Indeed, Macalester has long been known for helping students dig into the world\u2019s challenges by testing classroom theories through immersive, experiential learning opportunities. Mac students participate in large numbers in community service and community leadership, internship, and study away programs. Each year the college offers 60 courses with a community-based learning component in 17 different academic departments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want students to make a positive difference as they work for the common good,\u201d says Karin Trail-Johnson, Community Engagement Center director and Institute for Global Citizenship associate dean. More than 90 percent of Macalester students participate in some sort of community engagement before they graduate, she says. \u201cWe ask them to consider this question: \u2018What society do you want to live in?\u2019\u201d To do that, says Trail-Johnson, students must have the moral and community imagination to consider a better world, and then develop the skills they need to help make that change.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn important part of education is exposing students to the heartbreak of the world, the oppression, the historical faults,\u201d she says. \u201cBut we do them a disservice if we leave it at that. Our students practice being in the world, learning how to work toward changing imperfect and broken systems and becoming a force for good.\u201d<\/p>\n
To demonstrate that Mac historically has educated its alumni to be change agents, we have collected here the stories of several inspiring alumni who are acting as forces for good in the world.<\/p>\n
The Lawyer
\nCAIN OULAHAN \u201900
\nFounder, Oulahan Immigration Law, Milwaukee, Wisconsin<\/h3>\n
One of the hardest jobs Cain Oulahan \u201900<\/strong> tackles as an immigration attorney is turning away clients who have run out of options for staying legally in the United States. Saying no to those cases is about not raising false hopes. \u201cIt\u2019s the fair thing to do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n But Oulahan also shares in the joy of cases that end well for his clients. \u201cIt means so much for these families to stay together and to have more opportunities here than in the country they\u2019ve come from,\u201d he says. Oulahan first discovered the ups and downs of immigration law as a bilingual legal assistant working for a small immigration law firm in Milwaukee. He\u2019s fluent in Spanish, a language he studied at Macalester while earning a degree in Latin American studies. His language skills improved during a study abroad program in Nicaragua and while working for a Head Start program in Oakland, Calif., after graduation. \u201cThe legal assistant work made an impact on me,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in using language as a way of working with and learning about other cultures.\u201d The work was so meaningful, it inspired him to attend law school at Marquette University.<\/p>\n Last May, Oulahan started a solo practice, focusing on deportation defense, naturalization, and other immigration matters. His largest client group is from Mexico, but he serves immigrants from around the world.<\/p>\n \u201cSpeaking Spanish continues to be one of my biggest assets in working with clients,\u201d Oulahan says. \u201cIt makes them more comfortable and gives them confidence in my abilities.\u201d Oulahan also is on the board of several immigration law associations, works with the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinic, and frequently presents on immigration issues at nonprofits, churches, and schools.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sarah Craven \u201985<\/strong> advocates for women worldwide on issues of reproductive and sexual health.\u00a0When she sees photographs of healthy babies born to mothers around the world at UNFPA supported clinics, some in the midst of war zones or natural disasters, she is reminded that her work matters. \u201cThe photos tell the story of the importance of what we do, which is saving women\u2019s and children\u2019s lives,\u201d Craven says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe core of what we do is based in a woman\u2019s right to determine if, when, and how many children she wants to have,\u201d Craven says. \u201cWhen women have full access to healthcare, they can complete their education and participate fully in their local and national economies.\u201d<\/p>\n Besides advocating for the health and rights of women, UNFPA directs more concrete humanitarian efforts, such as providing sanitary napkins to schoolgirls in developing countries and clean childbirth delivery kits (a sheet of plastic, a razor blade, a piece of string, a bar of soap) to women who lack access to hospitals or other resources for the safe birth of their babies.<\/p>\n Even in the face of the Trump administration\u2019s decision to eliminate U.S. funding for UNFPA, Craven remains optimistic: \u201cIn my 20 years of doing this work, I\u2019ve never seen women\u2019s rights discussed in such a personal yet universal way. Women are speaking up and demanding that their dignity and rights are respected\u2014 whether they live in Manhattan or Madagascar.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Karlos Hill \u201902<\/strong> believes that historical scholarship\u2014taken beyond the academy\u2014can transform communities. As an expert on the black experience of lynching (his book, Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory, was published in 2016) and America\u2019s history of racial violence, Hill is particularly interested in how his work can help communities grapple with the legacy of historical events that happened in their midst. \u201cI want my scholarship to be part of the effort to transform our understanding of and relationship to institutional racism and violence,\u201d Hill says. \u201cMy goal is to create socially useful knowledge that applies to realworld problems and issues.