Class Notes, Fall 2025
2020s
Samantha Cary Angel (23BA), the first Hawkeye soccer player to be drafted into the National Women’s Soccer League, recently joined Chicago Stars FC.
Emily Bronswick (21BA) received the Mildred Throne & Charles Aldrich Award from the State Historical Society of Iowa for her thesis, “‘I Felt If Things Didn’t Change, the World Would Come to an End’: Black Iowa Women’s Activism During the Civil Rights Era, 1945-1965.”
Nyaradzai Chisaka (25PhD) is a visiting assistant professor in the UI Department of History this fall.
Kathleen Doyle (20BA), a former Hawkeye and WNBA player, is an assistant women’s basketball coach and recruiting coordinator at DePaul University in Chicago.
Cassandra Jensen (20MFA), an associate editor at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, received the George Mills & Louise Noun Popular History Award from the State Historical Society of Iowa for her article “Diane Oliver’s Unfinished Story” in the spring 2024 issue of Iowa Magazine.
Adeline Kenlin (23BS, 24MA), a former two-time All-American Hawkeye gymnast, is an assistant gymnastics coach for Illinois State University.
PHOTO: GRACE SMITH
Abby Stamp, Jan Jensen, Caitlin Clark, Tania Davis, and Sydney Affolter of Iowa women's basketball celebrate a February 2024 win at Maryland in this Grace Smith photo.
From All Angles
When Caitlin Clark (24BBA) was snagged by the Indiana Fever as the first pick in the 2024 WNBA draft, she wasn’t the only University of Iowa graduate bound for Indianapolis. Grace Smith (24BA) was hired as a staff photojournalist at The Indianapolis Star shortly after her 2024 commencement. One of her beats? The Fever.
The territory was familiar for Smith: Not only had she been a photo editor at The Daily Iowan, but she also had exclusive access to the Iowa women’s basketball program during the team’s 2023–24 season and championship bid. Smith and her peers from The Daily Iowan and the UI School of Journalism and Mass Communication spent months covering the team on and off the court, culminating in More Than a Moment: Elevating the Game with Iowa Women’s Basketball, a book published in May 2024.
From Indianola, Iowa, Smith says basketball is one of her favorite things to photograph, so following Clark to “the basketball state” has been pure joy. “When I got to Indianapolis, I was used to loud arenas and people going crazy,” says Smith. “It was special to be able to continue documenting history.”
2010s
Amber Riesselman Douglass (10PharmD), a mental health clinical pharmacist practitioner for Veterans Affairs in Bluffton, South Carolina, has been inducted into the American Association of Psychiatric Pharmacists’ inaugural fellows class.
Samsun Knight (18MFA), an assistant professor for the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, is author of Likeness, recently published by the University of Iowa Press.
Sam Logic (15BA), a former Hawkeye and WNBA player, is an assistant women’s basketball coach at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
Candice Long (10BBA, 11MAc) is an attorney with Winthrop & Weinstine, a law firm based in Minneapolis.
Lisa Neher (16DMA), a singer, composer, and educator, has received the Oregon Music Teacher Association Composer of the Year Award.
Tony Tulathimutte (12MFA) is author of Rejection, which was named to the L.D. and LaVerne Harrell Clark Fiction Prize’s longlist.
Eric Zimmer (12MA, 16PhD), a vice president of philanthropy and special projects for the Black Hills Area Community Foundation in Rapid City, South Dakota, received the Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award from the State Historical Society of Iowa for his book Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement.
2000s
Mike Abbott (05MBA, 05JD), a partner with the Faegre Drinker law firm in Des Moines, has been elected for a four-year term to the firm’s leadership board.
Erica Daehn-McHard (01JD) is a litigator for the Jones Walter law firm based in Houston.
Lisa Deimerly Didion (00BS, 05MD, 08R, 09F), chief medical officer at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi, earned a UI Carver College of Medicine 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award for Early Career Achievement.
Sarah Harrison (00BA), founder of the technology and data solutions company Order of Operations, competed on the entrepreneurship game show The Blox.
Leslie Jamison (06MFA), a bestselling author and associate professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts in New York, received the 2025 Weston International Award for Literary Nonfiction from the Writers’ Trust of Canada.
Katherine Massoth (09MA, 16PhD) is an associate professor in the history department at the University of New Mexico.
Daniel Runde (09MD, 16MME), the UI Department of Emergency Medicine’s vice chair of education and a course director for first-year medical and physician assistant students, received a UI Carver College of Medicine 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award for Early Career Achievement.
James Shea (01MFA) is author of the 2025 Iowa Poetry Prize-winning collection, Last Day of My Face, published by the UI Press.
Dionne Skeete (01F, 01R), director of the acute surgery division in the UI Department of Surgery, has received the Carver College of Medicine’s 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award for Service.
