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“During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with, and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences,” according to the Fulbright website. “The program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think.”

The Fulbright is the largest exchange program in the country and selects approximately 2,000 students annually to spend one academic year in a country of their choice. The participants are chosen for their academic record, personal qualifications, language preparation, eagerness to promote active engagement with a host community, and the feasibility of their project.

Students interested in applying in the future should contact Carleton’s Office of Student Fellowships for support and assistance.

Meet this year’s Fulbright grant recipients:

Jens Bartel ’25

• Biology
• Fulbright: Research in Austria

“I’ll be in Innsbruck, Austria, working in the Soil Microbiology and Climate Change group at the University of Innsbruck, focusing on projects surrounding land use change. I’ve had previous experience working in microbial research as well as land management here at Carleton in the Arb, and this project combines both interests! I have loved my previous experiences in Austria, including visiting while studying abroad and designing an independent fellowship last year to Vienna, and I am so excited for a chance to live there and experience the place and culture for a longer period of time.

In addition to furthering my interest in human and environmental interactions, I am most looking forward to learning what makes Innsbruck so special for everyone living there by exploring its university culture, surrounding mountains, and group trips like attending an annual ball in Vienna!”

Sadie DiCarlo ’25

• Geology (minor in history)
• Fulbright: Research in Iceland

“Next year, I will be studying the geomorphology and geochemistry of rootless cones in Iceland as terrestrial analogs of Martian paleoenvironments. Rootless cones are volcanic formations that result from lava and water or ice interactions and resemble similar structures seen in Martian satellite imagery. While rootless cones on Mars remain unconfirmed, their existence could indicate where and when there was near-surface water on Mars.

For my comps, I studied the geochemistry of meteorites as analogs for astro material sample-return. Through this, I became fascinated with planetary science and the use of terrestrial analogs to study our solar system. I’m super excited to spend time outside hiking and exploring Iceland, and geeking out about some cool rocks!”

Akash Ganguly ’25

• Mathematics
• Fulbright: Rényi Institute of Mathematics Award in Hungary

“This September, I’ll be in Budapest studying algebraic curves, which are shapes cut out by certain kinds of polynomial equations. Their study involves a number of really interesting techniques and I’m excited to learn more about them. I really enjoyed the city when I studied abroad there my junior year, so I’m excited to head back and enjoy the city again.”

Malachy Guzman ’25

• Mathematics
• Fulbright: Research in Spain

“I’ll be traveling to Spain to do research in biology, joining Professor Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona. I’m really excited about the opportunity to contribute to a collaboration between Professor Garcia-Ojalvo’s group and other groups in Spain and Germany, where I will be employing both experimental biology techniques and mathematical and computational tools to investigate how single cells learn from their environment by adapting their gene regulatory networks.

I first met Professor Garcia-Ojalvo through my work with physics professor Arjendu Pattanayak here at Carleton. Working together on a different project between Carleton and the UPF motivated me to apply, and I am thrilled that the Fulbright will allow me to engage with this fascinating new research. I cannot thank Arjendu enough for introducing me to this research community. Just as much as I look forward to throwing myself into the vibrant research community of Barcelona, I am incredibly excited to experience life in Catalonia. I’m deeply grateful to have this opportunity to serve as a cultural ambassador between the U.S. and Spain, and I can’t wait to get started!”

Olivia Ho ’25

• American studies and English
• Fulbright: English Teaching Assistantship in Bulgaria

“I’m happy to say that I’ll be spending the next year as an English teaching assistant in Bulgaria! I’ll be in a small town called Pravets, which is about 50 minutes outside Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia. Since I’ll be living and working in a rural area, I’m very eager to get outdoors and explore the natural landscape. Pravets is in a valley surrounded by the Balkan Mountains, and I’ve heard it has some amazing hiking! As I’ll be the only teacher in the classroom for a majority of my time, I’m eager to incorporate my own interests in creative writing and art that I’ve fostered at Carleton into my lesson plans.

As an American studies major, I was interested in going to Bulgaria because I wanted to immerse myself in a country that has had limited cultural and social interaction with America. Bulgaria’s history as a communist nation affiliated with the Soviet Union is particularly interesting to me given the historical tensions between the United States and the USSR. Along these lines, I hope to engage my students, ranging from ages 14 to 18, in conversations about their understanding of national history. In all, I’m immensely grateful for this opportunity to explore Bulgarian culture and become a member of the Pravets community!”

