Alumni Updates 2018-2019

​Jonathan Brewster (BA East Asian Studies, Japanese minor 2007) recently began his position as Director of the North Carolina State University's Japan Center. After graduating from UD, Jonathan attended the University of Hawaii's Shidler College of Business. He completed his MBA with a  "Japan Emphasis" in 2012. As Director of the Japan Center, he will help develop relationships between North Carolina's public and private organizations, groups, and citizens and Japan. To read more about Jonathan's new position, please see https://global.ncsu.edu/nc-japan-center-welcomes-new-director/

​Amy Shore (BAFLL Spanish 1993) was promoted to full Professor at SUNY Oswego and currently Chair of the Department of English & Creative Writing. 

​Nick Ustaski (BAFLL Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, BA History 2016) is now a graduating law student at Chicago-Kent College of Law in Chicago, IL. He is excited to announce he has accepted an excellent position at the prestigious law firm Kirkland & Ellis in Houston, Texas where he will be moving as a First-Year Associate of the general corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, and civil litigation groups. After playing for the D1 Hockey team at the University of Delaware, he continued on coaching at one of the top ranked high school hockey teams in Illinois. He is happy to announce that his Foreign Languages and Literatures classes helped assist him in his law school classes and career especially his Latin courses and roman history courses. Nick also finally got to live out a dream by during a European vacation tour visiting England, Italy (for the Latin, Roman culture, and history!) including Rome, Vatican City, Pompeii, Florence, and the Italian countryside, Denmark, and Iceland. Nick is now a board member of the University of Delaware Hockey Alumni Association, and a board member of the St. Ignatius College Prep Hockey Program. He is excited for what the future holds and is thankful for his time at UD.

​Shawn Conroy (BA History, BAFLL Russian 2016) got an MA in History from Rutgers in spring 2018. He spent last year in Russia teaching English and will be attending Ohio State University in fall 2019 for a PhD in History. 

​Kyle Crocco (MAFLP French 2005) worked at California State University at Fullerton as a Language Lab Coordinator and Writing Instructor from 2006-2011. In 2011-2012, he taught English for Chinese business majors at Shenyang Normal University in China. Afterwards, he returned to the US to study composition and rhetoric at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He earned a PhD in Education in June 2017, completing a dissertation on content strategy in university admissions. Currently, he lives in Santa Barbara, working on the content strategy for BigSpeak, one of the top business keynote speakers bureaus in the country. In his free time, he creates rock music videos with his band Duh Professors.

​Olivia Herrfurth (BA International Relations, Spanish minor 2016) is currently living in Bogota, Colombia as an English teacher. She moved there in September, 2018 and completed the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults). She hopes to gain fluency in Spanish, and experience life outside of the United States during her time in Colombia.

​Japanese Studies alumni London Hilprecht (BAFLL Three Languages 2013) and James Weaver (BA Computer Science, Japanese minor 2009, MA TESL 2012) joined Dr. Rachael Hutchinson's panel at the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies conference at Elizabethtown College in November 2018. They participated in a panel titled "Localizing Japanese Pop Culture." London spoke on "The Intricacies of Fan Translation" in videogame localization, and James spoke on "Fame, Profit or Practice: the Changing Landscape of Manga Fan Translation." The room was packed and there was lively discussion. Both London and James were invited back to Elizabethtown to present their work in Dr. Mahua Bhattacharya's seminar on Japanese popular culture.

​Shane Sanders (MAFLP French 2016) writes, "After a Fulbright where I trained English teachers and worked with American study abroad students in Senegal, I returned to the US to find a position in international education. My time at UD, and especially helping Ms. Anna Ogunnaike direct a winter session program in Martinique, put me on that path. I am now the Short-term Programs Coordinator in Susquehanna University's Office of Global Programs. I advise students on their study abroad options for the summer and winter breaks. At Susquehanna, every student is required to participate in a cross-cultural immersion program in order to graduate, so I work closely with students to help them find the best program for their personal, academic, and professional goals. I also work with faculty and staff as they plan and execute their programs, and I accompany students abroad for their immersion programs when needed. I also have the pleasure of teaching a course each term that prepares students for their cross-cultural immersion experiences in all corners of the world." 

Dean Woodrow (Honors BA International Relations, German minor 2019) has been accepted into a MA History program in International War Studies. He will spend one year at the Universität Potsdam and one year at University College Dublin. The program focuses on the context, development, and resolutions of violent conflicts in the twentieth century. It also covers political violence, and violence as it relates to society. Dean's goal is to better understand, prevent, and resolve violent conflict in the future. He adds, " I hope to use the degree to help develop conflict-prevention policy either with organizations like the EU or UN, or with private think tanks or consulting firms."