In this period of rapid transformation, the value of a liberal arts education is as important as ever. This past year as Dean of the ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences has shown me countless examples of that fact.Ěý

The stories featured in our Spring 2026 digital magazine offer lessons in resilience, hope and optimism for the future. They deliver advice and solutions.Ěý

In March, we announced that students will be able to enroll in a nine-credit undergraduate certificate in artificial intelligence starting this fall. As part of the program, students will learn about the underlying technology, as well as how to ethically and responsibly engage with it. 

Our community is guided by the Jesuit values of cura personalis — care for the whole person — and being people for others. This is exemplified by the students in the , who spent time this February visiting businesses in the DC area and learning from local industry and social impact leaders, and by , a Ph.D. candidate in history who is spending a year immersed in Japanese language, history and culture through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. It’s also embodied by our First Fellows Program supporting first-generation students and by courses like Defining Ourselves: Failure as Opportunity and Confronting Perfection. These programs and courses, taught by our faculty members and advising deans, help normalize both great success and heartbreaking failure as part of the learning process for students. 

Our remarkable, award-winning faculty members reinforce the qualities that make the College distinct. In her expert advice column, Nicoletta Pireddu, director of the Georgetown Humanities Initiative, provides a portable, future-proof toolkit on how the humanities prepare people to enter any space with cultural awareness, insight and creativity. The Pre-Health Advising Office has a new home on campus, where our advisors can expand on the work they do serving hundreds of students and alumni. Dagomar Degroot, an environmental historian, teaches us how the value of history lies in the ability to inform what comes next and help us find potential solutions.

We also talk to two extraordinary alumni of the College — Monica McNutt (C’11) and K’sean Henderson (C’12, L’18) — who demonstrate that success comes from resilience and advocating for others. 

Our students and alumni, faculty members and staff exemplify our Jesuit values of discernment and people in service to others. I am proud of the work we do as we prepare for what’s ahead.

Hoya Saxa,

-David

David M. Edelstein, Ph.D.
Dean, ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences
Professor of International Affairs & Government
Georgetown University

(Top photo by Rafael Suanes for Georgetown University)

Jennifer Boum Make, Rutgers University Press

Alex Brostoff, The MIT Press

Jamall Calloway, Columbia University Press

Daniel Cano, Trayecto

Alexandra DeCandia, et.al., Molecular Ecology

Paul Elie, MacMillan Publishers

Tania Gentic, Durham: Duke University Press

Bradley Gorski, Cornell University Press

Nathan Hensley, Chicago University Press

“”
Kelsey Alejandra Moore, The Public Historian

Rosemary Ndubuizu, The University of North Carolina Press

Felicitas Opwis, Leiden: Brill Publisher

Manus Patten, Harvard University Press

Robert Patterson, Oxford University Press

Cristina Sanz, John Wiley & Sons

Danielle Wiggins, University of Pennsylvania Press

is a professor in the Department of History and the founding director of Georgetown’s . He studies 19th-century U.S. history with a focus on the history of slavery and emancipation.

Rothman is the author of Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South and Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery, which won the American Civil War Museum’s book prize . 

Here, he shares the books that have shaped his understanding of the past and why they matter today. 

What is a book that everyone should read?

Everyone — or at least everyone in the Georgetown community — should read The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church by Rachel L. Swarns. 

Swarns is the New York Times journalist who covered Georgetown’s ten years ago and traced the emergence of the and their developing relationship with the university and the Jesuits. In 2024, she published a book that explores the long, tangled history of the Jesuits, Georgetown and the enslaved families owned and sold by the Maryland Jesuits in 1838. As a historian of slavery at Georgetown, I’d be remiss not to recommend it. 

What is a book that you revisit every year?

Silencing The Past: Power and the Production of History by the Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot is a perennial in my classes. 

I assign it to everyone from first-year undergraduates to doctoral students. Trouillot opens our eyes to how the stories we tell about history come to be, and what gets lost, neglected, omitted and suppressed in the process. It’s especially timely now for obvious reasons. At John Carroll Weekend in Philadelphia in 2025, and I led a walking tour of Independence National Historical Park that ended at an outdoor exhibit about slavery at the President’s House. The current administration has since ordered the National Park Service , and the exhibit remains subject to an between city and federal officials. Talk about silencing the past.   

What is a book that inspired your academic journey?

That’s a tough one because there are so many but I will say Richard Hofstadter’s The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It, even though its subtitle is a little cringey today. The book was published in 1948, and I first read it in high school in the 1980s. Hofstadter was a brilliant historian and an elegant writer. His profiles of the leading political figures in American history are complex, ironic and counterintuitive. He made me want to study — I mean really study — history. 

What is the best new book that you’ve read in the past year?

Probably the novel Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, which actually came out in 2023. It tells the story of a family trying to get by in a country that is descending into authoritarianism, with people being kidnapped and disappeared off the street by the government. Like I said, it’s fiction.

What is the perfect book for the beach (or curled up in front of a fire, or down time, or…)?

Moby Dick, of course!

When K’sean Henderson (C’12, L’18) steps back onto campus at Georgetown University, he notices how things have changed in the past decade since he was a student, but also, just how much has remained the same. The students today are asking themselves the same questions that Henderson once did.

“There is still just a group of young people trying to figure out what’s next for them as they face a lot of questions about what tomorrow looks like,” he said.

Henderson was heavily involved in various student leadership roles on campus, and now, as an alumnus, he wants to mentor and support younger generations of students as they navigate life after Georgetown. He is inspired to give back to the community he calls home.

For his efforts and contributions, Henderson, who works as an associate at the law firm in DC, received both the and the this year. The former is given to a graduate who has made a significant positive impact in their community, profession or field, including meaningful contributions to the Black community, and the latter recognizes outstanding service by undergraduate alumni who have exhibited leadership across many activities.

