Loyno Magazine - Summer 2017

SUMMER 2017

With

Honors 70 The University Honors Program is evolving – and our students are reaping the benefits

of Loyola basketball

Generation Z How they’re changing Loyola – and the world – for the better

SUMMER 2017

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DOING HONORS COVER STORY

THE

Michael Pashkevich ’17 was enrolled in the University Honors Program, which offers extra challenges – and opportunities – to students who seek them out.

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President’s Message Know & Tell News Roundup Creative Class The Loyola Effect Local Flavor On the Scene Doing the Honors Lifehack Loyola Food, Glorious Food A Slam-Dunk Program

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Lifehack Loyola, or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Gen Z

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Bring the Noise Aspiring music industry professionals continue their biannual student-run concert series at the House of Blues New Orleans – it’s fast become a Loyola tradition.

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Food, Glorious Food This fall, Loyola will launch an ambitious food studies program that will explore everything from environmental issues related to food production to the social justice implications of hunger.

32 Fresh Faces 34 Pomp and Circumstance 38 A Fond Farewell 39 Greatness in the Bag 40 Institutional Advancement 42 Alumni Events 48 Class Notes 47 Alumni Profile: Victoria Adams Phipps ’09 53 Alumni Profile: Kate Gremillion ’12 56 Alumni Profile: Ruth Mikulak Katz ’82 59 Bon Temps 62 Community Engagement 63 Then & Now 64 How Loyola Shaped Me

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

SUMMER 2017 Vol. 27, No.1 Editor Eve C. Peyton Designers Allee Parker Hollie Garrison Linda Lien-Ribardi University Photographer Kyle Encar Contributing Writers Mackenzie Becker ’18 Angelique Dyer ’11 Fritz Esker ’00 Autumn Cafiero Giusti ’00 Will Glass Lauren LaBorde ’09 Sarah Ravits Edward Wroten ’16 Director of Creative Services Allee Parker Associate Director of Public Affairs Patricia Murret Dear Loyola community, FOLLOWING A YEAR OF EXCITING ACHIEVEMENTS, we continue to create transformative change at Loyola. This year, the university proudly welcomed its strongest first-year class yet, with increased SAT scores and an average GPA of 3.9.

The class of 2020 also is populated largely with students for whom Loyola was their first-choice college.

Our nationally accredited University Honors Program has reached an all-time high, with more than 250 participants. Recent Loyola graduates received five Fulbright Award offers, and Loyola saw its first Gates Cambridge Scholar – only 95 people in the world received this prestigious international scholarship in 2017.

Just as we hold fast to our traditions of academic excellence and rigor, our commitment to social justice and volunteerism remains strong. I am pleased to say that this year, Loyola was once again named to the U.S. President’s Honor Roll for Community Engagement. And we earned a new honor: Top Producer of Peace Corps Volunteers.

In today’s ever-changing landscape of higher education, it’s essential that we remain nimble and adapt quickly to meet the needs of Gen Z and the 21st-century learner. That means expanding programs, adding online courses, and creating new and cutting-edge offerings. We want to encourage discovery and prepare students for jobs and careers that don’t exist yet while teaching them to seek what matters and preparing them for lives of both professional and personal successes.

As a Jesuit university, we should always ask ourselves how can we improve, do better, and serve better. And so we seek the magis, or the “more.” We’ve got an exciting year ahead of us – and days filled with promise. Let’s work together this year to make the new and unimaginable happen.

Assistant Vice President for Alumni Engagement Laurie Eichelberger Leiva ’03 Assistant Vice President for Donor Services Claire Simno ’72 Vice President for Institutional Advancement Chris Wiseman ’88 Vice President for Marketing and Communications Laura F. Kurzu University President The Rev. Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., Ph.D. LOYNO Magazine is published twice per year.

View online at loyno.edu/magazine Send address changes to: Loyola University New Orleans Office of Marketing + Communications 6363 St. Charles Avenue, Box 212 New Orleans, LA 70118 Correspondence may be sent to: Editor, LOYNO Magazine 6363 St. Charles Avenue, Box 212 New Orleans, LA 70118 phone (504) 861-5859 fax (504) 861-5784 email magazine@loyno.edu Submissions of stories and photographs are welcome.

Loyola University New Orleans has fully supported and fostered in its educational programs, admissions, employment practices, and in the activities it operates the policy of not discriminating on the basis of age, color, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex/gender, or sexual orientation. This policy is in compliance with all applicable federal regulations and guidelines.

The Rev. Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., Ph.D. University President

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know&tell photo by Kenny Kemp

Loyno news worth howling about

Howl! For the first time in Loyola history, both the men’s and women’s basketball teams advanced to the

Eric Eyre ’87,

NAIA National Championship Tournaments.

The Loyola School of Nursing’s online graduate (master’s and doctoral) degree program was ranked as No. 39 in the nation among best online graduate nursing programs by U.S. News and World Report.

The program received special recognition as one of the nation’s best online graduate programs in nursing sensitive to the needs of veterans.

The online master of nursing degree program also ranked among the Top 50 in the nation, according to independent college search and rankings website College Choice.

an alumnus of the School of Mass Communication, won a

2017 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Eyre, 51, is a reporter for the Charleston Gazette-Mail, a daily newspaper in Charleston, W.Va. He won the award “for courageous reporting, performed in the face of powerful opposition, to expose the flood of opioids flowing into depressed West Virginia counties with the highest overdose death rates in the country.”

ALONE, a short film by Garrett Bradley, Loyola digital filmmaking instructor – with the help of recent graduate Daniela Leal ’17 as the film’s assistant editor – won the

2017 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Jury Award!

ALONE is a documentary short film focused on mass incarceration and its shaping of love within the modern black American family.

They’ve been admitted, and now Loyola New Orleans has provided the accepted class of 2021 a chance to receive

free textbooks for their first year,

First-Year Ignition Program.

thanks to the newly launched This program, the first of its kind at Loyola, provided the first 400 students to submit deposits with the right tools to accomplish anything during their college careers.

Loyola

First-Year

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news roundup Object Lessons Gets Funding Dust, a book in the series, was an NPR Best Book of 2016

Read All About It! SMC students earn coveted Mark of Excellence awards

Loyola Associate Professor Dr. Chris Schaberg has been awarded a $250,000 Public Humanities grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of his essay and book series, Object Lessons, with co-editor Ian Bogost of Georgia Institute of Technology.

Bringing life to everyday items, Object Lessons explores the hidden lives of ordinary things. Published by The Atlantic and Bloomsbury, the series invites contributors to develop original insights and lessons around any particular object. Earlier this year,

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NPR named Dust, a book in the series, among the Best Books of 2016.

This esteemed national grant not only will support Schaberg and Bogost’s series but will also help the writers to lead four writing institutes aimed at inspiring and encouraging scholars to write for wide audiences. Funds from the grant also will be allocated to support students at both Loyola and Georgia Tech who are working as editorial assistants on the series; in this way, the grant allows students from both universities

to gain experience in the fields of publishing and editing.

“We’ve been delighted to see how authors and readers alike have embraced the basic idea of the series: to focus on something earnestly and openly and see what lessons emerge,” Schaberg said. “The series has motivated me more than ever to help my students prepare to engage the world and to make it a better place — one object at a time, one lesson at a time.”

Students from Loyola’s acclaimed School of Mass Communication won big this year at the Society of Professional Journalist Region 12 Conference with 10 accolades.

Students won awards in breaking news reporting, editorial writing, and sports writing and were finalists in general news reporting and feature writing. The Maroon, Loyola’s 94-yearold student newspaper, won SPJ’s Mark of Excellence for Best All-Around Non Daily Student Newspaper.

SPJ annually presents the Mark of Excellence Awards, honoring the best in student journalism. First place regional winners move forward to the national competition.

“These awards are a testament to the quality of skills instilled into our students through our robust programs and through our dedicated faculty and staff,” Dr. Sonya Duhé, director of the School of Mass Communication, said.

“We are so proud of our students and the future communications leaders they are quickly becoming.”

Winning Big at Big Easy Awards Loyola theater community brings home entertainment awards Loyola University New Orleans’ stellar Department of Theatre Arts and Dance recently won a Big Easy Entertainment Award for Best University Production.

The win came for the fall 2016 production of The House That Will Not Stand, written by Marcus Gardley and directed by Laura Hope, which chronicled the lives of free women of color in New Orleans just after the Louisiana Purchase. Popularly considered New Orleans’ very own brand of Tony Award, the Big Easy Entertainment Awards are designed to recognize achievement in live theatre.

“We are so grateful to the Big Easy Awards committee and our many alumni who have supported us during the revitalization of our department,” said Hope, the chair of the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance. “As the students and I accepted the award, it was so heartening to hear our Wolf Pack alumni in attendance howl their support. I’m very proud of all the students and faculty in our department for their work on this and all of our shows during the season. It is a team effort to make each show

happen with faculty and students working long hours together — days, nights, and weekends. It requires a level of focus and dedication that is awe-inspiring, and I feel lucky to work with such talented and devoted colleagues and students.”

In addition to the Best University Production award, Loyola students, faculty, alumni, and friends in attendance were especially pleased and proud to celebrate Loyola theatre arts alumna and award-winning actress Kerry Cahill ’05 (drama), who won Best Actress for Southern

Repertory Theatre’s production of Grounded, performed in Loyola’s Lower Depths Theatre; Loyola theatre alumna Kali Russell ’15 (theatre), whose theater company See ‘Em on Stage: A Production Company won Best Production of a Musical for Lizzie the Musical; and Loyola alumna and Southern Rep Theatre Artistic Director Aimeé Hayes ’91 (English), who won for Best Production of a Play for Colossal.

THE HOUSE THAT WILL NOT STAND won a Big Easy Award for Best University Production.

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CREATIVE CLASS

NO STARVING ARTISTS

BY FRITZ ESKER ’00

In Ethics and Contracts, design students learn how to do quality work – and how to protect it, get paid fairly for it, and set clear boundaries with clients.

Creative types, whether they be designers, writers, or singers, are not always known for their business sense. But it’s such an important skill for artists of all kinds to learn because it’s all too easy for clients to expect free work or endless changes and revisions for “exposure.” Daniela Marx, chair of the Department of Design at Loyola, has designed the Ethics and Contracts class to be both fun and informative for students.

The bachelor of design degree is a new one at Loyola. The first official class of seniors will graduate in 2018. All of them do design work on top of their classwork.

Often, it’s doing things like designing T-shirts for friends. Professor Marx wanted to be sure her students were entering the work force understanding contracts so they could be paid appropriately for their time.

“It’s all about time,” Marx says. “We all spend time designing, and we should be paid appropriately for that time.”

In the modern economy, more and more people make a living solely through freelance work. Even more use freelance gigs to supplement income for an existing job. But Marx realized freelancers often don’t know how to negotiate on their own behalf or run a business, so she designed the first Ethics and Contracts class for fall 2016. The class was taught by one instructor, Tippy Tippens. Guest speakers from the fields of law and accounting spoke to the class.

Lawyers have valuable information to impart to students about contracts. Young designers need to know how contracts should be worded and what behavior on the part of a client constitutes a breach of contract. Early in their careers, designers can be taken

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advantage of by clients who agree to paying a certain price for only three rounds of changes but keep asking for more and more before they will pay the designer a dime.

Accountants can help students in several ways. Since many graduates go into business for themselves, accountants can assist them in understanding taxes. It’s especially crucial in instructing them what expenses they can write off on their tax returns each year.

The class also did a project for the SPCA. It was run as a full simulation of how a real client-designer relationship would work. Students met with SPCA representatives, who described what they needed, and then students made and submitted designs. The SPCA picked the best projects and implemented them.

Marx was very happy with how Tippens performed in the fall 2016 class, but she has a different idea for the fall 2017 class. She is splitting it up into three five-week segments. This approach will make it easier for local professionals to commit to teaching a class; many times, a potential instructor will be interested in teaching but can’t commit to the full semester.

The three instructors this fall will be attorney Sheila Wilkinson; Blake Haney, creative director and owner of Dirty Coast, a local T-shirt company that coined the phrase “Be a New Orleanian wherever you are”; and Megan Koza Mitchell, director of operations at Prospect New Orleans, a citywide art celebration.

Marx believes this approach will give students more perspectives, which will give them valuable ammunition when they fend for themselves in the work force.

“There’s a skill in understanding a client’s message and communicating it to other people, and it should be valued,” Marx says. “We don’t believe students should do free work.

THE

LOYOLA EFFECT

FATHER TED DZIAK, S.J.,

VICE PRESIDENT OF MISSION AND MINISTRY

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The Peace Corps ranks Loyola No. 22 among small schools on its

2017 Top VolunteerProducing Colleges and Universities list.

Dziak believes Jesuit education, with its focus on global perspectives, is a good fit for future Peace Corps members. He takes frequent trips to Belize and Jamaica with Ignacio Volunteers and Wolf Pack Volunteers. “I don’t actively recruit for the Peace Corps,” he says, “but I think it’s very important to step out of your comfort zone and immerse yourself in another culture.”

The Ignacio Volunteer program engages students from diverse backgrounds to come together to be men and women for and with others and to find God in all things.

Since its founding in 1961, 101 Loyola alumni have traveled abroad to serve as volunteers in the Peace Corps.

There are nine Wolf Pack alumni currently volunteering with the organization worldwide.

1 Dziak, third from left, and his fellow Peace Corps volunteers are in traditional Korean nobility dress at a Korean palace (circa 1973).

2 Portrait of Father Ted Dziak today.

3 Alumna Marigny Landry ’16 with children from her service

community in the remote village of Khuis, located in the Southern Kgalagadi District in Botswana.

Father Ted Dziak, S.J., the vice president of Mission and Ministry, was a Peace Corps volunteer after college, teaching English at the college level in Seoul, South Korea.

“I had thought maybe I’d go to law school,” he recalls, “but then I found myself living abroad, and I just thought, 2 ‘Wow! Adventure!’” After a motorcycle accident left him with a broken leg, he returned home to the U.S. for medical care; before he left, a mentor gave him a copy of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s autobiography.

“I was lying in bed with a broken leg wondering what to do with my life, reading about Ignatius lying in bed with a broken leg wondering what to do with his life,” he says. Although he’d been raised Catholic, he’d never considered the priesthood – but after he returned to Korea, he started exploring his own spiritual vocation. Ultimately, he decided against law school and within two years had entered the Jesuit novitiate.

Marigny Landry ’16 (psychology) is serving the Peace Corps in Botswana doing youth development and HIV/AIDS prevention education.

Last year, she wrote an op-ed in The Maroon that read: “Receiving an education from a Jesuit university ensures that students lead meaningful lives in which they strive for a just world. An ideal way to start the new chapter of your life is to engage in a selfless two-year journey in the Peace Corps program.”

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LOCAL FLAVOR

STREETCAR STORIES Telling the Loyola story while rollin' down the Avenue Loyola University New Orleans.

The St. Charles Avenue streetcar.

PUT THOSE TWO NEW ORLEANS ICONS TOGETHER, and you get the perfect recipe for a new way of telling our university’s story.

Add in a powerhouse of a comedian, Edwin Unzalu ’17 (mass communication), and you’ve got Streetcar Stories: A Loyno Web Series.

The theme song will likely get stuck in your head after watching all 12 episodes, with Unzalu singing a catchy original tune about being “a young Latin boy telling stories about Loyola on the streetcar, yeah.” And hopefully, the stories get stuck in your head, as well.

The rumble of the streetcar adds to the soundtrack of Streetcar Stories, the brainchild of Loyola’s award-winning Office of Marketing + Communications and brought to life by Angelique Dyer ’11 (mass communication), the university’s digital marketing manager.

“Streetcar Stories provides outsiders an inside look at Loyola – and at life as a student

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in New Orleans,” Dyer says. “The streetcar in New Orleans is iconic, and so is Loyola, so to put those two together alongside food, music, and life at Loyola has been an exciting adventure.”

With her excitement for the project combined with Unzalu’s colorful personality and the expertise of a team of creative directors and filmmakers – one being another Loyola alumna, Daneeta Jackson ’88 (English) – Streetcar Stories came to life. The authentic storytelling and Unzalu’s rapport with members of the Loyola community was a springboard for increased visibility for not only our university but also the lives, backgrounds, and triumphs of our students, faculty, and staff.

