5questions

In the mid-2000s, a sense that the Islamophobia brought on by the 9/11 terror attacks had somewhat eased gave rise to a new feeling of optimism among some Muslim communities in the United States. They saw an opportunity to remake certain aspects of their public perception, setting out to prove them...

Growing up along Ohio’s northeastern shore, Dave Lucas felt the poetry of Lake Erie many years before he knew its landscapes could be thought of that way. A moment of epiphany for him came as a teenager, reading Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio—a poem that not only name-dropped a place familiar...

Pallavi Tiwari’s passion for biomedical engineering started in a garage in India. When she and a college friend realized the difficulty people with blindness have in navigating their surroundings—especially indoors—they set to work in Tiwari’s garage, teaching themselves how to solder. They then de...

Sara Lee may be new to the role of director of health services at Case Western Reserve University, but she’s no stranger to the university. Lee graduated from the School of Medicine in 2001 and started working as an attending physician at University Health Service in 2008. But years before, during ...

Aaron Aguilar almost missed his chance to play football. Worried about the injuries he might suffer, his father wouldn’t let him take the field. But Aguilar was determined to play, so in eighth grade, his mother snuck him out of the house to sign up for Junior All-American Football. “Ever since the...

As the clock was winding down during the Case Western Reserve University Spartans’ football game against the Carnegie Mellon University Tartans last Saturday, it seemed as though the team’s season was coming to an end. But with just 28 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, a punt block by senior...

When Oghenerukeme Asagba began interviewing applicants for a job at her family’s store in Nigeria, the then-high schooler became overwhelmed. But it wasn’t by the responsibility of selecting a potential employee; it was the realization that, despite having high school diplomas, many of them lacked t...

Adorning Mike Fisher’s Brooklyn, New York, apartment is a print of Cleveland’s skyline he bought years ago on Etsy, a global online marketplace of which he is now chief technology officer. Since taking the executive-level position in August, the skyline has served as a workweek reminder of his Nort...

"What do you think an addict is?" That was the question Sheryl Hirsh, assistant director of the Laura and Alvin Siegal Jewish Lifelong Learning Program, posed to more than 100 law enforcement officials at the Ohio Attorney General's Law Enforcement Conference last fall. Some answers included: “dish...

Edwin Pacheco Colón had never heard his mother so scared. Calming her as she crouched in her room, he stayed on the line while Hurricane Maria battered her home and the rest of Puerto Rico. Then, silence. For days. And not just from his mother—nothing came from family members spread around the isl...