“It’s helpful to stay involved because I think Georgetown over time has just given me so much and has poured into me in ways that I probably can’t even explain,” Henderson said. “I look for opportunities to give back to make sure that other alumni are also having a great experience with the university.”

A Deeper Learning

Born and raised in Hempstead, New York on Long Island, Henderson was drawn to politics at an early age. His mother has always been an active voter, he said, and because of that, Henderson paid close attention to local politics in his town. 

“I wanted to know how things are done and why they’re done that way,” he said. “How do we prioritize issues? How do we pay for things? Who’s in the room when these decisions are made? I wanted to get a better sense of what happens behind the curtain.”

When it came time to choose a college, Henderson said he wanted to study in Washington, DC — the epicenter of politics — and so picking Georgetown was an easy choice.

As a member of the Henderson quickly immersed himself into Georgetown through the five-week academic summer program and said he “already had 40 friends” by first-year fall semester. 

“It was such a cool experience,” he said. “I credit it with helping shape me, certainly in the early stages and then certainly throughout the rest of my time on the Hilltop.”

Henderson majored in government and minored in history in the ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences and found the smaller, seminar courses enriching. 

Some of his favorite classes included The Church and the Poor and Struggle and Transcendence by . Henderson also enjoyed the African Atlantic course taught by history professors and Shobana Shankar and Prisons and Punishment by .Ěý

“I felt like there was deeper learning happening, because you really do get to engage with your classmates,” he said of the seminars. “You get to have some back and forth. You get to have some disagreements. You get to really wrestle with some of the materials that you’re working through.”

Beyond the classroom, Henderson was involved on campus as a senator for Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA). He was also a member of the and the and helped coordinate . Henderson had many touchpoints with university leaders through his roles, including as a student intern in the Office of the President.

, the senior associate dean of students and the executive director of access and success, said she marveled at Henderson’s “ease of creating relationships and his infectious spirit that allows him to fully engage across the university.”

“K’sean is thoughtful and competent and remains focused on the success of student experiences while showing full investment in the ambitions of future Hoyas,” Brown-McKenzie said. “K’sean has had multiple interactions with the -affiliated programs and his outputs produce an immediate impact, especially on service delivery and student engagement.”

‘A True Hoya’

After graduating from the ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences in 2012, Henderson moved to Greenville, Mississippi to teach eighth grade English with Teach for America.

At that time, Henderson thought he would pursue a career in education policy, and one of his mentors, Rhondale-Marie Barras (C’97), a founding member of the , encouraged him to get into teaching. 

“She said, ‘Can’t you imagine how much better it would be if people who went into policy had been in a classroom?’” Henderson said. 

He stayed in Mississippi for three years and the experience gave him a close-up view of the systemic issues impacting the students. “It does matter if you have a teacher who’s committed and dedicated in the classroom, but some of the issues need to be addressed on a much larger scale,” Henderson said.

When he returned to DC to attend Georgetown Law School, Henderson thought back to his earlier interests in politics and leaned into more leadership roles. He served as vice president and then president of the , senior editor of the and as a member of , Georgetown Law Center’s intramural and interscholastic advocacy competition organization.

“K’sean is one of the gutsiest Hoyas I ever taught,” said Kemp, one of Henderson’s mentors and undergraduate professors. “K’sean deepens the virtue definition of a true Hoya, and his commitment to all to share the gifts of creation keeps me inspired.”

Henderson graduated from law school and joined Ropes & Gray LLP in a full-time role in 2018. He said he regularly draws on his liberal arts education as an associate who primarily handles internal investigations related to allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption.

“The liberal arts background, I think of it as a complete well-roundedness of an education,” Henderson said. “When I approach issues, I try to bring in things I’ve learned — not only from things I’ve learned from a political science class, but also something I might have learned from philosophy or theology. …The way you bring information, the way you synthesize it and then the way you communicate it with other people — that’s pretty much what I do as an attorney.”

Advocating for the Next Generation

Henderson’s involvement in the Georgetown community has strengthened as an alumnus.

Since graduating, he has served on the programming committee for three , as a class ambassador for the Class of 2012 and with Georgetown Law’s . He joined Georgetown University Alumni Association’s in 2020 and serves as chair for the nominations committee. Henderson also chairs the Board of Directors for the Patrick Healy Fellowship. 

He and his college roommates — Ryan Wilson (C’12, L’15), TK Petersen (B’12) and Dr. Jamil Kendall (C’12) — established the 1440 Center for Multicultural Equity & Access Endowed Fund in support of the and the Patrick Healy Fellowship.

“His temperament, dedication and experience are exemplified in his over a decade long service to Jesuit education,” said Brown-McKenzie. “K’sean lives out the values of people for others consistently in his national engagement with the Hoya networks and especially in his contributions to Georgetown University. His personal and professional experiences are deeply influenced by Georgetown University’s values.”

As an alum, Henderson advises current Georgetown students to “slow down” and enjoy the journey. He recommends “depth over breadth” when it comes to activities. Find the things that you can commit yourself to, and don’t spread yourself too thin, Henderson said. 

It will go by quickly. And when it comes to life after Georgetown, trust that things will work out.

“I want to say, hey, I was there. It looked different then, but I’m fine. You’ll be fine, too” he said.

(Top photo taken by Lisa Helfert at the 2026 Patrick Healy Dinner)

When (C’11) moved to West Palm Beach, Florida in 2015 to work for the newly launched American Sports Network as a sports reporter, anchor and analyst, she figured she would be leaving DC behind her. 

But less than two years later, the network laid her off. It was her second layoff in three years. She moved back in with her parents in the DC area with her “tail between [her] legs,” McNutt said. She was uncertain where she stood in the sports journalism and media industry and frustrated by the lack of steady employment. 

“I was embarrassed, because as much as you are told a layoff is not personal … what you do as a journalist, particularly on television, is so closely attached to who you are,” she said. “It’s hard to separate the two.”

“I wanted to be working so bad, and I can remember having little fits punching pillows,” McNutt continued. She saw other journalists on air and thought, “I can do that too. Why is this happening to me? Like, what is going on?”

