Forever Duke: Embodying the Spirit Through Service

In this episode of Duke GradCast, join Forever Duke Student Leadership Award winners Brian Cole, Emily Green, Francesca Magario, and Mercedes Muñoz as they discuss how the role of leading in the community during their time in graduate school.

Transcript

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LAUREN ZHANG

Hi, my name is Lauren Zhang, Associate Director of Development in Duke Graduate School. I'm delighted to introduce this episode of Duke GradCast, featuring the 2026 graduate student recipients of the Forever Duke awards. Duke's alumni are often called upon to embody the Forever Duke spirit by advancing our community's ideal of knowledge and service to society. The recently established Forever Duke Student Leadership Award recognizes current students who have gotten a headstart by having a tangible, positive impact on the Duke community during their time here. 

2025–2026 graduate student winners include Brian Cole, '25 Ph.D. graduate in Electrical & Computer Engineering; Emily Green, 2026 Ph.D. graduate in Integrated Toxicology & Environmental Health Program; Francesca Magario, a Ph.D. candidate in Romance Studies; and Mercedes Muñoz, a Ph.D. student in Psychology & Neuroscience. Their stories are different, but a common thread runs through all of them: a deep commitment to using their knowledge and experiences in service of others and to making Duke a better place for future generations, often in unexpected ways. 

We asked them first to share one word they felt described Duke. Let's listen in.

EMILY GREEN

Well, hello, everyone. My name is Emily Green, and I'm a graduating Ph.D. student from the Integrated Toxicology and Environmental Health Program, part of the Nicholas School here at Duke, and one word that I would use to describe the Duke community is “driven.”

FRANCESCA MAGARIO

And my name is Francesca Magario. I am a Ph.D. candidate in Romance Studies, soon to be Ph.D. this summer, and the word that I would use to describe Duke is “curious.”

MERCEDES MUÑOZ

My name is Mercedes Muñoz and I'm a graduating Ph.D. student in Psychology & Neuroscience, and one word that I would use to describe the Duke community is “passionate.”

BRIAN COLE

Hi, my name is Brian Cole. I graduated last year in the Department of Electrical Computer Engineering and my word would be “transformational.”

EMILY

So, I'm sure we all kind of came to Duke from very different places, both academically and personally. But at some point, something connected us to the community here. Does anyone kind of want to jump in and offer perspective into what really connected you to the community here at Duke?

MERCEDES

I can start. I was 22 years old when I got to Duke. I came right from my undergraduate experience to jumping right into my grad program, and I was very afraid and overwhelmed, to not have had any time between my bachelor's and my Ph.D., and I was really intimidated at first by all my other peers who seemed to have their life much more together than I.

Some of them had children, even, they were married, and I felt very out of my depth. But really quickly, as I kind of began to get to know the students in my program, they were all extraordinarily friendly. And I think that the Psychology & Neuroscience department’s first-year seminar really helped me understand that everyone, even if they were ten years older than me, we were all kind of coming, knowing very little about how to begin a Ph.D.

And so, it kind of set the baseline for all of us. And I no longer felt kind of lost, and I realized that everyone was a little bit confused. Everyone was a little scared. And from those experiences in first-year seminar, I was able to build really strong friendships with my peers and my cohort and professors in my department.

And I think that after my very first semester, I felt very confident be able to say, you know, “I'm a Duke Ph.D. student, and I know what I'm doing.”

FRANCESCA

That’s so nice. I feel like I got a delayed start because we started in 2020. So, it was August 2020, middle of the pandemic, and I was not sure what I was going to do. We were moving to Durham, but not really knowing what Durham was like because we couldn't access anything on campus, even. And so, it was very scary at first, but it took a long time to sort of find the community at Duke. Once the pandemic was over, I think that's when it really clicked that we were doing something, something great, and that the Ph.D. was actually starting, even though it had already started before.

BRIAN

When I joined it was fall 2021, my daughter was one years old and the first community that I found myself getting acquainted with was the Duke GradParents community, because they have support for students who are also parents. So that was my first community. And it was great. They had financial support, they had people who had resources and information who you could talk to, there were events. So we had, a lot, a lot of opportunities there for my, to help me with my own challenges with my daughter.

