Pivoting toward justice

Students embark on summer research for the common good

This summer, the Institute for Social Concerns placed over 332 Notre Dame students with 150 partner organizations through its celebrated summer programs. Students spent the spring semester preparing for immersive summer experiences from New York to San Francisco, Belfast to Mumbai, where they would spend eight weeks conducting original research while engaging with local communities. 

But when an Ebola outbreak gripped communities across East Africa, closing the region to outside visitors, nearly two dozen students saw their initial research plans evaporate.

Rather than abandoning their summer research, these students embraced a sudden pivot. Leveraging the institute’s decades of deeply rooted global and domestic partnerships, the students stepped into entirely new, unfamiliar environments—reframing their academic lenses to meet the unique needs of their new host communities.

In this month’s Current, we’re highlighting three students who are embracing the pivot.

For architecture major Wesley Buonerba ’27, the sudden change meant trading a plane ticket to Kenya for a journey to the remote island of Weno in Chuuk, Micronesia. Originally set to document Swahili building traditions in East Africa through a Summer Fellowship, Wesley adapted his research focus to the intense heat and heavy equatorial rains of the Pacific, studying how traditional Micronesian building practices cultivate essential vocational skills.

Wesley found a welcoming home at Xavier High School, a first-time partner organization for the institute. Along with teaching at the school and conducting his own research, Wesley found an unexpected opportunity for unique interdisciplinary collaboration.

Rerouted with two other fellowship students, Jack Keller ’27, an electrical engineering and theology major, and David Nagy ’28, a PLS and psychology major with a minor in sustainability, Wesley found that the serendipitous confluence of their backgrounds in engineering, architecture, and sustainability allowed the trio to assist in the construction of a new building on the school’s campus.

“The experience here in Chuuk has almost been more compatible with my proposed research question,” Wesley shares. “Xavier afforded me not only the opportunity to teach in the classroom for a month but also the chance to practice construction in one of the world’s most remote environments. I’ve been able both to see how houses are constructed here in Chuuk and to participate in construction, gaining further insight into the state of the industry along the way.”

Rising sophomore Amelia Lim ’29 experienced a similar whirlwind transition. A psychology and finance major, she was set to work with a vocational school for vulnerable youth in Uganda through the NDBridge program before receiving news of the outbreak.

Amelia was rerouted to Chennai, India, where she joined a cohort of four NDBridge “podmates” working with Vidya Sagar, an organization providing therapy and vocational training to over 3,800 individuals with disabilities each year. There she quickly realized her background in psychology and finance could be leveraged to examine complex questions of institutional equity and systemic barriers to independence. She adjusted her research on the ground to focus on sensory integration in classrooms with varying neurodevelopmental and physical needs.

“Each day, I get to encounter the fierce, unfiltered, childlike joy of the students I’m working with,” Amelia reflects. “Looking back, what started as a stressful disruption turned out to be the ultimate blessing. It has taught me to trust the pivot.”

Rachael Vu ’28, a neuroscience and behavior major, was originally prepared to spend her Summer Fellowship at a large public hospital in Mumbai, India. When travel plans shifted due to complications procuring her visa, she found her clinical research question localized at Stewpot Community Services in Jackson, Mississippi.

Instead of shadowing physicians in a referral center, Rachael found herself joining street outreach teams, walking narrow wooded paths in Jackson to deliver supplies directly to hidden encampments of unhoused residents.

“Interacting with community members in this setting made me realize the profound impact of being a consistent, familiar presence,” Rachael explains. “It taught me that effective public health is not just about checking clinical numbers but about earning trust and providing a reliable sense of continuity for people navigating difficult circumstances.”

Across three continents, these students experienced how trusting the pivot means embracing new contexts for research as opportunities for genuine human encounter. For Emily Garvey, associate director of justice education, these transformations illustrate the core of what the institute’s summer programs aim to cultivate.

“The resilience and adaptability these students have shown after their plans were upended are part of what it means to pursue the common good,” Garvey reflects. “It’s about looking past the disruption and focusing on the human being right in front of you.”

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