The webseries, the first of its kind to come from Loyola, premiered on a beautiful Wolf Pack Wednesday in October 2016. The show brought Loyola into the digital world using our students and our city as a backdrop. Each week, Unzalu was joined by a new guest – a priest, a basketball player, a DJ, a foodie – and together, they tell their stories about Loyola and New Orleans and how both places create experiences like no other. A few fan favorites included Ellie Diaz ’17 (political science), Student Government Association president, and Unzalu talking all things Loyola, which featured the fun fact that Diaz and St. Ignatius

of Loyola are the same height. Another memorable episode featured Trevarri HuffBoone ’17 (jazz studies) and Unzalu having a jam session with a guitar and a saxophone on the streetcar; the streetcar sounds added a special touch to the music.

The story of Loyola starts and ends with our Jesuit values and mission, and Streetcar Stories’ series finale was no different. The final episode featured a light hearted conversation between Unzalu and the Rev. Ed Vacek, S.J., a Jesuit priest and professor. During their ride, they discussed the Jesuit teaching of “finding God in all things,” whether it is through comedy or working out, and they also touched on what it means to be on the receiving end of a Jesuit education.

While the show has come to an end, its effects are felt around campus and in the community. For the first time, the Loyola and New Orleans love story came to life digitally and gave the audience a chance to see a new side of Loyola – the one that is filled with quirky personalities and exceptional talent. The series opened up a window of opportunity for more projects to be developed and more journeys to travel.

So “we’ll catch you at the next stop.”

Watch at loyno.edu/streetcarstories

ON THE SCENE

BY MACKENZIE BECKER ’18

Sherdren Burnside ’94 is committed to preparing local students for a college education – in the classroom and beyond.

IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA, the education system in New Orleans struggled to get back on its feet.

To help, the state took most of the public schools in New Orleans and transformed them into charter schools. While the schools have since been functioning better in a variety of areas, there is still a lot of work to be done in order to create an educational environment that will lead students on to successful careers.

That’s where Loyola alumna Sherdren Burnside ’94 (English) comes in. Burnside is dedicated to helping New Orleans students acquire an education that will prepare them for a successful future. She was vital to the implementation of the College Track program in New Orleans and currently

s s a l C t Ac

reaches out to students through her position as a pastor at the Upper 9th Ward Church.

After teaching in Marrero and Oakland, Calif., for many years, Burnside helped introduce the College Track program to the city of New Orleans as the founding site director.

Through this program, students have access to support through both academic assistance and financial advising as they work to attain a college degree, beginning at the eighth grade level and continuing until college graduation.

This commitment to access, education, and social equity is central to Loyola’s mission and that of its community.

“Loyola is where I learned to lead organizations,” Burnside says. “It is where I became acutely aware of the inequities that plagued our city. It is where I received support and encouragement to make a difference.”

When the College Track program began in New Orleans in 2012, only around 13 percent of students were eligible for TOPS, a series of Louisiana scholarships available to state residents attending a list of participating colleges and universities. But as of this year, 54 percent of high school graduates qualified for TOPS scholarships, and 38 percent utilized those funds.

Burnside stepped away from the College Track program in 2015 to work as pastor in the Upper 9 th Ward Church, but her passion for education hasn’t faded. She incorporates her previous work in education into her current work at the church, constructing workshops for students and connecting them to the people they need to know to succeed.

“Deeply embedded in Loyola’s ethos are the Ignatian ideals of faith, truth, justice, and service that inspire young people to stand on the courage of their convictions and to create change,” Burnside says. “The work that I do today is grounded in the experiences and lessons learned a at Loyola University New Orleans.”

Th The city of New Orleans continues to work k to restore its education system, and peop ple like li Burnside are vital to that process. people By al llow allowing students access to important reso urce Burnside provides them with the resources, oppo ortun to excel. opportunity “L Loyol fulfilled its mission by preparing “Loyola me tto o lead a meaningful life with and for othe ers; to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; others; and to wor work for a more just world,” she says.

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COVER STORY

DOING

HON

BY AUTUMN CAFIERO GIUSTI ’00

MICHAEL PASHKEVICH ’17 turned down the Fulbright to accept a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to study the role and ecology of spiders in southeast Asian oil palm plantations.

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THE

NORS The University Honors Program offers extra challenges to students who seek them out – and it's paying off in the form of prestigious awards, post-graduate opportunities, and high student satisfaction.

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Extra classes. Extra work. Time.

A thesis. For a line on your résumé.

This is what a typical honors program looks like: an unfair trade. And not necessarily the honor it purports to be.

But – there’s one that offers more.

Exclusive life experiences. Travel. Jobs. Prestigious research. Fellowships. Practical, experiential learning.

One program that acts as a useful supplement. That adds, at the very least, multiple lines to your résumé.

Really cool ones.

And it’s ours.

NAOMI YAVNEH KLOS REPRESENTS A BOLD NEW DIRECTION for the University Honors Program.

Since her arrival as the program’s first full-time director in 2011, the University Honors Program has undergone an impressive transformation – becoming a much larger, more diverse, and more focused version of its former self. As a result, honors students have laid claim to some of the most sought-after fellowship awards in the nation and around the globe.

“It’s very gratifying to me to see that what we’re striving to do is leading to so much success for our students,” Yavneh Klos says.

In spring 2013, the program doubled its usual yield of new students, from about 40 to 80, and has maintained that level of annual recruitment. The program now boasts 276 honors students, compared to 148 in 2012.

The program also has contributed to Loyola’s newfound status as a “Fulbright

factory,” with three of Loyola’s five 2016-2017 Fulbright Award offers going to honors students. One honors student received not only a Fulbright offer but also the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which is one of the most competitive scholarships in the world, on par with the well-known Rhodes Scholarship.

“We’ve built this up over several years, and we’re seeing a payoff,” Yavneh Klos says.

The program has tightened its focus to hone in on three primary objectives: recruitment, transforming the curriculum to accommodate all majors, and better reflecting the Jesuit mission of the university.

Students are invited to participate in the Honors Program based on their academic and co-curricular achievements.

The program’s core commitments include academic excellence and social justice, and it is increasing its recruitment and yield efforts for students from first-generation, low-income, and other under-represented backgrounds.

Continued on page 16

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MATHEW HOLLOWAY ’16 accepted a Fulbright to work in Panama on a research project called Open Spaces, a program he created for students to discuss topics of activism, advocacy, and ally-ship.

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FULBRIGHT SPO

BY EDWARD WROTEN ’16

Lauren Stroh ’17 (English and cultural studies) 4 Natalie Jones ’14 (theatre and languages and cultures), and 5 Mathew Holloway ’16 (sociology) all accepted their Fulbright offers while 1 Michael Pashkevich ’17 (biology) and 3 Emily Edwards ’16 (history) declined the Fulbright offers to pursue other fellowship opportunities – Pashkevich with the Gates Cambridge Scholarship and Edwards with the Max Weber Fellowship at New York University’s Center for European Culture and Studies.

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Jones, Holloway, and Stroh were each selected for the Fulbright program’s English Teaching Assistant program, which places Fulbright recipients in classrooms abroad to provide assistance to the local English teachers. ETAs help teach English while serving as cultural ambassadors for the United States. In addition to teaching English, each student will take on a supplementary research project of their own creation based on their interests and studies.

Jones will be placed in Argentina teaching English at a university, elementary school, or high school.

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In addition to her teaching duties, she will travel around Argentina investigating accents in pursuit of creating a database of accents from various regions of the country that language researchers can utilize.

“If you think about it, accents are like wearing a hat or wearing a mask,” Jones says. “It’s a voice coming out of your mouth. It changes the way you are perceived.”

Stroh will embark on a new chapter of her life teaching English in Paraguay.

Since graduating from Loyola with a major in sociology and a minor in Spanish, Holloway has been traveling

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TLIGHT around the world in preparation for his upcoming Fulbright journey to Panama. While in Panama, Holloway will ignite a research project called Open Spaces, a program he created in order to open a forum for students to discuss important topics related to activism, advocacy, and ally-ship. “From comparing racism between Panama and the United States to learning about the effects of global warming, I want to empower students to know how they can support and address issues affecting our global community,� Holloway says.

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LOYOLA FULBRIGHT STATS HERE?

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Continued from page 12 Whereas in the past the Honors Program was primarily the domain of humanities students, Yavneh Klos helped revise the program so that it could accommodate every discipline at the university. Honors students now hail from every major and program, with approximately 20 percent in the sciences and 25 percent in music.

Also under Yavneh Klos, the Honors Program has added social justice course requirements to conform more closely to the university’s Jesuit mission.

Laura Murphy, Ph.D., a Department of English professor who teaches honors classes each semester, says she has watched the program evolve and flourish under Yavneh Klos’ leadership.

“It’s been great to see how in the last five years, the Honors Program has grown from an ancillary program to a central heartbeat on campus,” Murphy says. “The number of students has grown, and therefore the caliber of our classes and the quality of the work we get to do here has improved.”

The Best and the Fulbright-est Recent graduate and Honors Program student Michael Pashkevich ’17 (biology) faced a pleasant dilemma at the start of the spring semester. He had two offers on the table: a national Fulbright Scholarship that would enable him to pursue a research project in Trinidad and a Gates Cambridge Scholarship – a highly coveted international award that would allow him to conduct field work in Sumatra, Indonesia, through the University of Cambridge in the U.K. Pashkevich chose the latter, becoming Loyola’s first Gates Cambridge Scholar. He joins the ranks of only 95 people from around the world who received the award this year; 36 of those recipients were from the United States.

“It’s very rare for a small liberal arts college outside of the top two or three schools to have a winner of this award,” says Carol Ann MacGregor, Ph.D., national fellowships adviser and assistant professor of sociology. “As a firsttime institution, we were singled out in the press release Gates put out about their winners.”

Pashkevich is pursuing a Ph.D. in zoology and plans to investigate the role and ecology of spiders in southeast Asian oil palm plantations. He says that being part of the University Honors Program has strengthened his confidence and ability to receive awards like the Gates Cambridge and Fulbright scholarships, as well as the national Barry Goldwater Scholarship he won last year.

“Because of the mission of the Honors Program and Loyola, I found that I have not only an academic passion but also a job that’s incredibly fulfilling that will hopefully allow me to pursue environmental justice for a long time,” Pashkevich says.

The fortification of the University Honors Program also has resulted in an increasing number of high-ability students, such as Pashkevich, who fit the profile of national and international scholarship candidates.

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This year, the Honors Program produced three of the five students who received offers for Fulbright awards. The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international education exchange program. Five Fulbright offers is a record for the university, and three ties the university’s previous record from the 2014-2015 year, when the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs named Loyola among the Top U.S. Fulbright Producers.

The students who accepted this year’s Fulbright offers are Natalie Jones ’14 (theatre and languages and cultures), Mathew Holloway ’16 (sociology), and recent Honors Program graduate Lauren Stroh ’17 (English and cultural studies).

In addition to Pashkevich, fellow Honors Program graduate Emily Edwards ’16 (history) chose to decline the Fulbright offer to accept the Max Weber Fellowship at New York University’s Center for European Culture and Studies.

Working with other departments and faculty members such as MacGregor is key to producing national and international award recipients within the Honors Program, Yavneh Klos says.

“It kind of takes a village to get a Fulbright,” she says. “We all work together to contribute to this. It shows how committed our faculty is to supporting our students.”

Just this year, 20 students applied for the Fulbright award, and others have been submitting applications for competitive awards such as the Goldwater and Harry S. Truman scholarships. “These are all things students are more aware of because the Honors Program has done more work to promote them, and also because Carol Ann [MacGregor] and I have been eager to make sure students know these things exist and have the support they need to apply,” Murphy says.

An Advocate for Honors The Honors Program has become a focus of success for the university beyond national scholarships and a standout program at the national level.

With a four-year graduation rate of close to 90 percent, its graduates this year have been admitted to Cambridge, MIT, Columbia University, Cal Tech, and several other highly selective graduate programs.

“I really appreciate the way Naomi [Yavneh Klos] has shaped the Honors Program so that it’s more of a culture than a set of classes,” Murphy says. “I think the students really gain a lot out of that.”

Honors Program students also hold leadership positions throughout the university and engage in thousands of hours of community engagement. They make up about half of the population of the Awakening Retreats; three of the four rectors this year were Honors Program students.

“With any honors program, there is a strong emphasis on academic excellence,”

Pashkevich says. “But what’s so unique about a Jesuit honors program – and really emphasized in Loyola’s Honors Program – is making sure to attach your academic talents to some sort of social justice.”

Yavneh Klos has been working to support the unique role of the Honors Program at Loyola and beyond. As chairwoman of the Honors Consortium of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, she has worked to promote the role of social justice in honors programs nationwide. “We articulate the characteristics of a Jesuit honors program,” she says. “We feel there are special values that our programs have that are not just for Jesuits. And so it’s really nice in an organization that has such a diversity of member institutions to feel like our special breed of honors is being recognized and getting attention because of my leadership role.”

This summer, the University Honors Program is taking four of its students to the Netherlands to present at the European Honors Conference and to discuss some of the program’s practices and how it incorporates social justice.

“I think that through the University Honors Program’s emphasis on social justice and community engagement, we are becoming a leader nationally and even internationally in honors education,” Yavneh Klos says.

Yavneh Klos is also president of the National Collegiate Honors Council, an international organization of more than 850 national honors colleges, as well as colleges in Europe, Asia, and Australia. The organization advocates and provides support for honors faculty, administrators, and students.

“It’s very exciting to be involved in this organization because we really strive to identify the strengths and advantages of honors education, as well as the challenges, to be advocates for our students and programs,” Yavneh Klos says.

Yavneh Klos is the 52-year-old organization’s first president from a Catholic and Jesuit university. “That’s something I’m very proud of,” she says.

Among her national advocacy efforts, Yavneh Klos met earlier this year with legislative aides on the health and education committees of the Senate to discuss what’s ahead for honors education under the new administration. She says it’s important for students to understand that there’s much more to the Honors Program than its coursework.

“I always tell these students that Honors is not a checklist of experiences,” she says. “It’s a community of relationships. That’s really what’s at the heart of Honors. It’s not just an amped-up curriculum.”

MAKING A FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR

BY AUTUMN CAFIERO GIUSTI ’00

The decision to pursue a Fulbright Award is anything but last-minute.

Submitting an application involves a yearlong process that entails months of planning, interviewing, writing, and collecting materials.

Carol Ann MacGregor, Ph.D., is national fellowships adviser for the university. She helps organize applications for Fulbright and other national scholarship awards that require the university’s endorsement of candidates.

“The Fulbright has a very detailed process that they like to see on campuses for their endorsements,” she says.

The process actually begins in April, when the Fulbright U.S. Student Program opens up its application.

The program requires that students participate in a campus interview process with faculty members. More than 20 faculty members volunteer two to three hours of their time to interview potential applicants.

Because the application deadline is usually the first week of October, much of the legwork for Fulbright applications takes place over the summer via email and Skype. The Fulbright program announces its semifinalists in December or January and then offers awards later in the spring.

MacGregor says her most effective technique for recruiting potential applicants is when she is able to tell a student that a professor thinks that student would make a strong candidate for the Fulbright. “With a little nudge, a lot of our students really are interested in pursuing something like this,” she says.

Because Loyola has a strong focus on experiential learning, MacGregor says many of the students who approach her already have excellent research experiences.

“My job is a lot easier because of the preparation that students come to me with,” she says. “I can help them sell themselves a little better, but I can’t give them experiences and opportunities before they get to me. That is where things like study abroad, internships, service learning, language training, and faculty-student collaborative research come in.”

Although Honors Program students regularly apply for and receive national scholarships like the Fulbright, it’s important to note that students from all of Loyola’s programs and disciplines receive them almost annually, says Naomi Yavneh Klos, Ph.D., director of the University Honors Program. “The fact that you weren’t in Honors doesn’t preclude you,” she says.

About 10,000 students nationwide apply for Fulbright awards each year, and the program gives about 2,200 awards.

This past year, Loyola produced 20 Fulbright applicants; one quarter of those received Fulbright offers.

“We had five semifinalists, and all five received the award, which is quite unusual but also quite wonderful,” MacGregor says.

A LOVING LEGACY Two of this year's Fulbright offers went to Emily Edwards and Michael Pashkevich, who were the 2016-2017 recipients of the Conrad Raabe Research Endowment, named for Professor Emeritus Conrad Raabe, Ph.D., a longtime political science professor and founding director of the Honors Program, who retired in 2011.

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Lifehack Loyola, or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Gen Z

BY WILL GLASS

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MY BROTHER IS VEGAN. He goes to bed at 7:30 p.m. and wakes up at 4:30 a.m.

