Spring Commencement 2024: Julia Buccola, Artis College of Science and Technology

Fresh out of high school, Julia Buccola didn’t know what to expect from her upcoming college experience at Radford University.

Reflecting back on those anxious feelings now four years later, right before she is set to graduate from Radford, the senior physics major from Roanoke, Virginia, knows now her time here was all about the experience.

Before she came to Radford, Buccola had already been bitten by the physics bug, thanks to a teacher from her freshman year at Roanoke Valley Governor’s School. “I knew I wanted to pursue physics in college as well,” she said. During her senior year in high school, a Radford University admissions counselor visited Buccola’s school and told her about the university’s Research Rookies program.

Words, however, can go only so far. There was no way of knowing back then how far she would go, how far she could remove herself from her comfort zone, by simply immersing herself in research with Radford faculty, beginning with her first semester as a freshman.

How could Buccola know that, just a few years later, she would trek thousands of miles from Radford to the polar beaches of Utqiagvik, Alaska, to test, in the frigid Arctic Circle, a research project she had designed and built herself?

How would she know she would conduct research on airborne microplastics? It was a project she considers her “most impactful,” she said.

How would Buccola know that before her senior year, she would work in an internship with the American Institute of Physics in Washington, D.C., as part of the FYI science policy news team?  

Joining Research Rookies opened many doors for Buccola to explore and learn outside her comfort zone. She found her place at Radford, too, by involving herself in a number of organizations like the Society of Physics Students, the National Society for Leadership and Success and the National Society for Collegiate Scholars? She also worked two years as a student assistant for Housing and Residential Life.

All along Buccola’s Highlander journey, Radford faculty pushed her to go further.

“I would definitely say what has made me a successful student at Radford University is the support of my professors,” said Buccola, who was recently named the Dean’s Scholar for the Department of Physics. “I would say the person that’s made the biggest impact on me during my time at Radford is [Professor of Physics] Dr. Rhett Herman. The physics department is pretty small, so we have pretty small class sizes, and that just means that we have a lot more time for one-on-one help. I would say that that’s true across campus as well.”

Up next for Buccola is graduate school, where she plans to pursue a degree in medical physics “with the hope that one day,” she explained, “I’ll be able to do research on better treatment methodologies for gynecological cancer.”

Thanks to the knowledge and confidence Buccola gained at Radford, she is setting her own expectations for future experiences.

“My experiences here are going to help me in pursuing my next steps,” she said. “I definitely didn’t expect to be able to do undergraduate research right off the bat, as soon as I started at Radford, but the research I have been a part of has been a really important part of my education, and all the skills I have learned at Radford are applicable to so many things as I move into the world.”