That volatile period would eventually lead McNutt to where she is now. McNutt is an NBA, WNBA and college basketball analyst for ESPN and an analyst covering the New York Knicks for MSG Networks. Sports fans can find her analysis and expertise on various television and radio programs and podcasts. The time McNutt spent bouncing between jobs ultimately gave her a more well-rounded perspective on her life. She had time to go to lunch with her parents and the even joined a recreational basketball league with former teammates. 

“I just look back on that year, and I often think about how God was able to use it to remind me of when I feel most loved, and how important it is to carve out time to make sure that that is still a part of my life,” McNutt said. “The only thing truly inevitable in our lives is change.”

A Hoya from the Start

From a young age, McNutt was “entrenched” in Georgetown basketball, she said. McNutt played basketball while growing up in Prince George’s County, Maryland and became a standout player at the Academy of the Holy Cross. 

Her dad is a “huge” Georgetown fan, she said, and McNutt has fond memories of going to Georgetown basketball games as a kid. One time, she was a ball girl for Georgetown when the Syracuse University men’s basketball team was in town, and she was able to see future NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony, a player that she and her father had followed and studied, up close.

When Georgetown recruited her to play basketball, it felt “serendipitous,” she said. 

At a recruiting visit to Georgetown when McNutt was in high school, she remembers meeting the late , or “Big John.”

“Having a chance to sit down and chat with Big John … and knowing all that he had meant at this point — to basketball, to the Black community, to Georgetown, to my dad — it was really surreal,” she said. Meeting Thompson and her future teammates and coaches led her to choose Georgetown, which McNutt considers to be “one of the best [decisions] I’ve made over the course of my life.” 

During her senior season, McNutt led the Hoyas to the Sweet 16 of the . She scored a in a close loss to the University of Connecticut. McNutt still looks back fondly on the practices with her teammates, “folks that I still share a group chat with today,” and camaraderie in the locker room, she said.

McNutt was captain of the team for two years and a leader both on and off the court for the Hoyas.

, the associate athletics director for communications at Georgetown, said she quickly realized that McNutt was the perfect spokesperson for the team. “She really knew how to captivate an audience and how to get her point across,” Barnes said. 

After her final game for the Hoyas, McNutt introduced herself to the reporters assembled in front of her. She told them she was now looking for a career in broadcasting. As her athletic career came to an end, McNutt looked to the future. “I wanted to be able to host, to report, to tell stories,” she said.

Finding ‘Resilient Stories’

After graduating, McNutt worked as a kindergarten aide for a year and then enrolled in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland for her master’s degree.

While she got experience in different types of journalism through the program, McNutt knew she wanted to stay in sports journalism. “I felt that the experience [in sports] for me had been so powerful, and there were so many great stories,” she said. “I want to stay with the joy of sport, the triumphant nature, the resilient stories.”

As women’s basketball continues to grow and rise in popularity, McNutt wants to tell stories that celebrate women and ensure fair coverage of the Black women who were pioneers of the sport. “I am protective of a space that has worked so hard for every bit of attention and dollar and sponsorship that it has right now. Everybody that helped get here should be respected,” she said.

Her time as a Division I athlete and an English major at Georgetown University ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences helped prepare her for a career in broadcast journalism. She realized she wanted to be a journalist after taking Professor Barbara Feinman Todd’s Media and Techniques class, and her love for the field grew from taking another class taught by Athelia Night, a former Washington Post reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist. 

“Georgetown is the foundation of my career,” . “It’s a place that helped me find my voice and develop the basketball eye that would be critical to the career I continue to build. My time on the women’s basketball team, particularly the two years that I was a team captain, helped me develop self-awareness which has benefited me tremendously personally and in the workplace. At the root of media is the ability to communicate, which requires understanding your audience.”

“I remember a number of classes and discussions on the Hilltop centered on community and understanding,” she added. “While I am in front of the mic professionally, I still value community and understanding and want to remain respectful of the people that I’m privileged to cover.”

McNutt started her broadcasting career at Prince George’s Community Television, and then worked at WJLA NewsChannel 8. But when Sinclair took over the station, she lost her job. Sinclair then brought McNutt to Florida to work on its new sports network, American Sports Network. After just over two years, the network shut down.

Moving back home, McNutt spent the next year and a half “hustling and grinding,” she said, and navigating the freelance world while working for ESPN, CBS, FOX Sports and local television. That experience, she said, was “really instrumental in my life at large” and required steadying herself “through faith and community.”

When ESPN launched the ACC Network , the network hired McNutt. This year marks her seventh year with ESPN. 

“All the credit goes to Monica, because the thing I’ll say about her is, at the beginning, she was willing to [cover] anything, no matter the sport, no matter how low level it was,” Barnes said. “She was willing to go out there and do it, and I think that is why she’s been so successful.”

Staying True to Yourself

Graduating from Georgetown in 2011, McNutt remembers people in her class were scared to start their careers in a rocky job market. One key to success then and now, McNutt said, is the ability to combine creativity and “outside-of-the-box” thinking with practical skills.

“If you can solve a problem, you have a skill that is desirable,” she said.

McNutt encourages those entering the sports media industry to be authentic. 

“My advice in general to young people getting into space is to take yourself with you wherever you go,” she said. “Just be mindful of how you’re showing up wherever you are, especially in an era of social media, because employers potentially look up your LinkedIn and also your Instagram.”

McNutt also advocates for having “a healthy relationship with ‘no.’” 

“I totally understand the importance of being able to support oneself financially,” McNutt said. “But I also have the lived experience that it is not a personal relationship with these jobs, and so you got to be able to hear ‘no’ without it decimating your hopes and dreams, and to use no in order to protect your hopes and dreams as you figure it out.”

While she did not take a straight line to get to where she is today, McNutt said she has few regrets. Each experience has been a learning opportunity, helping her become a more well-rounded and healthy person. Because of the winding path, she has been able to build both a life and a career.

