 All right, well good evening folks. My name is Ryan Hargraves and I am the director of admissions at the University of Vermont. Welcome to UVM Live at Five. This is an opportunity for you to learn more about our community through the eyes of some of our most distinguished members. Today we are fortunate to be joined by one of our most exceptional faculty members. She is Professor Alice Fathergill and I will let her tell you a little bit more about her. So thank you for joining us Alice. Why don't you give us a little bit of perspective on your background and your path that led you to University of Vermont. Okay, thanks Ryan. I'm Alice Fathergill and I'm originally from Washington, DC studied at the Natural Hazard Center at the University of Colorado and came to the University of Vermont in 2003. So I'm a disaster sociologist. I study inequality and vulnerability in the context of disasters. And my most recent project was studying children and youth in Louisiana who had been in Hurricane Katrina. So it was an in-depth look at their experiences and their displacement in that disaster. And it was recently published in a book, Children of Katrina. Okay, awesome. Well, it certainly wasn't a disaster for the University of Vermont to hire you. We're very happy to have you here. But why don't you give us a little bit more perspective about your research and how you bring that into the classroom for the benefit of your students? Okay, sure. So well, I teach a number of classes and one of the classes that I teach is called the Sociology of Disaster, which is a class that examines some of the major debates and theories and concepts in the field of disaster social science. So we might look at risk perception. We might look at recovery. We might look at all sorts of various issues around who is most at risk in a community to a disaster. So what I find in this class is that I am constantly bringing in my research of the past 20 years. So I studied people who volunteered in New York City after 9-11. I studied women's experiences in a flood in Grand Forks, North Dakota. And I've been all of those research projects find their way into every one of my lectures, actually. So just this morning in my class, we were talking about some of my research and I brought in what I learned about children in Louisiana and what I learned about the women in their families in Grand Forks. That's been a really wonderful thing to teach my expertise and bring those things into the classroom. I really, I really love doing that. Awesome. And speaking of your academic work and specifically your work with students, could you tell us about a specific student, someone interesting with whom you've worked who has perhaps taken advantage of the opportunity to connect with you and dig deeper into the field as an undergraduate student? Sure, sure. So one student who comes to mind is a young woman named Emma Squire who years ago took actually my Sociology of the Family class, then maybe a couple of semesters later, she was in my Sociology of Disaster class. And in that class, while we, during that semester, she was making plans to go study abroad in Nepal. And I was really excited for her. And during that time, there were two major earthquakes in Nepal. And so all of a sudden I started using Nepal, all the examples of what we were learning about Nepal. In class, she was preparing to go, sort of in the same ways I now talk about Hurricanes Maria and Harvey in class. We were talking a lot about Nepal. And she went. And one of the things that was interesting is that when she got there, she decided that her independent project was gonna be to travel to these villages in the Himalayas and do a qualitative research project on women who had gone through the earthquake. And it was phenomenal. She interviewed every woman in three different villages and learned about what their experience in the earthquake had been and what they needed for survival and how they were coping. And she did an amazing, amazing piece of scholarship. And just by coincidence, I was there in Nepal for an earthquake conference speaking. So I actually got to see her in Nepal, which was really very, just wonderful for me. And when she returned to UVM, of course I asked her to be my teaching assistant for sociology of disaster. And of course she was wonderful. And I actually had her do an entire lecture and presentation on her Nepal research in the class. And then finally sort of the last piece of it is that we were asked by the people in Nepal to write a chapter for a book on the earthquake, which combined her expertise, her study of the women in Nepal. And I wrote the part about children and youth and what they had been going through. So we have a chapter together, which is nice. So she's a nice example of that. That's pretty awesome. So yeah, pretty incredible for an undergraduate student to be able to do all of it. Now, you've been here for 15 years and you also have a high school student who's gone through this process of looking at colleges now. But if you could just reflect on your experience and think about what you know about higher ed in general, maybe tell us some of the benefits in your opinion of a UVM education. Well, so yes, you're right. So I have a high school senior who is making this decision. And one of the things that I think is one of the strengths of UVM are the faculty. And most, I mean, everyone, every single one of my colleagues is doing really incredible research. They have really strong research projects. They are pretty incredible teachers. And so the faculty, it's such a strength. And so I tell my son, I really say, I don't think you can do better than right here. I think what I see of my colleagues is so impressive and I'm so interested in some of their research projects and the energy that they bring to the classroom. So I really feel like we succeed in having that model of professors who are very, very active doing their research and bring a lot of energy and expertise to the classroom and really like their students a lot and really enjoy the interaction with their students. Well, awesome. Well, that's great perspective to have. So I know your time is super valuable and I don't wanna take up too much of it, but this has really been wonderful and I think that gives folks a good perspective on what the community at UVM is like. So with that in mind, thank you, Professor Father Gill for joining us and we encourage you if you want to learn more about University of Vermont, check us out online, come visit us. We would love to have you learn more. So thank you for joining us for UVM live at five. Have a great night.