Class Notes

Former Iowa State women's basketball player Emily Durr ('18 kinesiology) has been named head women's basketball coach and athletic specialist at Mohawk Valley Community College in her hometown of Utica, N.Y.

Criss Salinas (MEd '12, PhD '15 education), an assistant professor in the educational leadership and research methodology department at the Florida Atlantic University College of Education, has been named Florida Atlantic University's 2019 Scholar of the Year, as well as the 2019 recipient of the FAU Division of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management's Outstanding Faculty Award.

Bryan Petersen ('09 kinesiology, M.Ed. '12), a former Iowa State men's basketball player who is now head coach of the men's basketball team at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has led the Eagles to their second National Junior College Athletics Association (NJCAA) Division II national championship in four season as head coach. Petersen, who also played basketball at Kirkwood and was a junior college All-American before transferring to Iowa State, led the squad to a 31-4 overall record this season.

Dr. Jeffrey Fletcher and his wife, Jessica, welcomed a daughter, Samantha Marie, on February 16, 2018.

Kirk Scheckel (L)(’95 agronomy) has been appointed director of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development Land and Materials Management Division in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Dave Drennan (L)(’75 ag journalism) is retiring as executive director of the Missouri Dairy Association on May 1, 2019, after serving 23 years.

Rebecca Nellis (’18 ag & society and food science) has accepted a position as an associate product development scientist with Johnsonville.

Chris Flansburg (’12 agronomy) has sold his company BCA Ag Technologies in Albion, New York, to LandPro Equipment. He will lead the agronomy and data management portion of the new LandPro Equipment ag technologies division.

Emily Schmitt ('08 management) of Sukup Manufacturing has been named the 2019 recipient of the Ivy Women in Business Outstanding Young Alumni Award from the Iowa State University Debbie and Jerry Ivy College of Business.

Leslie Buttorff (MS '80 indus admin), the president and CEO of Quintel Management Consulting in Greenwood Village, Colo., has been named the 2019 recipient of the Ivy Women in Business Champion Award from the Iowa State University Debbie and Jerry Ivy College of Business.

Jeff Rowe ('95 ag bus), Syngenta's president of global seeds, has been recognized with the 2018 Outstanding Alumni Award from the Iowa State University Agricultural Business Club.

Roosevelt Maggitt ('12 liberal studies) has been named defensive line coach for the college football program at the University of West Georgia.

Rob Henson ('92 industrial ed/tech) has joined Rudolph Libbe Inc., of the Rudolph Libbe Group as a senior preconstruction leader in the Walbridge, Ohio, office. With more than 33 years of experience in construction, Henson previously served as director of preconstruction services with Touchstone Construction in Lima, Ohio.

Margarita Engle-Modrus (MS '77 botany) has received a national Green Earth Book Award for her children's book, Forest World, a story of a Cuban-American boy who visits his family's village in Cuba for the first time. The award recognizes books that convey the best environmental stewardship message and inspire youth to respect their natural environment.

Margaret Krug Palen ('52 textiles & clothing) has published A Different World: My Life and Making a Difference in the World," a detailed picture of rural American life from the 1930s to 1950s. The author also journeys to college, to work with the Department of Agriculture, and to work in other countries to improve food, textile, and clothing production.

Dale Netherton ('63 forestry) is the author of the new book "Peace Without God," which is described as "a description of how to attain inner peace without believing in an imaginary deity."

Jeff Deitering (L)('91 civil engr) recently published On the Hook, a fast-paced, light-hearted diversion from reality. The setting is a combination of real and fictional locations in a place with which many Iowa Staters are familiar: Kansas City, The book is the third novel in Deitering's "Hook and Patch" mystery series.

Diana Wilson ('03 civil engr) is the new general manager of the Island Water Association, a member-owned utility that provides potable water to Sanibel and Captiva Islands on Florida's Gulf Coast. She is the former manager of West Des Moines (Iowa) Water Works.

Mollie Aronowitz (A)('06 hort) has been awarded the Accredited Farm Manager designation from the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. She is one of only seven females holding this designation in the country, and the only female in the state of Iowa. Aronowitz is a land manager for People Company, an agricultural real estate firm in Indianola, Iowa.

Steven Lonergan (A)('88 an sci, MS '91), an Iowa State University animal science professor, was awarded one of two 2018 U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Agriculture Sciences Excellence in Teaching Awards.

Lindsay Tigue (A)(MFA '14 creative writing and the environment), a PhD student in English/creative writing at the University of Georgia, is one of 100 doctoral students in the U.S. and Canada selected to receive a $15,000 scholar award from the P.E.O. Sisterhood. Tigue is the author of the Iowa Poetry Prize-winning collection System of Ghosts.

Erika Lundy ('12 an sci, MS '15) has been hired as a beef specialist for ISU Extension and Outreach in southwest Iowa.

Petey Peterson ('10 child, adult, and family svcs & comm studies, MEd '12), the director of LGBTQA affairs at Wright State University, has been awarded the 2019 Voice of Inclusion Award by the American College Personnel Association.

Yuh-Yuan Shyy (A)(MS '81 ag engr, PhD '84) and his cofounder Majit Misra of the start-up company FloMetrix have been selected for developing one of the 2019 "AE50" honored inventions by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. The proprietary technology Shyy and Misra developed, known as RIFF (Real Time In-Like Inclined Flowmeter), can measure the flow of bulk materials such as seeds, grains, fertilizers, food, and pet food ingredients in real time as they move through an inclined pipeline. They founded FloMetrix in 2011.

John Akers (L)('79 journalism), who has spent 18 years as publisher and editor of Basketball Times, was recently inducted into the United States Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame. This year’s USBWA Hall of Fame class also includes Dan Wetzel, Bill Rhoden, and Jack McCallum. As a former president of the USBWA, Akers instituted the organization’s Rising Star award, which recognizes excellence in a member who is under the age of 30. He resides in Charlotte, N.C., where the publication is headquartered, but travels the country writing about hoops.