“If I hadn’t been laid off, I don’t know if my compass for my life would be so deliberate about carving out time for my loved ones and my family,” she said. “I think all things work out. They work together. So there’s not much that I would have changed. I think even in our missteps, there’s such beautiful lessons, and I think that’s important to our journeys.”

(Top image courtesy of Georgetown University Athletics)

In a quiet office in the , the past is anything but distant for , a professor of environmental history. History is a guide to understanding what lies ahead and helps find potential solutions for one of the world’s most pressing and urgent challenges: climate change.

That challenge, in his view, is a question of survival, equity and resilience.

“The world has warmed by about one and a half degrees Celsius since the late 19th century,” he said, noting that at this threshold, “certain things start to break down, like the coral reefs, globally.”

The question of why has become central to his work and reveals a key insight: climate change does not produce uniform outcomes. Some communities suffer, while others adapt or even thrive, depending on social and economic conditions.

In his research, Degroot, who is an expert on climate change, space exploration and existential risk, does not approach the past in isolation. 

“I’m a very unusual historian in that my research into the past is shaped by my perception of what matters now and in the future,” he said.

Responses to Climate Change

Growing up in a small town near Niagara Falls in Canada where “there are more cows than people,” Degroot said he was fascinated with anything that could take him far away.

That curiosity became a way of expanding beyond the limits of place. At first it took the form of science — astronomy, weather systems, the atmosphere — but eventually found a home in history. Today, as an associate professor of environmental history at Georgetown University ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences, Degroot’s work sits at the intersection of climate, society, space and time. 

He was recently honored with the College’s Stevens Faculty Excellence Award for excellent research, effective mentoring of student research and innovation in a social sciences field.

Degroot discovered his interest in environmental history when he was studying for his master’s degree at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. 

“I had this idea that I could find out how the climate changed even before the rise of greenhouse gas emissions and industrialization,” Degroot said. “That I could perhaps discover how different populations responded to changes in the climate, and use their responses to try to figure out where we might be headed in the future.”

His doctoral research at York University in Toronto focused on the Little Ice Age, a period of natural climatic cooling between the 13th and 19th centuries. Degroot studied the Dutch Republic, a society that “seemed to prosper and grow as the climate cooled,” he said.

“Many people suffered, but at a fundamental level, their society got stronger,” Degroot said. “It grew, it prospered.”

That research ultimately led to his first book, , published in 2018. In the book, that being more connected to the rest of the world could help a society be more resilient in the face of climate change. 

“The Dutch prospered not because their republic was rich but because much of its wealth derived from activities that benefited from climate change,” Degroot wrote “Today, we can learn from the republic by strengthening social safety nets, by investing in technologies that exploit or reduce climate change and, more broadly, by thinking proactively about how we will adapt to the warmer planet of our future.

Degroot believes that the more you mitigate climate change, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the less you have to adapt. “The less you mitigate, the more you have to adapt, until you can’t adapt,” he said. “You can think of mitigation as being significantly more important than adaptation — but adaptation still matters, and history might be able to teach us how to adapt.”

To Degroot, history offers a clear lesson: inequality can weaken resilience. Communities marked by inequality are more vulnerable to environmental shocks while more equitable societies are better equipped to respond. That’s partly because it’s poor people who are often most at risk of flooding, for example, or high food prices caused by extreme weather. 

“A society that thrives as climate changes probably can’t have extremely high levels of socioeconomic inequality,” Degroot said. “I think that it can make a society brittle in many different ways.”

Existential Risks

Degroot’s research now extends beyond Earth. 

In his new book, , he explores how space research has revealed risks that .

One example begins with dust storms on Mars. Scientists studying these storms discovered that atmospheric particles could cool a planet, which is an insight that eventually contributed to the theory of nuclear winter.

In another case, early space missions raised fears that dangerous microbes could travel between Earth and other worlds, imperilling environments on a vast scale. Yet, in spite of these concerns, “the actual systems that were developed to avoid contamination were full of problems, some of which were understood at the time, and some that escaped detection” Degroot said.

His research on space allowed him to identify a recurring pattern: intense pressure and competition between countries has led to existential risks throughout history, risks that threaten the survival of humanity. 

During the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union, for example, both countries fought for the court of public opinion. 

“Faced with this kind of constant competitive pressure, people prioritized known risks to missions or astronauts over unknown risks to planetary environments,” Degroot said.

It reminds him of the modern competition between corporations and world powers over artificial intelligence. 

“History shows us how dangerous that kind of competition can be when it’s applied to areas that can create existential risks,” Degroot said. “I think a policy solution there is to try to reduce that competition as much as possible.”

The Joy of Discovery

Despite the weight of his research subject matters, Degroot finds joy in discovery.

At Georgetown, that excitement carries into the classroom, where he encourages students to think differently about history. He also explores new ways of storytelling, including digital projects that bring climate history to broader audiences.

Degroot is the writer, narrator, and producer of “,” a multimedia project on the history and future of climate change. The series draws on research in archaeology, history, climatology and geology to explain how climate change has influenced humanity. With dramatic storytelling, it targets the widest-possible audience. 

For Degroot, part of the value of history lies in its ability to inform what comes next. Environmental history, in that sense, is about the future that is still being shaped.

“We’ve got 300,000 years of human history,” he said. “And I think this deep legacy of our ancestors is so under-realized as a way of helping us to understand where we might be headed in the future. The world today is, of course, very different from the world of the past, but people, I think, inherently are kind of still the same. My goal is to write histories that can help us understand how to avoid risks, how to thrive in spite of them, or even because of them going forwards.”

Pre-health students at Georgetown University have a new space to call their own.

Located in Poulton Hall, across the street from White-Gravenor Hall, pre-health students can now visit the in a dedicated space. , an associate dean in the ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences and director of the pre-health advising team, moved her office into the building this January, along with assistant directors, and . 

