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SENIOR SNAPSHOTS
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
SENIOR SNAPSHOTS
are borrowed into Polish,” says Fuchs,
who presented her research at the Annual
Conference of the International Linguistic
Association, held in April at Kingsborough
Community College in Brooklyn.
Buoyed by her experience as a teaching
assistant for two semesters each of “Introduction
to Linguistics” and “Introduction
to Statistics,” which entailed leading review
sessions and occasionally lecturing,
Fuchs now envisions herself as a linguistics
professor. “Seeing [the students’] eyes
when they get it — that’s the greatest
part,” says Fuchs, whose father has taught
at the University of Detroit Mercy’s School
of Architecture since she was 8 months old.
“When I finish a lecture or a review session,
I feel that I won something huge; it’s Zuzanna Fuchs ’13
PHOTO: CHAR SMULLYAN
the best feeling.”
Fuchs, who split her childhood between
her native city of Warsaw, Poland, and Royal Oak, Mich.,
recalls always wanting to attend an Ivy League school. It was
Alexzander “A.J.” Hudson ’13 can say he was accepted
to the College, not once, but twice. Though offered
admission the first time he applied, he was unable to
enroll due to a last-minute problem and matriculated
at The George Washington University. A year later, on a whim,
he reapplied to the College and was
thrilled to be among the small number
of transfer students — less than 10 percent
— accepted each year.
“I wanted the most challenging city
in the world and the most challenging
school in the world and they are both
here,” says Hudson.
The Indianapolis native made the
most of his second chance at a College
education. Honored as a Senior Marshal,
Hudson majored in psychology
with a concentration in sociology — “I
love understanding how thoughts
work, how they are processed and
where certain things arise in the brain,”
he says — and was among the 10 percent
of the graduating class initiated into
Phi Beta Kappa.
In October 2011, Hudson helped
start a Columbia chapter of Active
Minds, a national nonprofit that raises
awareness about mental health among
college students. “Our programming
revolves around explaining the common
mental illnesses that are in the popular dialect, which
people don’t know as much about as they think they do,” says
the Core, however, that ultimately drew
her to the College. “A solid base of knowledge
in a lot of different areas before specializing
— that was really important to
me,” she says.
Since her sophomore year, Fuchs’ main
extracurricular pursuit has been the College
Group Committee at The Metropolitan
Museum of Art. The committee, which includes
students from the College as well as
Barnard, NYU, the Pratt Institute, Hunter
College and other NYC schools, plans museum
events for fellow college students.
As publicity coordinator her senior year,
Fuchs helped plan and execute an Andy
Warhol-themed event in October 2012 that
she proudly says was well attended by Columbians.
“It says a lot about the Columbia
student body that everyone has varied interests
and that the Met brings in everyone,
not just the art majors,” she says.
Nathalie Alonso ’08
Alexzander Hudson Raises Awareness of Mental Health Issues
Alexzander “A.J.” Hudson ’13
PHOTO: CHAR SMULLYAN
Hudson, who also joined the University’s NAACP chapter upon
arriving in the College. This year, Hudson was recognized for
his extracurricular efforts with the King’s Crown Leadership Excellence
Award in health and wellness from Columbia Student
Affairs, which recognizes students who “exemplify the spirit of
caring for and about the members of our vast and diverse community.”
Hudson’s fascination with the human mind led him to pursue
several psychology research opportunities
in his senior year. With funding
from the National Science Foundation’s
Research Experiences for Undergraduates
program, he took a role as a research
assistant at the Earth Institute’s
Center for Research on Environmental
Decisions (CRED). His initial task was
to review “The Psychology of Climate
Change Communication,” the center’s
guide on how to effectively inform the
public of issues such as global warming.
Hudson now is conducting independent
research at CRED on the motivating
factors behind prosocial behaviors
such as recycling. Since October, he
also has recruited subjects for a study
at the Mailman School of Public Health
that examines the use of mobile dating
applications among gay men.
This fall Hudson will begin a stint
as a science teacher at a public middle
school in Brooklyn through Teach For
America. He hopes to enter a Ph.D.
program in which he can study the
intersection of psychology and education. “I want to get some
perspective and I feel there’s a lot I can learn by teaching at a
middle school,” says Hudson, whose long-term goal is to “pursue
social policy for education using psychology research.”
Nathalie Alonso ’08
Eric Kutscher Plots Path To Opening AIDS Clinic
Eric Kutscher ’13 was struggling with how to integrate his
love of biology, health, humanities and human sciences
until he traveled to Africa during his junior year to study
sexual health.
