The 2023 Graduation Edition

Maddie Zietsman hadn’t heard about Wake Forest until the summer before her senior year of high school, but when she strolled through the Reynolda Campus for the first time on a warm spring day, when campus was abuzz and students were in high spirits, she knew she'd found her home.  Four years later, she will graduate from The Forest having found success not only in the accounting major, but ...

After taking a gap year, Gabby Valencia hopes to attend graduate school for museum studies or cultural anthropology. “I'm ultimately interested in museum curation,” Valencia, who is also minoring in Latin American studies, English and history, said. “Really, I’m just taking the summer to figure it out.”  Valencia will be spending the summer back in her hometown of Los Angeles, Calif., w...

J De Oliveira Pinheiro is originally from Brazil but attended high school in Mexico. When looking for colleges, he knew he wanted to study in the United States, and he had a gut feeling that Wake Forest was the place for him.  De Oliveira Pinheiro arrived at Wake Forest intending to major in business but found his place in the mathematics department instead.  “I have always been good at mat...

When Jessy Ren arrived at Wake Forest, she was able to explore different classes and subjects. Sophomore year, Ren took a history of photography class with Dr. Morna O’Neill and soon after declared an art history major. “I learned to see how different cultures produce art from a socio-political perspective, and it’s such an interesting reflection on society throughout the world,” Ren said...

The backbone of elite higher education institutions like Wake Forest is their capacity to produce research. Graduating senior and biochemistry and molecular biology student Samantha Robinson has had the privilege of being at the forefront of that research for the past four years. As a Charlotte, N.C., resident, Wake Forest was always a fixture in her life. “I didn't want to go anywhere else,...

When Joy Oguama arrived at Wake Forest, she knew she was going to expand on her high school successes in math and science by majoring in a STEM field, but her initial plan to study statistics was sidelined when she discovered her love for a different subject — biology.  “I love learning about how life works from large scale to the minutiae,” Oguama said. “It’s just so fascinating to me, ...

Cameron May grew up in a family of medical professionals — from doctors to nurses to surgeons. Now, as he prepares to graduate with a biophysics major, he hopes to one day work in medicine, too. “I was always doing little projects as a kid,” May said. “I started out with really simple stuff like making a freshwater extractor from salt water, where you leave something in the sun and then the fre...

If you could be a Renaissance person or a specialist, which would you choose? On one hand, you could perform many tasks well, or you could excel at only one task. Sarah Gerlach doesn’t want to choose. She wants to be a jack of all trades in a niche field, which she has achieved by exploring the wide world of business through a German-speaking lens. As Gerlach spoke about her two academic love...

Juliano Ribeiro Filho says his passion for chemistry stems from challenging experiences in his childhood. “At the age of nine, my parents divorced, and my mom was extremely sick,” Ribeiro Filho said. “While my brother and I were forced to move roughly 2,000 miles to live with my mother’s family, I was left feeling helpless as her condition rapidly deteriorated.” Ribeiro Filho continued:...

There are Wake Forest students who are passionate about their studies, and then there are students who make sacrifices for their studies. Chinese language and culture major Kyle Smith falls into the latter group. Chinese language and culture majors are required to study abroad in either Taiwan or China. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Smith had to go this spring.  “I didn't even think I w...

Gray Rucker learned advanced Latin grammar through a semester-long campaign in Dungeons & Dragons in LAT 350.  “You roll the dice, and if your character is going to slay Medusa or something, you have to be able to parse out a very complex grammatical construction,” Rucker explained.  From playing Dungeons & Dragons in class to creating a video game inspired by Homer’s epic poetry...

Since she was a little girl, Maddie Koontz was a classics major in the making. The lore of Greek mythology fascinated her. It all started when she read the “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series in third grade — and then Homer’s “Odyssey.” She even tried to learn ancient Greek for a short stint in elementary school. She was an ambitious kid.  Koontz’s family told her that she taught h...

For some, balancing interests and academics is a challenge, but not for senior Maddie Faria — she makes it look easy. Heavily involved in various campus organizations, Faria has left her mark on the Wake Forest community, all while balancing a communication major and double minors in marketing and politics and international affairs. Faria hails from Houston, Texas, where it was the norm to go to ...

Growing up, AJ Aizpurua always wanted to do the pre-med track, but his passion never matched his performance. Despite excelling in all the right classes — biology, chemistry, physics — he only ever enjoyed the latter.  Coming into his freshman year at Wake Forest, Aizpurua continued on the path to medical school. His lack of interest in the subjects he was taking remained unchanged, and so d...