Ellis Kondrashov ’25

• Sociology and anthropology (minor in Russian)
• Fulbright: English Teaching Assistantship in Kyrgyzstan

“I’ll be flying out to Kyrgyzstan in September, where I’ll be an English teaching assistant. I’m excited to be back in Central Asia. I’m particularly excited to be just a few hours away from Kazakhstan, where I studied abroad two years ago and conducted my comps research last summer. I’ll get to see some of the amazing people I’ve met before, who have been some of the kindest and most generous people I know. It’s an absolute privilege to be able to go back, but this time I’ll be going to teach instead of study or conduct research.

Even though I’ll have a job this time around, I’ll still be learning every day. I’m hoping to learn about Kyrgyz dance and music (and learn Kyrgyz, too), and maybe get better at horseback riding somewhere along the way. This is one of those rare opportunities to live somewhere where I’m a true stranger and guest. I’ll be working around 20 hours a week, but for the rest of my time, I hope I can integrate myself into different communities and networks of people I can learn from and become real friends with.”

Caroline Loescher ’25

• Biology (minor in educational studies)
• Fulbright: English Teaching Assistantship in Spain 

“I am thrilled to be spending the next year as an English teaching assistant in the La Rioja region of Spain. Through my educational studies minor, I have worked in a Prairie Creek Community School classroom, a highlight of my time at Carleton. I had the honor of running an environmental science after-school program for students at Greenvale Park Community School, creating lesson plans that combined having fun outdoors and STEM subjects.

I am excited to immerse myself in the Spanish culture and language by learning from educators and students. The La Rioja region has lots to explore outdoors, and I am looking forward to hiking and traveling when outside of the classroom. I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn and teach in Spain.”

Ruby Mead ’24

• English (minor in creative writing)
• Fulbright: English Teaching Assistantship in Indonesia

“This September, I’ll be traveling to Indonesia, where I will work as an English teaching assistant at a vocational secondary school. While abroad, I plan to draw upon my past work as a writing consultant at Carleton as well as my time tutoring K–12 students, nannying, and teaching youth dance classes. My previous studies abroad in India, Australia, and the United Kingdom have additionally provided me with the necessary toolkit to design compelling lesson plans and community engagement projects.

I am most excited to immerse myself within a largely unfamiliar culture and language and to connect with those working toward reciprocal international exchange. In a more personal vein, I am eager to explore Indonesia’s diverse landscape and wildlife as well as their history of literary and oral artistry. I’m so grateful for this opportunity and to those who have supported me through this process; I can’t wait to get started!”

Melina Sasaki-Uemura ’25

• Major: Mathematics (minor in East Asian studies and music performance)
• Fulbright: English Teaching Assistantship in Taiwan 

“I will be doing an English Teaching Assistantship in Taiwan this coming fall! I am very excited and honored to be able to spend a year in Taiwan teaching elementary school children. I spent my sophomore and junior year summers learning Chinese in Taipei, and my interest in going to graduate school for East Asian studies motivated me to apply for a Fulbright.

I am very excited to be returning to Taiwan, and this opportunity will allow me to explore the island and culture in more depth than before. I am most looking forward to eating all the good food at the night markets!”

Henry Stier ’25

• Cognitive science and music 
• Fulbright: English Teaching Assistantship in Germany

“I’ll be teaching English in Germany next year, starting this August! I’ve been placed in the seemingly Midwestern-y state of Niedersachsen, although I haven’t been placed in a town or school yet. I’m really excited to find out what type of school I’ll be in and who I’ll get to work with. I started taking German at Carleton just to fulfill the language requirement, but it grew into a study abroad in my sophomore fall, which led to a love of the people I met and a strong desire to return.

I was lucky enough to hear German professor Kiley Kost talk about her experience on a German Fulbright, and she had so many positive things to say about it and how it cemented her relationship with the people and culture she was around. I’m most looking forward to developing those relationships with local people through food and music, improving my language skills, and getting to explore the surroundings and go hiking in a new area. There’s so much to look forward to with this opportunity, and I’m excited to represent Midwest America abroad!”

Kate Ulrich ’25 

• Chemistry (minor in Spanish)
• Fulbright: English Teaching Assistantship in Spain

“This fall, I will be working in the IE University (Universidad Instituto de Empresa) writing center in Madrid and Segovia, Spain. I am very excited for this opportunity to continue working as a writing consultant, as I have had a wonderful experience in this role throughout my past three years at Carleton.

