Class Notes
SUBMIT @ ALUMNI.JMU.EDU
(Above, center): William Kenlon (’09) earned a Doc torate in Music Composition at the University of Maryland, College Park.
08 Kendra Kojcsich (’05) at the Grand Canyon in summer 2017.
Jeffrey E. Tickle ’90 Family Endowment in Science and Mathematics Established in 2006 by Jeffrey Tickle (’90) to advance the fields of study in science and math at JMU, which will ideally lead to careers as teachers, professors, scientists or mathematicians. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Tickle, I’m very honored and thankful to be a recipient of the Jeffrey E. Tickle Endowment. I am currently a rising junior in the Honors College and a biology major with a 3.967 overall GPA and a 4.0 biology GPA. I’ve also made time to participate in JMU Club Gymnastics, and I was on the Level 9 team that recently placed second at the national competition. This past semester, I reached out to Dr. Susan Halsell to see if I could join the students working in her lab, and I was fortunate enough that she accepted me. In her lab, we are working to uncover the molecular mechanisms of the nociception pathway in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, which could potentially lead to better treatments of pain in humans. In the future, I hope to continue doing research on the smaller scale of biology, and my ultimate hope is for my research to somehow help our planet recover from the damage we as humans have caused. To do this, I plan on going to graduate school and earning a Ph.D., in what I’m not sure yet. The Jeffrey Tickle Endowment will allow me to stay in Harrisonburg this summer to continue learning the process of research hands-on in Dr. Halsell’s lab. Thank you for your generosity! Rachel Barborek
Fairfax, Virginia
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M A D I S O N
M AG A Z I N E
In addition to being an MBA candidate at Loyola University Maryland’s Sellinger School of Business, Kelly Guinan Fader is the director of graduate cohort programs for the school. ✦ Mark David Rinker has been hired as the assistant coach for the Louisiana State University track-and-field team. Rinker is a former JMU cross-country and track-and-field athlete.
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Jason C. Lantz and Patrick Taylor opened Café 33, a restaurant located on U.S. Route 33 in Rockingham County, Virginia. ✦ Amanda Zimmerman Sheroff ’s blog, School Counseling from A-Z, was included on OnlineCounselingPrograms. com’s list of “Top Counseling Blogs of 2017.” The blog was chosen for content and resources, social media presence and level of activity and engagement.
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Allison Colby is executive director of Culmore Clinic, an interfaith, nonprofit
health clinic providing culturally competent care to uninsured adults in Falls Church, Virginia. Earlier, she volunteered in community clinics in Northern Virginia.
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Phil Duntemann and Jill Renee McMullan (’15) recently opened Broad Porch Coffee Co. at Downtown Market, located in downtown Harrisonburg. The shop offers coffee roasts from a variety of Central and South American countries. ✦ Gray F. Kidd (’12, ’14M) was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship to support field research in Recife, Brazil, for his project Retreat from the Big House? Sociability, Race, & the Politics of ‘Culture’ in Recife, 1958-1987. His dissertation project at Duke University, where he is a Ph.D. in history candidate, deals with the evolving dynamics of interclass and interracial interactions between Recife’s literate minority and largely nonwhite plebeians. ✦ Caitlin Kimak (’13M), a teacher at Hayfield Secondary School in Fairfax County, Virginia, has been awarded a James Madi-