By Juliana Kim
Queens, N.Y.

When Gillian Knapp first walked into the Garden State Youth Correctional Facility, she remembers the doors clanging shut behind her and the smell that lingered in the hallways. It was an odor familiar only to those who’ve ever been to a prison. As she walked through security, she didn’t know what to expect.

But Knapp wasn’t heading for a cell. Instead, she was going to a classroom.

Knapp, a retired astrophysics professor, now leads the Prison Teaching Initiative (PTI). After more than 25 years teaching at Princeton University, she decided she needed a change. With four other astrophysicists, she decided to take on the prison education crisis in the United States. Continue reading →

By Doris Rodriguez
Miami, Fla.

If there’s one thing Jenny Greene knew when she entered college it was that she did not want to be a scientist.

When Greene started at Yale she immersed herself in the humanities, but come March she was utterly bored. After taking an astronomy course, she was hooked. She realized that the philosophical questions of the world just weren’t for her. Nineteen years later, she is an assistant professor of astrophysics at Princeton University. Here, she studies “supermassive black holes and the universe they live in.” Continue reading →

By Kaleb Anderson
Atlanta, Ga.

The small town of Princeton prides itself on continuing education and maintaining a safe community. Liz Lempert, mayor of Princeton, oversees a $6 million municipal budget and is committing herself to work toward a better and more diverse community.

Lempert grew up in San Mateo, Calif. Her parents are natives of New York state. She attended Stanford University and became a journalist in the Stanford, Calif. area. Lempert married, had two children, and moved to Princeton when her husband became a psychology professor at the university in 1999. Continue reading →