Dr. Katherine (Katie) Foss ’02, professor of Media Studies in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on her path to Gustavus and the profound impact biology professor John Lammert’s first-term seminar had on her present research interest, how media affect pubic understanding and memory of epidemic disease past and present (the focus of her recent book Constructing the Outbreak: Epidemics in Media and Collective Memory), media’s framing of the 1918 influenza and current COVID-19 pandemics, disinformation and media in both those contexts, the campaign against polio and why it was successful, the demonization of Mary Mallon (aka “Typhoid Mary”), and what an effective U.S. response to future pandemics would require, especially beforehand.