Blossoms abound as the days grow warmer.
Blossoms abound as the days grow warmer.
by Michael Blanding
Elyla (whose name is pronounced El-EE-la, and who uses gender-neutral pronouns) has long staged provocative public performances, often involving symbolic costumes and rituals. “The so-called socialist left in my country has systematically undermined LGBTQ rights and erased our histories,” says Elyla, who fled Nicaragua after receiving death threats. “Any activist or artist who is a dissident voice under such a dictatorial regime is at risk of repression, persecution and death.”
Elyla (whose name is pronounced El-EE-la, and who uses gender-neutral pronouns) has long staged provocative public performances, often involving symbolic costumes and rituals. “The so-called socialist left in my country has systematically undermined LGBTQ rights and erased our histories,” says Elyla, who fled Nicaragua after receiving death threats. “Any activist or artist who is a dissident voice under such a dictatorial regime is at risk of repression, persecution and death.”
Titusville, Fla.
Jordan, Minn.
I have been fortunate to witness hope in action via many service trips to Haiti following the massive 2010 earthquake that resulted in a reported 230,000 deaths. Working through World Hope and Global Partners, we arrived in Haiti in July 2010 to build the first of 20 structures to replace those that were destroyed. With materials previously shipped by way of sea containers, we began our work at the epicenter of the quake near Léogâne. The church we replaced was home to a congregation of about 200 people, 28 of whom died in the quake just six months before.
That July, we worked side-by-side with Haitians in the sweltering heat (120-degree days) constructing a 40-by-64-foot building with a gabled tin roof topping 17-foot-high walls designed to be earthquake and hurricane resistant. We were privileged to worship with them upon completion, and you could feel the hope that their faith in Christ provided. The men wore pressed white shirts and ties, the women wore beautifully colored dresses, and the children wore bows in their hair. Although they live in what is considered to be the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, they chose not to accept defeat.
We returned to Haiti five times over the next few years to help build and complete other church/school buildings. The stories are all similar. Hope does exist in the most difficult of situations. This hope comes from their faith in God, as does mine. We can learn from these “poorest” of people.
Cameron, N.Y.
The most recent Bucknell Magazine asked readers to answer the question of what hope means to us. Hope is my daughter. That might sound cliché. Doesn’t every parent think their kid represents hope? But really … her story, our story, is deep. She represents everything that hope should be. My husband, Chris Crellin ’00, and I tried for years to get pregnant, and after years of infertility and trying everything medically possible, we were told we would not have children of our own. Then months later, we found out that we were finally pregnant (with no interventions). At 22 weeks’ gestation, we found out our daughter would be born with a critical congenital heart defect, tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia, and would require lifesaving surgery shortly after birth. We knew instantly what we would name her: Hope.
Hope is now 5 and thriving. She is a light and everything that hope should be. In the years before her birth there was so much darkness, but despite her illness and the darkness that came with it, she brought light into our lives. Since her birth, I find hope everywhere I go. Maybe one day she will bring her light to the Bucknell Class of ’38.
Bedford, Mass.
Introducing Bucknell’s young innovators.
Illustration by Margaret Tillman Ayres
Volume 13, Issue 2
Gail Glover
Senior Director of Content Strategy
Heather Johns
Editor
Sherri Kimmel
Design
Amy Wells
Associate Editor
Matt Hughes
class notes editor
Heidi Hormel
Brad Tufts
Emily Paine
Susan Lindt
Bryan Wendell
Brooke Thames
Editorial Assistants
Miyah Powe ’20
Kim Faulk
Website
bucknell.edu/bmagazine
Contact
Email: bmagazine@bucknell.edu
Class Notes:
classnotes@bucknell.edu
Telephone: 570-577-3611
(ISSN 1044-7563), of which this is volume 13, number 2, is published in winter, spring, summer and fall by Bucknell University, One Dent Drive, Lewisburg, PA 17837. Periodicals Postage paid at Lewisburg, PA and additional mailing offices.
Permit No. 068-880.
Circulation
53,000
Postmaster
Send all address changes to:
Office of Records,
301 Market St., Suite 2
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837
© 2020 Bucknell University
Please recycle after use.