In Kenya, Kutscher, a history major with
a concentration in African studies, lived with
a family, studied Swahili and conducted
field research on male circumcision and HIV
risk in the Luo tribe. He walked throughout
Kisumu, a port city, conducting surveys and
discussing perceptions of circumcision with
male residents.
“Circumcision is against the Luo culture,
but western campaigns funding male circumcision
there have been very successful,”
he says. “I wanted to find out exactly why so
many men were lining up to get circumcised.”
Kutscher discovered that Luo men believe
circumcision leads to more pleasure
and that it also increases condom use, lowering
HIV/AIDS risk. The project showed
Kutscher that he could merge the social and
biological sciences and led to a dream: getting
an M.D. and an M.P.H., then starting an
HIV/AIDS clinic in New York City.
Eric Kutscher ’13
PHOTO: STELLA GIRKINS ’15
Kutscher ascribes his interest in Africa to two classes he took
to satisfy the Global Core requirement, “Major Debates in the
Study of Africa” and “Africa in Cinema.” His interest in sexual
health was more personal: In 2011, Kutscher was rejected from
donating blood in NYC because he identified as a gay male.
“After this incident, I became fascinated by the public health
policies around AIDS,” he says. “It got me really interested in
the idea of ‘acceptable risk.’”
Katie Meili ’13 might have been in the 2012 Summer
Olympics. But 20 days before the Olympic Team Trials,
on June 1, 2012, the record-breaking Columbia swimmer
broke her hand during a meet warm-up.
She opted for surgery over a cast so she
could get back in the water in only a few
days. And while she didn’t make it to the
Olympics, and considers the injury her most
trying moment, she often reminds herself
how lucky she was just to compete.
Despite the setback, Meili plans to pursue
professional swimming after graduation.
This summer, she will compete to join the
USA Swimming National Team. If she makes
it, she might have another shot at the Olympics
in 2016.
“It’s hard to think about the Olympics
because it’s just a long time and a lot of
things can happen between now and then,”
Meili says. “But I’m definitely training in
the summer. Once you start swimming, Katie Meili ’13
you’re in it for the long run.”
Kutscher honed this interest during his junior year through
classes at the Mailman School of Public Health. He also participated
in The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative, a summer program
in the history department that in 2011 focused on “The History
and Future of Pandemic Threats and Global
Public Health.”
The following summer, after returning
from Kenya, Kutscher interned in the policy
department of Gay Men’s Health Crisis
(GMHC), but he missed the interaction with
patients that he had in Kenya and realized
his interests would be best applied as a
doctor. So six days after graduation, he will
start at Goucher College’s one-year Post-
Baccalaureate Premed Program. From there,
he hopes to attend medical school to study
infectious disease and open his clinic.
“What I would want to be unique about
my clinic is the quality of care. By mixing
a private infectious disease practice where
patients receive top-notch care with a general
STI and HIV clinic, I think the ease in which
someone can come to one place and get every -
thing done will increase,” he says. “Likewise,
it brings people from all backgrounds to the same center … decreasing
the stigma against HIV/AIDS.”
Even in his final College days, Kutscher did not take time off.
He volunteered as a peer advocate at Columbia’s Gay Health
Advocacy Project and as an HIV tester and counselor at GMHC.
His recently completed thesis on the history of public policy and
gay bathhouses in San Francisco and New York City received
the history department’s Garrett Mattingly Prize.
Stella Girkins ’15
Swimmer Katie Meili Aims for 2016 Olympics
PHOTO: CHAR SMULLYAN
Raised in small-town Colleyville, Texas, Meili started swimming
competitively at 8. She followed in the footsteps of her older
sister, who, she says, “would never let me win.” With passions for
art and theatre, Meili always wanted to move to a big city. And
since arriving at the College, she hasn’t lost
momentum in the pool.
This academic year alone, Meili won first
place in the Ivy League Championships in
three events — the 100-yard breaststroke,
the 200-yard breaststroke and the 200-yard
individual medley — as well as placed third
in the National Collegiate Athletic Association
for the 100-yard breaststroke and competed
in both the Olympic Team Trials and the U.S.
Open Swimming Championships. Her 200-
yard individual medley record outpaces Cristina
Teuscher ’00, a 1996 Olympic gold medalist
and the University’s best-known swimmer.
Meili loves to win, loves to race and is
willing to make sacrifices to be successful.
“People have told me that they have never
seen someone as competitive as I am,” says
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