33 minute read
Discourses
Ideas. Perspectives. A closer look.
18 Spotlight: Vy Vuong ’19 19 Spotlight: Claudia Polgar ’19 20 Arts & Culture: Marcia Sells ’81, P’23 22 Connections: Geliebte Freundin!
Spotlight
A Dream Fulfilled
Alumna’s opportunities snowballed thanks to Hong Kong scholarship fund
by Kat Braz
The first time Vy Vuong ’19 experienced a snowfall, she rushed outside to play in the softly falling flakes. For this first-year student hailing from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, frolicking in the snow was somewhat of a bucket-list experience. Vuong remembers her friends laughing about her enthusiasm for the flurries. But for Vuong, the first recipient of the Barnard Club of Hong Kong scholarship fund, every experience at Barnard felt like a treasured gift.
“I hadn’t considered studying abroad because I knew my parents could never afford the tuition, especially at a private college in the United States,” Vuong recalls. “But then a lot of my high school classmates were applying to U.S. schools, and my parents were supportive, although we knew I’d need scholarship assistance to attend. So I applied and took my chances.”
Vuong wanted to pursue a major in biology, but she was also interested in history and psychology. The combination of Barnard’s women-centered education and its partnership with Columbia appealed to her.
“I liked the idea of a small, liberal arts college where I could have a mix of smaller classes in different subjects but also take advantage of the facilities and resources of a large university like Columbia,” says Vuong. “You don’t have that opportunity in Vietnam. There, you take an entrance exam and are put into a study track without a lot of options. If you decide to change your major, you have to start the process all over again.”
When Barnard notified Vuong that not only was she accepted for enrollment but was also the recipient of the Barnard Club of Hong Kong scholarship, she was overjoyed.
“The scholarship opened the door to a world of amazing opportunities for me,” Vuong says. “Because of the financial assistance, I was able to enjoy my four years of college.”
Throughout her time at Barnard, Vuong shared updates with Christine Mar ’65, the alumna who founded the Barnard Club of Hong Kong and spearheaded fundraising for the scholarship. Mar’s efforts raised more than $300,000 to establish an endowment to provide assistance to students from Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand, or Vietnam to attend Barnard. Recipients are chosen by the College during the admissions process.
“Vy is remarkable,” Mar says. “Her first semester, I offered to send her money for snow boots. She comes from a very hot climate, and New York is cold, she’s going to need snow boots. She thanked me, but she’d already bought a pair online. She was prepared. I thought, ‘She’s going to be just fine.’”
At Barnard, Vuong made the dean’s list, became active in student organizations, and worked as a research assistant. She’s now a lab technician in the Arlotta Lab in the department of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University, assisting scientists in their pursuit to better understand the development of the human brain’s cerebral cortex using organoids — self-organized 3-D tissue culture derived from stem cells. She has aspirations to one day earn her Ph.D. in biology. She still shares updates with Mar every Lunar New Year.
“Without her help, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Vuong says. “I have the opportunity to assist scientists with their research. I went from Barnard to a majority-women lab environment where I can thrive. As a scientist, I’m energized by the discovery process. There are so many things to be explored, so many things we still don’t know. That might be a little scary, but it’s also very exciting for me.”
She’s fully adjusted to life in New England, too.
“Boston has lots of snowstorms,” Vuong says. “I no longer find them that exciting.” B
Spotlight
Starting Up at Barnard
Claudia Polgar ’19 launches CheckPoint Health to streamline caregiving
by Veronica Suchodolski ’19
As a caregiver for her grandmother, Claudia Polgar ’19 has become well acquainted with what it means to navigate the United States’ healthcare system. “From diagnosis and treatment to follow-up and ongoing care, I witnessed that the process can be a winding road,” says Polgar. “While some healthcare journeys can be straightforward, others can be filled with countless next steps or an unclear path forward.”
