Meet Our Students and Recent Graduates
In this section, we showcase just a few of our many outstanding students and recent graduates.
Joshua Cameron, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
We often think of the impact that faculty have on the research agenda of a university and seldom of that of graduate students; however, graduate students do have an impact. Joshua Cameron, Ph.D. Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering 2007, is a perfect example. Read More.
Joseph Small, Art, Art History, and Design
The arts community at Notre Dame is an intimate and thriving creative environment—one that is enriched by the work of Joe Small, a second year MFA candidate in Photography, in the graduate program of Art, Art History, and Design. Read More.
Megan McCullough, Civil Engineering
Megan McCullough, now a second-year Notre Dame civil engineering graduate student, counts her visit to Thailand after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as a turning point in her life. She resolved then to go to graduate school and equip herself with the tools “to make a difference in the world.” McCullough now works daily in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences developing techniques that will lessen the effects of future natural disasters—for both commercial and residential structures. Read More.
Ryan Kennedy, Computer Science and Engineering
A Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and Engineering, Ryan’s research has focused on two major areas—bioinformatics and agent-based modeling and simulation—bound together with the common thread of global health. Read More.
Sami Schalk and Ryan Downey, Creative Writing
To some observers and critics, there is a stark divide between Notre Dame and the communities in the South Bend area. Two recent graduates of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program worked diligently for their two-year tenure at Notre Dame to bridge those worlds, bringing Notre Dame into South Bend’s underprivileged communities, and poignantly likewise, those communities into Notre Dame. Read More.
Hubert George, Electrical Engineering
Despite the wrenching transition of emigrating to the United States from Colombia six years ago, electrical engineering doctoral student Hubert George has earned many successes. George now works as an integral member of a research team in one of the College of Engineering’s signature fields: nanotechnology. Read More.
Joseph Teller, English
Joseph Teller, now completing his studies in Renaissance (1595-1650) devotional poetry in Notre Dame’s highly regarded graduate program in English, vividly recalls the moment he decided to pursue a career in literature. He had just finished reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms in his California high school and was seized with the thought, “How could a book make me feel like this?” Read More.
John Rothlisberger, Environmental Studies
John Rothlisberger, has become a key player in the battle to save the Great Lakes. As a graduate student at Notre Dame, Rothlisberger produced the first-ever estimate of the actual cost of non-native species that arrived in the ballast tanks of ocean-going vessels to the Great Lakes region. Following graduation, he became a fellow with the United States Forest Service, one of several groups working on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Read More.
Andrea Turpin, History
Andrea L. Turpin received her Ph.D. in History from Notre Dame in August 2011 and is now an Assistant Professor of History at Baylor University. Her research explores the historical connections between gender ideals, religious beliefs and practices, and higher educational theory and practice. Her dissertation, Gender, Religion, and Moral Vision in the American Academy, 1837-1917, examines how the entrance of women into U.S. colleges and universities shaped changing ideas about the religious and moral purposes of higher education during the rise of the modern college and university. Read More.
Rae Lundy, Psychology
When Notre Dame Counseling Psychology doctoral student Raé Lundy was an undergraduate at New Orleans’ Xavier University of Louisiana, she had what she calls a “defining moment.” It occurred in her apartment on the morning of August 29, 2005 — the day Hurricane Katrina struck. Living through a disaster of that scale influenced the kind of psychology Lundy chose to study and what she hopes to accomplish eventually in practice. Read More.
Errol Phillip, Psychology
Cancer survivors are the research interest of Errol Philip, a fifth-year doctoral student in Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology, now completing a year-long internship program at the Yale University School of Medicine. Errol has spent his graduate career examining the psychological well-being of cancer patients and survivors. He has sought to raise awareness of the issues facing survivors and to challenge the common belief that “once a person finishes treatment, the sun comes out and life goes back to normal." Read More.
Laura Taylor, Psychology and Peace Studies
Laura Taylor, a Ph.D. student at the University of Notre Dame in psychology and peace studies, focuses her research on the impact of war and violence on individual people—specifically, on children and families in Croatia, Northern Ireland, and Colombia. Read More.
Bob Brenneman, Sociology
Shortly before defending his dissertation in September 2009, Bob Brenneman was offered a most unusual prize for a student: a book contract with the Oxford University Press. Not only a top student in Notre Dame’s sociology department, he is a master storyteller—the account of his work the past three years with members and ex-members of Central America’s most violent gangs is both passionate and gripping. Read More.
Michael Cover, Theology
Fr. Michael Cover’s academic pedigree includes degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and Yale—and he is also a newly ordained Episcopal priest. At Notre Dame, Fr. Cover’s research interests include Philo of Alexandria, the Gospels, and Paul. He has learned three new sacred languages—Syriac, Coptic, and Aramaic—to add to his expertise in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Read More.