The life of Martha Weiss is segmented, bisected by the first time she saw cicadas. 

“Having grown up in California, I never had the pleasure of experiencing a periodical cicada emergence until 2004, when Brood X made its last appearance above ground in Washington, DC,” reminisced Weiss. “There were cicadas everywhere – crawling up out of the soil, marching across the sidewalks, climbing trees and stop signs and fence posts… Watching adults emerge from their nymphal cases and spread their wings was magical, and the cacophony of chorusing males was the perfect soundtrack to all that insect action! As a scientist who studies insect behavior, I was of course enchanted, and resolved that if I were still here 17 years hence, I’d find a way to study these amazing creatures.”

Periodical cicadas, which spend most of their lives underground feeding on the roots of plants and trees for long, dark years before emerging by the billions to reproduce and die, are not often described in such romantic terms. 

Early Puritan colonists were shocked by the cicadas and worried that, in addition to eating away at the forest, they were harbingers of sickness or disease. William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Colony, described them as a “great sort of flies like for bigness to wasps or bumblebees, which came out of holes in the ground and replenished all the woods, and ate the green things, and made such a constant yelling noise as made all the woods ring of them, and ready to deaf the hearers.” Nearly 400 years later, many are still fearful of the large insects, scared away by the red eyes of periodical cicadas, their huge size, and loud screeches.  

For scientists like Martha Weiss, however, cicadas are not only objects of wonder but peculiar organisms that provide invaluable insight into the natural world. 

An Appetite-altering Lurker

Bradford was incorrect in presuming that the cicadas ‘ate the green things;’ unlike locusts, adult cicadas feed on plant fluids, and do not eat leaves at all. However, as any biologist would predict, they become an unforeseen source of food for a myriad of animals. 

In anticipation of Brood X, among the largest populations of periodical cicadas, Weiss began preparing a research team to study their arrival in Mid-Atlantic forests in 2021. These adult cicadas, the children of the same insects that had fascinated her in 2004, hadn’t been seen for 17 years. 

Weiss partnered with her longtime collaborator John Lill, a professor at George Washington University, and additional researchers from his institution and the University of Maryland, ������̳ Park. The team set out to study how birds in temperate forests altered their diets when hordes of new insects seemingly appeared out of nowhere. 

“We wanted to see whether the birds that ordinarily ate the forest caterpillars that we have long studied would switch over to the novel prey when a gigantic pulse of insect food appeared in the forest, and if so, what the consequences would be for the rest of the forest food web,” Weiss said. 

The research team’s findings, released this past fall, provide biologists and lovers of insects with an intimate look at one of nature’s most fascinating curiosities. They were so groundbreaking that the research was featured on the cover of Science, one of the world’s leading academic journals. 

“Our results demonstrate the pervasive ecological impacts of periodical cicadas on species interactions and patterns of energy flow in the eastern forests of North America,” said Weiss. “Although they make an above-ground appearance only once in a generation, there is typically at least one brood appearing somewhere in this vast region every spring — and each time they appear, these insects rewire forest food webs and leave behind an ecological footprint on the landscape.” 

Weiss’s team drew on 983 observations from bird enthusiasts in the Mid-Atlantic region, forming a large-scale view of bird-cicada interactions across Brood X’s habitat. The team documented more than 80 species of birds eating cicadas, including many that don’t regularly consume insects as a primary food source — as well as those that do

“As a consequence, their predation rate on caterpillars decreased dramatically, resulting in a doubling of leaf-feeding caterpillar populations,” said Weiss. “Double the caterpillars meant double the leaf damage, suggesting that the cicadas indirectly  disrupted patterns of energy flow throughout a wide swath of eastern forests.” 

A Knack for Spreading Wonder

For Weiss, communicating scientific findings to the public is as important as conducting research in the first place. As Brood X’s re-emergence approached, Weiss and her collaborators sought to educate local youth who would be experiencing cicadas for the first time. 

“We thought that the cicada emergence was an amazing, once-in-a-generation opportunity to teach kids about insects, and to help tip the balance ‘from fear to fascination,’ as our environmental education collaborator [at Conservation Nation] Diane Lill puts it,” said Weiss. 

The team created a comprehensive guide to cicadas for elementary and middle school students, hoping to generate interest in one of nature’s greatest oddities. The digital resource, found at www.FriendToCicadas.com, is now periodically updated with additional information for different broods as they appear across the eastern half of the United States. 

“In 2004, I had a 6 year old and a 4 year old, and it was so exciting for me and my kids to witness this unbelievable biological occurrence,” said Weiss. “However, not every child in the neighborhood was thrilled about it — in fact some were quite scared. They were just so full of questions, like ‘Where did they come from? Why are there so many? What do they eat? Can they hurt me? Why are they so loud?’”

By sharing informative and fun materials about cicadas with young children, Weiss not only hopes to allay their fears, but incite curiosity and wonder at the natural world. 

“Insects are the most common and widespread animal group on earth,” said Weiss. “While there are a few species that are dangerous and can spread diseases, the vast majority are not harmful to people, and, in fact, are essential to us. They are pollinators, they move plant material around, help with decomposition and they are lunch for a huge diversity of other animals. Without insects, entire food chains would collapse.”

A Web of Wonder

Weiss has published research on an array of plants, insects and the interactions between them. In other words, she’s not just the cicada scientist.  

After earning her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied flowers that change color to signal their pollinators, Weiss began her career as a botanist. 

“The plants take advantage of the insects’ color vision and learning ability to teach their pollinators which flowers to visit,” Weiss said. “The insects are directed to flowers that will reward them with nectar, the flowers receive efficient pollination service and everyone wins!” 

