2001
Jamie Schievelbein is editor and reporter at The Savannah Reporter and Andrew County Democrat, a weekly newspaper in Savannah, Mo., with a circulation of about 3,100. She covers city council, school activities and the courts and edits all stories, writes a weekly column and designs the front page.
2000
Eric Rineer is a copy editor at the Steamboat Pilot and Today in Steamboat Springs, Colo. He had been a reporter at the paper since graduating in August 2000.
Brice Sullivan has been working as an editor at News Link in Lincoln since his graduation. News Link produces corporate publications for businesses and organizations across the nation, including BNSF Railroad, Lincoln Housing Authority, The Lincoln/Lancaster County Planning Commission and the American Red Cross. Sullivan does copy editing and layout and, occasionally, reporting and photography. He will be married in May 2002.
Amanda Taylor is an account coordinator at Thomas and Perkins Advertising/Public Relations in Denver.
1999
Sherri Neall Barnwell works at the office of undergraduate admissions at the University of Maryland. She is the visitor coordinator who plans all the open houses and special programs and works with the university’s tour guides. She was married in May 2001 to Jason Barnwell, a civil engineer from Clemson, S.C.
Matt Norman is a copywriter for ESI International in Washington, D.C.
1998
Jim Goodwin is a reporter at the Red Rock News in Sedona, Ariz. The paper is a semiweekly with a circulation of 7,000. He previously worked at another small semiweekly in Arizona where he was a bureau chief/reporter.
1997
Andy Bosselman has joined the Peace Corps and is teaching English in Benin. He will be in the African nation for more than two years. He previously worked at EGreetings.com in San Francisco.
Chris Hain started at the Lincoln Journal Star in April 1997, covering cops and courts, then education and city-county government. In October he moved to West Palm Beach, Fla., where he is covering county government for the Palm Beach Post.
1996
Jennifer Schein lives in Atlanta and works as the community producer for weather.com, The Weather Channel’s Web site.
1995
Matt Gersib has joined the public relations department at Swanson Russell, a marketing communications firm in Lincoln. Before moving to Swanson Russell, Gersib was marketing manager for Global Crossing Conferencing in Westminster, Colo. He had also provided marketing communications support for companies including Colorado Homes and Lifestyles magazine in Denver.
Wendy Thomas Russell of the Long Beach Press-Telegram, will be named Journalist of the Year in the “more than 100,000 daily circulation category” by the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The annual awards banquet is Feb. 4
1993
Jamie Green is assistant executive assistant for the Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City. He deals primarily with government relations and communications. He earned an M.P.A. from Arizona State in May of 2000.
1992
Brenda Cheng was promoted to assistant manager of traffic services in the graphics department at Leiner Health Products in Carson, Calif., in July 2000. She and her husband, Reeve Cheng, a 1993 UNL master of arts graduate, are the parents of a baby girl, Tryn Lee, born Sept. 17, 2000.
Tamika Simmons was a news assistant at the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis for two years after graduation, then spent two years in the Minority Editorial Training Program, first at Newsday and then at The Advocate in Stamford, Conn., as a copy editor. She worked on the night news desk at the Boston Globe for two-and-a-half years, then went to the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida where she spent three years as a reporter. This fall, she enrolled at the University of Miami School of Law.
1991
Jodi Hoatson worked for nine years as a college sport information director in Alaska, Washington State, California, Tulane and the University of Connecticut. She is now a senior publicist at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, R.I. Johnson and Wales was founded in 1914. It is a private, non-profit, accredited institution offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs in business, food service, hospitality and technology. The college maintains campuses in Charleston, S.C., Norfolk, Va., North Miami, Denver and Gothenburg, Sweden.
Bridget Sims produces the weekday morning newscast at WFAA-TV in Dallas.
1986
Tim Ganser is manager of talent and casting at Warner Brothers Television. He is also an adjunct professor at California State University-Northridge.
1983
Andy Baumert is the associate director of governmental relations at Iowa State University in Ames.
1978
Debra Alward has been with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about seven years. She has been the marketing director and assistant to the editor. For the past two years, she has been directing the newspaper’s Internet business: operations, systems, marketing, sales — everything but content.
1977
Steve Roth was promoted in May to be public relations counsel at Swanson Russell Associates, a marketing communications firm in Lincoln. He is responsible for strategic public relations planning, counseling and implementation for client programs and projects. He joined SRA in 1999 after more than 20 years of broadcast journalism and public relations experience.
1975
Lisa Noon, Mechanicsville, Va., has been director of communications and marketing for VAR for nearly eight years. VAR is Virginia’s largest individual member trade association made up of 22,500 realtors. Earlier, she was corporate marketing officer for Central Fidelity Bank (now Wachovia Bank) for more than eight years.
1972
Peggy Strain, Milwaukee, Wis., died Aug. 1 of complications due to cancer. She had worked for a variety of newspapers and government agencies, most recently the General Services Administration in Washington, D.C. She had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting when she worked for the Denver Post in the 1980s.
Alexandra J. McClanahan has been the historian for Cook Inlet Region Inc. in Anchorage, Alaska, since 1998. CIRI is an Alaska Native Regional Corporation created under the auspices of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. McClanahan received the Denali Award for 2001 from the Alaskan Federation of Natives, the highest award given to a non-Native by the AFN. She moved to Alaska in 1982 to work for The Anchorage Times and has written two oral history books about Alaska Native elders and leaders. She served as publisher and president of The Tundra Times from 1986 until 1991. She and her husband, John Shively, have a daughter, Natasha.
1967
Barbara Robertson received the 2001 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award from American Business Media for her article “Sea Change.” She also received an award of distinction from the Society for Technical Communication for the same article. The article, which reports on the creation of visual effects for the movie “The Perfect Storm,” appeared in the the July 2000 issue of Computer Graphics World. Robertson is a senior editor at CGW.
1966
Connie Ruohomaki is a marketing specialist with the Maryland Department of Agriculture in Annapolis.
1964
Jim Risser was one of three co-authors of a report for CNN, investigating errors in Election Night coverage. The co-authors also testified before a congressional committee about the same topic. Risser also wrote an article for the July/August Columbia Journalism Review about the changes at the San Francisco Chronicle since it came under Hearst ownership. “The paper is actually quite a bit better than before,” he says.
1960
Gus Buenz, director of communications for Oldsmobile, was named top public relations executive in the auto industry for 2001. The awards were announced in the July issue of Automotive News.