Four years ago this month they were effectively grounded. Stuck at home, they prepared for a graduation ceremony like no other–or, for some of them, no ceremony at all. It was the start of the first “Covid Summer,” and for the high school classes of 2020, that meant graduating via Zoom, or while sitting in the family car at a drive-in theatre.
In the fall of that year, պ writers told the story of a small group of these students as they began their պ journey: one that started with masks and social distancing and, as the պ community rallied to safely come through the pandemic, added close friendships, and deep learning and research experiences. For some, their planned pathways were confirmed. For others, their պ experience revealed new directions to explore. But these five and, indeed, all the members of the Class of 2024, are veterans of a unique experience. Now, with Commencement coming later this month, they’re ready to take flight.
Pearl Stuart
Pearl Stuart is in the music studio again. She plugs in a microphone, adjusts a few virtual dials on an equalizer and puts on her headphones. A Music Technology and Business major, Stuart has spent a lot of time in studios over the last four years. Sometimes she’s on this side of the equipment, sitting in the dark, supporting another musician or cleaning up a track. Other times, she’s on the live side of the microphone, under bright stage lights, singing.
In 2020, when Stuart arrived on campus, she was already a committed musician, having released two solo albums. Now she leads a new band called Fawn–“like the baby deer,” she says with a laugh. They launched in October and have been playing local bars and venues. “I write the songs and sing, and we've got a bassist, guitarist, drums, and keyboard. It's indie pop,” she says. Stuart finds it cathartic to write lyrics and then, the next day, bring them to her band. “They instantly seem to understand my vision and bring it to life. I got very lucky with the people that I found.”
But her years of college haven’t been easy. “Starting during Covid totally threw me off,” she says. “I met my best friend, Willow, on the first night of freshman year and she’s in my major. She’s been going through it with me. Now we live together and she’s the manager of my band.” An internship at Future Fields—a co-working production studio on Main Street— helped her find her way and her community. Two of the people who joined her band were interns there too. “My world has opened up. Burlington is great. There’s a lot of music and it’s an approachable size.”
Fawn will play at Foam Brewery downtown in May— “bringing a fresh queer femme pop energy to the Burlington music scene. Their originals feature dreamy guitar solos, heavy drums, and delicate melodies with gloomy undertones,” the brewery’s promo writes.
Like many aspiring musicians, “obviously my dream would be to get big and be able to make money,” Stuart says. “But that’s hard. So I just want to make music that I love. My song ‘Burn,’ that is out now is kind of about letting go and trusting the universe. And I believe in that a lot.”
Ryan Pham
As a kid, the one thing Ryan Pham knew was that he was going to college. That was something instilled in him by his parents—immigrants from Vietnam—and particularly by Pham’s mother.
“And I’m happy she did,” he says.
Pham grew up in Burlington and is the first in his family to attend college. He came to պ to study microbiology and picked up a second major in nutrition food sciences. Both fields marry his interests: working in the lab and cooking.
“The world of food is really fun to learn about,” Pham says.
The people in his lab made it approachable, too.
“All of our lab instructors are very friendly, very open to questions,” Pham says. “They gave me the ability to be free to make mistakes. That helps me learn a lot more than memorizing a manual.”
He routinely performs heat shock tests on bacteria like salmonella in the lab of Andrea Etter, assistant professor of nutrition and food sciences. He also works as a resident advisor (RA) in the dorms. Initially, the perk were the draw: a single room and no room and board expenses. But over time he noticed that he was benefiting in other ways too, such as learning conflict mediation and lessons in building community.
“I grew up as an only child,” Pham says, adding that he wasn’t used to sharing his space or his feelings.
That has changed.
Pham’s first year at պ, the COVID-19 pandemic was an ever-present part of life. Dorm residents wore masks and classes were conducted online. These days he looks forward to road trips and weekly in-person Survivor viewing parties with friends.
Pham has already fielded job offers as a food safety technician and is waiting to hear about positions in clinical microbiology labs.
“I’ve made it to the top of the hill,” he says with a smile.
Now his mom is busy planning his graduation party.
“But I’m going to help,” Pham says.
Fritz Gick
Crawling on the floor of an engineering lab in Votey Hall, Fritz Gick ’24 climbs out from under a roof. “We built this,” he says with a big grin, “it’s a real roof with insulation, just like you’d have in a house.” Except that over the top of the roof he’s installed a banner of white fabric, suspended a few inches above the black shingles.
As his senior capstone project in engineering, Gick and a partner have been working for a client to test a clever and simple idea: cool houses with cloth. “We’re looking for affordable options that could reduce the amount of air conditioning needed,” he says. Testing combinations of white fabrics, the team’s best results produced a 30-degree Fahrenheit reduction on the test roof. “We're making great progress,” Gick says.
