MELISSA MILLER, 1986 Natural Resources Planning and Interpretation, is currently an instructional coach at an elementary school on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona. Since graduating from Humboldt State, she has earned a Post-Bacculearate and Master's degree in Education. Melissa has applied her diverse educational background in a Montessori setting and working with Native American students in public school. She also currently enjoys living in the White Mountains of Arizona.

Julie King, 1985, Music, (née Reich) went on to earn a Master's degree in music (choral conducting) but pivoted her career to the nonprofit sector. King is currently vice president of Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group and engages in executive search as well as advising nonprofits on capacity building. She also serves on the Board of Directors of BeadforLife, a social enterprise serving women living in extreme poverty in Uganda. King and her husband, Chuck, live in Redwood City, Calif., where Julie rows on Bair Island Aquatic Center's competitive crew team.

Monica Topping, 2009 Journalism, launched the Small Town Big Art calendar project after successfully funding the project via KickStarter. The calendar profiles prominent Humboldt County artists. Topping was inspired to start the project the U.S. Census published a statistic that Humboldt County has more working artists per capita than any other county in California.

Jed Haley-Brooks D'Abravanel, 2007, Politics, is currently attending law school at American University.

Leonard A. Brennan, 1984, Wildlife, has been a professor at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, at the Texas A&M University, Kingsville, since 2001, where he holds the C.C. Winn Endowed Chair for Quail Research. Brennan teaches graduate classes in Ecosystem Function and Models in Wildlife Science. His past positions include director of Research at Tall Timbers Research Station in Tallahassee, FL (1993-2001), and small game research scientist at Mississippi State University (1989-1993). He served terms as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Wildlife Management (2001-2002) and Wildlife Society Bulletin (2012-2013). Since graduating from HSU, Brennan has published more than 160 peer-reviewed articles, five books and more than 100 extension articles.

Anthony Medrano, 2000 Politics, worked at Ohio University for a few years and moved back to Hawaii before finally settling down near Lake Mendota, Wis., where he is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Currently, Medrano is several miles away in Malaysian Borneo, conducting dissertation research as a Fulbright fellow. Medrano’s interest in the social history of oceans stems from his formative years at Humboldt and its intellectual ecology.

Christopher Bennett, 2010, Journalism & Mass Communication, worked for Bleacher Report, the online sports site, as a featured columnist. Bennett covered both the San Jose Sharks and Golden State Warriors, and was published on numerous sites, including CBSSPORTS.com. Bennett then attended law school in the Bay Area, where he focused my studies on intellectual property and corporate law. He graduated law school in 2013 and currently works in-house for Geosyntec, an environmental engineering firm.

Marisa Penkauskas, 2012, Journalism & Mass Communication, is the marketing manager for Interactive Fitness, a company producing interactive stationary bikes, based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Kevin Orris, 1998, mathematics, first went to Humboldt in 1984 as a Wildlife Management major, at which time he met his wife Bonnie. He returned to Humboldt in the mid ’90s and received a degree in Mathematics and his teaching credential. He has been teaching math at Golden Sierra High School for the last 12 years. He loves every minute and is very proud that he has encouraged several students to attend Humboldt.

Jeffrey Herr, 2013 Chemistry, found a job working as a laboratory technician in the quality control lab for Traditional Medicinals, which produces tea. Herr’s work is in testing and sampling herbs with names he can barely pronounce. Herr writes, “I already miss HSU.”