10 Questions
10 Questions with CEHS dean Dr. Jennifer Shewmaker
Dr. Jennifer (Wade ’92) Shewmaker, recently named dean of the College of Education and Human Services, believes the university is uniquely poised to take on the challenges facing higher education today. “I believe ACU has the flexibility and ingenuity to step into the future with hope and excitement,” she says. “Our mission is timely, and […]
10 Questions with Debut Dagger winner Sherry Rankin
When Sherry Rankin heard her first full-length novel, Strange Fire, had won this year’s Crime Writers Association’s Debut Dagger competition for unpublished writers, she was stunned. “To be honest, I entered it mostly as a way to toughen up and learn to deal with rejection,” said Rankin, assistant professor of English at ACU. She had just completed […]
10 Questions with ‘Cats’ director Jeremy Varner
ACU Theatre is producing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s mega-hit musical Cats for Homecoming 2017 on Oct. 20-22. Directing and choreographing the student actors is program alumnus Jeremy Varner (’10), who performed in several Cats productions in Atlanta. The New York actor took a break from rehearsals to talk about why the ACU and Abilene community should […]
10 Questions with Mike and Michelle Patterson
Alumni couple picks up pieces after deadly Texas twister Many breathe a sigh of relief now that the peak of another tornado season has passed in the Lone Star State. One alumni family in Rockwall, Texas, knows the feeling all too well. It’s taken nearly two years, but Mike (’90) and Michelle (Kehoe ’90) Patterson […]
10 Questions with Broadway actor Ben Jeffrey
One of Abilene Christian University’s most accomplished young graduates is Ben Jeffrey (’06), who has played Pumbaa in Broadway’s The Lion King since 2010. Jeffrey will be performing a one-man show, 1,700 Miles to Broadway, on Nov. 10, as the fall semester Lights Up! event to raise funds for the Department of Theatre. What can someone in the […]
10 Questions with Opry-bound Zane Williams
A native of Abilene, Zane Williams (’99) nearly gave up his dreams of a music career, nine years after pursuing it in Nashville, Tenn, following graduation. After a return to Texas, his instinctive feel for songwriting began to open doors. His poignant album title cut, “Hurry Home,” won the $20,000 Maxell Song of the Year honor in the John […]
10 Questions with country star Aaron Watson
The spotlight is pretty much the same shape as the well-worn piece of wooden stage underneath the WSM radio microphone at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, where Abilene Christian University graduate Aaron Watson (’00) is about to find out how it feels to step into country music’s most famous circle, literally and figuratively. And he’s not nervous […]
10 Questions with Dawne Meeks
Life sometimes comes full circle. That’s something Dawne (Swearingen ’95) Meeks, director of this year’s Homecoming musical Big Fish, can tell you about. Meeks came to ACU as a freshman in 1991, the same year Adam Hester (’77) became chair of the theatre department. After graduating from Abilene Christian in 1995, she went on to […]
10 Questions with Amber Brantly
When Dr. Kent (’03) and Amber (Carroll ’06) Brantly accepted a call to the medical missions field in Liberia in 2013, they had no inkling their lives might one day be the making of international headlines. “It still feels bizarre to me that people know about us, that it even mattered to so many people […]
10 Questions with attorney Lori Windham
As senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Lori (Halstead ’01) Windham, J.D., has argued some controversial cases, among them the right of a Santeria priest to conduct animal sacrifice in the garage of his Texas home. Now as a member of the legal team representing Hobby Lobby’s challenge of the Affordable Care […]
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