Four years ago, with the world still in the grip of a pandemic, future members of the University of Vermont’s Class of 2025 had to navigate the college application process without many of the usual helpful factors, like campus tours. But more than 3,000 of them saw their future at UVM, and built it here, one class, one experience, and one new friend at a time. Now they're ready to head out into the world to make their difference–for people and planet. Read on to meet just a few of these graduating class members who will receive their degrees during Commencement Weekend, May 17–18. Details on UVM's 224th Commencement can be found here.
Overcoming Adversity to Serve Children and Families
In third grade, Charlie Meacham had a teacher who made a lasting impression. “I definitely think about her when I think about teaching,” Charlie says. “She was an adult outside of my family that really listened to me. I could tell she believed in me and the other students in the class. She is still a huge inspiration for me and my teaching aspirations.”
On her journey to become an early childhood educator, Charlie navigates the challenges associated with her physical disability – a genetic connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. “I’ve had to work super hard,” she explains. “It affects my whole body, my mobility, and my energy.”
Despite the challenges, she is well on the way to her goal. Charlie was a full-time student teaching intern with a classroom of first graders at Allen Brook School in Williston. Before that, she completed practicums at Pine Forest Children's Center and Burlington Children's Space, and civic learning at the Greater Burlington YMCA.
Inquisitive young minds give Charlie an opportunity to educate the students about her disability: “They are so curious and ask the best questions. It's a magical thing.”
Entering college, Charlie planned to study biology. But as a first-year student she took Assistant Professor Kaitlin Northey's Child Development class. “And I thought, this is so cool, so I transferred into Early Childhood Education," she says. "I have not had a moment of regret since. Throughout her journey in early childhood education, Charlie’s sense of purpose has been clear and unwavering. “It just always feels like the right thing to do," she says. Though she plans to teach in an elementary school after graduation, Charlie also wants to explore options in prison education providing child development education for incarcerated parents.
–Reported by Doug Gillman
Drawing on Talent
Wylie Roberts had a passion for ecology and the natural world throughout his entire childhood, but during high school he fell in love with maintaining a personal plant collection while also researching plant ecology and the role specific plants play in the environment. So he knew he wanted to study plant biology in college. He was drawn to UVM by the accessibility of the university’s Pringle Herbarium, the second largest herbarium on the East Coast, with its more than 300,000 plant specimens.
In his freshman year, he approached the Pringle Herbarium and asked how he could get involved. “I was hired on as an assistant, handling intake of specimens, filing and sorting plants and accessing them,” he says. “It was great to have a job on campus related to my major.”
His work with the herbarium led to the development of another talent, botanical illustration. “I think myself as an artist in general, and I've been drawing for most of my life, but I took botanical illustration through the Department of Agriculture, Landscape, and Ecology, and I really loved the course.
An impactful experience for Wylie was a winter travel course, Tropical Plant Systematics, studying tropical ecosystems in Costa Rica. “We visited four different locations, spending time in different ecosystems and habitat types. It was definitely solidifying in terms of me knowing that this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
Post-graduation, Wylie plans to work in his field, and then pursue graduate studies in Plant Biology.
–Reported by Ren Dillon
Discovering a Passion for Forestry
Es Sweeney’s path to studying and loving forestry was winding, yet tremendously rewarding. “In high school, I thought I wanted to study linguistics, but I’d switched from linguistics to anthropology before I even got to campus,” Es says. Es had started taking an environmental science course in high school after they’d submitted their college applications, so they were looking for programs to pivot toward where they could pursue this new academic interest. They began their UVM journey in the College of Arts and Sciences. “I switched to anthropology because I wanted to study how people related to the environment, and I thought I wanted to do urban planning.”
But during their freshman year, they joined the Timbersports team, where they met lots of forestry students. “My Timbersports friends would be telling me about their classes and what they did, and it sounded so fun and interesting,” Es explains.
