Volume 15, Number 7
- Journalism alum serves sweet treats to beat the heat at ChillwaukeeIf you hit up any of Milwaukee’s many festivals this summer, chances are you’ll spot a pink cart on the back of a pink bicycle, topped with a pink and blue umbrella. Behind that cart, …
- What can you do with a major in actuarial science?Every year, graduates from the College of Letters & Science enter the workforce and begin to contribute thousands of dollars to their local, state, and national economies. They bring the skills and knowledge they gained …
- CES student’s (research) trip of a lifetimeJaeden Carrasquillo can’t stop smiling. Even when he is battling razor grass (“It hurts! You get a lot of scratches”), hiking treacherous terrain (“It was basically ‘Man vs. Wild’”), or flushing a frog’s stomach (“It’s …
- English professor takes the ART of Infertility to NYCInfertility can be intense: intensely painful, intensely isolating, intensely emotional. UWM Associate Professor of English Maria Novotny helps people capture that intensity and turn it into something beautiful. Novotny is the co-director of The ART …
- New UWM Chancellor Thomas Gibson shares a messageUW-Milwaukee welcomes its new chancellor in July. Dr. Thomas Gibson, the 10th chancellor in UWM's history, succeeds outgoing Chancellor Mark Mone, who is stepping down to return to a professorship. “I’m honored and humbled to …
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Alumni Accomplishments
Samantha (Samm) Schwarz (‘15, BA History and Religious Studies; ‘18, MA History and Master of Library Science) was named the new director of the Elkader Public Library in Elkader, Iowa. Schwarz has long worked in libraries, including at the Oak Creek Library in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and the Mount Mercy University Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Olivia McCurdy (‘25, BA Digitial Arts & Culture and Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) was named the 2025 Omicron Delta Kappa National Leader of the Year for Communications. The award recognizes up to six outstanding undergraduate leaders each year, and is the highest honor presented to the society’s undergraduate members.
Felice Green (‘89, BA Mass Communication/Journalism) was named among Milwaukee’s Notable Nonprofit Board Leaders by BizTimes. Green serves on several nonprofit boards in the city, including the Sherman Park Community Association Board. In addition, Green was promoted to Senior Director of Programming at Milwaukee Water Commons. In her role, she works to connect, collaborate, and build broad community leadership on behalf of the region’s common waters throughout the Milwaukee Watershed. She manages and oversees the organization’s green infrastructure initiatives, including the expansion of tree planting in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park, water safety at local beaches, and the incorporation of art through the lens of water in programming to develop strong community partnerships and collaborations. She works at the intersections of environmental justice and public health to support the betterment of marginalized and underserved neighborhoods and communities at the grassroots level, creating authentic community engagement opportunities that empower and uplift residents, neighbors, supporters, and community members.
Leanne Trapedo Simms (‘91, MA English) received tenure and was promoted to associate professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. She is the chair of the Peace and Justice Studies program and created a prison education program through which Knox faculty teach courses at Henry Hill Correctional Center.
Katelynn Dennis (‘15, Master of Human Resources & Labor Relations) was appointed the new director of human resources for Wacker-Charleston, a Tennessee-based manufacturer of photovoltaic components. Dennis was previously a senior human resources manager at the Columbus McKinnon Corporation.
Savannah Horstman (’24, BS Biological Sciences) won the “Evening Wear” category of the preliminary rounds of the 2025 Miss Wisconsin Competition. Her victory garnered her a $250 scholarship. Horstman previously won the title of Miss La Crosse/Oktoberfest.
Amy Gorski (’12, BA Communication) opened Poppy Bakery in June. Located in the former Sip & Purr Cat Cafe, Poppy Bakery is a small-batch bakery that uses local ingredients. The opening was noted in an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Laurels & Accolades
Professor Ching-Hong Yang (Biological Sciences) was recently awarded a $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to support his research on a novel compound that suppresses disease in citrus crops. Combined with previous grants, his federal research funding has now exceeded $3.9 million.
Professor Leslie Harris (Communication) has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 Research in the Humanities Award. Presented by the UWM Office of Research, this award recognizes outstanding scholarship and research in the humanities within the past two years. Harris has demonstrated a comprehensive grasp of the subject of inquiry. He has made substantive contributions to humanistic thought through her publication entitled The Rhetoric of White Slavery and the Making of National Identity.
