At the end of the fall 2016 semester, two longtime members of the Cabrini community retired: Cathy Yungmann, Associate Professor of Communication, and Nancy Hutchison, Director of the Center for Career and Professional Development. Read on as we look back on their 60 years of combined service to Cabrini and reflect on the impact they had on the students and alumni who passed through the institution.
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Cathy Yungmann, 1989 Yearbook |
Cathy Yungmann, Associate Professor of Communication
After 33 years of service to Cabrini, you may not be surprised to learn that Cathy Yungmann has accomplished a few things.
But that would be the understatement of the year.
Winning more awards than we can count, Yungmann received much of her recognition for helping students to be multimedia storytellers through promoting social justice and the common good. One example is the Davey Award—an international awards competition for smaller agencies, judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts—which she and her students have won three times over the past six years for their convergence projects.
“I'm so proud that my senior capstone convergence students have won a lot of national and international awards for their multimedia social justice web sites,” Yungmann said. “Each year, for over a decade, the class has selected a social justice topic to explore in depth for a year.”
These yearlong group projects are the culmination of both students’ social justice education in their Engagements with the Common Good courses and their mastery of communication expertise. Some of these topics include solving hunger in America, teaching teachers about domestic violence indicators, and an inside look at the revolution in Egypt.
Yungmann counts her national awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication among her most prized. One of these awards she received for the inventive integration of technology-based pedagogy in her classes, including the creation of the website/eBook in the Communication Department Capstone The Arab Awakening: A View from the Inside.
“It is so rewarding to be recognized by your peers,” she said.
“These national awards join the recognition and esteem Cathy holds at Cabrini for her tireless work on campus,” said Mary Van Brunt, PhD, Dean of the School of Business, Arts, and Media. “The Communication Department and Cabrini would not be the same place without Cathy’s dedication to the students and Cabrini’s mission.”
Yungmann, at her retirement party in December 2016
Yungmann has also received the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, the Rose and Ray Green Faculty Scholars Award, and an Honorary Alumna Award from Cabrini.
Yungmann came to Cabrini in 1983 when Jerry Zurek, PhD, now Chair of the Communication Department, was looking for a new television production teacher. He called local stations asking for recommendations, when one of the production managers suggested that he reach out to Yungmann, who had experience producing and directing at several stations, including WPHL-TV Philadelphia for five years.
Some of Yungmann’s earliest memories of Cabrini include the different location of the communication television studio, newspaper lab, and radio station, which all were in the Widener Center (compared to where they are now in Founder’s Hall).
“I remember walking into the newspaper lab and seeing a line of the first IBM personal computers on desks around the room,” Yungmann said. “The computer monitors could show a couple of lines of copy and we had to put in computer code to start a new paragraph or make a word bold. It was the dawn of digital writing, but the Communication Department was already on the cutting edge of technology. I can remember writing a crib sheet of code as a patient Jerry Zurek taught me how to use the DOS commands.”
The close-knit, supportive faculty in the Communication Department is one of Yungmann’s favorite aspects of Cabrini.
“I think this kind of camaraderie at work is really quite rare,” she said. “It meant that we could try all kinds of curriculum ideas and department activities. We could take risks and think in new ways while not being afraid to fail. That spirit fostered the innovation that has been at the heart of our Communication Department curriculum for decades.”
The Communication Department (l-r): Jillian Smith ('09), John Cordes, PhD, Cathy Yungmann, Dawn Francis, EdD ('93), and Jerry Zurek, PhD
Yungmann says that she has loved sharing half of her life with the Cabrini family, including her students, who keep her motivated as they question and challenge her. More than 1,000 students have taken her Introduction to Video Production course, many of whom have gone on to jobs using the skills they learned in her classes.
“I love watching students grow and blossom into adults and professionals,” she said. “I love following their personal and professional lives after they graduate. Luckily, there's social media so we can still keep in touch!”
