Alumni News, Samford University Department of English

Alumni News

Send your news & pictures of English Department Alumni
to Sandra McDonald at the above address or to jmbagget@samford.edu

Dr. Ladell Payne, the former president of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia

Courtney Camp Enloe, a magna cum laude English and Political Science graduate in 1994, is Senior Litigation Counsel Georgia-Pacific Law Department in Atlanta.
She graduated from Washington & Lee School of Law in 1997, and is licensed to practice in Tennessee and Georgia

Christin Camp, a 1997 summa cum laude English graduate from Samford, is an attorney at the King and Spalding law firm in Atlanta, and graduated from Vanderbilt Law School, where she was Senior Notes Editor for the Vanderbilt Law Review

Jack Snell, '63, left, retired from Hendrix Avenue Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1999; he and wife, Anita, are now Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionaries in Taiwan

Terry Jones is a physician in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

2005 Ladell Payne Exemplary Award Winners head to Graduate School

Stefanie Pickett, far left, has begun work on her Ph.D. in English at Florida State University. She holds a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University. Lauren Floyd has begun graduate study at Wake Forest University.

One of the first groups of English alumni to go to London in 1995. Alums include Squire Gwin (top left), an attorney in Birmingham; Sarah Woodruff Sloan (top right), '69, a middle school teacher in Anniston; Delores Forse, center, '88, a high school teacher in Birmingham; Beth Miller (second from left front row), '88, a teacher in Fayetteville, N.C.; Rachel Pinson (now),(front row center) '89, a high school teacher in Birmingham; Joseph C. Wingard (top row middle), a high school teacher in Andalusia; Raymond and Frances Hammock, '37 (he is top row second from left; she is bottom row, second from right). Raymond Hammock is a pastor in Mobile.

Nandra Perry, '94, is assistant professor of English at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, Calif. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Joseph Wingard, '66, a teacher at Andalusia High School and a frequent traveler on alumni trips, admires the gardens in Canterbury, England (left), and below, poses by a bust of one of his favorite authors, Sir Walter Scott.

In March 2005, Katie Hubbard Moellering, SU English '96, Adult Services Department Head of Emmet O'Neal Library in Mountain Brook, hosted Khaled Hosseini, Afghan author of The Kite Runner. Moellering is pictured above with Hosseini, left, and her husband, Doug, in middle.

Leslie Poole, '99, with Virginia Woolf. An honors graduate, Poole works for an insurance agency in Gallatin, Tennessee.

Gina Marshall her daughter Danae

Amanda Dunn Dove, '97, amandardunn@yahoo.com, is involved in freelance writing and editing and teaching English as a second language to refugees in the Netherlands. She married Richard Dove in October 2000.
*Vince Strawbridge, stands in the "Q" at the 1995 English Awards Picnic*		Leah Elliott, '99, teaches ninth and eleventh grade English at Hillcrest High School in Tuscaloosa

Webb Morgan, '99, graduated from Florida State University with a Master's in Higher Education. He is now Assistant Director of Orientation and Commuter Student Affairs at the University of Miami. His email is wmorgan@miami.edu

Chris George, '98, completed a Master's of Divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School in the spring of 2001 and is working at Southside Baptist Church in Birmingham this summer.

Elisabeth Rohlfs-Hill, '95, teaches 10th
and 11th grade English at the Alabama
School of Fine Arts. Her husband,
E. Bradford Hill, is also an English teacher.

Ella Robinson, '76, is a
freelance writer and has recently published
published A Guide to
Literary Sites in the South
(Vision Press)

Andrew Jenkins is pastor
of Ecclesia in Birmingham

Nina Farr Chafin, '47, admires
The Shambles in York, England

Other Alumni News:

Katherine Moore, 2004, is working at Altec Capital Services in Birmingham.

John Harkey, 2001 English alum from Atlanta, has completed his first year of graduate study at Wake Forest University in the M.A. program, doing preliminary research for his master's thesis.

John Mac Kilgore, 2001, presently lives in Winston-Salem, N.C., where he is busy composing and performing songs, hoping to have a CD recorded by next year.

Jamie McDaniel's senior thesis from Samford on Toni Morrison has been accepted for presentation on the Ethnic Literature Panel at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Conference in Scottsdale, AZ. McDaniel (2001) is one of four presenters on the panel.

Gina Marshall, 2001, is associate editor, editorial assistant, and website manager for a variety of magazines within the Grand View Media Group in Birmingham. Her senior thesis on Tim O'Brien and Virginia Woolf is being published by the Sigma Tau Delta journal The Rectangle.

Katie Gordon, 2000, has accepted a fellowship in the Ph.D. program in English at Vanderbilt University, which includes a tuition-free enrollment, plus an annual stipend and research fund.

Kellie Warren, 2000, has completed her M.A. degree in Comparative Literature at Penn State University.

Lisa Wethman has enrolled at the University of New Mexico to start English graduate courses. Under her teaching assistantship, she will be teaching English 101 this fall.

Amy Cheek Fineburg, who teaches English and Psychology at Homewood High School in Birmingham, has been elected to a national office on the Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools executive board.