Forestry was the perfect program for Es to integrate their passion for the outdoors with their interest in how humans relate to the natural world. Es also believes that studying forestry has helped them focus their energy and effort away from climate and anxiety and toward meaningful action. “I felt stress around climate change and the environment: what do I do? And forestry has really made me feel like there are tangible things I can do.”
–Reported by Maddie Cross
Keeping Informed
Noah Diedrich, a double-major in history and English from Arlington, Vt., has dedicated his college career to telling important stories. As a Community News Service intern, he stood out by producing in-depth local news articles on topics as wide-ranging as competing restaurant openings in the town of Cabot, and a profile of a local female fencing coach. In his senior year, Diedrich has been the news editor for The Vermont Cynic, UVM’s student newspaper, where he’s steered his team through many noteworthy stories, including UVM’s recent presidential search.
“I enjoy writing, and journalism is writing that goes toward the public good,” says Diedrich, who is applying for post-graduation journalism jobs. “It helps keep communities informed and hold powerful institutions accountable.”
Diedrich also communicates through music via The Undertow, the show he hosts on WRUV (UVM’s student-run radio station). “I try to play music that’s a little more underground, and I like to highlight local Burlington bands,” he says.
His dedication to his home state shows in his research, too. This month, he defended his honors thesis on the depiction of Native Americans in Vermont’s local histories. “I’m really drawn to what North American Indian history says about our nation’s history, and how historians have treated that subject over time,” he says.
Diedrich recently accepted the position of education and business reporter at The Keene Sentinel, a newspaper in Keene, N.H. “It’s going to be tough to leave Burlington and all the connections I’ve made” he says. “But I’m excited for what comes next.”
–Reported by Su Reid-St. John
In it for the Long Run
Abigail Costello ran the Boston Marathon and took the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) in the same week, so it’s no surprise the Exercise Science graduate has big plans. The avid runner keeps a brisk pace. For the past two years, she’s worked in the Department of Orthopaedics at the Larner College of Medicine, studying the meniscus after ACL injury, and presented the findings at the Orthopaedic Research Society's annual meeting in February. She’s volunteered at the UVM Medical Center, designing exercise programs for children with congenital heart disease, and led fitness initiatives as a volunteer with the College of Nursing and Health Sciences Unified Fitness program.
“I chose exercise science because I knew I wanted to pursue medicine, and I loved the concept of taking control over your own health with exercise,” says Abigail. “Exercise can change many aspects of our lives and give us a lot of autonomy. I've loved this aspect of medicine because so much of modern medicine involves giving someone a pill to treat symptoms, but there are many things we can control ourselves to take power over our health.”
Abigail was nominated by UVM’s Department of Rehabilitation and Movement Science for the American Kinesiology Association Undergraduate Award for Research, Leadership, and Service and received an honorable mention. After graduation, she’ll take a gap year, working, traveling, and training for another marathon while waiting to hear back from medical schools. She has the finish line in sight: “I'm ready to apply everything I've learned,” she says. “I want to be the person in the operating room, diagnosing and fixing injuries."
–Reported by Sara White
Vermont Solutions
Graduating senior Jacob McCoy is an Environmental Engineering major with minors in Biochemistry and Math from East Montpelier, Vt.
“I've known I wanted to be an engineer since I joined a robotics team in 5th grade and fell in love with the problem-solving process,” Jacob says. “I chose environmental engineering because it seemed like the one where I could make the most meaningful difference.”
Jacob’s honors thesis has been three years in the making, beginning when he joined the Environmental Microbiome Engineering Research Group (EMERG) in the summer after his freshman year. “As part of graduate student Leandro Conrado's research, fellow undergraduate Leo Rabinovich and I prepared and tested over 600 bottles for fermentation batch experiments over the course of a year and a half,” he says. “I chose to build on this experience for my thesis, operating fermentation bioreactors to model the anaerobic digestion of organic waste. There have been a lot of late nights (and early mornings), but my experience in research has been invaluable for learning what I want to do after graduation, and I'm so grateful for [Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering] Matt Scarborough and the rest of the EMERG community for making me feel at home here at UVM.”
