri, early manuscripts, and early printed books. We’ll even make some field trips to places like the and the .

Do you have any messages for incoming students?

Take a breath. You’re here. Reach out and meet people. Don’t forget that your professors really want to hear from you. Some of these field-leading scholars are teaching your classes — go to their office hours. Get to know them from day one.

Remember that you’re in one of the greatest capital cities on Earth. There’s a lot to do here on our campus, but don’t forget that there’s a lot to do in the city of Washington, D.C. as well. Take a trip to one of the Smithsonian museums — they’re free. Visit the Library of Congress and take a look at what they have. Don’t lose that opportunity to be integrated into the city, because it’s such an asset to what we have here.

Get to know a Jesuit. This is apart from any questions about personal faith — just reach out and get to know that part of our university’s heritage. The more you’re here, the more you’ll see that the Jesuit tradition is part of everything we do. It has a meaningful but not always visible imprint here, and the more you can identify that, the better off you’ll be.

Interview conducted by Patrick Curran and edited for length and clarity.

Edelstein took a unique approach to the theory of great power behavior, focusing on the difference between short- and long-term time horizons and decision-making in the face of uncertainty. When do states cooperate with rising powers for short-term gain, and when do they seek to constrain those powers?

As ongoing events call the longstanding international political order into question, we caught up with Prof. Edelstein this week to discuss his research, the inspiration for his book, and how his findings can help us understand the modern era.

What inspired you to write Over the Horizon?

Its origins were in thinking about the relationship between the United States in China, in particular over the last 20 years or so. The prediction that a lot of people had was that the United States might start to act in ways to constrain China’s growth and try and prevent it from becoming a threat to the U.S.

I saw that and thought that the U.S. was actually trying to cooperate with China in a lot of ways. The argument in the book has to do with time horizons and how states think about the short term vs. the long term.

What evidence do you draw from?

The empirical material is looking at past cases of rising great powers to see if we find anything in the past relationships between rising and declining powers in those past cases that might validate the theoretical argument that I was making, suggesting that it might apply to the Sino-American case.

What’s the biggest contribution this book makes to international relations literature?

I think the biggest theoretical contribution is attention to temporal dynamics in international politics. There are various places where there have been implicit claims about how states value the short term vs. the long term, and how that might affect their behavior.

I think my book is the first to really make those claims more explicit and think about the implication for those time horizons for the way that states behave. I like to think that I’ve identified an additional dimension along which states make foreign policy decisions that hadn’t really been given much attention before.

In researching and writing, was there anything that surprised you?

Well, the biggest puzzle was what motivated me to write the book. I started to look at and think harder about different cases and even looking at the modern literature on the Sino-American relationship, we’ve been conditioned to expect that rising and declining powers will become competitive and conflictual.

What I discovered — and what really motivates the book, in some ways — is that if you go back in history and look especially at the early parts of these relationships, there’s actually a lot of cooperation. We didn’t have a good explanation for that! So what the book tries to do is both identify that cooperation — which some people find surprising — and explain why it happens.

Are there other modern examples of situations where insights from Over the Horizon could be useful?

The book is about great powers, security dynamics, war and peace, all of that. But one of my hopes for the book is that the logic of the argument has implications across a broad set of issues. You could think about environmental policy — are states willing to pay a short-term cost to protect the environment in the long term? Think about arms transfers — states may be willing to sell arms to other states for a short-term benefit, but that has long-term consequences. Think about the financial world — the ways in which states act to constrain the ability of central banks to make decisions might benefit them in the short term but have adverse long-term consequences.

Since I’ve identified time horizons as a critical variable in international politics, I have to plead guilty to seeing them everywhere. Present me with an issue and I can tell you a time-horizons-based story about the decisions that are being made there.

Has anything that’s happened since you finished the book bolstered or called into question your theories?

