College of Arts & Sciences Newsletter Archives | ��Ƶ

What Can You Do With a Biology Degree?

tshah — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 17:32:26 +0000

For science lovers, a degree in biology is the perfect fit. At ��Ƶ, biology students benefit from a robust curriculum that equips them for success in a variety of fields.

“Rapid expansion in biotechnology, health technology, corporate sustainability and data analytics has driven high demand for employees with backgrounds that an education in biology delivers far beyond traditional academic or clinical roles,” said Matthias Foellmer, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Biology.

��Ƶ’s curriculum ensures a broad education in several core areas of biology, including genetics, evolution, ecology, physiology, developmental biology, molecular biology and cell biology. Students enrolled in the undergraduate and graduate program also get hands-on research opportunities, receiving training in qualitative analysis using advanced state-of-the-art methods and applying the scientific method.

“We prepare our students for today’s careers in the biological and medical professions, but also offer several transferable skills which makes our students suitable candidates for employment opportunities in a wide variety of fields,” Dr. Foellmer said.

These three alumni prove just how versatile a biology degree can be.

Put a Science Mind to Work in the Courtroom

When Hira Javed ’16, MS ’18, JD, enrolled at ��Ƶ for the BS in Biology program, she was set on becoming a pediatric neurologist. But while volunteering at a hospital during grad school—also at ��Ƶ—she met a nurse practitioner who had switched to advocating for patients’ rights. “She started fighting on the legal side for her patients, and I thought that sounded awesome,” Javed says. That chance encounter led her to explore a legal career—a�Ի� ultimately swap the MCAT for the LSAT.

An ��Ƶ professor helped her identify her legal specialty, pointing her toward patent law, something she’d never considered before. “They said to me, ‘If you want to go to law school and you still really love science, have you considered patent law?’” she recalls. “That was definitely a pivotal moment in my career.”

After earning her law degree, Javed joined a Washington, D.C., law firm, where she practiced patent litigation and privacy law. Her biology background proved more useful than expected. “Studying biology helped me become very detail oriented, and to use the analytical side of my brain,” she says. All of those hours she spent sifting through dense scientific papers at ��Ƶ translated directly to legal work, too, teaching her to zero in on the key pieces of data methodically rather than getting lost in the details.

In April 2026, Javed took her career a step further, accepting a clerkship with a magistrate judge in the Southern District of Florida. “When you take a step back and realize you’re helping move justice forward, it’s a really powerful feeling,” she says.

Help Migraine Patients Reclaim Their Lives

Monika Mikolajczak ’17, MD, still thinks of the fruit flies she cared for as a biology undergrad at ��Ƶ. Practically every morning for nearly two years, she came into the lab to prepare fly food and count the flies for a mitochondrial research project—work that eventually contributed to a published paper. “I wouldn’t have had that opportunity if I’d gone to a school with much larger classrooms,” Dr. Mikolajczak noted. “It’s not easy to get into a lab and do research—there’s a lot of funding that goes into it, and not everyone wants students involved with their research.”

That experience in the lab also honed the critical-thinking skills she relies on as a headache medicine fellow at Mount Sinai. “My biology education taught me to think through evidence and avoid jumping to conclusions,” she said.

Her path to that fellowship wasn’t a straight one. While becoming a physician was always a calling, she pursued other early ambitions, including physical therapy and, before that, shark research. But it was during her four-year neurology residency at Northwell Health that she found her calling. During rounds with a mentor in her second year, she watched a nerve block bring near-immediate relief to a migraine patient in the emergency room. “Anyone with migraines knows how terrible the emergency room can be—there’s a lot of light and noise, it’s not a fun place to be. So if you end up in the emergency room with a migraine, you’re desperate at that point,” Dr. Mikolajczak said. “Just helping him regain his function and be able to leave the emergency room feeling better was so rewarding.”

Turn a Study Abroad Trip Into a Dream Career

When Candice Marcos ’12, MS ’14, MA ’16, started her undergraduate biology degree at ��Ƶ, she had her sights set on medical school. Looking for ways to stand out as an applicant, she signed up for a three-week study abroad trip to Australia focused on environmental science. What she found there changed everything. Snorkeling and conducting field research in the water, she came home with a new direction. “After that, I decided I wanted to be in the field of marine biology,” she says.

Now, Marcos is head of education at Shark Reef Aquarium in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she uses her biology degree every day. In particular, her experience researching marine animals while a grad student at ��Ƶ helped her understand these creatures, knowledge she regularly shares with visitors to the aquarium. Her six-year stint as a science teacher in Nevada also equipped her with the skills to develop education programs that resonate with visitors, as well as provide professional development for her staff members.