He believes, with his whole heart, that his purpose on this planet is to put out a net positive – to do more good than harm. This is a moral impetus, his only one, actually, that informs all of his ideals and decisions.

His diet, a moral act. His use of money, a moral act.

He doesn't really worry about anything. Except climate change.

It doesn't scare him on a personal

level; he just sort of resents it and the people who deny it.

He doesn't spend money on things.

He sleeps on a mattress on the floor in a bare bedroom. His shower curtain broke, but it's a luxury he can live without. He’ll splurge on experiences, maybe. He went to Red Rocks in May. He hasn't checked his Facebook or Instagram in years, he thinks.

The accounts could be inactive. He thinks going on Snapchat streaks with his cousin is funny, but that's about it.

He doesn't go on the Internet.

His major is computer science.

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Gen Z Key Facts They are savers. They lived through the great recession and saw their older siblings live at home after college.

They are, largely, non-drinkers and non-smokers. On social media, kale is better for their image than recreational drugs.

They are “lifehackers” – they want faster, simpler, better.

Their attention span on average is between 6 and 8 seconds.

This is not because they’re impatient or unfocused (they can become completely engrossed in things they deem worthwhile) but because they have highly sophisticated filters.

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Which is probably due in large part to the fact that the average member of Gen Z has seen 200,000 marketing messages by the time they’re 15 years old.

They become highly selective and decisive, then, about the products and causes they support. Seeking meaning in a constant stream of information becomes futile.

Meaning must come from within; fulfillment becomes crucial to the work they do both professionally and personally.

They have friends they’ve never met in person, and 26 percent would have to fly to visit most of their social network friends.

They are the first true digital natives. They have grown up with the Internet – on the Internet.

Ninety-two percent of them are on the Internet every day, and 24 percent are on the Internet “almost constantly.” They have had constant access to a world’s worth of information and people for their whole lives.

60 80%

their jobs to have an impact % want on the world will more often buy a product that has a positive social or environmental impact

The Student My brother is unique. And so is the rest of Gen Z, which isn’t meant to sound cheeky.

The specifics of his motivation, his character, are a thumbprint. His exact configuration is not something you'll find in another member of his generation.

But the nature of these things is what makes Gen Z a classifiable and fascinating phenomenon.

There are things the generation as a whole believes in on a conceptual level. But they reserve the right to act on those beliefs in their own way.

So – they’re part of movements, but they’re always individuals. They swarm to cultural events, agree on a large centripetal force, and then develop personal responses in centrifuge.

It's a human power they believe in: the power of one self and the power of many selves. But never a faceless power.

They become, then, these individual actors. Their habits and skills can seem inconsistent – they eat like kings, but they can't pay taxes; they are thrifty and possessionless, but they spend thousands on travel – but they can defend them logically and compellingly. And they are wholly a part of the movements that the generation can agree upon as worthwhile.

These kids make decisions fast. They discover and dismiss inauthenticity in a few seconds. If the information you’ve pushed into the stream isn’t real, honest, worthwhile, or innovative, it’s ignored. Not disliked – ignored. Your content, thrown into the Mississippi and ruined by undertow.

Here, producers, employers, marketers, and universities find themselves back in the '90s – but only kind of. It's almost like appealing toward that familiar apathy, but it just seems that way because each consumer cares about a set of things so specific you'd never possibly guess, and any attempt to cash in on large cultural movements is spotted instantly (see: Pepsi).

They are the exact reason targeted ads were built – and, at once, the reason those ads often miss their targets.

So how do you get a generation like this to care about your product? To believe in it? To even notice it?

The wisdom is that you make it – your company, your product – into something they want to be friends with. You create loyalty – and, by the way, once they believe, their loyalty is fierce – by doing the right thing … the real thing (see: not Pepsi). These entrepreneurial young adults want friends who are open and honest. And who innovate for fun.

So you break rules. You commit to justice.

You make things – different things. You do your part to build the world they believe in.

You do these things because you should.

And you let them come to you.

The School With Project Magis, Loyola’s new initiative to improve the performance and health of our institution, we’ve harnessed the brainpower of the entire university to create the school of the future. To become these students’ innovative best friend.

It’s humbling sometimes to realize that you need to improve. To see movement and wonder if your stride matches. But it’s also the nature of the Jesuit to do so. To reflect on one’s output, accomplishments, processes.

To think critically – and to discern the areas that need work.

The Jesuits and Generation Z have this in common: They continue to set the world on fire. This is a generation that wants to change the world. That is changing the world.

So we committed. We backed them up.

We don't have pipes shooting students from class to class. We’re working on the flying cars. But Project Magis is keeping our Jesuit mission on track and – with the help of our faculty and staff’s ideas – making huge, innovative changes that match this generation’s stride.

This is what the Ignatian ideal of magis means: reaching for more, for better things.

It’s Loyola’s version of a lifehack.

We’ve created lean, nimble teams to take ownership of specific workstreams. These teams are the result of unprecedented collaboration across our entire faculty and staff, all areas of expertise, to bring diverse minds together on the topics they’re most passionate and knowledgeable about.

This commitment comes not long after the announcement of a new Student Success Center (see p. 40 ) and, of course, the incredible renovation of Monroe Hall, which gave the building 114,000 additional square feet, two new floors (including a rooftop greenhouse), three design studios, two elements studios, two teaching computer labs, improved classrooms, a screen-printing room, a darkroom, a digital printing and equipment lab, and a 3-D printer.

We’re introducing students to these facilities, and to Loyola in general, earlier in their decision-making process by creating new summer camps (like our new Neuro Camp, a weeklong, entirely neurosciencebased program that allows high school juniors and seniors to earn college credit in real lab settings) as well as spending some time making high schools more aware of the fantastic programs already in existence.

And – another bit of the lifehack here – we’re identifying and harvesting some seriously low-hanging fruit. For example, we’re investing in new programs that students all over the country are demanding – but can’t seem to find. This year alone, Loyola has added more than five programs and certificates.

Our new food studies program (see p. 24) molds students into experts on the entire culture and system surrounding food, its production, and its consumption. In addition to teaching students about the complex memory, ritual, history, and nostalgia of food’s many cultures, the program covers the food industry “from farm to plate” and examines ethics and urgent systemic social justice issues such as equitable access to food.

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criticism, food entrepreneurship, and consulting, among others. It’s a direct response to the nature of Gen Z, who made food’s production and consumption into a political act.

And it’s the only undergraduate program of its kind in Louisiana.

We’re also offering two new computer science degrees: one general and one with a concentration in game programming. Both of these degrees are teaching students the language that affects our world every single day – and that only a select number of gamechangers can speak.

Students in these majors become true architects of culture, shapers of information and the media by which we consume it. They learn skills that apply to an unimaginable breadth of career fields – health care, design, business, military – including ones that don’t exist yet.

There’s a new visual communication degree that teaches students – as creative directors, brand strategists, videographers, photographers – to frame a brand or issue in ways that focus the global zeitgeist.

There’s the new flexible online bachelor of arts degree, offered in multiple concentrations. And the Certificate in Software Development and Coding, a 10week boot camp that was developed with area tech employers and that provides the qualifications desired to fill 3,000 unfilled positions in Louisiana.

These make up just a sample of the degrees and certificates that Loyola has added to its offerings, all of which are extremely in-demand, tied to highest job growth, and nowhere else to be found in the New Orleans area.

And we’re constantly exploring new programs every day. Loyola is investing in these areas and skillsets. They’re the future.

They’re new ways, easy ways, we can serve our mission – and attract and retain students.

But more than touting new programs, the whole point here, to my mind, is to illustrate that the university is training its reflexes.

It’s making a habit of identifying needs and meeting them quickly and without fear. Like a Jesuit – like Ignatius.

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Loyola is adjusting, I think. It’s becoming nimble, adaptable.

If a student wants to take an internship in Silicon Valley at Google, we’ll develop online courses so they can attend their classes remotely. If a student wants a major we don’t have, we’ll work with them to customize their own.

Flor Serna ’15 (music industries technology) came to Loyola to study the music industry. But when she noticed she was the only female engineer in the studio, she developed her own curriculum that allowed her to mentor young girls and encourage their interest in STEM. She used the tools and flexibility of Loyola to build Electric Girls, a STEM-education startup that teaches elementary-age girls that they can be as skilled as anyone in electronics, audio, computer programming, and design.

Michael Pashkevich ’17 (biology), who won a 2016 Goldwater Scholarship and a 2017 Gates Cambridge Scholarship (see p.10), majored in biology to study the effects of certain species on the diversity and species richness of spider communities. But he took a second major in medieval studies. Just because.

This is what this generation is. They’re thinking of jobs that don’t exist yet, and they’re pursuing them with abandon. And we’re the university that’s going to prepare them for those jobs.

They want to create their own paths, their own degrees, their own careers. They are the definition of trailblazers. They want their hands on everything.

They want to touch the world, hold it, bend it. Set it on fire.

In cosmology class, our students use computational models to tinker with the laws of gravity and disprove the big bang theory. They investigate algae growth on human hair in forensic methods. They build apps and pitch them at NOLA Tech Week in entrepreneurship class. In music performance, they study under Grammy Award winners and book, promote, and play shows at local venues.

In Loyola’s “chicken lab,” undergraduate students work with Dr. Rosalie Anderson to investigate methods of joint regeneration

and have made significant progress in developing a technique that would allow for its possibility.

In Drs. Bob and Aimee Thomas’ biology class, students participate in the “BioBlitz,” in which entire classes of students descend upon parks to categorize the animal and insect life there.

In every program, students practice making. Doing. Because that’s what they are – makers and doers.

We’re already watching this generation take advantage of the new tools we’re providing them. They’re surprising us every day with the things they come up with.

It’s a simple Venn diagram. One circle is Gen Z. The other is the world they want.

The overlap is Loyola, where the future is being built.

My mom went vegan for 40 days in solidarity with my brother. Her cardiologist did cartwheels. She’s past the 40 days now and still going.

Inasmuch as he cares about anything, my brother is proud.

A small example, to be sure, but this generation, my brother, is changing the way people live. The way the world does things.

The way we appeal to each other, the way we learn, the way we buy, the way we hire.

And with change, there will always be generational dissonance at its outset.

There will always be those who worry that we’re getting dumber, more impatient, more superficial. Who wail about the world catering to the whims of goldfish ruined by technology.

But – when it does cater to them, the “goldfish,” the world becomes efficient, entrepreneurial, committed to justice, creative, tolerant, and compassionate. And when our school does, we produce mindblowing work; a community of makers and thinkers; and a drive to push ourselves toward a future filled with passion, kindness, and innovation.

And it doesn’t take long to see. Only about 6 to 8 seconds.

Project Magis as described by Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs David Borofsky, Ed.D.

The true goal of Project Magis is to break down silos, solicit ideas from all parts of the university, and work together to execute the best concepts in order to drive revenue and/or operate more efficiently.

That means building new systems and processes.

It also means encouraging more quality programs to deliver an exceptional student experience.

Project Magis is a strategic planning process that involves people from across the university in nine different workstreams to consider Loyola’s strengths and challenges and how to best leverage them for immediate effect. Each workstream has a particular focus and is championed by a sponsor, who holds overall responsibility for the workstream, and a lead, who is responsible for the vetting of initiatives through a group process known as bottom-up (or core) planning.

We want to encourage everyone in the community to become involved in the many different workstreams. We all have a goal of advancing Loyola’s mission, which is to educate as many students as we can in the Jesuit tradition.

Every workstream through an initial brainstorming and identification process generates multiple initiatives that could help Loyola to achieve its goals. These initiatives are identified in the first phase of bottomup planning and may morph throughout the process, as new ideas arise and others are consolidated or retained for the future.

Each initiative is appointed an “owner,” who will be responsible for moving the initiative through the planning process, gathering a team to assist in the effort, helping price any initiatives, and leading implementation of the initiative once it is approved.

An ad hoc committee of the Board of Trustees, which includes the president,

provost, director of Government & Legal Affairs, and the chief transformation officer for Project Magis, is steering the process.

This committee will make final decisions on recommendations from each workstream.

There are nine active workstreams, and the Board of Trustees has set financial targets for each; these targets may be reached through revenue generation or potential cost-cutting opportunities identified by members of the workstream with input from appropriate partners across the university.

It will be up to the individual sponsors and leads of each workstream, after considering information and feedback from workstream members, what they recommend to the ad hoc committee, understanding that financial targets are expected to be reached.

The bottom-up planning process is designed to last eight weeks. Initial planning will be completed this summer, and implementation of initiatives will begin shortly after the final plans of each workstream are approved by the ad hoc committee of the Board of Trustees and funding is identified through the Finance Office.

Already, I am encouraged by the conversations that are happening all around Loyola University New Orleans as a result of your engagement in this process.

I thank you for your time – and for your commitment to making Loyola a place that welcomes great ideas.

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FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD

BY AUTUMN CAFIERO GIUSTI ’00

This fall, Loyola will launch an ambitious food studies program that will explore everything from environmental issues related to food production to the social justice implications of hunger.

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IN NEW ORLEANS, FOOD IS AN EXPERIENCE. It’s cochon de lait po’ boys at Jazz Fest and crawfish boils during Lent.

It’s embedded in our culture with Creoleinfluenced ya ka mein and Sicilian-inspired muffulettas and in our traditions like doughy King Cakes from Twelfth Night to Fat Tuesday.

But food has a serious side, too. There are political and social justice concerns regarding global food production and trade and whether these things are done sustainably.

To that end, Loyola is launching its new food studies program to help students better understand the food system as a whole by exploring the commerce, culture, and policy surrounding what we eat.

The program will be the first undergraduate program of its kind in the region. Unlike traditional culinary arts, nutrition, or agriculture programs, food studies at Loyola will be an interdisciplinary program exploring the personal, health, and social justice implications of where our food comes from. The program aims to incorporate a substantial amount of service learning, along with connections to professionals working in the field, such as distributors, packagers, and farmers.

“There’s a lot that happens between a seed being planted in a field and a plate of food being delivered,” Daniel Mintz, Ph.D., director of food studies, says.

Mintz came on board last summer to help guide the process of designing the new

program. His role was to coordinate new courses, service learning opportunities, and community connections that would foster a student discourse on food consumption and waste. The program also will draw on the rich resources of New Orleans as a food city and Loyola as an institution committed to social justice and engaged learning.

“What I found very early on in the process was that there was tremendous enthusiasm among community members who work in food – whether in the hospitality sector or nonprofit – to support a program like this and to help students meaningfully engage with food in all its complexity and in a variety of ways in New Orleans and elsewhere,” Mintz says.

Loyola already has had some involvement with humane and sustainable food practices. Last year, Loyola’s Jesuit Social Research Institute hosted Emerson National Hunger Fellow Sakeenah Shabazz of the Congressional Hunger Center, who worked with Loyola student Colleen Dulle and JSRI economic policy specialist Jeanie Donovan ’08 (political science) to record and present the stories of SNAP benefit recipients and providers from across Louisiana. In the College of Business' Operations and Process Management class, Loyola M.B.A. students work with Second Harvest, the largest food bank in the Gulf South, to make recommendations for how the organization can find efficiencies, conserving even

THE EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD NEW ORLEANS' mission is to teach children to make healthy connections through food. It is a comprehensive food education that integrates hands-on organic gardening by Loyola students and seasonal cooking into the school curriculum, culture, and cafeteria programs for children in kindergarten through eighth grade. Loyola students learn the philosophy behind food education and are a part of Edible Schoolyard’s mission to change the way children eat, learn, and live.

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more of its resources for the population it serves. Second Harvest is also a service learning partner for Loyola undergraduates, who have helped with everything from sorting and packing food to designing and implementing public relations campaigns.

Loyola has a longer history in this area, too. The executive director of Slow Food USA, Richard McCarthy, previously worked at Loyola’s Twomey Center for Peace Through Justice. McCarthy is credited with developing the Crescent City Farmers Market, which operated out of Loyola for several years.

Mintz says that McCarthy was excited about Loyola’s new food studies program when the two spoke last summer. “He talked enthusiastically about how great of a fit it would be both for the university and for the city.”

A Customizable Degree Developers of the food studies program say that there will be a broad range of career possibilities that students can pursue because the program will expose them to so many facets of the food system.

“The liberal arts approach to knowledge is that you may want to know about food commerce, but you also need to know about culture and policy,” says Justin Nystrom, Ph.D., associate professor of history. “We feel that we’ll generate a much more wellrounded student.”

Nystrom has been involved with developing the program almost from the beginning and is also director of the Center for the Study of New Orleans and director of the Documentary and Oral History Studio.