Parker Beverly often gets teased by her friends for having an old soul and connecting more to older generations than her own. This characteristic has driven her love of history and storytelling, which has manifested in her passion for documentary filmmaking.  Beverly designed a personalized interdisciplinary major, a lengthy process that includes a 25-page application. Her major ended up being ...

Though Stamps Scholar Tal Feldman didn’t come to Wake Forest intending to be an economics major, he left as one. He’s also leaving as a Truman and Schwartzmann Scholar, two prestigious awards that will fund two separate graduate programs for him to further his economic studies.  “The way my first economics class tackled these questions of inequality, poverty and development were all really...

Caroline Fahringer, a graduating senior from Virginia, comes from a family full of educators — both of her parents work in the field. Drawn to Wake Forest by its location, not too close yet not too far from home, Fahringer initially came to the school without her mind set on any one major.  After a first year seminar taught by Dr. Adam Friedman, Fahringer decided that the education department ...

Whether she was conducting science experiments in her kitchen, helping her older brother build things in her garage or building things on her own, Julia Powers grew up with a love for creative problem-solving.  She also always knew she wanted to do something in STEM. Traveling to Winston-Salem all the way from California, Powers was drawn to Wake Forest’s engineering program both for its smaller lib...

Maren Beverly’s favorite classes have always been her English classes. Hailing from West Hartford, Conn., Beverly described her high school English teachers as incredibly strong and inspiring and credits them with motivating her to become an English major in college.  Throughout her time at Wake Forest, Beverly has made an active effort to take a variety of classes within her major in order t...

Meredith Power sees sustainability in every aspect of life. Whether through the environmental communication skills she’s honed through courses at Wake Forest, her participation and subsequent leadership of the Office of Sustainability’s Sustainability Leadership Group (SLG) or taking pictures outside in her free time, sustainability is omnipresent. When she arrived on campus in fall 2019, Pow...

Some of Charlotte Ramirez’s fondest memories from her childhood were close to home — and outside. At the Chattahoochee Nature Center in Roswell, Ga., Ramirez learned to love and care for the environment.  “One of my earliest memories of really loving the environment was going to the Chattahoochee Nature Center,” Ramirez said. “[The Chattahoochee River] is a little bit polluted, a little ...

Lily Farr, a senior from Charlotte, N.C., is someone who truly made the most of her time at Wake Forest. A finance major with a minor in psychology, Farr has loved learning about and understanding people, an attribute that will serve her well as she enters the business world.  Math came easily to her in high school, and this made the most sense with the analytics piece of finance. She knew she ...

Before she was majoring in French studies and minoring in Arabic at Wake Forest, Lillian Giles was already a student of language — something she first discovered while studying Spanish at an immersion camp and later abroad, from summers in Nicaragua to almost half a year in Chile. Giles first studied Arabic in her senior year of high school when she traveled to Rabat, Morocco, as part of the Nat...

Sydney Glickson did not plan on being a German studies major. At least, not until this year. Glickson was originally going to major in physics — but in the world of private equity, she felt that a physics degree would not be that useful. “If you asked freshman year me, she probably would have said getting a German major was dumb,” Glickson said. But now, she’s realized that learning a f...

For Robbie Grace, Wake Forest has always felt like home. From Minneapolis, Minn., Grace initially came to Wake Forest to run track, but she also fell in love with the environment and size of the campus.  It was her track coach, Coach Brian Mondschein who encouraged her to pursue a degree in health and exercise science (HES). Exercise physiology also stimulated her interest in health and exercis...

Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham once said that journalists write the first draft of history. To some, that’s just a saying, but to Katie Fox, a history major, editor-in-chief of The Howler Yearbook and former photography editor of the Old Gold & Black, it is a mission. “It's fulfilling to me both in the short term of being able to tell the day-to-day goings-on of the Wake ...

It’s easy to be intimidated by the accomplishments of the talented students who attend Wake Forest. I felt that intimidation in full force as I watched a short film both co-written and directed by Will Zimmerman while he was abroad in Prague, Czech Republic.  The short film “Don’t Bring a Gun” is only about seven minutes long, but it was a delight. To watch something created by someone my a...

For graduating senior and mathematical business major Gracie Stanek, business runs in the family. “My mom, my dad and my brother all have accounting degrees,” Stanek said. “I think a lot of people that I respect in my community were involved in the business profession. I kind of always had role models who were involved in that field.” Stanek grew up just over two hours away from camp...

Andrew Keller came to Wake Forest with one thing figured out: he definitely did not want to go to the business school. But as for most students who don’t know what they want to do, and like science, he found himself pulled onto the pre-med track. “That dream lasted six weeks,” Keller said, all thanks to a class he took his second semester, freshman year, that completely altered his college...