The University announced March 10 that classes would be held remotely for the remaining spring semester and that students would be required to vacate campus housing (with prorated credits for room and board, and exceptions available for students with need). Two days later, Bucknell canceled all events through the end of the spring semester, including admissions open houses, and advised students abroad to return to the U.S. as soon as possible.
President John Bravman acknowledged the disruption these changes would cause for a residential university like Bucknell, but he said they were taken to safeguard the most vulnerable to the disease.
Selinsgrove, Pa.
There’s no shortage of what Ryan Bailis ’21 calls “wicked problems” — issues that can only be tackled with novel, innovative ideas. This fall, the computer engineering and management major teamed up with Julia Knox ’21 and Kartikeya Sharma ’21 to create a workshop that empowers undergraduates to conquer complex challenges.
What They Did
Sharma, Knox and Bailis led a three-hour design-thinking workshop at nearby Susquehanna University. Design thinking is a problem-solving
process that helps people brainstorm effective, actionable solutions. After hearing about a workshop Sharma, Knox and Bailis taught at Bucknell, Susquehanna professor Emma Fleck invited the three to host a similar event for her management class. The Bucknellians led Susquehanna students through a series of interactive activities to generate creative solutions for dining and laundry service issues.
In the 174 years since Bucknell was founded, many traditions have come and gone. But occasionally students realize that some are worth resurrecting. Effiem Obasi ’20 is a case in point. Obasi was serving as president of the Black Student Union (BSU) when she discovered there once was a Black Alumni Weekend on campus. But it was phased out in 1998, the year of her birth. Obasi had been looking for ways to strengthen the bond between Black alumni and current students, so she launched a revived Black Alumni Weekend last year. Though no longer the BSU president, she helped plan the second annual weekend Feb. 28–March 1.
This year’s celebration was even bigger and better as the decade-old, student-led Black Arts Festival merged with Black Alumni Weekend. The combined programs offered a chance for Black alumni and students to meet, network and honor Black history at Bucknell. Standout events included a networking brunch with an alumni panel, a step-dance show featuring local Black Greek letter organizations (and the University’s own Bisonettes dance team) and a Black history exhibit in Bucknell’s African American affinity house.
“We wanted to create something that made Black alumni feel like they needed to come back to campus and reconnect,” says Obasi, a psychology major and Posse scholar from Los Angeles. “We also thought it was important to establish something that current Black students can claim ownership of and can connect to 10, 15 or 30 years from now.”
This fall, the college will add a new major in management & organizations and two new minors: a minor in real estate that’s open to majors in all colleges, and a minor in management that’s just for students in the College of Arts & Sciences and the College of Engineering.
The new major is open-ended by design, says Raquel Alexander, the Kenneth W. Freeman Professor of Management and Dean of the Freeman College of Management. Students can build management skills in the areas that most interest them and best serve their career plans.
“It allows students flexibility when they walk in the door,” Alexander says.
Already drawing interest is the real-estate specialization, which draws on Bucknell’s strong alumni network (the Freeman College’s real-estate advisory board has 19 alumni members) to offer authentic industry experiences students won’t find elsewhere.
The college also offers opportunities for more students to explore management. The new management minor enables arts & sciences and engineering majors to earn credentials certifying their management experience. The real-estate minor is also open to students from any of Bucknell’s three colleges.
Students can earn the management minor through Bucknell’s Summer Management Institute, launched last summer. This immersive, eight-week program explores basic management principles and all aspects of management taught at Bucknell, as well as lessons in leadership drawn from the liberal arts and real-world consulting.
These and other recent changes have broadened options for Freeman College students. In the last two years, the college reinvented its accounting & financial management curriculum to offer new majors in accounting and finance. Also added was a new business analytics major that prepares students for a future that’s increasingly data driven.
Poetry is my go-to genre after a long day at work. The precision of the linguistic choices, the rhythms of the language and the conciseness of expression drown out the noise of the day. Lima :: Limón takes me back to the borderlands of South Texas, where English and Spanish intermingle and intersect in a single sentence. The collection depicts the borderlands as a confluence of many cultures that coexist, and not always comfortably.