As part of my Spanish minor, I spent this past fall in Madrid on Carleton’s off-campus studies program. I had a fantastic time and I am looking forward to diving back into Spanish culture, especially Madrid’s rich food and museum scenes. I’m grateful to all who have supported me throughout my time at Carleton and through the application process. I am lucky to have spent my last four years in such a supportive, enriching community and am looking forward to building new connections next year!”

Katie O’Leary ’25 was selected for an English Teaching Assistantship in Germany, but instead accepted the U.S. Teaching Assistantship in Austria.

Mitch Porter ’25 was selected for the English Teaching Assistantship in Portugal, but instead accepted the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.

Aaron Zivsak ’25 was selected for an English Teaching Assistantship in the Czech Republic, but instead accepted the Pierce Fellowship through the American College of Greece. 

Without the benefits of planned retirement or time horizons favorable to recouping their losses, these employees experience an array of outcomes, from hard falls to soft landings. Notably, the authors find that when reflecting on the effects of job loss, fruitless job searches, and the overall experience of unemployment, participants regularly called on the frameworks instilled by neoliberalism. Invoking neoliberal rhetoric, these older Americans deferred to businesses’ need to prioritize bottom lines, accepted the shift toward precarious employment, or highlighted the importance of taking initiative and maintaining a positive mindset in the face of structural obstacles. Even so, participants also recognized the incompatibility between neoliberalism’s “one-size-fits-all” solutions and their own situations; this disconnect led them to consider their experiences through competing frameworks and to voice resistance to aspects of neoliberal capitalism.

Employing a life course sociology perspective to explore older workers’ precarity in an age of rising economic insecurity, Nierobisz and Sawchuk shed light on a new wrinkle in American aging.

American Idle is published by Rutgers University Press.

What inspired you to write this book?

In 2011, Annette was out on a walk when she bumped into a neighbor. He confided that he had recently experienced a phenomenon that was rife in the daily media at the time: late-career job loss. What he shared cast light on the lived reality of an unemployed older worker, yet his story contradicted the overly simplistic doom-and-gloom media accounts. Reflecting on this exchange, Annette developed a research study that asked the question, “What happens to workers who lose their jobs after age 50?” 

In American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Economy, we tackle this question by interviewing  62 older, white-collar workers who experienced job loss in the volatile economy of the Great Recession. The book taps into the voices of people who, as one interviewee put it, found themselves at a troubling new stage of the American life course: “too young to retire but too old to start all over.”

How did the two of you start writing together? What do you each bring to this project?

We’re actually old college friends! We first met in a senior sociology class in Winnipeg, Canada in the late 1980s and hit it off immediately. After graduating, we went our separate ways for a while and then, by complete coincidence, discovered that we were both pursuing PhDs in different departments at the University of Toronto in the mid-late 1990s. Unbeknownst to us, we were even living only one subway stop away from one another in the city! We always kept in touch after that, even when we landed faculty positions on the opposite sides of the Canada/U.S. border. This is actually our first joint project — and we’ve wondered why we didn’t start to collaborate much sooner in our careers. 

This book has been a long-term passion project of Annette’s. She developed the study and conducted all the interviews. The project builds on her long standing interest in workplace issues and previously published research on job loss in economic recessions, while also drawing on her expertise in qualitative data analysis.

Dana joined the project after a curious finding emerged at the data analysis stage: nearly three-quarters of the interviewees referenced God, faith, and church in describing how they coped with their job losses. Dana’s expertise in the sociology of aging, combined with her social scientific understanding of religion and identity, brought clarity to this finding. Our collaboration blossomed into a journal article, “Religious Coping Among Older, Unemployed Workers: Narratives of the Job-Loss Experience,” and from that point on, Dana became a partner in the larger project.

What did you learn about the subjects you spoke to and how did that change your thinking about the impact of job loss?

One of the biggest takeaways from the project has been how this group of baby boomer workers, because of when they were born and their experiences over time, really straddles two distinct employment eras in American history. And then, how that unique demographic and life course location shaped their responses to their job losses after 2008. 

