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.”

Andrew Jensen, 1996 and 2000 Fisheries Biology, and Melanie Jensen, (’96 Wildlife Biology), met in an Icthyology class in 1992. Then 10 years passed and they bumped into each other in a grocery store in Santa Rosa, Calif., and exchanged phone numbers. After a year or so they got together for dinner, spent several months becoming friends, and got married in 2004. Andrew now works as a senior environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife working on anadromous fish restoration, and Melanie works for PG&E in the Gas Service Engineering Department. They settled in Redding, Calif., and have two daughters, and several pets. In September 2013, they visited HSU and showed their girls where they had met, and let them run around on the soccer field near the Fisheries and Wildlife Building. Andrew writes that HSU was a wonderful place to go to college, and hopes their girls will pick HSU for their college education. Interestingly, Melanie's mother, Dolores Mattax, and aunt and uncle, Patricia Mattax and Jim Ingram, also attended HSU in the early 1950s. Patricia and Jim ended up getting married, and Jim is in the Hall of Fame as a football player and coach for HSU.

Amanda (Lang) Eldridge, 2001 Journalism & Mass Communication, lived in four major cities since graduating. She’s now married with two children and finally settling down in Denver.