I look forward to long flights when I can read more than 30 pages of a novel. Recently, I read The Capital, set in Brussels, the European Union’s capital. The characters come from a host of nation-states and bring their own desires, aspirations and frustrations, used cleverly as a plot device to demonstrate the real potential and dangers of fracturing the union, whose goal was to bring peace and economic stability to Europe.
My work as provost engages me closely with literature on higher education. An Americanist by training (like me), the author reviews historical models of higher education in the U.S., from the Puritan university to the one designed by Charles Eliot in response to the Industrial Revolution. It is time, she argues, to review that paradigm and consider how we can best prepare students for a more complex world.
Philosophy professor Trish McGee ’83 caught the film bug relatively recently: She was heading to her 35th Reunion at Bucknell when a friend asked if she wanted to act in a movie, Shadows. Now, McGee has just released her own independent film: In Your Afterglow, about a tormented psychology professor, played by McGee, who exploits the gifts of an autistic girl to uncover the mystery of her past life.
b. Dead Poets Society
c. Wonder Boys
b. Memento
c. Ex Machina
b. The King’s Speech
c. La La Land
b. Finding time to write
c. Acting, producing and directing at the same time
“In this course, students devise behavioral tests of learning and memory abilities in dogs and conduct simple experiments to investigate dog cognition. Neighbors in the Lewisburg community volunteer to bring in their canine best friends as test subjects, and in return get to learn a little about their dogs’ habits.
“This class allows students to view the research process from the researcher’s perspective, so they experience what goes into conducting a scientifically sound experiment. Students design their projects from start to finish, coming up with an experimental question, establishing procedures, testing the dogs and interpreting their data. They also gain practice communicating their research to an outside audience at a semester-end research poster session.
Tyler Wincig ’20 is a patient guy.
His baseball stats tell the tale. During his junior campaign last season, the utility player got on base in an eye-popping half of all of his plate appearances. His .500 on-base percentage was second best in the Patriot League and the third-highest mark in team history — in addition to ranking 20th best in NCAA Division I play.
If a pitch isn’t to his liking, Wincig is happy to let it pass (he drew 29 walks last season, the 10th most in program history).
“You can’t score if you don’t get on base first,” says Wincig, who was named Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year in his sport in 2019. “I’m proudest of my on-base percentage, and I also think it benefits the team more than any other stat I have.”
Hundreds of trees dotting Bucknell’s campus are silent witnesses as generations of students come and go. But even these gentle giants are under someone’s careful eye. Arborist William Kuntz has tended Bucknell’s glorious canopy since 2003. Every tree, from the skinniest sapling to the majestic white oaks over the Grove, gets attention right on schedule. And if you ask Kuntz, this familiarity is the key to healthy trees and shrubs.
ime passes slowly, and your daily routine has few variations when you’re in prison for life. And so the days stretch on for Joel, who’s spent the last 17 years in state prison on a murder conviction, and his fellow inmate, Tito. Now 43, Tito has been incarcerated since he was convicted of murder at 19. Both men may spend the rest of their lives behind bars (although they have applied for commutation of their sentences), and when you’ve been incarcerated for so long, any opportunity for a change in routine is welcome.
But it’s also scary.
In the following pages, we highlight 13 who stood out from the crowd.
We hope their insights spark some creative ideas of your own. — Sherri Kimmel, editor
In the following pages, we highlight 13 who stood out from the crowd.
We hope their insights spark some creative ideas of your own. — Sherri Kimmel, editor
But when he started putting his degree to use building satellite systems for companies like DirecTV and SiriusXM, Katz came to a sudden realization: Most of the countless cameras orbiting Earth today employ “basically the same technology in an iPhone, except with a big lens in front.”
2/A Smooth Brew
“I had this realization that beer companies are selling to the same customer again and again,” Hankinson says. “They don’t articulate craft beer in a way that’s approachable for people who don’t typically drink it.”
So last year, she and her business partner, LeAnn Darland, launched a beer company that offers fruit-forward beers that are easy on the palate.