For myself and pretty much everyone who studies international politics, the Trump administration has been a really interesting case study. Taking an academic point of detachment and leaving personal politics and everything else aside, it’s fascinating to watch a leader who, in my view, has very short-term time horizons and is focused on producing results that will be immediately beneficial for him, and how that affects the type of foreign policy decisions the U.S. makes.

The logic of my argument suggests that the U.S. would have a pretty short time horizon no matter what. It sees threats on the horizon — a rising China, a resurgent Russia — and that suggests the U.S. would be focused on securing itself in the short term more than the long term. My sense is that President Trump has exacerbated that because of his own personal inclinations. One of the great questions in the book — that I don’t have an answer for, but I think Trump has shone a light on — is whether we should talk about a state having certain time horizons or a particular leader having his or her own time horizons. In the case of Trump, we can talk about either.

Interview conducted by Patrick Curran and edited for length and clarity.

Hockfield received her Ph.D. in anatomy (concentrating in neurobiology) at Georgetown’s and subsequently researched at the and at the . Her research identified proteins that play a role in activity-dependent brain development. She moved into academic administration while teaching at , eventually serving as dean of the graduate school and university provost.

A pioneer in both neurobiology and academic administration, Hockfield became the first woman president of MIT in 2004, holding the office until 2012. She remains a member of the MIT faculty today and serves as Chair of the AAAS, the largest general scientific membership society in the world.

We caught up with Hockfield last week to discuss her career, the role of the modern university, her advice for undergraduates, and more.

What led you to pursue a career in the natural sciences? In neurobiology?

I loved science from as early as I can remember. In my junior year of college, I took a course in cell biology, and that led me to a job between college and grad school in a neurobiology lab. It just fascinated me.

What brought you to Georgetown for graduate school?

You admitted me! The offer from Georgetown came with two important components. The first was a stipend to get me started, which was very helpful. Even more importantly, they gave me the opportunity to get started right away. Georgetown let me start off-cycle, in January, which was unusual. They also continued to offer me an inordinate amount of flexibility in my research.

The chairman of my department told me about an inquiry for a summer intern from a lab at the . That lab became the place where I did my research, whereas most graduate students conduct all their research on the Georgetown campus. I was lucky that my advisor, , had an affiliation with Georgetown.

Do you have a favorite experience or memory from your time here?

Going to Georgetown was a transformational experience for me in so many ways — it’s where I really learned how to learn. The course that stands out still is gross anatomy, which I had dreaded going in. But that’s where I learned how to make sense of things for myself.

I also learned to teach and to love teaching, as it was a requirement at the graduate program. I entered the program thinking I wouldn’t enjoy it, and I discovered something new about myself — that I really loved teaching.

As a trailblazing woman in a historically male-dominated field, what advice do you have for aspiring women scientists?

As I reflect on how I navigated the difficulties, the best advice I have is to stay focused on your purpose, on your mission. What I hope for all the graduates is that they will find their calling. It makes it so much easier to stand up for yourself and your work if you know that you have a mission.

What inspired you to move into academic administration?

It was my experience at Georgetown, actually. I emerged from Georgetown as a scientist, in the classic solo scientist model. But later I realized that a huge number of people at Georgetown had created conditions that encouraged independent scholarship and brought people together in productive ways. I hadn’t anticipated moving to academic leadership, but when asked at Yale, I realized I could and should shoulder the responsibility of strengthening the student experience.

What should be the biggest priorities for modern institutions of higher education?

I still have a canonical view of the role of a university. I think these institutions need to create new opportunities for scholarship, using the catalytic mix of education and research to create educational and research opportunities for as broad a coalition as they can. Universities foster individual development and exploration, which creates benefits for society as a whole.

Why is the AAAS important today?

The theme that captures the role of the AAAS is what our CEO Rush Holt has articulated: We are a force for science in the world. Science provides a foundation for all the technologies we enjoy — all of today’s advanced products, pharmaceuticals, and devices can be traced back to a discovery in fundamental research. When you think about meeting our current and future needs of food, energy, medicine, transportation, or communication, the needed advances will all draw on discoveries from basic scientific research.