Next semester, Yungmann will teach part time at Cabrini and will help maintain the video equipment, in addition to her other planned retirement activities, such as gardening (even more), traveling, reading, visiting with her grandson, giving more time to community organizations, and, if you can believe it, sleeping in.
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Nancy Hutchison, 1995 Yearbook |
Nancy Hutchison, Director of the Center for Career and Professional Development
When Nancy Hutchison started at Cabrini in 1989 as a part-time Job Developer in the new Cooperative Education program, it was in a division separate from the Career Services office.
The program, which was grant-funded in the first few years, became fully integrated with Career Services in the mid-1990s. Hutchison became its Director and hired two others in the office.
“Our students were so eager to get real-world professional work experience,” Hutchison said. “It was so exciting to work with all of them and at the same time work with employers to develop and grow a professional co-op/internship program.”
For a chunk of the ’90s, Hutchison and her staff worked without computers, organizing research and documents in binders and file cabinets.
“I recall meeting with Jerry Zurek and Cathy Yungmann to help place English/Communication majors in co-ops,” Hutchison said. “The next day, Jerry delivered to me his internship loose leaf binder and wished me well.”
Even with the earliest computers, Hutchison recalls challenges that no one in the workplace faces today. If she and her staff had to present elsewhere on campus, they would take the full desktop and wires, transport them in her van, and set it all back up in the Widener Lecture Hall or wherever they were presenting.
“What a task!” she said. “I laugh at that thought now but we did it many times.”
Hutchison met several people in her early years at Cabrini who would become quite influential to her, including Martha Dale, then Director of Alumni Affairs.
“Martha and I worked together for many years on many endeavors,” she said. “Through knowing and working with Martha, I became involved with the Alumni Board and worked closely as a liaison to that group for many purposes.”
In 1997, Hutchison received the Honorary Alumna Award for outstanding service to the Alumni Association, a “very special honor and memory,” she said.
Another influential person she met in the early 1990s was Nancy Gorevin Costello (’71), then Special Assistant to the President for Mission, who invited Hutchison to become involved with a committee that was developing a new mission for the college. Even to this day, when Hutchison reads about another organization, she first finds the mission statement to learn about the heart of the organization.
During her 27 years at Cabrini, the employment industry went through considerable changes, which influenced the structure of the career office at Cabrini. In 2012, Hutchison secured a nationally recognized external review team to visit campus for two days—a move that helped Hutchison transition her office to the Center for Career and Professional Development, providing a more holistic approach to career development and expanded services, including a new Assistant Director for Employer Relations.
“As industry changes, employers' needs change and academia must respond,” she said. “For instance, the rapidly developing field of technology in all disciplines has created the need for robust technology education. With technology and social media advances, all students must be technologically savvy, conversant with social media platforms, and able to offer these skill sets to employers.”
Hutchison worked closely with deans, department chairs, and faculty to ensure that Cabrini’s curriculum aligned with the growing needs of businesses. One example is when she consulted with the Communication Department to address the increasing trend of employers wanting students to help create and maintain websites and market their organizations through various media, which helped build a case for developing the Digital Communication and Social Media major. The Center for Career and Professional Development also started to offer workshops and one-on-one meetings with students and alumni to teach them how to use social media platforms for professional development.
The Center for Career and Professional Development staff at Nancy Hutchison's retirement reception (l-r): Kareem Calliste, Nancy Hutchison, Susan Fazio, and Shakeyia Kersey
“I will miss working with our students and faculty daily, meeting with colleagues and alumni and fostering new employer relationships,” Hutchison said. “I will miss having the opportunity to make a difference within the Cabrini community.”
Her retirement plans include travel—and a lot of it. She has family all over the country, including California, Washington, Wisconsin, Maine, and Florida—all begging for visits. First, Hutchison and her husband will be sailing in the British Virgin Islands this winter.
She also plans to expand her volunteer efforts, catch up on reading, and continue to visit Cabrini’s campus for theater productions and fine arts programs.