One day, the little girl announced to her kindergarten teacher, “I want to be an entomologist!” While her classmates dreamed of becoming princesses, dragons, and firefighters, Essie Martin ’22 already knew what she wanted to do: study the natural world.

Martin was raised in the coastal Maine town of Damariscotta. As she grew up, so grew her love of the ocean and her community, as well as her understanding of how coastal communities depend on the marine economy. 

“Since a young age, I’ve always wanted to sort of work with oceans and help oceans,” she says.

But at the same time, she’s also had a front-row seat to the effects of climate change. “I’ve seen climate change in action in a way that I wouldn’t have otherwise if I had grown up somewhere else,” she says. 

“There’s the side of me that really hopes that kelp is contributing to climate mitigation and the oceans can be a solution to all this, and then there’s the science hat that I put on in the lab.”

At �ֲ���ý, Martin is putting her advocacy into informed action. She’s majoring in geology and minoring in chemistry, and her senior honors thesis is studying the ability of kelp to sequester carbon, a popular rallying point of climate activists encouraging investment in ocean health. 

Kelp absorbs carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and then sinks to the ocean floor like leaves in a forest, eventually becoming part of the ocean floor, holding onto the captured carbon for — hopefully — millions of years.

“There’s a lot of media hype about kelp and its ability to sequester carbon, but actually there’s very little scientific evidence to back that up,” says Martin.

By collecting sediment samples from the sediment below seaweed farms located on the coastal Damariscotta River and studying them in the lab, Martin can see if there’s any presence of or carbon isotopes in the sediment, which could indicate carbon sequestration.

To identify carbon and nitrogen isotopes, Martin uses a stable isotope ratio mass spectrometer in the Environmental Geochemistry Laboratory at �ֲ���ý. For the eDNA analysis, she was able to access new and important eDNA technology being developed at Maine’s internationally known Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences by . In the Price lab, doctoral student Sam Tan is helping to analyze Martin’s samples.

Martin explains that her honors thesis is part of a “preliminary study to just see if there’s kelp in the sediment at all. After that, there’s going to be a lot more work that needs to be done. And that could be a future project for me in grad school or beyond.”

“There’s a lot of media hype about kelp and its ability to sequester carbon, but actually there’s very little scientific evidence to back that up.”

For Martin, “grad school or beyond” will receive funding from a highly competitive Harry S. Truman Scholarship, which will help her pursue a master’s degree in aquaculture and policy. Martin hopes to follow that with a doctorate in geochemical oceanography. 

The Truman Scholarship recognizes individuals who show leadership potential and are committed to public service, traditionally defined by land-locked efforts around social justice. With climate change knocking on earth’s door, Martin appreciates that “an important element of public service now is our oceans and our fisheries and aquaculture.”

Martin’s fieldwork has been through internships with the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center, in Walpole, Maine, .

“I found that my favorite part of the job were days when I got to go out on the farm and either helped do some of the work or drive the boats around. I just love getting my hands dirty with it,” says Martin. 

“I have always been the muddiest kid on the playground and my mom used to get really upset at me for it. My coworkers still make fun of me today. I’ll come back to the lab and I’ll just be drenched in mud head to toe.”

But getting her hands deep in mud and seaweed is one of the things that makes her the happiest, even if it’s cold.

“I’ll come back to the lab and I’ll just be drenched in mud head to toe.”

During her time at �ֲ���ý, Martin’s approach to environmental advocacy has matured. From simple ideas like pulling plastics from the ocean to finding long-term sustainable ways to utilize existing aquaculture resources, she’s figuring out how to be a scientist-activist.

“I feel like I’ve had to create two hats for myself,” says Martin. “There’s the side of me that really hopes that kelp is contributing to climate mitigation and the oceans can be a solution and all this, and then there’s the science hat that I put on in the lab.”

When she’s in the lab, Martin puts the science hat on. “I just plug my music in and I do the lab work. I don’t really think about the intention when I’m in the lab.”

It’s not easy, she says. “I know that this is something that a lot of scientists go through learning, and I’m still very much in that process. Working through those emotions is really important.”

Help and guidance comes from mentors like Martin’s thesis advisor, Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences Bev Johnson, and the Darling Marine Center’s Damien Brady.

Alternating between the lab and the field showed Martin the push-and-pull of aquaculture academics and industry, and she wants to foster that partnership, especially since a large part of the economic life of the Maine coast is drawn from the ocean.

“In Maine, there’s traditionally been sort of some bad blood between industry — particularly the lobstering industry and scientists — because there’s this idea that science is always regulating the lobster industry, which is true,” she says. “I would like to be a scientist who is informing that policy and looking at how to — particularly with aquaculture, because it’s such a new industry — keep it green, and keep it sustainable as a long-term industry.”