The scientific enterprise rests on shared values: That evidence matters, that we search for truth independent of our individual background, that we seek out explanations of the world around us, that the human mind has an indomitable desire to make the world a better place.

What don’t a lot of people know about you?

I was an anatomist from my earliest days, and I used to dissect anything that came my way — my mother’s iron, my wristwatch, my neighbor’s pneumatic door closer. Occasionally I could reassemble them, but usually not. I left this trail of debris behind me, and I didn’t appreciate that it was unusual. Happily, I found a more productive use for that tendency!

Interview conducted by Patrick Curran and edited for length and clarity.

April 4, 2018 — Few people in history can claim to know Georgetown as well as Professor Margaret Hall.

Prof. Hall retired from teaching this spring after spending more than 50 years on the Hilltop, including 47 as a full-time professor in the Department of Sociology. One of the first women to be granted tenure at Georgetown, she served as department chair on two separate occasions and also directed the women’s studies program. Her research focused on social intelligence and the social construction of identity and behavior.

We caught up with Prof. Hall to talk about her impressive career at Georgetown, the evolution of her discipline, and her advice for today’s students.

How did you make the decision to get into teaching?

My mother tells me I played teacher with my dolls, so I think it was a long, deep-seated quest on my part to do something with people who could learn from me.

What brought you to Georgetown?

I married an American in London and followed his career for most of my career. It was really the learning process that interested me, and as a social scientist, I wanted to change something in the world. It seemed very productive for what I had in mind, trying to do something about social intelligence.

You said you wanted to change something about the world. Can you expound on that?

I bumped into almost inexplicable examples of pain. I was a privileged young kid, an only child who saw a lot of poverty in my town, Manchester, a city of the industrial revolution. It was a poor, working-class area, but I wasn’t in the poor part. The gap in resources grabbed me.

To what extent can one change what is given at the turning points in life? What drew me in was how I had a greater sense of control over my life, and I wanted to pass that on. I couldn’t perform miracles, but I could change lives in ways that mattered.

Talk about your own research and how the field of sociology has evolved.

There’s certainly more multidisciplinary work in research areas — you can’t get away with only being a member of a minor or less-resourced discipline. You need to cross boundaries and integrate research if you want to do something substantial.

There was no sociology department at all when we first came here, so we had our parallel development as a department. We tried to find meaningful curricula — we always tried to do something new, something traditional, something individual and something as a group. It’s been a great challenge.

I think my own research specialty in social intelligence is just an example of new ways to approach studying and problem-solving. The discipline of sociology at Georgetown is the place where we do this kind of new thinking.

What has changed on the Hilltop since you started?

The increase in residential accommodation available is important — I think students are more able to do evening activities and projects than they were before. Beautiful buildings.

But there’s a kind of “inside change” in how the students think, not just the “outside change” of things like new buildings. We have to see the link here to science — not just science that we learn in the classroom, but science in society. We were in a search for a description, and now it’s a search for an explanation.

What’s stayed the same?

Georgetown has a presence. It’s a very reassuring presence, and it’s good to be able to get together with others in ways that would make major differences. I never thought that parts of society in people’s lifetimes would be subject to these pressures.

What’s your favorite memory from Georgetown?

It isn’t a single memory, but it’s the process of becoming more American. I was born in Manchester and came over in ’63, having married an American sweetheart. It helped make me more American to come to Georgetown, go through ceremonies like graduation, and really feel part of the country. That happened through the business of Georgetown.

Any advice for sociology students today?

One of my hardest problems with students is the attitude of ‘What can you do? You can’t do anything.’ Well, you’ve got to do something. We’ve got to assume this responsibility ourselves.

You just need to start the first few steps of the journey toward your interests or ambitions. You can’t leave all your other responsibilities alone, but you can start by taking charge of a small part of a project, then a deeper part of the project. I always tried to get students interested in the human responsibility for changing the world.

