Class notes

1964

Robert E. Ulanowicz, Engr '64, '68 (PhD), is courtesy professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He is the author of The First Incarnation: Hope in Reality, published by Xulon Press in June 2024. The book explores how ecosystem theory can enrich the dialogue between science and religion. He spent the bulk of his career as a theoretical ecologist with the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, where he specialized in ecological network analysis. He is the author of three books and around 200 publications in refereed scientific journals.

1974

John Owen, A&S '74, is medical director of the Lions Eye Clinic and Emergency Department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Callahan Eye Hospital.

1981

Bill Barto, A&S '81, is a priest in the Reformed Episcopal Church, serving as assistant minister at Holy Trinity Church in Chantilly, Virginia. He joined Holy Trinity as a deacon in 2020. He spent more than four decades with the federal government in a variety of capacities, including as chief of judicial services in the administrative office of the U.S. Courts in Washington, D.C., from which he retired in 2021.

1985

Gary Wieboldt, Engr '85 (MS), '94 (MS), is chief systems engineer for Oceaneering's technologies division. Last year, he celebrated his 35th anniversary with Oceaneering International, which was previously Eastport International. He began his career as an electrical engineer specializing in fiber optics and is known for groundbreaking design and implementation of fiber optic technology in subsea remote-controlled vehicles systems. He holds two patents and is a Certified Expert Systems Engineering Professional of the International Council on Systems Engineering, a licensed pilot, and a general radiotelephone operator.

1988

Melissa Wu, A&S '88, Bus '00 (Cert), '03 (MBA), is intermediate care medical director at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center. She was appointed to a two-year term as president of the University of Virginia Medical School Foundation board of trustees, only the second woman to hold the position. She has been a trustee of the foundation's board since 2018, serving as vice president, and has been the medical school's Class of 1992 representative since 2010.

1992

Lynne Coy Ogan, Ed '92 (MS), is president of Husson University in Bangor, Maine. Previously, she was senior vice president for academic affairs, provost, and dean of the School of Education. Before her work at Husson, she was a school administrator in elementary and middle schools in Maine and Maryland and in 2002 was honored as Maine's National Distinguished Principal. Ogan has served on numerous state educational task forces and was a chair and participant on accreditation teams for the New England Commission of Higher Education.

1993

Scott Davis, A&S '93, is a Washington, D.C.–based large format photographer working with antique and historic photographic processes. He organized an international photography conference in October 2023, convening large format and historic process photographers from around the world to build community and collaborate. The conference began with a talk and reception at the Museo Archivo de la Fotografía to honor Julio Galindo, one of Mexico's most recognized historic process photographers.

1994

Francis Park, A&S '94, retired from the U.S. Army as a colonel after 30 years of active duty. Among numerous career achievements, he wrote the 2018 National Military Strategy and portions of the Army's official history of the war in Afghanistan. He was the inaugural recipient of the Army Strategist Association's Gold Order of Saint Gabriel the Archangel, for lifetime achievement in the Army and Joint Force strategy community. Attending the award ceremony were Chris Hickey, A&S '93; Bethanne Jones Kim, A&S '93; Kevin Carroll, A&S '94; and John Roy, A&S '94.

1996

Gail Magenau Hire, Engr '96 (MEE), is counsel in the environmental group of Verrill, a full-service law firm with offices throughout the Northeast. She is based in the firm's Boston office. A former engineer, Hire has a practice that focuses on real estate matters with environmental components—development permitting, enforcement defense, regulatory compliance, analysis and negotiation of business contracts, and environmental litigation, for example.

Alysoun McLaughlin, A&S '96, is a senior fellow in the Election Workforce Initiative at the University of Maryland's Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement. The fellowship offers her the opportunity to reflect and write after 14 years as a public administrator, responsible for managing federal, state, and local elections.

1999

Christopher Franklin, Peab '99 (DMA), is principal conductor of the Minnesota Opera through the end of the 2025–26 season. He made his debut with the Minnesota Opera in 2011 and made his principal conductor debut during the 2023–24 season with The Elixir of Love.

Pauline Karikari-Martin, BSPH '99 (MPH), Nurs '99 (MNPH), is an active-duty nurse officer who has served with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps for more than 20 years. In 2024, she received the PHS Outstanding Service Medal for establishing the first-ever numerical staffing standards in Medicare-certified nursing homes. She also received the 2020 Johns Hopkins Alumni Woodrow Wilson Award for her government service at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Her research focus is nurse staffing issues, and she has managed a variety of administrative and federally funded research evaluation projects.