Early last fall, Maya Benziger ’22 and her fellow Merimanders were talking about plans to return to the stage after a long pandemic absence. What started as a simple discussion about songs and setlists became an existential moment.

“We asked, ‘Okay, well, what is our setlist?” And then, “How did we used to do this? What were our traditions?’”

Like college a cappella groups around the country, the Merimanders hadn’t performed publicly since March 2020. Since then, two classes had graduated, stripping the ensemble of its institutional memory.

“I realized that I was one of the few people in the group who actually knew — and I realized I didn’t want that to end with me,” said Benziger. 

At that moment, recalls Benziger, “it wasn’t going to suffice for me to just be another singer in the choir. It was important to step up and become one of the leaders.”

Like many of her classmates, Benziger — now co-president of the Merimanders — has experienced key moments in her �ֲ���ý experience, where her growing knowledge and self-awareness put her on a springboard, from which she jumped into action and leadership. 

Taking on a leadership role was not something she would have predicted at the beginning of her college career. “I don’t think ‘timid’ is the right word,” said Benziger, “but I think I was somebody who was sort of hesitant to go the full nine yards.”

“What if I fail?” she would ask herself. “What if it’s too much work? What if I can’t do it?”

She came face-to-face with that hesitation when she started working at a Lewiston nonprofit, the Center for Wisdom’s Women. Benziger had reached out to Marty Deschaines ’75 of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, looking for student employment. 

Deschaines, the Harward center’s assistant director of community volunteerism and student leadership development, suggested Wisdom’s Women, and the next day, Benziger walked over to the center — and was overwhelmed. 

“There were just a lot of people,” said Benziger. “You walk in and there’s 20, 30 women, and everyone’s having conversations. Back before the pandemic, there’d be people in the kitchen cooking, other people would be doing an art class, or chatting over coffee.”

The hubbub of the center intimidated Benziger at first but she decided to keep showing up. “It just became like almost a home away from home. There’s always people talking, there’s always things happening.”

“The things that I did, the people that I talked to, the stuff that I helped out with, it mattered to that person in the moment.”

Soon, she was engaging with women at the center and finding her stride, committing wholeheartedly to the undertaking. She recalls spending a week helping a woman create a resume and practice for job interviews. The woman spoke a little English, and Portuguese, which was “close-ish” to Benziger’s experience with Spanish. 

“I do a lot of things at �ֲ���ý and they’re very important in a big-picture, theoretical sense,” says Benziger, a triple major in music, history, and politics.

“But going to the center was getting to be important to somebody’s life in maybe a very micro sense, but also a very real sense, because the things that I did, the people that I talked to, the stuff that I helped out with, it mattered to that person in that moment.”

Not everyone enters college knowing what they want to do after graduation, or even what they want to major in. College is all about trying your hands at what interests you, developing new interests, and building relationships with the people around you.

For Bridget Thompson ’22 of Newtown, Pa., her time at �ֲ���ý has been full of discovery, as she found her people, her passions — in the classroom and on the sports field — and her post-grad plan.

“I am always striving to be the best person that I can be,” Thompson said. “Whatever I’m involved in or striving towards, I put a hundred percent of my effort into that.” 

In the classroom, she’s pouring that effort into her honors thesis in history, about Operation Demetrius, the infamous mass internment of suspected members of the Irish Republican Army by the British Army in 1971.

Inspired to tackle the topic after a semester in Ireland at Trinity College Dublin, Thompson is researching interrogation techniques used by the British Army during Operation Demetrius, and whether those techniques, as later judged by the European Court of Human Rights, were or were not torture.

“What was perpetrated against these suspected radicals was, in my opinion, a violation of their rights as human beings,” Thompson says.

Thompson also majors in art and visual culture, with an emphasis on art history and criticism. Both majors, she says, let her investigate ties between history and modern issues.

“What makes me most enthusiastic [about researching Operation Demetrius] is that you can trace its history to our current time” — including post-9/11 interrogation techniques used by the U.S. as part of the war on terror.

Thompson’s adviser for her thesis is Caroline Shaw, an associate professor of history. They meet regularly, for “an open dialogue, which is really great,” Thompson says.

“I think the professors that I’ve had the pleasure of working with in my time here have been really supportive,” Thompson says. “They’ve also pushed me to be a better thinker and to critically engage with the world around me, and then think about how I can place myself in it.”

While doing an honors thesis is mostly about individual effort, when it comes to her sport, field hockey, Thompson works on being a good teammate.

“You need to recognize your role in the team, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be the one that’s putting in a million goals, every game,” she says. “There are a lot of different ways that you can be a good teammate and a successful player besides what the stats show.” 

