The program has proven impactful for Bucknellians like Kathy Graham P’03, P’05, associate vice president of university advancement, who attended a session on post-election civility. “It inspired me to approach family conversations with empathy rather than trying to debate or convince,” she says.

Facilitators report that participants apply circle principles across campus to improve communication.

Graham, for example, integrated circle principles into a workshop for her team to encourage constructive discussions. And Kurt Nelson, director of religious & spiritual life, has used the framework in grief support groups. “For students dealing with loss, these circles create a space to feel understood and supported,” he says.

ucknell men’s soccer capped a stunning turnaround season by defeating Colgate, 3-0, to claim the Patriot League championship before 1,400 fans at Emmitt Field in November. Waldemar Kattrup ’25 and Nick Prime ’25 scored in their final home games, leading the Bison to their highest-scoring match of the year. This is the program’s fifth Patriot League title — and first since 2014. The Bison were one of only two Division I teams to rise from last place in 2023 to a conference title in 2024. “Things happened fast, and it was a tough build, but I’m so happy for our guys,” said head coach Dave Brandt, named the Patriot League Coach of the Year. “For our upperclassmen and especially our seniors to be able to experience something like this is just a joy to see.”

ata science isn’t just for engineers or analysts. It has the power to advance many different fields of study, sometimes in surprising ways. For example, it can help psychologists better understand children’s movement patterns or inspire creative writing. Showcasing the versatility of data science is a goal of Kelly McConville, director of the Dominguez Center for Data Science. Students who participate in the Data Science Student Fellows program are matched with project stakeholders and data-science mentors who guide fellows through technical and theoretical approaches to data-centric problems. Fellows are encouraged to apply their diverse perspectives to develop solutions. This spring, 29 students are working on 13 projects, gaining experience across a range of fields. Here’s a look at three.

The Collaboration: Led by mentors Professor Haley Kragness, psychology, and Claire Cahoon, digital pedagogy & scholarship specialist, fellows Claire Engel ’25 and Gwen Radecki ’25 are exploring how music and dance affect children’s physical and emotional development and how to measure those effects efficiently. Their project blends developmental psychology, music cognition and computer science.

Engel’s computer science & engineering major complements Radecki’s psychology and linguistics double-major, bringing a cross-disciplinary perspective to their work. They’re studying different ways to track movement in children’s dance by comparing methods like automatic tracking to manual labeling to determine the most effective approach for researchers.

“While I lack the technical expertise to implement automated movement extraction alone, this project provides me with the potential to address a major challenge in my work,” says Kragness. Using home videos of children dancing, they are comparing automated movement extraction to manual annotations to assess its viability in children’s dance research.”

The Collaboration: Professors Sara Stoudt, mathematics & statistics, and Elinam Agbo, English — creative writing, are partnering with fellows Shaheryar Asghar ’28 and Caitlyn Hickey ’26 to explore how data and storytelling can intersect and inspire ecowriting for the journal The Dodge.

Asghar, a double-major in mathematical economics and psychology with a minor in English — creative writing, and Hickey, who studies applied mathematics and business analytics, are combining their skills in data analysis, app design and creative writing to develop an interactive app.

The project involves selecting nature-related datasets, developing writing prompts, and showing how data-driven insights can enhance creative expression. “Statistics requires creativity,” says Stoudt. “This project highlights that creativity while emphasizing the important role of writing in the statistical investigation process.”

The Collaboration: Professor Jimmy Chen, analytics & operations management, is teaming up with Palmer “PJ” Steiner, assistant women’s soccer coach, and fellows Katherine Vice ’27 and Aiden Kim ’27 to develop a tool that will simulate Patriot League Women’s Soccer Tournament standings and clinching scenarios. By incorporating home/away status, past matchups and team performance metrics, they aim to support data-driven decisions during the season.

Kim, a computer science and data science co-major, and Vice, an economics major, are combining their skills to develop an interactive simulation dashboard. Kim is focused on predictive models and design, while Vice is analyzing results. “This project provides both a learning opportunity for students and practical benefits for the women’s soccer team, demonstrating the power of interdisciplinary collaboration,” says Chen.

nearly forgotten piece of cinematic history has been brought back to life, thanks to the research of Professor Eric Faden, film/media studies, and a team of Bucknell students. Their work has revived a rare set of Japanese short films from the 1930s while taking them across the globe in search of even more lost media.

Faden found the films by fluke in 2017 during a teaching fellowship in Kyoto. While researching another project at the Toy Film Museum, he discovered a set of reels made from paper, a medium rarely used in filmmaking. “The only other films made on paper were copies of early American ones for copyright deposit,” Faden says. “The Japanese paper films are very different in that they were meant to be projected from the get-go.”

However, due to the films’ fragility, museums were hesitant to project them.

Determined to preserve the films digitally, Faden began meticulously photographing each frame with the intention of stitching them together as a video. The task proved to be far from simple. Although each film only lasts between two and 12 minutes, it could take Faden up to four and a half hours to photograph one. Even then, the result didn’t achieve the desired effect of watching a continuous movie.