\u201d Hill serves on the Tulsa Race Riot Centennial Commission (that city\u2019s 1921 riot was one of the deadliest in American history), which has been asked to raise awareness and promote racial reconciliation by examining the riot\u2019s legacy. He founded the Tulsa Race Riot Summer Institute\u2014to be taught in the Greenwood District, the site of the riot\u2014to provide K-12 teachers with the tools and resources they need to teach about the riot in culturally appropriate and sensitive ways.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re addressing Tulsa\u2019s legacy of racial discrimination,\u201d says Hill. He\u2019s also an historical advisor to the Tulsa Public Schools\u2019 community advisory council, which is considering changing the names of city schools that honor Confederate leaders. In addition, he co-hosts a podcast, Tapestry: Conversations about Race and Culture, which discusses issues surrounding justice, equality, and peace. Hill engages his students in the study of history by illuminating the contemporary relevance of historical people, events, and processes: \u201cI use my lens as an African-Americanist to promote understanding of complicated histories and the way in which those histories connect to issues today.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lisa Peterson \u201981<\/strong> teaches graduate-level courses in toxicology and operates a research lab at the University of Minnesota. With a focus on investigating how environmental chemicals harm people, she\u2019s currently working on two projects: the first looking at links between children\u2019s exposure to chemicals and their health, and the second exploring the carcinogenic properties of chemicals other than nicotine in tobacco. Her second project is an especially sticky one, given that there are some 7,000 chemicals contained in tobacco smoke, 70 of which have been shown to be carcinogens. \u201cIf we propose lowering some of the constituents, such as NNN (a known esophageal carcinogen), but leave other chemical levels high, are we really impacting the carcinogenic risk of tobacco?\u201d Peterson asks.<\/p>\n Peterson first discovered her love for scientific research at Macalester. She spent one summer in a University of Minnesota pharmacology lab growing cancer cells and treating them with a chemotherapeutic drug and another at Macalester working on an organic synthesis of a pine beetle pheromone to be used to reduce the bug\u2019s destruction of trees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When Martha Mills \u201963<\/strong> volunteered for the Lawyers\u2019 Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Mississippi in March 1967, she only intended to stay for a month, helping with smaller tasks so staff attorneys would be free to handle major civil rights cases. \u201cI soon realized that they badly needed more good lawyers,\u201d Mills says. \u201cThe injustices and inequalities were stunning, and I had no desire to live in a country where any group of people was not the equal of any other.\u201d That is how Mills ended up trying hundreds of civil and criminal cases for the Lawyers\u2019 Committee, both as a staff attorney in Mississippi and later as chief counsel in Cairo, Illinois. In 1968, she won the first jury verdict in Mississippi since Reconstruction for more than $1 million on behalf of the estate of a black man murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. Mills\u2019s book, Lawyer, Activist, Judge: Fighting for Civil and Voting Rights in Mississippi and Illinois (ABA Publishing, 2015), details her civil rights work.<\/p>\n Mills has always been a trailblazer. She attended Macalester\u2014graduating in three years\u2014even though her parents thought girls shouldn\u2019t attend college. In 1965, she became the first woman attorney hired at White & Case in New York City. She was a trial lawyer for more than 40 years, appearing in court, at least in the early days of her career, when women were generally not considered fit to do so. As a pioneering civil rights lawyer, she battled the systemic racism that disenfranchised blacks. \u201cI just did what I thought was right and I used the legal system to do it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n In 1971, Mills moved to Chicago to continue working as a trial attorney and in 1989 became only the second woman from Illinois to be admitted to the American College of Trial Lawyers. She was appointed judge for the Circuit Court of Cook County from 1995-96 and again from 2008-12, when she retired. Mills started a pilot restorative justice program, one of the first such programs in a family law court, and she continues to advocate for its power to resolve conflicts.<\/p>\n Of her years in the South, Mills says: \u201cI was part of an unprecedented and extraordinary effort. [The Civil Rights era] arose out of an urgent need for agreement between our values and our realities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gautam Dantas \u201900<\/strong> oversees a research lab at Washington University that examines how bacteria\u2014both good and bad\u2014work together in communities. His team uses that knowledge to develop living organisms that can improve human health and to find new ways to fight antibiotic-resistant infections. \u201cWe study the group of bacteria that live in and on the human body, attempting to understand how those bacteria interact, how they evolve drug resistance, and how we might genetically modify particular versions of those bacteria to either maintain health or combat disease,\u201d Dantas says.<\/p>\n His lab has had some recent breakthroughs, including discovering a new treatment for MRSA, a particularly nasty staph infection that can enter the bloodstream and turn deadly. Through an improved understanding of drug resistance, says Dantas, his team came up with a combination of three older drugs that can kill MRSA and prevent it from evolving new resistance. Last year, Dantas cofounded Viosera Therapeutics to bring the triple antibiotic treatment for MRSA quickly to market, as well as to eventually sell other novel microbial products.