Students will be able to major or minor in food studies. And, as Nystrom points out, Loyola’s degree program is efficient enough that students could double major in food studies and another area of study, such as marketing or environmental studies, giving students an opportunity to leave the university with a customized education tailored to what they want to do.

“They can marry an interest they have in food and culture and also a desire they might have to engage in the world of business,” Nystrom says. “We can offer them an academic pathway toward their goals.”

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THE BUSINESS OF FOOD Recent graduate Ellen Egitton’s honors thesis investigates how craft coffee shop owners use their WiFi policies to shape their customers' experience of the coffee they serve. Her interviews shed light on the social and business ambitions of high-end coffee-sellers.

There’s also the potential of entrepreneurship as a career for food studies majors. Mintz points to the example of the farm-to-table movement, which places an emphasis on knowing where your food came from. If the restaurant serves a salad with strawberries in it, diners might want to know where those strawberries came from.

The restaurant’s purchasing manager might seek out fruits with interesting flavor profiles that were produced by a small grower. But it can be difficult for a small supplier within a reasonable distance to consistently get those delicious berries to the table. “So there’s a great need for innovation in the distribution link on the supply chain,” Mintz says.

A food studies degree combined with an entrepreneurship minor will help Loyola’s students find workable, sustainable solutions to this kind of problem.

The city of New Orleans itself presents opportunities as a leader in handling international food commodities, as well as the city’s booming economic sector of food tourism. Students will be able to participate in internships and other forms of experiential learning in these fields.

As part of their coursework, students will learn from nonprofit and industry leaders at Second Harvest, Edible Schoolyard, Capstone Community Gardens, the New Orleans Food Co-op, Hollygrove Market and Farm, Whole Foods Market, Dooky Chase restaurant, and others.

Disciplinary Crossover Part of what makes Loyola’s food studies program unique is its interdisciplinary nature and its commitment to social justice.

Food studies will incorporate elements of sociology, history, English, business, and other areas of study.

Undergirding the entire program is the Jesuit imperative of justice and the theme of food justice. This fall, Associate Professor of Sociology Angel Parham, Ph.D., will teach a course on the sociology of food and food justice, which will explore food inequalities and social justice issues related to food.

“It’s amazing how you can do a whole chain of analysis of the justice and environmental issues that are necessary to bring you a single cup of coffee,” Parham says.

Parham is another member of the committee that’s been working to develop the

food studies program. Her class will include a service-learning component so that students can connect the course material to their own observations of food inequalities and food justice in the community.

“There’s interest from an increasing number of people to have a better sense for personal reasons, for health reasons, and for justice reasons about where their food is coming from,” Parham says.

Nystrom is launching a class in the spring called the History of Food in America, while Mintz will teach a literature course called Thinking Critically about Food, which is intended to help students think about food as a cultural text and expose them to how to talk about the literal and visual representation of foods.

Mintz’s background is in English literature. “One of the things I found very attractive about food is that it presents students with ways of engaging very complicated issues through the material of everyday life,” Mintz says.

Dishing It Up, a first-year seminar in management taught by Frankie Weinberg, Ph.D., assistant professor of management, introduces students to the ways in which different food service organizations in New Orleans design their organizational structures to meet the needs of their communities. Students in that course have studied how businesses as different as Whole Foods, Hollygrove Market, the New Orleans Food Co-op, and New Orleans-based food trucks work to understand the needs of their communities, identify opportunities, and build organizations that balance their social missions and their growth as enterprises.

Other food studies courses will include Foundations in Food Culture, which will look at food as not only nourishment but also as a cultural artifact and will examine how people use food to define themselves, and Foundations in Food Systems and Commerce, which will focus on the systems that bring food from field to table, as well as the systems governing food production, distribution, and consumption.

The program will start this fall – just in time for the annual Louisiana Seafood Festival – and will pick up with more courses in the spring and fall of 2018.

Much like coffee and beignets or a shrimp po’ boy with a cold Abita, Loyola University New Orleans and food is a perfect pairing!

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A Slam-Dunk

Program

BY FRITZ ESKER ’00

Wolf Pack Basketball has a bright future and a proud history. Outsiders, and even some alumni, may not view Loyola as a school with a legendary basketball tradition. But the truth is the Wolf Pack has a rich roundball story, including a national championship, an upset over the fifth-ranked team in the country, and a coach who’s recently become the winningest in school history.

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THE LOYOLA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TEAM has won three conference championships in a row under Coach Kellie Kennedy.

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THE 1966-1967 MEN'S BASKETBALL TEAM beat fifth-ranked Michigan State and went on to play in the NCAA tournament.

National Champs New Orleans Advocate journalist and Loyola graduate Ramon Vargas ’09 (communication) chronicled the 1945 Loyola men’s basketball team’s NAIB (precursor to the NAIA) championship in his book Fight, Grin & Squarely Play the Game: The 1945 Loyola New Orleans Basketball Championship & Legacy.

Vargas discovered the subject by accident when working for The Maroon. He wanted to know what it was like to attend Loyola in different eras, so he dug up old copies of The Maroon from World War II. The first page he opened to announced the Wolf Pack’s national championship. It’s the only national title any New Orleans basketball team has ever won.

Soon after, he was digging up everything he could find on Loyola’s championship.

The team’s leading scorer was Leroy Chollet, who would go on to a career in the NBA and play in the NBA Finals for the Syracuse Nationals (the team that

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would become the Philadelphia 76ers).

Jack Orsley was the coach. The season and championship brought joy and excitement to a university that had lost many students and alumni to World War II. There is one mysterious side note to the 1945 team’s story: The trophy is missing.

While researching the book, Vargas asked former players about the trophy. None of them knew its location. Loyola officials graciously searched for the trophy with Vargas. But they never found it.

“Nobody knows where that trophy ended up,” Vargas says.

Shocking the Spartans Another landmark Loyola basketball victory took place a little over 20 years later in December 1966 when Loyola’s men defeated the Michigan State Spartans, the fifthranked team in the country, 74-70.

Charlie Young ’64 (journalism) covered the game for the States-Item. He still remembers it vividly.

The score was tied at 70 with 9 seconds left. Jim Jackoniski ’69 (business), a reserve who was in the game because starter Barry Geraghty ’67 (business), J.D. ’70, fouled out, sank a 15-foot baseline jumper to give the Wolf Pack the lead. Michigan State hurried up the court and missed a shot. Jackoniski came to the rescue again, securing the rebound and sinking two free throws to seal the victory.

Heading into the contest, Loyola was undefeated. Before the game, Young recalls a long line of people waiting on Freret Street to buy tickets. Over 5,300 fans showed up to cheer on Loyola. The atmosphere was electric.

“The noise was deafening,” Young says. “It was surreal. … To see that kind of crowd was something else.”

While Jackoniski was the late hero, the end result was a balanced team effort.

Ten people played, and eight of them scored. Charlie Powell was the team’s leading scorer with 16 points. Powell, an African American, was the first collegiate basketball player to break the color barrier in Louisiana.

“They played a very good Big 10 team to a standstill,” Young says. “It was just a hell of a game.”

The 1966-1967 Loyola men’s basketball team went on to play in the NCAA Tournament (now known as March Madness).

The Kellie Kennedy Era Fifty years later, in the 2016-2017 season, Loyola Women’s Basketball Coach Kellie Kennedy became the winningest basketball coach in Loyola history. She has 195 wins and should easily clear 200 in the upcoming season. The women’s basketball team has won four conference championships in a row during her nine-season tenure. She’s humble about her success, attributing much of it to the athletic directors, assistant coaches, and players she has worked with over the years.

“You don’t do it alone,” she says. “All the players who have come through the program have been a big part of my success. I’ve had great assistant coaches, too. Coaching collegiate sports is a hard

job. When you have people who share your enthusiasm and work ethic, it makes it so much easier.”

Kennedy, a 1990 graduate of the University of North Carolina and a former collegiate basketball player herself, says working at a university like Loyola makes it easier for her to recruit young women who are both quality players and quality human beings. Part of the attraction for recruits is an exciting city like New Orleans. But much of the appeal comes from the school itself.

“It’s a great academic institution,” she says.

“For women’s basketball, that’s a big draw.”

For Kennedy, the biggest challenge of the job is not the X's and O's but working with young women, mentoring them, and watching them grow up over four years.

“You want them to be the best people they can be when they leave,” Kennedy says. “It’s extremely challenging but extremely rewarding.”

Kennedy is grateful for being a part of Loyola’s storied basketball history but is optimistic that the future will be bright, as well.

“We have a great tradition [with Loyola basketball], but we’re creating traditions as we continue, too,” Kennedy says.

COACH KELLIE KENNEDY should easily clear her 200th win this upcoming season and is excited for the future of Loyola basketball.

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SYBOL COOK ANDERSON, chief diversity officer

BY MACKENZIE BECKER ’18

JOHN HEAD, vice president of Enrollment Management

MADELEINE LANDRIEU, dean of College of Law

JOHN JO OHN HN HEAD, HEA EAD, D,, De D DDAVID Dean ean n of of BOROFSKY, interim and vice Enrollment Management Enro En ro ollllme llme men nt M nt an nag gem e provost en nt president of Academic Affairs

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KERN MAASS, dean of the College of Music and Fine Arts

Fresh Faces

BY MACKENZIE BECKER ’18

Loyola welcomes five new leaders to key positions.

AS LOYOLA REINVENTS ITSELF WITH PROJECT MAGIS (see p. 23), one of the things we’re most excited about is the talent coming into several high-profile leadership roles on our campus.

From this past February through the coming August, several new staff members will be making Loyola their home. And we’re confident these new people, with their energy and ideas, will lead the Loyola community through a successful year.

One of these new leaders is David B. Borofsky, Ed.D, who was named interim provost and vice president for Academic Affairs on March 28 and started his work on April 10.

Borofsky has gained experience at seven universities and colleges over the course of his career, serving as president, provost, vice president, and dean. In his most recent position as interim president of Hodges University, he helped the university exceed its enrollment goals and developed a first-of-its-kind university diversity and inclusion program.

“Loyola University New Orleans has a wonderful mission and cares deeply about the success of its students,” Borofsky says.

“I am excited to be joining its family and look forward to listening to and working with all faculty, staff, and students.”

We are also looking forward to welcoming John D. Head, Ed.D., who will serve as Loyola’s new vice president of Enrollment Management.

Head will oversee admissions and enrollment efforts for undergraduate, graduate, and continuing students at Loyola. He previously held the position

of associate vice president of enrollment management at the University of West Georgia, where he maintained responsibility for all undergraduate admissions and retention rates. During his tenure, the university experienced overall enrollment growth of 13 percent.

“Loyola is committed to educating the whole person, helping students understand that we have a responsibility to serve God and all of humanity,” Head says. “Loyola has a great academic reputation, and I am very excited about working for such an outstanding institution.”

The College of Law will also be under new leadership in the coming academic year.

Judge Madeleine Landrieu, J.D. ’87, H ’05, was named the new dean of Loyola’s College of Law in February and will join Loyola this summer.

Landrieu will bring to her alma mater a wealth of knowledge acquired as a lawyer, judge, scholar, and administrator.

“I am thrilled to join a remarkable faculty and administration and look forward to playing a small role in educating the next generation of legal professionals committed to using the law to make a difference in the world,” Landrieu says.

Before her first judicial election, Landrieu worked as a litigator for 14 years at the Gainsburgh, Benjamin, David, Meunier, and Warshauer law firm, serving as a partner for 10 years. In 2001, she was elected trial court judge on the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans, where she worked for 11 years before moving to the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal in 2012.

Another staff member we are eager to have on campus is Kern Maass, who joined Loyola as the new dean of the College of Music and Fine Arts in February 2017.

Maass has more than 15 years of leadership experience that he will be drawing on for his new position – from

program and curriculum development to assessment and accreditation, Maass has done it all. In his previous position as associate dean for the College of Fine and Applied Arts at Appalachian State University, Maass responded to the needs of over 3,000 students and 200 faculty.

“Faculty, students, and staff are so talented and passionate in everything they do,” Maass says of the Loyola community. “I think it would be hard to not be invigorated by their amazing work and creative expression.”

Finally, Sybol Cook Anderson, Ph.D., will fill a crucial role on campus, having been named Loyola’s new chief diversity officer in May. In this position, she will report directly to the president and provide clear leadership over the development and implementation of diversity and inclusion practices at Loyola.

Anderson has more than 25 years of innovative, results-driven administration and inclusive teaching experience, and her commitment to student success and creating a climate of inclusion has been a central part of her career for more than 20 years.

In her previous position at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Anderson led a campus-wide initiative designed to create strategic goals for inclusion, diversity, and equity and develop policies that support all members of the community.

“Our goal is to build and improve upon a culture that is consistent with our values,” Loyola University President the Rev. Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., Ph.D., says. “We are thrilled to have Dr. Anderson lead that effort.”

We know these new people and their visions for the future will positively impact the New Orleans community. We trust that they will not only work for the success of our university but also inspire the students, faculty, and staff on a daily basis.

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Pomp and

Circumstance LOYOLA GRADUATED MORE THAN 750 STUDENTS AT COMMENCEMENT 2017, which was held May 13 at the MercedesBenz Superdome.

Humanitarian and CNN political commentator Van Jones served as commencement speaker and received an honorary degree.

In a moving and emotional speech, Jones thanked the parents and families of the students and urged graduates to seek common ground and unity as they progress in their lives and careers.

“Everything has that call to greatness, and you have that,” Jones said to the crowd of approximately 8,000. “And that call to greatness in you has to be respected. The world is not going to tell you every day about that call to

greatness, but you have to tell yourself that these are not crazy dreams, these are not impossible goals.”

Also receiving honorary doctorates were world-renowned jazz musician Kidd Jordan and internationally recognized restaurateur Ella Brennan. Later that same day, at the College of Law commencement ceremony, which was the 100th since the law school's founding, the new law dean, Judge Madeleine Landrieu, J.D. ’87, H ’05, gave the commencement address, and the Hon. Dennis Waldron received an honorary degree.

In true New Orleans fashion, the graduates and their guests joined a traditional second-line celebration led by the Kinfolk Brass Band and Havoc as they processed out of the Superdome.

Congratulations to our newest alumni!

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I believe we all need each other. I don’t care who you voted for.

If you’re a liberal, great. If you’re a conservative, great.

We need each other. No bird can fly with just a right wing. And no bird can fly with just a left wing. We need

Maybe that can be your generation's cause.

each other.

... Conservatives ask questions about liberty, limited government. That’s good. Liberals ask questions about justice, helping those left out. That’s good.

That’s why when you were in the third grade, you said you want a country with liberty and justice for

We need you to focus on your destiny to let your soul shine and to build a country with your generation that has liberty and justice for all. all. We need each other.

–Van Jones

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A Fond Farewell We bid a bittersweet goodbye to two of our retiring longtime staff members and thank them for sharing their many gifts with Loyola.

After almost 40 years in IT, my wife and I are going to try to take a little time to smell the roses. –Bret Jacobs, vice provost for Information Technology and chief information officer

We call it living art because the tree is never really finished. –Robert Reed, assistant vice president for Student Affairs

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Greatness

Bag

in the

Donald Palmer ’46 started working at a bag company the Monday after graduation, started his own company a year later – and he hasn’t stopped yet.

BY FRITZ ESKER ’00

MANY LOYOLA ALUMNI can say they discussed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a history class. But how many can they discussed it as a current event in class? Donald Palmer ’46 (economics) can.

Now 90 years old, Palmer earned his bachelor’s degree from Loyola when he was just 19. He attended school throughout the full calendar year; there were no summer vacations for him. He started Loyola three days after graduating from Holy Cross.

Wasting no time at all, he finished in two years and seven months. Unsurprisingly, much has changed at the university since his time there.

Students then took classes in Marquette Hall, but one difference was that there were lockers on the first floor for their books. He also said class sizes were very small, usually no more than 15 students, because so many people were overseas fighting World War II. He remembered leaving his bike unlocked on campus and never worrying about it being stolen.

“I wasn’t the greatest of students, but I tried,” Palmer says.

Palmer described the economics program at Loyola as “very fine.” In particular, he fondly remembered two professors, Dr. Connor and

Father Joseph A. Butt (for whom the College of Business is now named). Palmer and Connor were also both parishioners of St. Matthias Church at the corner of Napoleon and Broad.

Connor passionately argued in class that Vice President Harry S. Truman would do a great job in the White House after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died.

Palmer’s time at Loyola clearly made an impression on him. In the 1990s, he donated $1.25 million to the university, which was one of the largest donations any individual had made to Loyola at that time.