Polgar isn’t alone in learning how to navigate the healthcare system: More than one in five Americans are family caregivers. That’s why Polgar — who majored in medicine, literature, and society as a student at Barnard — founded CheckPoint Health, a new startup designed to help family caregivers better manage their loved one’s care. “CheckPoint reduces the burden by taking care of the coordination and logistical planning involved with caregiving so that families have more quality time to spend with their loved ones,” Polgar explains.
Polger’s health productivity app helps users organize and simplify their caregiving tasks with customized checklists. It also enables family members to divvy up responsibilities more easily by allowing for schedule synching and information sharing.
The data supports the need to streamline the caregiving process. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that by 2034, older adults will outnumber children, increasing the stress on family members caring for both older and younger generations. Additionally, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Yale School of Medicine.
“I believe that family caregivers hold the key to alleviate pressure on an overburdened healthcare system,” says Polgar.
To get the startup off the ground, Polgar joined the Columbia Startup Lab with sponsorship from Barnard’s Athena Center for Leadership. The Startup Lab, housed at a WeWork office in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, provides space for 71 Columbia alumni to work on entrepreneurial ventures. Participants also gain access to Entrepreneur-inResidence hours and exclusive workshops.
“As a member of the Lab, I have access to a wealth of experts across industries, as well as membership in a cohort of founders from across the Columbia alumni community,” says Polgar. “I have received invaluable support, from reframing key challenges to rethinking market strategies.”
Athena’s support was critical to Polgar gaining access to the Startup Lab’s resources and has created a lasting partnership between her and the Athena Center. “In just one year, we’ve gotten a front-row seat to the building of a great company, built connections between students and Claudia, and strengthened our relationship to the entire Columbia entrepreneurship community,” says Umbreen Bhatti ’00, the Constance Hess Williams ’66 Director of the Athena Center.
Sponsoring Polgar is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Athena Center’s support of entrepreneurial work in the Barnard community. In June, Athena hosted the Barnard Startup Summit for students and alumnae. This threeday virtual boot camp — co-hosted by the Barnard Entrepreneurship Network — taught participants the ins and outs of creating a startup, offering workshops on branding, PR, elevator pitches, and more.
Athena also creates space for Polgar to take the advice she’s received from the Startup Lab and give it back to current students — she holds weekly coffee chats and check-ins with undergraduates through the Center. “Connecting with students has been a rewarding way for me to reflect on where I was as a student and where I am envisioning taking CheckPoint in the future,” says Polgar.
In the years to come, Polgar aims to grow CheckPoint Health into the go-to company for family caregivers — a vision that could include partnering with hospitals and healthcare systems. “I hope,” she says, “to empower patients and their families to hold an active role in their own healthcare journeys, avoid preventable errors, and maximize quality of care.” B
Arts & Culture
Coming Full Circle
Marcia Sells ’81, P’23 returns to her performing arts roots in a new role at the Met Opera
by Merri Rosenberg ’78
When Marcia Sells ’81, P’23 became the Metropolitan Opera’s first chief diversity officer in February, she found herself in a role that is not only a culmination of her professional experience but also a touching echo of an early chapter in her career — as a dancer. “It brings me back, literally, to the beginning,” says Sells, who had studied ballet and begun performing with Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theater of Harlem prior to attending Barnard; she left the company after her sophomore year. “It’s full circle. I felt it was kismet.”
Sells says her new role “pulls together all I’ve done”; she came to the Met after nearly six years as the dean of students at Harvard Law School. “DEI is what I’ve done my whole life.”
At Harvard Law School, Sells launched the first diversity and equity training program for students and student services staff. And in her previous position, as an associate vice president of government and community affairs at Columbia University, Sells developed pathways for underrepresented groups to enter STEM programs at the University. Similarly, when she served in high-level positions at Reuters, Columbia University Law School, and the National Basketball Association, Sells consistently made diversity, equity, and inclusion a priority.
“[As an attorney], I was trying to recruit young lawyers [of color] to the D.A. office,” says Sells. While a law professor at Columbia and Harvard, she also worked on programs to recruit and support diverse students.