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Independent theater artist-performer Eliza Rasheed \u201906<\/strong> has always loved theater, but as a multiracial woman, she hasn\u2019t always seen herself reflected on stage. \u201cI got into performing to figure out the story I wanted to tell,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt there was a need for complex narratives to be told.\u201d At Macalester, Rasheed\u2019s mentor and theater professor, Harry Waters Jr., introduced her to wider-ranging voices, including plays by Asian American women. \u201cReading those monologues made a profound impression on me,\u201d she says. \u201cI began to realize that I could be a playwright and use theater as a way to transform communities.\u201d<\/p>\n When Rasheed was hired eight years ago at Linwood Monroe\u2014an arts-focused public grade school with a diverse student body\u2014she came with a powerful vision for the school\u2019s theater program: To transform it into one culturally relevant for the fourth through eighth graders she teaches in the classroom and directs in the after-school theater program. \u201cI want my students\u2019 voices to be validated,\u201d Rasheed says, \u201cand for them to use their voices to talk about social issues they care about.\u201d<\/p>\n Rasheed\u2019s older students write and perform plays about issues such as racism, gun control, global warming, and mental health both at Linwood Monroe and throughout the Twin Cities. Her younger students learn ways to contribute positively to their environments and to effectively interact with all types of people, using theater as the backdrop for these lessons.<\/p>\n \u201cTheater helps us find hope among these big issues,\u201d Rasheed says. \u201cIt\u2019s about creating safe spaces for conversations to happen and for holding multiple truths. I want my students to learn that theater isn\u2019t always about seeing eye-to-eye, but about opening themselves up to differing perspectives and new experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Marla Holt is a freelance writer based in Owatonna, Minn.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alumni illustrate why Mac is a top-ranked school for students who plan to transform the world.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","image_options":false,"custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10512"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30585,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10512\/revisions\/30585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"CAIN](\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2018\/02\/Oulahan-headshot-600-300x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Policy Advocate
\nSARAH CRAVEN \u201985
\nDirector, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Washington, D.C.<\/h3>\n![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2018\/02\/Sarah-Craven_bd-600-300x300.jpg\")
Craven promotes the UNFPA\u2019s mission of universal maternal health to policymakers in Congress and the U.S. State Department. She also works with NGOs, the media, and funding sources to bring attention to reproductive health and rights issues, including providing access to family planning, preventing gender-based violence, and ending female genital mutilation and child marriages. Among these initiatives is UNFPA\u2019s goal of achieving zero maternal deaths in childbirth by the year 2030. This goal is one of the U.N.\u2019s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which cover global issues ranging from poverty to climate change.<\/p>\nThe Scholar
\nKARLOS HILL \u201902
\nAssociate Professor of African and African American Studies, University of Oklahoma<\/h3>\n![\"Karlos](\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2018\/02\/Change-Agents-photo.Karlos-Hill-600-300x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Researcher
\nLISA PETERSON \u201981
\nProfessor, Division of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Minnesota
\nProgram Co-leader, Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention, Masonic Cancer Center<\/h3>\n![\"Lisa](\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2018\/02\/Lisa-Peterson_preferred-600-300x300.jpg\")
Although her research is in its beginning stages, Peterson hopes that her lab\u2019s findings will someday inform FDA decisions on changing cigarette formulations to reduce harm to smokers. \u201cObviously, it would be best if no one smoked at all,\u201d Peterson says, \u201cbut\u00a0people do get addicted, so it\u2019s good if we can make the product as safe as possible.\u201d<\/p>\nThe Judge
\nMARTHA MILLS \u201963
\nJudge, Circuit Court of Cook County, Chicago, Illinois (retired)<\/h3>\n![\"Martha](\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2018\/02\/Martha-Mills-2-600-300x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Microbiologist
\nGAUTAM DANTAS \u201900
\nAssociate Professor of Pathology and Immunology, Molecular Microbiology, and Biomedical Engineering, Washington University, St. Louis<\/h3>\n![\"Gautam](\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2018\/02\/GautamDantas_HeadShot_May2014_1-600-300x300.jpg\")
Most of the antibiotics used today to treat infectious disease were discovered between 1940 and 1960, Dantas notes. \u201cWe\u2019ve slowed down in discovering new antibiotics, but bacteria haven\u2019t slowed down in evolving resistance to those antibiotics,\u201d Dantas says. His research team is motivated by sobering statistics: between 700,000 and 1 million people die each year from drug-resistant infections. Projected out to 2050, that number could reach as high as 10 million, Dantas says. \u201cThat\u2019s an incredible human cost and an enormous economic cost with regard to treatment.\u201d<\/p>\nThe Teacher
\nELIZA RASHEED \u201906
\nTheater teacher, Linwood Monroe Arts Plus Upper Campus, St. Paul Public Schools<\/h3>\n![\"Eliza](\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2018\/02\/20171220_mac_234-Eliza-Rasheed-600-300x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n