EMILY

Yeah, I definitely agree with everything you guys are saying. Like, I know my experience, I actually did work for about a year and a half before coming back to grad school after my undergrad. And so, kind of when I was starting here at Duke, everything was so new again. I wasn't used to taking classes, and it's just such a different kind of environment than you're experiencing when you're working.

And so, I think that transition for me was also like a bit overwhelming at first, but I definitely agree that the people here are just so welcoming, and they want to help. And there are so many resources to use. And so, I think kind of once you start to get your foot in the door and like, kind of just start to realize everyone's here to support you and lean on those people.

I think that really, that sense of community really created a sense of belonging.

MERCEDES

That's true, I feel like I've noticed that about Duke, is that people, even people that you would not expect, really do genuinely want to help you and want to see you do well, and so that was really a crazy realization.

For me, I came to Duke wanting to work, you know, with my advisor, Dr. Sarah Gaither, and I was co-advised someone else in the psych department, Dr. Christina Salvador. But, through taking classes in the psych department and, you know, some classes, kind of outside, I was able to find other professors who were really excited to help, you know, write letters of recommendation, meet outside of class to talk about career opportunities, and also other people in the department, like our [Director] of Graduate Studies, who I worked closely with, kind of in other leadership roles, you know, they'll move mountains for you, I feel, if you are genuinely interested in something, and they realize that there's some obstacle to getting you there. And that was really was something I really appreciated.

FRANCESCA

That is something I noticed too, when I came Duke, but especially in the later years of my Ph.D., that it really takes a village, and it's nice to find those people that make up your village. Because as individuals, I think that can do great things. But we can do better things when we have the support that we need.

And so, it's something that I always try to tell my students as well, is like, “Find your people and find the time to be with your people because it's just going to make your experience a lot better.”

EMILY

Yeah, so, I think for me, when I was interviewing at Duke, one of the things that kind of stood out to me was I could get a sense just from meeting with these students that were currently in the program, that there was a sense of belonging and a sense of community that I could tell.

And that's one thing that really stood out about this program and Duke specifically. And I found that it was more of a sense of community here than I saw at other institutions. And so, I really wanted to be a part of that. And so, that was one of the major factors that drove me to wanting to choose Duke for graduate studies.

And then once I got here, one of the things that I've always been really passionate about is community engagement, and being able to communicate my science to community members and people that our research is affecting, as well as just trying to educate and instill passion in science in children from a very young age.

And so, I had the opportunity to really become a part and participate with Community Engagement Corps, that is part of our department here at Duke. And that, to me, just gave me such a more meaningful purpose to my research to be able to communicate it with the community members that it's affecting, and also be able to participate in trying to create fun and engaging educational materials, to try to inspire kids to want to pursue paths in science.

And so, I think for me, that was one of the major paths that I found myself taking while—during my time at Duke. But I'm sure other people also have other things that they were allowed to kind of pursue those things that they were passionate with and find their community along the way.

FRANCESCA

Do you feel like you had an “aha” moment where you wanted to be more active on campus, or did it just happen organically?

EMILY

Honestly, I don't feel like there was any one moment. I feel like it's something that I kind of always was passionate about, being able to communicate my research. And so, it was more just once the opportunity kind of grew. The Community Engagement Corps has always been very active, but there was—I guess there was maybe one time specifically that I can talk about where our lab specifically wanted to be able to partner with them, and we didn't really have any idea of what we wanted this partnership to look like, or what we wanted the outcome to be.

So, we kind of just set a meeting for an hour, and the goal of it was just to kind of throw around ideas. And by the end of that meeting, we actually came out with this idea that we were going to create an educational board game, and that was going to be a board game that was aimed at trying to teach middle school students different concepts around eco-toxicology.

And that then became a whole like a four-year, three-and-a-half-year project that ended up really becoming this very cool thing that now is this real life board game that you can play. [Mercedes: That’s so cool!] And so, I guess there wasn't any one “aha” moment, but it was kind of just this accumulation of different events over time.

And finally, we just came up with an idea and decided to do it.