Sells found the Metropolitan Opera job posting on LinkedIn. “[My] time at Harvard was really great and proved I could live outside of New York City,” but, she admits, the temptation to return to the Big Apple was too strong to resist.
The position at the Met Opera takes Sells back to her artistic roots. As a young girl in Cincinnati, Sells recalls, her first performance was at age 9, in the opera Falstaff. “[My mother] loved opera and the symphony and put me in ballet. I was the only Black kid in ballet.”
Sells comes to the role at a critical moment for the legendary opera house, as it grapples with its own racial reckoning in the wake of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and strives to become a more equitable institution. And no one is better equipped to guide the Met through these changes than Sells. “I thought, ‘Why not? If not me, who?’ As a person of color, I’m familiar with the argument of whether Black people and Latinx people can be part of European art forms. Classical ballet doesn’t belong to one group.”
An important element of Sells’ mission is to conceptualize and put into action a plan that creates a more diverse and inclusive organization, from the performers who appear on stage and the staff working behind the scenes to the members sitting on the board. She’s also tasked with another equally important goal: to broaden the Met’s audience.
“We want to see how to build the next generation of opera lovers,” she says. “Where’s the next generation of stewards and opera lovers coming from? Are you inclusive? Do you have a sense of belonging?” Sells says that for art forms like opera to survive, and even thrive, they must speak to diverse audiences: “It’s about different stories and different voices.”
Part of DEI work, Sells explains, asks the question “How do you hire and recruit?” The Met Opera has an extensive labor force on the production side, with stagehands and crew, as well as other organizational positions that offer career possibilities. “How do we introduce young people to these opportunities, which are a perfect opportunity for diverse hiring?” she asks. “It’s about seeing the arts as a way to make a living without a college degree. Creating those partnerships is exciting for me.”
She is quick to point out that the Met Opera was already committed to these important issues — from connecting to new audiences to expanding hiring practices — before she stepped into the role this past winter.
“This has been percolating here,” says Sells. For the opening night of the 202122 season, the opera house presented Fire Shut Up in My Bones — its first work by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard — based on the book by New York Times columnist Charles Blow. The focus, she says, has shifted to “How do we pull it all together in a cohesive plan?”
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Sells’ favorite opera is Dialogues of the Carmelites, composed by Francis Poulenc, which tells the story of Carmelite nuns executed during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. As Sells notes, “These nuns sacrifice themselves for a cause. It’s empowering.”
Barnard was key to Sells’ own sense of empowerment. “There were teachers [there] who challenged you,” recalls Sells. “If you had the capacity to tackle challenges, no one was saying, ‘You can’t do that.’ That’s a huge lift in taking a job like this. You can still fail, but you can figure out how to get up again.”
Sells’ dedication to community service — no surprise, given that her mother was a volunteer for many local organizations and her father ran the largest settlement house in Cincinnati — started during her undergraduate years; she was the student representative to the College’s Board of Trustees, president of the Student Government Association, and active in the Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters.
Her connections to Barnard have remained strong. Her daughter is a member of the Class of 2023. Sells is a Trustee and also serves on the boards of the Revson Foundation, Coalition for the Homeless, and Columbia University Community Impact.
As committed as Sells is to the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion, she hopes that there will be enough progress and change to make her role unnecessary someday.
“It would be lovely,” she says, “to work myself out of a job.” B
Connections
Geliebte Freundin!
A Barnard connection forged just after WWII still flourishes threequarters of a century later
by June Bell
Around 75 years ago, two members of the Class of ’49 became friends.
Their connection seemed almost inevitable: Both were fluent German speakers and philosophy majors, and they shared passions for writing, music, opera, and theatre. But it was also improbable: Marlies Wolf Plotnik and her family were refugees who had suffered years of persecution in Germany, and Marion Hausner Pauck’s father was upset that his daughter had befriended a Jewish girl.