Molly Blackburn is an integral piece of the mathematics community at Wake Forest. Not only is she a dedicated volunteer at the Math and Stats Center — a free, in-person tutoring space — but she is also the president of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) at Wake Forest, which holds informal research talks, social events and discussions about the mathematical topics that most interes...

A classically trained pianist, music has been instrumental in Alice Hauser’s life since she was only five years old. While she has also devoted time to playing the trombone and singing, the piano is the instrument to which Hauser has consistently committed herself. But for Hauser, music is much more than pleasing sounds and notes. “Music, to me, is a celebration of humanity. I think there is ...

Rachel Edwards came to Wake Forest intending to follow the pre-med track and major in biology. However, her involvement with the Program for Leadership and Character led her toward the teachings of Aristotle, her favorite philosopher, whose “Nicomachean Ethics” helped her uncover a genuine interest in philosophy. She then decided to major in it and switched to the pre-law track.  Edwards rel...

Many children dream of becoming a princess, a space cowboy or an entertainer, and for the majority of them, it is rare that dreams become reality. But for Arina Yu, her dream of pursuing science became more and more plausible over time. Her first inkling of interest in science began not from a unique geology teacher in fourth grade or loving the great outdoors on family camping trips, but from h...

Growing up in Rocky Mount, N.C., Elizabeth Seagroves was inspired to pursue a degree in politics & international affairs after watching her parents work to mitigate systemic discrimination on the basis of race and socioeconomic status in her hometown.  Her father, a public school teacher and coach, was an important role model for her as he taught her what de facto racial segregation looked...

From Jacksonville, Fla., Roscoe Bell has left his mark on the Wake Forest community during his four years, majoring in psychology, minoring in music, being heavily involved in campus organizations, and even having founded one. He spearheaded the student-led arts festival, Wakeville, is founder and president of the organization “Songbird” and is co-president of the National Alliance for Mental Il...

On the very last day students could apply to be in the Wake Forest Class of 2023, Conor Metzger decided to throw in his application after casually chatting with family friends. He said he had only applied to three schools, so he figured he’d get a fourth school into the ring. “I honestly knew nothing about Wake Forest,” Metzger said. “I had no idea it was even a prestigious school.”  ...

To Madison Stafford, the most difficult aspect of learning Russian was the alphabet.  “The worst thing about the alphabet for second language learners is that if you come from English or Spanish or one of the Romanized alphabets, you end up with the characters that mean something different in English than they do in Russian,” Stafford said.  Stafford realized this when she took her first exa...

There’s a variety of avenues for students to discover their passions. For graduating senior Dianna LaTerra, her path began to fall into place well before her time at Wake Forest. LaTerra, a sociology major out of Waxhaw, N.C., became interested in social justice and equity work due to her experiences growing up. Her father was placed on a fixed income due to disability, and he became the sole...

Maddie Alexanian cites two influences that motivated her to major in Spanish — connecting with her older relatives and studying abroad.  Growing up, she recalls family gatherings on her dad’s side where everyone spoke in Spanish. Though her dad speaks Spanish, she, her brothers and her mother didn’t, so she didn’t grow up speaking it at home.  “I always felt like I didn't understand...

For all her award-winning work with numbers, statistics major Elizabeth MacDonald’s greatest mathematical feat may well be how much she can do with only 24 hours in a day. A member of Wake Forest’s DataFest team, a student adviser, a tour guide and a member of the Dean’s Student Advisory Panel, the Campus Life Advisory Committee and Wake Forest’s ballroom dance club, MacDonald still finds the...

Some come to Wake Forest for sports, for a professor or for a major, but what drew Ziyan Zhang to Wake Forest was its beauty. Zhang grew up in Shanghai, China, and attended middle school and high school in Zuoz, Switzerland. She came across Wake Forest from a brochure and was immediately drawn to the campus. "When I'm in a beautiful campus, it makes me want to do art,” Zhang said.  Zhang is a dou...

As a double major in theatre and biology, Nicole Liu is used to getting confused — but intrigued — looks when telling people about her studies. “I always start out with, ‘I have a bio major,’” she said, “And people will be like, ‘Okay, bio major.’ And then I'm like, ‘I have a theatre double major’ — and that’s when they start to show their interest.” Liu chose Wake ...

Growing up in North Carolina, Ashley Davis had times where she felt like a bit of an outcast.  “I identify as a lesbian, and growing up in the South, it wasn’t always great,” Davis said. “That pushed me toward looking into gender and sexuality, and that led me toward [women’s, gender & sexuality studies (WGSS)].” When she toured Wake Forest after she was admitted in her senior year of high schoo...