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During the week of Inaguration festivities we were honored to have five Carroll alum share their stories of how Carroll impacted their lives and their careers. Congratulations to these alums who have accomplished so much!
Janel Keating '86
Janel Keating is the new superintendent of the White River School District in Buckley, Wash. An accomplished educator with more than 26 years of experience, Keating has served as an elementary and middle school teacher, elementary principal, director of student learning and deputy superintendent. For eight years, she had the privilege of being the principal of Mountain Meadow Elementary School in Buckley, Wash. During her time there, Mountain Meadow was recognized as one of the highest academically performing elementary schools in the state. Keating has been named Principal of the Year in Pierce County, Wash. Keating presents at state and national events, is a coauthor with Rick Dufour, Rebecca Dufour and Robert Eaker of The Journey to Becoming a Professional Learning Community and coauthored with Robert Eaker the book Every School, Every Team, Every Classroom. She has written numerous articles on leadership and school improvement. She coauthored with Robert Eaker the lead chapter in the 2012 Yearbook of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. She is currently working on her second book titled Kid by Kid, Skill By Skill. Every month, Keating consults with school districts throughout the United States, from the Kern High School District, Bakersfield, Calif. (21 high schools and the largest high school district in California) to the Berkeley County School District in Charleston, South Carolina. Over the past six years, Keating has shared her expertise with nearly 250 schools and districts. She is past president of the Washington State Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Keating earned a master’s degree in educational leadership from the University of Idaho and a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Carroll in 1986. She received a superintendent’s certificate from Seattle Pacific University.
Doreen Fogg-Leavitt '01
Doreen Fogg-Leavitt, RN, is an Inupiaq Eskimo from Barrow, Alaska. After earning her Carroll nursing degree in 2001, she immediately began her career as a public health nurse for the North Slope Borough Health Department in Barrow, Alaska. Leavitt felt it was important to return to her home community to serve the people of her home region. Leavitt briefly left Barrow and worked for the State of Alaska Division of Public Health in Kenai, Alaska, and served as the Kenai sub-regional nurse manager for public health. Currently, Leavitt is the director for the North Slope Borough Health and Social Services Department, overseeing 12 health programs that serve 11,000 residents in a region the size of Minnesota. Leavitt is currently seeking her master’s in public health with a concentration in circumpolar health from the University of Alaska and is expected to graduate in 2013. Her other interests include health advocacy and encouraging Alaska Natives and American Indians to enter health care professions through her roles on the Area Health Education Center for the northwest region of Alaska, and Pathways into Health, a national non-profit grassroots organization promoting the health careers of Alaska Native/American Indians. Leavitt serves on the Alaska Public Health Association board of directors and the Rural Alaska Community Action Program, a non-profit dedicated to improve the quality of life for low-income Alaskans. Leavitt was also an EMT-II and volunteered for the North Slope Borough Fire Department from 2005–2008. Leavitt’s husband is a successful whaling co-captain of a whaling crew and the family participates in the traditional Inupiaq traditions like hunting, camping and fishing.
Tara Harris '00
Tara Harris has worked as a deputy county attorney for Lewis and Clark County for the past eight years. She has been the lead prosecutor for crimes against children and dependent neglect cases for the past four years. Since the fall of 2006, she has also worked as an adjunct professor in Carroll College’s Political Science Department and has coached Carroll’s Moot Court Team since its inception in the fall of 2009. During the past two years, her teams have earned invitations to nationals. Harris serves as a board member on the Montana Children’s Alliance, is an advisory board member for the Lewis and Clark Child Advocacy Center, and is a member of the multi-disciplinary team focusing on child abuse in Lewis and Clark County. Harris also trains local court-appointed special advocate volunteers and child protection specialist workers. She is licensed to practice in state and federal court in Montana. In 2000, she earned distinguished honors graduating from Carroll with political science and business administration degrees, then went on to earn her law degree from the University of Montana. While at Carroll, Harris competed on the Talking Saints forensics team and was a member of the national championship team in 1999 while placing third in the nation for debate with her partner. In her senior year, she placed fourth in the nation for memorized speaking. During her three years at law school, she competed on the UM Trial Team, earning the International Academy of Trial Lawyers 2003 Student Advocacy Award.