2000

Katie Rose Guest Pryal, A&S '00 (MA), is a bipolar-autistic law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, an author, and a keynote speaker. Her life's work is "making the world more inclusive for neurodivergent people and those with mental health struggles, especially in higher education." The author of numerous books on mental health, she recently published A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning With Mental Health in Higher Education (University Press of Kansas, March 2024) and received the 2024 bronze medal for education in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. She also recently signed a contract for her next book on neurodiversity to be published by Hopkins Press.

Sasha West, A&S '00 (MA), is an associate professor of creative writing and interim director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at St. Edward's University, in Austin, Texas. She established the university's Environmental Humanities program and is a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Hudspeth Innovative Teaching Award. Her second book of poems, How to Abandon Ship, was published in March 2024 by Four Way Books. She has received awards from the National Poetry Series, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Texas Institute of Letters. She is part of the eco-arts collaborative Hammonds + West with visual artist Hollis Hammonds; their multimedia shows have been exhibited at the Columbus College of Art and Design, Texas A&M, and ArtPrize Michigan, among others.

2002

Dakashna Prabhina Lang, A&S '02, is an English teacher at Heritage Middle School in Livingston Public Schools in Livingston, New Jersey. She was selected as an inaugural Teach Asian American Stories Fellow by AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islanders) New Jersey and as a Teacher Leader Policy Fellow for JerseyCan. She also received the Essex County Education Association Racial Advocacy Award in spring 2024.

2007

Rachel "Rae" Walker, Nurs '07, '13 (PhD), is associate professor and PhD program director at Elaine Marieb College of Nursing in Amherst, Massachusetts. They were the keynote speaker at the annual 2024 Zeigler Research Forum, hosted by the University of Vermont College of Nursing and Health Sciences in May. Their address was titled "Making Labor Visible: Valuing Care Work in an AI Era."

2009

Allison Dunn Wilson, Bus '09 (MBA), is vice president of building services for EXP, a global engineering, architecture, design, and consulting firm, providing services to built and natural environments. She leads strategic initiatives and partnerships to expand the firm's building services capabilities, operating from the mid-Atlantic office. She spent more than 25 years at Johnson Controls, where she was most recently director, commercial business process, for North America. Wilson is a LEED Accredited Professional, certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, and a member of Leadership Maryland.

2010

Francis Samonte, Med '10 (Cert), is a lead project co-investigator at the National Institutes of Health, focusing on the morphology of noncommunicable disease and mental health–related disorders and a faculty member at the University of the Philippines. He received the 2024 Community Commitment Award for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity from Omicron Delta Kappa, the national leadership honor society. The award was presented for his contributions to neuroscience issues and his work assisting Indigenous communities in the Philippines to create sustainable plans to address critical needs.

2011

Bernadette Thomas, Nurs '11 (DNP), is chief health officer at Mosaic Community Health, a nonprofit community health center in central Oregon. She establishes, develops, and executes integrated clinical services across Mosaic's more than a dozen locations. In addition to her administrative duties, she continues to provide primary care to patients.

2015

Lauren Goodsmith, Ed '15 (MSCG), is the founder and director of the Intercultural Counseling Connection, a Baltimore-based nonprofit that provides pro bono, culturally responsive therapeutic care for asylum seekers and other forced migrant survivors of violence and trauma in Maryland. The organization was founded in 2013 with an Open Society Foundation–Baltimore Community Fellowship grant and recently received Victims of Crime Act state funding jointly with Asylee Women Enterprise (AWE). The Intercultural Counseling Connection is in an ongoing partnership with AWE and the HEAL Refugee Health and Asylum Collaborative to provide federally funded services to torture survivors.

Sahun Hong, Peab '15 (GPD), '17 (MM), a pianist and arranger, was awarded third place in the Walter W. Naumberg Foundation's 2023 International Piano Competition. He was named to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's 2024–27 cohort of the Bowers Program Residency, which identifies and nurtures the next generation of leading chamber musicians. The program includes performances at Alice Tully Hall, recordings, touring, radio broadcasts, education and community engagement programs, and mentorship.

2016

Ledah Finck, Peab '16, '18 (MM); Sarah Thomas, Peab '17, '19 (MM); Amy Huimei Tan, Peab '19 (MM), '20 (GPD); and Irene Han, Peab '18 (MM), are the members of the Baltimore-based Bergamot Quartet. The group received one of the Aaron Copland Fund's 30 Grants to Celebrate 30 Years in honor of the fund's longtime support of contemporary American music.