In 2020, Gick came to պ with the hope of becoming a commercial pilot. Four years later, he’s taking off in many ways. Majoring in mechanical engineering with minors in computer science and math, he’s excelled as a student. And for fun he fights with swords. Really. Gick is the leader of պ’s Historical Fencing Club, which practices each week and recently held a tournament on campus. “There's a science around creating the right material for every purpose,” Gick says. “We use two-handed swords, but they're spring steel so that your foe doesn't get stabbed.”
And materials of all kinds are at the center of Gick’s academic and professional interests. Studying biological materials particularly excites him. “Let's say you have a broken hip. Instead of putting a metal rod in, we ask: what's in bone? Then we replicate it.” Gick has moved away from the goal of being a commercial pilot, but still loves flying. “I might end up being a materials professor,” he says. “I’d Iike to get a Ph.D. and do research developing new materials. There's always a search for better materials—including the stuff we use to make airplanes.”
Cole Royer
Four years ago, Cole Royer fielded questions about his future at պ across a computer screen.
“It was Covid college last time we spoke and that feels like forever ago,” he explains inside the Rowell Nursing and Allied Health Building, where he investigates the mechanisms regarding cancer progression in Clinical Assistant Professor Melissa Schieber’s lab.
Royer recalls his first year at պ, when almost everyone wore masks, and he held high expectations for himself. As a medical laboratory science major, Royer was contemplating a career as a pathologist. Somewhere in between he envisioned qualifying for the Boston Marathon. Four years later he remains on pace to tick off most of these boxes.
During the winter and summer of his freshman year, Royer swabbed noses at a COVID-19 field clinic near the U.S.-Canadian border where he grew up. His sophomore year he joined Schieber’s research lab and worked evenings in the clinical laboratory, receiving and triaging patient specimens for testing. In his junior year he began volunteering as a patient advocate at պ Medical Center. After hearing positive stories from cancer patients about their time at Hope Lodge—a free lodging facility run by the American Cancer Society for individuals undergoing treatment—Royer started volunteering there as well. He now spends his Tuesday nights preparing meals for patients and their caregivers and connecting with them outside of their illness.
“Most people don’t spend 90 percent of their time in hospitals, so it is nice going to the Hope Lodge to see patients out in the community,” Royer says.
The last four years have had a humbling effect as he recalls how much patients, his peers, and mentors have taught him.
“I feel like with medicine the more things I learn, the less I truly know,” Royer says.
After graduation, he will continue working in the lab while he prepares for the next phase of his life: studying for the MCAT exam and applying for combined M.D./Ph.D programs. And on May 26, he will toe the line to run the Burlington City Marathon—his third marathon to date. But Royer isn’t trying to qualify for Boston—at least, not yet.
Sydney Webster
Sydney Webster laughs and opens her eyes wide when asked what she expected her պ experience to be like before she arrived on campus in the fall of 2020. “I don’t remember what I expected, but I do remember thinking, ‘when I graduate, I'll be the oldest person in the world,’” she says. “I just thought that I would know everything about the world when I graduated.” Then she pauses and laughs again. “And I definitely don't! I think I know less—and I think it was better than I could have imagined.”
Webster arrived thinking she might be pre-med. “Not for me!” she says now. But her interest in human and ecological well-being has continued and deepened. After a powerful first-year course on race and racism, she chose to major in Health and Society with minors in Community and International Development and Integrative Health.
“I was moved more by traditional health issues entering college,” she says. “Now I’m more focused on development of emergent systems and why things are the way they are. A broad integrative view of health takes in green spaces and water and pollution—how that impacts health—before considering healthcare systems and healthcare actors.”
Several professors—particularly economist Josh Farley and health scholar Christine Vatovec—helped Webster develop this more integrated, connected view of health. But Webster’s own desire for connection seems to underlie much of what she does. She grew up dancing at the American Ballet Theater and the Washington Ballet, in Washington, D.C., but now her attention has turned to outdoor recreation—hiking and skiing—“and anything really, where I can connect with my friends and the other amazing people here, and be outside.”
During the pandemic, Webster took a gap semester and worked on a sheep farm in New Zealand, so she has one semester left to finish—which she’ll take in Grenada, Spain, studying language. “The most rewarding thing about պ is having a community safety net, where you’re encouraged to try lots of things and fail at some of them. People really care here, everyone wants to connect in some way. I didn't expect պ and Burlington to be such a strong-knit community. I'm really grateful I got to experience that. I’ll take that with me.”