Off the field, Thompson is involved in a range of activities, serving as president of the �ֲ���ý Special Olympics Club and co-president of Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. She also has an interest in music, which led her to create a radio show, Rock History with Bridget, last year on WRBC. And she’s a Senior Fellow for the Admission office. 

“Having other things that excite me, besides the sport and besides my identity as a student on campus, has really enriched my time here,” Thompson says.

After exploring many �ֲ���ý offerings during her first two years, “figuring out exactly what I’m most interested in,” she’s now focusing her energy to those things, whether leading a student program or taking a deep dive into Irish history.

Looking ahead, Thompson hopes to enter the field of law. Describing herself, with a chuckle, as a “rule follower,” she says she’s always been intrigued by rules — “applying rules, interpreting, followed, violating.” Her thesis experience, especially, seeing how courts have evaluating human rights laws, has deepened that interest.

At �ֲ���ý, she says, “I have figured out what my strengths are. I’ve become more sure and confident in what I love to do, and that has helped me figure out what I think I want to do.”

Motion defines dance. Yet for Erick Gredonia ’21, a defining dance experience at �ֲ���ý was a moment of quiet stillness, tinged with despair.

�ֲ���ý had announced on March 13, 2020, that all students had to leave campus due to the growing COVID-19 pandemic. Campus events were snuffed out, including the annual Spring Dance Concert, a highlight of the artistic year at �ֲ���ý featuring a range of student choreography and performance. So the �ֲ���ý dance faculty and staff gathered the concert’s student choreographers so everyone could say their goodbyes, shed tears, and lean on each other.

“I never felt more of a family in dance than when we acknowledged that the concert was no longer happening,” Gredonia recalls.

It was hardly a typical dance moment, he says, but one that solidified both his sense of self and “the kinds of people I wanted to be around in my life.” And in that moment was a lesson: “to appreciate bodies and minds and eyes and contact. I’ll cherish that moment forever.”

That was where he “knew that the �ֲ���ý dance community had my back — the people and their love, support, and encouragement. Their shoulders to cry on. In that moment of downfall, I never felt closer to these people.”

A year later, Gredonia got another chance at the Spring Dance Concert, choreographing and performing in his senior thesis project, “Response Ability: A Museum (non finito),” in Schaeffer Theatre.

More than a thesis, the dance represented “an extension of what I look forward to in life and people. And so I knew before the semester started that I wanted Tiauna Walker, Dawrin Silfa, and Brit Seipp as my dancers, people I genuinely just want to be around. That was super exciting, super special.”

It wasn’t easy — various disruptions during the semester included a campus lockdown due to a spike in COVID-19 cases, and omnipresent public-health policies. “It was challenging. That being said, focusing on the process was always at the forefront of my mind, making sure that no matter what the destination is, the journey should be just as enjoyable.”

Gredonia came to �ֲ���ý from North Hollywood, Calif., where “my family was my everything. They love me and continue to challenge me simultaneously.” Dance was interwoven into his family life and a vital part of his culture. When Gredonia was 7 years old, he performed a surprise dance at his cousin’s ��ܾ��Գ���ñ�����. “Dance became instrumental in making connections and relationships with people, including my family.”

He recalls arriving at �ֲ���ý, eager and enthusiastic to dive into �ֲ���ý life, to meet people from all over the world and learn with like-minded people. And also, to dance with them. “When I got to �ֲ���ý, I knew that dance was going to be the thing to get me to my friends, to my classes, to different opportunities on campus. Dance is something that I feel like I do more than eating or drinking water or breathing. It is that big in my life.”

At �ֲ���ý he found people who, like his family back home, “really get me going, forcing me to be the best version of myself.” This version of Erick Gredonia, 2021 �ֲ���ý graduate, is just as eager and enthusiastic as ever, but whose energies are more outwardly directed. It’s less about “care of me, and more about the care for others.”

Interviewed late in the semester, Gredonia was counting down both the days until Commencement and his blessings, “the constant reminders of why it is so awesome to be able to wake up in the morning, put your shoes on, and head over to the next project, the next class, the next person to eat lunch with. It’s all about community.”

Imagine taking a 17th-century play that was written for the English court, setting it on the soundstage of a boozy TV show on New Year’s Eve 1969, and then staging the whole shebang at �ֲ���ý when everyone is masked and standing 6 feet apart at all times.

This literal flight of imagination (the idea took hold on an airplane) belongs to Deon Custard ’21, a double major in theater and English who took Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, added a dose of glam rock, and shook it all into something fresh, but also vintage, for the �ֲ���ý stage.