Yet the classmates’ bond remained fast, even when they lived on opposite coasts and went years without seeing each other. “It never let up,” Plotnik, 93, says. “The fact that we were never not in touch is unusual. ... I had other connections, but nothing as solid as Marion.” Not surprisingly, Pauck, 93, agrees. “We’ve always been harmonious,” she says, “and that doesn’t happen often.”
Plotnik had lived in New York for just six years before being accepted to Barnard. She and her two older siblings were born in Darmstadt, Germany, where her father was a respected lawyer and her grandfather owned a successful factory. The family traced its history in Germany to 1560 and had felt secure in their homeland.
As the Nazis and Hitler rose to power during Plotnik’s childhood, anti-Jewish sentiment festered and spread. Her 75-year-old grandfather suffered a fatal heart attack the day he was forced to purchase a large sign proclaiming “He who deals with Jews is a traitor” and display it at his factory. Plotnik’s parents waited three anxious years for visas that allowed them to join New York cousins in 1939.
“I always had the fear it could all be taken away from me,” Plotnik said in a 2010 oral history interview conducted for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “This has haunted me.”
Pauck, the sheltered only child of German immigrants, had a very different upbringing. Raised in New York City, she savored Sunday services at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on the Upper West Side. The airy Gothic Revival building, illuminated by jewel-hued stained-glass windows, was the most beautiful building she’d ever seen, and it reverberated with stirring sermons. “And I loved the peace and quiet of it,” Pauck recalls. Barnard didn’t offer religion as a major, but philosophy, taught by respected department chair Gertrude Rich, was a popular alternative.
Pauck and Plotnik met in a philosophy class and then founded and wrote for Focus, Barnard’s literary magazine. Together, the young women interviewed the actress who’d received a Tony nomination for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in
Above: Marlies Wolf Plotnik Opposite page: Marion Hausner Pauck
COURTESY OF THE BARNARD COLLEGE ARCHIVES
the 1947 Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. “I thought we had some nerve ringing the doorbell of Jessica Tandy, but we did,” Pauck says. “She was so gracious! She said, ‘Please come in.’”
Devotees of Wagner and Mozart, the two women attended the symphony together and frequented the Metropolitan Opera. “We were both in love with Ezio Pinza,” Plotnik says of the Italian singer. She recalls regularly seeing Columbia president Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, on campus; the women’s diplomas bear Eisenhower’s signature.
The classmates’ connection flourished despite the disapproval of Pauck’s father. “But he had made a big mistake,” Plotnik says with a chuckle, “because he sent her to a Friends [high] school that gave her a liberal education.” Pauck notes that her father’s views were at odds with his behavior: He gave food to German-Jewish refugee families and helped them find work. Nonetheless, she says, he harbored some prejudices. “He and I had big fights,” she recalls.
After graduating from Barnard, Pauck studied at Union Theological Seminary and earned a Master of Arts degree in 1951 from Columbia. Although she had no plans to seek ordination, a male classmate told her he did not approve of women even attending divinity school. “You’ll take all our jobs,” he said. She couldn’t help laughing “because the male ego was far more fragile than the female.”
Pauck edited religious books for Oxford University Press and studied with German-American theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. She and her husband, Wilhelm Pauck, wrote a 1976 biography of Tillich that she notes proudly is still in print. Her husband, a professor, taught at Vanderbilt, the University of Chicago, and finally at Stanford.
After his death, in 1981, Marion Pauck remained in the San Francisco area, where she is working on a memoir and still attends church services. “My inner life is certainly religiously bound,” she says, explaining that she views religion as “a way of life, a way of thinking that is with you all the time.”
Plotnik married Eugene Plotnik (Columbia ’50), who became an editor, PR executive, and creative director. Marlies Plotnik launched and ran a New York City agency that matched advertising copywriters with clients such as IBM and major banks. She was especially pleased that her earnings put the couple’s two sons through college. Eugene Plotnik died in 2008.