FRANCESCA

Yeah, I ask because I have kind of the same. [Emily: Yeah.] I would’ve had the same answer. I didn't have an “aha” moment. It just happened, especially the more I was teaching, the more I felt like I wanted to be more involved versus those years that I was in research. And so away from campus and more focused on other things.

I wanted to be involved and sort of give our students better experiences inside of the classroom, outside of the classroom, but also thinking about my colleagues, my peers, and making sure that, I don't know, that they had access to the same things that I had access to. 

BRIAN

I love these, the board game situation is really great. When you think of how to get involved, it's really nice to keep in mind that this is an opportunity for me to change what’s happening here or have some new activity that I can lead in this involvement where I'm not just following the rules and ideas of others, but I also get to input my own ideas and what I would like to do and bring that into this program.

And so, what happened for me was the EASE, EASE is a departmental organization within my department, Electrical Computer Engineering, ECE Advocacy for Student Engagement, we had funds for these events, and there's things that I also love to do—one of those is play board games. And this has developed—my volunteering in that organization developed to starting a small program within that program where we would basically have board game nights. It was sort of EASE board game nights that was happening at first on a monthly basis, and it moved into a biweekly basis.

It would just be open to the Electrical Computer Engineering department. And people would come and then get to meet each other. And there's so much diversity within us. And then someone had an idea of why not this other department, or other people from other departments; what if the union could join us, and so then we start collaborating with other groups and other people would come, and then we’d buy more board games the next semester.

So that group is still going now. But it's something that just through slow volunteering in EASE organizations, find out how to do activities that I want to do and then how I can lead those, so board game nights became one of the bigger things that I led while I was in that organization.

EMILY

I love that, that's awesome.

MERCEDES

Yeah. I think my experience is very similar to Emily’s in that when I was interviewing at Duke, there was really something so special about the graduate students I was talking to during those interviews. They all seemed genuinely happy and, you know, happy to be around each other and in their departments, which is not something that you see everywhere.

And more than that, it was also the first place, the only place that I interviewed, really, where I saw other students that looked like me. So, I'm Mexican-American and the graduate student population in our psych & neuro department, we, at that time, you know, I saw like four or five other Latina faces, and I was like, “Wow, that's crazy!”

Like, other departments have zero or maybe one, and other people, you know, from diverse backgrounds. And so, when I, that made me want to come to Duke because I could see myself being in those spaces because I already saw other grad students that were there before me. And once I got here, I realized, you know, it's not—it wasn't just like a one-time thing or a facade that people put up for interviews.

It was really real, people were really happy to be here. And felt, you know, happy to be around their peers. And that's kind of when I got here, I started getting involved in my—the summer after my first year—in the department's anti-racism community. So, that is a graduate student-led and faculty-supported group within Psychology & Neuroscience that was formed in the summer of 2020 after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and in support of Black Lives Matter movement.

Kind of just thinking about like, what is our responsibility as graduate students in Psychology & Neuroscience and in this space, like Duke, to be actively anti-racist and, you know, bias reduction and how we, can we, in this privileged position, open the barriers for other people? So, I've been most involved in one of the pillars of this anti-racism community that focuses on recruitment and retention of diverse students in the department, and so definitely didn't do this all alone.

I want to just also give a big shout-out to Carol and Joe and Nicolas and Armand, and, Justin, Zoe, who do as much work, if not more work, than I did. But one of the biggest events I'm really incredibly grateful that we got to pull off was that we implemented Duke Psych & Neuro’s first ever fly-out program for diverse grad student applicants a couple of years ago—we did two years of that, and, you know, maybe four or five of the students who came to our fly-outs actually got admitted to Duke and like, actually are here and now are our peers. So those are really incredibly gratifying opportunities. And now, because of some shifts in, you know, budget cuts, as I’m sure everyone’s seeing, we've been having to operate at a lower budget.

So now I'm really excited that we're working, we have this program implemented now where we pair undergraduate students at local universities that are not Duke with Duke grad students to do research here, giving them opportunities that they wouldn’t have had at their home institution to kind of open doors for them to pursue a Ph.D. in the future.

So, I think that at first, getting involved in leadership positions was really daunting. But I think that the culture of the Psych & Neuro department and the students who are, came before me, made it seem that it was, like, it was cool to get involved. I think sometimes in your Ph.D. the, kind of the unspoken is like, you should be always working on your research and like everything else is a waste of time.

