Class Notes - EXTRAS
Class Notes - Extras
Covering the big stories
From Ted Cruz, Tiger Woods and Britney Spears, to the Capitol Hill insurrection, mass shootings and COVID-19, Justin Carissimo has had a very busy six months.
Carissimo, who earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 2013 and is a former staffer of The Jambar student newspaper, is an assistant managing editor at CBS News in New York, where he assigns, edits and reports national news stories.
At CBS, he mostly works on the website and liaise with the CBS Evening News and the streaming channel, CBSN. He has led coverage on several major events like the coronavirus pandemic, Texas weather crisis and Black Lives Matter movement. We asked what have been some of his favorite stories:
- Leaving Rikers Island and coming home to a pandemic
- "It's like we're not even human": Texas inmates face frigid temperatures during weather crisis
- What it’s like to earn a degree in prison
- "Why is it still open?" Inmates at Parchman's Unit 29 describe life inside notorious cellblock
Dean of the Island
Add the title “dean” to the resume of Shawnrece Campbell, master’s in English, 1994, who has been named the new dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
Campbell previously held several leadership positions at Stetson University in Florida, including director of Africana Studies, founding director of the bachelor’s degree completion program in Organizational Leadership, and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Campbell also holds a Ph.D. in English from Kent State University, an MBA from Stetson and a bachelor’s degree from John Carroll University.
She will now be making the move from Florida, across the Gulf of Mexico and to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, aka the Island University, the only university in the nation located on its own island.
Alumni Recitals
Lounge music to jazz, Brahms to R&B were among the genres covered in the McDonough Museum of Arts’ Cliffe College Alumni Recital Series, featuring alums from around the world performing a string of pre-recorded mini concerts that provided pandemic quarantined music fans hours of enjoyment.
Watch the performances on the YouTube channels of the McDonough or the Cliffe College of Creative Arts.
Among the performers:
- Pianist Sean Baran, bachelor’s of Music, 2011, master’s of Music, 2014.
- Jazz/musical-theatre singer Rosie Bresson, bachelor of Fine Arts in 2020.
- Caitlin Hedge, violin, master’s of Music, 2017, and Dave Lynn, guitar, bachelor’s of Music, 2004.
- Jeffrey Cruz, master’s of Music degree, 2020.
- Tria Corazón, a trio of YSU graduates that promotes new music and little-known works: Anna Reitsma, master’s in Flute Performance, 2018; Elliot Kwolek, master’s in Clarinet Performance, 2020; and Emma Donkin, bachelor’s in Music Composition, 2018.
McDonough Museum of Art on YouTube
Cliffe College of Creative Arts on YouTube
Beauty from ashes
William Webster of Marshall, Va., bachelor of Business Administration/Advertising, 1969, and his paintings were featured in an article in Middleburg Life magazine in Virginia.
The article, headlined “Finding Beauty from Ashes in William Webster’s Art,” chronicles Webster’s life from Youngstown’s steel mills and selling Arrow Shirts to designing log homes in the Blue Ridge Mountains and finally as an illustrator and painter.
“Most people are unable to see the beauty in something like a steel mill or the dilapidated buildings and lonely storefronts of a small town, but that’s not the case for William Webster,” the article begins.
The mills where Webster worked while in college became the subject of many of his early paintings. “The mills themselves are often grimy, dark places with dirt floors and materials piled on top of each other with little regard,” he says in the article. “But the process of steel making is something so intense — the light, the heat, and flashes of every color in the rainbow against the dark background of a steel mill is a thing of beauty indeed. If not a bit scary, it’s certainly a dangerous job and one that requires a completely lucid mind — probably why I can recall the images so vividly.”
Many of Webster’s original pieces of art are on exhibit at Marshall Curated, an antique and home décor shop. Learn more on his Facebook page. Read the story here.
Batman and his strange romances
During those quarantined months of the pandemic, as you sat around contemplating the future of the planet, you may have wondered: What are the strangest romances in Batman comics?
Well, maybe not. But if you HAD wondered about that, Andrew Claybourne, General Studies, 2019, has the answer in a new article in Rexweyler, an online general news site.
A bio at the end of the article says Claybourne is a writer, gamer, lover of media, proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, and an “overall pretty okay guy” based in Youngstown, Ohio. Among his previous gigs: “a fry cook, a busser, a server/bartender, a terrible telemarketer, a chef for a while, a librarian, a server again” who “has been generally killing it since ’08.” He now works as a contributor for ScreenRant Comics while getting his master’s in Creative Writing from Full Sail University.
(In case you’re wondering, the strangest romance in Batman comics, according to Claybourne, is Harley Quinn and The Joker – “dysfunctional at times and terrifyingly abusive at others.” So there you go.)
Helping youth find their way
Theresa Dellick, Business Administration, judge of the Mahoning County Juvenile Court since 2001, received the 2021 Athena Award from the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber and The Vindicator. The award is given to business and professional women who have demonstrated excellence in their chosen career, provided leadership in the community and mentored or contributed to the growth of other professional women.
Under Dellick’s leadership, the Juvenile Court has gained a statewide and national reputation as a leader in juvenile justice, earning recognition from the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Education and the Obama White House, among others.
In 2008, Dellick established the Mahoning County High School, designed for at-risk, trauma-affected students, to keep them in school and out of court. In 2019, she assembled a community-based task force to create a boarding school paired with the high school for at-risk youth to assist them in obtaining and completing their education.
Under Dellick, the court has also been involved in early intervention and diversion programs and recidivism reduction. She is past president of the Junior League of the Mahoning Valley and is a member of the Mahoning County Extension Ambassador Council, Akron Children’s Hospital Community Health Assessment Committee and the Financial Council of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.
pandemic, biology, virtual learning
In a 24-year career as a teacher, Heather Moran, Biology, 1993, coached state championship teams in environmental studies and oceanography, grew the school science club from 20 to 200 members, and led student trips to the Bahamas and Iceland.
So you didn’t think she’d let a pandemic slow her down, did you?
Moran, a science teacher at Boardman High School, is the author of Biology Help for the Virtual Weary Student, a new book that was just right for virtual, pandemic times.
The book, Moran says, serves as a bridge between the average biology textbook and classroom lectures.
“During the pandemic, I was trying to help a friend whose son was struggling with an online bio class,” Moran, who last year was named Teacher of the Year by the Ohio Federation of Soil and Water Conservation Districts, said in an article in The Vindicator.
“My friend said, ‘We have the textbook, a workbook and the answer key...what we need is someone to break down the why?’ After writing several of my normal lectures out for this boy, I realized these same short stories could help other students who might be struggling.”
Moran has been teaching science at Boardman for 19 years and has served as advisor and coach to the BHS Envirothon Club for a decade. During the summer of 2019, she escorted a group of 17 Boardman High Students on a trip to Iceland. Their adventures included navigating a glacier and diving between diverging tectonic plates.