5questions

On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker slammed into Prince William Sound’s Bligh Reef, resulting in one of the most notorious environmental disasters in U.S. history. As an associate for major Los Angeles law firm O’Melveny & Myers, Sharona Hoffman was assigned to work the defense on the ma...

Pandora Robertson is a database applications developer by day and theater director by night. The roles—seemingly in stark contrast to each other—are not as different as one might think. “Development and directing are similar in that you must create something out of nothing,” she said. “Both require...

As an undergraduate at University of Maryland, College Park, Rhonda Y. Williams’ first black women’s history class was taught by prominent scholar Sharon Harley. A few years later, when applying for graduate history programs, Harley wrote her a recommendation letter. Then, in graduate school at Univ...

One hundred years ago, Cleveland was the center of the start-up world, led in part by the presence of moguls such as John D. Rockefeller. By the early 2000s, the tables had turned—dramatically—as the area ranked dead last in Entrepreneur magazine’s list of 61 entrepreneurial regions. Fast-forward to...

Today marks the end of Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation Week at Case Western Reserve University—a week filled with activities and events, many of which third-year chemistry PhD candidate Shu Situ helped organize. As co-chair of the activities committee for the Graduate Student Senate ...

Stacy McGaugh joined the faculty at Case Western Reserve University in 2012—a career move that was a long time coming for him and his family. For the previous 14 years, McGaugh commuted on a weekly basis between College Park, Md., and Cleveland. He worked as in the Department of Astronomy at the Uni...

In his nearly four years at Case Western Reserve University, senior David Thompson has flourished on the basketball court, in the community and, most importantly, in the classroom. Thompson, the team’s starting center, finished his Spartan basketball career earlier this month as the university’s le...

As a 5-year-old, Ellen Kuerbitz watched as her older sister practiced Irish dancing, enthralled by the art and hoping to emulate her skills. Little did Kuerbitz know, her passion for dance would sculpt her into a premier performer. Soon, the Northeast Ohio native will display her talents by perform...

By: Shivani Parikh Brittney Bunn’s passion for science began in a high school classroom in Barberton, Ohio—and now it’s taken her all the way across the country to a national conference in Ventura, Calif., where she recently presented her research. The Gordon Research Seminar, a gathering of inve...

Daycare teacher, telemarketer, vacuum salesperson, property manager…women’s studies scholar? It may seem an unlikely résumé, but for Shannon Lundeen, a series of odd jobs led her to find her calling as the director of Case Western Reserve University’s Flora Stone Mather Center for Women. After grad...