Graduate Alumni Careers

Tara Wells is currently in a PhD program in Classical Studies at Duke University, and is pursuing a concentration in Archaeology.

Marissa writes: "Currently, I am in my second year of the PhD program in Classics at Columbia, finishing up my coursework and my qualifying exams. For the 2020-2021 AY, I am a Lead Teaching Fellow for the department, as well as a Teaching Assistant for Intensive Elementary Latin. I also am volunteering at the Columbia Food Pantry!"

Benjamin Turnbull is the Technical Services Librarian (Academic Librarian, Cataloger) at the Dominican Theological Library, a Catholic academic library in Washington, DC.

Ben earned his MA in 2019 from the University of Maryland, where he focused on Greek and Latin poetry, particularly epic, lyric, and elegy, as well as the intersections between poetry, philosophy, and historiography.  While at Maryland, Ben translated and edited selections of Medieval Latin for a Research Assistantship with UMD English Professor Dr. Ralph Bauer.

In 2021, Ben earned his Masters of Science in Library and Information Science (MSLIS) from the Catholic University of America, where he focused on cultural heritage information management.

Before studying Classics at the University of Maryland, Ben earned his BA in Classics with a double major in Studio Art from Skidmore College and he attended the Post-Baccalaureate Program in Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.  During his time at Penn, Ben worked as a Reading Room Assistant at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, an experience which enabled him to identify librarianship as his chosen career path.

Ben actively utilizes his knowledge of Classics within his chosen field.  As a cataloger, Ben facilitates description, discovery and access to library materials in diverse languages, both ancient and modern.  He enjoys reading and translating texts from various ancient languages, including Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Egyptian, Coptic and, most recently, Akkadian. In addition, Ben composes his own poetry on the side.  He hopes to pursue supplementary projects involving translation and editing primary sources, researching book history, digital image manipulation of rare books and manuscripts, and one-on-one language tutoring.

Ben writes: “I am continuously inspired by the interdisciplinary nature of Classics as a field at the intersection of so many others.  Classicists’ knowledge of Ancient Greece and Rome enables them to encounter additional fields and engage with them in order to study nuanced relationships between words, cultures, languages, and peoples.  Accordingly, the University of Maryland’s Classics MA Program allowed me to explore these complexities in-depth and equipped me with a distinct skillset that has enabled me to pursue a fulfilling career as an academic librarian."

Dr. Santucci defended his PhD dissertation in Classics at the University of Michigan in 2022, and joined Kalamazoo College that same year as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Classics at Kalamazoo College.

Dr. Silverman obtained a PhD degree in Classics in 2022 from the University of Florida, and is now an Assistant Professor in Classical Studies at The College of Wooster.

Megan (Brodie) Maier earned her M.A. in 2012 from the University of Maryland, where she focused on Latin and ancient history while leading weekly discussion sessions for undergraduate students taking Greek & Roman Mythology. After graduation, she entered law school at the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College, where she put to work the strong research skills she developed as a student of ancient languages and history. During her time in law school, Megan studied civil rights and held several animal law internships, including one in a government relations office in Washington, D.C.

Megan's classical studies background boosted her ability to zealously study for the bar exam and in 2019 she was admitted to the State Bar of Montana. She now puts her analytical expertise to work as the Senior Research Associate at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that advocates for legislation and regulations that promote the accuracy, transparency, and verifiability of U.S. elections. Megan also offers pro bono support to the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s attorney network and has had articles published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change and the DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law.

Harrison writes: “I received my M.A. in Classics from UMD in 2012 and was named a Distinguished Teaching Assistant for my work in the ever-popular Greco-Roman Mythology class as well as a class about the classical tradition in the United States. After leaving College Park, I returned to my native Florida to teach at St. Johns Country Day School, an independent school located in a suburb of Jacksonville. I am currently the English Department Chair and teach upper level courses in Latin as well as classical literature in translation. For the past ten years, I have tended to a growing Latin program and have striven to cultivate a community-wide awareness of the tangible benefits a quality liberal arts education can provide.