Dr. Larry McEvoy Jr. '87
Larry McEvoy, MD, weaves both the pragmatic and the visionary into the transformation of physician work, clinical performance and organizational dynamics in health care. In an industry where the pressures of scale, regulation, upheaval and uncertainty threaten to overwhelm passion and purpose with rote mechanics, McEvoy believes the highest business and clinical value arises from healthy medical communities which are the best place to work, the best place to practice and the best place to get care. His mission is to restore the energy, vitality and sustainability to health-care professionals, the care they provide, and the business value they create. His unique perspectives as both a clinician and a physician executive render him a powerful speaker, mentor and health-care leader. From 2008 to May 2012, McEvoy served as the CEO of Memorial Health System in Colorado Springs, Colo., facilitating a $100 million turnaround, the emergence of a culture of collaboration and commitment, and Memorial’s transformation from a municipal hospital to the threshold of its merger with the University of Colorado Health System. Prior to that, he was a senior executive and emergency physician at the Billings Clinic in Billings, Mont. After earning his degree in English writing from Carroll College in 1987, McEvoy graduated from Stanford University Medical School in 1992. He completed his training in emergency medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minn., in 1995.
Alex “Papu” Rincon '04
After graduating from Carroll in 2004 with degrees in business, art and Spanish, in 2007 Alex “Papu” Rincon launched a clothing and lifestyle store called four0six on Helena’s Last Chance Gulch near the historic Walking Mall downtown. The store offers a unique retail experience celebrating his passion for the Montana outdoor lifestyle and the arts, combined with regular public gatherings and fundraisers for special causes, like relief for the people of Haiti. He has created his own clothing line and local manufacturing process, with great success: the four0six brand and logo appears all over Montana and beyond. Rincon’s commitment to community is embodied in his decisions to buy products and services locally, provide local jobs and focus on ethical business practices. A social media marketing innovator, Rincon has served as a consultant advising startups on social media business promotion in South America. By 2010, he was named Helena Downtown Businessperson of the Year. His Carroll professors, Belle Marie and Beth Wilson, recognized Rincon’s successful enterprise as an example to others and nominated Rincon for the Small Business Association (SBA) Montana Young Entrepreneur of the Year, an honor Rincon won. In 2011, Rincon was selected by the Obama Administration as one of 11 young entrepreneurial Champions of Change honored by the White House
Richard S. Buswell '66
After graduating with his Carroll College biology degree in 1966, Richard S. Buswell went on to earn his medical degree from the University of Oregon Medical School (later rechristened Oregon Health Sciences University) in 1970, the same year he acquired his first camera. In addition to a successful private practice in allergy, asthma and immunology in Helena, Mont., he has achieved international success as a photographer specializing in artifacts of Montana frontier life. He has had 41 solo, museum-level exhibitions of his photography appear at top institutions, including the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Wash.; Springfield Museum of Fine Arts (Mass.) and the International Photography Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, Okla. Nearly 250 museum-level group exhibitions have included his photography, including the Denver Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Ga.), Tacoma Art Museum and Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. Over 200 museums have acquired his work for their permanent collections, among them the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston); Fogg Art Museum (Harvard University Art Museums); and Yale University Art Gallery. Three books of his photography have been published by the University of Montana, with a fourth, Close To Home: Photographs, scheduled for release by the University of New Mexico Press in 2013. Buswell received Carroll’s Academic Achievement Award in 2002 and is a multiple winner of the Best Doctors in America Award. In 2011, he was honored at the Montana state capitol as a Treasured Montana Artist.