Alumna Summer Bozeman writes book on St. Augustine

Alumna Summer Bozeman’s passion for St. Augustine’s past turned into a paying gig when she was tapped to author a pictorial book on the Nation’s Oldest City.

When Bozeman graduated from Flagler in 2007, she bought several books on St. Augustine history and found herself fascinated by many of the historic photos.

Peace Corps Alums working with HIV/AIDS children in Africa

Making a difference in Swaziland is no small task. Roughly 25 percent of children in the African country have contracted HIV/AIDS. In the rural area of Gamula, about 70 percent of the community is unemployed, most living on about a dollar a day. As Peace Corps volunteers, Tristan Estes and Rachel Manring are doing their best to make everyday improvements there.

Alumna Mallory Needleman works with recordings of Holocaust survivors at Holocaust Museum

Mallory Needleman gets paid to listen to horror stories. As an assistant outreach and archival researcher at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., she catalogues and fact checks interviews with survivors, witnesses and perpetrators of the Nazi Germany genocide that killed roughly 6 million European Jews.

The 2008 Flagler alumna works with about 1,600 of the museum’s audio and video accounts of the Holocaust’s everyday atrocities: not just the typical shootings and mass graves, but unexpected details – like a neighbor who found the village’s Jewish tailor with all his teeth gone, pulled for their tiny gold fillings.

O’Keefe, ‘80, looks back on life-changing trip to Rwanda

They are faces she can’t get out of her mind. Stories that are now etched in her consciousness — that haunt, or even inspire her on a daily basis.

For Kathy O’Keefe, a 1980 alumna and Flagler College’s former alumni director, the nine-day trip to Kigali, Rwanda, this past summer was something she could only describe as a life-changing experience.

Audio Slideshow: Kathy O’Keefe Speaks About Trip to Rwanda

’08 alum worked on infamous TLC reality show

For Flagler alumnus Clark McCarthy-Miller, ‘08, being a producer’s assistant has meant working on miscellaneous commercials, small movies and television shows. But that all changed when a friend set him up on an interview with a family that would change his life — the now infamous Gosselins, stars of TLC’s reality show, “Jon and Kate Plus Eight.”

After interviewing for the position with four others, the Gosselins handpicked him to work on the show. McCarthy-Miller could be seen on the show’s highest-rated season four opener where he helped the Gosselin family prepare for a birthday bash for the sextuplets.

As members of St. Augustine band the Wobbly Toms, Andy Calvert, Zach Lively and Richard Steinmeyer have been entertaining locals for years with their unique blend of folk, punk and rock.

The three men, all Flagler alums, and all English majors, have been firm friends since their post-grad days. In fact, they spent much of their free time at Flagler at WFCF and playing in bands–a preview of things to come.

He’s only 24, but alumnus Justin Black has already spent four years transforming St. Augustine’s Boys & Girls Club.

“We’ve done a 180,” he said. “When I first got here there was a fight almost every day … I’ve had people threaten to shoot me. I’ve had kids take a swing at me.”

Fights are rare now. The 2007 Flagler graduate said the club currently has the highest rate of teen participation in the area, and the kids often see him as “one of their own.” Those changes might not have been possible, Black said, if he wasn’t good at basketball.

Alumnus’ documentary receives major nomination at NAACP Image Awards

Four years ago, when Jeremy Dean finished his documentary “Dare Not Walk Alone,” the 2002 Flagler alumnus had incurred $30,000 in debt. He spent countless hours securing interviews with reluctant subjects. And he wasn’t sure whether the film — which examines both St. Augustine’s role in the 1960s Civil Rights struggle and the Oldest City’s more modern inequalities — would ever find a receptive audience.

The next step for 2009 graduate and standout cross-country runner Ryan MacManus may be a career as an FBI profiler

For spring 2009 graduate Ryan MacManus, the past four years has had its lows – like being diagnosed with the debilitating Crohn’s disease that nearly ended his cross country running career.

Alumna Diana Briggs working with author on book about love

Shared interests and a chance contact with award-winning author John Bowe have led Diana Briggs, ‘07, down a promising editorial career path with a job working on his upcoming book.

“If someone had told me two months ago that I’d be in Hayes, Kan., I would not have believed them,” she said.