Sarah Sorum (06R) is president of the National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations.
Thomas St. Jules (05BA) has been appointed 16th Judicial Circuit associate judge in Kane County, Illinois.
Matthew Warner- Blankenship (04MS, 11JD) has been elected to the board of directors for Dentons Davis Brown, a Des Moines-based law firm.
Jessica Werneke (07BA) is an assistant professor of instruction for the UI Department of History.
1990s
Karen Brasel (91MD), vice president of the American Board of Surgery, has received the UI Carver College of Medicine’s 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award for Achievement.
Tim Dwight (99BS), former Hawkeye football All-American, has been inducted into the National Federation of State High School Associations’ National High School Hall of Fame for his standout performances in football and track at City High School in Iowa City.
Peter M. Orner (98MFA), chair of the English and creative writing department at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, is author of the novel The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter.
Tim Vos (95MA), director of the Michigan State University School of Journalism, has been inducted into the UI School of Journalism and Mass Communication Hall of Fame.
Karen L. Wellner (95PhD, 99MA), an adjunct faculty member at Arizona State University in Tempe, received a certificate of recognition from the State Historical Society of Iowa for her research essay, “Thomas H. Macbride (28LLD), Bohumil Shimek (1883CE, 1902MS), and the Formation of American Science.”
Community Caretaker
Retired physician George Dawson (84MD) recalls the eerie transformation of Harlem’s typically bustling streets during the COVID-19 pandemic. As stay-at-home orders took effect in March 2020, an unsettling silence blanketed the neighborhood. It was broken only by the wail of ambulance sirens—a grim reminder of the crisis gripping one of the nation’s hardest-hit communities.
Moved to action, Dawson volunteered with the New York Medical Reserve Corps to vaccinate New Yorkers during the first deadly wave of the pandemic. The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine grad received a community service award from the Black Nurses Association and a legacy award from Harlem Pride earlier this year. Each honor recognizes his lifelong commitment to addressing public health crises such as COVID-19, mpox, and homelessness—both in and beyond his Harlem neighborhood.
1980s
JP Clancy (86BA, 90MD), senior vice president for clinical research for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, received the UI Carver College of Medicine’s 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award for Achievement.
Fred J. Crawford (87MBA), the recently retired president and chief operating officer of AFLAC, is an independent member of the board of directors for the Webster Financial Corporation in Stamford, Connecticut.
Chuck Current (88BBA) is executive director of Meals from the Heartland, a West Des Moines-based nonprofit fighting food insecurity.
Jay Currie (80BSPh, 84PharmD) recently retired from the UI College of Pharmacy after 40 years as a professor.
Randy McDonough (87BSPh, 97MS, 00PharmD), a professor at the UI College of Pharmacy, is president of the American Pharmacists Association.
Dana Roberson (87BA) is general manager of PBS station THIRTEEN.
Alejandro M. Sanchez (84JD), CEO of Salva Financial Group in Florida and executive advisor of Nasdaq, has been appointed to the board of directors at Business First Bancshares.
David Wolf (82BA), professor emeritus of English at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, published his seventh collection of poems, Seven, through In Case of Emergency Press.
1970s
Bill Douglas (77MA), a political organizer, delivery worker, and freelance historian in Clutier, Iowa, received a certificate of merit from the State Historical Society of Iowa for his book The People are Kind: A Religious History of Iowa.
Francis Hamit (72BGS, 76MFA), a member of the U.S. Army Security Agency during the Vietnam War, is author of Out of Step: A Memoir of the Vietnam War, Part One.
Joy Harjo (78MFA), a three-term U.S. poet laureate, is author of the upcoming book Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age.
Jonathan Heaslet (70BA) published his latest novel, East of Apple Glen.
Jane Wertzberger Rutledge (75BSN), a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, directs Region V of the Army Nurse Corps Association in planning a gala to commemorate the 125th anniversary of army nursing in February 2026.
1960s
Earl Fitz (68BA, 70MA), a professor of Portuguese, Spanish, and comparative literature at Vanderbilt University, published his latest book, The Evolution of Literature in the Americas: A Timeline and Commentary.
Bruce Gantz (68BS, 74MD, 80MS), who implanted the first cochlear implant in 1980, received the 2025 American Cochlear Implant Alliance lifetime achievement award.
J. Michael Gillette (63BA), professor emeritus of media arts at the University of Arizona in Tucson, is author of the historical fiction thriller Perdido, Arizona: A Novel.
1950s
David Paulsrud (59MD), a former Green Beret and orthopedic surgeon from Sioux City, Iowa, who has dedicated his life to serving patients with substance abuse disorder, earned a UI Carver College of Medicine 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award for Service.
Faculty & Friends
Paul Federici retired this past summer as UI director of football operations after working with the program for 21 years.