Weiss and her students have continued to investigate insect learning and memory, as well as ecological interactions between plants and insects. In the first demonstration of retention of memory across metamorphosis in moths and butterflies, she and her former graduate student Douglas Blackiston (G’07) showed that a moth could remember experiences it had as a caterpillar. 

Funded in part by a Fulbright Fellowship, Weiss recently traveled to Southern India where she teamed up with Divya Uma (G’10) to study the behavioral ecology of insects and spiders that look and act like ants.

“India is literally crawling with amazing ant mimics; the remarkable resemblance makes them less likely to be eaten by predators that rightly steer clear of what they take to be the tiny aggressors,” Weiss said. 

And Martha isn’t done studying cicadas yet — her team is traveling to Chicago this year to observe the rare simultaneous emergence of adjacent 13-year and 17-year broods of cicadas. The last time both of these broods emerged at the same time was in 1803. This isn’t just the event of a lifetime for an entomologist — it’s the event of the century. 

This time, instead of looking at birds’ appetites for cicadas, the team plans to turn their attention to ants. 

“These tiny creatures play a number of important roles in their forest communities, and we want to investigate the ecological implications if ants ‘walk off the job’ when the cicadas arrive,” said Weiss. “We are thrilled to be able to travel to Illinois for the double emergence; cooling our heels until 2038, when the DC cicadas will come back above ground, was not going to work — it’s way too long to wait for answers to our questions!”

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Jinwoo Chong (C’17) is setting the literary world ablaze. His debut novel, Flux, has been hailed as a “brain-bending pleasure,” “an imaginative exploration of how cultural memory and grief interact” and “an impossible-to-simply-label masterpiece.”

Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Esquire and Cosmopolitan, it centers around 8-year-old Bo, who is grieving the death of his mother; 28-year-old Brandon, who has been fired from his mid-level job; and 48-year-old Blue, who is the key witness in a criminal trial. 

“Flux began as a roman à clef inspired by the Theranos scandal and the downfall of former billionaire, current imprisoned fraudster Elizabeth Holmes,” said Chong. “I decided to bend it into the realm of science/speculative fiction and introduce a loose form of time travel explored by its characters with devastating implications. It’s a novel inspired by Silicon Valley, ’80s-era detective television and the general malaise of people in their late twenties laboring under late-stage capitalism.”

Chong, who majored in English, led an active life at Georgetown, dipping his toes into a variety of extracurricular activities. 

“Back in college, you might have seen me performing with the Phantoms around campus and DC, editing The Hoya late into Monday and Thursday night, and pulling espresso shots from 11 p.m. to closing time at Midnight Mug on Wednesdays,” said Chong.

He looks back on his time at Georgetown, both in the classroom and without, fondly. 

“I did a lot of things I’ll never do again while at Georgetown,” said Chong. “I performed at the White House, broke the news of an election in real time as part of a newsroom, voted to amend bylaws and elected a new governing board of directors at The Hoya.”

He even wrote his first short story while working on his senior thesis.

“That story became one in a collection of linked fiction based on stories my parents used to tell me about their childhoods,” said Chong.

But producing work that was commercially successful, and appealed to a wide audience, wasn’t on Chong’s radar until relatively recently. 

“I had become resigned to the fact that I would just write as a hobby and nothing more,” said Chong. “This changed after I—on a whim—applied to and was accepted to the MFA program at Columbia University. While there, I was given the luxury of time. I wrote Flux, published a few short stories, signed with an agent and the rest is history.”

Chong’s next novel, I Leave It Up To You, tells the story of prodigal son, Jack Jr., who awakens from a two-year coma to discover that he’s missed the majority of the coronavirus pandemic and several life milestones.

“I wrote I Leave It Up To You while Flux was getting a less-than-ideal response from editors over the seven months it took to sell to a publisher,” said Chong. “I wrote it in part to remind me that I loved writing and couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else.”

 It is slated for bookstores in 2025. 

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Planetary scientist Sarah Johnson has always looked to the stars and wondered what could be up there. Her father, an amateur astronomer and roadside geologist, instilled a love of space and science in Johnson at a young age. She remembers peering into the heavens through binoculars and stopping alongside the highway to look at fossils and unique rock formations.

Now, as a leading figure in the scientific community that studies Mars, Johnson seeks answers to those same questions that she started asking as a young girl. Her quest for answers has taken her to some of the most remote and inhospitable environments on Earth — the in Antarctica, the in Chile and the salt lakes of Western Australia — and involved closely collaborating with scientists at NASA to design, launch and run spacecraft. 

“I feel like planetary scientists have the best job on Earth,” said Johnson. “We get to ask deep questions about the nature of existence, and then send probes made by human hands out into the vastness of space to uncover the answers.”

Searching for Signs of Life

Johnson, who holds dual appointments in the Department of Biology and the School of Foreign Service’s Science, Technology and International Affairs Program, leads a lab at Georgetown that combines techniques from molecular biology and organic geochemistry.

“We spend most of our time trying to understand the presence and preservation of biosignatures within planetary environments — that is, we devise new ways to hunt for signs of life, past and present,” explained Johnson.  

Sometimes, that work includes excursions to harsh environments around the globe where life persists against all odds. In deserts and desiccated lakes, Johnson and her team look for subtle signs that life has been there. The biosignatures that the lab researches often reflect interactions between an organism and its environment. Disequilibrium in an environment, such as conspicuous chemical complexity or unexpected accumulations of certain elements, can serve as evidence for the existence of life. 

“Fieldwork is one of the best parts of my job,” admits Johnson. “I get to go to the ends of the Earth to find places that bear relevant similarities to other planets and moons—places where we can test our approaches.” 

Johnson’s team not only travels to the farthest reaches of the globe, but works with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to analyze samples collected by Mars rovers. 

