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SENIOR SNAPSHOTS
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
SENIOR SNAPSHOTS
Meili. “I often go 40–50 days at a time without taking a day off. …
As you get older, you learn to push your body in different ways.
You can push your limits and see how far you can go.”
That’s not to say that everything has been smooth sailing. Waking
up for 6 a.m. practice every day, committing time to train and
travel for meets, all while taking five or six courses at a time was
exhausting, Meili says. But she attributes most of her success to
her coaches and teammates.
“I always say that if I hadn’t come to Columbia, I wouldn’t
have gotten this good at swimming,” she said. “It was definitely
The elderly nun, a resident at ArchCare at Terence Cardinal
Cooke Health Care Center (TCC) in New York
City, was quickly declining. A once-gregarious teacher,
she had lapsed into near silence by the time Ashley
Shaw ’13 delivered an envelope in July 2012.
“She held my hand and gripped it,” recalls Shaw, a pre-med
student who was then interning at the extended care facility for
the terminally and chronically ill. “I asked if she wanted me to
open the envelope for her. She indicated that she did. A friend
hard when all your friends are going out, and they can stay up
as late as they want, and they can eat whatever they want …
when I had to go to bed because I was exhausted or I had practice
the next morning ... It’s a hard sacrifice when you are going
through it, but it’s so worth it in the end.”
[Editor’s note: Another senior has set her sights on the 2016 Olympics.
Read about rower Nikki Bourassa ’13 at college.columbia.edu/cct; click
on Web Extras.]
Grace Lee ’14 PH
Gerard Ramm Studies His Native American Heritage
With the support of the College’s Henry Evans Travelling
Fellowship, Gerard Ramm ’13 will devote
several months immediately after graduation to
exploring his Native American heritage.
Ramm, a registered member of the Quapaw tribe, will live with
relatives in Quapaw, Okla., while studying
the tribe’s language with an elder. He also will
assess online Quapaw language databases,
which he hopes to expand. “I want to learn
the Quapaw language as fluently as possible,”
says Ramm, who claims tribal ascendancy
through his father. “Many Native American
languages are in dire threat of extinction.”
Ramm’s desire to strengthen and preserve
the Quapaw language stems from the independent
summer research he conducted
with funding from an earlier fellowship, the
Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship,
awarded each spring to five sophomore
minority students with the goal of preparing
them for doctoral study. Fellows meet faculty,
learn about the process of choosing and applying
to Ph.D. programs and receive yearly
stipends and summer research funding for
Gerard Ramm ’13
PHOTO: CHAR SMULLYAN
the remainder of their College careers. Ramm spent summer 2011
in Quapaw, simultaneously studying and helping to organize
his tribe’s yearly powwow, which he fondly recalls witnessing
as a child. Then, last summer, he attended the Dhegiha Gathering
in Quapaw, which brings together speakers and teachers of
the Dhegiha family of indigenous languages. “I was exposed to
the ways people teach and learn language and the stakes for language
revitalization and survival,” says Ramm.
An English and comparative literature major, Ramm wrote
his senior thesis on the treatment of Native American figures in
contemporary American literature. “There is a lot of Native American
literature that gets overlooked in curricula and a lot of Native
American traces and symbolism that get overlooked in contemporary
literary criticism,” Ramm says. “How we deal with the presence
of indigenous figures in the larger transnational
literary canon is interesting to me.”
Ramm, who felt alienated from his
Native American roots while growing up
in Old Saybrook, Conn., is grateful to the
College for enabling him to explore his personal
history in an academic setting. “Coming
here was an opportunity to rediscover
a lot of issues,” he says. “There are a lot of
resources here, a lot of Native American
students and Native American events and
professors from whom I learned.”
While Ramm, a Junior Phi Beta Kappa
inductee, chose the College for its academic
reputation and location, he also sought a
school where he could nurture his lifelong
passion for music and theatre. He played
the saxophone with the Columbia University
Jazz Ensemble and appeared in several
plays with the Barnard theatre department. His most enjoyable
portrayal, however, was Bottom in the King’s Crown Shakespeare
Troupe’s spring 2012 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“It’s a huge comedic part and it was so much fun,” recalls Ramm.
During the next year, Ramm plans to apply to graduate programs
in either literature or Native American studies. “My goal is
to bring perspectives on Native American culture and politics into
a discourse of current cultural studies,” he says.
Nathalie Alonso ’08
Pre-Med Ashley Shaw Connects Students with Elderly Patients
had sent her $5 to buy a Diet Coke — she loved Diet Coke. I
remember the sort-of smile on her face. I sat with her for an hour
or more, in silence, just holding her hand.”
