Class of 2023 Hits the Ground Running

2023 Commencement Speakers

Playwright, screenwriter, and director Sofia Alvarez '07 will address the class of 2023 at Bennington College’s Commencement on at 10:00 am Saturday, June 3. Alvarez is best known for writing the screenplays for To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and To All the Boys 2: P.S. I Still Love You based on Jenny Han’s novels of the same name. Dr. Vanessa Lyon will be the faculty speaker, and Gianna Rodriguez ’23 will be the student speaker.

Friday's Commencement speeches and Saturday’s Conferring of Degrees ceremony will be available to watch on the College’s Commencement webpage.

We couldn’t say goodbye without sharing some of the remarkable accomplishments and valuable impact students have made on campus and beyond throughout their years at Bennington. 

In and Beyond the Classroom: Projects from the Past Four Years

Many 2023 graduates participated in research and creation for the Center for Advancement of Public Action (CAPA)’s second commission from the U.S. State Department's Office of Art in Embassies for the art collection at the new U.S. Consulate in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Thirteen students—including Jiji Kricorian Salomón '23, Wills Millin '23, December 2022 graduate Mari Schiff '23, and Sam Stubbs '23—presented their market basket study, which analyzed the availability of healthy foods in an area, to the Bennington Hunger Council as a part of Tatiana Abatemarco's Resilience and Food Access course.

Desire Chimanikire ’23 was among several students who created a free weekly farmstand, featuring seasonal offerings from Wildstone Farm, for Bennington students who were staying in Paran Creek through summer 2020.

Tinashe Chiura ’23, artist, writer, and diasporan, displayed a solo exhibition in the inaugural opening of the East Wing of Bennington’s Barn and co-curated an exhibition of student work with Marta Shcharbakova ’23 at the Left Bank Gallery in North Bennington. Notably, she started a podcast called Balance Me, focusing on storytelling, and interviews with African Diasporans, that ranked second in Zimbabwe.

Several 2023 grads were highlighted at a 2020 event called FLoW Gallery, featuring work by first-generation, low-income, and working-class students. Desire Chimanikire ’23, Smile Ma ’23, and others presented a Visual Arts gallery, podcasts, readings, dances, and music for dozens of Bennington students, staff, and faculty members.

In 2019, the following members of the class of 2023 spoke out about plastics pollution by writing letters to the editor in newspapers across the nation: Brian Ducey '23, Emma Fenton '23, Katie Johnston '23, Andrea Tovar '23, and Zo Williams '23. 

In 2021, aspiring theoretical physicist Swagata Datta ’23 studied soft matter physics as a part of Emory University’s Laney Graduate School Summer Opportunity for Academic Research (SOAR). While there, he looked for empirical evidence of the relationship between particles’ shape, their movement, and their arrangement. The following summer, Datta received and interpreted data collected from experiments conducted on the International Space Station. The experiments were meant to discover more about the movement of particles as it relates to the aging of colloidal gels in microgravity. 

As part of Tatiana Abatemarco and Susan Sgorbati's Understanding Food Insecurity in Bennington 2 course, students including Eva Forman ’23 and Sam Stubbs ’23 spent an afternoon gleaning apples from Bennington College campus trees, which were donated to Grateful Hearts, an organization that prepares food for elderly and food insecure community members. 

Imara Glymph ’23 created a senior participatory installation as her culminating work. Called Braiding Seeds of Mosaic Futurity, the project intertwined Africana Studies, Ecology, Dance, Spatial Justice, and Improvisation to birth a participatory installation within The Secret Garden. Inviting participants to become active co-creators of the artistic environment, this installation was an incubator for imagining equitable futures and archiving Multi-Diasporic Living Histories through Sound, Movement, Ritual, Ephemera, and Craft.

Jasmine Bowman, William Huntley, and Alausi Martinez, all 2023 graduates, founded the club TROC (trail runners on campus) in 2021. They train for rural half marathons.

The Seven Deadly Sins was Anna Rose King's Senior Show in Music, Drama, and Dance. The 40-minute long ‘sung ballet’ that tells the story of Anna, who is sent by her exploitive family on a seven-year journey through seven different American cities (from Louisiana to California) to earn enough money for them to build a house. Anna is torn between the need to make money and her morals, and, as such, has a split personality, so much so that she is played by two different people. Anna Rose King produced, directed, and starred in this two-night performance as lead soprano.