“I love the location,” Connell said. “It’s easy for students. …And I’ve always loved being in the middle of where their classes are.”

This move provides pre-health students with more opportunities to connect with their advisors and classmates. They can use the physical space to conduct video interviews for medical school, reserve rooms for meetings and study sessions and attend social events with guest speakers. It’ll also allow the advisors to expand on the work that they do. 

The Pre-Health Advising Office, housed under the College, serves all pre-health students at the university preparing for careers in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and other health professions. Connell, Ericson and Cherner advise approximately 900 undergraduates across the university who are preparing for health professions. The vast majority of pre-health students are pre-med, Connell said, and are in and , with additional students in the McDonough School of Business and the School of Foreign Service. The advisors also support dozens of postbaccalaureate students and more than a hundred alumni. 

“Students are accompanied on their four-year journey to figure out and discern what they want to do,” Connell said. “We make sure they are as prepared as they need to be.”

A Longitudinal Relationship

Anna Douglas (C’24) credits the pre-health advising team for guiding her on the path to medical school.

At Georgetown, Douglas majored in neurobiology and minored in fine arts, while also competing as a dressage rider. She was originally nervous about how she would fit into the pre-health community as someone with a “background that doesn’t immediately connect to medicine,” she said, but meeting with Connell and the advising team made Douglas feel at home.

“They were so nice, so understanding and so excited to hear about my story and the different things I was thinking about and curious about,” Douglas said.

She is currently deciding on which medical school to attend starting this fall.

“I have received more interviews and acceptances than I could have ever expected,” Douglas said. “I am now in the process of attending accepted students weekends at a number of schools and feel incredibly grateful to have a choice of several incredible schools.”

Throughout the medical school application process, which she began in the fall of 2024 while taking a gap year, Douglas turned to the advisors for help.

“I was really, really impressed and appreciative of the fact that I already had this longitudinal relationship with them, that I felt comfortable enough to meet with Dr. Connell and ask specific questions,” she said. “But also that there was constant information and workshops and seminars for everyone to go to.”

The advising begins by the time pre-health students arrive on campus.

Ishaan Kumar (C’24), a first-year medical student at Harvard Medical School, said that both his advising dean at the time and Connell had emailed him within his first two weeks at Georgetown. Over the next three and a half years — Kumar graduated a semester early with a neurobiology degree — he became close to the pre-health advisors, as they guided him through the application process.

“They’re the best,” he said. “They just really helped me figure out my path to medical school, because otherwise, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. It was helpful to have them walk me through it.”

The advice they gave was personalized. Ericson sat down with Kumar and “made a step-by-step, month-by-month plan” for his schedule to fit in studying for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) as an undergraduate student, he said. And when he was ready to apply to medical school, Connell, who received her M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1989, helped him prepare by conducting mock interviews.

“I was applying to more research-oriented schools, so she tailored her mock interview questions,” Kumar said. She also put him in touch with at least two alumni of the schools where he interviewed. 

In addition to personalized one-on-one advising, there are informational webinars and workshops that students can attend. Cherner, who coordinates Georgetown’s, has built a large Canvas course full of resources for pre-med students and also those interested in pursuing education in other pre-health professions, like physician assistant programs and optometry school.

“We have a whole Canvas course available to us in order to learn all the things that prepare us to apply, whereas so many of my friends from other universities just had to use YouTube or pay advisors from outside their university exorbitant amounts of money for private tutoring and counseling,” Douglas said. “I feel really, really grateful for the amount of support I’ve gotten. The advisors genuinely care.”

Both Douglas and Kumar recommend that students reach out to the pre-health advising team as early as they can and to meet them in person. The more the advisors know about the students’ interests and motivations, the better they can assist them.

“They’re the kind of people who won’t try to put you into buckets, or say, ‘Everyone should do this,’” Kumar said. “They’ll find opportunities that align with your interests to help you have the kind of college experience you want, rather than trying to just fit a certain narrative that helps you get into med school.”

A Collaborative Effort

All students who express interest in pre-health can receive support from the Pre-Health Advising Office. 

In addition to Connell, Ericson and Cherner, the ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences and School of Health both have advising deans and faculty members who are knowledgeable about the pre-health admissions process and work collaboratively with the pre-health advisors. 

“In my faculty advising role, I feel relatively comfortable giving students some basic advice, but when it comes to any sort of very specific types of questions, I really do rely heavily on the Pre-Health Advising Office,” said , an associate professor in the School of Health and one of the 11 staff and faculty members that sits on the . 

The committee, chaired by Connell, reviews students’ application material and sends their evaluations to schools.

Connell said the acceptance rate of Georgetown students into medical schools is “stellar” and has continued to climb since she began her role in 2019. She is also proud that the pre-health advising team does not “gatekeep” access to support. The advisors will help anyone interested in strengthening their applications.

When students are applying for medical school, Connell prepares them on what she calls, “the big three” focuses: research, clinical experience and service. 

“We help them with opportunities,” Connell said. “Research opportunities abound at Georgetown, and not just on the undergraduate campus, but the is right here. …We educate them about all the other wonderful sister and brother institutions we have here where they can find like-minded folks and go out to serve the community.”  

Thom Chiarolanzio, director of advising and senior associate dean in the College, believes that Connell has strengthened the pre-health advising program in a comprehensive way. 

“I consider us to be very lucky to have somebody of her own experience,” he said. “I’m really appreciative of her attention to providing more expansive opportunities for students that wasn’t always there.”

“She leverages her connections, and she builds new ones,” added , an associate dean in the College who is also on the Pre-Health Recommendation Committee. “That has really served our students well.”

Connell helped Eleanor Miskovsky (C’23), a third-year medical student at Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, find opportunities to shadow surgeons and gain clinical experience while she was at Georgetown. 

“It’s so competitive to find even unpaid, like volunteer positions, so it was huge that she helped connect me with people I could shadow and get some clinical experience with too,” said Miskovsky, who majored in biology of global health and minored in French. 