But I think that if you surround yourself with the community of people who don't view these kinds of “extras” as a waste of time, it's more just like, it feeds your soul, and it feeds you to be more motivated to be able to do your research in the future. So, I'm grateful that I was surrounded by grad students and a department that viewed it kind of in that perspective, and allowed me to be able to do the work that has brought so much joy and opportunity to so many people.

EMILY

I like what you kind of touched on; there’s kind of—you typically think that, okay, yeah, like the idea of a Ph.D. is you're always really focusing in on this research. And so many people do hold that belief, and they think that they can't be involved with these other things because they're not going to have time or their other things are kind of going to suffer because of that.

But I think participating in all of these other kinds of like extracurricular activities, helping our communities, I think those things just really help to kind of give you a bigger picture of what's really important. Like, yes, of course, our classes and everything that we're taking, they are important, you know, but like, what's really important here? And I think it just helps to put everything into context.

And I think that just helps make everything feel a little bit more manageable, even if sometimes you feel like you're taking on a little bit more.

FRANCESCA

And there are so many opportunities at Duke.

EMILY

Absolutely.

FRANCESCA

Anything you can think of—board games, for example, now we’ve got a group of board games.

MERCEDES

I know, and I feel like my philosophy, I guess, when it comes to like, community engagement and working and like service, I feel like, is this idea that nothing happens in isolation. Like, our success, like, is not because we are really smart and we're the best. It's because there's a community of people that have supported us and advocated for us and, and, you know, created spaces for us.

And I feel like my… I, I just feel like such a strong belief that we have the responsibility to look back and, like, open the door for the person behind us, whether that's like, you know, by providing teaching resources or communities or, you know, creating board games and spaces and programs and, I don’t know, it just baffles me when I hear sometimes people will be like, “Oh, well, I don't owe anyone anything,” like, “I'm on my own path,” and I’m like, “Well actually, all of our paths interlock and like, we're a community and one person's actions affects the whole, so it's actually super important that we're all conscious of those things.

And I think that, yeah, Duke’s a great place to be able to, to live out those, those philosophies.

BRIAN

Right, I could definitely speak to this. Like, the first year, I'm thinking I need to be really busy and do something great with research, and really, it was the least busy years where more got done and more good things happened.

And the first year was really hard. Not because it was hard, but because I made it harder than it needed to be and nobody is asking for that. Nobody is asking for me not to get engaged with the community and the programs around and to volunteer. Nobody was asking for that. And the research milestones I was setting, nobody was, nobody was asking for that.

And I brought in what I learned from another place, and it wasn't helping me here. I had to adjust; I'm in a different spot. The milestones are different, actually. What I've requested to do is done in addition to what I'm assuming needs to get done. Actually, it's instead of—which is really surprising, because I took that first year really hard.

It's really, really hard. My daughter—picking her up from daycare at the end of the day and dropped her off when it started and running, running between the things I was trying to accomplish, very little got done that first year and I was very busy and very stressed, and eventually I learned, “Wait, wow, actually I could do what is being asked, and that's way less, and I could do a lot more and actually do better things because of that. I can see a way to look at a higher view and tackle more urgent, important tasks and less, smaller, smaller things.”

MERCEDES

Yeah, so let's talk about what that looks like day to day, ‘cause I really agree with, with what you said, because I think so many people come into a Ph.D. program, and they're really worried about, you know, performing and meeting those benchmarks and those milestones. And, and because a Ph.D. is so kind of structureless, for lack of a better word, it's hard to know whether or not you're hitting those benchmarks, like week to week, even month to month.

And so, I think that you kind of drive yourself crazy if you're always kind of with your head in the book, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding towards this like, imaginary goal. So, I think that my advice to, like, future Ph.D. students would be to take a moment, you know, to pause and like, look up from the book and, like, pull your head out of the sand and, and look around and see where you are, what you can get involved in that helps you feel more like a normal person.

Because a Ph.D. is, you know, five to six to seven years of your life. And if you're always working and only ever thinking about work, then it can get really, really scary and really lonely, really quickly. So, I think that all of us have kind of found communities that make it so that when we're not, you know, working, it makes it still enjoyable and pleasurable to be a Ph.D. student.