The feeling is mutual for Matt Scarborough. “The thing about Jacob is that he’s not only brilliant, but he’s also one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet,” he says.
After graduation, Jacob will join the Burlington office of the Wright-Pierce engineering firm as a wastewater process engineer. “I interned with them last summer, and my courses at UVM provided plenty of experience to jump in and contribute meaningfully to projects,” Jacob says. “The hydraulics course I took and the skills I gained using Excel in various classes were particularly helpful in providing a smooth transition.”
“The fact that [Jacob] is staying in Vermont to work on critical wastewater challenges is incredible,” says Matt Scarborough. “He’s capable of so much and I cannot wait to see what he does in his career.”
–Reported by Chris Dissinger
Art and Science
When Sophia Bright visited the UVM campus from Amityville N.Y., in February of 2021 there were no tours (due to Covid), so she looked around on her own trying to make up her mind whether UVM would suit her. She chose UVM and began as a Biological Science major with a dance minor. But an Intro to Animal Science course she took in her first year awakened her interest in Veterinarian Science and she changed her major to pre-Vet.
She credits her dance mentor Paul Besaw, founder of the UVM dance program, with her decision to add dance as a second major. “He has really just been an amazing professor for dance and taught me more about the history and creative side of dance, not just actually moving.”
Despite the challenges of completing all the credits required for her dual degree Sophia is graduating Phi Beta Kappa and looking forward to taking a break from school. “When I go home in June, I'm going to help one of my friends who is in her third year of vet school. She's starting up her own animal rescue, so I'm going to run her social media, and just help out with things when she's off at her fourth year of vet school. Then hopefully either this year or next year I’ll apply to VET schools. I don't really have a top choice, but I want to focus on zoos and exotic animals.”
Overall, she summarizes here UVM experience this way: “I have learned so much from my time at UVM both in the classroom from professors, and outside of classes from the amazing community of students.”
–Reported by Ren Dillon
For the Love of Lab and Language
When asked what they’ve been passionate about at UVM, Ollie Leibovich replies, “Everything.” That enthusiasm is evidenced by the fact that they’ve triple-majoring in Russian, environmental science, and political science, with a minor in zoology.
“The Russian department has been huge for me,” Leibovich says. They became interested in Russian in middle school in Pittsburgh, Pa., after spying some intriguing cover art on a copy of Crime and Punishment. “Reading it changed my life. I thought, I need to read this in Russian.” At UVM, they got a chance to learn the language—and found a tight-knit community, too.
When they aren’t studying Russian, Leibovich works in the Vermont Entomology Lab and Vermont Liminology Lab. “I get to look at bugs all day,” they say. For one project studying the effects of extreme water events on algae blooms, Leibovich served as a lead undergrad. “We took samples and IDed the bugs,” they said. “It was amazing.”
Leibovich is most proud of how much they’ve learned. “Sometimes I’ll be calculating the discharge of a stream or writing an essay for a Russian class, and I’ll think, I can’t believe I know how to do all this,” they say.
There’s more learning to come. Leibovich will train as an EMT this fall, then perhaps apply to Ph.D. programs to study aquatic macroinvertebrates. “I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” they say, “but I do know I want to play in the mud for the rest of my life.”
–Reported by Su Reid-St. John
Following Her Passion
Molly Toner began her time at UVM as a business major. Originally from Milton, Vt., she wanted to go to a college with lots of options, “to just try a bunch of different things." She joined the service dog training club, the Japanese Buddy Club (to assist Japanese students adjusting to college life in America), and the anime enthusiast club. But the club that changed her trajectory was the Dairy Club. After meeting the cows in UVM’s Cooperative for Real Education in Agricultural Management (CREAM) program she knew right away that she wanted to change her major to Animal Science.
“I decided I should study what I love and what I’m passionate about,” Molly says. Students in the CREAM program perform all the day-to-day care and management of the UVM dairy herd including staffing the 4:00 a.m. milkings. Through the CREAM program Molly also had the opportunity to work with kids.