Plotnik and Pauck’s connection has bridged two centuries. During the five years that Plotnik served as president of the Class of ’49, Pauck was her vice president. When Pauck finished a book she enjoyed, she wrapped it up and mailed it to Plotnik. Pauck sometimes stayed with Plotnik when she visited New York.
The former classmates over the years developed a habit of beginning each letter — and then each email — with “Geliebte Freundin” (“beloved friend”). Initially, Plotnik says, “we did this as a nostalgia trip,” but the greeting stuck, and they continue to faithfully use it. “That phrase,” she notes, “is always followed by an exclamation point.” B
INTO THE WORLD
We spoke with six graduates from the Class of 2021 who are gearing up for their next adventure
This year has been unprecedented, to say the least. But even in the face of formidable challenges, the Class of 2021 forged ahead with tenacity, ingenuity, and an incredible drive to effect meaningful change. Leveraging the skills they learned at Barnard, these students hit the ground running. They launched new careers, enrolled in competitive graduate programs, and pursued international Fulbrights. The new alumnae are entering a broad range of job sectors; law, government, financial services, and tech are among the top reported fields. Teach for America, Google, HBO, Trisha Brown Dance Company, and Boston Children’s Hospital are a few of the many organizations employing Barnard grads. So far, 22% of the members of the Class of 2021 have told Beyond Barnard that they are continuing their education at the graduate level. And their pursuits are not just bound to the United States: Many are venturing abroad to pursue research, volunteer work, and scholarship opportunities, including three recent graduates who’ve been awarded Fulbright scholarships to work as English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) in countries as far afield as Taiwan and Mexico.
Integral to these students’ success was Beyond Barnard. The career advising center provided essential support — virtually and in person — to students through interview preparation, résumé building, a summer colloquium series, conversations with alumnae, and more. And the Class of 2021 took full advantage of all that Beyond Barnard has to offer, with 97% of its members using Beyond Barnard’s advising or events at least once since it opened its doors in 2018.
Here we highlight six new graduates whose interests span a broad spectrum of disciplines and professional fields. They filled us in on their time at Barnard and where they’re headed next.
Stephanie Calluori ’21:
Problem-Solving Pursuits
by Mary Cunningham
“As a biologist, you and your team are trying to solve a mystery,” says Stephanie Calluori ’21. “It’s really a giant, intricate puzzle.” For Calluori, who majored in cell and molecular biology, solving these puzzles was an integral part of her college experience — a challenge she’s now tackling in her new role as a scientific program analyst at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in Bethesda, Maryland.
Calluori knew she wanted to study biology from the moment she attended the Barnard Open House Program for Admitted Students. There, she had the opportunity to meet with professors and speak to a student studying gene regulation and honeybees in Professor Jonathan Snow’s bee lab. She remembers thinking: “That’s the essence of what I want to do.”
At Barnard, Calluori found herself enthralled by courses like Medical Sociology with Professor Amy Zhou, which opened the door to the world of science and public health: “It helped me to see the interconnections of biology and also the social and environmental conditions.” Calluori also minored in science, policy, and ethics.
During the summer of 2019, Calluori participated in the Summer Research Institute (SRI), where she assisted Professor Brandon Pearson, a behavioral neuroscientist and toxicologist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, in investigating the effects of environmental factors on aging and neurological disease. The work inspired Calluori to stay on in Pearson’s lab through her senior year.
Armed with the knowledge and research skills she acquired at Barnard, Calluori now provides support to the genomics research programs funded by the NHGRI, a prong of the National Institutes of Health that advances health through genome research. In this two-year position, which started in mid-June, she analyzes scientific information and evaluates programs. Calluori looks forward to learning more about genomics outside of the traditional lab setting and exploring ways to increase equity in genomics research.
“Having a public health background that I explored at Barnard provides me with a powerful lens through which to view the world. I think it’s a really great framework to ask questions and an approach to solving our most pressing health scientific issues,” she says. “I’m very excited to bring that perspective to my position.”
