Josie Schmidt ’22 was in the stands as a fan for the first-ever home game for the Boston team in the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL).

“Like many others around me, the overwhelmingly positive environment and elated fans, players, and staff nearly brought me to tears,” Schmidt said. “Young girls held signs that read ‘Play like a girl’ and ‘This is what dreams are made of.’ I knew in that moment that this league would make a lasting impact on the industry, and I wanted to join the team of trailblazers behind the scenes.”

Soon enough, Schmidt '22 fulfilled that goal.

She was hired as the manager of partnership services for the PWHL, building relationships with partners for the U.S. teams. She developed and coordinated events for youth and the community and on-ice promotions and giveaways, while also creating social media content.

As a child, Muritala Issa '24 M.S. wandered through the streets in his home country of Nigeria, eyes wide with wonder. He was captivated by what he describes as the "magic of transforming a village into a modern town." He marveled at the construction sites that shaped the village's landscape at the time, transforming its future.

 

To say that the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have experienced instability in their histories would be a significant understatement. Since the ninth century at least, the region has endured invasions from the Kingdoms of Denmark and Poland, German traders, and, from across the Baltic Sea itself, the Kingdom of Sweden.

“But the big constant for so many of the peoples in this part of Eastern Europe has been Russia, which expanded beginning in the 16th century, and then into the Baltic region in the 18th century,” University of New Haven associate professor of history Dr. Bradley Woodworth said. “So even though these peoples speak very different languages, they have this shared past as being part of the Russian Empire.”

Today, Russia continues to loom over the region, due to Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of nearby Ukraine. It’s in this context that Dr. Woodworth, as vice president for conferences with the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) for the past two years, organized the association’s annual conference held in New Haven over four days in June.

Co-hosted by the University of New Haven and Yale University on the Yale campus, the conference featured panels from all fields of the humanities and social sciences, education, technology, transnational security, safety, and well-being—with 12 of the panels chaired by University of New Haven faculty members. College of Arts and Sciences Dean Shaily Menon, Ph.D., and School of Health Sciences Dean Betsy Francis-Connolly, Ph.D., also chaired panels. Faculty members Maria Tcherni-Buzzeo, Ph.D., (criminal justice) and Matthew Schmidt, Ph.D., (national security) presented papers as part of the proceedings.