Pathways

by Eveline Chao

The parents of Chérie Celeste Malone ’13 were performers — her dad was a child actor who worked with the Muppets, while her mother was a singer — and, as a child, Malone took acting classes at the Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia. Still, it took years for her to admit she wanted to act. She began auditioning for Bucknell productions during her sophomore year.

“That experience of being more confident and trusting myself and coming out of my bubble — and not being ashamed of wanting to pursue acting — has been its own journey,” she says.

After graduation, Malone, a German and film/media studies major, was a deputy elections officer/adviser at the United Nations. She quit that post four years ago to focus on acting.

She recently appeared in New York City’s West End Theatre production of Harriet Tubman, The Woman, a play attended by a descendent of Tubman’s.

Malone also starred in the film Faking Real, a political thriller about the hacking of a U.S. presidential election, which is in postproduction.

Malone says she wants to use her craft to touch and inspire others.

“I want to be a role model and lift up other people with my acting.”

photograph by Dustin Fenstermacher

Pathways

by Eveline Chao

The parents of Chérie Celeste Malone ’13 were performers — her dad was a child actor who worked with the Muppets, while her mother was a singer — and, as a child, Malone took acting classes at the Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia. Still, it took years for her to admit she wanted to act. She began auditioning for Bucknell productions during her sophomore year.

“That experience of being more confident and trusting myself and coming out of my bubble — and not being ashamed of wanting to pursue acting — has been its own journey,” she says.

After graduation, Malone, a German and film/media studies major, was a deputy elections officer/adviser at the United Nations. She quit that post four years ago to focus on acting.

She recently appeared in New York City’s West End Theatre production of Harriet Tubman, The Woman, a play attended by a descendent of Tubman’s.

Malone also starred in the film Faking Real, a political thriller about the hacking of a U.S. presidential election, which is in postproduction.

Malone says she wants to use her craft to touch and inspire others.

“I want to be a role model and lift up other people with my acting.”

photograph by Dustin Fenstermacher

by Robert Strauss

Sanjay Dharmavaram was hardly on the road to being a mathematics professor at the start of his academic career. As an undergraduate in India, he studied mechanical engineering before completing his doctorate in theoretical and applied mechanics at Cornell and pursuing postdoctoral work in biophysics at UCLA.

During his graduate work on applying bifurcation theory to understand lipid membranes, Dharmavaram discovered “the beauty of pure mathematics combined well with the applied version of the discipline.” He was hooked.

“It was surprising to me at the time, because people there applied rigorous mathematics to mechanics problems,” he says. “Math is about precise thinking. What I enjoyed most was being careful and meticulous about how you do analysis.”

As much as Dharmavaram likes research, he says he has always known that he would teach. “Even as a kid, I would study by teaching to an imaginary audience,” says Dharmavaram, who is completing his first academic year at Bucknell this spring. “They say you only know something when you can teach it. Even then, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in education.”

photograph by Emily Paine