Students embark on summer research for the common good
July 22, 2026
This summer, the Institute for Social Concerns placed 332 Notre Dame students with 150 partner organizations through its celebrated summer programs. Students spent the spring semester preparing for immersive summer experiences from New York to San Francisco, Belfast to Mumbai, where they would spend eight weeks conducting original research while engaging with local communities.
But when an Ebola outbreak gripped communities across East Africa, closing the region to outside visitors, 22 of these students saw their initial research plans evaporate.
Rather than abandoning their summer research, these students embraced a sudden pivot. Leveraging the institute’s decades of deeply rooted global and domestic partnerships, the students stepped into entirely new, unfamiliar environments—reframing their academic lenses to meet the unique needs of their new host communities.
Designing architecture for a new climate in Chuuk, Micronesia
For architecture major Wesley Buonerba ’27, the sudden change meant trading a plane ticket to Kenya for a journey to the remote island of Weno in Chuuk, Micronesia. Originally set to document Swahili building traditions in East Africa through a Summer Fellowship, Wesley adapted his research focus to the intense heat and heavy equatorial rains of the Pacific, studying how traditional Micronesian building practices cultivate essential vocational skills.
Wesley found a welcoming home at Xavier High School, a first-time partner organization for the institute. Along with teaching at the school and conducting his own research, Wesley found an unexpected opportunity for unique interdisciplinary collaboration.
Rerouted with two other fellowship students, Jack Keller ’27, an electrical engineering and theology major, and David Nagy ’28, a PLS and psychology major with a minor in sustainability, Wesley found that the serendipitous confluence of their backgrounds in engineering, architecture, and sustainability allowed the trio to assist in the construction of a new building on the school’s campus.
“The experience here in Chuuk has almost been more compatible with my proposed research question,” Wesley shares. “Xavier afforded me not only the opportunity to teach in the classroom for a month but also the chance to practice construction in one of the world’s most remote environments. I’ve been able both to see how houses are constructed here in Chuuk and to participate in construction, gaining further insight into the state of the industry along the way.”