“My career combines my two worlds—biology and education,” Marcos says. “I teach important animal conservation concepts while getting up close to the animals.”

She stresses that her dream job wouldn’t have happened without a willingness to say yes—even to opportunities that seemed unrelated. Case in point: a part-time dental assistant role she almost left off her résumé turned out to be one of the things that set her apart from other candidates for her current role. “Don’t be afraid to take the side quest because you’re still gaining skills,” she says. “It’s better to try something and know for a fact that it’s not for you, than to not try it and always wonder ‘What if?’”

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Is Your Phone Actually Rotting Your Brain? Why Your Attention Span Feels Broken—And How the Algorithm Intended it That Way”

tshah — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 17:19:08 +0000

Two faculty members in ��Ƶ’s Department of Communications are addressing today’s scrolling epidemic from different—though complementary—scholarly perspectives.

Anna Akerman Berman, PhD, associate professor of communications and a social psychologist who specializes in child development, is taking a stand against a global media machine that’s designed to keep us hooked on content. Once a media consultant for the likes of Nickelodeon, MTV, Scholastic and Disney, Dr. Akerman Berman now uses her insider knowledge to help parents wean their children off of screens.

Peggy Cassidy, PhD, professor of communications and an expert in the history of children’s interactions with media, is looking to the past to understand our potential digital future. Dr. Cassidy has published at length on the evolution of American media environments. Her tips for a healthy media diet take their cues from 200 years of history: how generations of parents and children have adapted to the disruptive effects of new forms of media.

From attention-grabbing TV to attention-proofing phones

After earning her PhD, Dr. Akerman Berman applied the scientific theories she’d studied in school as an audience researcher for Sesame Workshop and Noggin. She analyzed children’s “eyes on screen”—when they were paying attention to the screen, when they were bored enough to look away—a�Ի� worked with creative teams to modify programming accordingly. “Before I started working for these companies, I hadn’t realized the extent to which psychology was being used to create content,” she said.

Dr. Akerman Berman went on to provide consulting services to executives at some of the world’s top media and entertainment brands. “The question we always returned to was: How can we keep kids watching?”

Today, she’s determined to keep children’s eyes off of screens. Why? There’s nothing wrong with scrolling for 10 minutes to decompress, she says. The problem is, 10 minutes often turns into several hours. That’s by design. “These algorithms are using more data points than we could ever imagine. They’re catered specifically to individual interests, and they reward scrolling behaviors in a very precise, individualized way.”

The science behind our scrolling addiction

According to Dr. Akerman Berman, scrolling seems to satiate our most basic human needs: competence, connection and autonomy. In a world where it’s all too easy to feel disconnected and disempowered, scrolling can generate instant satisfaction. But, Dr. Akerman Berman says, the feeling is “brief and disingenuous,” nothing like the satisfaction that comes from real-life experiences.

People trying to meet their basic needs—particularly children and adolescents—are easy targets for big business. They always have been. The tactics that tech companies use to keep us scrolling, Dr. Akerman Berman argues, are not so different from the manipulative marketing campaigns run by tobacco companies throughout the 20th century. However, it’s been proven that young people are less likely to use tobacco once they’ve been exposed to the tobacco industry’s manipulations. Dr. Akerman Berman is confident we can apply the same logic to social media addiction.

Education is the best weapon against “brain rot”

“The first step,” Dr. Akerman Berman said, “is educating our kids and ourselves. The second is becoming aware of our behaviors.” People of all ages should start collecting data of their own: logging their screen time and noticing how they feel before and after scrolling. Armed with this “metacognitive awareness,” they might begin to turn to other activities instead of opening TikTok or Instagram.

But going from 100 to zero won’t happen overnight, Dr. Akerman Berman stresses. “Our nervous system has learned that discomfort equals phone. In moments of stress, we will fall back on this habit. Still, we absolutely can re-habituate ourselves to a new normal where we’re replacing scrolling with taking a walk or listening to music.”

The “grasshopper mind” of the endless scroller

Dr. Cassidy sees scrolling as a cultural practice—a�Ի� a cultural problem. As a media ecologist, she’s more interested in media’s form rather than its content. While we should be thinking critically about the content we’re consuming online, we also need to consider the “ways of thinking, knowing and interacting” that are encouraged or discouraged by scrolling. She cites a concept coined by scholar Maryanne Wolf, EdD, called “grasshopper mind,” or “the impulse to just scroll away, to jump from one thing to another as soon as things get boring or hard or confusing.”