Calluori credits Beyond Barnard for helping her secure the role at NHGRI, thanks to offerings like its summer colloquium series — which, she says, taught her how to strengthen her résumé — and interview prep. (She discovered the job posting on Barnard Handshake.) “Whenever I meet younger students, I always tell them, ‘Go to Beyond Barnard. It is one of the best resources that Barnard has.’” Looking ahead to her next chapter, Calluori hopes to pursue a master’s and a Ph.D. in public health. The path, she says, might lead her to environmental health sciences or to a different field like epidemiology: “Ultimately, I’d like to take all that I’ve learned and help to inform public health and policy.”
Isabel Hernandez Rodriguez ’21:
The Right Chemistry
by Michele Lynn ’82
When Isabel Hernandez Rodriguez ’21 enrolled at Barnard, she had plans to go into medicine. But as a first-year student in a quantitative analysis course, she discovered a passion for chemistry and research. “Two classmates and I worked on a project to design a way to measure the organic compound HMF in honey,” she recalls. “We had to write a proposal, come up with methods, and write up a report, and I found that doing research independently is so much fun.”
Hernandez’s academic advisor, assistant professor Andrew Crowther, was key in assisting her with the transition from pre-med to chemistry, she says. “He helped me understand what opportunities there are in chemistry and avenues I could pursue postgraduation.”
For Hernandez, the next avenue is starting a Ph.D. program in chemistry this fall at the California Institute of Technology, where she will pursue her interests in physical and materials chemistry and possibly in clean energy. As Hernandez gets ready to embark on this journey, she feels confident that she is well prepared. “Every class I took at Barnard was very rigorous and provided me with the tools to succeed,” she says. “I am grateful that I was able to complete a chemistry department honors thesis — including doing research, writing the thesis, giving a presentation, and defending my thesis — which will make it easier when I have to do that in graduate school.”
She’s especially excited about Caltech’s focus on interdisciplinary research. “I’m looking forward to continuing to learn how to do research independently and starting to design my own research projects,” she says. “I’m very interested in continuing in research, whether I end up in academia or industry.”
Hernandez, who peer-tutored students in chemistry at Barnard, is happy that she’ll continue working with students while in graduate school. “Teaching and helping in the lab were a lot of fun and a good way to pass the baton from my Barnard professors.”
Hernandez cites her professors — particularly Crowther, Meena Rao, director of Barnard’s organic chemistry labs, and assistant professor of chemistry Christina Vizcarra, who earned her Ph.D. from Caltech — as invaluable to her learning and determining her future endeavors. She also took full advantage of the resources in chemistry across Broadway with Columbia professor Latha Venkataraman, in whose applied physics and chemistry department lab Hernandez researched during her Barnard tenure.
“Over the past four years, my parents and friends from high school have commented on how much more confident I have become. I’m so grateful for all the support I have had from the Barnard community.”
Sofia Perez ’21: A Creative Spin
by Veronica Suchodolski ’19
Going from majoring in art history to working in digital marketing might not look like an obvious leap — it wasn’t initially obvious to Sofia Perez ’21, who graduated with a degree in art history and a minor in English and then segued into a junior account manager role at Pinterest.
But with unexpected internship developments, the help of Beyond Barnard, and encouragement from the Barnard alumnae network, Perez cultivated her digital skills and discovered her knack for working with brands to realize their advertising goals. Her career trajectory even influenced her senior thesis, which explored makeup transformations throughout art history and connected them to TikTok and other online spaces.
“In art history, a lot of the time, we’re given a piece with no context, and we have to put all these clues together, or think about the piece from different perspectives,” says Perez. “That’s helped me think creatively and aesthetically about how an image can translate to different people, which I think is important for marketing.”
The nonlinear path that led Perez to Pinterest started at Cosmopolitan magazine, where she interned with the beauty and skincare team after her sophomore year. “What I didn’t expect from that internship,” says Perez, “was that I developed a lot of digital skills, because Cosmo is transitioning from not being so print-based, and I think that was really critical in my career.”
