By Anne Saunders ’12

When Michelle Fischer graduated from Marlboro in December 2009, she tackled the job hunt with the same vigor that she applied to her Plan in anthropology. She found that the National Park Service best suited her values and goals. “I’m a professional boy scout now,” she says. Michelle lives at the base of a mountain in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, in Texas’ Chihuahuan Desert. “This is a lifestyle,” she says. “About 35 employees attend to 87,000 acres of remote wilderness. My task is to make humans feel welcome here.”

Specifically, Michelle creates and delivers weekly lectures, guided hikes and publications. But living at the park, there is so much more to do. Describing her day-to-day assignments, she recounts, “Yesterday, I hiked over 25 miles to scout a long-forgotten park trail. Tomorrow a fellow ranger and I will teach a college class in North Dakota via Skype-like technology. I catalogue artifacts excavated by archaeologists, help fight 14,000-acre forest fires and keep an orchard at an historic ranch.”

Michelle says Marlboro remains a strong foundation for her character. “The community values that Marlboro taught prove invaluable in the workplace.” For the future, Michelle does not have goals so much as ideals. “Honesty, balance, compassion… I hope to listen, to keep trying, to walk narrow passageways, and to forgive myself as I explore what being an adult means.”

By Anne Saunders ’12

After graduating last May with a Plan in anthropology, Geri Medina decided to stay in Brattleboro. She is now working at The Experiment in International Living, a program of World Learning that sends high school students abroad on short programs. An alumna of the program herself, Geri works with the admissions team, “enrolling new students, answering questions about our programs and working directly with students to get them prepared for their summers abroad.”

Geri loves the comfortable environment that comes from working in a small organization, but it has its challenges. “We are a small team for a very big operation, so everyone shares in taking on all tasks, responsibilities and frustrations. It gets chaotic, and everyone’s on their feet.” Geri is excited by the possibilities for international travel with this job. She is thinking of leading one of the programs during a summer, or doing work with SIT Graduate Institute, another part of World Learning.

Marlboro helped Geri feel comfortable and confident with the demands of her job. “I think that the methodical process of writing Plan helped me to think on my feet and be adaptable, organized and dedicated. As much as a job like this can be stressful, I know I can handle it, and I know I can do it well.”

To me, interdisciplinary study supports the battle between ideas. The skirmish of my Plan of Concentration at Marlboro was between disciplines with writing, film and community architecture. I have gone on to study in an “interdisciplinary” architecture masters program based out of Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany. But now I realize that interdisciplinary study does not translate easily between different institutions. Not all schools support the ideological battleground.

In my program, we travel every six weeks for workshops in Germany, Estonia, Portugal, Poland, Austria, Spain and Israel. We are 19 students from 8 countries, and we live the life of tired travelers. By now, the romance of travel is long gone. The program consists of fieldwork, travel and multicultural classrooms, but the multicultural experience—jumping from city to city—feels more touristy than ethnographic to me. While diverse, we students are also similar. We share Western heritage: lineage, safety, comfort, privilege and education. When possible I have tried to jump outside these trends by living with locals in Poland and Austria—to hear their tongue, to eat their meals, to walk their streets, to learn from their everyday routines.

Generally, I have chosen the role of the rebellious student—to subvert the self-justifying institutionalization of knowledge in the program—by making projects that draw on theory from in and out of architecture. In each workshop, I have expanded my spatial reading and theorizing of political architecture. I have drawn on recent political geography, urbanism and political philosophy, and my projects have confronted theory with the practices of real political architects.

In my experience, architectural discourse is thirsty for this kind of political critique. My sociology of architecture writing has been accepted by peer-review journals and conferences, including a conference called “Architecture and the Political” at Lebanese American University, Beirut. I am trying to continue developing sociological analyses, while forging new connections into practice. I am training myself to confront standard practices with “the political.” I hope to continue this work. I may go the PhD route next, or try to gain professional experience practicing political architecture, or both.

At Marlboro, I chose sociology, documentary film and architecture to root my activism in rigorous academic thought and communication. In my graduate program, interdisciplinary study is conditional, restricted and de-politicized. As I reflect from the trenches of graduate school, I am grateful to have been so challenged, supported and encouraged by the Marlboro faculty and community. Only through my undergraduate experience—between the borders of disciplines, among the multiple approaches of different Plan projects—did I equip myself with the academic artillery to subvert from within.

By Anne Saunders ’12

Ever since she was 8 years old, it has been Lisa Orenstein’s dream to join the Peace Corps. Now, after graduating from Marlboro in December 2009, Lisa has achieved that dream and is teaching English in Kodyma, Ukraine. “I love showing the children a different way of thinking, and learning their perspective on the world” she says.

