Ben McAnally ’21, Student Manager: I am grateful to the Rose for my strongest community of both friends and professional peers during my time at CMC. Between the hard work to give BOG presentations demonstrating high-quality research to karaoke at our annual Christmas parties, the Rose became my second home. This made managing the Rose through COVID one of the most difficult and valuable professional experiences of my career so far. Jake (Leischner) and I tried to create a fair and smooth hiring process, making the difficult decision not to hire first-years, anonymously reviewing written applications, and running group and individual interviews over Zoom. Forming and maintaining a Rose community during quarantine was immensely difficult, but we were proud to send quarter-zips and rose-stamped cookies to at least echo the homey yet professional feel of our institution. I am glad to have contributed to the evolving story that is the Rose.
