Susquehanna Currents looks back on 50 years of effort to move a campus culture.
Features
As the only Burmese student at Susquehanna her first year, Su "Sandi" Aung ’13 experienced a difficult transition, immersing herself in a culture so different from her own.
Finding Direction Off the Beaten Path
As counterintuitive as it sounds, New York is reported to be one of the most racially segregated cities in the country. Just ask Nadia McCallum ’15, a Brooklyn native who sees the effects of this division every time she goes home.
Squint until your eyes are nearly closed. Your surroundings blur, your peripheral vision narrows. Now imagine seeing the obscured shapes around you in black and white—mere shadows coming and going from your field of vision. This is how Griffin Pinkow ’15 sees the world.
As the first African-American woman to graduate from Susquehanna, Theresa Palmer ’73 Tracy has an almost legendary allure to today’s students
In the early 1980s, there were few interracial, bilingual students on the campus of Susquehanna University. Being a singular figure on a campus primarily consisting of “sameness” was difficult for a young girl from a small island in the Caribbean.
Although he calls Newark, N.J., home, Johnny Culver ’15 was more prepared for small-town living than one might think. He was somewhat eased into the idea after attending high school at Wyoming Seminary Preparatory School in the northeastern Pennsylvania borough of Kingston.
Students often gasp when Rabbi Kate Palley says the word “Jew” for the first time in her Introduction to Judaism class. “They’ve never heard it used in a nonderogatory fashion,” she says.
Finding a Home in a Foreign Land
Like most students, Mouluddin “Dean” Rahimi ’10 was nervous about going away to college. Naturally, he was apprehensive about relating to new people and fitting in, especially since he would be living on an American college campus.
Community Support Eases Transition
Annika Miller, Ph.D., came to Susquehanna in fall 2000 to teach math and computer science.