Sure, as Hamlet said, “the play’s the thing.” But in directing Twelfth Night as part of his thesis work in theater, Custard needed to make the play more than a thing, a noun: It had to move, become a verb, where “everyone is really able to lean into the spirit and move loosely, to turn ‘play’ from being a thing we’re going to see, to the verb: playing on stage.” 

The idea to stage Twelfth Night on New Year’s Eve in 1969 came to Custard on a flight to his hometown of Chicago last October. 

At the time, he was seizing an opportunity to step away from campus for a few weeks to work as an assistant sound designer at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. He was also keeping up with his �ֲ���ý studies, including reading Twelfth Night for the course “Introduction to Design” with Associate Professor of Theater B. Christine McDowell. 

On the flight, just as he read the scene in which Feste the fool sings, “O Mistress mine where are you roaming? O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,” Bowie was in his earphones, launching into “Starman.” 

“Look out your window, I can see his light. If we can sparkle, he may land tonight.”

There was the epiphany. “I was like, ‘Oh, this works.’ The seed was planted.” 

Twelfth Night lends itself to unbridled tomfoolery, he says. What would it look like set in the late 1960s, the dawn of a new era of self-expression?

“Twelfth Night is so joyful on the page — mistaken identities, love triangles, and drunken foolery. It’s not only really funny, but it’s sending a message of living freely. That runs through every scene of the play.” 

“I’ve always had this overwhelming need to be able to tell stories,” adds Custard. “I’ve always known that whether it’s music or theater or some sort of live performance, being in the room with an audience, getting them to react in some way is important to me.”

“History continues to repeat itself over and over, whether 1602, 1969, or 2021.”

McDowell became Custard’s adviser, serving as set and costume designer for the play, creating what the director calls a “beautiful world full of bright, colorful costumes that are so flashy. The world came together because of the work that she’s done.”

Custard’s approach to Twelfth Night is more than just throwing some glitter around to see where it sticks. “When a play is set in a time and place different from what we might expect, the text and the context need to reveal something deeper about each other in order to be an effective piece of storytelling. Otherwise, it’s just camp.”

In researching Twelfth Night, Custard saw how “history continues to repeat itself over and over, whether 1602, 1969, or 2021. Stories of revolutionary love and social resistance will always be worth telling.”

“All the reading to learn the theoretical backing of a play — that gets me excited because it makes my work good, because it helps me to know what I’m doing,” he says. “I’m not just throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.”

In his English major, Custard has shown his research ability with an honors thesis that delves into themes of disease and sexuality in Romeo & Juliet and Measure for Measure. 

“It’s a study of how disease is working in the two plays,” he says. In both plays, symptoms of physical illness are directly connected to the “misogynistic, exploitative, and often deeply racist, systems of oppression…at work in the fictionalized cities,” which in turn, “can be used to represent modern cities — and the issues that we face today.”

“Bringing together the best of what everybody has to offer.”

What Custard took away from the long process of directing Twelfth Night, from the Feste-Bowie epiphany in 2019 to the closing performance on May 9, is how to be “a much more dynamic collaborator.”

He learned, he says, to focus on ideas, less on personalities. “�ֲ���ý is full of some of the strongest personalities that I think I’ve ever come across. It goes without saying that you will butt heads with people, particularly in creative spaces.” 

The result? “Bringing together the best of what everybody has to offer.”

Years from now, Billy Lahart ’21 will look back at his senior year on the �ֲ���ý men’s basketball team and see the goose-egg record: 0-0.

Zero games, zero wins, zero losses — a season lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. “That’s going to be weird,” says the English major from Franklin, Mass.

But on and off the court, Lahart is a glass-is-mostly-full guy. A team captain, Lahart has earned NESCAC All-Academic honors and All-Sportsmanship honors during his career.

“In a pandemic year like this, you just go back to the old definition of success: Have we applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand?” he asks. This year, the task was team-building, practicing, and getting ready for a new influx of players and a full schedule for 2021–22.

“And I would say that we certainly have. We’ve gotten a lot better. We’re a really tight group. So we should never look at 2020–21 as a loss — we were the COVID team.”

“You wake up, you go to class, and you bring the best of yourself to the classroom and to your professors,” Lahart says. “Then you go to practice and, in a very similar way, you strive to bring the best of yourself to your teammates and coaches — you hold yourself and others accountable, just trying to improve every single day.”

Off the court, Lahart has been involved in the �ֲ���ý Musicians Union and WRBC radio. He’s especially active in Special Olympics, this year.

Recently, he was honored by the JFM Navigators, a local community-based day program that helps adults with intellectual disabilities and other developmental disabilities improve confidence, increase self-reliance, and expand community participation.