Leah Elliott, leahe77@yahoo.com, is beginning her third year teaching ninth and eleventh grade English and Creative Writing at Hillcrest High School in Tuscaloosa. She graduated in August 2001 from the University of Alabama with a Master's degree in English and Secondary Education.

Amanda Moberg, 1998 and Cumberland 2001, is presently teaching law and business at a university in Tianjin, China which is about an hour south of Beijing. She is teaching law and business to English speaking students. This is an one year assignment. While at home she has been interviewing for admission to medical school which she hopes to enter this fall.

Bob Sands, 1997 and Cumberland 2001, has accepted a position as an attorney with the International Trade Compliance Division at the U.S.
Treasury Dept. (Customs).

Kirsten Eidsmoe--currently a dramaturge at ASF--has been accepted to the prestigious dramaturgy program at the University of London's Royal Holloway College.

Susan Orum works for a software development company in Atlanta. She has written most of the firm's courseware, and now finds herself traveling
internationally, training clients on various software offerings.

David Shaner, gorgon3n1@yahoo.com, works at Smith & Hardwick Books in Birmingham.

Blake Chism is now at Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas. He is doing a missions track and hopes to one day work overseas. He is working in the Political Science department and "consulting" in the Latin American Studies department on campus. He was selected to teach in a Baylor program for underprivileged gifted kids this summer and is in the process of designing a course on Shakespeare that compares the original texts to
some modern movies.

Holly Drake, hdrake@homewood.k12.al.us, is teaching 11th grade English and Algebra II at Homewood High School in Birmingham and is currently working on her Masters in English Education at UAB.

Paula Hunt Hughes is senior copy editor for Southern Living magazine in Birmingham. She has been with the company for 8 years, following an internship after graduation. Her primary responsibility is the Homes section of Southern Living. She is married to Andy Hughes, a fellow Samford grad, and they have a dog named Sam.

Morgan Amick Boothe is teaching at Meridian Community College and just finished her Master's degree.

Susan Kitchens, '97, stkitchens@hotmail.com, is working as a reporter for Forbes magazine in New York.

Ashley Spalding, '97, after finishing her Master's degree in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina, is now working on her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Leslie N. Bailey, PudgeLNB@aol.com, has been employed as a Compliance Analyst for Protective Life Insurance Company for over two years, and is currently pursuing a Master's in Spanish. Her job entails internal auditing, legal research of state laws and regulations as they pertain to the marketing and sales of life insurance and NASD regulations, agent communication, and coordinating activities related to Discovery and Subpoenas.

Andrea Martin Ziegler, azieg100@hotmail.com, is working at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in Huntsville, Alabama, as an analyst. SAIC (www.SAIC.com) is a government contracting company. She married Joe Ziegler (Samford ‘95) on June 26, 1999, and they are expecting their first child on January 11, 2002. Joe is Minister of Music at First Baptist Church, Athens, Alabama.

Courtney Camp, '94, is an attorney with the Alston and Bird law firm in Atlanta. Carrie Beavers, who graduated from Samford in May 2001, is a clerk at the firm.

Elisabeth Rohlfs-Hill, '95, teaches 10th and 11th grade English at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. She is married to D. Bradford Hill, who is also an English teacher. Her email is erohlfs-hill@asfa.k12.al.us

Deandra Little ('94) received her Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt in
2001 and is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia.
She works at UVa's faculty and TA development center, the Teaching Resource Center, and teaches in the English department. She and her husband, Jeremy Hunt, have 3 daughters. Jeremy co-owns an off-campus student bookstore.

Liesl Ward teaches English at Jefferson State in Birmingham. She completed her M.A. in English at Univ. of Alabama in Huntsville shortly after graduating from Samford, and then completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of Illinois, where her dissertation was directed by Nina Baym.

Martha Anne ("Marthanne") Brown, English and Journalism, is Associate
Dean and General Studies Chair at Bevill State Community College in Jasper. She directs a program there called "Read Alabama for Children."

Roderick Davis, who retired as Dean of the Howard College of Arts & Sciences in May 2001. At the May 2002 Honors banquet, Samford's Honors graduates voted him "The Professor Who Has Influenced Us the Most in the Past Four Years." He was presented a book of remembrances and photographs from the Honors classes they had taken with him. He returned to full-time teaching in the department in the fall 2002.

Dusty Folds, '04 is currently working the Samford University Library as a Library Assistant and planning for graduate work in Library Science.

Brittany Luck, '04, is currently in the Ph.D. program at the University of Kentucky.

Stephanie Blackmon, '05 is currently teaching at English at Jefferson State Junior College.

Sean Lyden, '95, is a Commercial Truck Specialist with Carl Black GMC Truck, the nation's largest GMC dealership based in Kennesaw, GA. He has pioneered the Virtual Dealership for busy people. Lyden brings the dealership to the buyer serving clients throughout the Southeast via phone, web, e-mail and fax. He has also co-authored a book, "How to Succeed and Make Money on Your First Rental House (Jan. 2004) published by John Wiley and Sons. He and his family are residents of Cartersville, GA.