The Pre-Health Advising Office assisted Mahad Mohamed (H’22) in finding mentors. During his application cycle, he was paired with a first-year medical student at Georgetown University School of Medicine. 

“My mentor was an amazing resource,” said Mohamed, who graduated with a health care management and policy degree from the School of Health. “He helped me with mock interviews and essays and things like that.”

He remembers meeting with Connell at least once every semester to check in and share updates. Even after graduation, he continued to meet with Connell and utilize the resources provided by the pre-health advising team. Mohamed is now a second-year student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. 

“I help students during this journey, and in a way that gives me the same pride I had while accompanying my three kids to adulthood,” Connell said. “I have the most heartfelt thank you notes and emails from my students and it, you know, makes me cry. I’m here to help students. That’s why I do what I do.”

(All photos taken by Lisa Helfert for Georgetown University ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences)

Illustration by Chiara Vercesi

Hanging on a wall outside of ’s office is an engraved wooden plaque with a quote from the Irish poet, playwright and author Samuel Beckett, that reads:

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Corcoran, an advising dean in the ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences, made the plaque in the Maker Hub using a laser cutter, as part of her one-credit course for seniors, Defining Ourselves: Failure as Opportunity, in collaboration with . The quote acts as a reminder to Corcoran and encapsulates what she wants her students to take away from the course as they prepare for life after Georgetown. 

“We are neither defined solely by either our failures or successes,” Corcoran said. “So much of the class was an exploration of getting out of the success-failure binary and thinking of ourselves not just as a cumulative resume.”

The course is just one of several resources at Georgetown University that includes College staff and faculty members that help students cope with setbacks, tackle their relationship with perfectionism and unpack their perceptions of failure.

, a professor of psychology and the College’s vice dean for faculty affairs, teaches a course, , with , the university’s vice president for student affairs, that addresses themes like perfectionism, authenticity and conflict. , who helps run the College’s First Fellows Program for first-generation students, also integrates discussions and assignments about “productive failure” into her classes to normalize failure as part of the learning process. 

“If you have your mind set on a goal, you’re eventually going to get there,” Harris said. “It might not always look like how you initially planned it, but success looks different for everybody, and you’re going to get there.”

Failure as Opportunity

When Corcoran joined Georgetown in 2018, she noticed that the prospect of failure often immobilized her students. 

They were familiar and comfortable with success and achievement, Corcoran said, but lacked skills to thrive in the face of challenging obstacles or unexpected detours. Around that time, Corcoran read a New York Times article titled, that discussed how universities were developing programs to help high achievers cope with basic setbacks like not getting the room assignment they wanted or being rejected by clubs.

With that in mind, the first Failure as Opportunity course launched in the fall of 2024.

“Our students at Georgetown are incredibly driven,” Corcoran said. “We as faculty need to show them failure is not just an inevitable part of life, but an opportunity to pivot and be introspective about that transformative moment.”

In the course, which is available to any Georgetown undergraduate, students learn about famous failures from entrepreneurs, researchers, politicians, artists and other leading world figures. They discuss their own failures, and by doing so, it normalizes the experience and reality that no one, no matter how it seems from the outside, is perfect or has gone through life without experiencing disappointments. 

Corcoran’s course helped Vaughan Anoa’i (C’26) realize that it’s okay for things to not go according to plan.

The American studies major is a self-described “consummate perfectionist,” someone accustomed to excelling in academics and sports. She came to Georgetown as a standout volleyball player, and started her own charitable organization, , when she was in high school, to help make volleyball clubs more inclusive and accessible. 

Anoa’i often struggled to slow down or accept mistakes, especially in academic settings.

“Even throughout my time in high school, we’re constantly praised for continuing to push ourselves past the point of burnout,” she said. “I think in this day and age, it’s not sustainable.”

The course also helped validate many of the feelings Anoa’i had heading into her senior year, she said. This past summer, she decided that she did not want to go straight to law school after graduation, as Anoa’i had originally planned. And in the fall, she stepped away from the women’s varsity volleyball team, a decision she said she made in part because the sport “wasn’t something that I needed to hold on to anymore.”

“This class has allowed me to reflect that sometimes it’s okay for plans and expectations to change, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m behind in my journey,” Anoa’i said.

Jefferson Gonzalez-Flores (C’26), another student in the class, said he grew up viewing the word, “failure,” as a definitive end point. Failing meant that he wasn’t cut out for something.

Now, failure or the act of failing to him is a “necessary mechanism for growth and self-definition,” said Gonzalez-Flores, a government major who is minoring in psychology. “Setbacks are not indictments of my character, but just another obstacle that can help redefine my plan and reveal my true capabilities.”

As he prepares to leave Georgetown and start his job as an investment banker at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York City, Gonzalez-Flores plans to use the lessons from the course’s assignments and guest speakers to see his future opportunities with a sense of curiosity and opportunity, rather than fear. 

“Everyone has a uniquely distinct and beautiful journey that they must go through,” he said. “But at the end of the day If you have patience with your own progress and feel empathy toward the struggles of others, anything is possible.”

Productive Failure

Harris, who leads the First Fellows Program, feels that students at Georgetown are really afraid to fail. Any grade below an A can sometimes elicit panic, she said. 

In that sense, Harris said, the first-generation students she teaches are not all that different from continuing-generation students. The First Fellows Program, which launched in the fall of 2024, is a cohort-based, holistic program that provides first-generation students in the ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences with critical academic resources, faculty mentors, financial support and a community of peers. 

“Everybody’s hyper focused on GPA,” Harris said. “We want to unpack that perception that GPA equals worth.”

When she was in her doctorate program at George Mason University, one of Harris’ professors assigned a project called, “productive failure.” The students had to pick something from their final project that semester that did not work well and reflect on it. 

“That was the first time that I ever really had a professor confront failure head on or make us think about it proactively,” Harris said.