Following an intense training in TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language), Lisa teaches classes of students from ages 8 to 15 and leads three English clubs each week after school. Her hope is to soon start an HIV/AIDS awareness club and begin seminars on female empowerment. “We are working on critical thinking in the classroom,” says Lisa. “I feel that that is one of the most important tools I can give them.”

Besides the everyday challenges of a classroom of kids with “a lot of energy,” Lisa reports that she has felt very welcome in Kodyma. “Everyone says ‘hi’ on the street, and I am invited to lunch, dinner or tea almost every day.” She says that the confidence she gained at Marlboro has been integral in attaining the leadership skills and independence necessary for her Peace Corps work. “If I can face the intense, difficult and time-consuming work of Plan, I can achieve almost anything.”

By Anne Saunders ’12

Shortly before graduating in 2010 with a Plan on the physics of wind turbines, Alec Koumjian was pleasantly surprised to have his current employer literally come knocking at his front door. He thus became the online business manager for Recycle Away, a growing company based in Brattleboro, Vermont, that sells recycling containers for public spaces.

Although there is no immediate connection between his job and his Plan work at Marlboro, Alec is constantly using the skills and technologies he picked up during his four years on the hill. He was hired because of the breadth of his skills, and has had the opportunity to hone new ones “on the job.”

Alec’s work is a real mix of tasks: web development and design, IT, search engine optimization and automated systems. “In a business that is expanding faster than we can handle,” Alec says, “the main challenge is having enough time in the day to get everything done.” Though there are challenges, Alec loves the trust and autonomy that Recycle Away gives him with his work. “My decisions and work have an immediate and direct effect on the success of the business and my opinion is highly valued.”

By Anne Saunders ’12

Since graduating in 2009, Katherine Partington has been busy working in New York City at several jobs simultaneously, but primarily as a freelance performance artist for a variety of choreographers, directors and filmmakers. She recently received the L.A. Movie Award for “best actress” for her role in the movie Overload.

“In one week I will work as an intern, hostess, choreographer, dance teacher and performer,” says Katherine. “I finish a shift at a restaurant to then go perform at the Guggenheim Museum, or teach a dance class on Long Island, or take a yoga class at Yoga to the People.” Katherine has to keep every job part time in order to allow for the flexibility she needs to structure her life on a project-to-project basis, and her income varies accordingly. This can be very challenging, but thanks to her fierce ambition and experience at Marlboro she knows how to plan, prepare and get it all done.

Katherine says Marlboro gave her the ability to recognize a group’s purpose and potential, and how she could best contribute. She says, “Before Marlboro, I wanted people to give me permission to work and take risks. After Marlboro, I am not only giving myself permission, but I am creating my own opportunities as well.”

After Marlboro I returned to Craftsbury, Vermont, where I grew up. I wanted to do something to use my degree in visual arts and creative writing, and decided that teaching art classes to community members would be a good way to earn some income and share my interests and skills. I opened the Art House Gallery, Studio & School in June 2009. A year ago we joined forces with another business that was in transition, Stardust Books and Café, and created one non-profit called The Common Place. Our mission is to cultivate the creative and literary interests of youth and adults in the Northeast Kingdom while supporting the local economy.

My official title is co-manager, but my role is more that of the director. I am the only person working in the organization not on an interim basis, other than our board of trustees. I make the calendar of programs, host events, teach classes, and manage the physical plant and the studio schedule. My time at Marlboro helped me make connections and understand how galleries work, and gave me the basic knowledge to jury good art and curate shows.

I first heard about Marlboro College Graduate School’s certificate program in nonprofit management in an email I regularly receive as a Marlboro alumna. My nonprofit is headed into its second year, a crucial time for development, and I felt that I needed to know more about how the nonprofit sector works. The classes in the program confirmed that I was moving in the right direction, corrected my actions when I was off base, and gave me the inspiration, motivation, and knowledge to move my organization into the future. As a certified nonprofit manager I feel capable and qualified to lead The Common Place through its second year and into the future.

The hardest part is finding the free moments between my paying job, as an admissions counselor at Sterling College, to return those phone calls, send emails, order supplies…there is so much to do, and so little time to do it all in. But I love creating community bonds through the programming, seeing how much people like to participate and seeing people engaged, learning and enjoying themselves. I’ve also become accustomed to the long days, and miss my work when I take a day off.