My professors in UMD Classics certainly taught me how to be a scholar, but they also taught me that  understanding the human condition is an increasingly worthwhile endeavor as the world becomes more connected and more complex. Languages and peoples may die, but it’s too little realized that their vestiges illuminate so much for the living.”

Brendan writes: "After a brief stint teaching Latin at a public charter school in DC, I realized that I loved my subject far more than I loved teaching it to a relatively unreceptive room of adolescents. I shifted directions professionally by taking a job as a proposal writer at a small web technology firm in my hometown of Kensington, MD, where I spent about 5 years writing responses to formal requests for proposals from trade associations, universities, and other such organizations. In the process, I picked up an interest in the architecture and development of modern web applications. Eventually, with encouragement from friends who are themselves programmers, I quit my job and enrolled in an intensive web development course in DC. As the course was winding down, I had the good fortune to land an interview at The Washington Post, where I am still employed today."

Brent writes: "I currently serve as the Assistant Director of admissions, recruitment, orientation, and communications for the College Park Scholars program at the University of Maryland College Park. As part of my responsibilities, I also coordinate the Scholars Ambassadors program and Communications team. 

Prior to joining College Park Scholars, I worked as an academic advisor and recruitment coordinator in the department of Letters and Sciences where I worked with students who were undecided and undeclared on a major.nBefore becoming a college administrator, I was a high school Latin teacher at Friendship Edison Collegiate Academy in Washington D.C. where I taught first year Latin to 10th graders.

I received a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies from Loyola University, New Orleans in 2001 and earned a Masters of Arts in Classics at the University of Maryland, College Park in 2003."

Andrea writes: “After completing my MA in Classical Studies with an emphasis on women in antiquity in 2003, I combined my passion for feminist studies and social justice by volunteering as a crisis counselor at a local rape crisis center. This led me to pursue another degree in counseling. I am a Licensed Professional Counselor in Philadelphia, and for the past 10 plus years I have been a therapist and clinical supervisor for multi-traumatized and multi-stressed families in the home and outpatient settings. I currently work for the School District of Philadelphia providing therapy to children and families, as well as supporting the school in being trauma-informed to support the community after this collective trauma. 

My experience in academia has been invaluable to me in that I have an understanding of human nature in addition to adaptability, resourcefulness, creativity in the often fast paced and ever-changing demands of my field. Moreover, I am able to integrate knowledge, skills, and current research into my practice to ensure my clients are provided the best service possible.”

As a 2002 MA graduate of our program, Brian Vuolo taught Latin for nine years at a series of high schools in Severn and Baltimore, Maryland before going on to study for a Masters in Accounting at Towson University.  At the Cardinal Gibbons School he was also the foreign language department chair; at the Boys’ Latin School of Maryland he increased enrollment in Latin by 119% and wrote five textbooks for the eighth through twelfth grade Latin curriculum.

Brian writes: “Next fall I will start working for KPMG [an international consulting firm that provides audit, tax, and management services]. I am really excited about that. All of the work in Latin, Greek and English preceding this change has been incredibly helpful. The most critical function of an accountant is in determining the substance of an economic transaction.  As you can imagine, it's not always obvious what exactly is happening. The training in semantics one gets in studying a written language is fully applicable/transferable to arguments in logic, and in discerning the principal element of an economic event.” 

Ann writes: "Since earning an MA in Classics in 2001, my career path has been very much influenced by the education and experience I received in the Department of Classics at the University of Maryland.   After graduating, I was hired as an editor at Ad Fontes, a publisher of full-text, searchable digital libraries of rare, historical documents from the 15th to 17th centuries, primarily written in Latin. 

My strong knowledge of Latin from my coursework at the University of Maryland was crucial to my work as an editor in which I translated manuscripts in order to index them for theological and social/political topics.  Eventually acting as Managing Editor, I became proficient in XML and TEI-encoding, which to my mind, at least, has its own vocabulary and grammar.  The knowledge of Latin grammar instilled during my time as a graduate student was vital to my understanding and application of XML tagging and TEI metadata standards.  It was from this experience that I developed a keen interest in making special collections and otherwise inaccessible primary materials accessible, especially in digital formats, and gained valuable insight into the importance of access to culturally and historically significant source documents for supporting humanities scholarship. 