Lahart received the Roland J. Boutin Award, given to someone outside the program who enriches the lives of people supported by the Navigators. “I absolutely could not imagine what my four years would be like without the Navigators,” said Lahart.

For Lahart, his various college endeavors, and the people he’s grown close to, has created a winning sum total.

�ֲ���ý is “where you can give yourself fully to your faith, your relationships, your work, and your play. You can embrace and live out our school motto, Amore ac Studio, ‘With Ardor and Devotion.'”

In a time of crisis, a college newspaper can do more than inform, says Vanessa Paolella ’21, editor-in-chief of The �ֲ���ý Student. “It keeps the community together.”

“With the pandemic, students have so many questions, all the time,” says Paolella, a geology major from Dingmans Ferry, Pa. “The newspaper has been a really great outlet for us, as the staff, to both answer our own questions and help other students maybe answer some of their own and learn more.”

Sometimes answering questions means sharing breaking news “as fast as possible,” such as when the college announces positive COVID-19 tests or makes an important announcement. “People need to know, and we use our social media to get that message out really fast,” she says.

Video by Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College

Other times, the goal is to provide a “deep dive into how students feel about COVID-19 policies on campus, how they’re doing with the challenges they face building community, interacting with each other, and finding their people.”

Journalists, she adds, “provide information and resources that people would not otherwise have, especially right now with the coronavirus pandemic, where there’s so much misinformation and rumors.”

And like all journalists, Paolella sees her newspaper as a vehicle for driving social justice. “One of our most important roles as student journalists is to elevate voices that may not otherwise have been heard.

“There’s so much energy because you have that strong sense of purpose.”

“We also have a really powerful platform to give voices to issues that students care about but don’t know enough about, or provide voice to students’ frustrations or concerns on campus,” Paolella says, such as the in-depth look she offered on the during COVID and remote learning.

Like anyone who feels purpose in their work, Paolella feels the surge of energy, a kind of flow, each Tuesday night as the paper approaches deadlines, and she and her editors work together in their Chase Hall office.

“We’re just working so hard to get to our deadline, reading over articles, making last minute edits, putting things together. You’re working hand-in-hand to get it done. There’s so much energy because you have that strong sense of purpose.”

Paolella came to �ֲ���ý with a single extracurricular focus. “I thought running was going to define who I was at �ֲ���ý,” and it has to an extent, as she’s a captain of the cross country team this fall.

“I didn’t come in intending to join the newspaper. But as a senior, especially in these hard times, I think that when I graduate, that having been editor-in-chief is probably going to be my most defining characteristic at �ֲ���ý.”

Paolella began her Student editorship right after completing a summer internship with the Lewiston Sun Journal. There, she “learned how fast the news cycle works, and how important it is to get correct information out as quickly as possible.”

That meant turning around a story in just a few hours. “I would be given an assignment at noon and told, ‘We need that for the paper tomorrow.’ I learned to call people up, say what I needed, and get the information together as fast as possible because even waiting an extra day sometimes is just too long.”

In how she works with her staff, Paolella sees herself “as a guide, because so much is done without my help. The meat of the work is done by reporters, editors, photographers, and other staff members.

“Maybe I’ll send them a nudge, ‘Hey, did you hear about this that’s happening on campus?’ Or, after reading through a draft, I might say, ‘Have you talked to these people? Have you considered this other perspective?'”

She’s also willing to dive in when needed, especially since the level of support can ebb and flow as students focus on their first priority, academics.

“Some people can’t take the time each week, so I do whatever I can do to keep the paper running. Writing articles, being first editor, proofing, photographing, working layout.”

Paolella has even been seen delivering print copies on her bike. “I enjoy the whole process.”

As the pandemic descended last spring and employment prospects grew bleak for many college graduates, the �ֲ���ý Center for Purposeful Work opened their paid summer internship program to graduating seniors for the first time.

That’s how Ariel Abonizio ’20 of Cuiabá, Brazil, found himself in a downtown Museum L-A exhibition space over the summer, working with high-end multimedia gear to create virtual-reality tours of two major exhibitions, one on the , the other about the Androscoggin River.

“I’ve been working with the museum to help mitigate some of the impact of COVID,” he said. “How do you deliver exhibitions through digital media? How can you do that effectively? Those are the kind of questions that I tried to help the museum answer.”

Abonizio’s story answers a question often heard by liberal arts majors: “What can you do with that major?”

In Abonizio’s case, he double-majored in anthropology and art and visual culture, earning honors in the former. “I loved my academic experience,” he says. “At the same time, I was acutely aware that I needed to develop skills as an artist, learning how to handle video, audio, stills — all sides of digital technology.”