Once at a ������̳ Executive Council meeting, we were doing a rewrite of the Georgetown mission statement. We had a discussion on the role of change and participation, and I said it can’t just say “participation,” it has to focus on an “active participation.” And that phrase is still there today.

Interview conducted by Patrick Curran and edited for length and clarity.

March 31, 2018 — We have spent this Women’s History Month celebrating the work of the women who make Georgetown ������̳ the intellectually vibrant community it is today. To mark the conclusion of the month, we caught up this week with of the and of the  to discuss their latest projects, the state of women in academia and more.

What’s the primary focus of your research right now?

Janet Mann: I direct two long-term studies of wild bottlenose dolphins: One in , and another, launched in 2015, on wild bottlenose dolphins in the .

­

For 31 years, I have been studying wild bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia. This long-term project has followed over 1700 individual dolphins from birth to death. We study their behavior, ecology, reproduction, life history, health, genetics, and social bonds. Dolphins have a very long period of dependency — sometimes nursing for up to 8 years — and it takes a young dolphin many years to acquire important hunting and social skills for survival.

Right now, we are focusing on several key areas. First, graduate student Caitlin Karniski is studying reproductive senescence in wild bottlenose dolphins and trying to understand how females adjust their behavior and investments with age. Graduate student Madison Miketa is focusing on the impact of extreme climate events on bottlenose dolphin behavior and fitness. Specifically, she is examining how dolphins were impacted by an extreme heat wave that lasted for 10 weeks in 2010-11 and destroyed ~80% of seagrass beds, which are critical hunting grounds for dolphins.  Madison is also examining the stability of long-term social bonds between adult females and what these bonds are based on. Taylor Cook, another grad student, is interested in dolphin “personality”, formally called “social phenotype” and is finding that dolphins have stable tendencies to be solitary or gregarious from infancy to adulthood.

Post-doctoral scientist Dr. Ewa Krzyszczyk is studying juvenile females and how they navigate the period between infancy and adulthood, and post-doctoral scientist Dr. Robert Rankin is examining network dynamics and what network changes predict death in dolphins.

Undergraduates are also working on projects. Sarah Powell, a senior, has just published a paper on poxvirus in dolphins in Science for the Total Environment. Ali Galezo (C’17) just published a paper on sex segregation in bottlenose dolphins in the journal Behavioral Ecology and is working on a second paper. She will pursue a Ph.D. at Duke University beginning this fall. I am working on the development of sponge tool-use in wild bottlenose dolphins, and what factors help explain why daughters become tool-users but nearly half of sons do not.

The Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project focuses on several key questions: What is the seasonal distribution and abundance of dolphins in the Potomac? Where do they winter? Why are they coming into the Chesapeake and Potomac? We have a number of outreach and citizen science projects planned.

Garance Genicot: An important theme in my current research is inequality. I am writing a review on Aspirations with , following up on our paper “Aspirations and Inequality” published in Econometrica in 2017. We have developed a theory of socially determined ‘aspirations.’ Aspirations are goals that individuals have for their children’s future and parents gain additional satisfaction when their children’s income surpasses their aspirations. In our model, aspirations impact investments people make and therefore the income distributions. Reasonable aspirations motivate parental investments into their children, but aspirations that are too high frustrate instead of inspire. The income distribution itself affects aspirations. People look around themselves and their aspirations level are determined by what others have. Our paper explores the relationship between aspirations, growth and widening inequality. We show how inequality can be self-fulfilling and how aspirations can generate ever-expanding inequality.

In another project, working with and at Georgetown and , we explore the incentives that different political systems give to politicians competing for votes to allocate governmental resources unequally to localities. We contrast different electoral systems — in particular majoritarian and proportional representation systems — and identify a new effect.  We call this the “Sprinkling Effect” and show that it can give incentives to politicians to geographically target some localities that are more electorally sensitive in proportional representation systems than in majoritarian systems. This is in contrast with the conventional wisdom that majoritarian systems give more incentives to politicians to treat localities unequally. We test the predictions of our model using the nightlight data —satellite images of nighttime light density across geographies — as a measure of government intervention.