From Cosmo, Perez went on to marketing internships at the social media app kickit, the Decker/Royal public relations agency, and the digital magazine Coveteur. “I feel like with every internship, I developed little pieces of skills along the way,” says Perez. “It really helped me in the job that I’ve landed.”
Integral throughout the journey was Beyond Barnard. “There was a period of time when I was in there [the Beyond Barnard office] maybe three times a week,” Perez says, recalling meeting with peer career advisors to review her cover letters and résumés. “Afterwards, I noticed I got a lot more interviews; I got a lot more emails from positions that I was applying to. I’m really lucky that I was able to have that resource.” The Barnard alumnae network was also a bonus. Perez’s intern manager at Cosmo was Ama Kwarteng ’17, and her co-intern in the department was another current student. “It was really nice to have that community,” Perez says, adding that she’s looking forward to connecting with the Barnard graduates working at Pinterest. Having just started her job in June, Perez doesn’t know what the next steps of her career will look like. “I definitely see myself staying [at Pinterest], developing my sales and marketing skills, moving up maybe into a more creative role,” Perez says. One thing’s for sure, though: “I’m really excited.”
Kelsey Bialo ’21: A Love of Language
by Michele Lynn ’82
Kelsey Bialo ’21 is fascinated by languages. After studying Mandarin in high school and at Barnard and spending the summer of 2019 with the Columbia in Beijing study abroad program, Bialo realized that it wasn’t just the Chinese language that enchanted her. “I am interested in how languages work and language pedagogy,” she says.
Bialo combined her disparate academic interests into a major in linguistics and minors in both education studies and East Asian studies, ideal preparation for her next step: a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Taiwan. She’ll spend the coming school year working in an elementary school in Taiwan, where she will offer guidance on vocabulary and conversation practice in the classroom and serve as a cultural ambassador for the United States.
“I am most looking forward to working with the students,” she says. “I expect that the students will be my biggest gateway into Taiwanese culture because children have such an amazing perspective on the world and a unique way of processing things. I’m also excited about working with teachers who have a whole different education, teaching knowledge, and pedagogy.”
The Fulbright is a perfect fit for Bialo. “I want to live outside the United States for a while, and this opportunity combines a region of the world that interests me, my teaching interest, and my language interest,” she says. “It took a lot of work to make myself into the type of candidate these competitive fellowships are looking for. Beyond Barnard was an incredible resource to me in that process.”
Barnard prepared her for her future endeavors “in every way humanly possible,” she says. “I learned the importance of thinking through a topic from the perspectives of others, which is so valuable to prepare you for post-college and for living in another country and another culture.”
While linguistics isn’t a formal program at Barnard, administrators approved Bialo’s petition and facilitated her ability to pursue her interest. In her senior thesis, Bialo explored how the Taiwanese government’s policies and social attitudes toward the Taiwanese languages Hokkien and Hakka have affected their use, which, she says, “carry different implications for their continued vitality.”
She expects to return to the classroom for a master’s degree in applied linguistics and to do fieldwork in language documentation, with the hope of having a career in which one foot is in academia and the other is working with communities and doing language revitalization. She also plans to stay active as a coach with the Skyliners synchronized skating team; she’s been a member for 12 years. For the past six years, she has joined the group in competing both nationally and internationally as Team USA.
“I’m so excited to be part of this close-knit Fulbright community that shares similar values with Barnard,” says Bialo. “It will be a great transition.”
Danielle Hopkins ’21: Reforming the System
by Lauren Mahncke
When Danielle Hopkins ’21 entered Barnard, she had little idea that she’d graduate, four years later, committed to pursuing a career in the criminal-legal field. But by the end of her freshman year — after her first African history course with Professor Abosede George — that path was becoming clearer.
“The class helped me to realize that history as a discipline would be the best way for me to attain the skills and knowledge necessary to work in the criminal legal field,” Hopkins says.
