BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – When an opportunity arose in the summer of 2010 to travel to northern Iraq and train health professionals at a local hospital, Molly King ‘03, an alumna of Illinois Wesleyan School of Nursing, jumped at the chance.

In June of 2010 King traveled to northern Iraq with the non-governmental organization (NGO) Samaritan’s Purse in conjunction with For Hearts & Souls (FHAS).

In Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, she helped to provide training to nurses specializing in post-operative nursing management of congenital heart disease repairs at the Sulaymaniyah Center for Heart Diseases.  King spent 10 weeks at the hospital as a representative of FHAS in conjunction with Samaritan’s Purse, a not-for-profit organization funding the trip.  During her time there, King focused on developing a curriculum addressing the post-operative care needs of cardiac patients and implementing it through bedside teaching and lectures.  At first, this proved to be a difficult task.

“Of course language was a barrier,” said King.  “A lot of the medical staff [understood] some English, but many did not, which is quite interesting considering that nursing education is done in English because there is no technical or scientific vocabulary in the Kurdish language.”

In addition to the language barrier, King found that asking questions was viewed as challenging authority and, therefore, culturally inappropriate.  “I probably had the hardest time with this because in the context of pediatric heart surgery, I could not respect that tradition when patients, especially children, were being harmed.”  Ultimately, King overcame these challenges by gaining the respect of the hospital staff through her persistence in teaching.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University alumnus Juan Salgado ’91 has conversed with the presidents of nations, worked closely with heads of major corporations, and been honored by the city of Chicago. Yet for Salgado, the work he does as the CEO of the Instituto del Progreso Latino is all simply part of doing what he loves.

“You never know where the work you do will take you,” said Salgado. “You just have to stay grounded and do something for which you have a passion.”

The Instituto, which Salgado has led since 2001, creates educational and workforce opportunities for Latino communities in Chicago. The not-for-profit was given an Award of Excellence from the U.S. Department of Labor in 2008, and in 2009 the Instituto was selected as the National Council of La Raza’s Affiliate of the Year.

Instituto’s mission is close to Salgado’s heart. Growing up in Calumet Park, Ill., he lived in a mostly white, working class neighborhood with pockets of long-standing Latino families. “My grandfather moved there from Mexico in 1918, and we grew up a block away from where my grandfather settled. So we had been there for almost a century,” said Salgado, who noted the neighborhood went through the phenomenon known as suburban flight, when many families moved to the suburbs. “By the time I went through high school, there were very few white families left,” he said. With resources being channeled to other communities, Salgado watched his neighborhood’s opportunities fade. “Even from a young age, it was already in my mind that I wanted to work with working class communities, promoting upward mobility and job formation in neighborhoods,” he said.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University graduate George W. Jones ’77, was recently elected to serve as president of the Texas Music Administrators’ Conference, an organization of 150 Fine Arts Administrators from across the state of Texas.

According to the Texas Music Educators’ Conference (TMAC)  mission statement, the group focuses on promoting and supporting “music education and music educators through collaboration, networking, and the sharing of best practices so that every child in Texas is assured of receiving quality instruction in the understanding, appreciation, and performance of music.”

“It is critical in this day of high stakes testing and budget cuts that we continue to educate the whole child by including a quality fine arts education curriculum” said Jones in a recent interview. Jones holds a master’s degree in music from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. In addition to his membership in TMAC, he is a member of the Texas Music Educators’ Association, the Texas Bandmasters Association, and Phi Beta Mu honorary music fraternity.

After serving 18 years as a band director in the Garland (Texas) Independent School District (ISD), Jones was appointed to the position of Director of Fine Arts in 1997. The Garland ISD is in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and serves approximately 58,000 students on 68 campuses. Jones oversees the Fine Arts Department consisting of over 250 teachers.

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November 29, 2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Shannon Zenk ’95, an Illinois Wesleyan University School of Nursing alumna, has been named a Nurse Faculty Scholar with the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The Nurse Faculty Scholars program aims to strengthen the academic productivity and overall excellence of nursing schools by developing the next generation of national leaders in academic nursing.

Zenk, who is currently an assistant professor at the College of Nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, won the competitive grant for her studies of how social factors influence rates of obesity in vulnerable populations. She is one of just 12 nurse educators from around the country to receive the three-year $350,000 Nurse Faculty Scholar award this year.

With the grant, Zenk will continue her research, which focuses on the contributions of neighborhood physical and social environments to racial and socioeconomic inequalities in health.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – For Illinois Wesleyan University alumna Lisa (Beal) Buhs ’94, work is a prison, and she would have it no other way.

Buhs is a clinical psychologist at Racine Correctional Facility, a medium security prison in Wisconsin, where she works with developmentally disabled and mentally ill inmates. “It’s a very fulfilling job and I know I am helping people,” she said of the 30 offenders she assists at the prison, that houses 1,600 men.

Graduating Illinois Wesleyan with a degree in psychology, Buhs originally planned for a career working with children. After she earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of South Dakota, she decided to join a student loan repayment program, which sent her to work in the Wisconsin prison system. “I found it more challenging and rewarding than I could have imagined,” she said. “I’ve been here for 11 years.”

According to Buhs, the demand for those who can work with special needs inmates has grown over the last few decades. “In the past these inmates would have been placed in some type of a group home setting. They never would have been in the criminal justice system,” said Buhs, “but now the expense has forced states to close many of those facilities, so a lot of the men end up with us.”

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – On Friday, Dec. 31, alumnus Kyle Pfortmiller ’92 will make his debut performance at The Metropolitan Opera in New York. Pfortmiller will sing the role of Marquis d’Obigny in Verdi’s La Traviata with world-renowned soprano Maria Poplavskaya and tenor Matthew Polenzani. The show will run from Friday, Dec. 31 to Saturday, Jan. 29. A live radio broadcast will take place on Saturday, Jan. 15 from 12:00-2:50 p.m. central standard time.

Pfortmiller will also perform the role of the servant in Strauss’ Capriccio alongside Grammy award-winning soprano Renee Fleming, who will play the role of the Countess. The performance will debut on March 28, 2011 at The Met and will run until April 23, 2011.  A live radio broadcast of the show will take place on Saturday, April 23 from 12:00-2:45 p.m. central standard time.

While at Illinois Wesleyan, Pfortmiller studied with Professor of Music Linda Farquharson and received a bachelor of music degree. He performed several roles in IWU productions, including Top in Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land, a king in Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors and the wolf in Cesar Cui’s Little Red Riding Hood.

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