Alumnae Profile: The Indefatigble Heuer Sisters by Kristen Walsh

The Indefatigable Heuer Sisters

Keri Heuer ’15 Katelyn Heuer ’17

Finding Their Rhythm

Sisters Keri Heuer ’15 and Katelyn Heuer ’17 have a lot in common. Both are accomplished pianists who performed at Carnegie Hall. They are STEM scholars who find balance through creative outlets. They agree that new experiences at Portsmouth Abbey – though sometimes uncomfortable at first (a new sport or public speaking) – are accompaniments to their lives. Yet each is forging her own path: Keri is a PhD candidate in astrophysics at Drexel University while Katelyn recently graduated from Bucknell University with a computer science degree and is starting a job as a computer scientist at the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center.

Sitting down to talk with Katelyn and Keri, one sister’s answer often seamlessly transitions into the other’s, like musical notes coming together to form a chord. Take the recitation assignment in their respective English classes – an impactful memory for both.

“I would ask to go first every single time because I was so nervous and couldn’t just sit there waiting,” Keri says. “I didn’t enjoy public speaking, and though Mrs. Bonin would challenge me to get more comfortable, she would balance that with letting me go first. I slowly got better and ended up really enjoying doing the recitations.”

Katelyn would also ask to go first when she took the same class with Mr. Barron two years later “just to get it over with.” But, she adds, “I eventually realized that, with practice, everything was going to be ok.”

It’s that approach that helped both sisters get through their respective Carnegie Hall piano performances at age 16 (even though neither got to perform first).

“I was one of the oldest people there and one of the second to last to perform,” Katelyn recalls. “It was really scary, seeing people leave one-by-one and I was just standing there. But I realized I was there to share something special.”

Working in Harmony

Keri and Katelyn arrived at the Abbey having mostly focused on activities that were more individual in nature for the pianists and avid readers. It wasn’t long, though, before they both learned how to use their talents for a broader purpose, even in unexpected ways.

Katelyn was co-captain of the Junior Varsity Field Hockey team during her Fourth-Form year. “I wasn’t

necessarily very good at field hockey, but the fact that my peers saw me as a leader is something that really stuck with me.”

It was likely Katelyn’s loyalty that earned her the role. “I can relate to a lot of people and no matter what happens, my team knew I would be there for them.”

Her creative outlet came from being a Chamber Ensemble member. Some of Katelyn’s favorite songs today are rooted in that experience. “Mr. Bentley understood the type of music I liked and suggested pieces to me that I had never heard of but ended up being some of my favorites.”

Keri was part of the Abbey’s orchestra, Sinfonia, and a member of the Girls’ Track team. The latter – which marked the School’s athletic requirement – is something she admits she was initially hesitant about. “I had never really played sports before, so I wasn’t expecting to like it. But I ended up learning a lot of life lessons from it: I got to experience the camaraderie of a team sport and built leadership skills being a captain.” Keri was team captain for track, a tri-varsity athlete, and she received the Scholar-Athlete award at the conclusion of her Sixth-Form year.

Though Keri had been playing piano since she was four years old, she evolved from the individual performances that marked recitals growing up. “Being a part of the orchestra at the Abbey allowed me to share my love of music with other people.”

Hitting the Right Notes

Being part of something bigger than themselves is a Benedictine principle that resonates with both Keri and Katelyn.

“I didn’t really have a sense of community before the Abbey, especially because I had so many interests and was in all of these different groups that it was hard to share things with people,” Keri recalls. “I had never really felt like I belonged somewhere until I came to the Abbey, especially serving as a day student prefect in my SixthForm year. It was fun mentoring girls and being a role model. “

Though she chose to attend a large university for undergraduate studies, Keri made sure that she carved out smaller communities while at Cornell. “I joined a sorority and was New Member Coordinator during senior year, something I wanted to do because of my time as a prefect at the Abbey. That’s something I definitely want to carry over into my professional life. Being a scientist and doing research, communication is very important to learn from each other and support each other.”

The Benedictine principle of discipline is something that informed Keri’s experience at Cornell. “I remember I was terrible at time management before the Abbey because I always liked doing so many different things and being active,” says Keri, who majored in physics with a minor in creative writing. “But I learned how to be able to manage my time and be able to pursue my interests while still putting 100 percent into everything I did.”

As an undergraduate researcher, Keri studied the correlation of galaxies in galaxy clusters with the gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background. She spent two summers as a research assistant for NASA’s NuSTAR Group in Columbia’s Astrophysics Laboratory and was also a Smithsonian Fellow in High Energy Astrophysics at the Center for Astrophysics, a collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory.

Katelyn chose a smaller college, attending Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. “At the Abbey I especially liked being at a school where everyone knew each other, and if they

Keri performing at Carnegie Hall at age 16

didn’t, they would still smile or wave. I wanted to carry that into college, and it’s something that I also want in other areas of my life.”

She went into Bucknell knowing that she wanted to major in computer science, but her choice for a double minor in math and history is something that she may not have had the confidence to do if not for a teacher willing to answer any questions.

“I didn’t love math and I wasn’t very good at it,” Katelyn modestly says. “But Algebra 2 Honors with Mr. Moffie was my favorite class at the Abbey. The way he taught showed that he really cares about every student. He encouraged me to stick with it.”

That perseverance also landed her a spot as a National Science Foundation STEM scholar during her first year at Bucknell. Students selected for the highly competitive program do undergraduate research in the STEM fields. Katelyn worked with a professor to explore the relationship between novel objects and dominance hierarchies in Capuchin monkeys. Her work included writing code to analyze and sort CSV data files.

Katelyn, upon her graduation from Bucknell University

Encore Performance

These days, the sisters show no signs of slowing down in their respective STEM disciplines. At the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Katelyn works in the Combat Systems Department, starting in a rotational role in the Naval Acquisition Development Program that includes exposure to different departments. Coding, Katelyn says, is “a cool concept” that she enjoys. “Being able to come up with a solution to a problem is very rewarding to me. It’s important to take a step back, think about what you’re doing, and look at the big picture. It might sound very counterintuitive to step back, but it’s part of the process of figuring out what you are supposed to do.”

Keri agrees with the approach, saying that she learned to “avoid tunnel vision and look at the bigger picture” in Mr. Zelden’s Humanities class. “I vividly remember when I was crying in the middle of a test and Mr. Zelden put a sticky note on my desk that said ‘breathe.’ Now it’s the first thing I do, take a step back to zoom out and come up with an approach – and remember what I’ve practiced and what I know.” (Keri kept the sticky note; it hangs on the wall of her bedroom at her parents’ house.)

A doctoral candidate at Drexel, Keri is a researcher and graduate teaching assistant in physics; in 2020 she was awarded the Physics Department’s Diversity and Inclusive Excellence Award. After Keri completes her PhD program, she plans to continue to do research but also hopes to teach. Her interest in astrophysics is partly due to fascination.

“Astrophysics makes you think about time and space,” Keri explains. “Observing things really far away, like stars and black holes, puts things into perspective and inspires me to ask a lot of questions. For me, astrophysics also feeds my artsy side because it is like storytelling; I use science to figure out the story of the universe.” – Kristen Walsh

Keri as an Abbey student