Liz Hughes is currently living in Alexandria, Virginia. She works as an Intelligence Analyst for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Currently, she is in language school learning Spanish and will eventually (probably during the second half of 2007) be moving to Mexico City to work for DEA for a couple of years.
After graduation, Mariaelena Amato worked at her old ACE school in Los Angeles for a couple more years, and then, in 2004, she married Eric Amato (ACE 8) and moved to Marymount High School. It was a different kind of Los Angeles experience, but she liked it. She is still teaching at Marymount (all Spanish II classes) this year. She was also the campus minister for a couple years, but missed being in the classroom. Her BIG news is that she and Eric are expecting their first baby at the end of January. She is going to teach this semester and then take some time to be with the baby next semester. She is also working hard on developing the ACE Fellowship in the LA area. There are a pretty good group of alums so far involved and we have had a lot of alums of the PLACE program (the Loyola Marymount ACE model) join us.
Erin Lillis is teaching 3rd and 4th grade at Concordia International School in Shanghai. She was married in June of 2006 to Nicholas Kent. They moved to Shanghai, China in July 2006. She says life is fabulous and hopes everyone is doing well.
Contact Information: 18 Huang Yang Road Apt. A402
Jinqiao, Shanghai 201206
P.R. CHINA
The biggest news for Molly Welzbacher Carlin, although she can hardly believe that it's almost been a year ago now, is that she and Ryan Carlin got married last December. They had a fun almost-Christmas wedding in St. Louis. Father Nuzzi was nice enough to do the ceremony for them, and lots of their ACE community members and friends were in attendance. Ryan is finishing up his PhD in political science at Chapel Hill right now, teaching classes at the university, while working on finishing his dissertation. Molly took on a new role as assistant principal at a school in NC where she has taught for about 5 years now. She loves it, and would love to have some ACErs come work at her school. Danielle Gabrielle Davey (ACE 8) joined the staff this year!
Ben Calleja is still in Dallas - working at a Jesuit High School. He mostly does counseling for freshman students, but also teaches a class to seniors in Public Policy and Social Justice. Ben loves what he is doing. He says he doesn’t have any real news to offer – nothing exciting anyway, but he is in the application stage for his permanent residency. After over six years here, although he misses his family constantly, he has realized that he really loves this place and wants to stay longer. Long term, he will end up back in Australia, but this buys him some more time.
Nicole Shirilla is currently in the process of applying to med school. She went back and took all the science classes she needed this past year and a half, and took the mcat in August. She’s still waiting to see what happens! She got to teach for a month at her former high school (Cardinal Mooney High School in Youngstown, Ohio), and loved it. A teacher was recovering from surgery, and so she was able to start the year and teach his senior Brit. Lit classes, and a sophomore Honors World Lit. class too. She says it was such a great experience to get to teach at her old high school!
Anna Kapranos (soon to be Moran) is currently teaching 3rd grade in Portland, Oregon at All Saints School. She left Louisiana and began teaching at her old grade school’s rival school. She got engaged in June to Matt Moran, who she was introduced to on her third day of teaching at All Saints by his third grade cousin! She will definitely have a big role in the wedding next September. They also have a new addition to the family…an adorable yellow lab named Gunner. She sends blessings and laughter to every one of you.
Brian Churney is in his second year of law school at George Washington University in DC. After five years at his school and now two years of being a student, he's doing an experiment that involves seeing how long someone can live below the poverty line. He hopes to practice education, sports or employment law when he finishes up.
Pat Burns is getting an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. His phone number is 510-847-8197. His address is 4315 N. Rillito Creek Place, Tucson, Arizona 85719. Pat is not married, but he has a wonderful girlfriend.
Kelly Holohan hopes this finds you all well... she is settled in well in Charlottesville, VA. Her fiance, Craig, is doing a PhD in education at UVA, and she is teaching second grade at Charlottesville Catholic School. Life is great. They are getting married in Charlottesville on May 26, 2007.