Molly will receive dual degrees in Animal Science from the College of Agriculture and Life Scienes and Japanese from the College of Arts and Sciences, ]graduating Phi Beta Kappa. She hopes to make a career out of something related to teaching in either animal science or Japanese.
–Reported by Ren Dillon
Building Business Connections
When Ally Updegrove arrived at UVM’s Grossman School of Business, she knew she wanted to study marketing for its mix of creativity and strategic thinking. Ultimately she decided to pursue a global business theme that truly set her apart, blending seamlessly with her Spanish minor. As co-president of the Grossman Student Advisory Committee (GSAC), Updegrove embraced every opportunity to connect with faculty, professors, and peers.
In September 2024, Updegrove became part of Campus Storage Solutions, a company co-founded by fellow Grossman students Ethan Israel and Logan Vaughan. As co-founder and chief marketing officer, Updegrove played a key role in the company’s success, helping them secure the prestigious Joy and Jerry Meyers Cup, which provided $225,000 in funding to launch their innovative business in Vermont. She plans to continue leading the company after graduation.
Updegrove’s experience at UVM has shaped her entrepreneurial journey, and her advice to others is clear: Get involved. “Joining GSAC gave me meaningful relationships with faculty and friends that I wouldn’t have had otherwise,” she says. “College is the perfect time to dive into everything that excites you. You never know where it will take you.”
– Reporting by Amanda Anderson
Breaking Down Barriers
Before attending medical school, medical student Ashwini Sarathy ‘25 worked for organizations that provide health care to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and help them learn to take personal responsibility for their own wellbeing. That experience inspired her decision to pursue a medical degree, and to continue that work through her academic journey. Throughout her time at the Larner College of Medicine, she volunteered for Champlain Community Services (CCS), a developmental services and health care provider for Vermonters with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“I am so excited to work with this wonderful community,” Sarathy says. “I cherish the incredible relationships I have built over the past four years.”
One of those relationships is with Mike Reilly, the development coordinator for CCS. Reilly serves as a community mentor for medical students in the Public Health Projects course, which matches learners with community service organizations to address social determinants of health. Her project group worked with CCS to examine barriers to understanding health care information among individuals with intellectual disabilities.
During that time, Reilly learned that he has Parkinson’s disease. Sarathy volunteered to help Reilley understand his diagnosis and serve as an ally at his first neurology appointment.
“She vigorously researched Parkinson’s disease, and at my appointment she talked to me as a support and to my doctors as a colleague,” Reilly says. “A potentially terrifying visit was relaxed, almost fun. We even took selfies!”
To recognize and thank Sarathy for her contributions to the community, CCS presented her with the 2025 Larry Bellew Award for Volunteering. This summer, Sarathy will begin an otolaryngology residency in New York at Montefiore Medical Center/Einstein Hospital in the Bronx.
–Reported by Janet Essman Franz
Balancing Accounting, Entrepreneurship, and Outdoor Adventures
Tom Statham’s decision to major in accounting and entrepreneurship at the Grossman School of Business was a natural fit, combining his love for logic and numbers with his dream of one day owning a ski store. His entrepreneurial spirit has been a driving force throughout his college journey, with a clear vision for his future.
At UVM, Statham immersed himself in both academic and extracurricular activities. He served as an ambassador for the Ski and Snowboard Club (SSC), vice president of finance for Phi Mu Delta, and was an active member of the Alpine Ski Racing Club (ASRC). “SSC rail jams and the Homegrown Film Festival have been incredible experiences, both competing and helping set up,” Statham shares. Though he’s not a competitive skier, joining ASRC has introduced him to some of his closest friends and allowed him to improve his skiing skills.
This summer, Statham will intern with PwC in Boston, working in the Digital Assurance and Transparency department. Afterward, he’ll return to UVM to complete the Master of Accountancy program and enjoy one more ski season in Vermont.
– Reported by Amanda Anderson
