Gutsy, Tough Changemakers

Alex Papadakis ’21 calls herself lucky. During her time at UNH she has been the recipient of several scholarships. This year that included assistance from the Lewis Family Scholarship in...

A Sense of Purpose

Traditionally, the stories featured in UNH Today’s “The Places They’ll Go” are all about where new graduates are headed. Not so for Whitney O’Connell ’21. By the time she received her master’s degree...

Prizewinning Dreams

Before Ely Marciano’s last semester on campus, the graduating senior claimed a first by becoming the only student in the College of Liberal Arts to win the Maurice Prize for Innovation.

Excellent Faculty

Every year, a chosen few of UNH’s outstanding faculty members from each college and school receive Faculty Excellence Awards in recognition of their achievements in teaching, scholarship and service...

Good Beer, Good Jobs

Timothy Fischer ’20 is the assistant brewer for Border X Brewing in Bell, California. Brooklyn Zielie ’21 works for Anheuser-Busch in Merrimack, New Hampshire, as a quality analyst running lab tests...

Researching His Future

Travis Fischer ’21 is into research. Specifically, research into diseases like cancer. He wants to help stop them from devastating people’s lives by working to develop new therapies and possibly be...

Fulbrights Increase Mutual Understanding

Seven UNH students are part of a celebrated moment in the history of scholarships as 2021 marks the 75th anniversary of the Fulbright Program, signed into law in 1946 by President Harry S. Truman.

Challenged to Meet the Challenges

Grace Roy ’22 started mapping her future when she was in middle school, a future that aims to see people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol get the help, and respect, they deserve.

Prestigious NSF Graduate Fellowships Awarded

Four UNH students have received National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships, given to students pursuing master's and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics...

Making It Work

As a nontraditional UNH student, Elizabeth Kipp ’21 took 16 credits a semester her sophomore and junior years so she could finish her undergraduate degree in social work in three years.

From Aliens to New Orleans

A September night in 1961 changed the lives of Betty and Barney Hill when, while driving through New Hampshire’s Franconia Notch area, they allegedly encountered aliens. It would become the first...

Liking Lumpfish

Lumpfish. That’s what was featured in the first video Nate Spada '19 ever posted to TikTok, lumpfish and their eggs. Not exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to draw much interest, let alone more...

Racism In Science

There is data that supports the racism that’s at play when more Black people than white are stopped while driving. Or denied housing in an area despite the fact that redlining became illegal in 1968...

Helping to End the Fear

Early in December, when the state of New Hampshire was expecting its first shipments of COVID-19 vaccines, officials sought help with distribution. Volunteers who would assist with all aspects of the...

Fully Immersed

In a normal year, nursing students begin their senior practicum during the last semester before they graduate. But as COVID-19 has repeatedly proven, nothing has been normal since the pandemic began.

Building Essentials

It’s not just about the buildings. It’s about the way they all fit together. It’s about the outdoor spaces as well as the indoor. It’s about the experience the buildings create.

ECenter Ideathon/Hackathon

When some people hear the work ‘hack’ they think identity theft; compromised information, gained when someone illegally accesses their computer. But the hackathons hosted by the Peter T. Paul...

Black History is American History

“What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice,” historian and author Carter Godwin Woodson said...

To the Woods

If everything goes according to plan for Krista Rodrigues ‘22G, you may come across her one day working on a trail in the Whites. If not there, then along another mountain belt. It doesn’t matter...

“I Do Solemnly Swear”

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the...

A Future in Criminal Justice

A desire to better understand how people think led Gordon Unzen ’21 to major in psychology. He added philosophy after taking social and political philosophy, and then justice studies when he realized...

Hey COVID: The Show Went On

How a theatre major adapted to virtual performing.

A Huge Step Forward

Hannah Sorensen ’22 has been working at Portsmouth Regional Hospital as a phlebotomist for the past two years. The part-time job has her drawing the blood of patients in the emergency room, as...

Challenge Met

Heeding the advice judges offered during the 2019 Social Venture Innovation Challenge helped a team committed to recycling garner three awards in this year’s event, an affirmation that their idea is...

Another First

Memorial Field is known for hosting graduates and athletes. But the event that took place on Dec. 2 was likely a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence as members of the New Hampshire House and Senate met...