She credits another member of the history department, Dr. Barbara Fields, for informing her views on American history and how race is used to justify oppression. For Hopkins, who grew up in a mostly white town on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, “being in New York and having classmates who come from different backgrounds also really changed my perspective.”
After graduating magna cum laude from Barnard with a degree in history and a minor in Spanish, Hopkins started working in the Houston office of Partners for Justice, an organization that trains nonattorney legal advocates to help people at risk for incarceration. At the Harris County Public Defender’s Office, she’ll serve a two-year term as an advocate, providing case navigation and wraparound support to clients. “For example,” she says, “I might help someone whose car has been repossessed find an alternative way to get to work so that they don’t lose their job.”
The central goal is to advocate for and support clients and their families and help them deal with the consequences of being entangled in the legal system, particularly focusing on the marginalized communities who are most heavily impacted by the legal system. In Harris County, Black people are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts are.
Beyond Barnard played an essential role in helping Hopkins take this first step in her career. Like many new graduates, it initially took Hopkins a little time to land the right job. After she discovered the position on Handshake, Barnard’s student job board, she went to the Beyond Barnard office for assistance with the application process.
“[Dean of Beyond Barnard] A-J Aronstein specifically really kept me going,” she says, even prepping her for the Partners for Justice interview. In fact, Hopkins had two job offers to pick from during graduation week. Beyond Barnard also helped her with her successful application for an investigator position at the Tennessee Office of the Post-Conviction Defender.
Hopkins’ ultimate goal is to become a public defender. “That being said, I also know that my career could take me in many directions as I work to join the efforts already being done in dismantling the criminal legal system in this country,” she says. “While there need to be immense structural changes — and I hope to see those changes — I want to work as a lawyer so that I can support and advocate for the individuals, families, and communities that are being impacted right now.”
Julie Seager ’21: Economic Impact
by Michele Lynn ’82
As Julie Seager weighed her college admissions choices, Barnard came out on top, in no small part because of its multifaceted economics department. “The economics faculty have such fascinating research topics and do progressive work,” says Seager.
The knowledge, training, and research opportunities she gained as a dual economics and math major prepared Seager for the job she began in July as a research analyst in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s two-year program for recent graduates. On the forecasting team, she and her colleagues use macroeconomic models to assess the current and future state of the U.S. economy.
Doing research, however, is nothing new for Seager. Starting in the spring semester of her sophomore year, she helped Barnard economics professor Rajiv Sethi’s team conduct research on hybrid forecasting of geopolitical events — work that continued during the Summer Research Institute and subsequent semesters. In her senior year, she further honed her research skills when she teamed up with Sethi to examine disparities in police use of lethal force. In fact, by the time Seager graduated, she had co-authored three papers with Sethi and fellow researchers. For Seager, this mentorship has been critical to her growth. “He helped me transition from being his research assistant to being his collaborator,” she says.
“Presenting my research during the poster session at the Summer Research Institute and having that practice in a safe space where people were supportive helped build my confidence before I presented at a professional conference,” she says.
Seager is appreciative of the funding she received for her own independent research over two summers, one of the many benefits of being selected for the Barbara Silver Horowitz ’55 Scholars of Distinction Program, which provides a four-year scholarly experience to a cohort of students.
For Seager, classes such as Economics of the Public Sector— taught by Elizabeth Ananat, Mallya Professor of Women and Economics — were transformative. “Professor Ananat, who served on the White House Council of Economic Advisors during Obama’s presidency,” she says, “opened my eyes to what a career as an economist in the public sector could look like.”
These courses, coupled with research opportunities, provided Seager with a road map for the future. “My interest in economics has come from a place of understanding different dimensions of social inequality,” says Seager. “I’m grateful that Barnard’s Economics Department has a commitment to economic justice and encourages students to go down different paths.”
Seager envisions pursuing a master’s in public policy or data science or a Ph.D. in economics. “I want to combine my passion for social issues and my love for data science to make an impact,” she says. “I learned at Barnard how many different career options there are that fit at that intersection.” B
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