There were no gap years or time off for Palmer in between graduation and the working world. He finished Loyola on a Friday and went to work at a bag company the next Monday. After working for this business for a year and a half, he left to start his own business at the age of 20. Seventy years later, the Donald Palmer Co. is still going strong.

When he began his business, it had the first plastic bag manufacturing plant in the South.

Palmer would travel the country working sales, and the plant would run around the clock. He would regularly attend packing exhibitions in

cities like Chicago, New York, and Cleveland, and he soaked up new information like a sponge.

“I asked a million questions,” Palmer says.

“I found it interesting, and I always wanted to learn more.”

Things were going well when disaster struck in 1965 in the form of Hurricane Betsy.

When the storm hit, Palmer lost $300,000 (in 1965 dollars) in one night. He lost all 14 of his bag-making machines. But he refused to quit. He took a loan from the Small Business Administration and started up his business again one machine at a time. Two years later, he was back to full capacity. About 30 years ago, he accepted a cash offer from a North Carolina company to purchase his business.

But Palmer was not ready to retire. Instead, he started a bag distribution company from the bottom half of his Uptown home. He has a warehouse in Elmwood. While he has since hired someone else to oversee daily operations, Palmer is still involved with his company, and he has no plans to stop. He has enjoyed it all too much.

“It’s been a long ride and a good life,” he says. “We’ve had fires, and we’ve had floods, but we’re still here.”

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g n i l w o H

BY WILL GLASS

s s e c c Su

Faith in the Future campaign breaks records, helps students.

LOYOLA’S ONGOING FAITH IN THE FUTURE CAMPAIGN is the most successful drive in university history.

Which is great – because its success is directly and intentionally connected to that of our students. Donors get to see their gifts in action every time a student makes a connection, creates a masterpiece, executes an innovative idea.

The campaign’s primary goal is the same as our administration’s: to ensure the growth of our students – always.

And the most heartwarming thing we’ve learned from the campaign is that our community shares that goal, too.

Pan-American Life Insurance Group, or PALIG, and an anonymous donor have made recent gifts to Loyola totaling $1 million.

This brings the campaign to more than $67 million of its $100 million goal.

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The gifts will be used specifically to create the new Pan-American Life Student Success Center at Loyola University New Orleans, as well as enhance the existing Student Success Center and the Office of Disability Services.

This partnership with PALIG is a special example of our community: There are 15 Loyola graduates working in its New Orleans office.

“Pan-American Life is especially proud to partner with Loyola on the Student Success Center, which will give students access to all the resources they need to make the most of their continued education,” José S. Suquet, Pan-American Life’s chairman of the board, president, and CEO, said.

During the 2015-2016 academic year, students made approximately 4,000 visits to the existing Student Success Center, which sponsored or co-sponsored nearly 50 workshops on a variety of topics, including procrastination and time management, citation styles, memory and study habits, financial aid literacy, and anxiety management.

“A strong focus on student retention through graduation is fundamental to Transforming Loyola 2020, Loyola University New Orleans’s strategic plan,” Vice President of Institutional Advancement Chris Wiseman ’88 (political science), Ph.D., said.

But the center offers assistance to faculty, too. Its staff is available to offer research resources as well as help professors design assignments, schedule class visits, and create topic-specific workshops and talks.

The proposed renovations will centralize support services currently offered across campus so that students can come to a single site for tutoring, staff advising, academic accommodations, retention services, writing improvement skills, mentoring, academic recovery, achievement-related seminars, and visual academic resources.

“The new Pan-American Life Student Success Center at Loyola University New Orleans brings together in one location all the services here on campus that help to advance student success before and upon graduation,” Loyola University President the Rev. Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., Ph.D., said. “We are so grateful for the generous gifts that are helping our students receive all the resources, tools, and support they need to carry them through their higher education experience from the day they arrive through graduation.”

Attitude of

Gratitude

From left, Faith in the Future Co-Chair S. Derby Gisclair ’73, Julia Smith ’17, student Haleigh Bourque, and Loyola University President the Rev. Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., Ph.D., gathered to give thanks to scholarship donors.

Scholarship recipients offer heartfelt thanks to those who have helped them achieve their dreams.

AT LOYOLA, EVERYTHING WE DO IS FOR OUR STUDENTS – and that includes helping to make sure that money doesn’t keep them from fulfilling their goals of graduating.

Of course, gratitude is key to Ignatian spirituality, and so every year, benefactors, students, faculty, and staff join to say thank you and to honor the generosity of those who provided scholarship support for the academic year.

It’s an emotional event for both scholars and donors, who otherwise might not have the chance to meet face-to-face. At the dinner, donors are seated with recipients of the scholarships they helped to establish.

“It is a special moment when students meet donors who helped make their Loyola dreams possible,” Vice President of Institutional Advancement Chris Wiseman ’88 (political science), Ph.D., said. “Our students help make our donors’ dreams come true, as well."

The evening’s featured scholarship recipient speakers were first-year public relations student Haleigh Bourque and Julia Smith ’17 (international business and accounting). Bourque was awarded the School of Mass Communication Scholarship, and Smith was the recipient of the Francis Robert O’Brien Sr. Memorial Scholarship, the Taylor Scholarship, and the William Wildes Endowed Scholarship.

“I’m the youngest of my parents’ three children,” Smith said at the dinner, “but I’m the first to graduate from university. I think – no, I know – they couldn’t be prouder.

Because of your generosity and commitment to education, so many of us are graduating, ready to change the world and the future. … I once told you of my commitment to go to Taiwan. Last year, I spent the academic year there. To this day, I still can’t believe it actually happened. … Accomplishing that goal, having one of many dreams come to fruition, changes you. You become a different person – for the better.”

The evening's program also included performances by student musicians from the College of Music and Fine Arts: Trevarri Huff-Boone ’17 (jazz studies) on saxophone; Alexander Szotak ’17 (music industry studies) on bass; instrumental performance junior Emanuel Burke on piano; and Dhani Juan ’17 (music composition) on violin, who joined the trio at the end to play as a tribute to his scholarship donor, the J. Edgar Monroe

Foundation, represented by Bill Finegan ’57 (business) and his wife, Sue. “Thanks to very recent gifts by Loyola trustee and alumnus Dennis Cuneo, J.D. ’76; retired music faculty member John Mahoney; and the estate of Tric Sehrt, J.D. ’71, I am proud and grateful to report that Loyola’s Faith in the Future campaign has surpassed its $20 million goal for scholarships,” said Loyola University President the Rev. Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., Ph.D. “We are so grateful to them and to all our donors for their generosity and support of Loyola. Because we believe in pursuing the magis at Loyola, we will keep building on our success and working to raise even more scholarship dollars for our students.”

Loyola Board of Trustees member and Faith in the Future Co-Chair S. Derby Gisclair ’73 (drama) also toasted the Loyola scholarship donors with Wolf Pack Cuvée, a wine created by alumnus Bob Almeida ’72 (management) that raises money toward academic scholarships.

“It is remarkable when we, as students, are shown in such a magnanimous way that someone believes in our abilities,” Bourque said in her speech. “We collectively are dedicated to using this aid to achieve all that our university has paved the way for us. As Loyola students, achieving more is just in our nature. I hope we can all mirror your generosity in our lives in the present and future. Without you, our dreams are just that – dreams.”

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Alumni

Starlight Racing Alumni and friends gathered in the Winners’ Circle at the Fair Grounds Race Course for Loyola’s sixth annual Starlight Racing on March 10, 2017.

Events

1912 Society Dinner 1 Alumni Association board members Allison Plaisance ’00, Maria Pote ’94, and Kevin Gordon, M.B.A. ’15, at 1912 Society Reception 2 John, M.B.A. ’70, and Patty Finan with Havoc

1 Mardi Gras Happy Hours 3 The Atlanta Alumni Chapter celebrated Mardi Gras.

4 The Austin Alumni Chapter hosted a happy hour for Mardi Gras.

5 The Chicago Alumni Chapter celebrated Mardi Gras with a happy hour.

6 Northshore alumni enjoyed Mardi Gras festivities with a happy hour at Meribo.

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Wolves on the Prowl National Day of Service

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Now in its 17th year, the annual event brings together students, alumni, and their families in service to their local communities. Howl, Wolf Pack!

1 Atlanta Alumni Chapter 2 Austin Alumni Chapter 3-4 Loyola students worked at Good Shepherd School.

5 Miami Alumni Chapter 6 New York City Alumni Chapter 7 Boston Alumni Chapter 8 Chicago Alumni Chapter 9 Dallas Alumni Chapter 10 The Houston Alumni Chapter

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Crawfish Boil The Atlanta Alumni Chapter crawfish boil

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Christmas at Loyola Artist in Residence Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg; Courtney Anne Sarpy; and Barry, M.B.A. ’82, and Teresa LeBlanc attended Christmas at Loyola.

4 Play Ball!

1 Players and staff celebrated the start of the season at the Baseball Kickoff Party & Scholarship Fundraiser on Feb. 2, 2017.

2 Baseball athletes celebrate the new locker room at Segnette Field. The locker room, dedicated in October 2016, includes lockers named in honor of baseball alumni and coaching staff.

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Young Alumni Pack Christmas Cocktail Reception 5 Kyle ’06 and Kerry ’06 Daly, Brandon Krsak, and Keelia O’Malley ’07 6 Emily Ramirez Hernandez ’09 and Young Alumnus of the Year Garlan White ’08

College of Law 3 Richard L. Pouey, M.B.A. ’98; Tracy Petruccelli ’85, J.D. ’88; and Kristen Pouey, J.D. ’17 4 On Oct. 27, 2016, Lawrence, J.D. ’77, and Micki Chehardy hosted a cocktail reception at their home. The reception was part of the Faith in the Future campaign and centered around the College of Law’s campaign priorities. They are pictured here with Meredith Chehardy, J.D. ’17.

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Brunch Alumni in the Houston area gathered for the annual brunch at Brennan's of Houston on Nov. 6, 2016.

M.B.A. Happy Hour Megan Manning, M.B.A. ’17; Joseph Bohrer, M.B.A. ’15; Imran Khan, M.B.A. ’16; and current M.B.A. student William Wray met at American Sector for an M.B.A. alumni networking social on March 19, 2017.

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Tampa Time Several alumni of the Tampa area gathered at Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club.

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Wolf Pack Wine Young Alumni 1 Anthony Sedlak ’12, Jasmine Barnes ’14, Thomas Stover ’10, Sofia Pena-Uijttenboogaard ’10, and Emily Aucoin at the President’s Open House 2 Young alumni participate in a yoga session at Urban South Brewery.

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1 Vice President of Institutional Advancement Chris Wiseman ’88, Ph.D., presented Bob ’72 and Debb Almeida with a framed photo of their profile in LOYNO at the Wolf Pack wine-tasting event.

2 A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each bottle of 2014 Lagniappe Peak Wolf Pack Cuvée from the Almeidas’ vineyard went toward the Loyola Scholarship Fund. The Almeidas have since launched a chardonnay that will also benefit Loyola.

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Lunch and Learn 1 New Orleans alumni attended a Lunch and Learn in November 2016.

2 John Deveney ’88, M.C.M. ’15, president and founder of Deveney Communications, gave a talk called “Delete Your Account: How Social Media Personality Wins in Politics and Business.”

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Loyola Loyal Day With a kickoff in Lafayette Square as part of the Wednesday at the Square concert series, Loyola Loyal Day set an ambitious goal of 400 donations in 24 hours, from noon on April 12 to noon on April 13. With your support, we exceeded that goal and unlocked a $20,000 challenge gift! Thanks so much to everyone who joined in the celebration – at the Square or around the world!

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ALUMNI PROFILE

“I FEEL LIKE I'M JUMPING ALL OVER THE PLACE,” Victoria Adams Phipps ’09 (music industry studies) says as she explains how she became the executive producer of New Orleans Entrepreneur Week (NOEW), a position in which she oversees everything from placing sponsorships to the physical production of the event. But that’s life for Phipps, whose favorite part of what she calls her “24/7/365” job is precisely that she wears so many hats.

After Phipps graduated from Loyola’s music industry studies program, she imagined working for a record label or something in the “mainstream music industry” and took a job at an independent record label, managing tours and artist relations. After two years she wanted a change.

“I think I had a bit of an itch to do something that was a little more connected to my community,” she says. The Miami native was scheduled to start Loyola the year Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures ravaged New Orleans, and she says that experience fostered a duty to her community.

She took a job as a program manager with the business incubator Idea Village, and eventually she took on the project of building New Orleans Entrepreneur Week, which was

Community Service

BY LAUREN LABORDE ’09

originally designed as an “alternative spring break” for M.B.A. students looking to use their skills to aid in the city’s post-Katrina recovery.

The festival has since expanded into an event designed to engage the larger New Orleans community, and attendance under Phipps’ leadership has increased from 1,200 in 2011 to 13,000 in 2016, she says.

A lot of Phipps’ job involves being a cheerleader for the New Orleans business climate, and she says there’s a lot about the city that is attractive to entrepreneurs.

“Compared to other markets, New Orleans is much more collaborative than other cities,” she says. “People genuinely want to help each other out. This is an obvious one, but the cost of living and quality of life is so different than what you’ll find anywhere else. We have a growing tech sector, but you also have a

second lines, Jazz Fest, Essence Fest, and great weather almost the entire year.

“And more and more investors as well are starting to look at nontraditional markets,” Phipps continues, citing the New Orleans tech startup Lucid, which recently closed a $60 million funding round. “The majority of venture capital goes to companies that are coming from the coasts, but New Orleans is starting to become more and more a part of that conversation.”

Although her career isn’t quite what she imagined as a student at Loyola, Phipps says her education — and that fateful experience of starting school in 2005 — has proved to be applicable to her work.

“I think when I look at how things have evolved and the fact that I am running NOEW now and booking bands for the festival and

dealing with massive production and logistic details, so much of what I learned at Loyola ties in,” she says. “I’m constantly thinking of the person in the audience, what their experience is going to be like, the production value. I think being a part of the Katrina class of Loyola really fostered a deep appreciation for New Orleans. The Jesuit values they instill, the way each course really had a thread of community engagement, a thread of social good – that definitely stuck with me and altered the way I look at my career path and look at the impact I can have. And I think Loyola does a great job of showing you can be serious about your studies but also have a good time and do something that is unique and true to your community. So much of that is what I try to insert in NOEW today.”

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Class Notes 1950s 1970s 1980s

Charles Suhor ’56 (English education) published “Don Suhor: From Dixieland to Bopsieland,” a biography of his brother, in the 2016 issue of Jazz Archivist, a journal of the Jazz Archive at Tulane University. Don Suhor was a student in the Loyola College of Music from 1950 to 1953; his participation in the burgeoning postwar modern jazz culture at the school is described in the context of a sustained 55-year career as a jazz clarinetist and saxophonist in New Orleans.

1960s

John R. Kemp ’68 (history) has released a new book, Expressions of Place: The Contemporary Louisiana Landscape, published by the University Press of Mississippi.

Justice Jeannette Theriot Knoll ’66 (political science), J.D. ’69, was honored with the Louisiana Bar Foundation’s Distinguished Jurist Award in April 2017 at the LBF’s 31st Annual Fellows Gala at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. Knoll, who retired from the Louisiana Supreme Court at the end of 2016, was elected to the Louisiana Supreme Court seat for the Third District in 1996. She has read and voted on more than 58,000 writ applications and authored nearly 200 Louisiana Supreme Court full opinions. She also wrote more than 850 opinions during her 14-year tenure at the Third Circuit Court of Appeal.

A talented operatic soprano, she also performed at the Red Mass at the St. Louis Cathedral this past fall, and now that she is retired, she plans to help her parish church, St. Joseph’s in Marksville, with its choir and liturgical music and devote herself full-time to being a wife, mother, and grandmother.

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Johnny Vidacovich ’72 (theory and composition), a beloved fixture on the New Orleans music scene and a talented drummer, received a Lifetime Achievement in Music Award at Offbeat magazine’s Best of the Beat Music Awards. An instructor in the School of Music, Vidacovich has worked with legends such as Professor Longhair and James Booker and was a co-founder of Astral Project.

J. Patrick Beauchamp ’70 (philosophy), J.D. ’73, of McGlinchey Stafford was named to New Orleans CityBusiness’ 2017 Leadership in Law class.

