This week’s Project 100+ memory comes from Katherine Trauger.  She was raised in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.  Her mother is an active professional opera singer who went to Glassboro State College.  Her father is an economist who works for the United States Department of Labor in their Bureau of Labor Statistics office in Philadelphia.  She went to public schools and graduated, in 2017, from Cherry Hill East High School.  After a successful four years at Rowan University, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in the Fall of 2021.  A double major in history and political science, she received both the Marius Livingston Scholarship and the Best Paper prize for “‘Saint Jane’ and the ‘Prophet’ Wilson:  Race, Gender, and Equality in the New World Order,” which she completed for Stephen Hague in Senior Seminar.  Shortly after graduating, she enrolled in the University of Oxford’s Russian and East European Master’s program where she received full funding after being named the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre Scholar.  Her dissertation was entitled “‘Island of Stability’: Foreign Aid, Gender Development, and State Security in Uzbekistan.” She completed that program successfully in the Spring of 2022 and began a second Master’s degree that Fall at Johns Hopkins University.  Again, she had full funding, this time being named one of her year’s Public Service Fellows.  As part of her studies, she consulted for the State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. This work allowed her to travel to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to conduct field research on Russian influence in Central Asia. In her second year, she began an internship at the State Department’s Office of American Citizens Services and Crisis Management.  She began on October 10th, three days after the Hamas attack on Israel.  She joined a Task Force charged with getting Americans out of the affected regions of the Middle East.  She immediately felt that this work was important, gladly staying above and beyond the required hours of the internship.  Still, she notes that she and co-workers very much appreciated the time when their boss, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, brought brownies and thanked everyone for their service.  She will finish the International Relations program at the School of Advanced International Studies in May of 2024.

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For many years, I intended to study opera like my mother.  I was considering the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Juilliard School in New York City.  However, I decided in my senior year, and at the very last minute, that I no longer wanted to go into music professionally.  When I decided not to study opera, I knew that I wanted to go to Rowan University.  My mother spoke about Rowan so fondly that I assumed it would be a nurturing academic environment.  So, I chose Rowan first and my major second.  I spent much of my childhood preparing for a career in music—in addition to singing, I learned three instruments: violin, viola, and piano, and took Advanced Placement Music Theory.  During all of this, the only non-music subject that I spent any time on at all was history, which I did just because I liked the subject, having no ambitions at the time to do anything with it.  So, when I suddenly decided to forego studying music, history was the clear choice for my major.

My decision to major in history felt right after my first history classes at Rowan through the CLIO program.  I had you, Dr. Carrigan, for United States History to 1865, and I had Dr. Stephen Hague for Western Civilization to 1660.  Both of you cared so deeply about history as a subject that I began to see the study of the past as not only fascinating but holding more gravity than I had at first appreciated.  I knew almost immediately that the major would be very much worth my time. 

The CLIO program as a whole helped me to become a much better writer and thinker.  While all of the CLIO classes helped in this regard, none mattered more than Historical Methods, which I took with Dr. Melissa Klapper.  She forced me to grapple with some of my weaker writing habits.  She showed me not only how to convey information concisely and clearly but how to write persuasively.  Dr. Klapper recognized that I could be a better student and pushed me to make the most out of my potential.  It was not always easy to hear in the moment, but I am forever thankful that she cared so much.  She somehow knew what I needed, and I rose to her challenge. I will forever be grateful.

The one class that made the most impact on what I still study today was Dr. James Heinzen’s Russia since 1914.  I had always loved Russian classical music, and I thought there might be something resonant between the music I loved and the history of the place that produced it.  I was right, but I am not sure I would have known I was right if I had not had Dr. Heinzen.  He was a fantastic teacher whose style captivated me and helped me understand Russian history and culture in a way that is hard to describe.  I often wish that I could go back and sit in on his class again, experiencing it once again but for the first time.  It was truly magical, and I have maintained both academic and personal research interests in the region since.

After taking a class with Dr. Heinzen, I decided to take a course with Lawrence Markowitz in the Department of Political Science on politics in Russia and Central Asia.  When I began that class, I didn’t even know where Central Asia was on a map.  Since his class, I have consistently focused on studying the region and exploring its rich history and political complexities.  I loved the way that he talked about the region and his own experiences there.  In many ways, his career became a model to me.

Although I was no longer pursuing music as a career, it was still too much a part of me to completely abandon.  So, during my first year, I joined the audition-only concert choir.  I was one of only two or three non-music majors in the fifty-ish-person choir.  We toured around New Jersey and produced some professional recordings.  I also played viola in the Rowan Symphony Orchestra and as part of the pit orchestra during Rowan’s opera productions. One of my mother’s good friends and classmates from her time at Rowan, Salvatore Scarpa, was also the conductor of the Symphony Orchestra during my time with the orchestra which I found incredibly special.

I kept very busy at Rowan, as I volunteered for Andy Kim’s congressional campaign in 2018 and then interned in the office of Congressman Donald Norcross in 2019.  From the summer of 2019 through the Fall of 2020, I was a research assistant at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia where I primarily worked on foreign influence in the 2020 election. I also worked as a Student Program Assistant for the Hollybush Institute for Global Peace and Security during my junior and senior years.

I owe most of my success to Dr. Stephen Hague.  He was the one who suggested I apply to work at the Foreign Policy Research Institute—a decision that ultimately kickstarted my career in foreign policy—but this was just one of the many ways in which he shaped my time at Rowan and beyond.  I took five classes with him.  In his classes, I learned to think logically and to improve my reasoning.  Like Dr. Klapper, he helped me improve my writing and did not let me slack off in the slightest.  In hindsight, he was helping me to prepare for the rigors of graduate school.  In all of my schooling, I have never had someone who cared so much about my success and my well-being.  He spent tremendous time and energy helping me be the best I could be.  I cannot count how many hours I spent in his office, talking about the world and my greatest hopes, and receiving sound and sage advice. Of the many things that he did, the most important may be that he taught me to believe in myself.  It was clear that he believed that I could do great things, and this has meant more than I can say.  He suggested that I apply to go to graduate school at Oxford and convinced me that I would succeed once I was admitted. Even after graduating, I still turn to him as a sounding board and for professional advice.

The History Department at Rowan is the most nurturing community I have found. I came out of Rowan a better scholar and person because of the attention and genuine care I received from the faculty in the Department.  I attribute my success at Oxford and Johns Hopkins to my time there.  It has meant everything to my academic development and my career in international relations. 

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/