I’ve often been told I have an “old soul.” Guilty. My thoughts run deeper than small talk, and they demand space. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I filled journals before dinner and lost myself in books after. Through words, I could be whoever I wanted, wherever I wanted. What I didn’t realize then was that my pastime was quietly shaping how I made sense of myself.

Migdalia Lopez, E25, held a wrench before she could even write her name. The youngest of four daughters in a low-income Alabama household, she became her father’s unofficial assistant in the garage—a space filled with rusted lawnmowers, sputtering engines, and endless questions.

Her dad, a self-taught mechanic with experience in landscaping, construction, and consulting, didn’t know he was mentoring the family’s first engineer. By day, he worked as a janitor at Mercedes-Benz. By night, he split his time between caring for his family and fixing machines in the garage. “I wanted to be let into that world I didn’t have access to,” Lopez says, recalling the thrill of watching her dad work and hearing stories about the engineering projects happening at Mercedes-Benz. Each time she grasped the logic behind a tool or cracked a problem on her own, nerves gave way to excitement—laying the groundwork for the problem-solving mindset that would define her future.

As colleges face shifting enrollment patterns, resource cuts, and the lingering impacts of the pandemic, academic advising must evolve quickly.

That was the focus of a recent Chronicle of Higher Education webinar titled The Evolving Work of College Advising, where Jennifer Stephan, Dean of Academic Advising and Undergraduate Studies at the Tufts School of Engineering, joined a panel of national thought leaders in higher education. Alongside experts like Scott Carlson (Senior Writer, The Chronicle), Ned Laff (Co-author, Hacking College), Kyle Ross (Executive Director, NACADA), and Ruth Baer (President, InsideTrack), Stephan helped unpack key questions including: How can advisors adapt to growing caseloads while still delivering meaningful support to students?

Greses Pérez, McDonnell Family Assistant Professor of Engineering Education in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Fellow at Tufts University’s Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO), has been selected as the  2025 National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow. This fellowship will support her ongoing work on how multilingual and multidialectal communities learn and apply engineering in ways that reflect their lived experiences and cultural understandings.

Pérez’s current project, Thriving in Fogaraté: Engineering Ingenuity in Haitian-Dominican Communities, investigates how engineering and robotics knowledge is shaped by the everyday experiences, language, and cultural traditions of Haitian-Dominican communities. Her research involves partnering with communities in Dominican Republic’s former bateyes—under-resourced sugar plantation towns that are primarily home to descendants of Haitian and Dominican sugarcane workers—and reimagines bateyes as powerful learning environments. Pérez highlights how the bateyes “have cultivated a culture of engineering ingenuity by integrating technical knowledge with community practices across generations.” 

Across the United States, 12% of the population lives with at least one chronic condition, which can place a heavy burden on families, hospitals, and the healthcare system at large. What if a single device could help reduce hospital admissions, free up critical resources, and lower health costs, while working equitably across all skin tones?

Associate Professor Valencia Koomson of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is leading that charge. Alongside PhD candidates Blessing Kolawole (Computer Science) and Ravi Durbha (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Koomson’s team has developed an AI-powered health monitoring device designed with inclusivity at its core. 

In the busy streets of Gurgaon, Haryana of 2020, Freya Gupta dared to dream of a life beyond the sea surrounding her home. That dream inspired her to journey across the world to learn more about artmaking and the impact of art. Despite the skeptical eyes of her parents, Freya remained steadfast in her determination to chart her own course. Now armed with a combined degree in clinical psychology and Studio Art (with a focus on graphic arts), Freya has come out of her college experience feeling fulfilled at having followed her dream. Freya's academic voyage at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA) has been characterized by remarkable resilience and an unwavering commitment to cultivating community. As she prepares to bid farewell to her alma mater, Freya reflects on her transformative journey, shaped by her profound need for community, advocacy for mental health awareness, and for her unwavering dedication to intentional artistry.

Love is in the air tonight, you can find it beneath the stars.