Our respondents grew up and saw their parents experiencing the stability of life-long careers of mutual obligation between employer and employee, complete with benefits and the party with a cake and a gold watch at the end of their working lives and the beginning of comfortable retirements. So when, as White and well-educated individuals, they entered the labor force themselves, they fully expected to experience this same type of stability. For a while, and for the most part, they did. Later in their careers, however, and certainly when the 2008 Great Recession hit, we were already well into the period of what we call in the book the “neoliberal era.” This era, for a variety of reasons, really is not characterized by the same type of mutual obligation between employer and employee, but this was the rough new reality that confronted them when they lost their jobs. 

So, what really changed our thinking about job loss was not necessarily how hard it was for our respondents or the financial and emotional strains they reported (this was sad, but not really unexpected). Rather, it was how living through this shift, from the age of stability that they saw in their parents’ generation and that they were socialized into as young workers, to the neoliberal age (sometimes called the age of flexibility), really shaped their expectations about employment and opinions about job loss. When they talked to Annette, we saw both evidence of a nostalgia for that bygone era of stability, but also evidence that they had internalized, for better or worse, much of the mindset of the new neoliberal era.

What surprised you the most in this project?

One of the biggest surprises for us was the variation in financial outcomes following job loss. At one end of the spectrum were those interviewees who experienced a “hard fall.” Long-term unemployment, multiple job losses, evaporating personal wealth, and difficulty paying for basic necessities were among the troubles these downwardly mobile individuals faced. Interestingly, it was the women in our sample who were more likely to report this devastating financial outcome. Equivalent hardships were absent from the job loss experiences we classified as “soft landings.” These predominantly male respondents were left more or less financially unscathed. And then a third group fell somewhere in between on the hard falls/soft landings continuum. These individuals still had a bumpy ride, but they tended to have personal resources in place that insulated them from a hard fall after job loss.

Another surprising finding was how long these variations in job loss outcomes lasted. When we recontacted our interviewees a decade later, those with hard falls were continuing to experience financial difficulties while those with soft landings were enjoying a comfortable retirement. In sociology, we refer to this phenomenon as “cumulative disadvantage,” which simply means that social or economic benefits accumulated earlier in life add up over time, eventually leading to larger disparities between advantaged and disadvantaged groups.

How can the lessons learned from the Great Recession inform how policymakers should prepare for the coming disruption from AI?

One of the things we say in the book is that “objects in the mirror are closer than they appear,” and we think that’s a good way of putting it. We’re more than 10 years away from the first job losses some of our respondents experienced — even 15 years in some cases — though we did re-interview six of the original respondents in our book in 2023. And really, what we learned from all of our interviewees and the lessons from their experiences are unfortunately all too relevant today. Not just because the population is aging and people often work past the traditional retirement age. Whether it is because of AI, DOGE cuts, or COVID-19 before that, job loss among older white-collar workers is a common phenomenon. It’s so common, in fact, that sociologist Sarah Damaske likens it to an institution in American society. We need to understand it to be better prepared for the future.

We also learned that job clubs offered our respondents an important lifeline. At the time of our study, there were approximately 90 community and faith-based job clubs operating in Minnesota’s greater Twin Cities region. The three most popular clubs were affiliated with Christian churches that offered job search services. In the book, we are critical of privileging a faith-based framing of job loss while downplaying contemporary business practices and ideologies that informed both downsizing and job search strategies. Research by sociologist Ofer Sharone shows that when job counselors take a sociologically-informed approach, they can greatly reduce the stigma that unemployed white-collar workers inevitably experience. 

Beyond this critique, many of our respondents spoke positively about the invaluable assistance and camaraderie they experienced at job clubs. When we reconnected with one respondent a decade later, he had moved to a different state, one where these clubs were non-existent. This made his unemployment experience feel even lonelier and more difficult than necessary. 

What role did additional skills training or career pivots play in people moving forward after job loss? 

One respondent talked about accepting contract opportunities as a way to expand his skillset and enhance his market value. Other respondents enhanced their credentials by enrolling in educational programs. While these self-investment efforts boosted confidence, they did not produce new full-time jobs. Part of what was going on was the ageism that our respondents encountered. Consistent with what we see in the scholarly literature, stereotypes and false assumptions about older workers proved a real obstacle for many of our interviewees. Let’s face it, high school and college graduation dates and other clues in a resume can easily reveal an applicant’s age after the simplest of calculations, and callbacks and interviews sometimes dried up after such a calculation was made. In response, our respondents engaged in various forms of body and beauty work — dying gray hair, dressing “younger,” losing weight, acting “energetic and enthusiastic” in interviews to convey vitality, and, in one case, even concealing the fact that a wheelchair was sometimes needed as a mobility aid.