“Sometimes working at the lab bench is just like you’d imagine: we analyze molecules and sequence DNA, and there are centrifuges whirring in the background. Other times the work is a little more sci-fi, like when we don white bunny suits to work with samples that can easily become contaminated,” said Johnson. “We also get to analyze data from current spacecraft, and we all put our heads together to devise new techniques for future missions. It’s a lot of fun, especially when we get a result we didn’t expect.”

Some of the most exciting work being done in Johnson’s lab is trying to find new ways to detect life.

“Most strategies for detecting life rely upon finding features known to be associated with life ‘as we know it,’ such as particular classes of molecules, but life may be vastly different on other planets and moons, particularly as we expand our efforts to think about life detection on places like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn — Europa, Enceladus and Titan,” said Johnson. “These places are otherworldly in every sense of the word. Titan, for example, has thick clouds, pale hills and lakes — but it’s a gasoline world. Those lakes are filled with liquid ethane and liquid methane instead of liquid water. What might the chemistry of life look like there? Without presupposing any particular molecular framework, we hope that the new agnostic approaches to life detection we are developing will one day be used from Mars to the far reaches of the solar system.”

Siren of Science

For Johnson, the story of science is reflected in a long line of mentors and mentees. 

“As I started down my academic journey, I was also incredibly fortunate to have mentors who saw something more in me than I saw in myself, and who took the time and made the effort to provide me with opportunities to grow,” Johnson said. 

Like many researchers, Johnson remembers pivotal instructors in her undergraduate career that not only inspired her to pursue her passions but showed her what kinds of career paths were possible. 

“I never would have become a planetary scientist, or discovered all the planetary scientists before me, without Ray Arvidson,” said Johnson. “I met him the first day of my freshman year in college and he opened my eyes to Mars science — he taught my classes, gave me a space in his lab and took me to do research all over the country.”

Arvidson, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, famously served as deputy director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission. 

“Even though he was helping to run these tremendously complex missions, he always made undergraduate education a priority, both inside and outside of the classroom,” remembered Johnson. “After thirty years of teaching, he’s had an extraordinary influence on the field, and now Mars conferences are completely filled with his former students — what a legacy!”

In her own classrooms and lab, Johnson mentors undergraduates interested in science and gives many the unique opportunity to conduct groundbreaking research in collaboration with some of the brightest minds thinking about outer space. Last year, Johnson Lab alumnae Olivia Gadson (C’23) and Chloe Fishman (C’20) were awarded fellowships through the , one of the most prestigious fellowship opportunities for graduate students pursuing STEM research. 

“Now that I’m in a position to mentor others, I find it incredibly helpful to have had these relationships, since reflecting on them makes it so clear to me that nobody walks their path in life alone,” said Johnson. 

In addition to producing a wealth of research within the scientific community, Johnson has recently branched out into publishing for a wider audience. Her 2020 book, , was a smash hit, receiving wide critical acclaim and being named one of the top books of the year by The New York Times. 

Equal parts personal memoir and scientific history, Johnson tells the story of the Red Planet, both its own geological past and humanity’s relationship with it, from a spot in the night sky to a planet populated by spacecraft and robots. 

“The Sirens of Mars began as a collection of thoughts that would never find expression in the pages of scientific journals — things I scribbled down as my mind wandered away from a collection of data, and moments I read about, the stories of my colleagues and predecessors that I found inspiring, unlikely or poignant,” said Johnson. “My hope was to reach people who love science but also people who don’t always engage with these topics, to share some of the compelling things about reaching into the night and our fundamentally human drive to explore.”

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Tell Me: Building History with Mireya Loza

Historian Mireya Loza gathers and shares the stories of the immigrant and migrant farmworkers of the past and today — providing a clearer picture of the people who have fed and continue to feed us.

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“¡Yo le digo!”

This was the response of Gustavo Eloy Reyes Rodriguez. On July 1, 2008, Professor of History Mireya Loza interviewed him about his experience as a bracero, one of 4.5 million Mexican guest workers who came to the United States from 1942 to 1964, as part of the largest foreign worker program ever sponsored by the U.S. government. 

They were talking in his home in Oaxaca, Mexico, and she had just asked him if there were any gay men among the Bracero Program.

Sure, he responded.

Then: I will tell you.

Loza listened. Over the course of six years working with the National Museum of American History’s Bracero History Project, Loza has listened to Rodriguez and more than 90 people tell their stories as well as trained faculty and staff who helped amass over 800 oral histories for the project’s online archive.

This work would become the focus of her research, her book , a traveling exhibition for the Smithsonian Institution, and the research she teaches Hoyas to conduct. And it all began with an undergraduate assignment.

“As an undergraduate, I was part of the first cohort at my university to take classes in Latino studies and ethnic studies, which were pushing the envelope in terms of being recognized as a valid body of scholarship,” remembers Loza. “In one of my first classes, the professor asked us to find our oldest family or community member and conduct an oral history.”

Oral histories, which rely on personal interviews to understand historical events at the individual level, are an essential tool for students of the humanities — shedding light on details and perspectives left out of other forms of historical narratives. 

“Equipped with my little cassette player, I conducted my first oral history with my uncle, who had worked in the Bracero Program,” said Loza. “I realized that I loved talking to people, interviewing them and asking questions about the ways in which power shapes their lives. I was able, because of the classes that I had taken, to know how to do that — to fill in the pieces with the literature.”

As a graduate student at Brown University, Loza began working with the National Museum of American History, which was carrying out a massive transnational project to collect oral histories in both Mexico and the United States. 

“For the National Museum of American History, this was a novel concept — that you could collect stories of U.S. history outside of America,” said Loza. “These people, whose lives across a political boundary, also hold part of that American story and without them it is incomplete.”

