Andrea Samz-Pustol has accepted the Assistant Director position for the Constellations Program at UW-Madison. She graduated from UW with a BA in 2010, earning majors in Classics and Art History. She continued her education at University of Kansas, completing an MA in Classics in 2014. She went on to earn an MA in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College in 2017 and is finishing her PhD in Classical & Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr as well.
Like the Constellations courses, Samz-Pustol’s dissertation is highly interdisciplinary, combining gender, religion, architecture, agriculture, ancient medicine, economics, art history, food studies, and archaeobotanical evidence. Prior to starting graduate school, Andrea worked in student services here at UW, as an academic advisor with CCAS and as a program assistant for the Farm & Industry Short Course in CALS.
Her experience in graduate school has allowed her to pursue her passion for the humanities by studying ancient Greek sanctuaries, teaching undergraduate archaeology courses, exploring digital humanities, learning foreign languages, and conducting archaeological fieldwork in Greece, Italy, and Morocco.
As a first-generation low-income (FGLI) student and first-generation American, Andrea is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is a co-founder of the First-Generation Low-Income Federation (FGLIF) through the Society for Classical Studies. She is excited to promote the value of a humanities education, build meaningful partnerships between faculty and staff across disciplines, and contribute to the legacy and mission of the Constellations Program.