This spring, the First Fellows students did something similar. Harris placed them in accountability groups based on their post-graduation plans and asked the students to address the ways that they struggled. 

Throughout the semester, Rylie Hannon (C’27) stayed connected with her group through regular check-ins. She and her classmates, Hannon said, quickly realized they were all facing similar struggles. 

“That shared experience helped us create realistic plans and support each other in a meaningful way,” said Hannon, a government major with a minor in law, justice and society. “I think creating space to talk openly about failure, especially at Georgetown, is incredibly valuable. It’s easy to get caught up in presenting success, whether through LinkedIn or other ways, but these honest conversations reminded me that many of us are navigating the same challenges.”

In her presentation, Hannon said that this year, her goals were to get ahead on her LSAT preparation and law school planning and improve her GPA. Those goals, she said, took much longer than expected. For the assignment, Hannon instead decided to focus on her successes from the year.

“For me, that has been my experience living at and rediscovering my love for learning and for Georgetown,” she said. “Being able to celebrate each other’s growth while also acknowledging setbacks is what I value most about First Fellows. It was really special to reflect on both the challenges and accomplishments of the year.”

Harris, for her part, wants to be intentional about modeling and sharing her own failures. She told her students that once, when she didn’t get a job she thought she would get, she went home for a week and cried.

“I think sharing my own failures in hopes of normalizing it to show that the people in power or the people in the head of the classroom experience it too,” Harris said. “Everyone has their own struggles.”

Confronting Perfection

Woolard and Daugherty, who co-teach the Confront Perfection course, like to introduce themselves to the students by reading their resumes. 

“We tend to start by being ridiculously perfect,” Daugherty said. “We wear suits, and we read three pages of how fabulous we are.”

Then, they rip up the resumes, and share who they really are.

The two are friends. When Daugherty joined Georgetown in 2023, “everything was going wrong for me,” she said. She contracted COVID-19 twice and had a concussion. Woolard was her first friend on campus. Instead of giving just their “Georgetown intro,” Woolard said, they talk about their interests and share how they’re feeling that day. 

“We try to get folks to settle into being authentic,” Woolard said.

The one-credit course, first launched in the Spring 2024 semester, is a partnership between the College and the and is open to all Georgetown students. Some take it for credit, but it’s not required. The program, which consists of five sessions throughout the semester, is designed to bring together undergraduate and graduate students in a space where they can learn skills that will help them develop into caring leaders. 

“We take concepts of vulnerability, conflict, tension and connection and really unpack them and what they mean to allow students to make their own meaning from them,” Daugherty said. “And we do that by blowing up perfect people.”

The course is inspired by the Hoyas Connected project in the College’s Department of Psychology and supported by a gift from the . That initiative began at Georgetown in the Fall 2023 semester and is based on the Connection Project, an empirically-based program established at the University of Virginia, which was designed to help foster belonging and connection, said Woolard, a professor of psychology. 

Similarly, Confronting Perfection is a place where students can practice their skills in dialogue and reflection. As a senior, Ellie-Rose Wallach (C’26) wanted to take a small, seminar-style course where she could talk to people and exchange perspectives. 

“It’s been really helpful and nice and a good way for me to just meet people and engage in the community here at Georgetown in a different way,” said Wallach, an English major who is minoring in psychology. 

One of the learning goals for the students is to develop a mindset that views failure as part of the growth process. 

Harry Morelli (C’27), an English major and film and media studies minor, said he signed up for the course because he wanted to better understand the concept of perfection. 

“I think at Georgetown, there is this sort of expectation of perfection,” he said. “I think the conversational discussion aspects of the class made me sort of realize that I’m not the only person going through this, and that it’s sort of this false image that everybody at Georgetown seems to project. We’re all sharing the same internal thoughts about perfection.”

Sarah Shahine (C’29) said listening to the guest speakers, which included Georgetown University leaders and alums, reinforced to her that everyone has insecurities, including people who are highly accomplished. 

“I think a huge part of the class has been building community,” said Shahine, who is majoring in environment and sustainability. 

Post-graduate success, Daugherty said, is not about being perfect or being the smartest. It’s about being humble and not knowing all the answers. 

“Our Jesuit institutions are invested in a hope-filled future,” she said. “They don’t impose answers upon youth. They allow for formation with youth.”

By sunset on a chilly and overcast Friday evening in late February, the students in the had walked more than 10,000 steps and gained hours worth of knowledge. They spent the day touring businesses in the DC area and engaging with local industry and social impact leaders for their annual DC Day trip. 

This year, the students — 16 of the 19 total in the program — visited Graham Holdings Company, where CEO (B’04) shared stories about his business career; NPR, where students heard from arts and culture writers and editors and NPR Music producers; JosĂŠ AndrĂŠs Group, where chefs and operations leaders demonstrated their inspirations at the test kitchen; and Lafayette Square, where founder and CEO of the private credit firm, (B’97), gave an impassioned speech about “leaving the system better than you found it.” 

For lunch, students heard from Kathleen McCabe (C’94), a partner in the strategic advisory group at PJT Partners and former , who emphasized the importance of a liberal arts degree in the business world.

These visits can serve as networking opportunities. But, more importantly, they can help shape career paths and interests. DC Day is the third of these trips that students in the Baker Scholars Program take each year, following a trip to New York City earlier in the spring semester and a visit to a rotating city each fall.

“DC Day, as well as the other trips that Baker Scholars undertake, expose the students to a wide variety of business opportunities as well as different locations,” said (C’92, G’97, G’07), the decanal representative to the program. “This is an incredibly valuable process not necessarily for the short-term but has an impact long-term in particular as students make transitions in their careers. Many of these meetings also contain really important life advice that is relevant and applicable at any time.”

A Bird’s Eye View

The Baker Scholars Program consists of undergraduate students in the ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ & Sciences who are interested in business and have a commitment to service, Zimmers said. Selection for the program takes place in the spring of a student’s sophomore year.

