By Andrew Mollenauer 

Hello again, Terps! We’re excited to be back for a new semester at Stories Beneath the Shell and create more great content. TOP-SHELLF is back, too, and this week we’ll be summarizing students’ reactions to the controversy of school on President’s Day and whether professors should have Zoom classes on snow days.

SPOTLIGHT: Merrill Student-turned-staffer using perspective from pandemic to grow in new role

Merrill College of Journalism alumna Kate DeBlasis never imagined working there a year after graduation, much less after a virtual commencement from her living room. In lieu of traditional regalia, she wore shorts and a T-shirt, sipping a 7-Eleven Slurpee as her name was called in the video. 

“As a 21-year-old, the biggest thing in the world was I just wanted to graduate,” DeBlasis said. 

DeBlasis, 25, graduated from Maryland in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic before accepting a part-time communications position at Merrill a year later. In 2023, she transitioned into a unique, full-time role: The Howard County native is the journalism school’s first communications visuals coordinator. 

DeBlasis said the new position entails several duties but allows for creative freedom. She documents various events through photography and videography, works with social media, and has been learning graphic design. DeBlasis also designs the college’s signature “Merrill Swag” merchandise. 

But before beginning her career at her alma mater, DeBlasis spent a year and a half navigating pivotal stages of her education disrupted by Covid. All of her courses were remote when she returned for the fall semester of her senior year. 

“I don’t think I learned a thing that semester,” she joked, sitting at her office desk. “I wasn’t absorbing information the same way.”

DeBlasis said she struggled in virtual classes, but her passion for video journalism never wavered, and her labors soon bore fruit. She won two Hearst Journalism Awards for her motion graphics essay and branching video from her capstone course. 

Despite the limitations Covid placed on the capstone, a project DeBlasis said normally would have required her to travel, she completed the work, which involved interviewing students from across the country about the virus.

“I did it from the comfort of my parents’ house,” DeBlasis said of the capstone project, laughing as she recounted a time when her mantra was, “You move on.”

“It was like a means to an end to be here,” DeBlasis said. “I was a very stressed person at the time.”

For Josh Davidsburg, her professor for the capstone and a documentary filming class, the toll Covid was taking on his students was palpable. So, too, was DeBlasis’s will to succeed, he said. 

“It’s hard for a student to emerge and become a superstar in those conditions, and Kate was a superstar,” Davidsburg said. “We did the best we could, given the situation, but Kate really went above and beyond.”

At one point, Davidsburg made in-person attendance optional and DeBlasis was one of just two students from a roster of 12 who came to the classroom, he said. 

“People kept dropping like flies because they kept getting Covid,” DeBlasis said. 

DeBlasis recalls desks being spread apart and wearing a mask in classrooms. She said the latter was hardest when one of her classes — once a week but for three hours — met in Eaton Theater, which DeBlasis said was uncomfortably hot. She frequently took breaks, stepping outside to remove her mask.

“It felt like I was taking the Covid version of a smoke break,” DeBlasis said.

Outside of class, DeBlasis and her roommates countervailed the intense stress with long walks — including to Whole Foods — and by playing board games. She recounts, with a laugh, learning how to play spades, too.

Gabby Melendez, still a close friend of Deblasis, was one of those roommates and admires her now as she did then. 

“I like to think I always gravitate toward creative, genuine people,” Melendez said. “Kate one hundred percent fits those qualities. She was dedicated and found ways to stay balanced given her workloads.”

To Melendez, DeBlasis’ journey from Merrill student to employee is “surreal.”

“I know she worked so hard during school [and] I think it’s great that her talent is recognized by Merrill,” Melendez said. “It’s the attention to detail that makes her art pop [with] whatever medium she uses.”

Davidsburg said he’s thrilled seeing his now colleague channel the dedication he’d observed a few years prior into consummate professionalism. 

“I’m just happy to see that the skills that she was able to hone here … she’s able to use, and we can actually see how she’s blossomed into an amazing employee,” Davidsburg said. “I’m incredibly proud to watch her work, you know? Her success is my success.”

Being a recent graduate on a staff of older adults was an odd adjustment, DeBlasis said. She remembers feeling awkward working where several of her peers were still students, and that professors initially mistook her for one, which she said still happens sometimes but “is a compliment at this point.”

