They are spread all over the world.
The Journal-World caught up with its 2000 Academic All Stars 10 years after they were honored for their outstanding performances as high school students.
When the judges chose them in 2000, the all stars had interests in many different fields, from sciences to the arts to the humanities. Today, the group members represent several different career paths.
Jarrett Johnson
Baldwin High
It’s probably no surprise to people who knew Jarrett Johnson growing up in the Baldwin school district that he is working as a researcher for the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.
“I have been on this trajectory basically since the beginning, as I’ve always had a strong interest in physics and astronomy and had as a goal to study those things,” Johnson said.
After graduating from Baldwin High School in 2000, he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 2004 from Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., with minors in mathematics and Spanish. In 2009, Johnson graduated from the University of Texas with a doctorate in astronomy.
He and his wife, Kristi Silva, now live in Munich as Johnson researches the formation of the first stars and galaxies. His position will likely run for two years, so they plan to return to the United States in 2011.
“I would very much enjoy a job as a professor, perhaps at a small college, where I would like to teach and have the freedom to carry on with the research that interests me,” he said.
Johnson credits Baldwin High School leaders for allowing him to take classes through both Baker University and Kansas University, which gave him confidence once he started on his path of professional education.
Bridget Guffey-Acker
Perry-Lecompton High
Her story is about timing.
Things have changed in 10 years for Bridget Guffey-Acker since she graduated from Perry-Lecompton High School.
She attended Kansas University with an eye toward studying anthropology, but Guffey-Acker was also working full time. After one semester, she shifted to being a full-time cook and spent most of nine years in Lawrence restaurants — Alvamar Country Club, Free State Brewery, Pachamama’s and Wheatfields Bakery.
“I think it’s the freedom of being out of the house and everything,” she said. “I wanted to be able to go do the things I was ready to do, so working full time made that happen.”
She enjoyed the jobs, but says it got old eventually.
“There were good things about it, but I feel like I wasted a lot of time, too, now that I’m kind of back on the path that I originally started on,” Guffey-Acker said.
In the fall she quit working full time and has returned to being a student at Highland Community College’s Perry campus. She hopes to finish her requirements to enroll in engineering school at Kansas University in the fall.
“I’m enjoying it. I almost feel like I can feel my brain growing after years of not thinking in those ways,” she said.
For now, Guffey-Acker is working part time for her father at his lumber distributing company, Wood Haven Inc. in Perry. She also married Edward Acker, and they live in east Lawrence.
It will likely take Guffey-Acker about three more years to graduate from KU. She says she’s motivated to get into the engineering field and that her story does offer some advice for this year’s high school graduates — even if she took a little bit more time off from school than she had originally planned.
“If they’re not sure what they want to do, it’s not a crime to take a year off because you go to school and try to figure stuff out a little bit,” she said. “Then you’ll be more likely to apply yourself when you do go.”
Elisabeth Betzen
Lawrence High
In 10 years, the standout Lawrence High art student is still working in the field.
Elisabeth Betzen spends her days as a senior designer at WD Partners of Columbus, Ohio, which helps design and program buildings for retail and food service businesses.
“I love the fact that I get to be creative and solve problems and have an impact on the world,” Betzen said.
After she graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2005, Betzen worked for three years with the design firm Chute Gerdeman in Columbus as an environments designer and had a hand in designing a Barbie flagship store in Shanghai, China.
Work in commercial design is fulfilling a long-term goal Betzen made when she was younger and growing up in Lawrence, a place that she said helped foster her interest in art.
Betzen praised former LHS art teacher Pam Nemchock.
“She was better than some of my professors in college, and I was at a world-renowned college,” Betzen said. “Lawrence High did a great job with their art program.”
Evan Grosshans
Lawrence High
He did what he said he would after graduating from Lawrence High in 2000.
Evan Grosshans in 2005 earned a bachelor of arts degree in theater and voice from the former KU School of Fine Arts and a bachelor of general studies in theater for acting from KU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
He then spent one year as an associate company member with Playhouse on the Square, a regional theater based in Memphis, Tenn., until he moved to Scotland and earned a master’s of performance in musical theater at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
He’s also worked in food services, education and in real estate.
“It’s been an interesting few years work-wise, but it’s definitely been worth it,” he said.
Grosshans married Pauline McLeman in April 2008, and they live in Glasgow, Scotland.
“I find Scottish people to be a lot like Midwesterners: hospitable, opinionated and proud of their heritage,” he said.
He hopes to get back into the performing arts but this time more from the angle of songwriting and recording original music. He would also like to work more with high school and community college students.
“I’ve gotten a taste for it in the last couple of years, and I’ve found it to be very rewarding,” Grosshans said.
Jennifer Hughes
Lawrence High
She’s moved around several times already — from northeast Kansas to her undergraduate days at Reed College in Portland, Ore., to Texas for graduate school.
Now Jennifer Hughes works as an assistant cataloging librarian at Salt Lake Community College.
“You never know where you’re going to end up,” she said. “I enjoyed both of my degrees.”
Hughes left Lawrence High as an enthusiastic art student in 2000 with plans to study art, the humanities and Russian at Reed, a small liberal arts college.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in art and spent two years in Portland working a variety of jobs, including for an importer of stone and tile from Turkey.
Eventually Hughes moved to Austin and enrolled in graduate school at the University of Texas to study art history and information science. She earned her master’s degree in information science in 2008 and worked at the university’s visual resources collection.