Loza traveled across the United States to help run various collecting sites, which served as loci for identifying and interviewing braceros and their families. The program relied on a town hall model which brought together nonprofits, local organizations and other partners to cultivate a community of people who had lived through or observed the Bracero Program in action. 

“We interviewed everyone we could — not just braceros, but children, wives and neighbors,” said Loza. “Together, we built one of the largest thematic repositories of LatinX history. ”

Published in 2016, Defiant Braceros won both the , which is awarded by the , and the Smithsonian’s Secretary’s Research Prize. Loza’s research helped build a wider understanding of the Bracero Program and contributed to a settlement program, initiated by the Mexican government, which provided former braceros with compensation for their wages that had been garnished during the 1940s. 

By pulling at a single thread of interest discovered in an undergraduate classroom, Loza dove deep into research that not only provided her with accolades but helped shape the academic and public discourse on a topic that personally affected her, her family and millions of others. 

Connecting the Past With the Present

On the Hilltop, Loza seeks to ignite the same curiosity for her students. 

“I bring the real world into my classroom so that students can get a sense that the humanities are a vibrant place where they can tackle current problems, learn real skills and find a pathway to employment,” said Loza. “I always have to remind my students that it’s not about the discipline in the humanities that you pick, but the critical thinking that the humanities teach that can be applied across a multitude of careers and sectors.”

As an undergraduate, Loza remembers her family pestering her over pursuing a different field, what she calls popular telenovela careers — doctor, engineer and architect. While valid areas of interest, they weren’t for her and the humanities opened up doors that she didn’t even realize existed.  

“Exploring the humanities taught me critical reading and writing skills, it taught me how to think about the wider world around me, about material inequality and ways in which we build discourses around the topics I was interested in,” said Loza. “Studying the humanities set me on this path to ask questions, to think about my family’s history, their community’s history and to make connections with that history and the present.”

At Georgetown, Loza has mentored many exceptional Hoyas, including Grace Elicker (C’22), an American Studies major who first met Loza in a course exploring workers in the American food system. Elicker, who was recently accepted into the doctoral program in Columbia University’s Department of History with a full-ride, credits Loza with expanding her perspective on what labor history can encapsulate. 

“Before that course, my idea of food production was bound to the binary between the people who grow food and those who eat it, and after that I had a more nuanced understanding of how many hands are involved in the food production process, and the struggles these workers face in this system,” said Elicker. “That first class forced me to reckon with the narrative in which workers are saturated in the American labor movement, and how they are disinherited from that story.”

After taking that first course with Loza, Elicker went on to become her research assistant, and has since helped develop an ongoing digital humanities project documenting the first Mexican guestworker program during World War I. 

“Grace is rendering prototypes for this mapping,” explained Loza. “This not only allows us to see the photographs of the actual workers, but apply a second layer of data analysis on top of that information.”

The project aims to identify the workers who participated in the program and aggregate as much information about them as possible. To build out this data source, the team is working with worker cards that were issued at the border by the Department of Labor. 

“We aim to visually represent the data gleaned from these ID cards by creating a map that traces migration patterns from an individual’s last residence in Mexico, to their point of entry into the United States and their final destination within the United States,” said Elicker. 

To date, the project has digitized some 500 migrant worker cards, but for Elicker that’s just the beginning.

“The cards only tell a fraction of each worker’s story because there is still so much that remains unknown: where they were born, where they went after the program and, most importantly, their experience in the program,” said Elicker. 

For Elicker, this research not only enriched her undergraduate experience, but has allowed her to continue preserving history since graduation. 

“Throughout the project, I have learned how digital humanities can serve historical projects,” said Elicker. “Through the visual representation of the map, we can offer both a human portrait of a real person who came to the United States to work over a hundred years ago, and document large-scale migratory patterns from a statistically significant gathering of data.”

Amplifying the People 

Since publishing Defiant Braceros, Loza has worn many more hats beyond that of professor and historian — working as both a museum curator and a policy expert. Last year, Loza was tapped by the Biden administration to participate in the first USDA Equity Commission. 

“We are trying to think about what the USDA has done to increase equality between Black farmers and nonblack farmers, but also amongst farmworkers and farmers,” explains Loza. “Trying to undo a lot of the historic policies that set up these inequalities is a huge challenge, but also very novel as a historian because I’ve always been asked to talk about the past and I’ve never been invited to be at the table when people are crafting contemporary policy.”

Loza continues to curate exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where she recently worked on the exhibit De Últimate Hora: Latinas Report Breaking News, which opened late last year.  

Her next book project, tentatively titled The Strangeness and Bitterness of Plenty: Making Food and Seeing Race in the Agricultural West, focuses on the intersection of immigrant labor and the construction and maintenance of the agricultural system in America. She is particularly interested in the distinction between farmers and farmworkers in the United States. 

“I’m thinking about how some of the people who do the hardest work to feed us every day are also the most marginalized in our society,” said Loza. “We have separated farmers from farmworkers not based on labor or expertise, but because of ownership. I’m trying to pull that thread back as far as I can to better understand how we got here and how we might build a more just food system.”

Throughout her work in the classroom and outside of it, Loza seeks to listen and amplify the voices, experiences, and lives of others. 

“I love public history and the public humanities — a call to bring the humanities to the public, to make sure that we’re addressing their concerns, producing projects that are relevant, answering pressing questions that solve problems, that build knowledge,” said Loza. “I love it. To me, it’s humanities for the people.”

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What has been the highlight of the program so far?

The summer was incredible – going to a vineyard and taking samples, sitting in labs for countless hours a week and doing real science. My favorite part had to be getting to know f and , who mentored us very closely because we still didn’t know what college would be like and they reassured us every step of the way.