Sarah Lore '23 and fellow student Valeria Sibrian '21 founded (M)othertongues, a student-run publication focused on the complexities of translation, and recounted the development of the journal for the October 2020 issue of EuropeNow Journal's. The issue highlights the work that Bennington College students and faculty did in partnership with the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education. 

McKennly McLain helped Emily Waterman with two publications: an article, "The link between intimate partner violence and food insecurity: A review of quantitative and qualitative studies" and the chapter "Adolescence" in Howard Friedman and Charlotte Markey's The Encyclopedia of Mental Health, 3rd edition.

Hannah Pereira '23 wrote, directed, and produced a play called God’s Grape Juice. The play is about a man named Kenny who, at a low point in his life, finds the modern-day truth serum in a bottle of Welch’s white grape juice and believes he must spread the grape juice gospel. He ends up gaining a cult following on YouTube, and as a result, indirectly kills a man. It was chosen to be the student fall production and doubled as Pereira’s senior work at Bennington.

Marta Scharbakova '23 and Ulyana Shkel '23 initiated and took part in creating a course Belarus: A Critical Understanding of Democracy held in Fall 2020 with support from Susan Sgorbati. This course invited speakers from Belarus and Eastern Europe to fuel conversation around democracy during political protests in Belarus in 2020. 

Last fall as part of the Social Kitchen 2.0 class under the direction of Yoko Inoue, Lynne Scharf ’23 put together a sourdough bread baking workshop. In an effort of connecting community members involved in food justice activism with Bennington College students, the day-long workshop was orchestrated as a space to learn how to bake a loaf from scratch. The class  considered the  local foodscape and experimented with flours of locally grown grains. Participants also spoke critically about what bread stands for in the home, as an industrialized product and how memory can be deeply tied to food. 

Ulyana Shkel '23, three other students, and Faculty Member Yoko Inoue wrote a grant to launch the Slow Cooked Movement, which continues in various iterations today. 

Oliver Wessels ’23 and Andrew Tachman ’23 collaborated on advanced work in an intersection of drama and astronomy. Relative Luminosity, a play written by Tachman, was a staged performance based on astrological data that Wessels gathered over a summer independent study at Stickney Observatory. The show personifies the stars and includes scientific information integrated into the script. 

Working Around COVID

COVID bisected the Class of 2023’s experience at Bennington. Despite the disruption, students persevered and continued to produce inspiring work, virtually. 

In April 2020, Bennington students, faculty, and staff in Kerry Ryer-Parke's Sing course went viral with this arrangement of Love Is Love Is Love Is Love by Abbie Betinis. The 2023 grads in the video include Maaz Adil '23, Tristan Archibald '23, Rafaella Binder-Gavito '23, ​​Emma Fenton '23, Ayla Kanciruk '23, and Anna King '23. India Carter-Bolick '23, Saira Shrestha '23, Jenna Taus '23, and Rezzie Yildrim '23, who graduated in December 2022, also worked on the production. 

Jullian Androkae ’23, who graduated in December, and India Carter-Bolick ’23 were among members of the Bennington College Community Builders, who produced a virtual conference, Reflect, Rebuild, & Rise: Social Practice of Inclusion, in May 2020. BCCB was formed to create a more diverse and inclusive community at Bennington College. Also during COVID, Androkae created the campaign video for Make Kitchen Communal Practicum’s “Soup’s On” fundraiser.

In Nick Brooke's spring 2020 class, The Five Obstructions, Lynne Scharf '23, and others rewrote songs in unusual ways and created a unique SoundCloud playlist. 

Students from the Bennington Plays course, led by Dina Janis, Michael Giannitti, Sherry Kramer, Richard MacPike, and Jennifer Rohn, presented their original works of theater, online and on air, in May 2020. The 2023 grads who participated include Bailey Kasdon '23, Smile Ma '23, Hannah Pereira '23, and Lua Piovano-Marcotte '23. 

Desire Chimanikire '23 and others organized a heartfelt video tribute to the essential workers at Bennington College in April 2020. 

In the spring of 2020, Izzy Friedland '23, Ayla Kanciruk '23, Malva Miranda '23, Becca Molaro '23, Dennis Mullings '23, Paul Norton '23, and Ulyana Shkel '23, all of whom were students in Jean Randich's Devising: Moving Through Time and Space and Directing I: The Director's Vision, presented their virtual coursework through video reels.