That’s where the college’s Digital Media Studios came in. “DMS is where I learned professional skills and got the experience I needed,” he says. “I learned to be a videographer right there. And I had mentors who helped me figure out what I liked so much about digital media and what I wanted to do with my life professionally.” In other words, he discovered his own purposeful work, “which is fundamental.”

As a sophomore, Abonizio had an internship with the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art — “a fantastic resource” — working with the museum’s educational programs. “So I also have real-life experience working with museum staff on educational resources.” He also had a video internship with the �ֲ���ý Dance Festival in 2019.

He brought all this to bear on his work to create a virtual-reality tour for Museum L-A. The key piece of technology: a professional Matterport reality-capture camera that photographs 360 degrees of a space — up and down, left and right.

“The camera truly sees in 3D,” he explains, by projecting millions of infrared points onto floors, walls, and ceilings, “collecting data that, through artificial intelligence, measures the distance between those points to create a 3D version of a room, if you will.”

Abonizio went on to develop additional digital educational materials for the tour, including an interactive timeline and map, and other graphics. “He also helped us figure out ways to promote the tour through social media,” says Emma Sieh, curator of Museum L-A, including spending a week taking over the museum’s Twitter account. Her word for Abonizio’s work? “Stunning.”

Last March, COVID-19 forced the museum to shut its doors to the public shortly after the opening of its well-received exhibition about child labor, All Work and No Play. (The museum has since reopened for in-person visits.)

At the time, numerous tours by local schools had to be canceled. “Three hundred students of all ages were deprived of the opportunity to learn more about this difficult era of Maine’s industrial history,” Sieh says. Abonizio’s work helped fill in the gap, creating a “stunning virtual reality experience that will allow us to share this important exhibit with educators who missed their in-person tour,” she adds.

The museum’s VR tours, including a forthcoming tour of Our Working Waterways, about the Androscoggin River, will be a valuable resource for anyone who can’t visit — student, researcher, or general visitor — to “learn about the history of our community for many years to come.”

For Abonizio, developing this high-tech tool for Museum L-A is purposeful in more ways than one. “It’s great for me to be able to give back a little bit to the community that hosted me for four years.”

Each year we profile �ֲ���ý seniors in a series known as “Voices of the Class.”

Here are the five we profiled from the Class of 2020, each one produced by Theophil Syslo:

• Sam Findlen-Golden talks about how mathematics manages to “work its way into a lot of places that I didn’t expect.”
• Maddie Hallowell explains how she honed her data-collection skills — which she employs in fisheries research — by sending balloons high into the sky.
• A poet, Jesse Saffeir offers insights into the verses she wrote about unexpected places: Maine’s power-line corridors.
• A first-generation college student, Ryan Lizanecz talks about the slow process of finally feeling comfortable at �ֲ���ý.
• Topher Castaneda, a front-line Residence Life staff member,  describes his love of creating community at �ֲ���ý.

Sam Findlen-Golden ’20 and the unexpected joy of mathematics

When Sam Findlen-Golden ’20 of Amherst, Mass., first started at �ֲ���ý, he wanted to try anything and everything that was available to him. “Just because it’s an option,” he says.

Since then, as he’s learned more about what interests him, he’s let go of some pursuits while taking a deeper dive into others — including both mathematics and the performing arts.

A mathematics major and French minor, he’s a member of the a cappella group Crosstones and the music director of the Robinson Players, the student theater company.

Video by Theophil Syslo.

For Findlen-Golden, math serves as an organizing principle in his life.  “Math manages to work its way into a lot of places that I didn’t expect,” he says. “It can be math in the perspective of music or through the perspective of history and education, which is a lot of what I’ve done here outside of academics.”

As he completes his math major, Findlen-Golden has similarly dived deep into biomathematics, learning how best to model the spread of diseases. Along the way, he’s learned how to embrace the more subjective side of his discipline.

Sam Findlen-Golden ’20 (left) and El Khansaa Kaddioui ’20 of Elhajeb, Morocco, talk with Associate Professor of Mathematics Meredith Greer during their biomathematics seminar in Hathorn Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“I’ve always been a very pure mathematician: I like working with straight numbers,” he explains. In the past, “whenever it gets into interpretability, like modeling complex behaviors or patterns in nature, I’ve always been a little intimidated because as much as I enjoy being creative, I also like things that have objective truth to them. There’s a bit of a simplicity in that.”

Yet once again, math has shown him a path, and he’s discovering new satisfaction as he’s explored biomathematics in his senior year, including epidemiology and disease spread.

“It’s shown me that there can be this beautiful blend of interpretability and subjectivity to something that is very objective. You have this objective language to describe subjective opinions and subjective patterns that can be modeled, interpreted in various ways.”

