Where the Alumni Are

What happens to people when they graduate with an English major or minor?

2004
 

Kirk Stewart is a graphic designer for Diocesan Publications, a company that prints high quality bulletins for Catholic parishes. The Grand Rapids office serves over 350 Catholic parishes throughout the Midwest.

He also writes a monthly music review column called "The Juke Joint" for the trade publication, Vending Times, which has a reader circulation of about 15,000 copies per month. The column reviews new music available to digital jukebox operators.

Additionally, Kirk leads a contemporary worship service at his church, St. Paul’s United Methodist, on Sunday evenings at 6:00 p.m..

2002
  Nathan Bierma writes the weekly "On Language" column in the Chicago Tribune. He is also contributing editor to Books & Culture magazine, and has taught writing at Calvin College, where he works as communications and research coordinator for the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. His first book is Bringing Heaven Down to Earth: Connecting This Life to the Next (P&R Publishing). His website is www.nbierma.com.

1998
  After Calvin, Deborah Leiter worked at Zondervan for seven years, mostly as an information architect (think web editor/audience researcher) for their website. She then returned to graduate school for an MA in English at the University of Saskatchewan. In Fall '07 she'll start a PhD in Communications at Purdue, where she intends to research how people read and write in a technological world. She's also done creative writing and editorial work; for instance, she was the 2006-2007 managing editor of the online literary journal The Fieldstone Review and she's seeking publication for her first novel.

1996
Suzanne Linder After Calvin, Suzanne Linder took a job teaching English at the University of Illinois Laboratory High School. While teaching at Uni, she was selected as a Fulbright scholar, traveling to New Zealand, and recently completed an MA in Speech Communications at the University of Illinois. She is currently teaching 10th-12th grade English and a social justice elective, Social Advocacy. In her spare time, along with husband Jay Schubert, Suzanne works with Books to Prisoners to bring books and library facilities to inmates throughout Illinois.
 

After Calvin, Laura Veltman headed to the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, where she did graduate work in nineteenth and twentieth century American lit and in Afro-American Studies, finishing up her PhD in 2006. She now teaches at California Baptist University. She married Mark Peterson, a Hope grad (gasp!), almost two years ago. They two of them like living by mountains.

1995
  Julie Voss continued studying English after graduating from Calvin, earning an MA at the Claremont (CA) Graduate University in 1997 and a PhD at the University of Kentucky in 2006. She currently lives in Knoxville with her golden retriever, Jeter, and teaches American literature and writing at the University of Tennessee.

1993
Chad Engbers After graduating from Calvin, Chad Engbers moved to Washington, D.C. for graduate studies at The Catholic University of America. He met his wife, Susanna, in graduate school and now teaches Renaissance and Russian literature at Calvin College.

1989
  Catherine Ristola Bass worked several jobs ranging
from the Calvin mail room to aide in the US Senate and now is happily at home full time with her family in
Holland, MI. She scours her old anthologies for poetry
to use as her outgoing messages on her home answering machine.

1982
  After graduating from Calvin, Thomas E. Smith attended the University of Michigan, where he received an M.A. (1986) and then Ph.D. (1992) in Asian Languages and Cultures (Chinese). His research concentrates in Chinese literature of the Han and Six Dynasties periods. His study included a two-year stint of intensive language training at the Inter-University Program in Chinese Language Studies in Taipei (1983-5). After graduating into virtual unemployability, he moved to New York City, where his wife, Fang-mei Chou, was studying for her Ph.D. in Chinese art history at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. Thomas worked as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for two years. In 1994, when his wife received her Ph.D. candidacy and a large grant to do her dissertation research (which involved a great deal of traveling in order to examine paintings), the two of them moved to Taiwan and stayed there ever since. Thomas has been working as a translator for the Bureau of Foreign Trade, a Taiwanese government agency, since 1996, and he also does a large amount of free-lance translation. Whenever possible, he continues his own research. His wife is a professor of art history at National Central University. They have one son, Ian, who is entering kindergarten this fall.