What is your biggest takeaway from the program?

My biggest takeaway was to dream again. They taught me that I didn’t just have a seat at the table, but the power to radically change things for me and others and that I could be what I wanted to be but the first thing I needed to do was to dream again.

What does it mean to be a Regents STEM Scholar?

Being in the Regents STEM Scholar program means being part of a community of like-minded individuals who are here for your development. Not everything in college will be a success and not everything will be easy, but I can also count on the Regents STEM Scholars program to be around when thinks do get shaky.

The Regents STEM Scholars Program is celebrating seven years of first-generation college students like Assefa gaining hands-on experience with scientific research before the academic year begins — as well as support throughout their time at Georgetown. The program was founded to augment Georgetown’s existing support systems with an eye towards the mentorship and experience required for scholars pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). 

“We sought to build on the fabulous work of the Community Scholars Program to create additional layers of community and support that could help students better achieve their goals for a STEM education,” said Heidi Elmendorf, associate professor of biology who leads the program. “What had become clear to us is that students in STEM disciplines had needs for community and support that were quite specific, that we weren’t meeting, and that were leading us to be less successful in supporting these students.”

Before most of their peers arrive on campus, scholars in the program arrive on the Hilltop for summer research. Each cohort works as a group conducting research for Glen Manor Vineyards, a winery in Warren County, Virginia. With guidance from core faculty members, like Jeanetta Floyd, students collect samples from the roots, soil and leaves of plants on the vineyard. 

The RSSP runs a year-round pop-up lab, designed and implemented by , that features microbiome research from a range of partners, from faculty labs to government organizations. This lab provides scholars with the opportunity to further develop their scientific research and professional skills before making the transition to other research positions. The lab is the RSSP in a microcosm, welcoming students into the scientific community and providing them with the skills and tools to thrive as students and researchers. 

For Elmendorf, bringing students into the scientific fold as people and as academics is incredibly important. In addition to the summer research and pop-up lab, the RSSP provides professional and financial support to scholars throughout their time at Georgetown.

“Creating communities that are inclusive and environments in which every individual fully matters as we work toward a shared purpose is a manifestation of caring for the whole person,” said Elmendorf. “Our students are incredibly smart, creative and determined. Research is difficult, and presenting students with an authentic research project from the get-go is a powerful way of demonstrating our belief in them and of making the very best use of their many talents.”

A generous gift from Joe Zimmel (C’75) fully funded the implementation and running of the Regents STEM Scholars Program for its first decade. 

“Georgetown invested in me by providing a scholarship that changed my life,” said Zimmel. “I am grateful to be able to try to do the same thing for these very talented young people. I hope others will do the same thing by creating and supporting scholarship initiatives in other academic areas at Georgetown.”

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Learning by doing. Famed pedagogist John Dewey touted the now well-known concept in 1938, arguing that concrete experiences following actively engaged learning allow us to better act upon our understanding. It’s a best practice embedded in everything at the ������̳ of Arts and Sciences, from lab experiences and field trips completed as part of coursework to research projects and internships completed beyond. Here are just a few recent examples of how Hoyas are benefitting from it.

On the Campaign Trail

When Pratik Jacob (C’25) enrolled in Hans Noel’s Presidential Nominations Lab, he wanted a firsthand look at the process of politics. And right from the start, that’s what he got. 

Instead of gathering in a classroom, the students met for the first time in an airport, where they boarded a plane to Iowa to brave subzero temperatures and observe democracy in action.

“I’m fascinated by how different electoral systems impact the prevalence/success of specific types of politicians, policies and politics,” said Jacob. “This class is a rare opportunity to experience firsthand how our politics and policy are shaped by the uniquely American system of presidential nominations.”

“At home, you don’t get the opportunity to feel the energy and buzz of a campaign as it goes through its ups and downs,” said Jacob. “Some candidates clearly inspired a lot more energy and buzz from their crowd than others, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, I was surprised by how much more engaged Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy’s supporters were than Ron DeSantis’.”

Jacob recognizes that the energy in a room in Iowa doesn’t always result in better election turnout, but meeting voters in person, especially those showing up for a primary, was an invaluable addition to his understanding of American politics — one that gave him hope.

“The highlight of the course so far has been the conversations I was able to have with Iowans in the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses,” said Jacob. “Campaigns, intrinsically, are acts of hope — manifestations of the belief that, with the right leaders and policies, America and the world have brighter days ahead. 

“It’s often difficult to preserve that optimism when I’m flooded with information from my classes, the media or my classmates about how broken the world is. It certainly is, but being around so many people, whose voices blazed with passion and vision for this country, reinvigorated my spirit.”

Tracking Art History Around the Globe

In the waning days of the 19th century, a cult-like group of post-impressionist painters formed a secretive brotherhood in Paris known as Les Nabis, which means “prophets” in Hebrew and Arabic. The artists were drawn together by a shared disdain for representational art and a communal longing to unlock mystic secrets.  

Nami Bolat (C’25) spent the summer before her senior year studying the Nabis in the United States, Japan and France. 

“I have always been abstractly interested in the interplay between the East and West, especially when it comes to spirituality and religion,” explained Bolat. “Time and time again, it seems like the West has looked to the East for inspiration that they can’t seem to find in their own religions.”

Many of the artists who considered themselves part of the Nabis were adherents to Theosophy, an occult movement that sought to unlock core truths through a synthesis of world religions. 

“My research has uncovered that Theosophy seems to have been the most prominent religious influence on the group while the Japanese influence was mostly an aesthetic one,” said Bolat. “Theosophy’s attempts to amalgamate or find commonalities between all religions and world views are fascinating, a bit frightening and another example of how the West interacted and continues to interact with the East, both positively and negatively, on the spiritual and religious plane.