I enjoyed the open critique discussions we had at Marlboro, and I incorporate this format into classes here whenever I can. Broadening people’s perspectives of art, enhancing exposure, and raising awareness are some of the biggest goals of The Art House. One program that we host each month is the First Friday Art Talk. I asked former Marlboro visiting professor and outside evaluator Brian D. Cohen to speak in February-the gallery was full of his watercolors and copper etchings. It felt great to have one of the people who taught me printmaking at Marlboro exhibiting work and presenting in my own gallery.

By Jamie Davis ’14

With a Marlboro degree in biochemistry, Moses Sandrof ’07 is currently a research assistant in a Brown University pathobiology lab, studying the effects of commercial and industrial toxicants on the male reproductive system. He puts it simply, “Basically, Nalgenes and how they interact with your balls.”

Moses found this job by e-mailing a contact of his at Brown, who helped him get hired after a bit of back and forth. He says of the work, “I find that it adds depth and tangibility to my view of the world. It’s a great rebound if you’re feeling trapped in the Ivory Tower of the library balcony, because in a lab, it’s the data that talks.” There are challenges, however. “While Marlboro prepared me intellectually for the task of working for a big research institution, it didn’t exactly prepare me technically.”

Although he doesn’t relish this task, Moses has become an expert at dissecting rats in his lab job. He accepts it as long as the research has its heart in the right place and it’s done humanely. What is his next step? “I’m currently applying to graduate programs to further my study of biology in some as-yet-to-be-determined direction. Or moving to a farm…or both.”

By Jamie Davis ’14

After graduating from Marlboro, Willow O’Feral ’07 says that she wasn’t sure what to do but she “knew what she didn’t want to do.” So she decided to just throw herself into “a totally new situation, anything scary and untested that would shock me into action.” She completed a Teaching English as a Foreign Language course and an exchange program in Chiapas, Mexico. There she lived and taught children English for three hours a day, and learned how to speak Spanish for two hours a day. While in Mexico, she was hired for a nine-month teaching contract in Avignon, France, again teaching English.

Willow says these experiences ultimately made her realize she did not want to be a teacher for a profession, but she is still at a crossroads with many available paths. She says Marlboro’s emphasis on hard-working and thinking, self-discipline and creativity shaped her into the person she is now, and looking back on it fills her with happiness and gratitude.

“For the moment, I want to continue being ravenously omnivorous: keep stuffing my face with as many new experiences and places as possible. But I feel much stronger and confident now that I’ve done a good bit of thrashing around in the world.”

Harris County, Texas (the county Houston is in), has sentenced more people to the death penalty than any state in the nation. As a Jesuit Volunteer in Houston, I work at the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, a non-profit law firm that represents indigent defendants facing the death penalty at trial or re-trial. My work is a combination of fascinating and tedious-and it can often be both at the exact same time. I work as the investigative intern, which means I deal with heaps and heaps of records. I collect and process the records we have for the specific client’s case-school records, medical records, foster care records, employment records, anything we can get our hands on really, and I scour them for all of the “meaning” they hold. In addition, I interview potential witnesses (people who know the client, not necessarily people who saw the crime committed), visit clients in prison weekly and also answer the phone-it’s so exciting when you look over and see the ACLU is calling up, or the Innocence Project.

I encounter some of the most horrifying documents and stories on a daily basis. Beyond the challenge of realizing that someone’s life is actually in my hand, I have to deal with the fact that the state wants to kill them because they have often done something legitimately terrifying and painful. It can make you think twice when you realize you’re fighting for the right to life for someone who has murdered or raped or done other horrifying things to people and the pain that act continues to cause the victim’s family. A day at work can be extremely emotionally draining. At the same time, this is the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done, and I like that I can see how what I’m doing is directly connected to someone’s fight for their right to life.

I’m planning on starting law school in the Bay Area in the fall and hope to begin a career that focuses on capital punishment, which I’m really excited about. I applied for this position through JVC because I was curious as to whether I would enjoy law in practice and I feel like everyday something confirms that this is exactly what I want to be doing with my life. Working at a law firm is oddly similar to being on Plan. I have this long, never-ending, research-focused project where I am constantly thinking about how things connect to one another.

I was really drawn to the Jesuit Volunteer Corps for its focus on community and social justice. Marlboro certainly wasn’t the first place where I’d encountered those values, but without a doubt it developed my desire to have them central in my life. I also live with five fellow volunteers. They all work at totally different places and with very different issues. At dinner each night we talk about whatever crazy stuff went down at our work or what new thing we learned. This often reminds me of those dining hall conversations about class. For those with interest, I highly recommend Marlboro students looking into the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (www.jesuitvolunteers.org), Lutheran Volunteer Corps (www.lutheranvolunteercorps.org) and AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. (www.avodah.net/). You can also find out more about my work at www.gracelaw.org or contact me at s.h.fielding@gmail.com.