Alumni Features

Where are they now?

Marshelle Woodward

Marshelle Woodward (GC 2006) currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include (but are not limited to) the social and intellectual history of early modern Europe, birth and death in Renaissance England, material culture and post-human studies. As a teaching assistant at the university, she has taught Introductory Shakespeare, British Literature Before 1750, and Freshman Composition.

Gina Puthoff

Gina Putthoff, class of 2005, is currently the marketing coordinator at ENTRAN, a civil engineering firm headquartered in Lexington, Ky. Before joining ENTRAN, Gina worked for two years as the publications manager for the Underground Railroad Research Institute at Georgetown College. She is also a freelance copyeditor and graphic designer, and has copyedited or composited three published/ forthcoming books over the past three years. Gina is also compositor for the Georgetown College literary magazine, Georgetown Review.

Katie Eades

After graduating in 2004, Katie completed her M.A. in English Literature at U. Tennessee. There, she taught freshman composition for two years and, after finishing her degree, took a job as a lecturer. In her current position at a contract research organization in Cincinnati, Katie has put the oral and written communication skills she learned at Georgetown College to good use. She has edited a publication of non-fiction called Juggernauts, and she tells us she has never lost her “love of reading, analyzing, and discussing literature.” Future plans include pursuing her doctorate and returning to teaching.

Joshua Cook

Joshua moved to New York a week after graduating in 2000 to start as a Desk Assistant at CBS Network Radio News. After 15 months in that role, Joshua was promoted to a News Writer position. He helped cover the 2000 Recount and Air France Concorde crash, September 11th and the Afghanistan invasion. He began producing network updates during the second Iraq war. He decided it was time for a break and left CBS in 2005 to hike along the Appalachian Trail and teach in Tokyo for a year. He returned to CBS in 2007.

Brooke Barnett

Former Georgetonian editor Brooke Barnett, class of 1993, is now an assistant professor of communications at Elon University in North Carolina. She completed her Ph.D. at Indiana University, where she wroter her dissertation on visual portrayals of the
accused in television crime coverage. She is also a documentary producer, reporter, news director and interview host/producer. Her research interests include visual communication and media law; she has published articles in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Visual Communication Quarterly and the Federal Communications Law Journal.

Earl Pinkston

Earl Pinkston, Georgetown College class of 1993, recently found himself back at Georgetown College--this time as the College's Missionary in Residence. He and his wife, Robin, spent a year at Georgetown, coming home after their years in Malta, where they were serving as missionaries, working with volunteers from around the world to serve the Maltese people.

Earl and his wife, Robin, have now returned to their work with Ministries to Malta (M2M), hosting volunteer groups who come to work with the Maltese.

While they are in Georgetown, Earl and Robin will assist the Campus Ministry team in conducting fellowship meetings, speaking to classes, informing students about missions and visiting churches.

Rachel Wagner

When Rachel Wagner (GC 1996) graduated from University of Kentucky's Law School in May of 1999, she stepped right into a position with a firm in Pikeville called Robinette-May and Associates, P.S.C. She then moved back to Lexington, where she practices law with

Rachel writes that her experience as an English major was very helpful in law school--especially when it came to getting good grades on her papers

Chris Schimmoeller

It would be hard for anyone who was on campus in the late 1980s and early 1990s to forget Chris and Trina Schimmoeller (GC 1991), the identical twins who had such an impact on the Georgetown College campus. Trina has since completed a Ph.D. and is awaiting the publication of her first book. Chris took a different track, first going to India as a Fulbright scholar and then coming back to lead the fight to preserve the Kentucky environment. As coordinator of Kentucky Heartwood, Chris is leading a new initiative to stop logging in the Daniel Boone National Forest. She and her husband, Joel Dufour, live in their cabin in Franklin County, Ky., where they avoid the modern conveniences they consider harmful to the environment (thus, they have no electricity and no running water.

Trina Schimmoeller Peiffer

Trina Schimmoeller (GC 1991) received her Ph.D. in English from the University of California/Davis. In the process, she wrote a book, now available from the University of Utah Press. The book, entitled Coyote at Large: Humor in American Nature Writing, has been called a "groundbreaking volume" that "is criticism of the highest and truest sort."