Larry Dorman ’73 (journalism), a former New York Times sportswriter and golf industry executive, has been named the recipient of the 2017 PGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism. He was honored on April 5, 2017, at a dinner in Augusta, Ga. Bill Capo ’75 (communication), WWL-TV’s veteran action reporter, retired on March 3, 2017, after a 36-year career. He spent much of his career reporting on people who needed help and problems that needed fixing, and he also served at times as a substitute weather forecaster and covered major news stories, including Hurricane Katrina, the papal visit, the Saints’ Super Bowl win, and many elections.

He mentored scores of younger reporters. His plans for his retirement include training to become a tour guide at the Cabildo.

Maureen Blackburn Jennings ’74 (economics), J.D. ’78, a solo practitioner in Houston, was named a 2016 Texas Super Lawyer in the category of Employment and Labor Law. Susan Polowczuk ’79 (communication) was promoted to senior public relations account executive at Zehnder Communications.

She joined Zehnder in 2013.

Antonio García ’81 (jazz studies) was promoted to professor of music at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he has served as director of jazz studies since 2001. He also received the VCU School of the Arts 2015 Faculty Award of Excellence for his teaching, research, and service and continues to serve on the board of The Midwest Clinic, the largest international band and orchestra conference in the world, and as jazz editor of the International Trombone Association Journal. He also has been appointed a research faculty member at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, after leading a three-year exchange program of faculty and students between UKZN and VCU. He recently released a new book, Jazz Improvisation: Practical Approaches to Grading, published by Meredith Music Publications. His recent scores for two independent films have screened across the U.S. and in Italy, Macedonia, Uganda, Australia, Colombia, India, Germany, Brazil, Hong Kong, Mexico, Israel, Taiwan, and the U.K.

Kurt Goins ’78 (political science), J.D. ’81, an attorney with the Caddo Public Defender Office, was named to the list of Top Attorneys in the March 2017 issue of SB Magazine, which covers the Shreveport-Bossier City area. The selection was made by a vote of fellow attorneys in the area.

Tom Gruber ’81 (computer science and psychology), an executive with Apple and a co-founder of the original parent company of Siri, joined the Board of Trustees of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. Other corporate members of the group, along with Apple, are Amazon, Facebook, Google/DeepMind, IBM, and Microsoft.

Keith Horcasitas ’81 (social work) had an article titled “The Birds and the Bees” published in Where Y’at magazine.

Holly Klaine ’83 (graphic design and communication) had her artwork featured inside and on the cover of Georgia Mountain Laurel magazine, which also profiled her.

Allen J. Krouse III ’77 (speech), J.D. ’84, of Frilot was named to New Orleans CityBusiness’ 2017 Leadership in Law class.

Dr. Kenneth St. Charles ’85 (management) was named the new president and chief executive officer of St. Augustine High School in New Orleans. He is currently the vice president for institutional advancement at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Va., which during his tenure raised $15.6 million, the highest in its 125-year history. He also served for 10 years as the vice president of institutional advancement for Xavier University of Louisiana, raising more than $95 million for the school. He is a 1981 graduate of St. Augustine High School and will be the sixth president in the school’s 65-year history.

Magdalen Blessey Bickford ’83 (general studies), J.D. ’86, of McGlinchey Stafford was named to New Orleans CityBusiness’ 2017 Leadership in Law class.

Laurie M. Joyner ’86 (sociology), president of Wittenburg University in Ohio, has been chosen as president of St. Xavier University in Illinois. She previously served in multiple vice presidential and decanal roles at Rollins College in Florida and was on the faculty at Loyola. In addition to her Loyola undergraduate degree, she holds master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology from Tulane University. She is a two-time recipient of POWER 50 (in 2014 and 2015), which honors the most influential female executives in the Dayton, Ohio, area.

She also received the Woman of Distinction Award from the Girl Scout of Western Ohio in 2014.

Hon. John J. Molaison Jr. ’83 (general studies), J.D. ’86, was appointed a member of the Judiciary Commission of Louisiana.

The Judiciary Commission is a nine-member constitutional

Weddings & Engagements 1

3

2

4

5

6

1 Catherine Carter ’14 (mass communication) and Joseph Billiot ’12 (political science) were married in Durham, N.C., on Jan. 14, 2017.

2 Gretchen Hirt ’12 (theatre and communication) married Timothy Gendron on Oct. 23, 2016, at Rosy’s Jazz Hall in New Orleans. They live in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood, where Gretchen works as a communications strategist

at Gambel Communications and Timothy works in the movie industry.

3 Cherie LeJeune ’14 (communication) married Samuel McCabe ’14 (psychology) on Sept. 24, 2016, at Holy Name of Jesus Church.

Cherie and Sam met at Loyola and began dating as sophomores while both living on the fourth floor of Buddig Hall. They were blessed to have many close

friends join in the celebration – with three bridesmaids and two groomsmen having lived on the very same dorm floor with them in college.

4 Rosalind Santos ’14 (theatre) married Allen Hall ’14 (music composition) on Nov. 5, 2016, at Holy Name of Jesus Church.

They live in New Orleans with their Great Pyrenees dog, Willa Rose.

5 Mark Gaal ’09 (international business and marketing) became engaged to Ariel VanDoren in front of Gallier Hall during the Krewe of Freret parade on Feb. 18, 2017.

6 Mallory Flynn ’11 (history), J.D. ’17, and Alexander Hautot, J.D. ’16, got married on Aug. 21, 2016, after surviving the flood in Lafayette. The couple met while both students at the College of Law.

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Class Notes

body that is empowered to review allegations of judicial misconduct and to recommend to the Supreme Court that a judge be sanctioned when misconduct is proved by clear and convincing evidence. Judge Molaison has served as a judge in the 24th Judicial District since 2007; before that, he held several positions in the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office.

He currently serves as president of the Louisiana District Judges Association.

Linda Hunt Williams ’86 (management), a native of New Orleans and a current resident of Holly Springs, N.C., was elected to North Carolina’s House of Representatives for a two-year term. Since 2009, she has served as councilwoman on the Holly Springs Town Council.

She received her master’s of public administration degree with honors from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte in 1996 and is a 2002 fellow of the North Carolina Institute of Political Leadership.

Eric Eyre ’87 (communication) won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for a series of stories he wrote for the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail on the opioid crisis in West Virginia and how drug wholesalers are contributing to it. (See p. 3.)

David Messina ’84 (music performance and piano), J.D./M.B.A. ’87 has joined Chaffe McCall’s New Orleans office as a partner in the firm’s Business Practice area.

Messina has close to 30 years of experience representing clients in connection with problem credits, workouts, and Chapter 11 reorganization and liquidation proceedings.

He is board-certified in business bankruptcy law by the American Board of Certification and is a board-certified business bankruptcy law specialist certified by the Louisiana Board of Legal Specialization. He is a frequent speaker at bankruptcy law seminars, including at the Annual Bankruptcy Law Seminar presented by the Louisiana bankruptcy judges and sponsored by the LSU Center for Continuing Professional Development.

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He has served as an adjunct professor at the Loyola College of Law, teaching Creditors’ Rights and Bankruptcy for more than 13 years. He will focus his practice on bankruptcy law and complex bankruptcy litigation.

He also was selected as a 2017 Super Lawyer in the category of Bankruptcy: Business.

Marla Donovan ’88 (organizational science), a local artist and civic activist, received the 2016 Circles of Excellence Award, given by Delgado Community College and the Delgado Foundation Board. The award highlights Donovan’s many contributions to the Greater New Orleans community. She was recognized at a dinner on Nov. 3, 2016.

David G. Trepagnier Sr. ’89 (management) was honored as Alumnus of the Year for Brother Martin High School for his commitment to God, service, and his alma mater.

1990s

Jeanne L. Wilson ’91 (management) recently graduated with her doctorate in business administration with a concentration in leadership from Walden University. She is currently the director of training and development, quality and risk management, for Slidell Memorial Hospital.

Lambert J. Hassinger Jr. ’88 (philosophy), J.D./M.R.S. ’92, of Galloway Johnson was named to New Orleans CityBusiness’ 2017 Leadership in Law class.

Fernand “Ferdie” Laudumiey IV ’92 (political science) has joined Chaffe McCall’s New Orleans office as a partner in the firm’s Business Practice area.

He will focus his practice on bankruptcy law and complex bankruptcy litigation. For the past 17 years, he has successfully advised and represented clients in both Chapter 11 reorganization and Chapter 7 liquidation proceedings, including bankruptcy trustees, debtors, and creditors in Louisiana and other jurisdictions.

Laudumiey has been a speaker on bankruptcy issues and has

been recognized for his work in bankruptcy.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff ’93 (communication) made headlines around the nation as one of the chief planners of the Trump inauguration. A friend of First Lady Melania Trump, Wolkoff is a former special events director at Vogue who helped planned the Met Gala. After serving as the founding fashion director at Lincoln Center for more than two years, Wolkoff started her own creative agency, SWW Creative, in 2012. Her agency coordinates and establishes partnerships between and among the fashion, beauty, and entertainment industries.

Sherdren Burnside ’94 (English) was recognized as a NOLA Hero by the Times-Picayune/ NOLA.com for her work helping local students find a path to higher education. (See p. 9.)

Dr. Peter L. Cho ’93 (jazz and piano), M.M. ’94, has been named the executive dean of the West Bank Campus for Delgado Community College in New Orleans. Cho previously served as the interim to this position for the 2016 academic year and has also served as the lead department chair of the Arts and Humanities Division since 2011 and as the head of the Delgado Music Department from 1996 until 2004. He currently serves on the executive board of the American Federation of Musicians, Local 174-496, and is the vice chair for the Algiers Development Corp. He also serves as a voting member for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (Grammy Awards) and is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian USA Church. Cho is also a professional musician in the New Orleans area, performing for James Rivers, the National World War II Museum, and many other venues in New Orleans and is a faculty member for the Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp.

Stanton Moore ’94 (percussion) was featured in JAZZed magazine, a magazine for jazz educators, for his work as a jazz-funk drummer and an instructor and mentor to young drummers via his YouTube tutorials, webinars, and new website

(stantonmooredrumacademy. com). He teaches lessons, master classes, and clinics and hosts the Spirit of New Orleans drum camp. He also plays with Galactic and the Stanton Moore Trio, has released several solo albums, and continues to tour and perform. In addition, he designed a signature snare drum with Gretsch; released a signature line of Sabian Crescent cymbals, a brand he co-founded; and launched a signature line of drumsticks and a signature pandeiro. He has published books and released DVDs about the art of drumming and is committed, through his work with various nonprofits, to making music education accessible to children of all backgrounds.

Mike Stag ’90 (finance), J.D. /M.B.A. ’94, of Smith Stag was named to New Orleans CityBusiness’ 2017 Leadership in Law class.

Doris Bobadilla ’91 (political science), J.D. ’95, a lawyer and part-owner of her firm in Louisiana, was profiled in The Atlantic as the first self-identifying Hispanic female to be licensed to practice law in the state of Mississippi. She is licensed in a total of four states.

James W. Stewart ’95 (social sciences) retired from the FBI after a 21-year career and is now the police chief in Hammond, La. Amy Boyle Collins ’96 (communication) was promoted from director of strategy to vice president of Gambel Communications in New Orleans. In her new role, she will lead strategy and business development and assist with management of the firm.

Helen Adams ’97 (nursing) has been named the director of cardiovascular services at Tulane Health System. Prior to this, she was the operations coordinator for the cardiac catheterization lab for six years at Ochsner Medical Center.

Maurice A. Brungardt ’94 (political science), J.D. ’97, and his family are assigned to Maputo, Mozambique, where he is serving as site security manager with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. Department of State, responsible for the security of the construction of the

In Memoriam William F. O’Toole ’38 Henry J. Read, J.D. ’41 Mary A. Tortorich ’42 Dr. Mike E. Bozeman Jr., D.Pharm. ’43 Dr. George S. Dacovich, D.D.S. ’44 Josephine Castrogiovanni Propper ’44 Jack Seitlin, D.D.S. ’44 Kent J. Zimmermann ’44 Kathryn Adds Dureau ’45 Elaine Lacrouts Wingerter ’45 Wilson A. Ardoin, D.D.S. ’46 Daniel B. Alexander ’47 John P. Briant Jr. ’47 Virginia Micciche Criss ’47 Blaise N. Angelico, D.Pharm. ’48 Dr. P.M. Breaud, D.D.S. ’48 Mary Lee Gardner Gibson ’48 Russell G. Cresson ’49 Emmett M. Fitzpatrick ’49 Charles G. Merritt ’46, J.D. ’49 Albert F. Widmer Sr. ’49 Rev. Victor B. Brown, O.P., ’50 Michael J. Donahoe ’50 Mary Elizabeth Hobley Fernandez ’50 Dr. Hollis C. Gamble, D.D.S. ’50 Frederick W. Kunz ’50 Jacqueline Rome Roy, D.Pharm. ’50 Gerald P. Sadlier ’50 Dr. Roy M. Stewart Jr., D.Pharm. ’50 Arthur J. Thiberville ’50 Jean Egli Correa Bordelon ’51 Dr. Anthony Carter ’51 James M. Roos ’51 John D. Thomas ’51 Dr. Rosario M. Carubba ’51, M.E. ’52 Dr. Henry E. Sikes Sr., D.D.S. ’52 Dominick J. White, D.Pharm. ’52 Blake G. Arata Sr. ’52, J.D. ’53 Brother Virgil Harris, S.C., ’53 Daniel B. Killeen Sr. ’53 Dr. Allan N. Carr, D.D.S. ’54 Frank P. Lorentino ’55 Lt. Col. Frank R. Newman (ret.) ’55 Robert S. Schultis ’47, J.D. ’55 Lloyd Burkenstock Jr. ’49, D.Pharm. ’56 Dr. Raymond J. Schiele, D.D.S. ’56 Dr. Russell S. Crapanzano, D.D.S. ’57 Will T. Jourdan ’57 Sister Mary Alice Leblanc ’57 Hon. Denis A. Barry, J.D. ’58 Carole Breithoff Weller ’56, J.D. ’58 Raymond L. Fricken ’59

George Rhode III ’59 Adrienne C. Tervalon ’59 Ronald F. Borne ’60, Ph.D. Armand J. Brinkhaus, J.D. ’60 Sister Mary Ursula Harelson, C.S.J., ’60 Stewart P. Rozas, D.Pharm. ’60 Huey H. Breaux, J.D. ’61 William J. Connick Jr. ’61 Vincent T. LoCoco, J.D. ’62 Rev. Patrick Regan, O.S.B., ’62 James L. Alcock Jr. ’58, J.D. ’63 Valerie R. McWaters ’63 Alfred H. Morgan Jr. ’63 Jimmy N. Ponder ’63 Evangeline Molero Vavrick ’54, M.E. ’60, J.D. ’64 Dr. Ronald A. Barrett Sr., D.D.S. ’65 George D. Keenan ’65 Rev. Louis A. Poche, S.J., ’65 Dr. Anne M. Smith ’65 Dr. Louis P. Nogues III, D.D.S. ’66 Paul J. Boumans ’67 Arthur M. Hayes Jr. ’64, J.D. ’67 Raymond A. McGuire, J.D. ’68 Sister Mary Michel ’68 Jack C. Siekkinen ’68 Diane P. Levy Belsom ’69 John C. Parrott ’69 Dr. Conway G. Yarbrough, D.D.S. ’69 Lydia Sindos Adams ’70 Sister Elizabeth Bourg, C.I.C., ’70 Sister Claire Mule, D.C., ’70 Valerie L. Thibodaux ’66, M.E. ’70 Charlotte Lozes Todd ’70 B. Ralph Bailey, J.D. ’71 Cecelia Guillot Bonin, M.E. ’71 Stanley G. Brown, M.E. ’71 Bernice Ward Dormio ’71 Jean O. Parmelee ’71 Nella King Brainis, M.E. ’72 Ignazio T. Fontana, J.D. ’72 Robert M. Petersen, M.A. ’72 Robert M. Reichert ’72 Marlene M. Benandi, M.E. ’73 Carol A. Drennan Hegedus ’73 Daniel J. Mack Sr. ’73 Albert J. Wynn, M.Ed. ’73 Peter W. Lewis, J.D. ’74 John F. Marie Jr. ’74 William S. Neal IV ’74 Gloria Navarro Ballestas ’75 John R. Meyer ’75

Mary C. Springstead ’68, M.E. ’75 Dolcina A. Bourg Geldersman, M.E. ’76 Jerry A. Walz, J.D. ’76 Raymond R. Young Sr. ’76 Wallace W. Barr III ’77 Thomas J. Ory, M.Ed. ’77 Rosalie J. Parrino, M.B.A. ’64, J.D. ’77 Kevin D. Slattery ’77 Vincent J. Benanti Jr. ’78 David Howley, M.B.A. ’79 Carlos J. Ortiz ’79 Monty C. Crosby, J.D. ’80 Marcus J. Poulliard, J.D. ’80 David Neeb, M.B.A. ’80, J.D. ’81 Sister Audrey M. Kihnemann, M.P.S. ’82 Collie Mangano ’83 Gary P. Landry, J.D. ’84 Mary J. Kilday ’81, J.D. ’84 Jeffrey M. Reilly, J.D. ’85 David S. Nordman ’89 Evelyn M. Antoine, M.P.S. ’90 Lolis E. Elie, J.D. ’59, H ’92 Sister Marcella M. Romine, M.P.S. ’92 Kevin P. Kane, J.D. ’93 Thomas K. Armington, M.Q.M. ’96 Monsignor James A. Comiskey, M.P.S. ’97 Gretchen W. Gantzer, M.R.E. ’00 Jayne E. Cunningham, M.R.E. ’03 Leslie A. Martino ’03 Lauren N. Autin ’07 Laurie Salas, M.S.N. ’10

“

I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

”

+ John 11:25-26

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Class Notes

new U.S. Embassy Compound.