“Being a Baker is to be a Baker for life,” said Kaitlin Martin (C’26), a political economy major who is minoring in Spanish and business studies. “You come into this program trying to learn about yourself and different industries, but also to give back to your community and future students within the program.”

During events like the DC Day trip, Baker Scholars students gain exclusive access to business executives and leaders. These individuals can provide a “bird’s eye view” on the path they took to the top of their industries, said Josh Dawit (C’26), who is majoring in government and minoring in sociology. 

“In my experience, when talking to people that are much further into their career, they’re a lot more candid about failures and setbacks that they’ve had because they’re not like recent grads that are still trying to put up that image of perfection for their next employer,” Dawit said. “Seeing those people talk very candidly about those things and still be in the positions that they are is not only reassuring but also very tangibly helpful.”

At the visit to Graham Holdings Company, O’Shaughnessy shared stories from his time as a product manager at America Online — “AOL at the time was like Google,” he said — and as the co-founder and CEO of LivingSocial, a local e-commerce company that, at its peak, was valued at multiple billions of dollars and had thousands of employees. 

He joined Graham Holdings Company in 2014 and was named president and CEO in 2015. The holding company’s portfolio Kaplan, Inc., a global leader in educational services; Framebridge, a custom framing service company; Slate, a daily online magazine; and Clyde’s Restaurant Group, the owner and operator of The Tombs. 

“There are a lot of different ways to be successful,” O’Shaughnessy told the students.

Charlie Berger (C’27), a political economy major who is minoring in philosophy, said he was inspired by the meeting and learning more about the historical legacy of Graham Holdings. 

“That was amazingly informative for me,” he said. “The relationships that they are looking to build with their portfolio are not ones of menacing dominance … but are more like part of a family. I think having that really long-term approach to investing is what a lot of great investors say is most important.”

Follow Your Passions

Everything about music interests Sofia Gershanik (C’27).

She is passionate about singing, songwriting, musical theater and the intersection of business and music. At Georgetown, she is an American musical cultures major with a Spanish and psychology double minor. After graduation, Gershanik wants to work with musical artists.

The visit to NPR felt tailored for her and reinforced in her mind the importance of liberal arts skills.

“It really just makes me see how important connection is, and that’s something that I focus on a lot in music,” Gershanik said. “Music is not only about expression but human connection and being able to speak or sing or resonate with somebody else in some way.”

As part of the tour of the broadcasting organization’s headquarters, students got to see where Tiny Desk concerts are filmed. After the tour, students heard from Bob Mondello, an arts critic; Ciera Crawford, the chief culture editor on the Culture Desk; Mitra I. Arthur, a producer for NPR Music; Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez, an audio engineer; and Josh Newell, the technical director for NPR Music.

For Gershanik, the biggest takeaway was the joy and care that each person brought to their role.

“Passion is a really big thing,” she said. “I think a lot of times, when talking to business professionals in any industry, you get the sense of like, ‘This is the job they do.’ This is how they do it, and then they go home and they do what they like. But at NPR … you bring your passion to your work. They can’t do their work without feeling excited about it.”

‘New Ways and New Ideas’

All of the fondest memories for Berger, a junior in the Baker Scholars Program, revolves around food and conversations with people. His “true dream job” would be to one day start a restaurant group, he said. 

Visiting JosĂŠ AndrĂŠs Group reaffirmed those interests. 

“It was important for me to go there and see what is arguably one of the most successful restaurant groups,” Berger said.

During the visit at José Andrés Group’s corporate office, students lined up in front of the test kitchen and heard from Hector Contreras, the former research and development chef, Tammy Saunders, the research and development pastry chef and Alan Grublauskas, the director of operations for José Andrés Group in DC.

The R&D team explained how they come up with different culinary concepts and served the students several samples, including a “Philly cheesesteak” , one of the signature items at The Bazaar by JosĂŠ AndrĂŠs: a puffy pita filled with creamy white cheddar espuma foam and topped with onion jam and wagyu tenderloin. The R&D team also talked about the .

“We’re finding new ways and new ideas,” Saunders said.

Like Berger, Arnoldo Sandoval Garcia (C’26) found the conversation about the restaurant business and the constant need for reinvention to be illuminating. He has experience working with Rogers & Sons Produce Inc., a produce distribution company in the San Antonio Wholesale Produce Market, and recently accepted a job as a production supervisor for Ready Foods, a family-owned food manufacturer based in Colorado.

“It’s a very low chance that a person actually goes to visit your restaurant twice,” said Sandoval Garcia, an American studies major. “If they visit your restaurant three or four times, you have a client for life. So, how do you create those experiences for your clients to keep on coming back to your restaurant?”

The conversation was helpful even for those, like Gershanik, who aren’t interested in entering the food and restaurant business. 

“If I need to apply any of those skills to a future career, whether that be in music or not, I can now work on developing them,” she said. “I have the context to learn from.”

Anything Is Possible

Dwin, the CEO of Lafayette Square, a private credit firm lending capital to growing middle market companies in working-class places, began his speech to the students with a declaration: “What you do with your money and power is your choice.” 

He implored the students to have an agenda, while adding that it’s okay if that evolves. Spend time understanding economic systems, and then leave them better than you found it, Dwin encouraged.

Dwin, who began his career as a trader with Goldman Sachs in New York and London, believes that working-class people and places are often ignored by private credit. Lafayette Square aims to support 100,000 working-class jobs, invest 50% of capital and curate benefits for 50% of its portfolio companies by 2030. 

“I’ve never felt more alive than in the presence of ethical human beings,” he said. 

Dwin’s speech left an impact on TJ Johnson (C’27), an economics major and junior in the Baker Scholars Program, crystallizing his belief that studying liberal arts is important to becoming a strong business leader. 

“I think that going to these visits really shows that anything is possible,” Johnson said. “You can really follow your passions in a very unstructured way, especially during our time being young, and make a very major impact by just following your heart.”