In her cluttered office in Warren Hall, Dr. Sarah Giroux digs through piles of paper to unearth a writing utensil.
At 35 years young, Giroux is far from tech-savvy. She prefers pen and paper to help visualize her buzzing ideas, but her sketches are illegible to others. In fact, her writing and her diagrams are an abstract art open to interpretation.
When it comes to navigating computers and smartphones, Giroux looks like a grandma, forcefully poking at her iPhone with a scrunched-up look of frustration. “I’m technically a millennial, but I grew up without the internet, and I can’t even figure out how to use Snapchat,” she says as she continues to scavenge for a pen. She speaks quickly, like her thoughts are in a rush to get somewhere.
Though technologically-challenged, Giroux spends her free time as any stereotypical millennial would, attending Crossfit classes, perusing Facebook, and binge-watching Netflix. With more energy than both her kids combined, Giroux looks youthful with sparkling blue eyes, Ray-Bans perched on the crown of her head, and trendy white Birkenstocks. But she’s also a scholar.
After triumphantly waving the pen she has found, Giroux begins to scratch out the framework of her most recent project, which she is conducting alongside Dr. Parfait Eloundue-Enyegue, the head of Cornell University’s Department of Development Sociology. Their project was given a $1 million grant by the U.S. Department of Defense to study fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa.
But why does the DoD care about babies?
When women have lots of children, it creates a youth bulge. The babies age and move into the young adult cohort. If a country is unable to support and integrate them into the labor force, Eloundue and Giroux hypothesize this demographic will transform into an economic, sociological and political problem. Previous research has linked youth bulges with increased radicalization. Their project implements and measures the effect of integration programs into Cameroon, a microcosm of Sub-Saharan Africa’s youth bulge. The programs are designed to transition the wave of youth into adulthood by teaching high schoolers team-building and other soft skills. Their ultimate goal: to curb terrorism.
Learn more about the project here.
“While I was in Yaoundé a few weeks ago, I was chatting up their Director of Education when Parfait beckoned me. I walked over to him, and suddenly a bunch of men with massive cameras appeared and the next thing I know, I’m being filmed live on Cameroon National Television,” Giroux said.
Working with Eloundue requires a lot of improvisation. Last June, for example, the pair was invited to sit-in on a Cameroon Parliamentary meeting. But half-an-hour before convening, they were asked to give a presentation in front of Parliament, which neither were prepared for.
During her graduate studies, Giroux chose to narrow in on fertility rather than migration or mortality. “Studying birth is happy, you know. And fertility impacts the flow of everything – from the economy to political stability.” But the real reason Giroux was initially thrust into the world of demography was because of her undergrad experience.
Though born in Southern California, Giroux has spent most of her life around Ithaca after moving to Dryden when she was 5. Upon graduating from Dryden High School, Giroux decided to stay near her parents and pursued her undergrad at her father’s alma mater, Cornell University, a mere 10 miles from home.
As a Cornell student, she was so focused on her academics she failed to capitalize on the college student experience outside the classroom. When asked about the craziest thing she did during her undergrad, she said, “I bought a house in Ithaca sophomore year.”
She established a mentor relationship with Eloundue after enrolling in his development sociology class, which piqued her interest in demography. I requested a quote from Eloundue, but received no response.
Immediately after finishing her bachelor’s degree in international and rural development, Giroux went on to pursue a joint master’s and doctorate program in development sociology. Which school did she attend? You guessed it – Cornell.
During the final year of her postgraduate degree, Giroux was pregnant with her first child. “I love learning about babies, and I’ve always wanted to have kids, so it just sort of happened”. Now a mother of Harry, 6, and Willa, 4, motherhood is her most rewarding job.
Teaching is also something that just sort of happened. Upon completion of her PhD, Giroux was offered a job in San Francisco but decided to stay in Ithaca with her family. Eloundue needed a replacement to instruct his Social Inequality class, so he called on Giroux who jumped straight into teaching a 3000-level course at Cornell. This feat did not faze her.
Her husband and mother are both high school teachers so teaching came naturally. Giroux’s mother still teaches at Dryden Middle School and even taught fifth grade to her own daughter, which Giroux describes as, “not as traumatizing as you’d think.”
“I try to be laid back and sort of go with the flow.” That’s her philosophy for teaching, researching, parenting, and life in general.
“I’m relaxed, but I feel like I’m thinking all the time.” This is evident as Giroux continues to scribble onto the now ink-filled sheet of paper she started with.
The first time she didn’t go with the flow but took initiative was when she met her husband.
Sarah Giroux, née Holtz, first laid eyes on Cory Giroux the summer after graduating from high school. He was a lifeguard at the local swimming pool. As a nerdy student, she was instantly attracted to the athletic hunk because he looked “so cool.” Her mutual friend was also a lifeguard there, so she invited herself to their end-of-the-summer lifeguarding party. During the car ride there, she tried to flirt by sitting next to him.
“I slowly inched closer, but then he turned to me and said ‘Um, do you need more space?’.”
It gets even more cringe-worthy.
She magically got his number that night, then asked him to see a movie the next weekend. When she picked him up, he rolled out of his house wearing a tattered tee and baggy shorts while she was decked out in her finest outfit. The first thing he said was, “Where’s everyone else?”
However, he finally got the hint, and by the end of the summer they embarked on a semi-long-distance relationship as he attended Ithaca College nearby.
Giroux never felt the urge to move out of the Ithaca bubble. Her job allows her to be with her family. Although not blood-related, Eloundue has become part of that family.
Her trips to Cameroon allow her to occasionally break from the bubble, though Giroux never imagined that she would be spending her career studying a place as distant as Sub-Saharan Africa. The international focus of her studies provides an outlet to explore the world beyond Ithaca while allowing her to keep her family close.
“I’ve been in school since I was three, and now I work at a school – it’s become my home.”