Alumni Points of Pride

• Dan Leonard (’79, Theatre Arts) received the Randolph Frank Prize for the Performing Arts. He received the $5,000 award for his work in Palm Beach County’s performing arts scene for the past 25 years. 


• Robert “B.A.” Schoen, (’69, Mass Communications) was named 2012 Man of the Year by the Baldwin (N.Y.) Foundation for Education, where he has been a board member since 1996. 


• Maynard R. Meyer (’74, Mass Communications) was inducted into the Minnesota Broadcasting Hall of Fame. He began his career in broadcasting at KMRS radio in Morris, and has been part owner and manager of KLQP-FM in Madison for the past 28 years. 


• Alumni Leni Ramberg (‘73, Speech-Theatre and English) and Pamela Troumbly (‘71, Elementary Education) recently collaborated on the book, Girlfriend Detectives: The Missing Photo Mystery, which is now available for sale and download for the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and other e-reading devices. Read more about how these alumni connected at a Dragon alumni reunion which resulted in this great alumni collaboration.


• Jan Maxwell (attended MSUM in the 1970s and 1980s) was nominated for a Tony Award for “Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical.” Follies received a total of eight Tony nominations, including” Best Revival of a Musical.” Read more about how Jan got ready for Follies.


• A documentary about three underprivileged New York City teenagers was produced in part by alumna Jill Angelo (’97, Speech). The documentary was praised in an October issue of The New York Times for offering “more substantive insights into pressing issues of public education and urban poverty than many political commentators muster in a career.” 


• Yelena Mejova (’07, Computer Science) will participate in a postdoc with the Yahoo! research lab in Barcelona, Spain, as part of their web mining group. Mejova earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Iowa.


• Bioscience graduates Cory Sailer and Sonny Radenic, both 2011, and Bioscience student Randy Sutrisno received final acceptance for publication for their research paper entitled “Maternal effects and exploratory-boldness behavioural syndrome in zebrafish.” The research was supervised by Prof. Brian Wisenden. Thus far, 62 undergraduates have co-authored peer-reviewed research papers with Wisenden.