McGrath is a senior scientist in translational genomics for Jounce Therapeutics, the Cambridge, Mass., pharmaceutical company co-founded by James Allison, the 2018 winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Using cutting-edge data-science techniques, McGrath helps to develop drugs that trigger the body’s immune system to fight cancer. Her work places her at the frontier of bioinformatics, a field that applies computer science to biological questions — and one so new that it “literally did not exist” when she was a Bucknell student.
The company’s most developed therapy, Vopratelimab, works with existing drugs to treat bladder and lung cancers. That drug is in the second of three clinical trials needed for FDA approval, and part of McGrath’s job is to use the trial results to deduce what genetic factors make patients receptive and others resistant to the therapies.
McGrath is a senior scientist in translational genomics for Jounce Therapeutics, the Cambridge, Mass., pharmaceutical company co-founded by James Allison, the 2018 winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Using cutting-edge data-science techniques, McGrath helps to develop drugs that trigger the body’s immune system to fight cancer. Her work places her at the frontier of bioinformatics, a field that applies computer science to biological questions — and one so new that it “literally did not exist” when she was a Bucknell student.
The company’s most developed therapy, Vopratelimab, works with existing drugs to treat bladder and lung cancers. That drug is in the second of three clinical trials needed for FDA approval, and part of McGrath’s job is to use the trial results to deduce what genetic factors make patients receptive and others resistant to the therapies.
After launching and growing a successful travel agency in his home country of Sri Lanka, Nishan Rajakaruna ’08 refocused his life on the teachings of Buddha.
“After I reached my financial target, I realized that money gives me happiness, but it’s not permanent, lasting happiness,” he says. “As soon as those materialistic objects are removed from your life, that happiness goes.”
5/Brain Games
As a neuroscience major at Bucknell, Stephen Wakulchik ’10 could have followed a clear path to a career in medicine. But his interest in the science of learning led him instead to Silicon Valley, where he designs innovative educational programs for Apple.
For the last five years, Wakulchik has been an education engineer for Swift Playgrounds, an inventive app that teaches kids how to code. The program actively responds to users’ actions, offering personalized hints and suggestions to help novice coders understand key programming concepts. As kids develop their skills, Swift Playgrounds adapts to help them build what they want — from apps to games.
“These are the kinds of ideas you hear professional developers talking about, yet we’re making them available for kids to create right on their iPads,” says Wakulchik, who designs curricula for the program. “That’s something a lot of teaching-to-code programs have a hard time doing, which is what makes what I’m doing such cool work.”
AS A CHILD, Rebecca Rosenberg ’20 had such poor vision, reading meant her nose was literally stuck in a book — just so so she could decipher the words.
Rosenberg was an infant when she was diagnosed with oculocutaneous albinism, a genetic condition causing involuntary eye movements and reduced clarity. The impairment can’t be completely corrected with eyeglasses, so she sought high-tech visual assistance. That’s how she discovered a well-stocked assistive technology market of bulky document cameras and talking screen readers mostly designed for those who are blind or nearly blind.
“They were actually harder to use than they were helpful, especially in a classroom environment,” says Rosenberg, who still holds her phone inches from her face to read text messages.
7+8/Forward Momentum
Muyambi Muyambi ’12’s obsession with bicycles began as a child in Uganda, where he remembers trying to build a wooden bike using found parts. The end product looked nice, but lacked one crucial element: It couldn’t roll.
Muyambi’s passion for pedal-powered vehicles grew as he did: “I saw bicycles saving people’s lives – from a man taking his pregnant wife to the hospital on a bicycle, to seeing my mother taken to the hospital on a bike multiple times.”
At Bucknell, the civil engineering and economics double major paired his life experience with resources accessible through a liberal arts education to start Bicycles Against Poverty, a student club raising awareness about the lack of access to bicycles in Uganda.
Self-proclaimed sociology-nerd-turned-designer Lauren Weinstein ’10 spends her days tackling what she calls “big, knotty social issues” for the design nonprofit IDEO.org. Most recently, she’s worked with adolescents living with HIV in Mozambique to help them embrace and stick with treatment plans.