Bolat’s travels and research were funded through a Royden B. Davis Research Fellowship. Every year, the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences awards undergraduate students fellowships between $1,000 and $5,000 to explore “transformative educational experiences.” 

Given in honor of Fr. Davis, Dean of the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences from 1966 to 1989, the fellowship empowers students to pursue avenues of interest that extend beyond the boundaries of the classroom, encouraging the curiosity that is at the heart of a liberal arts education. 

For Bolat, her summer experience not only expanded her horizons, but allowed her to connect her personal identity, interests and area of study. Bolat, who has relatives in France and Japan, was able to reconnect with family while studying the Nabis. 

“I began my travels afraid I was about to face a tremendously lonely journey, worried that my subpar Japanese wouldn’t be enough to feel close to the family I’ve left behind there, worried to be all alone wandering around Paris,” said Bolat. “I was proven completely and utterly wrong.”

Researching Biology on the Hilltop and Beyond

Naomi Greenberg (C’24) was one of five Hoyas to be named a 2024 Marshall Scholar. Greenberg, a biology major and journalism minor, spent her time as an undergraduate unifying her love for research and her passion for writing. 

Greenberg not only conducted research into molecular biology, molecular genetics and evolutionary genetics, but explored other passions both on the Hilltop and beyond. She spent all four years involved with The Hoya, working as a copy assistant, copy deputy and copy chief. She then founded and led the publication’s Science section. 

Her research interests now, however, focus on genetic engineering, when humans alter an organism’s DNA. That interest began during an internship at the National Institutes of Health, where she worked in a lab studying chromosome dynamics and evolution. Greenberg observed the phenomenon of natural gene drives—or the ability for some genetic traits to be passed on more rapidly—in mice. According to Mendel’s Law of Segregation, that ability shouldn’t be possible — two alleles of any gene should have an equal chance of being transmitted.   

“The experience of seeing a real gene drive system in action at the NIH was pivotal for me,” said Greenberg. “Witnessing firsthand an exception to the so-called ‘laws’ of genetics turned my theoretical interest into a practical one, and ignited my motivation to become a gene drive researcher.”

In Greenberg’s eyes, genetic engineering is likely here to stay and that means creating scientific consensus around the morals of the issue and communicating to the public what it means and why it is important. 

“Naomi is a special scholar — some are good at generating questions and others at working toward their answers. And then there is Naomi, who is unusually good at both,” said Manus Patten, a teaching professor of biology who mentored much of Greenberg’s research. “It’s going to be fun over the next few years to watch as she makes the most of these opportunities. I feel like we’re at Cape Canaveral here, watching a scholar launch.” 

Applying Disability Studies in the Computer Lab

The summer before graduating from the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences, Kwabena Sekyere-Boateng (C’23) completed a 10-week research fellowship with the MIT Institute of Data, Systems and Society. His research examined the complex ways in which technology can both reinforce and tear down systems of hierarchy and oppression.

Sekyere-Boateng’s work was fully funded through a Station1 Frontiers Fellowship, a selective program that empowers undergraduates in STEM to gain real-world research experience in socially-directed projects. 

“Receiving the fellowship was exhilarating; it not only felt validating and affirming but also gave me a sense of belonging,” said Sekyere-Boateng, a computer science major and disability studies minor. “It underscored the reality that there’s a longstanding tradition of socially-directed science, and a vibrant community supporting it.”

Sekyere-Boateng conducted research as part of a group whose objective was to investigate how transformative, technology-based educational experiences can empower marginalized communities. They relied on the Critical Participatory Action Research, or CPAR, a research framework suited for “documenting, challenging and transforming conditions of social injustice.” 

“My research stemmed from interrogating how computer science as a discipline is often presented as neutral; however, it is a tool that perpetuates and reifies structural oppression,” said Sekyere-Boateng. “We focused on addressing this issue, particularly how computer science can also be used as a tool to combat structural oppression and empower marginalized communities.”

The group worked out of a computer lab at Camfield Estates, a federally funded voucher co-op in Boston, which has been described as “an oasis in a desert of affordable housing.” The community has a long-standing collaboration with MIT.

“The initial phase involved developing a curriculum tailored for participants aged 10 to 15, which was both accessible and enriching, guided by liberatory computing principles,” explained Sekyere-Boateng. “Liberatory computing illuminates how computing curricula can empower African-American students with skills to address societal racism.”

For Sekyere-Boateng, his Station1 Fellowship felt like the culmination of an educational transformation that started when he first set foot on the Hilltop. 

“What truly excited me was that it was the first space where my interests really intersected. Often, being the only, or one of the very few, Black students in a classroom can be isolating,” said Sekyere-Boateng. “However, this fellowship afforded me the opportunity to scrutinize computer science through the lenses I acquired from my other academic pursuits.”

Today, teaching computer science through a liberatory computing framework in Ghana, Sekyere-Boateng is following through on the ambitions and skills he honed as an undergraduate.

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Sara Jane Ho (C’07): Set Digital Boundaries

Much of etiquette has to do with setting and respecting boundaries, and digital boundary setting begins with physical boundaries. If you’re in the presence of someone with a heartbeat, prioritize their feelings. There’s nothing more annoying or potentially hurtful than trying to have a face-to-face conversation with someone who is focused on their screen or constantly checking to see if they have any messages. (One of the most common deal-breakers on first dates is someone continually checking their phone.) If you’re expecting an important call or message, tell the person you’re with in advance and apologize for the possible interruption.

Next are the boundaries we set with ourselves and our devices. Almost all of us are digital addicts to some degree. Our brains need the dopamine hit we get from checking our phones, and they are going to manipulate our behavior to get it. Still, pride and common sense must prevail to some degree. Repeat after me: mute, unfollow, unplug.