That impulse could very well erode the foundations of our society. If we disengage as soon as we’re faced with something we don’t understand, what will happen to our interpersonal relationships, our cultural norms, our politics? Dr. Cassidy believes the cracks are already visible. “We as citizens are not engaging deeply with ideas,” she said. “We tend to have superficial emotional responses to political messaging, which has contributed to this intense polarization we see today. We don’t stick around long enough to hear someone’s full perspective.”

New media fears have old precedents

For Dr. Cassidy, the fears around social media addiction and scroll culture are well founded. But they’re nothing new. In her book (Routledge, 2017), she charts 200 years of panicked reactions to emerging media environments, from 19th century dime novels and nickelodeons to rock ’n’ roll and TV.

“As a media historian, I resist the temptation to use the word unprecedented,” Dr. Cassidy said. In fact, she even takes a “certain comfort in knowing we’re not that unique. Our species has been here a long time, and other changes in media have disrupted us, upset us, required us to adapt.”

At the same time, historical precedent shouldn’t become its own deterministic force. “Just because adults were afraid of dime novels in the 1800s and it all worked out okay doesn’t mean we don’t need to worry about social media and smartphones. Throughout history, there have been missed opportunities for citizens to organize themselves around resisting the direction that certain technologies are taking us.” In other words, to create the future we want to see for ourselves and our children, we have to act now.

The secrets of a healthy media diet

Like Dr. Akerman Berman, Dr. Cassidy prescribes moderation—a�Ի� an open mind—to adults and adolescents alike. “I would encourage people, especially parents, to take a breath and not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” she said. “Yes, so much of what our children are consuming is not developmentally appropriate. But we should stay open to wondering about what’s captured their attention.”

In social media, young people are finding benefits that prior forms of media never enabled. Adolescents who feel alienated in their immediate communities, for instance, can reach out to allies halfway across the world with the press of a button. These connections may be mediated by technology, but they’re indisputably human.

Scrolling addicts may be able to rewire their psychic habits by leaning into that innate human-ness, too. “We have to learn to stay with hard things, to struggle, to make mistakes,” Dr. Cassidy said. “That’s the only way we’ll get better.”

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What Can You Do With an Art Degree?

ckatz — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 16:48:51 +0000

Never mind the “starving artist” tropes. Declaring an art major is a power move. A creative degree gives students versatile skills for a world that craves innovation, leading to career possibilities that are as diverse as they are exciting.

Art students not only learn how to paint, draw and sculpt—they also learn to think. “The art department prepares students to be creative problem solvers, and we give our art students a wide range of skills based in the studio arts as well as in design, digital art and technology,” said Kellyann Monaghan, professor and chair of the Department of Art and Art History.

��Ƶ offers degrees to appeal to different areas of interest, including Studio Art, Graphic Design, Art and Design Education, and Art History. Students benefit from small classes led by successful artists, branding experts and seasoned educators, along with real-world experiences like internships, collaborative mural projects and career preparation courses. “We function like a small art and design school within the larger University,” Monaghan said. Students can develop skills in complementary fields like psychology, business and communications. This flexibility helps them tailor their career paths to their interests.

Those paths are broader than many people assume. ��Ƶ art alumni work as photographers, art directors, school educators, art therapists, and in many other fields. “Students don’t have to be starving artists,” Monaghan said. “There are lots of different ways for them to make a living in the world.”

Case in point: Meet several ��Ƶ alums who built a thriving career with their art degree.

Turn a Creative Vision Into a Thriving Agency

Carl Timpone ’08, Portrait, Editorial and Commercial Photographer and Partner at Visual Natives

Photographer graduated at the start of an economic recession. Jobs were scarce, but the creativity and independence ��Ƶ fostered helped prepare him to think outside the box. He began sneaking backstage at concerts to take photos of musicians, which quickly led to creating album artwork. “My job was just to listen to the music, listen to their lyrics and translate that into a visual form,” Timpone said.

As he gained experience and became more successful, he partnered with a graphic design graduate he met through the music scene and launched an agency——that is still in operation today. Their clients span record labels, the fashion industry, enterprise companies, and legacy artists like Stevie Nicks and Def Leppard. “What I enjoy most about my career at this point is the ability to think quickly and creatively and the human connections that I make with the subjects, even if it’s brief,” he said. And those subjects happen to be Hollywood’s biggest stars, from Cynthia Erivo to Timothée Chalamet, and music industry icons like Post Malone and Chappell Roan.