For this project, IDEO.org partnered with ICAP at Columbia University to co-design, with young people, a program whose goal, she says, “was to put health and hope at the center by tackling community stigma, medical misconceptions and lack of belonging in the already tumultuous journey of adolescence. Most projects take a similar approach — spending time with a community, doing research, prototyping solutions, then working with a partner to implement them. What underpins all of our work is the belief that people are at the center of everything we do.”
Weinstein joined IDEO.org in June — a creative professional journey that began in her first-year sociology class with Professor Elizabeth Durden. Service-learning trips to Nicaragua with the Bucknell Brigade ignited her interest in on-the-ground social change. Earning her master’s in social design from the Maryland College Institute of Art provided further grounding for her move into social innovation.
For this project, IDEO.org partnered with ICAP at Columbia University to co-design, with young people, a program whose goal, she says, “was to put health and hope at the center by tackling community stigma, medical misconceptions and lack of belonging in the already tumultuous journey of adolescence. Most projects take a similar approach — spending time with a community, doing research, prototyping solutions, then working with a partner to implement them. What underpins all of our work is the belief that people are at the center of everything we do.”
Weinstein joined IDEO.org in June — a creative professional journey that began in her first-year sociology class with Professor Elizabeth Durden. Service-learning trips to Nicaragua with the Bucknell Brigade ignited her interest in on-the-ground social change. Earning her master’s in social design from the Maryland College Institute of Art provided further grounding for her move into social innovation.
Yet his achievements belie his modesty. In 2016, Maeda was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the finance and venture capital category. Maeda is the managing partner of Singapore-based BEENEXT, an early-stage venture capital firm investing primarily in Japan, India and Southeast Asia.
While still a Bucknell student, Maeda met his future boss, the founder and CEO of BEENOS, who would someday hire him to lead the company’s investment division. In 2010, Maeda launched Japan’s first startup accelerator. Five years later, he founded BEENEXT, which now manages more than $200 million in investments.
Yet his achievements belie his modesty. In 2016, Maeda was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the finance and venture capital category. Maeda is the managing partner of Singapore-based BEENEXT, an early-stage venture capital firm investing primarily in Japan, India and Southeast Asia.
While still a Bucknell student, Maeda met his future boss, the founder and CEO of BEENOS, who would someday hire him to lead the company’s investment division. In 2010, Maeda launched Japan’s first startup accelerator. Five years later, he founded BEENEXT, which now manages more than $200 million in investments.
After college, when she decided to harness her inner foodie to develop healthier food products, she originally had busy students in mind.
“Then someone showed me how much sugar is in baby food,” Sturzenegger says. “Research tells us our gut biome and palettes develop before we’re 3, so if we want to change the way future generations eat, we have to start with baby food.”
12/Taking His Shot
In 2017, Joe McMullan ’13 and his business partner, Rick Seidman, invented ShotSled — a patented and trademarked $1,499 training tool that helps wrestlers improve their positioning, form and technique.
McMullan came to Bucknell on a wrestling scholarship in 2009. While at Bucknell, he learned that starting a business is more about perseverance than connections.
“A lot of people will question your business model and offer their advice,” he says. “If you believe in yourself, your partner and your business model, success will eventually occur.”
The morning after the idea was born, McMullan drove to the nearest dollar store and loaded up on plastic straws, hot glue, duct tape and pool noodles. The partners had a nonfunctional prototype a week later.
Emily Hochman ’14 is a self-described “responsible risk-taker” on a mission to make the world a healthier place.
Inspiration struck after a personal crisis forced her to reflect on her lifestyle. Hochman, who majored in art history and minored in dance, appeared outwardly fit, so a sudden health scare took her by surprise. “I realized the missing puzzle piece for me was nutrition,” she says.
Hochman enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and as she applied what she learned, she realized the importance of healthy eating. Seeing her own successful results, she quickly wanted to help others benefit from a healthy lifestyle and feel as good as she did. In early 2019, Hochman founded Wellory, a nutrition tech company that connects clients with certified health coaches, nutritionists and dietitians. Each new Wellory client completes a diet assessment and is connected with the right coach to help set goals and develop personalized plans. Coaches keep clients on track via daily messages and weekly progress tracking.
