It’s a drizzly morning in Shreveport, LA, but big band jazz pours from the loudspeakers inside the Greenwood Acres Full Gospel Baptist Church, and look—a giant mascot dressed as a nurse in a white uniform with a huge afro and long felt lashes is dancing up the aisle.

Like many, Hal B. Klein set out to become an actor. Like fewer, he did. After earning a BA in theatre in California, he headed to New York (to work) and to London (to pursue a post-graduate certificate in classical acting). Roles followed in a few independent films, in commercials, and at Shakespeare festivals around the country.

You might say that Celeste Smith’s take on the arts is supported by two pillars. One is discoverable the minute you ask her about “the arts”—dollars to donuts, her answer begins by requesting that the conversation be about “arts and culture” (she counts watching her mom bake and choose home décor among her earliest experiences of “the arts”). 

Alumna Carol Mason, PhD, ’67 was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on May 1, in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. She was one of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates to receive the honor.

I am currently employed as a high-end residential interior designer here in Pittsburgh, and I graduated from Chatham’s Bachelor of Interior Architecture program. Over the course of a few years, I have worked on numerous scale renovations, new build constructions, and showhouses for Traditional Home Magazine across the United States.

Holly Putnam was working at Cappy’s Café on Walnut Street when a friend walked in one morning, accompanied by a man she didn’t know. “This is Mike Bacasa,” said the friend of the man she would one day end up marrying and having four children with. “You’re both starting the physical therapy program at Chatham.”

Katy Wozniak ‘98, neé Antkowiak, grew up with three older sisters and a menagerie: six dogs, “four or five” cats, birds, guinea pigs, and rabbits. It was a bustling life, filled with trips to Sea World and to zoos, that stoked her desire to work with animals. “I always said I was going to be one of those trainers one day,” she says.

When Tony Miga, MSUS ‘14 first visited Eden Hall Campus as a prospective graduate student in the brand-new Master of Sustainability program, what he remembers seeing were some dilapidated stables and the big barn. And the orchard.

When Rita Armstrong started researching online Doctor of Nursing Practice programs, she did not see herself in Sweden presenting work on diabetic education and self-management to a global audience. “Never in my years did I think I’d be doing that,” she laughs.

“Big houses tend to be a burden, I think, for people,” she says. “They lend themselves to people holding on too too much stuff. My partner came in one day and found a homeowner lying on the floor one day curled up in the fetal position.”

“The most important thing I learned at Chatham was how to hone my skills in problem solving. In fact, I might argue that there is no greater skill set.”

“I knew I wanted to start a business,” says recent Chatham graduate Allie Frownfelter, “but I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”