You may order the book from
http://www.amazon.com --click here to get right to the page for her book

Martha Banta Boltz

When young Martha Banta (GC 1958) was in Dr. Horace Hambrick's history class, little did he know that this English major would eventually be writing historical booklets and articles about the Civil War. Though she claims she was never a very good history student, Martha turned her experience as editor of The Georgetonian and her interest in the Civil War into a career as a historical writer who freelances for The Washington Times and takes on a variety of different writing projects as they present themselves. Her articles on Civil War subjects often fill full pages of The Times.

In addition, she has recently completed a mini-book/oversized booklet being published on "the pathfinder of the seas," Matthew Fontaine Maury -- father of oceanography. She writes, "He's a little known Confederate hero, and literally the father of modern oceanography, and I was commissioned to write a decent-sized booklet on him which we hope will end up in Civil War site and museum book stores."

Tammy Howard

After working over three years in GC admissions and earning a Master's degree in Student Personnel Services in Higher Education at Eastern Kentucky University, Tammy Howard (GC 1993) is currently the Assistant Director of New Student Programs in the Dean of Students Office at the University of Kentucky. The main responsibilities of her position include directing the fall orientation program for all new students called Kentucky Welcome, directing the UK Parent Association, and advising the UK Ambassadors. She puts her English degree and Belle of the Blue editor experience to good use by
producing several publications associated with these programs. In addition to her regular job responsibilities, she is also a UK 101 (orientation course) instructor, and she teaches an alcohol risk reduction course. She maintains her GC ties by serving on the Delta Eta of Phi Mu Alumnae Advisory Committee.

Mark Mitchell

Mark graduated Georgetown in 1989 and received his Master's Degree in fiction from Murray State University in 1991. From there he began working at the Legislative Research Commission proofreading in the Statute Reviser's Office. A couple of years into that he began drafting resolutions for the General Assembly.

In 1995 he began his new job in LRC as a
Legislative Analyst with the Local Government Committee. He has been the principal staff person for two interim subcommittees: The Subcommittee on Building Inspections in the 1996-97 interim, and the Subcommittee on Planning and Land-Use Management in the 1998-99 interim. His primary duties involve legal research, other research of a general nature, and bill drafting. He has drafted over 120 bills so far.

Mark comments that his English education provided him with both the ability to understand the subtleties of reading law and the the ability to write clearly, which he says "is now a necessity."

Cathy Jones Reynolds

Cathy Jones (GC 1994) now lives in Houston with her husband Michael and daughter Lauren Audrey. Cathy earned her M.A. in journalism from Ohio State University and then went on to work for the city of Waco, Texas, where she helped handle many aspects of that city's public relations office. Since her move to Houston, she is working as an Information Technology recruiter with with Data Staffing Centre, a division of Management Alliance Group. She helps companies connect with computer professionals and visa versa. She writes, "After seeing how much these people command and demand, perhaps I should have double-majored in computer science AND English."

Michelle Celsor Pedigo

Michelle Celsor (GC 1990) is beginning her third year as principal at Barren County Middle School in Glasgow, Kentucky. It is a school with approximately 550 seventh and eighth graders. Prior to being principal, she was the Vice Principal for two years. Prior to that, Michelle taught four years of high school language arts, along with being the assistant girls' basketball coach and yearbook advisor, at Allen County-Scottsville High.

She is beginning "Principal's Diaries" entries on Middleweb, a website for middle level educators, sponsored by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. You can find the diaries through a link at www.middleweb.com .

Michelle has also been chosen to serve on a National Middle School Board sponsored by the Galef Institute in California. The purpose of the board will be to promote academic excellence in middle level education.

Michelle has two daughters, Sara-Cate (age 5) and Deanie (age 2), and a cattle-farming husband, Ivan.

Ian Dawkins

Ian Dawkins (GC 1998) always loved Japanese animation while he was a student at Georgetown, and his interest led him to take Japanese to fulfill his foreign language requirement. Now he has turned his avocation into a pathway to a vocation--teaching English to Japanese students. After several years in Atsumi, Japan, teaching with the JET program, Ian returned and has completed an M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.