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College of Arts and Sciences Announces Inaugural Board of Advisors

ckatz — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:30:51 +0000

��Ƶ’s College of Arts and Sciences introduces its first-ever board of advisors, bringing together a cohort of accomplished alumni to guide the college’s strategic direction and strengthen opportunities for students over the next decade. Established for the 2025–2026 academic year, the board will work with Dean Vincent W. Wang, PhD, and faculty leadership to further academic development, carve out new career pathways, expand community engagement and provide philanthropic support.

The Role of the New Board of Advisors

The newly formed Board of Advisors brings together alumni from a wide range of professional fields, creating a direct bridge between the College and today’s workforce. The board members will serve as advisors—sharing real-world insight into industry trends, new and evolving career opportunities, and how the College can better prepare and assist students—effectively positioning them for professional success. Through their experience and networks, the board will help advance the college’s academic mission, while opening doors to experiential learning, mentorship and philanthropic support.

“This board reflects the breadth, talent and impact of our alumni community,” said Dean Wang. “Their perspectives and experiences will help us ensure our programs remain relevant, inclusive and forward-looking, while keeping student success at the center of everything we do.”

Meet the College of Arts and Sciences Board of Advisors

The board of advisors was purposefully constituted to reflect the disciplinary, demographic and experiential diversity of ��Ƶ. The board currently consists of six professionals whose careers span STEM, education, law, medicine, the arts, public service and cybersecurity.

Katie Aragon ’09, MA ’22, earned a BFA in studio art and an MA in Art Education from ��Ƶ and is an art teacher at While at ��Ƶ, she was a member of the Honors College and served as a University tour guide. She later earned a master’s degree in museum education from the Bank Street College of Education and spent several years teaching in museum settings. Her work reflects a deep commitment to arts education and student engagement.

, a three-time ��Ƶ graduate, with a BS in computer science and mathematics, a master’s degree in mathematics, and a doctorate in mathematics, is a professor of computer science at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He was previously a senior member of the technical staff at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute and CERT Research. He is an expert in computer and network security, cryptography, privacy and anonymity. He previously served as a senior security architect at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has been published widely and has mentored students for more than 20 years.

, holds a BS in physics from ��Ƶ and a doctorate in engineering from Cornell University and is currently a technical program manager at Northrop Grumman. She is the co-founder of Career Factory 360, a career consulting and development company. A 10 Under 10 honoree, Dr. Grayson is a strategic engineering leader with more than a decade of experience managing cross-functional teams. She is also a global keynote speaker, bestselling author, and a passionate advocate for mentorship and representation in STEM fields.

Barry Gross ’68, JD, earned a BA in history from ��Ƶ and a JD from Albany Law School. He has practiced law for more than four decades, handling more than 1,250 cases during his career. Gross is a founding partner of and serves as a member of the ��Ƶ Panther Club Executive Board. His experience offers the college a perspective on legal practice, ethics and alumni engagement.

Joseph Lombardo ’75, MD-PhD, a retired physician with more than 30 years of experience in anatomic and clinical pathology, earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from ��Ƶ and a MD-PhD from SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Board-certified, Dr. Lombardo served as chairman and laboratory director at several hospital-university medical centers. Among his many accomplishments, he established a full-service virology and STD laboratory at UMDNJ-NJ Medical Center (now the Rutgers School of Biomedical and Health Sciences) and identified the first case of HIV-2 in North America. Dr. Lombardo has numerous publications and has taught in medical schools both in the US and abroad.

, serves as dean of social sciences and humanities at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. He earned a bachelor of arts in political science in 2006 and master’s degree in the Scholars Teacher Education Program in 2007 at ��Ƶ. Dr. Ramos then furthered his education, obtaining a Doctor of Arts in history and education from St. John’s University. He will complete his second doctorate, a PhD in sustainability, from Prescott College in May 2026. A member of ��Ƶ’s 10 Under 10 young alumni recognition program, his research focuses on world poverty and sustainable development. Dr. Ramos’ leadership experience brings valuable insight into academic innovation and student-centered learning.

What’s Ahead

The board of advisors will meet twice annually and will work closely with Dean Wang to advance strategic priorities outlined in the College’s strategic plan. In the short term, the board will partner and support student research and experiential learning and career opportunities, as well as faculty interdisciplinary teaching and research. Looking ahead, the College plans to strategically grow the board, while maintaining its cohesiveness, to continue building a future-focused and preeminent institution of liberal arts and sciences where every student is promised a high-impact college education.

