Noteworthy
A thousand miles from home, still adjusting to the oppressive humidity of summer in Atlanta, rising Suffolk sophomore Sachelle Sterlin pored over a heartbreaking letter.
In a message to a friend who moved to Chicago during the Great Migration—a population shift from 1910 to 1970 that saw millions of Black Americans from the southern US resettle in Northern, Midwestern, and Western cities—a Georgia woman wrote of more loved ones who’d since departed and her struggle to make a life in a dying town. Increasingly isolated and desperate, she begged for details of life beyond the home she knew as she, too, prepared to leave. Her search for hope amid uncertainty resonated with Sterlin.
Like many of her generation, Sterlin has also navigated a very different, but very deep, disruption. Growing up during the COVID-19 pandemic and social and political upheaval has been “very rocky and very transitional,” she says.
Looking to make sense of a rapidly changing world first sparked the then-Malden Catholic High School student’s interest in research. But it was her freshman-year courses at Suffolk—including robust discussions in Professor Bryan Trabold’s Black Lives Matter first-year seminar and practical tools she gained in a research-methods course with Professor Rachael Cobb—that catalyzed her plans to pursue a career in academia.
“I like to think about the interaction between political and social systems and those living within them on a very intimate, human-focused level,” says Sterlin, who plans to major in sociology with a minor in Black studies.
After securing a selective research internship that connects students from historically underrepresented groups with mentors in doctoral programs, Sterlin spent her summer conducting hands-on archival analysis with an Emory University faculty member. The experience gave Sterlin a peek into the realities of an academic career. Now she’s back on campus, applying for research assistantships and planning to study abroad—eager to learn more and make her mark.
“I’m always on the lookout for immersive learning opportunities that allow me to branch out from the classroom,” she says. —Andrea Grant
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fall 2025
Photograph courtesy Sachelle Sterlin