Inspiration struck after a personal crisis forced her to reflect on her lifestyle. Hochman, who majored in art history and minored in dance, appeared outwardly fit, so a sudden health scare took her by surprise. “I realized the missing puzzle piece for me was nutrition,” she says.
Hochman enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and as she applied what she learned, she realized the importance of healthy eating. Seeing her own successful results, she quickly wanted to help others benefit from a healthy lifestyle and feel as good as she did. In early 2019, Hochman founded Wellory, a nutrition tech company that connects clients with certified health coaches, nutritionists and dietitians. Each new Wellory client completes a diet assessment and is connected with the right coach to help set goals and develop personalized plans. Coaches keep clients on track via daily messages and weekly progress tracking.
photographs by Dustin Fenstermacher
ere’s what the generation gap might look like in today’s office: A boomer-generation boss thinks, “Geez, why can’t these kids get into the office by 9 a.m.? What’s wrong with these slackers?” Meanwhile, those young “slackers” are thinking, “Man, my boss is a dinosaur. She expects me to be at the office by 9 a.m. sharp, even after I’ve been up ’til midnight working from home. She doesn’t have a clue.”
This clash of generational expectations is playing out across the modern American workplace, and that’s exactly the terrain Cali Williams Yost ’87, P’20 helps major corporations learn to navigate as CEO of Flex Strategy Group.
Yost says tech-savvy younger workers “are coming into the workplace with a completely different sensibility about how, when and where it is possible to work, and that is colliding with the traditional work model.”
Betsy Graves Reyneau, 1942
Oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Peter Edward Fayard
Betsy Graves Reyneau, 1942
Oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Peter Edward Fayard
niversity archives are spots of wonder filled with artifacts that are mesmerizing, quirky, priceless and surprising. At Bucknell’s Special Collections/University Archives, one of the surprising collections consists of letters to and from George Washington Carver. Born into slavery at the tail end of the Civil War, he became not only the first African American to earn a bachelor of science degree but also a prominent scientist who developed more than 300 household products from the humble peanut.
Generations of Bucknellians revered Carver’s correspondent, Forrest Brown, who arrived in 1930 as secretary of the Bucknell YMCA, recast as the Bucknell Christian Association in 1934. From that year until his retirement in 1966, Brown served as the association’s general secretary but also directed many of Bucknell’s intercultural and community service programs. The University’s Forrest D. Brown Conference Center at Cowan, which he developed, is named for him.
Welcoming and supporting students of color and international students was part of Brown’s life mission, according to his daughter, Carolyn Brown Chaapel ’56. International students “felt comfortable with him — coming into a new environment, a new land,” she recalls. “He wanted to give students coming here a sense of our people and our country.”
Submit your own photos to Bucknell Magazine by contacting your class reporter or emailing classnotes@bucknell.edu
His team was preparing for an upcoming race, riding in what Goodell describes as “a rotating, rhythmic paceline” — something like a bicycle chain in motion, each cyclist a separate link, all sharing the burden of fighting the wind. They were riding at 30 mph when those in front saw traffic slowing sharply ahead. Word didn’t reach the rearmost riders in time, and the group collapsed in on itself. Goodell found himself on the ground, paralyzed from the chest down.
“Seeing Bucknell teams coming to Columbus to compete is a great kick. It may be a workday for me, but I’ll still be wearing my Bucknell T-shirt underneath my work clothes,” Malone says with a laugh. “There’s generally a tremendous turnout of Bucknellians for games.”
Much like his “secret” wardrobe, Malone keeps Bucknell close to his heart. This is his third year on the Bucknell University Alumni Association board, where he focuses on diversity and inclusion as a member of the executive committee.
“Playing basketball and going to school at Bucknell was truly a unique experience, and it’s important for me to stay connected to the school,” says Malone, who majored in sociology. “I miss being involved in the athletic side at Bucknell, so being so close and personal with Ohio State’s program is something I’ve really enjoyed.”
