Student Profiles

Pranit Chand is a Junior at Emerson College. He largely spent his life growing up in the city of Kathmandu in Nepal. As an international student, he first arrived in the United States in the Fall of 2019 at a small college on top of the hill called Marlboro College. He says he immediately fell in love with the pedagogy offered at Marlboro, where students could really design their own major and make the most out of their time there. He started out as a Computer Science major, working with Professors Matt Ollis and Jim Mahoney.

However, as things never go as expected, by chance he ended up at Emerson College in the City of Boston. After exploring a little bit he settled down as a Data Science and Economics major, citing the classes he took with Professor Tylor Orme to really be the motivating factor behind this choice. His major focus at this point is to harness the power of data to create a platform to invest in content creators. At the core of it, he was motivated to pursue this largely because of the income inequality in the creative and cultural industries. He's also working with Professor Lu Ann Reeb to develop his own venture in the E3 minor.

Outside of the classroom, Pranit is also the Vice President of Student Government at Emerson College. He is also an International Student Peer Mentor, assisting the first-year international students. He is also a Dean's Fellow for Race and Equity for the Marlboro Institute.

Maya Haruko Abarca is a current student at the Marlboro Institute program studying International Relations, Human Rights, and Environmental Justice. She is a senior who is currently working on her Interdisciplinary Studies capstone entitled “After They Leave,” a website that documents changes in government and law throughout pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial Filipino history to understand how colonialism, in many ways, continues to impact the lives of Filipino people and the islands they call home. Being of Filipino heritage herself, she hopes her work can reach and inform those who are not familiar with Filipino history and Filipino community issues while also contributing to the discussions within the Filipino community. 

Maya is thankful to be working with Ian McManus, who is a faculty serving as both a Reader and Advisor on the project, Jon Honea, who is a faculty serving as a Reader on the project, and Rituparna Mitra, who is also a faculty serving as a Reader on the project. In addition to the Advisor and Readers she works with, Maya is so grateful for all of the support she has received from everyone, including those who are part of the Marlboro Institute community, whether that be from the discussions in seminar classes, talking with her peers and loved ones, and all who have encouraged her and helped her throughout the capstone process. She believes that the community at the Marlboro Institute and her loved ones are what make it possible for her to be able to do a capstone project for the first time. 

After finishing her Capstone, Maya intends to further her education and focus on how she can contribute to making a positive impact on the world around her.

Jillian is a Senior in the Marlboro Institute studying marketing and environmental sustainability. She grew up in Onset, MA, a small town near Cape Cod. The first university she attended was Marlboro College in VT, where you were able to design your own major and were encouraged to explore the interconnections between disciplines. After Marlboro College’s merger with Emerson College, she combined her knowledge in environmental studies with marketing, a discipline where Jillian found some incredible professors such as Michael Tucker and Nejem Raheem who have been a great source of inspiration. She is passionate about a focus on sustainability to combat the enormous levels of environmental damage that demand and consumption have caused.

Jillian loves studying marketing because it is a creative outlet where you can do storytelling, design, art, and photography. In her future career, she plans to work at an advertising agency that partners with brands that are committed to sustainability, or do in-house marketing if along the way she finds a company she wants to focus on working with.

Emery Lawrence is a Junior in the Interdisciplinary Studies program with a concentration in Cultural Studies. She was born and raised in Chicago, IL and grew up surrounded by books. As a policy debater in high school, she developed a passion for critical literature and chose to continue her studies at Emerson College. While she began her undergraduate path expecting to focus on media studies with an emphasis on film criticism, her academic plans have continued to grow and evolve over her semesters in Boston and abroad in the Netherlands. She is currently primarily interested in studies of the body and subjectivity, with a focus on theories of gender, sexuality, and art. She is currently working on her senior capstone and Honors thesis, which will explore the etymology of consent and the intersection of consent-based sexual education and health communication. Her focus at this point in her academic career is on integrating the visceral and lived experience in her work as well as developing effective research methods for critical inquiry. She is motivated by a desire to develop accessible and actionable theory and to teach in a university setting. Following graduation, Emery plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Sociology or Sociomedical Sciences and continue her research on consent advocacy with a focus on undergraduate college student populations.