Some of our respondents chose to reinvent themselves after job loss. These self-actualization efforts included embracing part-time work and a mindset of “work to live” rather than “live to work.” Others explored new career paths, and often self-employment, that allowed them to center their creativity and personal interests. While these paths typically resulted in a loss of occupational status and income, the happiness our respondents reported experiencing was perceived as worth the payoff. 

What would you most want your audience to know and understand after reading this book?

On the one hand, we saw how people’s age and life stage really shaped their unemployment experiences. But on the other hand, we want to convey how generalizations about the baby boomers are both inaccurate and unwarranted. There’s a tendency to blame baby boomers for climate change and to perceive this generational group as having achieved greater wealth and financial security than the generations that followed. They’re the lucky ones, right? Yet, our study illuminates some of the many financial struggles they encountered. These people don’t have the luxuries that tend to be associated with the boomers. Some scholars call these false generalizations “generationalism,” and we refer in the book to the generational “blame game,” which is not only wrong-headed but also divisive. And it goes both ways, as we also heard our interviewees saying some rather unflattering things about “kids these days” — that they are not loyal to their employers or that they are not willing to work hard, for example. But here’s the thing: both demographic groups are shaped by the historical context in which they entered into the labor force, and both groups need to look beyond this age-based blame game to truly understand the broader policies and priorities of companies and governments themselves who render all age groups precariously employed in the neoliberal era. 

What questions still remain unanswered that you think should be addressed?

Let’s face it, we interviewed a highly select group of respondents: White, mostly white-collar workers. We did follow conventional sampling methods, and sent out a multi-pronged call for research participants, but, despite claiming a mix of ethnic backgrounds, all of the respondents self-identified as White. 

We believe future research needs to determine if the problem of late-career job loss is concentrated among white-collar workers and, assuming it’s not, access the experiences of more diverse occupational groups. Also, because social research confirms that racialized workers tend to experience a far greater range of disadvantages in the workforce, future research should focus on the job loss experiences of older workers who are racially diverse. Finally, the state-level supports unemployed workers could access in Minnesota at the time of our study were more generous than other states. For this reason, it’s necessary to qualitatively document the job loss experiences of older workers in a wider range of geographic regions.

Looking forward more broadly, there are some questions that future researchers and policy makers should examine. For example, some of our respondents discussed the financial support they received from their parents. What happens when these parents die and a once reliable income stream disappears? Where will older generations find financial support, especially if they don’t have adult children who can close the gap? Additionally, some of our interviewees leveraged their homes to manage the unemployment experience. With the classic middle-class nest egg of home ownership now seen as unattainable to younger generations, they may not have the leeway that buffered many of our “soft fall” respondents. Finally, the onset of AI is projected to result in millions of job losses for white-collar workers. Will this create a significant shift to employment in manual labor? If so, these physically demanding jobs will neither be attractive to, nor feasible options for, older, unemployed white-collar workers.

Learn more about American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era.

Read the full paper.

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Read the full abstract.

Brian Fox, the Marvin J. Johnson Professor in Fermentation Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, tinkers with the way living things use chemistry to turn their own blueprints, DNA, into the processes that make a healthy organism go.

Over more than three decades, federal agencies including the Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation have supported his efforts to study that basic biological chemistry — and to engineer changes to organisms that can benefit humanity.

Fox’s current research focuses on a genetic alteration to poplar trees, equipping them to produce an industrial chemical. It was a surprise discovery that was years in the making and only made possible by long-term investment in his line of research.

“I had no idea we were going to find a gene that would do such a specific and useful thing,” he told UW News in a recent interview. “But here we are, having turned basic research on some gene families into three patents and a process that makes an industrial chemical in a tree.”

Read the full piece.

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Read the full piece.

Mitch Porter ’25

Porter will travel to places experiencing ecological loss to investigate environmental memory and the response of communities to ecological change. Each of his planned destinations face a unique environmental challenge, from flooding in the coastal neighborhoods of Jakarta, to deforestation in the rainforests of Borneo, to the rewilding of brown bears in central Italy and deglaciation in Greenland. 