“This is just the beginning,” Dr. Wang said. “Our board of advisors represents a powerful partnership between alumni and the College—one that will help us prepare students not just for their first job, but for lifelong impact.”

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Strange Things on Long Island’s East End: The Historical Undercurrents of the Upside Down

ckatz — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:15:32 +0000

Michael LaCombe, PhD, Associate Professor of History

In this Q&A, we sit down with Michael Lacombe, PhD, associate professor in the ��Ƶ Department of History—a�Ի� superfan—to leaf through the series’ folklore. From the base’s original purpose to the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, Dr. Lacombe offers his thoughts on how the era’s paranoia mixed with the eastward explosion of suburban Long Island created an ideal breeding ground for Stranger Things.

He also offers a historian’s-eye critique of the show’s evolution, the “mindset” of the 1980s and why the series finale might have played it a little too safe—spoiler alert!

Camp Hero has been called the “Hawkins Lab” of the East End. What can you tell us about the original purpose of this base during WWII and the Cold War and why it became such a fixation of conspiracy theories?

I have no idea what the base was built for and what it may have been used for while it was active. I think that even today and especially during the Cold War, secrecy is kind of a reflex reaction for most of the military: They didn’t and don’t really need a good reason to keep things classified, beyond the fact that it makes it harder for us taxpayers to know where our money is going.

Some of the Cold War espionage stories I do know about seem either banal or just bizarre, like planting a booby-trapped seashell for Fidel Castro to find while snorkeling. If someone smuggled news of that plan out of a place like Camp Hero, or got drunk at a local bar on the East End and talked too much, no one would believe that was the real plan. A booby-trapped seashell? There would be all sorts of speculation about what the “seashell” is, and the military would encourage the weird stuff to make it even harder to know what was really going on.

is the best example: I’ve read recent articles that claim the military has fostered and even spread weird stories about aliens there to cover up the more unsavory aspects of what they do everywhere. And they may also think it’s fun, trolling the civilians.

A structure that is one of the many support buildings located at Camp Hero State Park in Montauk, NY, the real-life inspiration for “Hawkins Lab” featured in Netflix’s Stranger Things.

Do you have any thoughts on how Camp Hero influenced the mythology featured in the series?

I’m sure the base was built when there was nothing much out there and Long Island grew to meet it, so it was surrounded by ordinary people doing ordinary things by the time of the Cold War. That was also (of course) the time of the automobile and the highway and the explosion of population on Long Island, so all of a sudden suburban neighborhoods found themselves next to “secret” bases. I think this is an important part of how this mythology grew, as the American population exploded and expanded in the years after World War II.

You could say the same thing about wolves or mountain lions: They’ve always been there, of course, but now people have moved into their territory and surrounded them and they’re a thing, a problem—military bases haven’t been there that long, but I think it’s likely that in the 70s and 80s people just started to notice them.

Hawkins’s status as a kind of Everytown USA, with a mall and a Blockbuster, is very important to the show, and I imagine that 75 years ago Montauk could have thought of itself in the same way (like Amity Island was in the movies). It’s hard to imagine anyone envisioning the East End as Everytown USA today.

Are there any elements of the Camp Hero project that still remain in Montauk?

I’ve never been out there, but I understand there are some beautiful, rusting relics still standing: a radar tower and gun emplacements (there are lots of these, it turns out—I’m familiar with a series of bunkers and gun batteries in Casco Bay, Maine). I think responsibility is now New York state’s and not the Army or the federal government, and that some areas are closed off because they’re dangerous and/or contaminated. And (as we know from the Hudson River) it takes a lot of time and money to remedy some kinds of environmental contamination. But all this feeds back into the reason why we’re interested in such places and why being forbidden to go there makes us even more interested and curious—a�Ի� dubious—about the boring official explanations (you are likely to be seriously injured and the Army doesn’t want to get sued).

Think about this comparison: The Army gave Governor’s Island to New York City and the state, but there are no stories about that: It’s a beautiful place, largely intact, that’s now a park with great old brick buildings and astonishing views. But the barbed wire, rusting tower, gloomy bunkers and “Danger–Keep Out” signs just lend to Camp Hero’s eerie 80s aura. And there are lots and lots of photo-essays of dead malls with weeds growing in the food court—it’s the same vibe of mysterious and evocative places.

And anyway, we’re still talking about it!

Eleven’s story is said to be grounded in the CIA project MKUltra. The Hellfire Club is a nod to the “Satanic Panic” of the 80s. And so much of the series is colored by fears from the Cold War era. Can you delve a little deeper into the American history that influenced the show?