Such experiences had prompted Shaw to start the volunteer
At Your Service program, which connects Columbia students
with elderly TCC residents to provide long-term companionship
for those nearing the end of life. With grants from the Columbia
College Alumni and Parent Internship Fund and the Work Exemption
Program, Ashley devoted summer 2012 to laying the
groundwork for At Your Service. Now, each
semester approximately 30 College and postbaccalaureate
students devote four hours a
week to TCC, two of which are spent engaging
residents in recreational activities.
“TCC could really benefit from extra hands
and extra people to talk to residents who
might not have many friends or family who
visit,” says Shaw. “And there was also the
need of pre-med students [at Columbia] who
yearned for meaningful patient interaction.”
Shaw, who majored in biology with a
concentration in art history, became involved
with TCC during summer 2011
through an internship offered by the Earth
Institute Center for the Study of Science and
Religion. She has accepted post-graduation
employment at TCC and hopes to enroll in
medical school in fall 2014.
In addition to palliative care, Shaw is interested
in adolescent medicine as a result of her involvement with
Peer Health Exchange, a national teen-oriented health education
organization. During the last four years, through the organization’s
By the time Devyn Tyler ’13 enrolled in the College, she
had landed minor roles in The Curious Case of Benjamin
Button, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, and The
Great Debaters, directed by Denzel Washington. For the
past four years, however, her film career has been largely on hold
in favor of a degree in French and Francophone studies.
Since the Spring 2011 semester, Tyler
has had the support of the Mellon Mays
Undergraduate Fellowship, awarded
each year to five sophomores of underrepresented
minorities who are interested
in and demonstrate potential for doctoral
study and professorial careers. Fellows
meet faculty and graduate students in
various fields, learn about the process of
applying to graduate school and receive
financial support and research training
for the duration of their College careers.
“It took me from being a sophomore, not
knowing what a Ph.D. was or why it mattered,
[to having it] explained to me, not
only what it is, but also why it’s important
and how I can get there,” Tyler says of the
program.
Tyler, who plans to pursue a Ph.D. in
French, credits the course “Major Debates
in the Study of Africa” with broadening
her view of the French-speaking world
Ashley Shaw ’13
PHOTO: CHAR SMULLYAN
and French colonialism. “I realized I could go to many different
places and understand many different histories,” she says.
After spending the Fall 2011 semester in Paris through the Columbia-Penn
Program at Reid Hall, Tyler became a peer adviser
in the Office of Global Programs, where she was a resource for fellow
students pondering study abroad in the French capital. This
Barnard/Columbia chapter, Shaw has taught
more than 45 health workshops in public high
schools throughout New York City. As a senior,
Shaw also was president of the Columbia
University American Medical Students Association
– Premedical Chapter and community
adviser for McBain residence hall.
The Torrance, Calif., native chose the
College for the opportunity to live in New
York City, a decision she relishes every
time she escapes to Lincoln Center to catch
a performance by the New York City Ballet.
A dancer herself since she was 4, Shaw
sees a direct connection between her love of
art and her work at TCC. “A lot of people
at the end of life start to think about what
makes life meaningful. Learning about art
and what has inspired people to make art
throughout the ages — whether it is religion,
politics or just the need for expression — is
what makes life meaningful. I feel those two areas of my studies
are congruent and complementary.”
Nathalie Alonso ’08
Devyn Tyler Juggles Interests in French and Acting
Devyn Tyler ’13
PHOTO: CHAR SMULLYAN
past semester she co-taught an extracurricular French course to
middle schoolers at the Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning
and Social Change in Harlem, where she had her students
research a French-speaking country. “That wide, diasporic view
of the world that French gave me and that made me so excited in
college — I wanted to expose them to that,” she says.
Tyler first studied French at The High
School for the Performing and Visual
Arts in Houston, the city her family relocated
to when her native New Orleans
was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in
2005. Tyler, who had just started high
school in New Orleans, evacuated ahead
of the storm and, despite seeing the destruction
on television, was initially resistant
to starting over in a new state. “I was
forced to, because we couldn’t go back
home,” she says. “Even if we did go back,
our house wasn’t going to be there.”
Tyler’s transition to the College was
smoother; she knew she wanted to go to
Columbia from the moment she first visited
the Morningside campus as a high
school student. “When I saw it I thought,
‘That must be what college is.’ It was my
first ‘picture’ of college,” she says.
After graduation, Tyler, who played
Mariana in the King’s Crown Shakespeare
Troupe’s Spring 2010 production of Measure for Measure, plans to
take time off from academia to pursue acting more intensely. “I’m
going to take at least a year to get back into the film industry and
theatre and get artistically productive again,” she says.
Nathalie Alonso ’08
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