Honoring Service, Sacrifice

With ROTC scholarship, Gary pays tribute to his father’s military service and mother’s dedication to family

Researching the Sea

First there was walking the beach with her mother, crabbing with her father, and falling in love with the sea. Then carrying that love through high school, into her college career. From there, Mary...

Small Problems

During the 2020 spring semester, when the coronavirus shut down the UNH campus, Brent Bell had to figure out how to keep teaching his wilderness first responder course, which typically includes trips...

Sustaining Platinum

When it comes to sustainability you can never have too much validation, particularly when it recognizes a commitment that runs deep, as it does at UNH. The latest distinction comes from  the...

COVID and the Brain

In the early days of COVID-19, as people were trying to filter the onslaught of information and what it meant to them, Amy Ramage was focused on their brains. Or more specifically, the brains of...

A Clearer Vision of History

Columbus Day became a national holiday in 1937. It would be more than 50 years later — and 500 since Columbus arrived in America — before people came to officially recognize the impact the foreign ...

Electing a President: History Repeats Itself

We’ve heard all the adjectives describing the 2020 election climate — challenging times; tumultuous times; unprecedented times; even, times of unprecedented challenges.

Outdoor Groupies

Grace McCulloch ’21 is a self-proclaimed groupie. But not the celebrity fan kind. As a wildlife and conservation biology major, being involved with the UNH Extension program Nature Groupie is an...

GERMS 101

It’s not that Davida Margolin had a crystal ball or whatever one might need to predict the future when she was preparing to teach this semester. It’s all right there in the science: how a coronavirus...

From Farm-to-Fork to Hunger

Alexandra Papadakis ’21 has long been interested in food. When she started at UNH, she thought that interest would take her in the direction of how it’s grown, harvested, marketed, consumed— that...

Honesty, Transparency And Tough Love

Kenneth Holmes, senior vice provost for student life, talks with UNH Today about his new role.

A Movement Not A Moment

Tamara Marcus knows that if there isn’t a way to address a problem, you find one. A Ph.D. candidate at UNH, Marcus helped cofound the Advocates for Social Justice in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Move-in Days

The first day of school never looked like this. Neither has any other move-in day.

The Work Begins With Us

Nadine Petty is UNH’s new chief diversity officer and associate vice president for community, equity and diversity. She comes to us from the University of Iowa where she was the executive director of...

Reaching for a Galaxy Far, Far Away

After her first semester at UNH, Morgan Saidel was miserable. It took a course in astronomy for her to realize it was because she had ignored her instincts to reach for the stars.

“Yours For The Building”

“For more than 30 years, John Lewis has had an unwavering commitment to the civil rights movement,” then-UNH President Dale Nitzschke said in his 1994 introduction of that year’s commencement speaker...

Being Part of the Wave

There’s a pretty big gap between a career in design research and one in occupational therapy, but Abigail Baker has found herself a bridge. Not only that, she’s been awarded a $10,000 scholarship to...

A World Shaped By Race

In the two months since George Floyd was killed by police, protesters have continued to call for change. They might not march every day in every city, but they are still marching.

Looking Toward Fall

If this were any other year, we wouldn’t be talking about plans to reopen UNH in the fall. It would never have closed. During any other summer, campus would be teeming with activity as a mix of...

Falling in Love with Chemistry

Editor’s note: This is one in a series we call “The Places They’ll Go” that has graduating seniors sharing their plans for the future.   Daniel DiRocco ’20 was always into biology. He goes so far as...

Early Activism

Ronelle Tshiela ’21 has a friend who never drives with anything in his pockets. He keeps his license and registration on the dashboard so if he gets stopped by the police he doesn’t have to reach...

Boring It's Not

A course in the science of daydreaming got Lauren Flynn ’20 thinking about the creativity that can bloom when our minds are free to wander. That led to a research position in the affect, cognition...

Helping His City

Sean Sutherlin ’21 is from Minnesota. He lives in a small city outside of Minneapolis, where protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in May led to rioting and looting. On the fourth day — once...

"We Must All Protest"

In a 1967 speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” He went on to ask what America had failed to hear. 

Proving the Naysayers Wrong

The messages we receive when we’re young can stay with us — the things people tell us or suggest are true. David Walker ’20 came out of high school thinking he wasn’t “intelligent enough” to go into...