The Media Ecology Association recently awarded the 2025 Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the History of Technics to Professor Jason Puskar’s (English) book The Switch: An Off and On History of Digital Humans (Minnesota, 2023). The Mumford Award recognizes recent scholarship in the history of philosophy of science and technology.
Associate Professor Jennifer Gutzman (Biological Sciences) was recognized as a 2025 Notable Leader in STEM by BizTimes. She was recognized for her exceptional mentorship of undergraduate students and her research into disease development by studying zebra fish.
Associate Professor Suzanne Boyd (Mathematical Sciences) will be the new Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences in the College of Letters & Science. Boyd brings a wealth of experience from across the university, having served as a department chair, a special assistant to the Provost, and the Director of UWM University Centers (her current role). She also has extensive experience in governance, having chaired or served on many university committees. Her research involves the analysis of dynamical systems. Boyd will begin in this new role on July 7. She takes over from Daad Saffarini.
In the Media and around the Community
Professor David Kaplan (Physics) and Akash Anumarlapudi (‘25, PhD Physics) were part of a team of researchers who recently published their discovery of a unique space object emitting both radio waves and X-rays. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on the news.
The position of the sunrise changes throughout the year, thanks to the Earth’s tilt. Even if you didn’t consciously know that fact, you’ve already observed it, Director Jean Creighton (Planetarium) said in Milwaukee Magazine. She also joined WUWM Radio to discuss the astronomy of the summer solstice, and was quoted on DiscoverWildScience.com on the hypothetical scenario that Earth becomes tidally-locked to the moon.
What do you need to know about telehealth visits? Milwaukee Magazine explored the topic with help from Clinical Professor Stacey Nye (Psychology).
Deputy Director Rachel Baum (Jewish Studies) presented a discussion titled, “How Jewish Wisdom Can Help Us Grow Older, Better” as part of the Levy Summer Series hosted by Jewish Social Services of Madison. Her talk was delivered on July 1.
The Town of Marengo, Wisconsin, asked the UWM Anthropology Department and graduate student Crystal Morgan to see if there was any truth to the rumors that there were unmarked graves in the Maple Grove Cemetery. (The Ashland Daily Press reports there was not.)
Professor Derrick Harriell (English) was the featured poet at the second annual Sequoya Summer Festival of Poetry hosted by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets in Madison, Wisconsin.
If you like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s sports section, you’ll want to learn more about one of its editors and jack-of-all-trades, UWM alum Dave Kallmann (’87, BA Mass Communication), who was profiled in the newspaper in an interview reprinted on Yahoo! Sports.
Before a German zookeeper had the crazy idea to make enclosures mimic an animal’s natural habitat, zoo cages were cramped and depressing places to live. Professor Nigel Rothfels (History) helped explain the history of modern zoos in an article on MSN.com.
Assistant Visiting Professor Robert “Biko” Baker (African & African Diaspora Studies) spoke about Milwaukee’s place in Juneteenth history on WUWM Radio.
Professor Jeffrey Sommers (African & African Diaspora Studies and Global Studies) co-authored, “Proprietari, neo-feudali și capitaliști,” (“Landlords, Neo-Feudalism and Capitalism”) in contributors.ro in June.
Graphic designer Milo Miller (L&S College Relations) is the co-founder and co-director the of Queer Zine Archive, a repository of small-press publications about the LGBTQ+ community. They and the archive were featured in the Shepherd Express in June. They were also featured in the June/July issue of the print zine Razorcake.
People in Print
Professor emerita Colin Scanes (Biological Sciences). 2025. Effects of Cholinergic and Opioid Antagonists on In Vitro Release of Met-Enkephalin, Somatostatin and Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 by and PENK Expression in Crop, Proventriculus and Duodenum of Newly Hatched Chickens. Animals, 15(12): 1702.
Associate Professor Ashley Lemke and Associate Professor Mark Freeland (both Anthropology). 2025. Naandamo: Indigenous Connections to Underwater Heritage, Settler Colonialism, and Underwater Archaeology in the North American Great Lakes. Heritage, 8(7): 246.
Lisa Silverman. 2025. Invisibly Jewish: Lotte Jacobi, Photography, and the Boundaries of Jewish Cultural Studies. In Rethinking Jewish History and Memory through Photography (ed. Ofer Ashkenazi and Thomas Pegelow Kaplan). Albany: SUNY Press. 51–68.