Finally, there are boundaries we set with others online. Just because we are technically available 24 hours a day doesn’t mean we should be. Most relationships will not benefit from that kind of unlimited access. But people won’t know what our limits are unless we communicate them, either outright or in a more subtle way. Managing expectations pertains just as much or more to life online as to IRL. Whether we’re talking about friends, lovers, colleagues, or family, decide early in the relationship when and how quickly you want or need to reply. People become conditioned as to what to expect. Don’t respond late at night, for example, if you don’t want to convey availability at that hour. Boundaries can change, but they need to remain comfortable for both sides. 

Sara Jane Ho (C’07) is an internationally-renowned etiquette expert whose approach to comportment centers on self-improvement. This advice is excerpted from her new book, , was published this year following the success of her Emmy-nominated Netflix show of the same name. 

Andrea Bonior: A Focus on Health

Prioritize Sleep. Many of the daily practices that are most helpful for reducing stress are things that we already know we should do, but it’s a matter of starting small to truly prioritize them rather than feeling guilty that we ‘should’ do something and aren’t. If we could just get eight minutes more of sleep per night, that would add up to nearly an extra hour of sleep a week. And sleep deprivation — along with poor quality sleep — is one of the most common contributors to anxiety, and it lowers our resilience to stress.

Start Small. We all likely know that physical activity is good for a mental and physical health, but we often think that requires a big production of going to the gym, when in reality if we were to dance to our favorite songs and get our heart rate up for just 10 minutes regularly, that can grow into a practice that makes a meaningful difference in your mood. I truly believe it’s very important to start with just a few minutes of something that you can do differently, building consistency slowly. Tie the new behavior to something that you do anyway. For instance, I’ve often seen people better able to incorporate mindfulness exercises or meditations when they center them around brushing their teeth because they are used to brushing their teeth regularly and reliably. So, the new habit sticks better when it’s paired to something established. 

Label Your Thoughts. When stress feels really overwhelming, it’s often helpful to use mindfulness techniques to make sure your anxious thoughts aren’t becoming more sticky then they need to be. The heart of mindfulness is being gentle and curious as an observer of your thoughts and physical sensations, rather than beating yourself up further about your thoughts, or giving your anxious thoughts more power because you’re so bothered by them. It’s often helpful to label your thoughts as thoughts, which gives you some distance from them and reduces their power, like “I’m having a thought that I can’t handle this, but I know part of that is my anxiety distorting the situation,” rather than “I can’t handle this!” Zooming out to the big picture and reminding yourself of your values can be helpful, because it can remind you of what really matters to you, and how in the big picture of your life some of our biggest stressors are actually growth opportunities rather than fully “bad” events. 

Connect With Friends. People with whom you feel trust and connection and who appreciate you for who you are are some of the biggest stress relievers that there are. And though the pressure as a busy college student to socialize can feel overwhelming, prioritizing quality time with people whose company brings you joy can help make tough moments easier.

Andrea Bonior is a mental health expert and teaching professor in the . Bonior is a licensed clinical psychologist and the author of the best-selling book Detox Your Thoughts. She hosted the mental health talk and advice podcast Baggage Check, based on the mental health brand she built at The Washington Post. On campus, Bonior leads The Connection Project: Hoyas Connected, a program created at the University of Virginia to help increase a sense of belonging and community among new students.

Trahern, who recently celebrated her 10th year as head of the nation’s premier trade association for country music, believes that remaining curious and passionate about the work you do is not only essential for success but, importantly, it keeps life interesting. 

“It’s not like I woke up one day when I was 21 and decided that I was going to be the CEO of the Country Music Association — that was just not in the purview of things that I would think about,” said Trahern. “But I have always had a passion for music, a passion for journalism and a passion for history. Pursuing my American studies degree enabled me to dip my toes into those areas while in school, but chasing those passions after graduation has led me to jobs that are fascinating and that have kept me learning and growing.” 

Founded in 1958, the Country Music Association, or CMA, was the first trade association established to promote a single genre of music. Throughout Trahern’s tenure, the CMA has celebrated several milestones, including the 50th anniversary of the annual CMA Awards and CMA Fest, among the biggest and best country music festivals in the world. These events bring out the biggest names in country music and unite fans in a celebration of all things country. 

“Country music has the unique ability to speak to our shared experiences and unite us in a way that feels both personal and universal,” said Trahern. 

A Broad Toolbox for Unique Problems

As an undergraduate on the Hilltop, Trahern studied a wide array of subjects that not only expanded her horizons but equipped her with a unique set of skills drawn from across the curriculum. 

“I’m still to this day a big believer in the liberal arts education,” said Trahern. “It gives you a basic skill set for how to read and interpret materials and move nimbly between disciplines.”

The skill set Trahern developed throughout school, which drew on lessons learned in class, as an RA in Harbin Hall and from internships held throughout college, helped her navigate an unlikely career that began in Washington, DC and led to Nashville, TN. After graduating, Trahern took a job with a political consulting firm where she had interned as a student. Then, after the election of 1986, she was out of a job. 

“A year after graduation, all of my friends were working their jobs and on their individual paths and I was out there looking for a new gig,” said Trahern. “This led me to my job at C-SPAN, which was an incredible place to work as an American studies major and a lover of all things politics and history.”

At C-SPAN, Trahern covered races for the U.S. Presidency, Senate and House. She also produced Booknotes, a weekly program on nonfiction books that was hosted by C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb. 

“We were covering these historians that I’d read and studied in school, like David McCullough and Doris Kearns Goodwin,” said Trahern. “I was able to introduce Douglas Brinkley (M’83) to  C-SPAN founder and then-CEO Brian Lamb, which led to the creation of the C-SPAN School Bus, which was inspired by Brinkley’s book, The Magic Bus.”

