Anita On '22, Chloe Hasund '22, Jackson Kwon '22, Jameson Crandell ’22
During the College of Human Ecology’s 2022 commencement, Anita On ’22 spoke about grit – meaning perseverance and passion for long-term goals – and how the class of 2022 embodies that concept.
Everything we have achieved did not, and will not, come without its challenges. But every time we found a way to push through and become stronger with the community and support around us.
A human development major, On was part of the Brain Days team in the Affect and Cognition Lab, the Advanced Cooking Education Program, and a scholar in the Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE). On is this year’s Florence Halpern Award winner, and a two-time recipient of the Elsie Van Buren Rice Award in Public Speaking.
“We are now closing a substantial chapter of our lives, but this is just the beginning,” On told her fellow students.
For On, that beginning will start as a research associate for the Texas A&M AgriLife Research & Extension Center in Dallas.
And there are also new beginnings for other CHE graduates.
Chloe Hasund ’22 walked into the Introduction to Global Health class taught by Jeanne Moseley on the first day of her spring semester and had a good feeling.
“It was in that class that I knew I had made the right choice in selecting not only my major but also Cornell as an institution,” Hasund recalled.
Hasund is a global and public health sciences major with minors in biomedical engineering and infectious disease. She is headed to the National Institutes of Health to study the Ebola virus with Dr. Nancy Sullivan as part of an Intramural Research Training Award. After her time at NIH, Hasund plans to pursue a Ph.D. in epidemiology, with the goal of serving as an epidemic intelligence service officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jackson Kwon ’22, a fashion design management major, is taking the skills he acquired at Cornell to The Row, a luxury fashion label. Kwon is a Merrill Presidential Scholar, an award given to Cornell’s most outstanding graduating seniors. Kwon said he will miss his involvement with the Dean’s Undergraduate Advisory Council now that he has graduated.
“I will especially miss being able to regularly cross paths with Dean [Rachel] Dunifon throughout my time as an undergrad,” Kwon said.
Jameson Crandell ’22 is headed to Yale to pursue his Ph.D. in microbiology, but it was one of the first classes he took at Cornell that started his path there.
“My favorite class at Cornell was Introduction to Public Health,” Crandell said. “When I took this course as a freshman, I felt as though it was really the start of my journey at Cornell and laid the foundation for my public health studies.”
Crandell, who was captain and MVP of the men’s swim and dive team, said he will miss the global and public health sciences cohort, describing them as an amazing and diverse group of individuals who share a passion for public health.
“I can’t wait to see where their passions take them,” Crandell said.
Kaite Cisz ’22, Sofia Urquiola ’22, Matthew Canabarro '22, Quinn Guthrie ’22
Marine science is a passion for Kaite Cisz ’22 who is headed the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary to study fisheries science, specifically in anatomy and genetics. Cisz wants to use her degree from Cornell in human development and her future studies at VMIS to teach young children about the changing oceans.
Cisz was a student in the CORALS (Cornell Ocean Research Apprenticeship for Lynch Scholars) program and a PRYDE Scholar, which brought some of the most meaningful work she did at Cornell.
“The work with Dr. Tony Burrow and our 4-H partners to facilitate and build an evaluation tool for the anti-racism program Act for Change has been extremely meaningful,” Cisz said, adding that CHE will always hold a special place in her heart.
Sofia Urquiola ’22 did not begin her Cornell studies as a CHE student, but one particular class made her realize that CHE should be her home.
“My most impactful class was Infancy and Childhood with Dr. Tamar Kushnir; it convinced me to transfer to CHE as a human development major,” Urquiola said. “Dr. Kushnir became my mentor and my research professor when I joined PRYDE, and she helped me to grow and excel.”
Like Cisz, Urquiola was an Act for Change facilitator; she won the 2022 Flora Rose Prize for Excellence in Community Service and was a Meining Family Cornell National Scholar. She is headed to Columbia University where she will work toward a master’s in social work. She will miss the care that everyone in CHE has for each other.
In other colleges, there may be atmospheres of competition, but in CHE, I really feel like everyone wants you to succeed.
It’s that care – and tightness of the CHE community – that Matthew Canabarro will miss about Cornell. A design and environmental analysis major, Canabarro received the DEA Outstanding Senior Award and won third place in the 2022 International Interior Design Association’s Student Design Competition. Canabarro described the CHE faculty and staff as people you could turn to when seeking advice or wanting to discuss a specific topic.
“You really get to know everyone as a full person, and this made classroom and workplace experiences all the more fulfilling,” Canabarro said. Not everyone gets to go as a class to a professor’s house for s’mores or drive a professor home from the Human Ecology Building, but for me, these silly memories serve to emphasize the closeness between the administration and students I witnessed and experienced in Human Ecology.”
Canabarro said he made a late career shift and will be a user experience design intern at d1g1t, a wealth management startup based in Toronto.
Boulder, Colorado, is where Quinn Guthrie ’22 is headed after graduation. The fashion design management major will begin her career as a production and design associate at Pleiades Designs.
Guthrie received the Excellent Student Award for Fiber Science and Apparel Design every year from 2019-2022 and received a Human Ecology Summer Research Grant in 2020. Guthrie said she will miss having access to the resources available to Cornell students, including the design studios, 3D printers, laser cutters and ultrasonic bonding machines.
“Cornell has a lot of unique resources that helped me create anything I wanted and come up with inventive ideas,”
Guthrie said. “I never felt limited to designing just for my classes or the Cornell Fashion Collective. I could truly make whatever I wanted in order to best enhance my design knowledge.”
These students are just a few from the class of 2022, a class that Dunifon said will hold a special place in her heart as it is the first she welcomed as dean.
“During your time here, you transformed in important ways,” Dunifon told graduates during commencement. “Not only did you change, so did the world around you, in ways that none of us would’ve predicted when you first arrived.”