An environmental studies and Latin American studies double major, Porter was inspired to apply for the fellowship when he heard Associate Professor of Anthropology Constanza Ocampo-Raeder, who was also a recipient of the fellowship, describe it as a formative experience. Porter has researched medicinal plant species in Mexico with Ocampo-Raeder. He also studied abroad in Argentina, an experience that developed into his senior comps project on the creation of marine protected areas in the region. 

“I really wanted to keep asking the questions that I’ve been asking,” said Porter. “What is climate change and what is environmental change, but also how do people respond and what does it actually mean for them? What does it mean to live in a world that’s constantly changing?”

Porter is excited to spend a year in “some of the most vulnerable but also most beautiful places on Earth,” and experience places where he doesn’t speak the language.

“It’s an insane privilege to get to do in the first place,” he said. “One of my biggest realizations at Carleton has been that most of the knowledge about big issues is already out there. I hope to learn from other people who are living these sorts of experiences and think about these things on a daily basis.”

Jonah Docter-Loeb ’25

Docter-Loeb will also use the fellowship to explore environmental issues, but through the lens of a creature he’s become familiar with during his time at Carleton: beavers.

Docter-Loeb will explore people’s relationships with beavers in Norway, Britain, Canada, Chile, and Argentina. He’ll explore topics such as how people work with beavers, work against beavers, and how beavers connect with conservation goals and landscape change.

“Each of these countries has unique social, historical, economic, and ecological landscapes that shape how beavers are managed and what role they play in conservation,” he said. That ranges from places where beavers are abundant, to places where they are being reintroduced after extirpation, to places where invasive beavers are reshaping landscapes unused to them.

“In every case, beavers find a way to lodge themselves into the center of complex environmental conversations,” Docter-Loeb said. The fellowship will allow him to chew on the global impacts of beavers (pun intended).

“Beavers are unique in how they challenge people’s visions for landscapes,” Docter-Loeb explained. “They’re a catalyst for these larger conversations about what we want our relationships to landscapes to look like in this increasingly changing world.” 

Docter-Loeb became passionate about beavers during his sophomore year after getting to know local trapper Mike Smith, who was hired by Carleton to kill beavers in Lyman Lakes (it’s illegal to relocate live beavers in the state of Minnesota, so trapping has become one of the only available options).

“His kindness and openness to sharing his craft inspired me to dive deeper into this issue and keep an open mind to people who commune with the natural world in ways unfamiliar to an urbanite like myself,” Docter-Loeb said. 

Docter-Loeb has since conducted an independent study on beaver management and environmental ethics; initiated and organized Beaver Fest, a now-annual Carleton tradition celebrating and educating about beavers on campus; and traveled to Washington state to speak with people involved in beaver restoration.

During his Watson Fellowship, Docter-Loeb plans to wrestle with the big questions that beavers pose about humans’ relationships to the land and each other. He’s also excited to watch beavers and build relationships with the people and landscapes he encounters.

Victoria Semmelhack ’25

Semmelhack will travel to Ghana, India, Australia, and Norway to explore childbirth knowledge and maternal healthcare policy. 

“My content is structured around two main themes,” she said. “The first is looking at how Indigenous childbirth knowledge and the more westernized hospital-based system interact. All four countries have a long history of colonization and I’m really intrigued by how that manifests itself in their actual birth practices.” 

“Another component is the rural aspect of it,” she added. “A lot of these populations are located in really rural locations, and these countries have a difficult time getting adequate maternal healthcare to them. I’m looking at how these countries provide that and the challenges in these rural areas.”

Semmelhack has had a long-running interest in birth. 

“It’s this fascinating intersection of a variety of different aspects of society,” she said. As a double major in history and sociology and anthropology, she challenged herself to end every term with a final project related to birth. 

“I was able to study the topic of birth across a variety of time periods, cultures, and societies,” she said. “The Watson Fellowship just felt like a really natural extension of that personal challenge of mine; and a really fun one at that, because I love traveling and seeing new things.”

While researching birth experiences in southern Appalachia for her senior comps project, Semmelhack discovered the value of talking with people about the topic and immersing herself in the field.

“The experience made me really excited for the Watson, where the whole year is just talking to people and meeting people,” she said. “There’s no better way to learn about this topic.”

Semmelhack said her ultimate goal is to affect maternal healthcare policy in the United States, and she plans to pursue a PhD in public health or sociology.