Maddie Hallowell ’20 and the lows and highs of data collection

Maddie Hallowell ’20 grew up in North Haven, Maine, an island community in Penobscot Bay. For her family and neighbors, the effects of climate change are immediate.

“I recognize the changes that are happening in the coastal system and the ecosystem,” she says.

With the guidance of �ֲ���ý professors, Hallowell discovered the value of data collection, primarily through sensors deployed along the coast. She designed an interdisciplinary major incorporating digital and computational studies and geology, and her senior thesis involves developing a sensor that can be attached to lobster traps.

“I want there to be a future for where I live and for there to be a place that I can come back to when I’m older,” Hallowell says. “I think that getting this information will help solidify my ability to do that.”

To expand and hone her abilities, Hallowell has devoted her extracurricular time to collecting data in another direction — straight up — with the High Altitude Ballooning Club.

Video by Theophil Syslo.

For a recent launch, club president Hallowell and the rest of the student team rose at 5 a.m. to drive to New Hampshire, where they launched a balloon filled with 200 cubic feet of helium dozens of miles into the atmosphere.

When the team retrieved the balloon two hours later in central Maine, along with sensors that measured things like temperature, pressure, and humidity, “it felt like we had done something really big,” Hallowell says.

“Data collecting really excites me,” she adds. “You expect what you’re going to see, and then you can get a whole new frame of information, and it can completely change what you thought.”

Maddie Hallowell ’19 of North Haven, Maine, fills a high-altitude balloon with helium before a launch on Nov. 9, 2019. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Jesse Saffeir ’20 and lines of poetry sparked by lines through nature

One of the most important lessons Jesse Saffeir ’20 of Pownal, Maine, has learned at �ֲ���ý is the importance of applying what she learns in class to her own life in the world.

“What impact do we have on other people, and how can we move through spaces in ways that make people feel comfortable and included?” she says.

An environmental studies major, Saffeir began to think about how she moves through one type of space in particular: Maine’s power line corridors. The corridors, cut through fields and forests to make way for tall towers and wires, are juxtapositions of what we think of as manmade and natural — if we think about power lines at all.

“We all, for the most part, rely on electricity to live, and we never really encounter the spaces where that energy is produced and transported,” Saffeir says.

Video by Theophil Syslo.

So last summer, Saffeir walked along the corridors, funded by a �ֲ���ý Otis Fellowship, which supports students investigating relationships between humans and nature. She defined the experience more as bushwhacking than hiking — since there are no trails, she had to make her own maps and plan where to get her food.

“I think we often forget just how much we rely on the spaces around us for our well-being and our sanity,” she says.

Saffeir wrote a poem each day as she walked, later collecting them into a book called Transmission: Poems from Maine’s Powerline Corridors.

Jesse Bull Saffeir ’20 of Pownal, Maine, displays her book of original poetry about Maine’s power line corridors, written during an Otis Fellowship sojourn. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Walking the lines, Saffeir says, has reinforced and given deeper meaning to what she has learned in her classes: that the environment isn’t just the wilderness, that there’s no clear binary between “human” and “nature.”

“I want to think a little bit broadly about our environments as being the places where we live, where we work, where we play, and also the environments that we rely on but don’t really spent a lot of time in,” she says.

“Being able to apply the things that we’re learning about in a very direct way to our own lives is so important to just becoming humans in this world.”

Here is one of the poems from Transmission:

“T�����Բ������������Dz�”

I step into the lake to fill
an empty jug with cool clear water.
I cannot trust my senses
so I heat it to a boil.

I am learning to shelter
my body
to only drink upstream
of the runoff —

pass by the green water
the brown water
the turquoise water pooling
near the mines

sooner or later everyone
gets thirsty

the world is not a disease
that I know of.
it is an inheritance beyond
my wildest dreams.

at night the space between my eyes crawls
with deer ticks, vectors that will burrow
their bodies into me transmitting
a fear I cannot see.

I walk along transmission
lines. the air grows charged
condenses to a static spark
each time I touch a finger to metal

and what that spark contains
has travelled a long way to get here
and will keep traveling
long after it passes

Ryan Lizanecz ’20 finds a home at �ֲ���ý as a Maine first-gen student

When Ryan Lizanecz ’20 first came to �ֲ���ý, “I was anxious, I was curious, I was scared,” he says. “Literally every feeling I could possibly feel at the same time.”

Lizanecz is from Portland, Maine, and he is the first in his family to go to college. Maine as a whole and �ֲ���ý are similar, he says, in that both are “small communities where people know each other and people are friendly.”

Nevertheless, arriving on campus was an “information overload.” Lizanecz had lived in the same house all his life and never been away from his family for more than a week.