Why is your research important?

JM: Much of what we know about dolphins worldwide comes from our research. They are the ‘mind in the waters’. Next to humans, dolphins have the largest brain size relative to body size. What are they doing with those brains?

Numerous communities benefit from our research: stakeholders (fishers, recreational and tourism industry), educators, students, scientists, and the public generally. Dolphins are excellent bioindicator species. They are visible indicators of ecosystem health. Dolphins are excellent umbrella and flagship species that can strengthen efforts to protect and conserve critical ecosystems (in Shark Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in the Chesapeake-Potomac, the largest and one of the most productive estuaries in the U.S.). Dolphins meet the flagship and umbrella criteria because they are relatively accessible, have anthropomorphic features that capture the public’s imagination, have large body sizes, and have ranges with extensive habitat complexity and biodiversity. Dolphins are an excellent way to increase STEM education because they are so attractive to students.

GG: The World Bank declared shared prosperity as a twin goal alongside fighting poverty. Thomas Piketty’s book on inequality was a blockbuster and widely discussed. Angus Deaton, who has done substantial work on inequality, received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015. Furthermore, inequality appears frequently in the public press and is a popular topic in current political debates.

The fact is that the democratization of living standards in developed countries has masked a dramatic concentration of incomes over the past 30 years. Across the world, despite recent progress, average within-country inequality of income is greater now than 25 years ago. While, many countries have seen a rise of their middle class, the top 1 percent of the income distribution has seen its share rapidly increase in most countries for which we have data. In other words, the very rich have gotten significantly richer than the very poor, regardless of which way you measure it.

In order to design policies that can be effective at reducing inequality, it is important to understand its underlying cause and what feeds it. This is what I study and where my work matters.

What does Women’s History Month mean to you?

JM: I have had great women mentors in the sciences. This is something that would have been difficult to pull off 50 years ago. I am actually the academic granddaughter of Jane Goodall and Irven DeVore, two iconic primatologists who mentored my mentor, Barbara Smuts. I was also mentored as an undergraduate by Jeanne Altmann, considered one of the most admired women scientists in our field. It is important to communicate with the public as well. Jane Goodall is an outstanding public scientist and advocate, famous the world over. Millions of women are inspired by her story. If you haven’t caught , you should.

GG: Over the last few months, the economics profession has reckoned with evidence of sexism in economics forums, discrimination in teaching evaluations, and suggestive evidence that women get less credit for co-authored work and experience more delays in the career-making peer-review publication process. This suggests to me that pausing once a year to highlight and publicize women’s work in economics may not be a bad idea.

In addition, the proportion of women seeking a Ph.D. in economics has plateaued over the past few years, and female undergraduates seem much more likely to switch to other majors after introductory courses than their male counterparts. I would be delighted if highlighting my work could encourage more women to study economics.

Interviews were conducted by Patrick Curran and edited for length and clarity.

May 16, 2017 — The 2017 Georgetown ������̳ Commencement speaker and honorary degree recipient is Sister Mary Scullion.

Sister Mary is president and executive director of Project HOME, an immensely successful service and advocacy group for people experiencing homelessness in Philadelphia. TIME named her to its “100 Most Influential People” list in 2009, and the Philadelphia Inquirer named her Citizen of the Year in 2011. She is both a tireless ground-level worker to alleviate homelessness in Philadelphia and a passionate advocate for fair housing policies on a national scale.

We spoke with Sister Mary in advance of Saturday’s Commencement ceremonies to learn more about her life, her mission, and what brought her to Georgetown.

Georgetown ������̳: What motivated you to choose a religious vocation?

