Alumni Connections

Neither President Rivera nor Julian find it particularly surprising that the two of them, as CSW alums, would be drawn to a place like Macalester.

College President Suzanne Rivera ’87 and 2022 Truman Scholar Julian Applebaum ’19 connect at Macalester College.

Julian Applebaum ’19 was a first-year student at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN, when the school announced that fellow CSW alum Suzanne Rivera ’87 had been named the college’s next president. An article announcing the appointment in The Mac Weekly, Macalester’s student newspaper, described President Rivera as having attended an “elite boarding school in Weston, Massachusetts,” a detail Julian says he initially glazed over, not making the CSW connection until a friend pointed it out to him. He remembers laughing at the characterization of CSW as “elite.” President Rivera agrees.

“CSW — and Macalester — are both places that celebrate individuality. They are places where people who march to a beat of a different drum can really thrive and are appreciated for their gifts,” President Rivera shares. “When I hear the phrase ‘elite boarding school,’ that’s not what I think of. I think more of places that encourage conformity or achievement in a very specific, narrow kind of way.”

What’s more, President Rivera finds the notion of her being described as an elite boarding school student humorous because she likely only ended up attending CSW because her mother worked there and was able to send her children there on full scholarship. Their family lived in the Aleph dorm parent apartment, and President Rivera can remember working for the maintenance crew over the summer. Her mother, a single mom, was a clerical worker at CSW for many years before deciding to go back to college. Upon earning her degree from Brandeis University, she was hired as a member of CSW’s English Department.

“My whole family life is wrapped up in CSW,” President Rivera says. “I owe the place a lot for giving me such a great education that I could then compete for entrance at a place like Brown, where I went for college.” President Rivera started her presidency at Macalester in June of 2020, a difficult and tenuous time for anyone attending or working at an educational institution — let alone a new college president — but she took the challenges in stride. Due to safety constraints posed by the pandemic, despite having connected with Julian over email, it would be some time before the two would be able to meet in person, finally crossing paths at an orientation event in which President Rivera was serving ice cream to students.

Neither President Rivera nor Julian find it particularly surprising that the two of them, as CSW alums, would be drawn to a place like Macalester. Both describe the school as being very similar to CSW.

“That’s actually exactly why I picked Macalester,” Julian shares. “I remember I was sitting in on a class during an accepted students weekend, and when I got to the classroom — it was a political science class — it was set up in a horseshoe of chairs and tables with the professor sitting at a table with the students. It was the first time I had seen that at a college, and I remember thinking, ‘yes, this is it. This is what I love.’”

Interestingly, though they attended decades apart, President Rivera also remembers classes at CSW being arranged in this way, and says the middle of the horseshoe shape was sometimes referred to as “the well of knowledge.”

Both alums also cite CSW’s commitment to social justice and activism as being formative to their respective trajectories. President Rivera recalls being the leader of an organization called STOP Nuclear War and organizing a group of students to attend rallies around Boston and even once on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

“CSW encouraged my impulse to activism and made it seem to me like pursuing social justice was not only acceptable, but desirable, and almost a moral obligation that if you see something wrong in the world, it’s your job to try to do something to change it.”

Julian, who just wrapped up a semester abroad at the University of Oxford studying politics and English Literature through St. Catherine’s College, was also heavily involved in activism and social justice work at CSW, most notably as head of the school’s Junior State of America (JSA) chapter. He says it was a great way to create new engagement on campus for political discourse and public speaking training, and involvement with local and political affairs.

It was this passion that led Julian to apply for — and ultimately receive — a Truman Scholarship, a competitive national award created by Congress in 1975 as a living memorial to President Harry S. Truman. Each winner receives a grant of up to $30,000 to pursue a graduate degree towards a career in public service. He thinks his high school self would be very proud of this achievement.

“It’s a very competitive scholarship,” he says, “but my entry and ultimate win were motivated by a sense of duty and justice, and commitment to a career in that.”

This incredible honor and grant will allow Julian to pursue a graduate program in public service with continued opportunities for mentorship and networking throughout his life. He is now committed to working at least three years in public service, but hopes to do it for much longer.

President Rivera agrees that her high school self would be pleased with where she is now. While she never specifically envisioned herself becoming a college president, she was always someone who aspired to be an effective leader. These leadership skills have been integral to her tenure as Macalester’s President, with the pandemic bringing on challenges beyond what anyone ever could have imagined. Shortly after beginning the job, President Rivera and her leadership team made the difficult decision to temporarily move to remote classes, a prospect that was bemoaned by students who disliked being in four or five remote classes all day. So President Rivera and her team came up with the brilliant idea of dividing each semester into two modules, so that students only had to take two classes per module.

This framework probably sounds familiar to CSW alums, and it certainly did to Julian when he heard about it. President Rivera herself admits that the decision to call these blocks of time “modules” was inspired completely by CSW. Excited by the prospect of returning to his beloved Mod System and eager to help, Julian went so far as to reach out to Macalester’s Jan Serie Center for Teaching and Learning to offer to help faculty learn how best to teach in a mod framework. Julian’s generosity also earned him the Hamre Award for service to Macalester that year. To this day, he still hears from Macalester faculty, thanking him for writing and sharing his Mod System recommendations.

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING CSW!

Thank you to the many donors who made a gift to support, honor, and celebrate CSW this past year! Your gift makes a difference, helping to ensure that CSW continues to deliver a transformational educational experience for today’s students. Through this year’s Day of Giving, we were proud to receive a total of 321 donations, raising over $176,791 for CSW. Your generosity continued through the end of our fiscal year, bringing the grand total of funds raised to $1.1 million. We look forward to sharing our annual Report on Philanthropy with you later this fall. Be sure to check it out for more details and stories from this historic school year.