The Hellfire Club was also a big shout-out to the original (D&D) players from that era. A lot of cool people today pretend they were “really into” D&D in the 80s, but they weren’t—it was a game for outcasts and recluses and misfits like Eddie and Dusty Buns and the gang. D&D changes the equation of the popular fear of satanic influence, too—there was a lot of fear in those days just as there is today, about mysterious forces preying on American youth. It wasn’t communism anymore (even the Reagan administration couldn’t make a credible case that American teenagers in the 80s were closet commies). But the broader conspiracy theories that the show is based on (secret bases, secret experiments, the military/scientific/paranormal) acted at the time against all sorts of things. The destroyed lives, and the just made it impossible for a kid I played Little League with to come over and play D&D with us. But I think the show didn’t just plant 80s cultural references like Easter eggs: It had a very 80s mindset and sensibility.

So I thought one of the most interesting things about the show was not that it was “about” anti-communist fears of sinister satanic forces infiltrating small-town, authentic American heartland lives. That was all true in the show, right? The Soviets really were training a strike force of interdimensional creatures and all that. It was more the way it inhabited that 80s world of paranoia so fully, the same world that gave us all those classic horror franchises. Subterranean tunnel networks—what could be a more obvious symbol of this? A parallel dimension—all of that.

So the varsity hoops team beating up the D&D club was part of the way the show inhabited the 80s sensibility, but so was the casual way that our heroes, including Sheriff Hopper (a Vietnam vet—another essential element of the 80s anti-government conspiracy mix) shot American soldiers as they invaded the base in the final season. That was right out of , and I found it frankly jarring—there was another scene where an Army sniper in a helicopter was gunning down scientists fleeing a secret desert lab, laughing as he shot them. The portrayal of soldiers in these ways was really not something we’re used to seeing much these days.

Stranger Things was rooted in the very real tensions of the Cold War.

Most importantly, what did you think of the ending?

Not enough death. I think the show took on a cultural resonance way bigger than its story and characters, and (let’s face it) the “tension” between Nancy and Jonathan or the bromance between Dustin “Dusty Buns” and Steve “The Hair” Harrington was never going to sustain the show. So they added character after character, and only Eddie and Bob ended up dying. I thought both of those characters’ deaths were important and gripping, and I thought we’d see a few more as they wrapped things up. But I think it just became impossible to kill off Mike, or Max, or Robin, or Hopper, etc., etc.

So as the final season wrapped up, we were left with a lot of long conversations to tie up plotlines that took too much time and were kind of implausible. Joyce vanished, and she was not only a great character but also Winona Ryder, which is a very important point to a person my age. But the biggest problem was time: There wasn’t enough time for the final boss fight, so it was a letdown—Nancy got to blast things, okay, but it was too easy. And no one died!?! Who’d have thought Hawkins v. Vecna would be a shutout?

These multi-season streaming series are a strange and new phenomenon, almost a new form of storytelling. The show writers try to get renewed, so they open up the conflict the way Stranger Things did in the first couple seasons without resolving it (so they *have* to make a new season and get paid). But this kind of narrative lends itself to just this sort of problem. My daughters would have been very sad to see Max or Robin die in the finale, so why do it? It would have soured the show for them, and the finale served the purpose of the show well enough. Not every series can end perfectly the way did.

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From Lab to Liftoff: Hoverboards and Electric Tiles at ��Ƶ Physics

ahassan — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:09:40 +0000

A new sophomore physics lab course taught by Matthew Wright, PhD, professor and chair of the physics department, puts students in charge of ambitious, hands-on projects that introduce them to the kind of work they might do in their careers as physicists.

“This class is innovative because it turns a physics lab into a real R&D shop,” said Dr. Wright, whose annual Cosmic Pathways conference treats college and high school students to a day of presentations, panels and workshops on the many exciting career paths for physics majors.

“Students don’t follow recipes,” he continued. “They invent their own projects, debug unpredictable problems, and learn to think like working scientists and engineers.”

Preparing students for physics careers

Student chose projects—building everything from a leaf blower-powered hoverboard and 3D‑printed drones to EKG devices and rockets—then spent the semester designing and debugging them. Students also had to write a proposal and budget for their project and get approval from Dr. Wright. This gives them experience in grant writing and technical writing.

The lab grew out of a multiyear effort led by Sean Bentley, PhD, associate professor of physics, to redesign the physics curriculum based on feedback from an industry advisory board. Employers told ��Ƶ they needed graduates who could do more than recite formulas; they wanted people who can debug complex systems, use lab instruments confidently, program computers, and solve messy, open‑ended problems.

