Alumni Profiles
Alumni collaborate on devotional book
Brown works to make a difference
Cross country alums come back to campus
Making news with ABC
Mitchell finds career in technology
Alumni collaborate on devotional book
By Deborah Lilly
Kurt Salierno ’85 and Barry Shafer BA ’83 collaborated on a book featuring real-life parables and in-depth Bible study. Salierno and Shafer hope Mercy Beyond Measure: Desperate Lives and the Reckless Grace of Jesus, a 30-day devotional book, will encourage teens and young adults to experience God’s call upon their lives.
Salierno is the founder and director of Church on the Street in Atlanta, an inner-city mission to the homeless. He began working in street ministry as a college freshman in Portland, Ore. Shafer launched and directs InWord Resources, a ministry dedicated to producing in-depth Bible studies for teens. In Mercy Beyond Measure, Salierno shares stories from his experiences on the street. Shafer follows up each story with a personal Bible study.
While the book can be used for individual Bible study, Shafer adds that it is particularly useful for youth groups preparing for or returning from work camps.
“Kids come back from work camps fired up,” he explains. But then they quickly experience the “commitment fade syndrome.” Mercy Beyond Measure takes their enthusiasm, hooks it up with an inductive Bible study, and hopefully strengthens and matures their newly discovered commitment to ministry. To encourage continued involvement in ministry, Shafer suggests that Saturdays be “Do Days,” and he offers ideas and scriptures to spur action.
Mercy Beyond Measure is not available in bookstores but can be ordered through InWord’s Web site at www.inword.org or by telephone at (888) 422-3060.
Brown works to make a difference
By Randy Dillinger
In this present time of war, much has been said about the relief efforts in Afghanistan. It’s very “American” to contribute to such a cause, and that’s good. But Dr. Larry Brown BA ’63, director of the Center on Hunger and Poverty, unreservedly states that any impact we would have on the world must begin at home.
“While the greatest needs are in the international arena,” Brown says, “I believe that the United States will not be able to play the positive role it can play — in terms of promoting opportunity, fairness and justice in the world — until it first tends to the problems of hunger and poverty among our own people. We will not have moral authority so long as we preach to others while perpetuating such injustice in our own midst.”
This is not a new perspective for Brown, who as a student expressed a commitment to helping build a more just America. His career took him through the Peace Corps, Oxfam America and the Harvard School of Public Health. While chairing the Physician Task Force on Hunger in America from 1984 to 1988, he helped conduct field visits in 25 states to “look at the face of hunger, why it had returned to America, and to recommend to Congress and the public steps to remedy it,” Brown says. In 1990 he founded the Center on Hunger and Poverty, now located at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
“The vision of the Center is an America where children and families do not go hungry and where we do not see extreme poverty existing alongside lavish wealth,” Brown says.
Today, the Center is working with two initiatives to bring about that vision. Hunger Free America (www.hungerfreeamerica.org) is a multi-year effort in conjunction with the Entertainment Industry Foundation and actor Jeff Bridges to motivate Washington officials to end hunger. A second initiative, created in partnership with the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation (www.kleinfoundation.org), is the development of a hunger curriculum and community service program for middle- and high-school students nationwide “to learn about domestic hunger and enable them to take action to help end it,” Brown says. “These programs were inspired by the life and work of 77-year-old Gerda Klein, a Holocaust survivor whose dream is that before she dies she can know that no child went to bed with the pangs of hunger that she had so often known in her youth.”
In his role as the Center’s director, Brown has frequently been called upon to appear as an expert on hunger and poverty on national television shows, including “Nightline,” “Good Morning America,” “The Today Show.”
“National media coverage of my work is something that comes with the territory,” Brown says, “but I am grateful for the interest. My staff and I are contacted almost daily by major papers and television networks, and we are able to help them understand current policy issues as well as help them to maintain factual accuracy in their reporting.”
Brown is not alone in his passion for justice. His wife, Judi Garfinkel, was the founding director of Physicians for a National Health Program. “I was raised as a Christian and my wife is Jewish,” he says. “The common theme in our marriage is that we are to make a difference, try to improve the world.” Their 13-year-old daughter, Ariel, also does her part. As a fourth-grader she initiated and organized a book drive for children in the Mississippi Delta who had no books of their own.
Reflecting on his time as an AU student, Brown acknowledges the faculty for their positive influence on his life direction. “I credit my professors at that time, especially LaVerne Norris and Val Clear, with helping me to see a larger world and for instilling in me the confidence that I could be a world citizen with the capacity to make a difference. I’ll always be indebted to these and other broad-minded people who dared to venture into the world around them rather than withdraw or become critical and complacent.”
And as his experience shows, Brown has applied the same principle to his own life and work.
Cross country alums come back to campus
By Deborah Lilly
For four years Jason Medler BA ’01 and Aaron Moody BA ’00 heard about their predecessors in the university’s cross country program. “We’ve had a lot of good runners through the years,” admits Coach Larry Maddox. Medler and Moody decided they wanted to meet them, so they proposed an AU cross country reunion at the beginning of the 2001 season.
This first year, they started small, inviting a handful of cross country alums and discovering if there would be interest in larger, annual reunions. Around the track on Aug. 21, more than 30 alums and family members stood alongside students to greet Maddox. “I looked out there and saw All-Americans, conference champions and people who contributed to the team because they were on the team,” says Maddox.
