As a tenure-track faculty member in Colby’s Psychology Department, Veronica Romero (Venezuela, UWC Adriatic, Colby ’09) has returned to where she was a Davis UWC Scholar.

Veronica taught for two years after graduation, through Teach for America, at an elementary school in Washington, DC. She next earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology at the University of Cincinnati, then spent two years in a visiting position at the College of Holy Cross before rejoining Colby.

“What I really like about Colby is that, at least in the Psychology Department, the relationships with students have always been very open and collegial,” Veronica says. “It’s always been a first-name basis. I’m very happy here.”

Veronica pursues two lines of research: on the breakdown of social-interaction skills development in autism, and “to understand more generally how people interact with each other. The autism work is the more translational, in application, and the other is what we would call basic science — just to understand how this behavior of humans being social, and solving problems together, works.”

Veronica often joins international student events, such as food festivals and the campus’s Friday international coffee hour. “Most of that, I would say, is spearheaded by Davis Scholars,” she observes.

“When you get to interact with people who didn’t grow up the same way you did, or might have a different perspective, that opportunity is really great for everybody. It makes everyone more connected, and more conscious about how small the world really is.”