Last year, he coordinated U.S. Embassy Maputo’s 5K run as a part of the Diplomatic Security Service’s 100th Anniversary Global Race for Charity. Funds raised by U.S. Embassy Maputo personnel were donated to a local orphanage.

Rebecca Hankins ’97 (fine arts and humanities) was appointed

by President Barack Obama to the National Historic Publications and Records Commission.

Hankins is associate professor, curator, and librarian for Africana studies, women’s and gender studies, and Arabic language at Texas A&M University, where she has worked since 2003. She previously held positions at the University of Arizona and Tulane University’s Amistad Research Center. She is a regent for exam development for the Academy of Certified Archivists and a distinguished fellow of the Society of American Archivists, as well as a certified archivist with the Academy of Certified Archivists.

Giselle Diaz Eastlack ’99 (marketing), Diaz Markets convenience store owner and general manager, was named to Convenience Store Decisions and Young Executive Organization’s prestigious 40 Under 40 list.

Convenience Store Decisions is the industry print and online leader for all things convenience store-related, and Eastlack is the only Louisiana convenience store leader named to the list, which highlights the convenience store industry’s best and brightest in the United States and Canada. She oversees her family’s convenience store business, Diaz Markets, which includes 17 stores across southeast Louisiana in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, and East Baton Rouge parishes.

Shalanda Young ’99 (psychology), a 10-year veteran of the House Appropriations Committee, is starting a new role as the panel’s Democratic staff director. Young, who is the first woman of color to serve in this post, says she hopes to preserve bipartisanship in a fiercely divided Congress.

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2000s

Mark G. Boyer, M.R.E. ’00, a part-time faculty member in the Religious Studies Department of Missouri State University and a retired priest, will publish two new books in 2017. An Abecedarian of Sacred Trees: Spiritual Growth Through Reflections on Woody Plants (Wipf & Stock) explores various sacred trees in world religions and serves as a companion volume to his previous book Animal Spirit Guides: Spiritual Growth Through Reflections of Creatures (Wipf & Stock, 2016). A Spirituality of Mission: Reflections for Holy Week and Easter (Liturgical Press) presents an exercise for every day of Holy Week and Easter that includes scripture, a short reflection, a question for journaling and personal meditation, and a concluding prayer. Boyer has written 51 books, some of which are translated into Chinese, Spanish, and Italian.

Natalie C. Albers ’01 (elementary education) was named the principal of Arlene Meraux Elementary School, which will open this fall. Albers, a 15-year veteran of the St. Bernard Parish school district, currently serves as the assistant principal of Lacoste Elementary.

Ansel Augustine ’00 (sociology), M.P.S. ’02, received the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry’s National Catholic Youth Ministry Award in the category of Multicultural Gifts.

The award is given to a person who has made a significant contribution to youth ministry by recognizing the gifts and charisms of the multicultural church and enabled others to share their gifts in the larger church, as well as helping the church understand and call forth the giftedness of all, especially the young church.

Maggie Bove-LaMonica ’02 (history) is the new founding director of BUILD LA, a national education nonprofit that is expanding to Los Angeles for a fall 2017 opening. Its mission is focused on inspiring at-risk youth to become college-ready

through experiential learning programs and opportunities.

Kathleen Gasparian ’95 (English), J.D. ’02, of Gasparian Immigration was named to New Orleans CityBusiness’ 2017 Leadership in Law class.

Ylan Mui ’02 (communication) left the Washington Post after 10 years to join CNBC as a Washington, D.C., correspondent. She has covered a variety of issues, including the Federal Reserve, the economy, and consumer finance, as well as international stories such as the Greek financial crisis and Brexit. A New Orleans native, she was able to offer special insight in her coverage of the BP Gulf oil disaster and Hurricane Katrina. She is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association and past vice president of the Washington, D.C., chapter.

Marc Paradis ’02 (music performance) and Omar Ramirez ’02 (music) celebrated the release of the seventh album with their band, Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes, with an album release party on March 25, 2017, at the Maple Leaf.

Thomas Petersen ’02 (English) directed and produced a documentary, The Acquired Savant, for CNN Films. The documentary explores the story of Jason Padgett, a futon salesman with no previous interest or skills in math who developed a deep knowledge and intuition of complex geometry after a brain injury. Petersen also was a producer for CNN Films’ The Last Steps and director of photography for Dinosaur13, which was the opening selection at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and won a News and Documentary Emmy in the Outstanding Science and Technology Programming category.

Zach Powers ’02 (jazz) published his debut collection, Gravity Changes, this spring with BOA Editions.

Fr. Ryan Richardson, L.C., ’03 (economics) was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Pietro Parolin in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. Fr. Richardson is a spiritual director for college-age students and young

adults in the Diocese of Dallas.

After graduation from Loyola, he volunteered as director of chapter development for COMPASS, a national network of Catholic college students. He was named the program’s executive director in 2004 and in 2005 joined the Legionaries of Christ. During his years of formation, he served as an assistant to the instructor of novices in Cheshire, Conn., and co-founder of Upper Room Rome, an apostolate that networks English-speaking Catholic college students in Rome. He graduated summa cum laude from the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome with degrees in philosophy and theology and was ordained a deacon in Indiana before being ordained to the priesthood in December 2016.

Stephanie P. Arceneaux ’04 (nursing) received her M.S.N. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in December 2007. She is employed full-time as a nursing instructor in the undergraduate nursing program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and continues to work part-time with the Hospitalist group at Lafayette General Medical Center as an adult nurse practitioner.

Mary McIntyre ’86 (communication), M.P.S. ’05, received her master’s degree in counseling from the University of Holy Cross in May 2016 and is now a provisional licensed professional counselor and national certified counselor. She works in private practice at Crescent City Counseling in Metairie, specializing in children, adolescents, women, and families.

Ellen Altamirano ’06 (communication) has been promoted to social media supervisor in Zehnder Communications’ New Orleans office.

Kelly Williams Brown ’06 (communication), the author of the New York Times bestseller Adulting: How to Become a Grown-Up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps, released her second book, Gracious: The Subtle Art of Charm, Tact & Unsinkable Strength on April 4, 2017, with Rodale.

ALUMNI PROFILE

Labor of Love

BY LAUREN LABORDE ’09

THERE IS PLENTY OF ADVICE available for young working women today — but how do you “lean in” when you’re not sure what kind of career you want in the first place? When Kate Gremillion ’12 (communication) finally got her “big girl job” at a public relations giant in Dallas, she had a realization while poring over Excel spreadsheets that this wasn’t what she wanted. She thought back to her year as a collegiate development consultant for Delta Gamma sorority, a job she was offered while still a Loyola student, and the women she met everywhere from UCLA to Harvard.

“I realized a lot of women were struggling around career options — not having a ton of information to make decisions in their career and not really knowing where to go for real, tangible, actionable advice beyond your typical ‘find something you’re interested in’ or ‘find something that makes good money,’” she says. “I started researching what makes careers enjoyable and fun and exciting, and I realized I was having the same problem the women I was working with in college had, thinking I enjoyed this career path and having the pretty stark realization it wasn’t something I really enjoyed and had imagined.”

Gremillion teamed up with Tallia Deljou, whom she met at her Delta Gamma job, to launch Mavenly + Co., which started as a blog but now includes a podcast, workshops, and private coaching services aimed to help young women design fulfilling careers. Based in Atlanta, Mavenly recently expanded services to offer workshops to companies.

The workshops and coaching sessions teach women how to discover their skills and values in order to create clarity and confidence around career decisions.

Gremillion says the most frequent thing she sees millennial women struggle with is articulating what they want — and don’t want – out of their careers.

“Women come to us and say, ‘I hate my job,’ but they can’t articulate what they don’t like about their job and how they would

change it,” she says. “Creating a language around their workplace — how to talk about what they want to do and what they don’t want to do in a way that’s relatable to their managers or their colleagues — can actually make tangible changes.”

Gremillion’s Jesuit education taught her the importance of her values being reflected in her career and that a job doesn’t have to be directly related to social justice to showcase her values and impact others.

“I think sometimes when we think of a Catholic education, there’s the mindset that

you have to work at a nonprofit or volunteer all the time, but we’ve seen that women can implement those values they learned at a Jesuit university and use them to do well for others while making money and being successful ... I don’t think those two things have to be mutually exclusive,” she says. “I think one of the biggest impacts Loyola had on me is realizing that you can do good while doing well.”

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Justin Hopkins ’06 (performance) sang a solo with the Boston Pops this past holiday season. A baritone, Hopkins travels the country performing frequently, most recently with the New York Choral Society at the Lincoln Center, the Boston Pops, and the Grand Rapids Symphony. He also performed with Peggy King and All-Star Jazz at the Rrazz Room at the Prince Theater in Philadelphia.

James Martin ’06 (music industry studies and jazz performance – saxophone) released his latest album, Something’s Gotta Give, on Jan. 13, 2017.

Mashonda S. Taylor ’06 (psychology) was promoted to chief community relations officer at Woodlawn Foundation, a holistic community revitalization organization in Birmingham, Ala. She works with community members, business leaders, academic institutions, partners, and government agencies to identify and document demonstrated needs in the Woodlawn neighborhood and then assists in the development of collaborative efforts to facilitate those needs.

J. Raul Garcia ’07 (finance) graduated in May from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and began work at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in its Mergers & Acquisitions Department in New York City.

Luis E. Llamas ’07 (marketing) of Fowler Rodriguez was named to New Orleans CityBusiness’ 2017 Leadership in Law class.

Clayton J. White ’78 (physics), M.B.A. ’93, J.D. ’07, a partner at Sternberg, Naccari & White, was honored at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week when his firm was named to the NOLA100 Class of 2017.

Michael Girardot ’08 (music industry studies) of the Revivalists performed on Conan and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Ahmad Jabbar ’09 (biology), a local doctor, saved the life of a man who was having a seizure on an airplane by checking his

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blood sugar levels and administering fluids and glucose. In a story shared on Buzzflare, Jabbar says that the man he helped was Israeli and expressed prejudice toward him as a Palestinian-American, but the two men ended up finding common ground and sharing a hug.

Sarah Vandergriff, J.D./M.R.S. ’09, of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools was named to New Orleans CityBusiness’ 2017 Leadership in Law class.

Linda Ann Wainright, M.S. ’09, M.P.S. ’09, completed four units of clinical pastoral education and is currently working as a chaplain for Essentia Health.

2010s

Trevor Cassidy ’10 (communication) was the recipient of an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Suncoast Chapter for his work on a television news promo titled “We Stand With You,” created for WESH-TV in Orlando, Fla., after the PULSE Nightclub massacre. Cassidy is the assistant creative services director for WESH. David Castillo ’10 (performance) performed in the multidisciplinary culinary event, Seven Deadly Sins. Inspired by the satirical “sung ballet” created in the 1930s by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, Castillo planned his version to appeal to all of the senses through seven courses matched with dance, music, and visual art. He is also the creative director of Jukebox Castle, which creates multidisciplinary projects. He recently played the role of Atzuko in Figaro!( 90210) at The Duke on 42 nd Street in New York City.

Following that performance, he will be performing with the Cleveland Orchestra for Pelléas et Mélisade with Maestro Franz Welser-Möst.

Adam Mejerson ’10 (sociology), executive director and co-founder of FitLot, a local nonprofit committed to helping

communities find the resources they need to plan, build, and program outdoor fitness parks, has broken ground for FitLot’s flagship fitness park on the Lafitte Greenway. With donations from a crowdfunding campaign and Saints player Thomas Morstead, Mejerson was able to break ground on The What You Give Will Grow FitLot Fitness Park. Following a community build day on Jan. 28, 2017, the park opened for use on Feb. 3, 2017.

Christine Rigamer ’10 (English and communication), communications manager at Gambel Communications in New Orleans, was one of two public relations practitioners from Louisiana to be recognized as a 2016 Southern Public Relations Federation senior practitioner. She also currently serves as the president of the Public Relations Association of Louisiana – New Orleans Chapter, a statewide professional development organization for public relations students and professionals with chapters in Acadiana, Baton Rouge, Central Louisiana, New Orleans, and Northwest Louisiana. As PRAL state president, Rigamer represents Louisiana as a memberat-large on the 2017 Southern Public Relations Federation board. Rigamer is immediate past-president of the PRAL New Orleans chapter and has held the distinction of a nationally accredited public relations professional since 2014.

Milad El Hajj ’11 (biological sciences) just matched at Medical University in Charleston, S.C. After receiving his medical degree from LSU, he will start his residency in internal medicine.

Gerald “G-Eazy” Gillum ’11 (music industry studies) was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the music category. His 2014 major label debut album, These Things Happen, hit No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard 200, and his 2015 follow-up, When It’s Dark Out, topped the R&B/HipHop Album chart.

Alysha Jean ’11 (communication) was in the ensemble of Jelly’s Last Jam at Le Petit Theatre.

Peter Falanga ’12 (English and digital filmmaking) works for the Portlandia Art Department, which recently won its second Emmy Award for Outstanding Production Design. Falanga has worked on the show for the past four seasons and currently serves as the Art Department coordinator.

Gretchen Hirt Gendron ’12 (theatre and communication) has been promoted to senior communications strategist at Gambel Communications.

Gendron joined Gambel Communications in 2012 and most recently held the position of communications strategist. As senior communications strategist, Gendron handles media relations, social media, special events, and community relations for her clients. Currently, she leads a variety of accounts and has yielded millions in media impressions nationwide in publications including The New York Times, Washington Examiner, CNN, Politico, and Southern Living Magazine. She currently serves on the board of the Public Relations Association of Louisiana – New Orleans Chapter as vice president of programming/president-elect and has most recently served on the 2016 Southern Public Relations Federation board, the 2015–2016 Public Relations Association of Louisiana – State Chapter board, and the 2014–2016 Jefferson Chamber Foundation board. Gendron graduated from the 2013 Bryan Bell Metropolitan Leadership Forum, the 2014 Junior League of New Orleans’ Get on Board Training Program, and the 2015 Leadership Jefferson program.

She is a current member of the 2016 New Orleans Regional Leadership Institute. Gendron was named the Rising Professional of 2015 by the Public Relations Association of Louisiana – New Orleans Chapter and earned a 2015 Award of Excellence recipient from the Public Relations Society of America – New Orleans Chapter. For

her work in public relations, Gendron has received a Silver Anvil Award from PRSA, as well as an Award of Excellence, a Lantern Award, and Best in Show from the Southern Public Relations Federation. She also won a certificate of merit from the Southern Public Relations Federation for her work on the name change campaign for the New Orleans Women & Children’s Shelter. She used traditional community and media relations, as well as dynamic social media campaigns, to spread the word about the nonprofit organization.

Hillary Barnett Lambert, M.B.A./J.D. ’12, an associate in McGlinchey Stafford’s New Orleans office, has been elected president of the Association for Women Attorneys. She will serve a one-year term and previously served as AWA’s vice president and co-chaired the AWA’s annual Food & Funds Challenge, a fundraiser for Second Harvest Food Bank. At McGlinchey Stafford, Lambert advises clients in connection with revolving and term loan facilities, construction loans, letter of credit facilities, and restructurings. She also represents community development districts and economic development districts in connection with real estate development and infrastructure finance and advises institutional investors in the municipal finance area.