EMILY

Yeah, I completely agree. And I really like what you touched on, where you don't always have to be working, like you're going to drive yourself crazy if you're always constantly kind of trying to push toward this imaginary goal that you're setting for yourself. And that doesn't mean that, oh, we can just, you know, slack off. But that means you have to build your identity as other things other than your research, whether it's community engagement or service or other hobbies, and—like board games, things like that—other things that bring you fulfillment and enjoyment.

Like for me, I love biking and mountain biking and doing all these active hobbies outside. And I think being able to have those other identities and things that you're passionate about helps also build resilience. Because depending on what your research is, whether you're in data science or you are in lab research or other kinds of like, types of Ph.D. programs, there are going to be times where things are failing and things are not working.

And, if you're building your own identity solely around your research, you're going to have that sense of, “I'm a failure, I'm not good enough.” And that's obviously not true at all. But I think being able to have those other hobbies and those other things that you are passionate about and driven to pursue, I think helps build resilience and being able to navigate setbacks.

FRANCESCA

I totally agree with both of you, and working more doesn't always mean that we're working better. And it's, I think it's harder at the beginning when you're really trying to match that idea of what a Duke Ph.D. student should look like, trying to navigate a heavy course load. We have teaching in my department; we start teaching on year two.

So that's, that also adds a lot of the stress. And then you're starting to research, you're starting to navigate how to be an academic, going to conferences. And so, it's a lot to deal with. And thinking back, yes, it's easy to say, you know, you should look up from the book, and I can see saying that to myself, too, but I would have not believed you, [Emily: That’s true.] like, year 1 or 2.

EMILY

I would not have believed myself either.

FRANCESCA

Right? But as you go, and I think maybe for me, it was like, after the preliminary exams, I had a moment to breathe and be like, okay, now I know what my trajectory is going to be. So it's going to be easier to think about how else I can, you know, engage with the broader Duke community and do something that is worth doing on top of research.

MERCEDES

What did that look like for you? Like specifically, what communities were you most involved in and what roles did you take in those communities?

FRANCESCA

Yeah, I mean, I just really wanted to be involved with the Italian program. So, I am in the Romance Studies, it's a comparative track. So I work across languages, doing Italian, Spanish. And I have been mostly teaching Italian since I've been at Duke. And so, I've been trying to be very active with all of the programming, participating, organizing events for our students, extracurricular activities.

I have been leading for a few years—this has been one of my favorite things to do, actually, at Duke—I’ve been leading a cooking class in Italian for our students.

MERCEDES

[Emily: That's awesome.] I actually heard students talking about that class the other day. Like, I guess they were registering for something, and they were like, “I really want to take the class where you're cooking in Italian!” And I was thinking like, “That sounds so cool, I wish I could take that class!”

EMILY

Yeah, can I take that class? What am I doing?

FRANCESCA

Yeah, we can have a private session.

So yeah, that was definitely like a huge part of being in the community. And to me, looking back, it doesn't seem like it was such a big deal. And maybe that's why it was so strange to also be awarded like, you know, this leadership award, because it feels like I would do it in a heartbeat, and it seems so natural.

But clearly students really enjoy it, and that's what we're trying to do. And not just our program, of course, like at Duke, I think there's very much the spirit of trying to give our students the best experience possible in the classroom, but also outside of the classroom, because at the end of the day, you know, your years at Duke will end, and it matters how you bring your experience from here to in the, you know, the world out there.

What about you guys?

BRIAN

Yeah, so, community is really important. And so, it's really good to remember that where you're at is not where you're always going to be. And these networks you're building are going to be the networks that you're building from at a later time.

FRANCESCA

But also, isn't the Ph.D. like the perfect time to start new hobbies? I don't know if you guys have started any new hobbies, [Emily: Absolutely.] other than, you know, board games.

EMILY

I think I started probably three new hobbies during my Ph.D., and those were like snowboarding—I learned to snowboard as an adult, which is a very painful hobby to take up; lots of falling—I learned to mountain bike, and I also started rock climbing.

FRANCESCA

Oh, me too!