Imara Glymph ’23, a Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation Fellow in 2021, embarked on an internship as a programming coordinator with The Billie Holiday Theatre, an African-Diasporic artistic incubator forged out of the kiln of the Civil Rights Movement. Glymph collaborated in designing and supporting the Brooklyn Black Joy Film Festival, a multimedia community-building event emerging as the rebirth of in-person for live theater programming following pandemic closures.

In their sophomore year, during Covid, Hannah Pereira '23 was the only member of the Class of 2023 with a part in the faculty production, The Chechens, by Phillip Christian Smith, Black playwright and 2020-2021 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow. The play asks important questions about modern Chechnya, where homosexuals are rumored to be held in camps. Can one family protect their brother suspected of being gay, or will they honor kill him to protect the name of the family? What prevails in the end: religion, politics, or love? Pereira played Raisa.  

As COVID-19 turned schooling remote, Sofia Salusso ’23 and her father worked together to bring a virtual weekly story time into his second-grade students’ homes.

Sofia Salusso '23 was also involved in a May-2020 project with Bennington Drama students Oliver Wessels '23 and others. They presented a Zoom reading of Can't Weed All Just Get a Bong?, a modern-day Alice's Adventures in Wonderland adapted by Sonise Lumbaca '21.

We Work Here 

Work-integrated learning has been integral to a Bennington education since its founding. Through their four Field Work Term experiences, the class of 2023 explored passions, made professional connections, and gained work experience at institutions ranging from the Brooklyn Academy of Music and DancEast Collective to Harvard University and the National Science Foundation.  

With the support of a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant, December 2022 graduate Jullian Androkae '23 established the Vahombey Project, a library in Bekitro, Madagascar. The library serves three local schools and more than 1,000 students.

In the summer of 2021, Ryan Chigogo '23, who studies physics at Bennington, participated in an externally funded National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates at the University of Utah. The experience was focused on High Energy Astrophysics, studying gamma rays from astrophysical sources. 

Chicago interned with Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). As a part of this experience, he was an astronomy intern  at F.L. Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in Amado, Arizona. The program provided an introduction to professional research in world-class astrophysics and experiences with high-speed electronics and modern astronomical technique.

Over the summer of 2022, Chigogo worked with LevelTen Energy, EnergyGPS, Vestas, Microsoft and Google under the Energy Scholars Program. The program provides students with a strong understanding of wholesale energy markets and renewable energy technology, as well as essential foundations in analytical techniques and business writing. 

In the summer of 2021, Tanner Criswell '23 and Ulyana Shkel '23 lived with the Aztlan Native American Church in Colorado. They were a part of the community and learned stories and traditions by living alongside each other.  

Over the summer of 2020, amid the global pandemic, Imara Glymph ’23 spent Field Work Term interning remotely for Theater Without Borders. She worked closely with Artists & Climate Change, a partner organization that highlights projects and voices that work at the intersection of climate change and the arts. 

In the spring of 2022, Glymph participated in an immersive cultural exchange program in Ghana. Delving into Africana Studies and West African cultural histories, Glymph built relationships of trust with Ghanaian colleagues in the creation and archiving of Research on Queer Artistic Activism. She compiled three visual case-studies to highlight underrepresented voices advocating for decolonial infrastructures and equitable human rights irregardless of sexuality and gender identity. The project, titled “We cannot win when we are unseen: An ethnographic exploration of Queer Artivist Resilience, Resistance, and Self-Making in Ghana’s ‘Postcolony,’” symbolizes the continuation of lifework surrounding shedding light on African Futurist themes across spectra.

During consecutive Field Work Terms, William Huntley ’23 researched leaf morphology at Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. He hopes to use what he learned at Bennington and during Field Work Term to further explore his interests in molecular and plant biology.

During the summer of 2021, Mohit KC '23 worked as a software engineer for Zudy, a tech startup based in Boston, where he led a project building a cross-platform web and mobile app designed for the New England Patriots to effectively manage events at the Gillette Stadium.

The following summer, Mohit interned with Proofpoint, a tech company based in Silicon Valley, where he worked on improving Cloudmark, a widely used cybersecurity tool that helps keep mailboxes free from spam for over a billion users worldwide. KC programmed automated version handling and logging features into the application to make upgrade testing more efficient.