Jeffrey J. Ramon ’12 (religious studies) will serve as the president of the Young Catholics Professionals’ New Orleans chapter. Among other things, the group seeks to bring young Catholic adults who may have strayed from their participation in the church back into the fold.

It also serves as a networking platform and a way for young people to share their work experiences and faith with others.

Sam Shahin ’12 (jazz) of Naughty Professor was nominated for Offbeat magazine’s Best of the Beat Music Awards in the categories of Best R&B/Funk and Best Drummer.

Dino Silvestri ’12 (management and finance) is running for mayor of Roatán, Honduras.

Cori Bodley ’13 (music industry studies and violin performance) was hired as College Access Program manager by Let’s Get Ready’s Boston office.

Emily Fransen ’08 (music performance), M.M. ’13, has been hired as adjunct faculty of music at the University of New Orleans, where she teaches both music literature and music appreciation. She also is celebrating 11 years as a private piano instructor at Hall Piano Co. in Metairie.

Brad Ricke ’08 (social sciences), J.D. ’13, and his wife, Rebecca, formed Senior Wellness Communications LLC, which serves the families of senior citizens by performing welfare checks and giving daily reminders via phone.

Malerie Thornton ’13 (mass communication) just finished her master’s degree in strategic communication at Purdue University. An Atlanta-based UPS employee, she also was recently featured in a video for its Wishes Delivered campaign, which can be viewed at wishesdelivered.ups.com

Davis Woodall ’14 (music industry studies) was accepted into the 2016 Directors Guild of America Assistant Director Training Program in New York City. During the two-year training program, he will be working on various film and television projects; upon completion, he will be eligible to join the DGA. Wayne P. Connor ’11 (economics), J.D. ’15, joined the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., as an assistant general counsel after being selected as a 2016 Presidential Management Fellow.

Keith J. Naccari, M.B.A. ’12, J.D. ’15, a partner at Sternberg, Naccari & White, was honored at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week when his firm was named to the NOLA100 Class of 2017.

Naccari was also named One to Watch in the law category by New Orleans CityBusiness.

Mary Ann Staes ’15 (communication), a digital content producer, is the youngest recipient of WWL-TV’s prestigious Willie Wilson Award.

Owen Connelly ’16 (biochemistry pre-med), Veronica Morse ’16 (political science), and Francesca Vaccaro ’16 (biochemistry pre-med and mathematics liberal arts) joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Jesuit Volunteers serve hundreds of thousands of people each year and address serious social issues including hunger, homelessness, poverty, domestic violence, endof-life care, and mental health.

As full-time volunteers, they will live and serve in a supportive and reflective community among other Jesuit Volunteers.

Mathew Holloway ’16 (sociology) has been selected for a 2017-2018 Fulbright U.S. Student Award to teach in Panama. (See p. 14.)

Emily Townsend ’16 (music performance) will attend Southern Methodist University in the fall.

She will be pursuing two master of music degrees in viola performance and music pedagogy as a recipient of the Meadows Artistic Scholarship Award, which will provide full funding for all tuition and fees. In addition, she has been invited to participate in the 2017 Round Top Music Festival.

Nicole M. Volpi ’13 (criminal justice) retired after 18 years of military service. She is currently a Ph.D. student and a certified EMT-Basic and just published her first article on EMS1.com titled “Deciding to Become an EMT, Again.”

Emily White ’13 (accounting) was awarded the Kenneth R. Clegg Award for Excellence by the Maine Board of Bar Examiners. This award is given to the applicant who earns the highest combined score on the Maine bar examination on his or her first attempt at passing a bar examination. She also was awarded the Laurie A. Gibson Award for Excellence by the Maine Board of Bar Examiners for earning the highest score on the essay portion of the Maine bar examination.

See our

newest alumni

start their class stories on p. 34.

Natalie Jones ’14 (theatre and Spanish language and culture) has been selected for a 2017-2018 Fulbright U.S. Student Award to teach in Argentina. (See p. 14.)

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ALUMNI PROFILE

Making History

BY SARAH RAVITS

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AFTER GRADUATING FROM LOYOLA UNIVERSITY, Ruth Mikulak Katz ’82 (management) began a lengthy career in the local hospitality industry working in group sales.

“My family had ties to this industry, and it only felt natural to follow in my father’s footsteps,” she says.

But after more than two decades working in this field for some of the city’s biggest hotels, she decided to tackle some new professional challenges.

The self-described history buff had remained inspired by a class she had taken during her undergraduate days, taught by Dr. Stephen Ambrose, who founded the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. She joined the museum’s staff as director of group sales in 2009, right when the museum began its $400 million capital expansion program.

Since then, the museum has become a top tourist destination and is nationally known for its interactive and immersive exhibits, rare artifacts, and multimedia experiences.

“It has been my distinct pleasure to be affiliated with the museum’s growth over these past eight years,” she says.

As director of group sales, Katz says her main duties include overseeing her team who “strategically targets markets to cultivate relationships and generate sales.” She works with clients big and small, ranging from educational, tour, religious, corporate, and military groups and international and social markets.

The proud alumna says that her days at Loyola prepared her for the future and that she continues to be inspired by her work. “Loyola taught me the value of personal relationships and loyalty as well as maintaining integrity in everything you do,” she says. “Loyola also gave me a sense of community, which I value highly still today.”

Katz also brings the values she learned more than 30 years ago to her position. “Several of the Jesuit ideals have influenced me in my career,” she says.

She notes that working at the National WWII Museum has fostered a great respect for the world and its history. “I am grateful for the opportunity of integrating the museum’s mission in my daily work, by helping all generations understand the price of freedom and be inspired by what they learn.”

DO THIS

Check out the Pack Pages, Loyola's alumni business directory, at alumni.loyno.edu/ business, and if you're in New Orleans, join us for the Pack Pages Networking Happy Hour on July 26.

Give Thanks Show your gratitude for your Loyola experience by making a gift by July 31 at giving.loyno.edu/LOYNOGrateful

Celebrate the Feast of St. Ignatius on July 31 by checking out these resources: president.loyno.edu/chaplain/feast-st-ignatius-loyola

Update your email address to make sure you receive emails, including the monthly Pack Press e-newsletter, at alumni.loyno.edu/reconnect

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Births & Adoptions

2

1

3

1 Mari Novo ’98 (communication) welcomed her daughter, Lucia del Carmen Novo, on Feb. 18, 2016, at 8:39 a.m. She was 5 pounds, 15 ounces, and 19 inches long.

2 Casey Buck ’03 (music education), M.M. ’05, and Kristina Rose Buck, M.M. ’03, welcomed their second daughter, Adia Shalom Buck, on Sept. 24, 2016. Adia arrived two months early (at only 31 weeks gestation) due to complications with the pregnancy and spent 32 days in

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5

4

the NICU. She was 3 pounds, 3 ounces, and 16.1 inches at birth.

Other than being premature, Adia has had no lasting health problems, and Kristina has mostly recovered from her physical struggles, as well. The family is thankful to God not only for a precious baby girl but also His hand of protection and provision through a very difficult time in their lives. They are happy to report that everyone is healthy and thriving now!

3 Kate Hannan Fullenkamp ’03 (public relations) and her husband, Josh, welcomed their first child, Allison Donahue Fullenkamp, on May 20, 2016.

4 Deanna Jones-Puig ’05 (communication) and her husband, Mark Puig, welcomed their daughter, Annaluisa Marie "Annielu" Puig on Aug. 27, 2015, in Marietta, Ga. She is a happy, smart, energetic, and kind little girl. Deanna works at St. Pius X Catholic High School as the communications manager.

5 Madeline Guillot Schott, J.D. ’13, and her husband, Michael F. Schott Jr., J.D. ’13, welcomed their first child, Molly Ann Schott, on Oct. 7, 2016.

Send us your milestones.

New job? New baby? Got married?

We want to share in your joy! Send us your wedding, birth, or job announcements, along with photos, at magazine@loyno.edu

n o B M.B.A. student GEORGE BEVAN benefits from his time in the College of Business' Carlos M. Ayala Stock Trading Room on the first floor of Miller Hall, which provides a working environment for students enrolled in the Student Managed Investment Fund Program.

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OUT IN THE STREETS

g n i r B

BY SARAH RAVITS

the

Aspiring music industry professionals continue their biannual student-run concert series at the House of Blues New Orleans – it’s fast become a Loyola tradition.

ON MAY 3, 2017, MORE THAN 100 LOYOLA STUDENTS from the Popular and Commercial Music Program showcased their musical talents at the House of Blues New Orleans. The event, dubbed Uptown: Downtown, began in the fall of 2015 and is now a biannual student-run concert series at the historic French Quarter concert hall.

Highlights this year included a series of 25-minute performances by eight contemporary ensembles and one hip-hop ensemble under the direction of Professor of Popular and Commercial Music Sandy Hinderlie, an accomplished jazz and blues pianist and producer, and Extraordinary Professor of Music Industry Studies Dr. Lo Faber, a founding member and frontman for the New York-based jam-rock band God Street Wine.

While the participants and organizers were undoubtedly in good hands under the leadership of their accomplished mentors, the event itself was entirely studentmanaged, -marketed, and -operated and

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gave these aspirational Loyola pupils the chance to demonstrate their skills beyond the classroom in a real-world setting. It also connected them with students from other universities as well as the general public, as the event was open to anyone over 18.

“The Pop and Commercial Music Program at Loyola New Orleans brings together incredibly talented and inspiring young singers, rappers, instrumentalists, songwriters, and producers from every genre and from all over the United States – where they get to make music in all kinds of groups and bands, under the supervision of a world-class faculty, in one of the greatest cities on earth for live music,” Faber says.

The popular and commercial music major, launched in August 2015, is a bachelor’s degree program in Loyola’s acclaimed Film and Music Industry Studies Department, which prepares aspiring musicians, singers, performers, directors, producers, and industry executives for entrepreneurial success in the creative professions. It places

a primary emphasis on music industry studies, music technology, business, and theory, as well as band/ensemble classes and private music lessons. It’s a demanding but rewarding program that requires prospective students to audition for admission, be proficient on an instrument, and participate in a student ensemble.

Uptown: Downtown also showcased the diversity of genres and talents, as students demonstrated their abilities in rap, R&B, rock, pop, and funk. They also performed covers of familiar and well-loved songs and showcased original material.

Music industry studies senior Kori Jackson took the stage and loved every minute of it. “Being on stage at the House of Blues was an amazing and hyped experience,” she says. “I play the background most of the time, so to have the opportunity to get on stage in front of a crowd and get out of my comfort zone was scary and exciting.

Which is how my four years at Loyola have been: scary and exciting – in the best way!”

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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Dance Partners The Loyola Student Government Association teamed up with Miracle Network Dance Marathon to benefit Children’s Hospital – and were wildly successful.

STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT Elisa Diaz ’17 (political science) has always believed deeply in the Jesuit values, and as she neared graduation, she felt the need to give back to a community and city that shaped her.

"At Loyola, you don’t just go to school in New Orleans; you become a part of New Orleans,” Diaz, a Miami native, says. “I have seen New Orleans grow, rebuild, and remain resilient in my time at Loyola. Similarly, I have grown into the person I am today. The opportunities to give back are endless.”

For the second year in a row, Diaz and other members of the SGA joined forces with the Miracle Network Dance Marathon to raise money for New Orleans’ Children’s Hospital.

Miracle Network Dance Marathon is a nonprofit that has raised more than $150 million for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals across the U.S. since 1991.

Diaz initially set a goal of $10,000 for the event. When that amount was reached, she remembered her Jesuit values – and raised her goal to $20,000.

“You will always be pushed to reach for the magis, the ‘more,’” she says. “The Jesuit mentality is that our work isn’t ever over

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because we are always able to do more. I carried the magis this year through our dance marathon.”

In addition to raising much-needed money for a very worthy cause, the event itself was full of fun. Along with students; faculty, staff, and their children; and Children’s Hospital representatives dancing the night away to high-energy tunes, the event included food, face-painting, and contests and games.

When all the numbers were tallied, the dance marathon raised $24,183 for Children’s Hospital.

Diaz says that this year’s dance marathon was her proudest moment as SGA president, but the most meaningful part to her was getting the chance to meet some of the “miracle families” that would benefit from the money raised.

“We got the opportunity to invite children from our local hospital to celebrate life and fight for a cure for pediatric illnesses,” Diaz says.

“Being directly responsible for bringing hope to children in our community is just one example of how Loyola students are changing the world around us. My world has been sculpted by Loyola and by the magis, and nothing is more humbling than giving back to a community that has given me so much more.”

THEN & NOW THEN THE E N & NOW N OW NO

THEN The Rev. James C. Carter, S.J., attended Loyola for one year in 1944 before joining the Jesuits. After completing his novitiate at Grand Couteau, he earned an undergraduate degree in physics from Spring Hill College, a master’s degree from Fordham University, and a Ph.D. in physics from Catholic University. He returned to Loyola in 1960 and taught in the Department of Physics for 10 years before transitioning to his new role as provost and academic vice president. In 1974, he assumed the presidency of the university, where he laid the groundwork for the J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Library and established the Jesuit Identity Task Force, which he considered his most important achievement. In 1984, New Orleans Business wrote of Carter’s impact on the campus: “Loyola has changed its public face from serene to scrapping and turned its cerebral president, Fr. James C. Carter, S.J., from an introspective scholar into a prominent point man – the Lee Iacocca of higher education.” Carter served as president until 1995; he is the longest-serving president in Loyola’s history.

NOW

Father Carter will celebrate his 90th birthday on Aug. 1, 2017. In 1995, he was awarded an honorary degree from Loyola, and he is still a familiar and friendly face on campus, where he teaches a popular course on faith, science, and religion and serves as honorary chair of the Faith in the Future campaign. “The campaign is helping Loyola adjust to a world in which the number of Jesuits has declined – but one in which the number of laypeople interested in our Jesuit character has increased,” he told LOYNO in 2014.

A Man For Others,

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HOW LOYOLA SHAPED ME

A Happy Homecoming Tod Smith ’84 (business administration) You know, when I was in school, I would have to say my dream job resembled something like Darrin Stephens, the character from the television show Bewitched. I later found out that he was probably an advertising agency creative director, and I thought that was pretty cool. Today, my dream job is one that looks a lot like my current role. I like being creative, but I’m also analytical, so a job that satisfies both those needs is a dream.

Loyola had a culture that emphasized the individual’s role in advocating for human rights and equality, and if you were in tune to it, you could certainly feel it on campus. Scholarly discourse, questioning, and believing that everyone deserves equal rights and opportunities in many ways influenced my career choice.

In my opinion, a wellinformed public is one of the keys to social justice, and my desire to be a part of that certainly began during my days at Loyola.

as a culmination of everything we had learned in the College of Business – we were assigned a small business to work with and had to look at every aspect of the organization. Our instructor singled out another team member and me for the work we’d done. It felt really good. Today, I’m proud to say that I work here at WWL-TV as the general manager and that I can trace my career here back to the days when I parked cars, mopped floors, painted, cut grass, and generally did whatever I was asked to do. But of course, I’m also the father of a wonderful son who makes me proud to know the man he is becoming.

In college, I really for some reason thought that there was such a thing as a 9-to-5. I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t exist, and if it did, I’m not sure I’d be happy with it!

The single biggest thing I love about staying involved with Loyola is knowing that I am a part of something that is bigger than myself as an individual. I know that In my senior year in while I was a student, faculty, staff, my Small Business and teachers all took an interest Administration in my well-being. In continuing workshop course – it to help Loyola and its students, was a class that served I believe that I am continuing a tradition. Loyola was a special time in my life, and frankly, continuing to be around it keeps me young!

SMITH RETURNED HOME TO NEW ORLEANS FIVE YEARS AGO AS THE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF WWL-TV. He began his broadcasting career at WWL in 1980 as a production assistant when the station was still owned by Loyola.

Prior to returning to WWL, Smith was general manager of WVEC-TV in Norfolk, Va.

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g n i v Gi in Greatness

Love is shown more in deeds than words -Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Your generosity makes a direct impact on our students.

But don’t hear it from us – hear it from them.

Because of your generosity and commitment to education, so many of us are graduating, ready to change the world and the future. Though we've been prepared to do it, we actually get to do it because you made a way for us, and you took a chance on us.

–Julia Smith ’17 We are ALL grateful for your continued support of Loyola. Your gifts create opportunities for the next generation of leaders.

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CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED

Congratulations graduates! class of 2017

SEE MORE COMMENCEMENT PHOTOS

loyno.edu/commencement