“This is an experience that will definitely show me whether or not this is the path that I should pursue, and I don’t think it will show me otherwise,” she said. “I’m excited to bolster my excitement for pursuing higher education and policy work.”

Learn more about the Watson Fellowship and how to apply on Carleton’s Student Fellowships website.

Learn more about the book.

“This study compares erosion rates during the Ice Age to erosion rates after Euro-American agriculture was introduced in the upper Mississippi River region after the 1850s,” Penprase said. “This work is directly relevant to the area around Carleton; both the Cannon River — which flows into the Mississippi River — and Northfield are deeply impacted by agriculture and increased erosion following the introduction of plow-based farming. Studies like this are essential to understand baseline erosion rates before major human modifications to this landscape.”

“Growing up in Southern California, I remember the first time I came to Carleton, and I was amazed to see all the cornfields,” she added. “Agriculture is such an important part of this region in Minnesota and it’s crucial that we understand how these land use practices are impacting the landscape. I decided to become a geology major after taking an intro geology class on a whim with Bereket [Haileab, chair and professor of geology]. I loved it and it’s so cool to see that love for a class resulting in research about the region of Minnesota near Carleton being published in Science!”

He developed the paper in part through discussions at a Carleton Humanities Center Research Circle event with colleagues Kiley Kost, lecturer in German, and Juliane Schicker, associate professor of German and department chair of German and Russian.

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While teaching BIOL 210: Global Change Biology as a visiting instructor at Carleton this past winter, Torstenson focused on exposing her students to environmental issues and ideas, but also on helping connect those issues to their own lives. In her words, “What do you care about and how can you use biology to understand it more and respond?”

While science is often focused on objectivity, “people don’t just accidentally end up being ecologists,” Torstenson said. “People get into doing this work because they care. I wanted to show that you can integrate your identity and background with biology.”

Returning to Carleton to teach Global Change Biology was a full-circle moment for Torstenson; one that recalls her own process of finding her place in ecology. A math major at Carleton, she took the course herself as a student after attending a lecture on mathematical ecology while studying abroad at the University of Oslo in Norway.

“I was like, ‘That exists? That’s so crazy!’ I care so much about the environment, and I like doing math, so this is where I should be,” she said.

Once she returned to Carleton after studying abroad, Torstenson took Global Change Biology with Daniel Hernández, professor of biology.

“I learned so much, and then I spent the rest of my time at Carleton taking as many ecology classes as I could and getting involved in research experiences,” she said. 

After graduating, Torstenson remained immersed in the field of global change. She spent a year teaching math at the Conserve School, a high school program focused on conservation, and then traveled to Norway to research arctic climate change for a Fulbright fellowship. 

Torstenson is currently in the fifth year of her PhD program at the University of Minnesota. She uses mathematical models to study how animal migration affects responses to climate change and how migration shapes pathogen evolution.

“When the opportunity to teach Global Change Biology [at Carleton] came up, it was really exciting,” she said, “because the course was so formative in my academic development, by being exposed to these major environmental issues and getting some insight into the [classic college senior question], ‘Where can I put myself?’”

Torstenson has integrated some of the perspectives gained from her research into the course, such as the importance of models in ecology and how to think in systems. 

“People don’t often imagine ecology as a mathematical discipline, but mathematical models are a useful way to understand complex systems and processes,” she said, “so practicing thinking that way is a lot of what we do.”

Given the magnitude of many current environmental problems, facing those issues every day can be emotionally challenging, something Torstenson often thinks about and discussed with her students during class. 

“You can learn these topics and just be sad or anxious about the world, and some days in my research, that’s how I feel,” she said. “One of my approaches is just to get it out there that that’s a normal response to this. I also try to emphasize points where all kinds of people, through their actions, have made a difference.” 

“I presented this Robin Wall Kimmerer quote, where she talks about choosing joy and choosing reciprocity,” she added. “A wounded world is still feeding us and a wounded world is still bringing joy every day. So to be joyful is just returning the gift… You can be sad and you can be anxious, but you should try to not be alone in that, and think, ‘What can I do to help?’”

For Torstenson, teaching is a powerful way to make an impact. 

“Teaching here and now, I get to engage with parts of global change biology that aren’t in my research and think more broadly,” she said. “It’s also great to watch learning happen and see people put pieces together.”