“It was very weird at first because I was considered old by the students and young by the faculty members and other staff,” she said. “When I’m at college meetings with all the professors and the staff, I’m like, ‘I am young,’ and then I have meetings with students, [it’s] like, ‘I am the crypt keeper and I must shuttle you children along.’”

Brendan Hartlove, like Davidsburg, knew DeBlasis in a different capacity before becoming coworkers; the two have been close friends since they met at freshman orientation in 2017. 

Hartlove, Merrill’s program coordinator of undergraduate recruitment, believes DeBlasis is “the perfect fit” for her role at the college. 

“It was obvious from the get-go that Kate had an eye for visuals,” Hartlove said. He believes DeBlasis has “elevated the presence in the online space” for Merrill. 

DeBlasis recently found an old hard drive in the journalism building, Hartlove said, and to their surprise, it had pictures from their freshman orientation, including one of them sitting together in a classroom when incoming students were registering for courses. 

“It was an incredibly serendipitous discovery that neither of us knew even existed,” Hartlove said. “That picture proudly hangs above my desk, so every day, I am reminded of where Kate and I started our journeys at Merrill College and how lucky we are to still have that friendship all these years later.”

Looking back on the less-than-ideal end to her time as a student, DeBlasis said that while Covid robbed her of normalcy and the quintessential college experience for more than a year, she’s gained perspective as a result.

“The pandemic affected everybody, like, if you said you were the same person that you were back in 2019 … now in 2025, I would think you’re a liar,” DeBlasis said. “You had to learn a lot about yourself because you were spending a lot of time with yourself.” 

Now on the other side, DeBlasis is grateful for how far she’s come. 

“I do very much appreciate the University of Maryland [and] Merrill College,” DeBlasis said. “It always has a nice place in my heart and in my mind. I am happy to work here, I am happy to be an alumna, and I am happy to be a current staff member.”

Now, here’s what you missed this week:

Should we observe Presidents’ Day?

Last week, SBS heard from several students as we sought perspectives on whether the university should observe Presidents’ Day. The general verdict was twofold: Students would prefer a closure on the academic calendar but don’t believe the day warrants celebration. 

One student’s perspective, an outlier with respect to peers’ opinion on celebration, stood out. Marin Frame, a senior psychology major, argued that the meaning of Presidents’ Day transcends partisan ideology on both sides of the aisle. 

“Regardless of how you fall in the political spectrum, it’s so important to recognize who the president is even though you might disagree, and then that kind of can inform how you proceed to act,” Frame told SBS.

Government entities and public school systems designating the day off while the university remains business as usual evidently is a noticeable-enough discrepancy that elicits conversation in the community. 

Several students said they believe its meaning has all but dissipated with time. 

Ruth Gensler, a sophomore psychology major, told SBS that’s precisely her observation. 

“I think it has become a lot more superficial,” Gensler said, adding she’s still a proponent of making it a day off. “Maybe it had more meaning in the past.” 

Should classes be on Zoom for snow days?

Amid multiple snow-related disruptions, including a closure on campus Feb. 12, conversation is brewing about the idea of professors holding class on Zoom in these cases. With a recent delayed opening for campus and frigid temperatures in the past few days — and a foreboding prediction of extended winter from Punxsutawney Phil — the debate regarding Zoom may be gaining traction.

Senior Vice President of the Division of Academic Affairs at the university, Jennifer King Rice, reiterated to professors in a Feb. 10 letter that any class scheduled during a closure is canceled. But she added that an asynchronous learning model may be used in lieu of in-person instruction and at professors’ discretion. 

In effect, that means Zoom classes on a would-be day off are fair game, much to the behest of students who spoke to SBS and shared their thoughts. 

“It potentially stresses students out more when they could be getting time to rest,” Antonia Gonzalez, a sophomore animal science major, told SBS.”

Sydney Zimmerman, a freshman biology major, said one of her professors held class on Zoom during the recent in-person closure apparently in fear of the class otherwise falling behind.

Zimmerman said certain classes’ rigor and demands, though, necessitate the virtual contingency option.

“Everyone always talks about how organic chemistry is really difficult, so I understand why we still had class,” Zimmerman told SBS.