In late 2009 she accepted a position in Salt Lake City, where she is responsible for cataloging books, electronics resources, periodicals and DVDs. The college works with several area universities to create a digital archive.
Hughes has been able to travel abroad several times and describes her experiences as “awesome” from her days in Lawrence up to today in Utah.
She was the second all star from 2000 to trace some her of enthusiasm for learning and the arts to her Lawrence High mentor, former art teacher Pam Nemchock. Today outside of work she still paints and sells her crafts.
“All of my teachers at Lawrence High were really impressive,” Hughes said.
Ryan Morgan
Lawrence High
When he graduated from Lawrence High in 2000 and headed to Rice University to study and play on the golf team, Ryan Morgan generally had his sights on majoring in business or economics.
“Coming out of high school, I was definitely uncertain of what I wanted to do long term,” he said.
In 10 years, Morgan has let his experiences shape his life and his career, a move he says that has made his first decade out of school very rewarding.
During his undergraduate years in Houston at Rice, Morgan was captain of the golf team his last two years. In addition to his work on student-athlete advisory committees, he earned a bachelor’s degree in sports management and managerial studies.
He then spent two years as a fellow for the U.S. Golf Association. He found out about the fellowship by “blind luck” and worked tirelessly in Colorado Springs on pursuing grant funding for the USGA’s charitable arm.
“We gave $5 million a year to nonprofits around the country that ran golf and life-skill programs for underprivileged kids and people with disabilities,” Morgan said.
Eventually he made it into Vanderbilt’s law school, where he graduated in 2009 and recently returned to Houston to work for the corporate law firm Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP, practicing real estate and finance law.
This month he also married his college sweetheart, Whitney Botsford, who is an assistant professor in the college of business at the University of Houston-Downtown.
“It’s taken 10 years, but I feel like we’re both starting on real life,” said Morgan, whose parents Jeff and Sue Morgan now live in the Austin, Texas, area.
Justin Shmalberg
Free State High
You might remember Justin Shmalberg, a 2000 Free State graduate, for his downtown Lawrence store, Natural Pet Outfitters.
He and his fiancee, Danielle Jonas, as Kansas University students ran the natural pet food and supply store in the 1000 block of Massachusetts Street.
“This effort led us to many remarkable pet owners and attracted me to an examination of the human-animal bond, as well as veterinary medicine,” Shmalberg said.
While Shmalberg was working on his KU degree in African studies, he and Jonas also adopted a rescue dog who had severe health issues, including intractable idiopathic epilepsy.
After conventional therapies did not work, they pursued several “integrative approaches” like her diet, supplements and acupuncture, which aided in her recovery.
They started the downtown Lawrence store after that, and eventually sold it so he could attend veterinary school at the University of Wisconsin. Shmalberg earned his bachelor’s degree in African studies from KU in 2004 and his doctorate in veterinary medicine from Wisconsin in 2008.
Shmalberg completed his internship for veterinary acupuncture and integrative medicine at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He’s now a veterinarian at Haile Plantation Animal Clinic in Gainesville, Fla.
In addition to trying to continue to strengthen his clinical skills, Shmalberg still has an interest in focusing on the topic of his undergraduate studies.
“I also hope to eventually use my skills in a means that benefits communities abroad, consistent with some of the concepts I explored in the African studies program,” he said.
He and Jonas are renovating a small farmette outside of Gainesville. They continue to take on more rescue animals. Shmalberg says growing up and attending Lawrence public schools and KU helped foster his career path and interests.
“There were so many supportive educators, business owners and family members who along the way encouraged me to pursue a diversity of ideas and thought,” he said.
Kelcie Fincham
Free State High
When she left Free State High School in 2000 to study pre-medicine at Dartmouth College, Kelcie Fincham was motivated to become a doctor.
After some detours in 10 years, the third-year medical student is close to reaching her goal.
But Fincham’s experience has also given her a chance to refine her path. After she finishes at the Medical College of Georgia, Fincham wants to be placed in an infectious disease residency program, likely in New Orleans or Chicago, to begin working for a career in international nonprofit medicine.
“I realized that it’s something that I was actually capable of and what I wanted to keep working towards,” Fincham said.
She has gained interest in the career path after stints in graduate school with a public health program in Vietnam and India.
Fincham hopes to learn from the best doctors and organizations in the public health field.
“They are the ones that can really treat the things that are causing the biggest burdens of disease,” she said.
She has earned chemistry and environmental studies degrees from Dartmouth. She also took a year off from her public health graduate studies at the University of Georgia to teach English to students in France.
“I’m pretty grateful to have made it this far,” she said. “And I’m pretty excited to some day have a career.”
Rachel Sellon
Free State High
Rachel Sellon had planned to study science when she graduated from Free State High School in 2000.
Sellon, though, has been drawn more specifically to chemistry in the 10 years since she left Lawrence.
“I think when I graduated high school I planned on doing something more related to physics, but I hadn’t really decided,” she said.
Sellon earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 2004 from Grinnell College in Iowa.
She is working on her doctorate in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Sellon hopes to work either in the industry or teach once she finishes her degree.
“Lawrence was a good place to go to school. I think that I was better prepared for college than most of my peers,” she said.
John Sheu
Free State High
After a successful high school career at Free State High School, Sheu eventually graduated from Harvard University with a degree in computer science and went to work for Microsoft Corp., his father Albert Sheu said.
Several attempts to reach Sheu in recent months were unsuccessful, and a Microsoft spokesman said last week he would be unable to respond to questions.
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