While Torstenson has had her own process of connecting her passions with her environmental concerns and finding a place in her field, teaching continues to inspire her. 

“There are so many Carleton students that go out and do cool things in the world and are just smart, interesting, engaged people that care,” she said. “What is the knowledge that I can give them to facilitate that awesomeness?”

Joanne Chung ’26 has been accepted into the 2025 Public Policy International Affairs (PPIA) Junior Summer Institute at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. She will be the first Carleton student to participate in this program, and sat down with me to speak about the process and what she hopes to get out of the experience. She is double-majoring in political science/international relations and economics at Carleton, with an interest in learning more about public policy.

Chung found PPIA while searching for opportunities on Carleton’s Office of Student Fellowships website, and thought it would be a good fit for her current interests in addition to helping her think about her path after Carleton.

“As a first-generation student,” she said, “I’m unclear what public policy might look like in higher education, so I think that the PPIA program would be a good way to test that out and think about graduate school.” 

Chung is most excited about the exploratory aspect of this fellowship, explaining that she is interested in many different types of domestic policy right now and isn’t sure yet where she wants to focus. 

“I want to narrow down to a specific field, but I still need to do that narrowing down,” she said. “[This fellowship] will permit me to have the time to explore a topic more in-depth than I would on my own time as an undergraduate.” 

The six-week PPIA program features graduate-level coursework in statistics, economics, and policy, all pertaining to public policy. After its conclusion, Chung will receive an evaluation and a stipend, which she can use for a master’s in public policy if attending one of the 60+ institutions connected with the PPIA program. The consortium includes Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Michigan.

A significant part of what drew Chung to public policy came from experiences she had in Carleton classrooms. She explained the importance she places on discourse during class discussions, and how she wants to continue to be in spaces that allow her to contribute to that. She identified two courses that stood out to her — AMST 225: Beauty and Race in America and POSC 265: Public Policy and Global Capitalism. 

Beauty and Race in America was Chung’s first course that employed “discourse-based teaching,” which she really enjoyed; it made her want to take more discussion-centered courses. 

“It was so refreshing to take, because I had primarily done STEM and introductory language courses previously,” she said. 

Public Policy and Global Capitalism had a similar effect, but narrowed her focus to the realm of policy, enabling her to “develop a larger understanding of the frameworks in which policy is developed and understood.” 

“A lot of the conversations I’ve had with peers inside and outside the classroom… [have] turned into bigger conversations about systems and institutions,” she said. “That’s what attracted me to public policy. Finding the roots in systemic issues and trying to address them, whether through policy research or legislative enactments, is what I’m most interested in. This fellowship fits perfectly with that.”

Working at the intersection of science, healthcare, and entrepreneurship, the multidisciplinary team of four Carleton students spent four months tackling a challenging biomedical tech transfer project focused on a novel technology for simple and rapid generation of recombinant adenoviruses for in vivo gene delivery.

Carleton’s 2024–25 Innovation Scholars team is comprised of Theodore Bester ’26, economics major; Selina Chen ’26, biology major with a minor in neuroscience; Benjamin Szeto ’26, economics major with minors in statistics and data science and public policy; and Allison Tran ’26, economics major with a minor in statistics and data science. Campus mentors include Matt Rand, professor of biology; Ethan Struby, assistant professor of economics; Debby Walser-Kuntz, Herman and Gertrude Mosier Stark Professor of Biology and the Natural Sciences; and Bruce Dalgaard, visiting scholar in economics. The team is led by Augsburg University MBA student Amanda Xiong.

Innovation Scholars is a nationally recognized experiential learning program that engages teams of liberal arts students in the complex processes of translational medicine, taking an idea “from the bench to the bedside.” Project partners include Mayo Clinic, early-stage companies affiliated with Medical Alley, and NASA.

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Keenan Hartert has heard people say college students just need to get a job to work their way through college.

He’s found it’s not that simple.

The Minnesota State University Mankato professor noticed that some students who seemed engaged in class bombed tests, in part because of trying to balance full course loads with working more than 20 hours a week — whether on overnight hospital shifts or managing a Kwik Trip.

“I was floored at how normal they thought … working 30 hours or more was,” he said.

Hartert began researching his students’ schedules, making connections between their hours worked and class performance.

He found that students who work more than 20 hours a week do significantly worse on tests and come to class less often; half of those low-attending students ended up failing his class, compared with just 7% of high-attending students.

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