Jupiter Kalinowski ’23 was part of the 2022 cohort of The Jackson Laboratory's summer research fellowship program, funded by the National Institute for Neurological Disease and Stroke, where they designed their own research project in one of their labs. Kalinowski did work characterizing a mutation implicated in Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorder using mouse models, which were patterned after human patients. The findings from that project were selected for presentation at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists in Anaheim, CA, and Kalinowski was awarded a travel grant by the conference to attend.

Malva Miranda ’23 shadowed midwives and midwife trainees in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She gained tremendous respect for the traditional culturally coherent pedagogy and how the jungle was able to provide for all of the people’s needs. She stands against governments and companies who systematically erase healthy and abundant lives achieved through indigenous knowledge. 

Timberlake Pieper '23, who studied Dance and Psychology at Bennington, spent her 2021 summer Field Work Term at DancEast Collective in Nashville, TN. As a part of her work, Pieper participated in dance intensive, served as an assistant teacher for 12 classes per week, and led the Introduction to ballet class for 4 year olds. The work intersected perfectly with her Plan, which examines the relationship between child development and dance. 

Alyssa Pong 庞利艳 ’23 documented the disappearing arts of her Malaysian homeland in Ambiguous Assemblages, an ongoing two-part thesis and documentary. She explored how the government’s hyperfixation on the homogeneity of ethnic and religious identity have banned the all-women Mak Yong troupes and stripped the artform of any allusions to Buddhism. 

Gianna Rodriguez ’23, President of Student Educational Policies Committee and the Class of 2023 Student Commencement Speaker, contributed to research that could speed the diagnosis of autism by as long as 8 months and may improve treatment for infants and toddlers affected. 

The neuroscience research project was based at Puglia Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory, a National Geographic-featured research lab at the University of Virginia in Charlesville, VA.

Alisha Shrestha ’23 documented the Nepali Feminist Movement with a combination of oral history and found images and footage. Her project used images to produce a hybrid documentary and explores the changes of women’s rights and personal womanism in Nepal.

During his first year at Bennington, Suman Sigdel '23 participated in the Wolfram Summer Program, where he worked under the guidance of Stephen Wolfram to publish a paper on using Generative Adversarial Networks (technology used for deep fakes) to generate text. He also completed a software engineering Internship at Coinbase, where he worked under the security operations team to enhance internal security and built tools that are now used by more than 4,000 employees at the company. During a software engineering internship at Uber, Sigdel worked under the Platform Engineering team to build a command line interface to debug servers in production.

During the summer 2020, Andrea Tovar ’23 worked on the products and platform team at Accenture. The company has made a system that various states have adopted into their government programs to make it easier for people to apply for benefits. She debugged the social welfare and public healthcare software, which made the process a lot easier for users.  

Campus Collaborations

Bennington students make an impact in the local community, during their Field Work Term experiences and beyond. 

Kathleen Castro ’23 was very active with GANAS, an organization that provides students with volunteer opportunities to engage with the Latino migrant worker population in Bennington County through our partnership with community organizations and collaborators: the Vermont Migrant Education Program, the Bennington Free Clinic and Legal Resistance Alliance.

Graduate Ryan Chigogo ’23 worked as an intern with the College’s Buildings and Grounds department, where they tracked Bennington College’s sustainability progress.

In 2020, Desire Chimanikire ’23, Kevin Lionel Ndizaniye Mpundu ’23, and Mohit KC ‘23 addressed local food insecurity through work with Greater Bennington Community Services (GBCS), Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union, and Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, all partner organizations in Bennington College’s Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded work to address the systemic causes of food insecurity in Bennington County. 

In 2021, Mohit K C '23 worked with the Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union in the role of Food Insecurity Intern as a part of the Food Insecurity & Population Health Fellowship funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Working alongside teachers and administrators in Bennington's K-12 school district, K C developed and implemented primary resources and activities to support the nutrition curriculum to address local food insecurity.

Hannah Pereira '23 served as Assistant Director to Kirk Jackson, in Fun Home, a musical theater adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic novel of the same name, performed at Hubbard Hall, Winter 2022. 

Anna Rose King ’23, Jessica Star Langham ’23, and Hannah Pereira ‘23 were cast in the world premiere reading of a new play Storiented  by Mitchell Lichtenstein ’78 and directed by casting agent Judy Dennis ’78. Faculty members Kirk Jackson and Jennifer Rohn were also cast. The production was performed during the Fall 2022 Alumni Weekend.