While living in Washington, DC, Trahern was an avid concert-goer and lover of music. Immersed in the worlds of politics and history, Trahern was pursuing her passions, but had let her lifelong love of music function as a hobby rather than a profession. The daughter of a university professor and a classical violist, Trahern learned how to play the violin, piano and guitar at a young age. Eager to bring music into her professional life, Trahern moved to Nashville, using her technical savvy and production know-how to transition into a role with The Nashville Network. 

Since her initial plunge into the waters of country music, Trahern has made waves in the industry, revamping CMA’s membership structure to broaden its base, championing Nashville as the epicenter of a uniquely American art form and beating the drum across the globe for all things country. Trahern has won numerous accolades during her time as CEO, including being named “Executive of the Year” by Billboard in 2017, the same year that she topped their County Power Players List. Trahern was also inducted into the Academy for Women of Achievement and has been honored by the Country Music Hall of Fame.  

“When we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the CMA Awards, we opened with a montage of artists from the history of country music, from Charley Pride to Carrie Underwood. We had everyone at that show — from Beyonce to the Dixie Chicks,” said Trahern. “This has been such an amazing chapter in my life — to be able to sit in this chair, particularly with my love of history.” 

Trahern on the Hilltop

Trahern’s experience on the Hilltop mirrors her professional career around a central, defining pivot — from questioning her government major to pursuing American studies. 

“I almost left Georgetown,” said Trahern. “I looked into transferring to pursue a career in journalism, but the wonderful Hugh Cloke convinced me to stay and encouraged me to pursue American studies.”

Cloke, who spent 40 years in the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences as a professor and dean, helped found the American Studies Program and was honored with the Patrick Healy Award in 2013 in recognition for a lifetime of outstanding achievement and service to Georgetown. 

“Both Father Davis and Hugh Cloke were instrumental in my Georgetown experience,” said Trahern. “I think there’s something unique and wonderful in the way that the Dean’s office of the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences engages students that is not typical of the college experience.”

Trahern was first exposed to the kind of problem-solving and critical thinking required for American studies in a class on the history of the American South. 

“There were all these students making great points and pulling things from other classes and disciplines and they were all American studies students,” remembered Trahern. “I realized that’s what I wanted to do rather than just learning sequentially. It seemed to me what synthesis is really like.”

The synthesis of information from disparate sources is at the center of interdisciplinarity and, according to Trahern, good business. 

“All of the interdisciplinary programs that the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences has developed over the years emphasize the synthesis of information in different ways and that’s basically what business is,” says Trahern. “Today, I take inputs from a variety of sources and make decisions whose outcomes aren’t guaranteed and require the same kind of mental nimbleness that I learned through my American studies degree.”

When reflecting on her pivot to American studies, Trahern sees much of her life story in that single decision. 

“I believe strongly in following your passion and pursuing your curiosity,” said Trahern. “I think the liberal arts teaches you curiosity and I hope and pray that everybody can keep that curiosity throughout their careers.”

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Professor Daniel Shore is a specialist in early modern literature whose research demands thoughtful engagement with some of the most important works in the English language. Since studying John Milton as a graduate student at Harvard, Shore has become an internationally recognized expert on the poet and his seminal work, Paradise Lost. Shore’s first book, Milton and the Art of Rhetoric, explored Milton’s development of novel rhetorical strategies amidst a widespread distrust of classical rhetoric in the 17th century. 

In addition to immersing himself in texts written hundreds of years ago, Shore’s research points to the future – he has published on both linguistics and the digital humanities. One of Shore’s projects, , is an interactive, collaborative, digital reconstruction of the Early Modern social network, built around the epicenter of philosopher Francis Bacon. His second book, Cyberformalism, presented a groundbreaking approach to understanding the history of language and culture with the help of growing digital archives and advanced search tools. 

Shore, who is in his second year serving as the chair of the Department of English, is currently working on two book projects: The Limits of Experience in the Seventeenth Century and Language After the Human. Though quite different in their aims and topics, both projects respond to a posthumanist movement away from the traditional human subject as the locus of knowledge and agency. We visited Shore’s office in New North to discuss his passion for books. 

What is a book that everyone should read?

Forgive me for being slippery, but there is no such book that “everyone” should read. The true pursuit is what Milton called “promiscuous” reading, and to that pursuit no single book can be essential. But also: Middlemarch by George Eliot.

What is a book that you revisit every year?

One of my teachers, Stephen Booth, described John Milton’s Paradise Lost as the greatest pleasure machine ever created by a single human being, and after teaching it for more than a decade I remain inclined to agree. Its pleasures range from the truly awesome scope of its subject matter – God’s creation in its entirety and the causes of human suffering – to the local eventfulness of each sentence, drawn out from one pentameter line into the next.  I try to teach and to introduce students to Milton’s epic whenever possible, and I am grateful for the chance to evangelize on its behalf here.

What is a book that inspired your academic journey?

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens made me want to devote my life to literature. As a young person I identified quite strongly with the protagonist, Pip, in ways that now baffle me. My identification was far from auspicious, since the great expectations of the title come to naught. Pray that my “academic journey” does not follow suit. 

What is the best new book that you’ve read in the past year?

After a period of dissatisfaction with contemporary novels, I found the first two books of Marlon James’ Darkstar Trilogy — Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King — vivid, experimental and enchanting. They locate fantasy in an imagined Africa just before the arrival of European slave traders.

What is the perfect book for the beach?

I sometimes try to read novels at the beach and usually fail. The brief, fragmentary essays of Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia feel suitable. Read one, reflect on damaged life, stare at the sea.

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