Alumnae Come Back to Campus

Students in Mrs. Crissy Giacona’s 8th grade science class welcomed guest speaker Sylvia Mullen ’18, a senior honors student at the University of New Orleans who shared findings from her research project for the past two years in Honors Biology. The topic was, “Evaluating Methods To Determine the Maximum Oxygen Consumption by the Gulf Killifish, Fundulus Grandis.”

Returning to her alma mater, Ty Rhea Salvant ’93 spoke about racial justice to the juniors’ religion classes taught by Mr. Mark Gonnella and Ms. Claire Gallagher. She answered pre-submitted questions from the students and shared handouts on institutional racism, and distinguished from the explicit attitudes or racial biases of individuals by the existence of systemic policies or laws and practices that provide differential access to goods, services, and opportunities of society by race.

Eva Schmidt ’15 was guest speaker for Ms. Anjel Guitroz’s Bio II class. She holds a degree in Biological Engineering from Louisiana State University where she found a passion for biomedical research with a background in oxidative stress and diabetic kidney disease research. At AxoSim, located in the New Orleans Bio District, she assists in neuropathy, myelination studies, and commercialization. She is interested in the novel biotechnology and innovative molecular methods AxoiSim offers.

Students in Mr. Kenneth Lannes' Engineering Class welcomed guest speaker Emma Hensley Taylor ’12 who touched on a range of civil engineering career tracks. Mrs. Taylor also covered the importance of getting internships prior to graduation and showed the class some of the new construction, renovations, and forensic engineering projects she has worked on. “Whether or not they become engineers, they all have a bright future ahead of them,” she said.

Nancy Thomas ’12 and Rachel Hensley ’15, were guest speakers for the Biotechnology Club and Mrs. Koenig’s Biology II Honors class. Hensley is a Crime Lab DNA Analyst II at Louisiana State Police Crime Laboratory. Among the topics she covered in her talks were forensics and CODIS, the acronym for the Combined DNA Index System. Thomas is Manager of Oil Chemistry at Eurofins in New Orleans. Eurofins Scientific through its subsidiaries is the world leader in food, environment, pharmaceutical & cosmetic product testing, discovery pharmacology, forensics, and in agroscience contract research.

WWL-TV Eyewitness Morning News anchor Sheba Turk ’07 returned to her alma mater where she met with students in the Speech and Debate Club. Turk, who joined WWL-TV in 2011 as an associate producer for the Morning News, shared her career experience of rising through the ranks in television news and answered students’ questions. She is author of, “Off Air: My Journey to the Anchor Desk,” that traces her rise from traffic reporter to TV reporter and now anchor at WWL-TV.