Johanna Kvam, Peab '16 (MM), was one of 16 emerging musicians in the National Opera Studio's 2023–24 Young Artists cohort, one of only four repetiteurs in its Global Talent Programme. The nine-month London-based program collaborates with six full-time opera companies in the United Kingdom.

Hannah Loonsk, A&S '16, married Roberto Ramirez, A&S '16, on May 4, 2024, in Río Grande, Puerto Rico. Her parents are Dana Louttit, A&S '82, and John Loonsk, A&S '81, and the wedding was attended by 27 alumni, representing nine different classes, including 1981–82, 2014–19, and 2022. She is an associate veterinarian at Companion Animal Clinic in Gainesville, Virginia, and he is a family medicine resident at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

Paula Maust, Peab '16 (MM), '19 (DMA), is an assistant professor at Peabody. Her book, Expanding the Music Theory Canon, was published in December 2023 by SUNY Press. The book is based on her website of the same name and her ongoing project to introduce composer variety to music education.

2017

Kristen Brown, Nurs '17 (DNP), is associate dean for simulation and immersive learning and an associate professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, as well as simulation strategics projects lead at the Johns Hopkins Medicine Simulation Center. She was recognized by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH) as the SSH Educator of the Year for 2023, owing to her numerous contributions to research in health care simulation.

2018

Melissa Hladek, Nurs '18 (PhD), is an assistant professor in the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and a nurse practitioner at Esperanza Center in Baltimore. She was recently inducted into the Class of 2024 American Academy of Nursing Fellows.

2019

Scott Caudill, Ed '19 (MS), is the police chief for the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. He has been with the city's police department since 1994, most recently serving as deputy chief of the northeast quadrant. He also has been a lecturer and adjunct professor at Purdue Fort Wayne's Department of Criminal Justice and Public Administration. He represents Indiana as part of the International Chiefs of Police Association's Midsize Agencies Division, is an advisory board member for the Greater Fort Wayne Crime Stoppers, a board member of the Police Athletic League (PAL), an advisory board member for Allen County Community Connections, a youth baseball coach, and a PAL football coach.

Endia Santee Crabtree, A&S '19 (MLA), is principal clinical product risk scientist at Boston Scientific, where she conducts clinical evaluations of medical technologies in the peripheral interventions and interventional oncology and embolization divisions. She is co-lead of the Society of Women in Engineering, Boston Scientific Chapter Conference Communications team; was elected chair of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging; and was a member of the board of directors at Junior League of Cincinnati for 2024–25.

Manka Nkimbeng, Nurs '19 (PhD), is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. In late summer 2024, she received a Bush Fellowship from the Bush Foundation to develop a coalition of health care organizations devoted to the health of Black immigrants.

2020

Leonard Weiss, Peab '20 (MM), is the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's 2024–25 Cyber Assistant Conductor Fellow. He also was the 2022 New Zealand Symphony Assistant Conductor in Residence and was one of five conductors selected for the 2023–24 Australian Conducting Academy, where he had the opportunity to work with Adelaide, Melbourne, Queensland, Sydney, and Tasmanian symphony orchestras and Orchestra Victoria.

2022

Jess Huang, A&S '22 (MS), works for a Washington, D.C., think tank after spending two decades as a political staffer and strategist. She authored her second children's book, The Great Pumpkin Pancake Party, under the pen name Celeste Pewter. The book is scheduled to be published in 2026 by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers.

2023

Kayla Laufer, Peab '23, is a dancer with Chutzpah Dance in New York City, co-founder of Melody in Motion with Anna Jarboe, Peab '23, and a master's degree student in computer science at Fordham University. She was one of five recipients of a 2024 Eryc Taylor Dance New Choreographer Grant, through which she produced a 15- to 20-minute original performance with at least three dancers.

Max Massiah, Engr '23, is a teacher in Tanzania with the Peace Corps.

2024

Rosie Garcia, A&S '24 (MA) (Cert), completed the National Nuclear Security Administration Graduate Fellowship Program, which develops and prepares the next generation of professionals to contribute to the nuclear security enterprise, and has joined the federal public service.

Jinhee Jeannie Nguyen, Nurs '24 (DNP), Bus '24 (MBA), is chief nurse officer at Huntington Health, located in Pasadena, California. She has more than 30 years of experience, serving as a staff nurse, a clinical nurse specialist, nurse manager, associate chief nurse officer, and recently as vice president and patient care executive at Adventist Health Glendale Medical Center.