Sister Mary Scullion: I loved the mission of the Sisters of Mercy: to work directly with those that are poor, sick, and uneducated (especially women), and to provide those people with opportunities. I love their work; their spirit of mercy and justice; and their commitment to community.

GC: Tell me about founding Project HOME.

SMS: I started working with the men, women and children experiencing homelessness in 1975, mainly though emergency shelters. We all perceived homelessness as a crisis – we needed emergency shelters, because people were just experiencing emergency situations. Over the years, we saw that housing supply was being strained for the bottom rung of the economic ladder. We realized that homelessness — while an emergency situation for some initially —was a permanent reality for many people, because of a lack of affordable housing and changes in federal housing policy that institutionalized homelessness. It was becoming a permanent situation, especially for people with special needs, people who were mentally ill, people who were addicted, mothers, and children.

In 1989, Joan McConnon and I decided we wanted to focus on permanent solutions to homelessness. Project HOME stands for affordable Housing, Opportunities for employment, Medical care, and Education, because we see these four areas as the most important for ending and preventing homelessness. Our vision statement is “None of us are at home until all of us are at home,” and it’s rooted in strong spiritual conviction of the dignity of every person.

In 28 years, we’ve developed 800 units of housing, The Stephen Klein Wellness Center (including medical care, behavioral health services, a dental clinic and legal counseling), and the Honickman Learning Center Comcast Technology Labs as a center for education and workforce development located in second poorest zip code in Philadelphia.

GC: What is most difficult about your job?

SMS: It’s difficult to make the broader community understand that we can end homelessness — what we lack is the political will. Knowing that we can end it and not being able to do so because of that is the most difficult thing.

GC: Most rewarding?

SMS: Being a member of the Project HOME community, and working on this issue with the most incredible people you’d ever meet —especially those who have experienced homelessness. The strength and resilience of the people experiencing homelessness inspires me every day.

We partner with so many other organizations and people, and we always want to engage more because we think the solution lies within all of us. There’s short term efforts, but also long term commitments that need to be rooted in advocacy for these issues — today, we focus on affordable housing; for the future, we invest in quality education.

GC: Is there one achievement makes you the proudest?

SMS: I’m proud to be part of a community of people from all walks of life, all dedicated to ending homelessness. We can’t rest until we end it in our city and in our country, and we still have a ways to go. I’m grateful for our staff, donors, trustees, partner organizations, and huge army of volunteers — well over 500.

GC: Why Georgetown?

SMS: I was nominated by Prof. Alan Mitchell (of Georgetown’s theology department). I am Jesuit-educated myself at St. Joseph’s University, and I have a strong relationship with the Jesuit community. One of my heroes is Fr. Horace McKenna, who started the McKenna Center, situated on the grounds of Gonzaga ������̳ High School. It’s a center on campus for people experiencing homelessness — the only one of its kind in the country, I believe. It’s really awesome for the students there to work directly with men and women who are experiencing homelessness as a key aspect to their service learning.

Fr. McKenna is someone that we did look up to: He lived and walked with people who were homeless. He embodied Pope Francis’ call for a “revolution of tenderness.” Fr. McKenna and Fr. Ed Brady — my mentor at St. Joseph’s —  got myself and many others in Philadelphia connected with Jesuit spirituality.

Mark McConnon, the husband of [Project HOME co-founder] Joan McConnon, is also a Georgetown alum and continues to live the Jesuit values of social justice and striving to be a person for others.

GC: Without spoiling your speech, do you have any advice for social-justice-inclined college students?

SMS: In addition to getting an excellent academic education, it’s equally important to work directly with, know, and walk beside people in our society and in our world who are struggling and suffering — be it people on the street, immigrants, or refugees. Touch the pain and suffering around us, and through that, help to affect the injustice and suffering, but you too will be transformed. Students often lead by example.

GC: What do you want people to know about you that they might not know already?

SMS: I have a good sense of humor! And I love working with and being with young leaders and people who are on fire about changing our world.

