Meet the Class of ‘23!

Our graduates are the embodiment of our mission: Knowledge for the public good. With doctorates and master's degrees, they are shaping research as postdocs at prestigious institutions, influencing policy in the nonprofit sector, and inspiring the next generation of learners at numerous colleges and universities. 

China Sajadian (Ph.D. ’22, Anthropology), who spent the last year as the Eveillard Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Smith College, begins a tenure-track position at Vassar College in the fall. She shares her experience on the academic job market and turning her dissertation into a book.

 

Jane Quinn (Ph.D. ‘23, Urban Education), an architect of the community schools movement, returned to school in retirement to make a difference in a new way and earned her Ph.D. at age 78. 

 

Cognitive Neuroscience master’s graduates Daisy Reyes, Denis Shor, and Tikva Nabatian are all entering Ph.D. programs at the Graduate Center this fall. They share how the master’s program helped them get accepted into competitive doctoral programs. 

 

Henry O. Love (Ph.D. ’23, Psychology, Developmental Psychology training area) says his doctoral studies focusing on homeless youth helped him bring research and theory to his role as vice president of policy and planning at WIN (Women in Need, Inc.), the city’s largest provider of shelter. 

 

Samantha Tramontano (Ph.D. ’23, Earth and Environmental Sciences) already has had an enviable career as a volcanologist, collecting samples as the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted. Now she heads to a postdoc at the American Museum of Natural History and shares this advice for other Ph.D. students.

 

Andrew Goldberg (Ph.D. ‘23, Theatre and Performance) had a successful career as a director, but says his doctorate helped him become a lecturer at the University of Arts London’s (UAL) Wimbledon College of Arts and get the stability he desired. 

 

Omnia Khalil (Ph.D. ’23, Anthropology), now a lecturer at City College, is active as a public intellectual, publishing in Arabic on topics related to urban change, violence, and life in Egypt after the 2011 revolution. 

 

Kavya Beheraj (M.S. ’23, Data Analysis and Visualization) credits her master’s program with helping her get a job as a data visualization editor at Axios. 

 

It was a family affair when Nishani Jayakody earned her Ph.D. in Physics – her father had received his Ph.D. from the same program, with the same adviser, and even the same research area. 

 

Cody Nager (Ph.D. ’23, History), whose research focuses on early American migration and citizenship in Atlantic and global context, landed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab, part of the Hoover Institution. He offers advice about securing postdocs.

 

Inspired by a sister with a neurological disorder, Carly Terracciano (Ph.D. ’22, Psychology, Clinical Psychology training area) has turned her interest in the human brain into a career in psychology. She recently finished an internship at the University of Florida and is now working toward her license to practice as a clinical psychologist in New York and Connecticut.

 

For her doctoral dissertation, Gisselle Mejía (Ph.D. ’22, Earth and Environmental Sciences) collaborated with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to investigate the impacts of its MillionTreesNYC initiative. Mejía is now a Guarini Dean’s postdoctoral fellow in environmental studies at Dartmouth College, where she is investigating the effects of land-use legacies on secondary forests in rural settings.

 

Agustina Checa (Ph.D. ’22, Music: Ethnomusicology) deposited her dissertation on alternative economies of music one day before starting as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Music, Multimedia, Theatre and Dance Department at Lehman College.

 

Angela Crumdy (Ph.D. ’23, Anthropology), whose dissertation examined Black women educators in Cuba through a feminist lens, is a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she co-teaches a course on race and education in Afro-Latin America.

 

Cristina E. Pardo Porto (Ph.D. ’22, Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures) landed a tenure-track job an assistant professor of languages, literatures, and linguistics at Syracuse University. She shares insightful details about her own job search to help others.

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