To this end, I enrolled in the Masters of Information Sciences program at the University of Tennessee concentrating on academic humanities librarianship, particularly digital humanities. I also had the opportunity to participate in a practicum at the Folger Shakespeare Library, where my Latin served me in good stead, and another practicum at the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Besides the content of my classes in classical literature and history at UMD, the academic research skills I developed as a graduate student were invaluable to coursework I completed to earn my MS degree in December 2012.   

At present, I am a “Humanities Administrator” in the Office of Digital Humanities at the NEH, working on a digitization project that will make available to the public historic grant records from the establishment of the Endowment to 1979.  I hope to continue working in digital humanities in my new career in librarianship, and I very sincerely believe that my study of the Classics not only informs my professional activities, but will enormously enrich the work I do."

John writes: "After graduation from Georgetown University with an M.A. in Arab Studies, I began working in the IT field first as a technical writer and later as a programmer. In the summer of 1991 I was managing a team of technical writers and trainers and was putting in a lot of hours that left me feeling drained both emotionally and intellectually. My world revolved around work and I was stuck in a rut; even my free time was spent out with colleagues talking about work!

I had always enjoyed Latin as a high school student and as an undergraduate, and so on a whim I applied to the M.A. program with a concentration in Latin at the University of Maryland. Since I worked full time, I could only take one course a semester. My whim turned out to be one of the smartest decisions I've ever made. At one course a semester it took me five years to complete the program, but I enjoyed every minute of it. In fact, at the end of the five years I returned and worked another five years on Greek.

During that time I discovered the faculty and staff of the Classics Department to be some of the most wonderful people I've met. They were always willing to accommodate me as a "non-traditional" graduate student, yet at the same time they didn't relax their professional standards. The result was that I got the same quality education as those students who completed the M.A. degree in two years. In addition, my resume has attracted attention in that it's unusual for someone in the IT field to have an M.A. in Latin, Greek, or Classical Studies. I was once called into a job interview solely because the project manager was overcome with curiosity. After the interview I was offered the position. During my interview for my current position, the interviewer talked at length about how important she thought Latin was to a good education and how much she had enjoyed it in high school. I had to change the topic in order to find out what the job actually entailed.

One can therefore conclude that my years in the Classics Department at the University of Maryland have rewarded me both intellectually and financially. In the years that have passed since leaving the university I often think back on the teachers and the courses with fond memories and a sense of pride that I accomplished what I had set out to do."

Dr. Chrol writes: "My two years at UMD in Classics were some of the most difficult and rewarding of my life.  On the one hand, I received a thorough renovation of my Greek and Latin, a renovation that prepared me for doctoral work; on the other, I was trained to teach, and I have achieved great success pursuant to that training, namely 14 teaching awards and multiple teaching positions.  Maryland Classics prepared me for my future career, taught me the importance of hard work and the relevance of our field for the modern world, and introduced me to friends and colleagues I have kept close to this day.

After graduating with my M.A. in 1997, I taught Latin, History and Public Speaking at The Academy of Holy Cross in Kensington, Maryland.  I also taught in the Honors Program of George Washington University and at University of Maryland.  From 1999-2006 I pursued my Ph.D. at the University of Southern California where I did a dissertation entitled “Countercultural Responses to the Crisis of Elite Masculinity in Late Republican Rome”.  During my time there I also excavated at Despotiko, Greece for two summers, taught English to Students of Other Languages, and picked up Olympic-style Fencing.  In 2006 I took a position at Marshall University in Huntington, WV.  In the past seven years, I helped found the Sexuality Studies program, earned tenure, and am now chair of both the Department of Classics and of the Sexuality Studies program.  We have our own M.A. program, and we are modifying our curriculum to be more like Maryland’s.  Maryland Classics’ M.A. program was intense but essential to my career."