The event began with a time trial for both students and alums. “It was the worst two miles of my life,” admits Frank Runion BA ’90, a five-time All-American who once finished second in the nation in the 5K. “My legs never hurt so bad in my life.” Reuniting with his former teammates and Maddox, however, was a wonderful experience.
Thorpe Miller BA ’91 agrees. “It was great to get back together with everyone,” he says. Memories of his AU cross country experience enticed Miller to return for the reunion. “We went through a lot together, and you really felt a bond with your teammates,” he explains. “Whether it was Coach Maddox’s workouts, running a race in 15-degree weather or all the long bus rides, it was always bearable because you were doing it as a team.”
Jason Lenz BA ’86 returned with his family. His sons — Adam, a seventh grader, and Cole, a ninth grader — ran an impressive race against alumni runners, including those who have continued to train. Adam finished fifth behind Moody, Peter Pritchett BA ’92, Medler and Brian Williams BA ’88. Cole finished seventh.
“Going back with my three children and running with some of the former athletes was a memory that I will not soon forget,” says Lenz.
“One of our goals was to let our runners know that they weren’t the first people to go through this. They are part of a legacy,” explains Assistant Coach Scott Wilson.
There’s also a legacy runners take with them when they leave AU. “Coach Maddox has made a special impact on us,” says Angie Clark Bryan Combs BA 93. “Coach shared his Christian faith with each runner. It’s not just a running bond we have but a bond in Christ. What a great thing for young runners to experience.”
Making news with ABC
By Joy May
Loretta Rogers Cooper BA ’88 began her “first real news job” at WWKI in Kokomo, Ind. She covered news stories for the station and on the side did some television broadcasting in Lafayette to get her feet wet in the industry. But she got her first break when ABC News asked her to cover the Mike Tyson trial as a freelance stringer.
The network, impressed with Coopers’ work, hired her at WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., a station owned by ABC. By 1995, Cooper had made enough contacts to secure a full-time job at the ABC Radio Network. She then made the transition to television. Cooper — known to her viewing audience as “Lauren Rogers” — now works for News One, a small division at ABC Television, and is the Washington-based correspondent for local stations across the United States.
Her schedule is sporadic, often including late nights in front of a camera or in the field. When the Timothy McVey execution was scheduled in Terre Haute, Ind., she completed 27 live network feeds before 10 a.m. that day. While she doesn’t work every day of the week, the news often predicts when and where she’ll be, given that there are only two correspondents at this small news bureau.
“It’s very fun,” Cooper confesses. “I never really know what I’m walking into. I have a vague idea, but that’s part of what makes it fun. It’s something different and new every single day.”
New and different also means surprises at every turn. Like the time she got the call to come and serve as vacation relief for the regular anchors on “World News Now,” which airs late nights on ABC. Unlike other hard news shows, “World News Now” offers a bit more levity because of its late hour, something Cooper enjoys.
“We often re-run pieces from ‘20/20’ and ‘Nightline,’ so we often don’t have original material. The staff is loose, and we laugh a lot and have a great time while we work.”
But don’t let the fun fool you. Cooper works hard to meet the challenges of the job. “The challenge is being sharp and ready to go on no sleep at all. In spite of the fact that we have a great time, I work with professionals who really know what they’re doing, and the secret to having a show that works on spontaneity is that everything else has to be in perfect working order.”
Order is a priority for Cooper, who juggles award-winning reporting and motherhood. Still, balancing an unpredictable schedule filled with folks like Peter Jennings and Kokie Roberts is no match for being mom to Carson, 3, and newborn Bennett.
“They can always hire somebody else to do live shots,” Cooper says. “Carson [and Bennett] can’t interview for another mom. I’m it.”
Mitchell finds career in technology
By Joy May
Mary Mitchell BA '82 has ridden the techno wave into the 21st century. Armed with a communications degree, and a master's in magazine journalism from Ohio University, Mitchell began her online career as an editor at CompuServe in Columbus, Ohio in early 1984 when the CompuServe Information Service had only 150,000 subscribers, most of whom were computer hobbyists.
Now Mitchell works in Princeton, N.J., for Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company -- a leading provider of global news and business information services. There she is manager of product research for Factiva and travels throughout the Americas, Europe and parts of Asia to conduct research. Most recently, her efforts helped shape Factiva's latest product offering, Factiva.com, which offers 8,000 sources, from 118 countries with content in 22 languages. And there's more to come, because, as Mitchell articulates, the research she gathers is always changing the face of the products, services and programs that Factiva develops.
Before her current role, Mitchell gained a second master's degree from the American Graduate School of International Management, spending time in Paris and Geneva. But Mitchell says she never dreamed in earlier years she'd have such diverse experiences in her career. She took a "videotex" course in 1983 at the urging of a professor, not knowing it would be a launching pad for a new career direction. It was those professor/student relationships — the ones she recalls most fondly from AU — that opened new windows to the business and communication world for her. For example, she is still in contact with AU’s Professor Holly Miller, who served as her senior fellow through the Center for Public Service.
Looking back, she also recognizes the value of student involvement. From the onset of her college experience, Mitchell participated in student publications, internships and organizations that enhanced her education. "When I think back to my campus experience, I see the importance of being as involved as one can be, because you don't always know what will later prove to be useful. Everything I learned fit together to give me the right background for the job I'm doing today."
