Alumni News

Sarah Mulhall Adelman, class of 2003, went to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, where she expects to finish her PhD this year. She had an article accepted for publication in The Journal of Women's History. The project is based on a paper she wrote for a Xavier course:

In spring 2002 I wrote a research paper for your Women's Work in America seminar on the governing structure of Catholic sisters' religious communities. I continued research on this topic during my first year of grad school and expanded the project into the paper I had to produce at the end of that year, broadening the topic of inquiry to power relations and political culture more broadly within these communities. Although my dissertation goes in a completely different direction (19th century New York City orphan asylums and conceptions of childhood), I have returned to this project over the past few years to revise the paper and get it ready for publication. The publication date has yet to be scheduled, but it will appear under the title "Empowerment and Submission: The Political Culture of Catholic Women's Religious Communities in Nineteenth-Century America."

Sister Mary Barbara Agnew, CPPS, Edgecliff class of 1947, received her MA and PhD in Theology from the University Notre Dame and Catholic University of America, respectively. She retired from the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University 10 years ago, but will be teaching an introductory course in Modern World History in Villanova's college program at a nearby state maximum security prison. She observed that Villanova's history department approved her to teach the course on the basis of her undergraduate degree, and that theology demands a good bit of history, too.

Natasha Hamilton, class of 2005, advises city and state officials on finance in her position as associate financial advisor at Scott Balice Strategies, LLC. She currently is a Democratic candidate for New York State Assembly, District 42.

Babs Wenstrup Hammond, class of 1955, was in the process of moving from Florida back to Cincinnati when she received our call for information. She writes:

I'm afraid I wasn't a very good history major, even though my grades were good. I didn't do the reading that Fr. Stritch asked of us and still don't. I prefer historical fiction and good mystery writers. My grandson, Christopher Smith, is a history major at Xavier and loves reading history, so I'm glad he didn't take after me!

Gia Hayes-Martin, class of 1999, went straight to graduate studies in history at Vanderbilt University after graduating at Xavier, where she specialized in early modern British history. Halfway through the program, she realized that she wasn't suited for academia as a career and needed to do something about her persistent calling to ordination. She finished her PhD in 2004 and shortly afterward began the process for ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. She is now completing an MDiv from Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif. She swears this is the last of her higher degrees, and writes:

God willing, I will be ordained next year and move into some combination of parish ministry and health care chaplaincy. While I'm not active in the field any longer, I use the critical-thinking and source-criticism skills I learned as a historian every day. My training guides me to recognize the importance of context, take the long view, and eschew simplistic answers. Human beings and their structures are enormously complex creatures that have evolved over a long time, and I'm suspicious of efforts to reduce us to easy black-and-white categories. History also gave me an appreciation for the power of story, which is crucial to my preaching and my ministry as a hospital chaplain. And my interest in "old stuff" led me to a medieval abbey on a remote island off the coast of Scotland, where I happened to sit next to a Glaswegian man named Melville Martin. We've now been married for two years.

David Hoinski, class of 2000, earned an MA in philosophy from both Cleveland State in 2003 and from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium in 2006. He is pursuing PhD work in philosophy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. David writes:

Duquesne's philosophy program has a strong emphasis on the history of philosophy, so my education in history at Xavier has served me well in my PhD program. My dissertation, on which I am presently working, is on philosophical autobiography, and in some sense it may be viewed as a history of the genre, how philosophers have constructed autobiographies and for what purposes.

Pat Scallen, class of 2001, is in a doctoral program at Georgetown University in Latin American history. His dissertation is a transnational history of Salvadoran migration to Washington, D.C. He also just finished his second year teaching in the social studies department at Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington. Carroll is an urban Catholic school that educates low and middle-income minority students. He taught World History, U.S. Government, and Ethnicity and Culture. Pat has also worked as a historical consultant on indigenous affairs for the Peruvian government, earned an MA in Latin American Studies at Tulane University and wrote the entry for the history of El Salvador for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American History.

Brett Simmons, class of 2009, is living in Chicago and working for "ACCION Chicago". He says he is "very excited about it. He writes:

I think it will be the ideal 'professional' combination of my international microfinance work and interest in urban policy and community building. As far as history is concerned, they did ask me if that meant I could write well, and I think it helped because my position is going to be a lot of grant writing.

Stephen J. Simon, class of 1961, writes:

I graduated from Xavier in the spring of 1961. In June of that year I took my first course in graduate school at Xavier. It was a class on the early Roman Empire taught by Rev. John N. Felten, S.J. From that point on, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. In 1973, I received a PhD from Loyola University Chicago in ancient history. I have taught Greek and Roman history at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. for 38 years. Thank you, Father Felten and Xavier.

James Uhler, class of 1996, has taught history and directed the eighth-grade program since 2002 at Christ School in Asheville, N.C., which is an Episcopal boarding school for boys. He also coaches baseball and swimming. He was named Teacher of the Year in 2004 and has also been listed in Who's Who Among America's Teachers. In August 2008, he married Becky Serraglio. They reside on the school's campus.