Raven Realmuto ’23 served on the public outreach committee for the 2019 Bennington Empty Bowls Supper, a cooperation between Bennington’s Greater Bennington Community Services and Bennington College. The event welcomed 700 people to the Mount Anthony Union Middle School for soup, handmade bowls, community, and to alleviate the often hidden food insecurity in Vermont. 

Awards and Honors

Many students were awarded prestigious fellowships to expand their experience in their areas of study. 

Katie Johnston '23, Lynne Scharf '2, and Rezzie Yildirim '23 were named as recipients of this year's John Hendrick '86 Memorial Music Award. This award is given annually to gifted Bennington student composers, chosen by the music faculty.

Tristan Archibald '23 was the recipient of the 2023 Iftekhar Entrepreneurial Fellowship. The fellowship provides selected students funding and mentorship to spend their FWT pursuing an entrepreneurial venture, such as starting and running their own business or nonprofit or launching themselves as an independent artist. 

Kathleen Castro '23, Malva Miranda '23, Saira Shrestha '23, and Alisha Bade Shrestha '23 were among twelve students to receive the Newman and Cox Public Action Student Fellowship in 2023. Students complete a Field Work Term position or Independent Study focused on public action, either domestically or internationally, each supported by a grant. Work may take place anywhere across the globe. 

In 2023, as a continuation of Study Abroad Independent Research centered on Queer Artistic Activism within Ghana, Glymph was a Newman and Cox Public Action fellow with Drama Queens, a non-profit theater organization dedicated to catalyzing social change through the lenses of artivism, feminism, pan-africanism, and gender equity. She co-facilitated interactive workshops with secondary schools of the Accra and Volta regions to promote consent awareness, queer rights, environmental justice, and youth political agency.

Olivia Chiossone ’23 was awarded an Endeavor Foundation Environmental Action Fellowship for the 2021 Field Work Term. She worked with the NYC-based non-profit Sane Energy, which pushes for renewable energy for all.

Four 2023 graduates were named as Frankenthaler Fellows for the 2022 Museum Fellows Term. They include Ellina Efimenko ’23, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Catalogue Raisonné; Grace Englehart ’23, Museum of the Moving Image; Smile Ma ’23, The Studio Museum in Harlem; and Marta Shcharbakova ’23, Dia Art Foundation. 

Niki Karanikola ’23 and Jiji Kricorian Salomon ’23 participated in independent studies as a part of the Newman and Cox Public Action Student Fellowship, part of the 2022 Field Work Term Fellowships. Alma Ocampos Irala ’23 used the Newman and Cox grant for work at Fundación Paraguaya, while Stefanos Zogopoulos ’23 worked as a UWC Costa Rica Fellow with Theatre Without Borders under the same program.

Ayla Kanciruk ’23 and Hannah Pereira '23 received the Lucille Lortel Fellowships over the summer of 2022. Kanciruk worked as a marketing intern with The Classical Theatre of Harlem, while Pereira worked as a development intern at Harlem Stage.

Four 2023 graduates were selected for the 2023 Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation Fellowship, an annual fellowship offering exceptional Bennington drama students the opportunity to receive mentorship and to work in paid internships at Off-Broadway non-profit theater companies during the College’s Field Work Term. Fellows include Bailey Kasdon '23, Ma-Yi Theatre Company; Jessica Langham '23, Harlem Stage; Parker Lawrence '23, Pregones/PRTT, and Oliver Wessels '23, Amerinda Inc. In previous years, Alisha Bade Shrestha '23, and Stefanos Zogopoulos '23 worked as administrative and/or production interns at Ma-Yi Theatre Company and Amerinda Inc., respectively. 

The 2022 Field Work Term Fellows included several 2023 grads. As a part of the Mellon Foundation Food Insecurity and Population Health Fellowship in 2022, the following students worked as food security and population health interns: Gianna Rodriguez ’23 at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center and Mari Schiff ’23, who graduated in December 2022, at Greater Bennington Community Services, Inc.

The poem "Whales" by Smile Ma '23 was the winner of the 2023 Academy of American Poets Prize Competition. Poet Shane McCrae selected it out of 93 poems submitted by 31 Bennington students. The poem will appear on the Academy of American Poets website, poets.org. 

In addition, Home is a Concept, a solo photography show by Ma, appeared at Caudan Art Center in Port Louis, Mauritius. A photo by her was featured in a Dance magazine article about the advantages of smaller college dance programs. 

McKennly McLain was the Co-Winner of the UROP Grant: Virginia Commonwealth University Undergraduate Research Fellowship for creative work while at Bennington. 