Recognizing the need for a new preservation method, Faden recruited the expertise of professors and students across disciplines. Alina Arko ’23, who studied mechanical engineering, designed a scanner delicate enough to handle the fragile paper reels while capturing them as a continuous video. Then, computer science students Yuhan Chen ’23 and Jackson Rubiano ’27 developed software to recognize frames and stabilize the images, ensuring the films could be projected in a fluid sequence.

The films represent a fascinating mix of genres, including wartime propaganda, instructional exercise reels, early anime and mythological stories featuring ninjas and samurai.

From the beginning, Faden’s goal was preservation, not restoration. “We wanted to show the films — warts and all — with their inconsistencies and the over-scanning so the audience could see how the film is working. A restoration project would remove all that.”

“It gave me perspective about the history and culture of Japan, which helped me understand the films I had been working on,” Rubiano says.

In August, the digitally preserved films were screened at a Brooklyn theatre. “I thought we would have six people, aside from my family,” Faden joked. Instead, the event was packed — 75 people were turned away once the venue hit capacity.

For his dedication to preserving these films, Faden was awarded the 2025 Sumie Jones Prize for Project Leadership in Japan-centered Humanities by the Association for Asian Studies.

For the triple jumper and cornerback, the journey from one sport to the other requires time management, no-days-off determination and a willingness to transform his physique from one season to the next.

As a football player, Sims needs muscle mass to jam or tackle, while as a track athlete, he requires lean muscle to run fast and soar far. Like 47 feet, 1 inch far, Sims’ best triple jump distance.

“After track season ends, I start to pack on my football weight,” he says. “I gain back about 10 to 15 pounds. It’s a totally different lifting program and training routine. Then, at the end of football season, that weight comes off, and I start my track training.”

This physical transformation is why some colleges avoid recruiting dual-sport athletes. Sure enough, in Sims’ junior year of high school, recruiters from other schools asked him to pick a lane. “They felt if I did two sports, it would take away from one,” he says. “In a way, I agree with that. I mean, I sometimes wish I did spring training for football or fall training for track. But it all comes together in the end, which makes it a really good experience for me.”

This do-it-all attitude formed at age 5 when Sims sought a way to connect with his athletically inclined older brother, Micah ’20. By middle school, Chris excelled in football, basketball and track at The Haverford School in the Philadelphia suburbs. Bucknell’s track team first offered him a spot, and the football team allowed him to walk on.

“It was a dream come true to start at a Division I level and play two sports,” says the economics major. “I just want to help the teams in whatever way possible.”

His team-first mentality explains why Sims was selected by his peers to be track team captain. He is willing not just to motivate his fellow jumpers but also to lift up the whole team.

Sims knows individual performances can boost the entire team’s morale, similar to how a key interception can change a football game. “If a distance kid runs really well, that’s awesome for our team,” he says. “It’s not just, ‘Oh, he set a PR [personal record]’ — it takes the whole team higher.”

Nathan: Your team’s strength directly impacts the company’s success. We’ve made mistakes in both directions — hiring too quickly and not acting fast enough when someone wasn’t the right fit. Surround yourself with people who complement your strengths, and the business will thrive.

Tramm didn’t always dream of exploring space. But an internship as a systems operations engineer with Northrop Grumman and an astrophysics class taught by Professor Michele Thornley, physics & astronomy, got the mechanical engineering major thinking about how she could apply her skills to the great beyond. “I was able to dip my toe into the subject at Bucknell, which helped me realize it was something I wanted to explore more,” she says.

With the help of her professors, she was accepted into a graduate astrophysics program at Rochester Institute of Technology. There, she discovered a love of instrument engineering for astrophysics, which involved launching sounding rockets carrying scientific instruments into space. Her research helped her formulate a clear picture of her ideal career. “I didn’t think it was possible to work for NASA — it’s everyone’s pipe dream,” she says. “But when I got the job offer, I knew it was what I wanted to do.”

At JPL, Tramm has worked on instrument operations for the Mars Perseverance rover and Earth-observing satellites like Sentinel-6, which measure sea-surface heights to understand climate change. “Everyone I work with is doing something that’s never been done before,” she says. “We’re always doing things for the first time.”

As a posse scholar at Bucknell, John Quinn ’18 learned the importance of giving back to his community. After graduating with a degree in history, Quinn returned to his home district of Prince George’s County Public Schools, where he teaches AP and IB psychology and government at Frederick Douglass High School. He has also advised the National Honor Society, coached the debate team and helped found the school’s mental health club.

Quinn’s time at Bucknell taught him that the value of education extends beyond the classroom. “The experience at Bucknell was just as much about what happened outside of the classroom as inside of the classroom,” he says.

In his first year of teaching, Quinn was named High School Male Educator of the Year by his district. He went on to earn his master’s from Teachers College at Columbia University, where he wrote a thesis on implementing a positive psychology curriculum to explore adolescent identity development.

“A Bucknell education instills in you how important it is to learn about the injustices in society, the inequities, especially in public education,” he says. For Quinn, tackling those injustices often takes place at the individual level. “Mentorship between students and young teachers is key,” he says. “Being able to connect with young people is both important and rewarding.”