Interview conducted by Patrick Curran and edited for length and clarity.

February 16, 2017 — Julia Marsan (C’17) is the latest member of the Georgetown community to appear on the popular quiz show , as she competes for the in episodes airing this month. The $100,000 students-only tournament, which Jim Coury (F’15) , began airing Feb. 13 and continues through Feb. 24. We sat down to get to know Marsan before her first appearance airs this Friday (7:30 p.m., WJLA-ABC).

Georgetown ������̳: What do you study?

Julia Marsan: I’m a major and an minor.

GC: Hometown?

JM: My family’s in Brookfield, Wisconsin, right now — about half an hour outside of Milwaukee — but we’ve also spent time in Virginia and Indiana. They’re all really excited.

GC: Any postgraduate plans?

JM: I’d like to teach in the Milwaukee area and go to graduate school for education.

GC: Had you been a Jeopardy! fan for a long time?

JM: Not really! I had been a trivia fan for a long time — I like reading trivia books and stuff like that — but I didn’t really watch Jeopardy growing up at all. I didn’t know that much about the show until I auditioned, actually.

GC: How did you decide to audition, then?

JM: The did a , which I won, and someone was like “You’re really good at this! You should be on Jeopardy!” So I Googled it, and they were having the ������̳ Championship test that October. I took it and didn’t really expect to hear anything — just kind of took it for fun. Then they called me and asked me to do a screen test and second round of testing in New York in November.

So I went, and I still didn’t really expect to hear anything back, because there were a lot of people there. But in the first week of December, they called me back and said “We want to offer you a spot on the show,” and I flew out the first week of January to do it. So that was very exciting.

GC: What areas of trivia do you specialize in? Are you a generalist, or do you have your favorite categories?

JM: Definitely literature, history, pop culture. I’m not as good at the math and science bits. Unless the science part is only about — then I’d be fine.

GC: Did you do anything special to prepare for the show?

JM: At the second round of testing, they gave us all little pens with clickers on the end to practice with. So I watched a lot of old episodes on YouTube and just clicked my pen every time [host Alex] Trebek finished his sentence. And yeah, it was a lot of old episodes. Pretty much every episode I could find.

GC: I know you can’t talk about what actually happens in the episode before it airs. But was there anything about being on the show that you found surprising or interesting?

JM: It was kind of overwhelming just to be on a real television set, you know? Everyone was incredible friendly and professional — they do this every week, obviously.

It was a little disappointing that I didn’t get to hang out with Alex Trebek. He knows all the answers to the questions, so he’s not allowed to spend any time with the contestants before the show.

GC: That makes sense!

JM: Yeah, he gets in at 7:30 in the morning and spends hours going over all the questions and answers to make sure he can pronounce everything correctly. So during that time, he’s not allowed to talk to us. During that time, we’re getting mic’d up and playing a few practice rounds and whatnot. So I would’ve liked to have spent more time getting to know the real Alex Trebek! But that was my only regret — the rest of the experience was awesome.

GC: Do you have any advice for people who think they want to be on Jeopardy! someday?

JM: Read as much as you can. Honestly, I get most of my information just by reading random things. Read Wikipedia pages. Read the back of a cereal box. Read everything around you — that’s the kind of person who’s going to succeed on Jeopardy!.

GC: Did you know anyone else who’s been on the show?

JM: No. Which is helpful, I think, because they do ask you if you know anyone who works at Jeopardy! or has been on the show. I’m kind of glad I didn’t know anyone, or they might’ve thought I had an in.

GC: Anything else we should know about you or your experience, without stepping on Alex’s fun-fact-finding toes too much?

JM: About that — you give Alex three little factoids about yourself, and he just picks one at random to ask you about. So you’re never quite sure which one he’s going to say. I think the important thing is just to be prepared for anything. He’s a man of whims.

Interview conducted by Patrick Curran and edited for length and clarity.