MERCEDES 

I feel like every grad student starts rock climbing in their Ph.D.

FRANCESCA

Is it the crisis? Is it the crisis moment we all go through, we’re like, “Let’s climb.”

MERCEDES

I think so.

EMILY

You know, I don't know. To me, it's just like I enjoy it because it's like, it's like a puzzle. It's like I'm solving, like—that’s what we do on our like, right—like, I'm a scientist. I want to solve problems. And now this is literally a physical problem in front of me. And I have to make it up this wall.

FRANCESCA

That is so fun. I saw it more metaphorically—I also started rock climbing. [laughter]

EMILY

Yeah.

FRANCESCA

Apparently, we’re a cliché! And it was more like, you know, the journey as a Ph.D. student, like, from beginning to end is really hard. And the beginning of climbing, it's, yeah, it takes a lot of adjusting, but once you're up there, you're like, “Oh my gosh, I'm so proud of myself.” [Emily: Yeah.] “I did it, 47 feet up this wall.”

EMILY

Absolutely. [Mercedes: Wow! That’s amazing.]

BRIAN

I love that. Even just geographically, one of the options here, one, I often—I didn't really realize before coming here was, is wading in the Eno, like the Eno River, it's just fantastic. [Mercedes: It’s so lovely.] [Emily: It's great.] You know, when it's open, and it's warm, it’s just… wonderful. Yeah.

MERCEDES

There’s nothing like it.

FRANCESCA

We were recognized for this award because of our commitment to the Duke community. So, let's talk a bit more about this.

MERCEDES

So, I guess, I know we were recognized for the Forever Duke award, but I, it was a huge surprise to me. I was sitting at home, and I got the email in my inbox, and I was very shocked. And then when you were all at the award ceremony, I had, you know, other nominators coming up to me and saying, like, “What were you nominated for?”

And I was very shy because I was like, “I have no idea!” I had no idea what I was nominated for. And I spoke to my nominator, my advisor, Dr. Sara Gaither, and then she just started listing stuff, and I was like, woah. I mean, think like we were talking about before, sometimes you, you do things like Francesca’s saying, because it seems natural, like you would have done it even if nobody had asked you to do it.

But when it shows up on a sheet like that, and it's just like listing all the things you've done in the last five, six years, it does start to feel, like, really substantial. So, I think, you know, I'm very grateful to have gotten, you know, to receive the Forever Duke award. I, like I said before, I don't think that this happened because I was, you know, exceptional in some way.

I think that it's a team effort. All of these, like, you know, experiences. You work in community with other people. It's not just you. And I'm glad that I've been able to highlight some of the work that, you know, the anti-racism community does in psychology & neuroscience. And I think that this work is, is extraordinarily important to helping everyone have access to graduate education and feel like they can achieve, and they can, you know, step foot into a Ph.D. program. So, I'm really grateful to get the opportunity to talk more about it, and to have received the award.

EMILY

I completely agree with that, kind of the sentiment of just being so surprised and being like, “What? People are recognizing—you know, like, I would have just done all of this anyway.” So, I kind of already touched on it, but I was nominated for the award because of my participation in community engagement. Specifically, creating this educational curriculum for middle school students, including this kind of development of this fun, interactive eco-toxicology board game, which has honestly just been an incredible experience.

The name of the board game is Resilience. It was, obviously it was not just myself. I definitely have to give credit to the others that participated in the creation of this board game, other people with the Superfund Community Engagement Corps, they have been just like, absolutely incredible to work with. And so, kind of similar to your experience, when I received that email, I was like, I was so shocked.

I was like, because it was the, Dr. Kate Hoffman, the DGS of our program that had nominated me for it. And I honestly didn't even know that other people knew that we were working on this. I was like, to me, it was just this really fun thing to be involved with. And I had just, it had become such a big part of like the last four years or so in grad school.

And so, to just really be able to see it kind of start from when we're just throwing around ideas to literally manifest into this full physical board game that we can play. We have multiple copies of it, we can rent it out to schools, things like that. Like, that was just, like you said. I was going to do this anyway.

And so, this is just I'm like, I'm so honored to actually be able to be recognized for it because it's something that I'm just truly so passionate about.

