Future Plans for 2009 VUAA Distinguished Student Award Winners

This fall, Coyne will attend Loyola University Chicago, where she will study international and public interests in the school of law. She may also pursue a master's degree program in political science. In January, she will begin a year's leave from law school in order to teach English in South Africa on a Fulbright award/grant. While there, Coyne will conduct research on nation-building, reconciliation and South African law. She will return to Loyola the following January to finish her studies. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Forsythe is currently in Washington, D.C., interning for the Ethics and Public Policy Center's journal The New Atlantis. Starting in late August, she will be a 2009-2010 postgraduate fellow at the John Jay Institute for Faith, Law, and Society in Colorado Springs, Colo. She will begin her time at the institute with 11 other fellows studying politics and theology, and then will continue with an externship abroad, possibly with a human rights advocacy organization. In August 2010, Forsythe will start a four-year joint JD-MA degree program in philosophy, with a bioethics concentration, at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johnson will spend the next several months working at Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago, where she earned a dramaturgical internship. From the theater's website: "Having just surpassed our 30th season as one of the country's most respected mid-sized professional theater companies, Victory Gardens Theater is the recipient of the prestigious 2001 Tony Award for Best Regional Theater and was recently heralded by The New York Times for its role in helping to position Chicago as a city 'with a theater scene as vibrant as New York's'" For more information, please visit www.victorygardens.org/content/about/mission.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This fall, Lohrmann will be pursuing a master's degree in social work at the University of Michigan, where her concentration will be in interpersonal practice with children, youth, and families. From the program's website: "Consistently ranked among the top schools of social work in the nation, The University of Michigan School of Social Work is a community of internationally recognized faculty, gifted students, and dedicated alumni who share a common objective: to create social change and promote social justice through excellence in research, education, and practice." For more information, please visit ssw.umich.edu/about.

This summer, DeGarmo will be tutoring five days a week with a local woman of Chinese descent. The tutoring sessions will be reciprocal in nature, as each strives to master the other's native language. Next year, DeGarmo will be teaching English at Zhejiang Economic and Trade Polytechnic College in Hangzhou, China, while also pursuing fluency in Mandarin Chinese. At the conclusion of that assignment, she may spend another year in China or Japan. DeGarmo eventually plans to pursue a master's degree in either business, Chinese and/or Japanese studies, or some combination of both, with an end goal of earning a position with a Chinese or Japanese multinational company. 

Keane will be spending her summer working full-time at Cohen Law Group, a small firm in Chicago that prosecutes whistleblower cases. Keane also worked for the firm last summer as part of the Kemper Scholar Program, after which she was invited to continue as a part-time employee during the school year.  With the return of summer, Keane has returned to full-time status. In August, she will begin law school at Washington University in St. Louis, and will benefit from the city's network of "federal and state judges, nationally prominent law firms, and community organizations that eagerly seek the help of WU students with critical legal and public policy issues." For more information, please visit law.wustl.edu/about_the_school/index.asp.

 

This summer, Schroeder is working with VU professor Robert Palumbo on his STEP team (Solar Thermal Electrolysis Project).  The first part of the summer will be spent in Valpo doing final preparation of a test apparatus, after which the group will travel to the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland for six weeks to conduct experiments at a solar concentrator facility. This fall, Schroeder will begin a graduate degree program in mechanical engineering at Penn State University. During the semester he also will work as a research assistant in the ExCCL (Experimental and Computational Convection Lab)., wherein he will engage heat transfer problems such as those occurring in the turbine section of gas turbines.

While she prepares to take the American Nurses Credentialing Center family nurse practitioner certification exam in August, Jarosak will continue her position as a registered nurse on the medical/pediatric unit at St. Anthony Medical Center in Crown Point, Indiana. Upon completion of the examination, she plans on pursuing a career as a family nurse practitioner in collaboration with a family physician in an outpatient facility located in either the Northwest Indiana or Chicagoland region. Jarosak also will continue to actively participate in nursing research and data analysis with Nola Schmidt, associate professor of nursing, and Health Visions Midwest through funding from the CDC Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health U.S. grant. This research will be used to bring about positive changes within Lake County by addressing infant morbidity and mortality among the Latino/Hispanic populations.

Kulwinski is currently residing in Ohio, where he is studying for the bar exam. After passing the bar, he will begin employment in the public/government sector with the Ohio Attorney General's Office in Columbus, Ohio. Kulwinski will be working within one of 30 different divisions that range from health care fraud to executive consulting.  The Attorney General's office represents the citizens of Ohio and offers legal advice to the legislative and executive branches of government, as well as representing the state in any lawsuits brought against it.  The office is very similar in certain respects to the Federal Department of Justice, which represents all United States citizens in criminal and civil prosecutions and defends the United States when sued.

After passing the NCLEX-RN exam to become a licensed registered nurse in the state of Indiana, Borys plans to begin her nursing career at Community Hospital in Munster, Ind. She hopes to work within the that hospital's cardiovascular intensive care unit. Borys also is planning to return to school in the upcoming years to earn an advanced degree in nursing so that she may become a nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialist. She is very excited to utilize the wonderful education she received at Valpo to begin the next chapter in her life.