Three classmates recently were featured in radio, print and television.

In September Carmen (Schmitt) Lopez was part of a great story on NPR’s All Things Considered, about College Horizons, a New Mexico-based nonprofit organization providing college and graduate admissions workshops to American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students and participants from across the nation. Carmen is the executive director of College Horizons, which offers five-day summer “crash courses” in which Native sophomores and juniors work with college counselors and admissions officers to select suitable colleges where they can apply, gain admission and receive adequate financial aid. “We’re talking about a population that is so underrepresented and so underserved,” Carmen told NPR.

Students research their top 10 schools, complete college essays, resumes, the Common Application, the preliminary FAFSA and receive interviewing skills, standardized test-taking strategies and financial aid and scholarship information.

The story focused on a program at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, where 85 students gathered with admissions officers from some of the country’s most selective universities. Carmen said that Native students are often overlooked because they’re isolated, likely no one in their family attended college and they have little access to college preparation. She said she invites admissions officers to College Horizons retreats because, “I want colleges to recognize that in their story and in what they’ve presented academically, this is the student who’s going to do well in your college because they’ve already had so much thrown at them.”

The retreats also reaffirm students’ identity and purpose. On the last day of the Lawrence University retreat several students made a poster reading, “Be as tough as the land that made you.”

Listen to the story at www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/09/26/493112553/how-native-students-can-su….

Anne (Gibson) Burkholder was interviewed about cattle farming in the October issue of The Atlantic. “I met my husband [Matt Burkholder ’94, Th’95] at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire,” Anne said. “He is a farm kid from Cozad, Nebraska, who decided he wanted to see a different part of the country, so he played football at Dartmouth. I was a swimmer there, and we met on Halloween of my freshman year, fell in love and got married. We spent a year on the East Coast before deciding to move back to the farm.”

With the ability to feed 3,000 cattle in their farm’s feed yard, “we practice what’s called low-stress cattle handling,” said Anne, a psychology major. “We provide a very natural environment. When we handle cattle, we do it using non-verbal communication, which is how cattle communicate with each other.”

Anne continued, “My perspective of the world is a lot different now that I’ve spent two decades as an animal caregiver. I love to work with animals and I enjoy the fact that I’m growing food. It makes me feel good at night that I’m doing something meaningful.”

Anne lives on the farm with Matt and their three daughters. Read the interview at www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/cattle-farmer/502991.

Finally, Brady Beale, a veterinary ophthalmologist and clinical instructor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, was featured in Life at Vet U., an Animal Planet documentary following the lives of six fourth-year students in their clinical rotations. Watch Brady’s episode at www.animalplanetgo.com/life-at-vet-u/no-sleep-til-graduation.

Brady also made the news in 2015 when the Philadelphia Zoo asked her to restore the vision of Princess, a 60-plus-year-old Andean condor. Brady and her team successfully removed cataracts from both of Princess’s eyes. Learn more here: www.vet.upenn.edu/about/press-room/publications/penn-vet-extra/penn-vet….

Brady is married to Davis Clark, an emergency physician. They live in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with their daughters, Vivian (5) and Anna (3).

Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2017!

—Jason Casell, 10106 Balmforth Lane, Houston, TX 77096; jhcasell@gmail.com