Class Notes

Makenzie Stock, BSArch ’25, joined Beard + Riser Architects as a full-time architectural intern. Stock gained international experience through study abroad programs in Florence, Italy, and her multidisciplinary background includes real-world collaborative experience through the Peace Park Pavilion project. Stock will participate in comprehensive professional development programs and will receive mentorship toward architectural licensure.

Katie Plum, AB ’25, won the National Building Arts Center 2025 Mendel Sato Research Award for her undergraduate exhibition proposal Out on Olive. Inspired by salvaged windows from Olive Street in St. Louis, her work reimagines them as the heart of an immersive exhibition that brings together architecture, queer history and community storytelling.

Cleonique Hilsaca, MFA ’25, won the National Building Arts Center 2025 Mendel Sato Research Award for her work, The Brownies’ Book: The First Black Children’s Literary Magazine. The Brownies’ Book was created by W.E.B. Du Bois and his colleagues to provide a positive representation of Black Americans for young readers while countering racist stereotypes. Hilsaca conducted a visual analysis of the Du Bois work and created new illustrations inspired by the original artwork.

Kate Farmer, AB ’25, received the Joseph Rago Memorial Fellowship for Excellence in Journalism from The Fund for American Studies and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).Farmer, who served as editor-in-chief of the Washington University Review of Philosophy, is a writer and commentator for Young Voices. Her work has appeared in RealClearPolitics, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Washington Examiner. Farmer is spendingnine months working within the WSJ’s opinion section.

Megan Taylor, AB ’22, moved to New York after living in Madrid for the past three years. She started a new role as a focus teacher at Winston Prep, working individually with students with learning differences such as autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia and ADHD.

Ida Duplantier, BS ’22, graduated from Northwestern University in June 2025 with a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling and is a certified counselor seeing clients in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Her clinical work and training focuses on addiction, eating disorders, childhood emotional neglect, LGBTQIA+ concerns, cultic abuse, religious trauma and animal-assisted therapy.

Parasuram Balasubramanian, PhD ’21, was appointed an academic senior fellow at the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at The Wharton School for the academic year 2025-26.

Cole Reyes, AB ’20, was one of six recipients of the 73rd annual BMI Composer Awards. The awards, which celebrate excellence in composition, were presented by the BMI Foundation president in May 2025. Reyes is a composer, educator and arts administrator whose creative exploration delves into the intersection of individual human experiences and the broader world. He is pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Michigan. 

Alissa Barber, MSW ’20, married Sardor Abdugani on April 11, 2025.

Pablo Zavala, PhD ’19, wrote Forging a Mexican People: Collective Subjectivities in Postrevolutionary Print Culture, 1917-1968 (University of Arizona Press, March 2026). The book details how illustrated print culture forged different versions of “a people” in the context of postrevolutionary Mexico.