At night early in his �ֲ���ý career, he says, he often dreamed of home.

Video by Theophil Syslo

“Thankfully,” he says, “Bobcat First! was my foothold.” The four-year program designed to foster belonging among first-generation-to-college students “provided me with everything I needed to succeed in the first year–plus of my college experience. They were really a family to me.”

With that support, Lizanecz flourished. A politics major, he has delved into the ways that structures of power shape the world.

“�ֲ���ý does a very good job, especially in the liberal arts, of teaching you about how all these different moving parts of the world are interconnected, and how that impacts how the world works,” he says.

At Opening Convocation on Sept. 3, Ryan Lizanecz ’20 (center) sits between keynote speaker and honorand Dolores Huerta and Phillips Professor of Economics Michael Murray. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Lizanecz has sung with the Deansmen, the oldest of �ֲ���ý a cappella ensembles, throughout college. He is also the president of student government this year; in that role, at Opening Convocation, he told the incoming first-year students that their �ֲ���ý experience will be what they make of it.

Now, when he spends the night at home in Portland, Lizanecz dreams of �ֲ���ý.

“�ֲ���ý is my home,” he says. “This is where my friends are. This is where I have the most fun. This is where I learn things that I care about. I think that that’s what �ֲ���ý has become to me.”

Topher Castaneda ’20 builds community as a Residence Life leader

“Something that I’ve realized I truly enjoy doing is building community,” says Topher Castaneda ’20 of Los Angeles.

Which makes Castaneda a great fit among the front-line community builders at �ֲ���ý, the college’s Residence Life staff.

This year, Castaneda is a Residence Coordinator team leader. He’s in charge of six Junior Advisors who, in turn, work with groups of first-years in their residences known as First-Year Centers. He has three first-year residences in his portfolio: Clason House, Milliken House, and Frye House.

Video by Theophil Syslo

“Being so far away from home, I’ve found ways and places to help structure some sort of community around myself, but also around other people who identify as me,“ says Castaneda.

“I’m first-gen, I’m queer, and I’m Latinx. How do I build community for those people, but include more stories in the narrative? One really good way is through Res Life.”

“A really big thing when building community is making sure that people feel heard.”

Castaneda taps into a powerful and fundamental way to forge community: “Stories are really important because they connect people,“ he explains.

“A really big thing when building community is making sure that people feel heard, and people are also understanding where you’re coming from — what your background is, your culture, and what your norm is.”

His Res Life work “has been just awesome,” says Castaneda. And that’s partly because, again, of the human connections. “You get to meet so many different people that you wouldn’t otherwise get to meet at �ֲ���ý.”

An environmental studies major, Castaneda devoted his summer to supporting community in a different way. Working with Holly Ewing, Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, he collected water samples from the local municipal water source, Lake Auburn, as part of research into protecting drinking water quality for the Twin Cities.

Topher Castaneda ’20 (right) sits on a boat with Holly Ewing, Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, as they do fieldwork on Lake Auburn. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

When Sam Findlen-Golden ’20 of Amherst, Mass., first started at �ֲ���ý, he wanted to try anything and everything that was available to him. “Just because it’s an option,” he says.

Since then, as he’s learned more about what interests him, he’s let go of some pursuits while taking a deeper dive into others — including both mathematics and the performing arts.

A mathematics major and French minor, he’s a member of the a cappella group Crosstones and the music director of the Robinson Players, the student theater company.

Video by Theophil Syslo.

For Findlen-Golden, math serves as an organizing principle in his life.  “Math manages to work its way into a lot of places that I didn’t expect,” he says. “It can be math in the perspective of music or through the perspective of history and education, which is a lot of what I’ve done here outside of academics.”

As he completes his math major, Findlen-Golden has similarly dived deep into biomathematics, learning how best to model the spread of diseases. Along the way, he’s learned how to embrace the more subjective side of his discipline.

Sam Findlen-Golden ’20 (left) and El Khansaa Kaddioui ’20 of Elhajeb, Morocco, talk with Associate Professor of Mathematics Meredith Greer during their biomathematics seminar in Hathorn Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“I’ve always been a very pure mathematician: I like working with straight numbers,” he explains. In the past, “whenever it gets into interpretability, like modeling complex behaviors or patterns in nature, I’ve always been a little intimidated because as much as I enjoy being creative, I also like things that have objective truth to them. There’s a bit of a simplicity in that.”

Yet once again, math has shown him a path, and he’s discovering new satisfaction as he’s explored biomathematics in his senior year, including epidemiology and disease spread.

“It’s shown me that there can be this beautiful blend of interpretability and subjectivity to something that is very objective. You have this objective language to describe subjective opinions and subjective patterns that can be modeled, interpreted in various ways.”