Cathy A. Small (born 1949) is a cultural anthropologist and an emeriti professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University. She specializes in culture change, migration, and transnational studies with an emphasis on East Asia and the Pacific. In 2002, Small conducted a participant observation study of American university students and published her findings under the name Rebekah Nathan. Early life Small was born in 1949 in New York and grew up in Brooklyn. She attended Temple University, graduating with a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1987. Her doctorate was about the "impact of immigration on the people of Tonga." Career Small started teaching anthropology at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in 1987, eventually becoming a professor and graduate coordinator. Small's work in anthropology focused on understanding long-term social change. She has examined the rise and fall of social institutions, the long-term implications of social structures, and the ways culture changes. Her work is known for critical empathetic feminism and reflexivity. Tongan islanders Small's major ethnographic work focused on the immigration of Tongan islanders to the United States. She studied this population to understand long-term social change. As part of her research, she lived in Tonga for three years, working with a co-op of women who manufactured ceremonial cloth from Tapia tree bark. Cornell University Press published her book, Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs in 1997. Pacific Studies selected this book for scholarly review. More than 100 universities in the South Pacific region have adopted Voyages as a textbook. It was reissued with a new edition in 2011. Small also created a virtual model of Polynesian society called TongaSim using C++. Freshman Year After teaching for fifteen years, Small realized she no longer understood the behavior and attitude of her students. In the fall of 2002, Small decided to apply anthropological methodology to the issue and developed a participant observation study focusing on the life and practices of American university students. She said, "Given that I'm an anthropologist, I knew the best way to get insight about a different culture was to go and live like them." She took a leave of absence from teaching and enrolled as a freshman at Northern Arizona University. At the time, Small was 52 years old. For a year, Small attended typical first-year classes and completed homework. She paid for her tuition and expenses. To better understand first-year students' emotional, social, and academic experiences, Small