The result is a three‑year lab sequence: an introductory first‑year lab to learn tools and basics, this open‑ended sophomore lab, and a more advanced senior quantum lab.

A Physics Major Builds Her Own Hoverboard in the Lab

Physics major Carolina Guekjian designed and built a hoverboard powered by a leaf blower.

“I wanted to do something cool, unusual and futuristic, something you cannot go out and buy,” she said. She used airflow and pressure calculations to figure out how much air she would need to lift to the board, how wide to make the board, how big to make the vents to lift the board.

“You can use these equations to come up with a theoretical idea of how your project will work,” Guekjian explained, “but the theory isn’t always exact due to real world conditions, so I had to alter it to make sure it works perfectly.”

There were problems, of course. Initially she thought she would use magnets in her project. “I ended up ruling them out because it was just going to be a fire hazard,” she says. “So I landed on using a leaf blower instead.” A battery connector failed near the end of her project, she said, which she still needs to fix. But her hoverboard hovers and can be steered left and right, so she counts her project as a success.

Guekjian said she spent 10 hours a week on her project, including lab sessions and time at the machine shop. Her efforts worked and she had a working hoverboard by the end of the class. “I learned that being in a lab and making a project is about failing and overcoming the failure until you get it right,” she said. She believes the skills she learned in the lab will help her pursue her dream of going into physics research in quantum optics.

“The ideas tend to be pretty simple, but the hard part is debugging and fixing and trying to figure out what all the little problems are and overcoming them,” said Dr. Wright, who . That unpredictability turns each class meeting into improvisation, with the instructor moving from bench to bench to help students.

“It’s like being the orchestra conductor,” he said. “I never know what they’ll need help with, and that makes it fun and challenging for all of us.”

First test run of the hoverboard. We fried one of the propellers so we might be done.

Physics for Sustainability: Creating Energy From Foot Traffic

Physics major Braden Patterson used the sophomore project lab to design a floor tile that generates electricity when someone steps on it. His invention, which Dr. Wright , used a magnet spinning inside a coil to generate an electrical current that can power small devices like an LED light. The broader idea is to harvest energy from everyday foot traffic, he says.

“The lab and my project gave me a way to connect my coursework to the real world,” Patterson said. “In Physics I and II we learned the equations on paper, but this project let me build something from scratch and actually see those calculations come to life.”

Patterson said the skills he learned in the lab will help him reach his career goal. He’d like to work on electric motors for car companies and is also interested in nuclear energy production.

Beautiful teaching moment

Lab Course as a Career Testing Ground

“Dr. Wright is really fun and incredibly supportive,” Patterson said. “He explains things in a way that makes sense, and he’s always available for questions. With him, I never feel stressed about asking for help. He just genuinely cares about his students.”

Guekjian agrees. “Dr. Wright is patient and he’s helpful,” she said. “He really likes it when students learn, and he wants to do everything he can to help you learn the material.”

The lab is designed to push every student out of their comfort zone. Each of the 15 students must confront and overcome obstacles in their projects. “Every student in the class had to overcome major issues with their project, and that really leads to learning, and it leads to professional growth,” Dr. Wright said.

Dr. Wright also explained that the course could not have been created without the support of Professor Christoper Saucedo and Chris Stahley ’16, head studio technician, of ��Ƶ’s art department. “Professor Saucedo has built a really nice machine and wood shop and has made it available to the physics students,” Dr. Wright said. “When our students needed to prototype something, they’d go there and Chris Stahley would help them put it together.”

For many students, the class doubles as a career testing ground. About a third of ��Ƶ physics majors go into engineering, another third into traditional physics paths, and the rest into fields like teaching or technology. By choosing their own projects, students explore what they might want to do after graduation.

They also discover how powerful applied physics can be. “Physics is a platform for doing just about anything,” Dr. Wright said.

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From Dancing in Bronx Hallways to Performing with Bad Bunny: Frida Molina ’23

ahassan — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:01:41 +0000

On weekend nights in the Bronx in the early 2010s, Frida Molina ’23 was teaching herself to dance. In the hallway outside her parents’ apartment, she’d watch DJ/dancer Matt Steffanina’s hip-hop videos and copy every move she saw. Then she’d prop her phone up, record her best take and post it online.