Right now Greg Joseph is a recently professed religious brother/seminarian for the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT). After spending one year in Belize teaching high school at one of our missions, and another year in Colorado for novitiate, he is currently studying philosophy and Latin in Corpus Christi, Texas. He still has about 5 or 6 more years to go until ordination to the priesthood (God willing). He hopes all is well with everyone. He passes on these words: May the peace of our Lord and the presence of our Lady be upon you always.
Beth Burau is still busy teaching. She has been busy working on an ACE Fellowship in Dallas. Currently, she is teaching Sophomore English, Creative Writing, and German at Bishop Lynch High School in Dallas, TX. She says the most exciting thing to happen in the last year was receiving the Arete Award for Excellence in Teaching last school year. This year her school is busy with preparing their Self Study for accreditation. She is also working on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with some students - writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days! This past summer she took a group of German and French students to France, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. The highlight for her was being there during the World Cup. Another highlight was hiking the Grand Canyon with her brother and sister-in-law in late June. She still can't believe they did it and survived! She praises Camelbacks for getting them through!
Emily (Bergman) Ludwikoski is currently not teaching in a classroom, but admits it often sounds like it would be delightful to work again. On August 8th, her second son, Edgar Robert, was born! So, that makes her a mother of two boys. She is fortunate enough to stay home and take care of them full time. Oscar, the elder, just turned two on Nov. 4th. Today, they had a birthday party in the park for him. Yeah for Fall and parks! Bob and Emily, (Oh yeah, part of her post-ACE update was marrying Bob Lud.) are living in Kansas where he is working at a new high school as a Spanish and English teacher. In short, she spends her time loving her family and trying to "run a household". She talks things over with Oscar, whose vocabulary is ever-expanding (her newest favorite word of his is spatula) and snuggle with and feed Edgar whose little body is ever-growing. Bob and Emily continue to take care of each other. She hopes all is well with everyone!
Heidi (Eppich) Druist and her husband Dave live at:
444 Saratoga Avenue, Apt. 17G
Santa Clara, CA 95050
She is working part time at St. Justin School, specifically on reading skills with some elementary special-needs students. She is also supposed to be having a baby in the next couple of days! They have decided not to find out the gender of the baby, but they’ll let us know at the next installment what ends up coming out!
Megan (Ferrell) Kelley and her husband, Shamus, are expecting their first child in February (due Valentine's day). They are so excited! They don't know what they are having, they wanted to wait and be surprised. That's her “biggest” news...nothing else to update.
Molly Bates
1186 Worthington Woods Blvd
Worthington, OH 43085
(Columbus, OH area)
614-429-8898
Molly is in her second year as a middle school counselor at Kilbourne Middle School in Worthington.
Kathy Steinlage stayed at her ACE school in McAllen, TX for a third year and then moved down to Santiago, Chile where she taught until 2005. Upon her return, she moved to Los Angeles and taught at St. Sebastian School in West LA. She currently works on Notre Dame campus for the ACE Fellowship, networking alumni and coordinating the ACE-Chile program.
Tim O’Rourke is still living in Tulsa and this is his seventh year at Bishop Kelley High School. He is still teaching sophomore religion and junior/senior U.S. History. He also coaches the freshmen boys basketball team. He and Susan got married in July of 2004 and they have a son named Sean who just turned 1 this past October 24. Susan is in her final year of medical school at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa and is looking to be a pediatrician. They’re looking at residencies back up in the upper Midwest. Life is good in a nutshell.
David Wartowski got married a little over a year ago (Oct 10, 2005). He and Alecia live in Evanston. Alecia is a legal aid attorney who represents children as a guardian ad litem. David continues to work as a math teacher at Evanston Township High School, where he feels plenty challenged on a daily basis, yet enjoys the support of phenomenally talented colleagues. It has been a wonderful place to grow as an educator.
Kelly Tousignant is currently living in Minneapolis, Minnesota close to the huge chain of lakes near downtown. It's been fun for her to be back home with friends and family close by. She just recently graduated with her Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy. She is currently working as a counselor in three different settings. She works three days a week as a school counselor at a suburban high school - so much fun! She also works as an individual, couple and family counselor both in an agency setting and in family's homes. It's a busy life, but she is really loving what she does and has found something that she can commit too...finally!
