Online college review website Best College Reviews has recently ranked Bloomington-Normal as one of the best college towns in America. Ranked 38 out of 50, Best College Reviews calls the twin cities area “a great location for young college town seekers” due to opportunities from large employers like State Farm Insurance, Mitsubishi, and Country Financial, “coupled with a low cost of living.”
The McLean County Museum of History
Read the full article here.
Through the healthcare internship community Work the World, nursing alumna Hannah Smith spent three weeks this summer as a midwifery intern at Mount Meru Regional Hospital in Arusha, Tanzania. She witnessed over 40 births over the course of her internship, performed eight deliveries independently, and worked as the nurse in three cesarean sections.
Hannah Smith ’14 cradling a newborn
“What I liked most about my internship placement were the experiences that I would not likely see in the United States,” said Smith. “Being immersed in a culture where fetal heart tones are taken only every four to six hours on a woman in labor and documentation is done on a scrap of paper helped me grow to appreciate the charting and standards that we have in the United States.”
Read the full article here.
Colleen O’Connor ’14 is currently investigating creative writing as an affordable mental health intervention. As one of this year’s recipients of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Re-Centering the Humanities grant, O’Connor regularly leads a creative writing group at the Addiction Recovery Center at Advocate BroMenn Medical Center in Normal, Illinois.
Colleen O’Connor ’14
“For those with few resources, creative writing may provide a low-cost alternative for the management of persistent mental health disorders,” said O’Connor, who studied both Psychology and English-Writing at IWU. “I was interested in investigating how creative writing can best be used as a low-cost supplementary aid or replacement for traditional therapy techniques.” She hopes to eventually integrate successful creative writing-based therapeutic designs into the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery.
Read the full article here.
Cyclists competing in the Ironman Coeur d’Alene
Aaron Smith ’14 in his senior year Track and Field roster picture
Hey there, alumni! If you don’t recognize me from my picture at the top-right of this page, my name is Mack Rivkin and I am the new Class of ’14 Newsletter Editor. I want to extend my gratitude to Bobby Castillo, the former newsletter editor and fantastic friend of mine, for his hard work and dedication to IWU and the class of 2014.
A bit about me: I studied English and Environmental Studies while at IWU, and was heavily involved with theatre. I am passionate about writing and editing, and I did a ton of it in school. When I wasn’t writing papers for class, I wrote poetry, short stories, and plays. Now, no longer a student, I still write for leisure when not working at Epiphany Farms Hospitality Group in downtown Bloomington. In my free time I enjoy riding my bike, surfing Reddit, and playing Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons.
I am very excited to do even more writing as Editor of this newsletter, and I hope to serve my class well. Please email me at mrivkin@iwu.edu if you have any updates you’d like to share!
Because this is the internet, I will leave you with an adorable picture of my cats. Happy reading!
My cats, Montgomery Bagel and Amelia
More than 5,000 alumni showed their support by making a gift to IWU in fiscal year 2014!
And for the second year straight, Illinois Wesleyan alumni have grown our alumni giving percentage. We are now at 23%!
THANK YOU for doing your part to keep IWU strong.
IWU’s fiscal year ends TODAY – July 31 – Thank you if you’ve already made your annual gift!
Now help us find the 47 additional alumni donors we need to reach our participation goal by today. Organizations view alumni participation as the metric that measures alumni satisfaction. It affects IWU’s ranking, bond rating, and ability to earn grants, so make your gift today at iwu.edu/give to keep IWU strong! Every donor counts!
The Illinois Wesleyan fiscal year is ending quickly on July 31. Have you renewed your support yet this year? *
It’s not too late to be added to the list!
We still need 163 alumni to step forward before July 31 to increase alumni participation 1% over last year.
*Check by visiting http://www.iwu.edu/annualreport/.
Catherine Geehan, former intern at the Scholars at Risk Network at New York University, spoke at the IWU Women’s Council 2014 Summit, Lead Connected, event on Friday, February 28th with Deb Adams ’79, Molly McLay ’06, Ade Olayinka ’11 on campus at the Hansen Student Center on Advocating for Social Justice: Make a Living Working for Change.
Lucas Fletcher performed an organ recital at First Presbyterian Church in Delavan, Illinois on Sunday, May 18th. Lucas’s performance was advertised in the Lincoln Courier, which also noted that “[t]he church’s Hinner’s pipe organ, manufactured in Pekin in 1914, became one of the largest in the region with the addition of components from the Wesleyan University chapel pipe organ in 1962.”