Those grainy hallway videos were the first steps on a path that would eventually lead Molina to ��Ƶ’s dance program, gigs with Lil’ Kim, Yailin la Más Viral and other artists, appearances in multiple music videos, and a coveted spot as a featured dancer in a Bad Bunny music video—all while building a career as a teacher, choreographer and mentor for the next generation.

Building a Dance Career From Scratch

Molina’s earliest training didn’t come from studios or competitions. It came from family parties—festive Dominican gatherings that included fun, informal dance competitions for the kids—a�Ի� from whatever dance videos she could find online. “My parents didn’t have enough money to take me to dance,” she said. “I started learning through YouTube videos.”

Formal training followed in middle and high school at the Bronx Dance Academy and then the Talent Unlimited High School in Manhattan. After school, she headed to the Martha Graham School’s Teens at Graham program, where she discovered modern dance and even performed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. For a while, she thought her future might be with a modern company like Martha Graham or on a Broadway stage.

Then she realized she didn’t want to choose between fine art and commercial work. She wanted to do all kinds of dance.

Finding Her Place in ��Ƶ’s Dance Program

When it came time for college, she chose ��Ƶ. “This is not only a school for dance, but it has so many different career paths and so many different majors and minors,” Molina said. “I wanted to be in a broader community and have friends who majored in other things.”

She enrolled in ��Ƶ’s dance program in 2019, focusing on ballet and modern—what is called “concert dance.” Teachers like Orion Duckstein, associate professor and chair of the dance department, and adjunct professor Jennifer Kreichman, saw something different in Molina—a student determined to keep one foot in the concert world and the other in the commercial dance scene.

While many classmates stayed on the traditional track, Molina commuted to Midtown Manhattan after her ��Ƶ classes to take hip-hop and urban dance classes. Her days were stacked: academic classes, technique, rehearsals, then the train ride into the city for more class—along with time to record and post on social media. “I was juggling everything at the same time,” she said. “But teachers like Orion and Jen gave me that space to embrace both my commercial side and concert side.”

Balancing Graduation With Dance Performances With Lil’ Kim

By the time Molina neared graduation in 2023, her résumé was already growing.

The first big-name artist she got to dance with was Lil’ Kim. Through connections she’d made in New York classes, a choreographer recommended her for a gig. Soon she was appearing in Lil’ Kim shows in Pennsylvania, Las Vegas and New York, “I was balancing graduating and then being on a flight the next day to perform with her in Vegas,” Molina said.

Then came a turn toward the Latin music world. She joined the team for Yailin la Más Viral, a Dominican artist gaining international attention. “We did our first mini tour that took us to Baltimore and Virginia.”

A Featured Dancer for Bad Bunny

For many dancers, performing with Bad Bunny is a dream. Molina’s chance came in late 2023, but it arrived wrapped in mystery. A friend who had performed with big names helped her get a job as a featured dancer/extra for a big club-scene video. The call sheet didn’t include the star’s name. “They just said, ‘It’s for this major artist. We can’t say who.”

Even when she got to the set—an abandoned warehouse in New York transformed into a huge, pulsing nightclub—no one said who the star was. The music she rehearsed to gave no clue, either.

After hours of practicing moves, the moment finally arrived. The star walked out.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God. Like, this is Bad Bunny in front of my face right now,’” Molina said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

It was an experience of a lifetime—a�Ի� experience built on a lifetime of hallway practice, packed schedules and saying yes to every opportunity.

Inspiring New Directions in ��Ƶ’s Dance Program

Molina’s career isn’t limited to performing. Thanks in part to relationships forged at ��Ƶ—especially with Kreichman, who invited her to co-choreograph a piece for a concert at ��Ƶ—; works as a dance educator/teaching artist in New York public schools through the 92nd Street Y; choreographs for emerging artists; casts dancers; and does movement coaching to help performers develop stage presence and personal style.

She’s also watched ��Ƶ’s program evolve. “Because of people like Orion, now there’s more space for commercial dance at ��Ƶ,” Molina said. “I see jazz, I see hip-hop there.”

Using Her ��Ƶ Dance Degree as a Launch Pad

For students dreaming of a life in dance—or parents wondering if it’s a realistic career path—Molina points to three things that helped her succeed: versatility, authenticity and consistency.

“Never put yourself in a box,” she said. “Whatever you want to try, go for it. As long as you’re determined, remain a good person, remain true to yourself and are consistent, you can make it.”

She also stresses the importance of social media as both a portfolio and networking tool.

“Social media is the biggest form of networking,” Molina said. “I think the biggest reason I’ve been blessed to be booked by these people is because I’ve been able to show people my personality through my social media.”

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