We are going to pick up the baton handed off by this year’s Commencement speaker, Mindy Kaling ’01. Specifically, focusing this class column on two of our classmates and granting them permission to root for themselves. Well, sort of—I mean, others technically passed this information along to me, but we are going to give a rouse to each of them, as I know you will enjoy cheering for them through these updates.

In case you have been wondering where in the world Susan Johnson Bower is, look no further than Greensboro, North Carolina. Sue was recently named athletic director at Guilford College. However, let’s really bring you up to date. After a three-year stint on the Ladies Professional Golf Association’s Futures Tour and three years as an assistant golf professional, Sue took over Tulane’s fledgling women’s golf team in 1992, a five-woman squad ranked second from the bottom among Division I programs. By 2005 the team finished 15th in the NCAA Championship and had reached NCAA regional tournaments in five of Sue’s last six seasons before the program was suspended due to university cutbacks forced by Hurricane Katrina. Sue garnered 13 various coach of the year awards, including the 2003 National Golf Coaches Association East Region honor. In 2006 she transitioned from coach to Tulane’s assistant athletic director for internal affairs, playing a key role in developing and executing the university’s plan for reinstating eight teams. Sue joins Guilford from St. Martin’s Episcopal School in New Orleans, where she was athletic director for the past two years. Heralded by Guilford’s president as a collaborative leader who “brings a depth of skill and experience that strengthens Guilford’s athletics department and the whole institution,” Sue is the Quakers’ first full-time athletic director since 2007. Way to go, Sue—give her a rouse!

Since her days on the Hanover Plain, Michelle Duster has been busy creating her career, and she currently is a professor of writing at Columbia College Chicago. In addition, she has been even busier preserving a legacy by undertaking work to preserve and promote the legacy of her great-grandmother Ida B. Wells, a journalist, suffragist, and civil rights activist. After the Ida B. Wells Homes community in Chicago’s Southside was demolished in 2002, Michelle decided in 2008 to do more to preserve her ancestor’s legacy. She edited and published two books that include the original writings of her ancestor, Ida In Her Own Words and Ida From Abroad. Michelle has been involved for a decade with a committee focused on creating a monument to honor her great-grandmother on the land where the housing community stood for more than 60 years. (To learn more, visit www.idabwellsmonument.org). Thanks to recent interest and support shepherded by Michelle, the committee targets completion in mid-2019. Once erected, it will be one of only a handful of monuments dedicated to a black woman in the country. Let’s give another rouse to Michelle!

Until our next column update, send us your news—we will print it here.

All the best to all of you!

—Leslie A. Davis Dahl, 83 Pecksland Road, Greenwich, CT 06831; (203) 552-0070; dahlleslie@yahoo.com; John MacManus, 188 Ringwood Road, Rosemont, PA 19010; (610) 525-4541; slampong@aol.com