Alumni News (March-April 2025)

Thank you to everyone who submitted stories, pictures, and updates since our last newsletter! It’s great to learn about what our alumni have been up to since they left the hallowed halls of Pray-Harrold. Please keep the stories coming! Send them to John McCurdy at [email protected].

• Phil Kotwick (BS, 1993; MA, 2020) delivered remarks on student activism at the EMU campus on April 16, 2025. Kotwick drew on material from his MA in History thesis to recount the days in May 1970 when police and students clashed outside of Starkweather Hall on what was then Forest Avenue. Kotwick’s remarks were delivered in conjunction with the art installation Growing Home by EMU student Lydia Vollavanh. Read more about the artwork here.

          Milton Mack, Jr.

• Milton Mack, Jr. (BS, 1972) was recently reappointed as member and chair of the Mental Health Diversion Council, a state board charged with reducing the number of people with mental illness or intellectual or developmental disabilities entering the corrections system. Judge Mack represents the State Court Administrative Office on the council. See the CAS Newsletter for more information.

          Antonio Salinas

• Antonio Salinas (BA, 2005; MA, 2007) was recently promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army. Salinas is also a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Georgetown University, where he focuses on the history of climate and conflict. Following his coursework, he will teach at the National Intelligence University. Salinas has twenty-five years of military service in the Marine Corps and the US Army, where he led soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the author of Siren’s Song: The Allure of War and Boot Camp: The Making of a United States Marine. See the CAS Newsletter for more information.

           Marie Sarnacki

• Marie Sarnacki (MA, 2023) will enter the Ph.D. in History program at Wayne State University this fall. Marie is a Social Studies and English Teacher at South Lyon East High School. She tells us: “I can attend [Wayne State] part time and continue to teach high school, which is great.” Marie wrote an MA thesis at EMU titled “Save the Child and Honor the State: Moral Reconstruction, the Michigan System, and Progressive Welfare Policy” under the direction of Professor Mary-Elizabeth Murphy. In May, she will present research from her thesis at the Midwestern History Conference in Des Moines, Iowa.

• Jesse Yaeger (BS, 2015; MA, 2025) recently accepted a position as Local Historian and Archivist at the Albion Public Library.