Throughout the afternoon, passersby stop and gather sporadically at the gleaming white tents on Library Mall. A few tables are set up on the grass, where a group of people are learning how to make paper. They dip wooden screens into buckets of water mixed with pulp made from recycled cloth and rags. Drawing them back out as the pulp collects into a mold, they then press the screens onto a thin layer of cloth to dry under the sun.
Dozens of people from around campus come by throughout the day, producing paper with their own hands, probably for the first time. Among those guiding the first-time papermakers is Grace Gooley, a senior majoring in chemistry and environmental studies. She’s also the lead undergraduate ambassador for the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. She jointly organizes this year’s papermaking event with Holding History, a student-driven humanities program that organizes public community events demonstrating how culture and knowledge are passed along through media.
But Gooley’s role in organizing the event is just one instance of her extensive campus involvement. In addition to serving as an ambassador for the Nelson Institute, she’s also a current L&S Dean’s Ambassador, the co-president of the Chemistry Undergraduate Research Board (CURB) and a member of Alpha Chi Sigma, a co-ed chemistry fraternity.
“It’s a lot of planning,” Gooley says, balancing her lab work and senior thesis in a schedule that would seem overwhelming for many. But for Gooley, it’s just a matter of planning: “I keep it all on Outlook,” she says.
Over the course of her undergraduate career, Gooley’s future aspirations have become increasingly clear — to make an impact in climate research. But this wasn’t always her intention.
“During my freshman year I was actually set on becoming a high school chemistry teacher,” Gooley says. “When I took an intro to climate and weather course during my sophomore year, I realized I wanted to switch gears.”
Gooley hasn’t completely abandoned the prospect of teaching, but her immediate plan after graduation is to continue doing research in a PhD program and eventually work for a government agency such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“I still want to go into teaching later, but I feel like I can make a bigger impact in climate change research,” Gooley says. “I really like the idea of constantly learning and trying to find new solutions.”
At the same time, Gooley also developed an interest in finding community among people in her major. Last year, Gooley applied to the Nelson Institute ambassadors program after receiving an email calling for undergraduate students interested in fostering a community for Environmental Studies majors and certificates.
“I was really interested, because I didn’t know any other environmental studies majors at the time,” she says. “I really just wanted to meet other people who had the same interests as me.”
But while Gooley tried to find community in her own major, she was also interested in bridging different people in various disciplines. Gooley is also an L&S Dean’s Ambassador, a position through which she hopes to organize joint events that would connect students from both L&S and the Nelson Institute.
“I’m trying to help bridge the gap between L&S and Nelson,” Gooley says. “There are a lot of people who are in both schools. It’d be really nice to organize more events targeted at both audiences, because there’s a lot of overlapping interests.”
Papermaking is one such event among a myriad of joint collaborations that Gooley has helped to organize during her time as ambassador, including a haunted house in Science Hall with the Japanese Student Association (JSA) and a plant swap for students and faculty to exchange plants with each other.
Collaborations like papermaking sometimes happen fortuitously. During the summer, Joshua Calhoun, an associate professor of English, reached out for a potential collaboration between his program Holding History and the Nelson Institute. Gooley happened to know Calhoun — she had taken one of his classes during freshman year and even attended his papermaking event on Library Mall, which he hosts annually as the co-director of Holding History.
Gooley and Calhoun both share an interest in building interdisciplinary communities, bridging the sciences and the arts.
This is especially true of papermaking — anybody can make paper.
The sheets of paper made during the event are stored away until Spring, when the Nelson Institute and Holding History plan to create an art exhibition in Science Hall featuring the papers made collectively by the community.
“I personally think community building is really important,” Gooley says. “I really want to try to make the student experience less intimidating, less complicated. Personally, I felt so much more comfortable on campus after joining these organizations because I know so many more people than just those in my lab or within my major.”
For Gooley, this kind of community-driven work is also valuable to being a student or even a researcher, especially in a field where collaboration between various disciplines is a matter of necessity.
“I think it’s important for issues like climate change, to be able to explain what you’re trying to do and what you’re researching,” Gooley says. “Especially in politics, where sometimes that knowledge isn’t being broadcasted in a way that’s very understandable to someone outside of that scientific community.”
Gooley admits that finding community can feel intimidating at first, especially for new students. But communities aren’t always closed off — more often than not, even the act of making paper with other students creates community around the objects we share.