“Silicon Valley has a reputation for being cavalier in the way they deploy things — it’s, ‘Go be disruptive, go change the world, and ask questions later,’ ” Dawson says. “I railed against that from the sidelines, and as self-driving technology was hitting the roads I felt a moral responsibility to get involved.”
“I never saw myself as limited in my academic or social opportunities because I was a woman,” says Bellissimo, who was a coxswain on the men’s crew team for four years at Bucknell. “Eventually, there came a point in my career when I wanted to create more opportunities for women to join the field, because the industry is best served by a diversity of thought and backgrounds.”
To address this gap, she developed TREP$ (short for “entrepreneur”), a project-based learning program providing students in grades 4 to 8 with a wide array of entrepreneurial skills. TREP$ is typically integrated into voluntary after-school programs, but many schools include it in their daily curricula. Since Romano launched TREP$ in 2007, it has grown to include 180 schools in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania catering to 40,000 students, and it earned the PTA Champion for Children Award and the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship Education Award.
Some chemical engineers develop life-saving drugs and more efficient energy systems. Others make our lives a little sweeter.
Jake Bellucci ’12 is the latter. Since graduating, the chemical engineering major has been a project engineer for Mars Inc., setting up new candy factories around the world and working on the team that first produced M&M’s Caramel.
“Oil, gas and pharmaceuticals are popular industries for chemical engineers, but that wasn’t really for me — food seemed more tangible,” he says.
Nicole Adams ’18 developed a passion for education while working for Teach for America in New Jersey. But when summer break arrived, she wanted to keep working. That’s when she stumbled upon a nonprofit called SuitUp, which runs educational competitions to connect corporations with middle and high schools in low-income communities across the country. She fell in love with the mission and, in just a few months, rose from intern to program manager. “I run the whole competition,” Adams explains.
Betty Hyde Yearing, Dec. 23, Orleans, Mass..
Bob Hambleton, Nov. 6, Medford, N.J.
Joseph Lirio, Dec. 6, Philadelphia
Mary Scouller Nelson, Dec. 2, Southwick, Mass.
Merle Smith, Nov. 30, Ft. Myers, Fla.
Sally Kriner Goodman, Dec. 9, Northbrook, Ill.
Cal Seaman, Nov. 16, River Vale, N.J.
Donald Wian, Sept. 30, New Whiteland, Ind.
Don Williams, Oct. 27, Tilton, N.H.
Ellie Leiper Williams P’76, Dec. 9, Lewisburg, Pa.
Laurel Kreitzburg Ellis, Oct. 31, Woodsboro, Md.
George Metz P’78, Oct. 7, Chestertown, Md.
The Chemistry of Being Indoors
How do you show your Bucknell pride?
Making a career move?
To reach prospective students, you need to go where they are.
That was the plan in December, when Bucknell debuted its Instagram Q&A to answer admissions-related questions from prospective students and others. By harnessing the built-in audience of @BucknellU’s 18,000-plus Instagram followers, the launch was an overwhelming success.
Nearly 4,000 people tuned in to the Q&A, which was extended by popular demand from two days to a full week. More than 400 Instagram users, most of whom are prospective students, submitted questions.
REBECCA MEYERS is Bucknell’s academic film programmer and a film/media studies lecturer. In her own nonnarrative filmmaking, she has captured the often overlooked world of wild birds — a natural subject for this avid birder. To Meyers, this perfect marriage of two passions feels more like making poetry than making movies. In her office, Meyers keeps some bird nests — symbols of a perfect, natural world just outside, and of a yet-to-be made film.
REBECCA MEYERS is Bucknell’s academic film programmer and a film/media studies lecturer. In her own nonnarrative filmmaking, she has captured the often overlooked world of wild birds — a natural subject for this avid birder. To Meyers, this perfect marriage of two passions feels more like making poetry than making movies. In her office, Meyers keeps some bird nests — symbols of a perfect, natural world just outside, and of a yet-to-be made film.
Birding is unusual to a lot of people, so when they find out I do it, it sticks with them. I was considering making a film about bird nests, and people who know I’m into birds gave these to me. It’s amazing these nests have stayed together so long. They fell from trees and were outside until given to me.