Looking ahead, Quinn aims to drive systemic change as an administrator. He joined his district’s aspiring leaders program and hopes to become an assistant principal and, eventually, a principal.

While studying at University of Southern California Gould School of Law, Coleman joined the Post-Conviction Justice Project (PCJP), where he provided pro bono representation to incarcerated individuals before the California Board of Parole. “These people have been rehabilitated and paid their debt to society, so we should help them reintegrate,” he says.

His work with the PCJP led him to pilot a restorative justice program in Long Beach, Calif., where community members help determine responses to crime. “It’s taught me that, sometimes, people just need a second chance,” says Coleman, who serves as the vice chair of the Ethics Commission for the City of Long Beach.

In addition to his commitment to restorative justice, Coleman practices intellectual property and privacy law. “In private practice, I represent large corporations in relatively sophisticated matters,” he says. “Shifting from my practice to restorative justice work reminds me of why I went to law school in the first place. It’s an honor to advocate for others.”

In 2023, he founded Brainforge, a company that helps organizations uncover insights, cut costs and grow revenue. For Kumaran, Brainforge represents the culmination of years spent solving complex problems and improving decision-making. As a leader, he prioritizes fostering a culture of continuous improvement and a fail-fast mentality. “Every day, we challenge ourselves to be better than we were yesterday,” he says.

Kumaran traces his entrepreneurial mindset to Bucknell, where mentors and resources from the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) helped shape his approach to problem-solving. “The collaborative environment at Bucknell gave me the tools to think critically and creatively about real-world problems,” he says.

The son of first-generation immigrants, Kumaran planned to attend college in his native California but followed his father’s vision for a liberal arts education on the East Coast. A chance meeting with a professor during an impromptu tour of the Dana Engineering building convinced him Bucknell was the right fit. “Getting a one-on-one tour was a game-changer,” Kumaran says. “It showed me that Bucknell was a community where people care.”

Kumaran majored in computer engineering but explored beyond his field. As a sophomore, he approached Professor Curtis Nicholls, the Kiken Family Chair in Management, about joining Bucknell’s Student Managed Investment Fund, which is typically reserved for senior management students. With the help of Nicholls, Kumaran took summer courses to acquire the prerequisites for the capstone course. He also got involved in the SBDC and co-launched Maker EDU, a venture that helped schools build makerspaces, which gave him his first taste of entrepreneurship.

After graduating, Kumaran worked in data roles at startups like WeWork and Flowcode, managing projects from sales analytics to scaling data teams. Seeking more independence, he launched Brainforge, leveraging his network — including Bucknell connections — to build the business. Today, Kumaran leads with a focus on empowering clients and exceeding their expectations. “Our goal is to be indispensable to them,” he says.

“Young music directors tend to take on a lot of far-flung contracts. I‘ve done theatre in Indiana and Massachusetts. I’ve toured with Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and Mamma Mia!,” says Golden, who has hit most of the continental U.S. while touring on productions. “But all of that adds up. Every job I’ve had has led to the next job, which has now led me to New York City.”

During The Notebook‘s 10-month run on Broadway in 2024, Golden worked as the production‘s associate music director and associate conductor. If there is a dictum that undergirds her work, it is that practice makes perfect.

“It begins with three weeks in the rehearsal room, where I teach music to the actors and act as a liaison with the rest of the creative team,” she says. Then comes tech rehearsal, where she helps integrate design elements — like a scene featuring live rain on stage — and works with the orchestra. When the production went live, Golden attended eight shows weekly. “Even after our 250th show, we were still refining things,” she says.

Golden’s role came full circle when she found herself working alongside composer, singer and songwriter Ingrid Michaelson, who composed The Notebook’s music. “At Bucknell, my a cappella group, Two Past Midnight, performed Ingrid Michaelson songs,” says Golden. “Years later, I was able to translate her new music into the show and teach it to the actors.”

Fries pursued a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Washington, leading to a remarkable career that advanced the cause of women in technology.

In the June 4, 1979, issue of Computerworld magazine, an article titled “Women vs. Chauvinism: A DP [data privacy] Showdown” documented one of Fries’ quiet advocacy efforts. Frustrated by a clerical computing task she suspected was assigned due to her gender, Fries crafted a report deliberately using feminine pronouns to challenge the status quo. Her thoughtful approach blended technical expertise with a quiet stand for equality, leaving a clear message without disrupting her work.

Though Fries excelled professionally, she had yet to receive official recognition of her academic achievements at Bucknell. Tau Beta Pi began admitting women as full members in 1968 and extended an invitation to Fries in the early 1970s, but she was living in Seattle with young children and unable to attend the induction ceremony.

It wasn’t until the fall of 2024 that Fries received her due. She reached out to Bucknell with a simple request: Could she be inducted?

Thanks to the efforts of Erin Jablonski, director for the Perricelli-Gegnas Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, and Wendelin Wright, head of Tau Beta Pi at Bucknell and professor of mechanical and chemical engineering, Fries was formally inducted into the honor society. On October 6, she finally received her Tau Beta Pi pin — a long-overdue recognition for her academic excellence and an acknowledgment of her groundbreaking contributions to women in engineering and technology.