BRIAN

Yeah. To what she said, like, I receive this award, it's like, what? What is being recognized here? Was it the emotional intelligence leadership or science engineers program that I founded that got funded through the DGS? Was it the GradParents, Duke GradParents club where I became president there and ran that, or was it going to be the running the board game events in Gross Hall every month for those couple of years? Then handed off to others? Or was it the EASE department where I was director of finance? Which one? And then I go and see what's written and there's all of it. So, Melissa Bostrom, highlights everything as like, oh, it was for all of those things.

It's just very nice. Have you really been, you’ve really been watching?

FRANCESCA

It's so interesting how we were all surprised to get these awards. Whether it was for a specific project or for a collective, you know, or a continued effort to improve our communities. And it just happens and we're like, “Oh, wait, maybe I am a leader.”

But do you guys have some sort of philosophy or approach to like, providing meaningful service or an idea that you follow that you think about as you're, you know, doing the work?

MERCEDES

I feel like when you love a place, and you love its people, you want to do things to give back to it and make the people that you know work and live their lives’ better. And I think that it just becomes like a subconscious choice to want to do things to help people and help the people around you.

I wouldn't say that necessarily is like a philosophy; I think it's more like an instinct.

BRIAN

Yeah. And also, when I was writing a grant for the Emotional Intelligence Leadership for Scientists and Engineers program, what I really was thinking was, I had a partner telling me that I need to work on my emotional intelligence.

So maybe I could just kind of combine what I want to do and what other people want to do and get what, what I would really like to experience, happen, because it benefits the community as a whole. And same thing with hosting events. It's, well, if I volunteer to manage events and lead events, well then, I get to pick and choose what those events might be, which is great.

That's great for all of us, because then we're doing really fun things, right? 

FRANCESCA

It’s a win-win situation. You get what you like, but also you're putting yourself in someone else's shoes and imagining what their needs might be. And so, it works out that way.

BRIAN

Absolutely.

So, okay. So, let's talk about what's next. So, for myself, if I start, I graduated in the winter of 2025. And then I started a postdoc at UNC. A couple months into that, I realized this is not the best path forward and looking out for other opportunities. And just from word of mouth, I learned about a startup that's looking for someone who does the kind of thing that I'm doing.

And, next thing I know, he's reaching out to me and says, “Hey, do you do, want to do electronic things?” And I said, “Yeah, sure.” And so now I'm at the startup over here in Raleigh, just bouncing between Durham and Raleigh these days. Yeah. What about you guys?

MERCEDES

Yeah. So, I'll be starting a faculty position at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia in the psychology department, and I'll be teaching cultural psychology. And I'm really excited to move up to Virginia and try to find some Duke alums up there to connect with and try to keep the spirit of Duke alive.

FRANCESCA

Congrats on surviving the job market, [Mercedes: You too!] which is dreadful; thank you, yes! 

MERCEDES

It’s been a hard year.

FRANCESCA

So, I will be defending my dissertation in June. And I will be starting also a faculty position as a lecturer of Italian and Spanish at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island, at the beach. [Brian: Wow!] Which is exciting. I will still be carrying, you know, Duke and Durham in my heart with me, and all of the incredible mentorship that I've received while here.

But it's nice to, you know, start a new chapter and take it all with me elsewhere. I'm very excited about it.

EMILY

Yeah, congrats to all of you. Those all sound absolutely incredible opportunities. I am actually currently navigating a few potential offers. I have not officially signed on to one yet, so I'm not going to say it, just until things fully get finalized. But I am planning on staying in the Durham area, I’m planning on staying in RTP.

I just have really created such a meaningful community here, and I'm not quite ready to leave that. And so, I am excited to still stay around and kind of, continue to pursue opportunities. I guess I can say this, that my future position will be pursuing opportunities in research, and research that has meaningful contributions to society and improving our environment.

MERCEDES

That's great, what more could you want? Dream job, I love it.

FRANCESCA

Congrats, everyone! [Brian: Yeah!]

It was so nice to meet you all guys, thank you.

MERCEDES

Yeah, Good luck in the next steps. 

EMILY

This was incredible.

BRIAN

Thank you guys. This was great.

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