Araceli Ramirez
14830 Kilpatrick Ave, Unit 2E
Midlothian, IL 60445
708-687- 9787 (home)
708-977-1733 (cell)
Araceli’s recent news is that at the end of August of 2006, she was promoted from treatment counselor to Treatment Program Manager. She currently manages an adolescent substance abuse program in Cicero, Illinois. She loves it. Her group serves adolescents & families that are directly or indirectly substance abuse impacted by providing individual, family, group counseling, advocacy, and outreach. They receive referrals from various avenues such as the courts, probation officers, schools, families, and other social service agencies.
Beau Schweitzer is leaving Honduras in December. When back in the states he’ll be investigating religious orders. He sends out a forewarning: he may be coming to sleep on a couch in your neck of the woods!
After three years of studying ground squirrels in Idaho, in 2005 Karen Panek finished her M.S. in Biology and headed to Wales. She spent a year living on the south coast of Pembrokeshire (though part of it was spent in the Scottish highlands) teaching ecology and geography field research courses at a residential environmental education center. She returned to the States for a few weeks this summer to visit family and friends before heading abroad again. In August she went to Bolivia as part of Jesuit Volunteers International. She lives in a small rural village in the Andes Mountains near Cochabamba, and volunteers in the school and parish there. The vast majority of the people are Quechua-speaking indigenous folks from even more rural areas, and they live too far from town for the children to walk in everyday. Therefore, the parish runs a Yachay Wasi, a sort of low-income boarding house that houses about 70 of these students during the week. In addition to attending school, the students learn practical skills such as taking care of the greenhouses and the pigs. Karen will be teaching, doing youth ministry, and helping at the Yachay Wasi until autumn (in the northern hemisphere) of 2008. If anyone is interested in photos or stories of her life there, you can visit www.kcpanek.blogspot.com. Her current address is Jesuit Volunteers International, c/o Padre Rene Cardozo, Casilla 2175, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Her telephone number is 011.591.4.457.0136.
Julie (Wernick) Dallavis
1031 N Niles Ave
South Bend, IN 46617
574.217.7579
Julie and her husband, Christian, have just moved back to South Bend. Julie is working as the managing editor of the "Catholic Education" journal, which is published by Notre Dame.
After ACE, Amy Saks Pavese moved back to NJ and taught middle school math and science for a year before enrolling in a doctoral program at the University of Colorado at Boulder in Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice. Her experiences in the program have been wonderful; she has had the opportunity to supervise student teachers, teach a social foundations course, and work with a scholarship program for college freshmen from migrant families, among other adventures. Joey Womac once told her that he knew she was going to marry a guy from Jersey and his prediction came true this past June. In what could only be described as a quintessential Jersey wedding, Jeff and Amy got married at St. Mary’s Church in Wharton, NJ and partied down at the reception in Stroudsburg, PA. Former ACE roommates Ann Alokolaro, Sara Holloway, and Anthony Veneziale joined in the festivities (John Steffan and Brad Kluesner were there in spirit)—everyone had a blast!
After finishing the ACE Chile program Erin Luby moved back to her hometown, Chicago. She is going on her third year of teaching and coaching at St. Ignatius in Chicago.
Kelly Tutko has a year left of her French master's program. She started taking Spanish language classes, and will be going to Ecuador for Christmas this year. Està todo.
Margaret Oakar wanted to share fun news on behalf of Meghan Farrell: Meghan Farrell (married name is Kelley) is pregnant and due on Valentine's Day 2007.
Michael and Katie (Gaffney) Earley are both in the process of adjusting to new careers. While Mike has left teaching to begin work in psychology research, Katie enters her second year as program director of Teens in Public Service, a service learning and leadership-training program for teens. They feel blessed to be living in Seattle among so many great ACE folks and to have the chance to interact will the group at masses, game watches, and at Anne and Martha's legendary annual St. Patrick's Day party. They saw loads of ACE folks at Joey and Paola's wedding and loved housing Kathy when she was out to do ACE fellowship work last month. All is well in the rainy northwest; they encourage anyone to visit!
Compiled and Written By: Anna Kapranos, Amy (Saks) Pavese, and Nicole Shirilla