Alumni Highlights

Susan Wendel, Ph.D., Chemistry major, 1989

• Susan earned her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from Rutgers University. Susan has worked in drug development, and she is currently a Scientific Director at Johnson & Johnson where she leads multinational teams on global research initiatives. In 2015, Susan was named Johnson & Johnson's Working Mother of the Year.

Richard Dietz, J.D., Finance major, 1999

• Richard earned his J.D. from Wake Forest University School of Law. He is a North Carolina Board- Certified Specialist in Appellate Practice, and is a member of the North Carolina Bar Association's Appellate Rules Committee. He has been recognized in North Carolina Super Lawyers magazine as  a “Rising Star” in Appellate Law. In 2015, North Carolina Lawyers Weekly named him one of their "Leaders in the Law."

James Ruda, M.D., Biology major, 2000 

• James earned his M.D. from the College of Medicine at Pennsylvania State University, and completed a pediatric otolaryngology fellowship at the University of North Carolina. James is a member of the Department of Otolaryngology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and an Assistant Clinical Professor for the Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery at Ohio State University College of Medicine. 

Ryan Hurst, Accounting and Finance major, 2003 

• Since graduation, Ryan has gained expertise in the business appraisal, investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, and private equity sectors. Ryan has been a Vice President at Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, LLP, a Partner at Artisan Values, LLC in Reading, PA, and is currently a Partner at RKL LLP in Reading, PA. He is a member of the American Society of Appraisers and holds multiple Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) certifications. 

Ethan Goldbach, History and International Studies major and Anthropology and Music minors, 2014

• During his undergraduate years, Ethan won the U.S. State Department's Critical Languages Scholarship to study the Korean language, and he studied abroad at Soonchunhyang University in South Korea. Ethan was the second Honors student to be selected for the highly prestigious Fulbright Program English Teaching Assistantship, and he spent the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 academic years teaching in Malaysia. Ethan is currently pursuing a Master of Philosophy in Education at Cambridge University.

Kelsey Mengle, Chemistry major and Mathematics minor, 2015

• Kelsey was the first Shippensburg student to be awarded the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to support her graduate studies. Kelsey earned a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan and has published her research, First-principles calculations of the near-edge optical properties of β-Ga2O3. Kelsey is a Materials Reliability Engineer at Apple in Cupertino, California.

Curtis Rabe, Computer Science major and Ethnic Studies, German Studies, and Music minors, 2016

• Curtis was the third Honors student to be selected for a Fulbright Program English Teaching Assistantship. He spent the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 academic years teaching in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and plans to pursue a Ph.D. in German.