Suman Sigdel '23 was chosen as a 2022 Kleiner Perkins Fellow. Fewer than three percent of applicants are accepted. 

Eve Vishnick '23 worked with the Al Held Foundation as a part of a 2023 Creative Legacy Fellowship, where selected students are placed into internship positions at artist-endowed foundations to investigate the forces and individuals that contribute to shaping an artist’s legacy. In addition to their internships, Fellows develop as a peer-supported cohort through pre-Fellowship meetings, coursework, and mentorship.

Outsized Impact

Bennington students don’t wait to begin making an impact. The work they do, even as undergraduates, changes the world right now. 

Niki Karanikola ’23 founded the Bennington College chapter of Women in Data Science, organized Bennington College’s first Women in Data Science Datathon, and spearheaded the first Women in Data Science virtual conference in cooperation with Stanford University. Tinashe Chiura ’23 contributed social media and communications work for the events. 

In addition, Karanikola worked with Mweya Green Energy, a startup based in Zimbabwe to develop an app for companies and individuals to calculate their carbon footprint. 

Saira Shrestha ’23 conducted independent research with the Street Vendors Union and Satori Center for the Arts in Kathmandu and considered urban planning, public space, working class desires, and political policies to design a solution for a long-lived conflict between street vendors and Kathmandu Metropolitan City police.

Stefanos Zogopoulos ’23 worked with Transform 1012, a Texas-based non-profit coalition of eight local arts and service organizations, to transform a creative space into The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing. As an act of restorative justice, the center honors the life and memory of Rouse, a Black butcher who was lynched by a White mob in Fort Worth in 1921.

Graduate Studies and Future Plans

Bennington graduates bring innovation, creativity, and drive to their work. With an average of ten progressive work experiences woven into their self-driven educational Plan, Bennington graduates are uniquely prepared for the world of work, earning rave reviews from the College’s network of employer partners. Their futures are bright! 

Kathleen Castro ’23 learned to conduct a thematic analysis of  interviews she gathered from migrant Uber drivers and hotel workers in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her research was accepted as a Poster Presentation for the Society of the Psychological Study of Social Issues Conference (SPSSI) in Denver, Colorado, in June. 

After graduation, Ryan Chigogo ’23 will be joining Charles River Associates in Boston as an analyst for their energy practice.

Olivia Chiossone ’23 studied moisture sensitivity in trees in ridgetop wetlands during a 2022 “Research Experience for Undergraduates” program at Eastern Kentucky University. She plans to specialize in dendrochronology, the study of tree rings, as a part of her graduate studies in forest and ecosystem sciences at the University of Göttingen this fall. 

Ellina Efimenko ’23 will pursue a PhD in Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center. She received a generous fellowship and will study English, French, and Russian. 

Emma Fenton ’23 was selected for a Teaching Assistantship Program in France (TAPIF) award for the 2023/2024 school year. TAPIF is a government-sponsored English teaching program in France. She will be working in a French school district teaching primary school students English for one school year. 

Joey Gawtry ’23 will go on to the master of fine arts in poetry program at Colorado State University.

Jasmine Groom ’23 will pursue a master’s in Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Columbia University in New York City. 

William Huntley will be moving to New York City and working as a research technician/lab manager in the laboratory of Dr. Boris Reizis at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.

Jupiter Kalinowski will be moving to Boston and working as a research technician in the laboratory of Dr. Kathleen Burns at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Alum Carlos Mendez-Dorantes, PhD ’15 is currently a Postdoctoral fellow in that same laboratory.

Ayla Kanciruk ’23 will be working at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee as the Assistant Director of Admissions for their Theater program.

McKennly McLain ’23 will go on to study Clinical Psychology at Old Dominion in Virginia.

Julian Preston ’23, a translator and fiction writer, will do advanced studies in Chinese.

Gianna Rodriguez ’23 will attend the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

After graduation, Suman Sigdel '23 will be working as a fulltime software engineer at Nextdoor.

Car Simione ’23 will pursue a master of fine arts in poetry at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Immediately after graduation, Jenna Taus ’23 will join Vanessa Anspaugh at the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought in Northampton, MA, for a two-week intensive before moving to Berlin for a residency at Lake Studios Berlin. 

Fletch Weiss ’23 was accepted to two programs for a master’s degree in Library and Information Science but chose to defer to gain experience working in a professional setting.