After years of hard work and several near misses, 2021 saw Debra (Kempf) Shumaker '93 complete her quest to become a children's picture book author, with one book out in May and another to be published this fall.

For Viterbo vocal music performance grad Katherine Weber ’10, music has opened the world to her. Literally. She now lives in Amsterdam, engaged to a U.K. native, and has performances planned this year in several European countries as well as the U.S.

As an inner-city Milwaukee kid, Adrian Boyd ’92 didn’t see himself as a world traveler. His basketball skills and work ethic, however, led to him logging countless miles as a pro basketball player and entrepreneur, making a particularly big splash in New Zealand.

Josh Lichty is an assistant professor in the School of Education. Prior to teaching at Viterbo, he taught elementary and middle school for 16 years, including coaching numerous sports—he is currently coaching football and track in Onalaska. Lichty received his master’s degree in educational leadership from Viterbo in 2017.

The theme of the high school commencement speech Renee (Heuss) Volk ’99 gave, taken from a Dr. Seuss book, was telling: “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” The travel-loving mother of four has seen much of the world and now lives in a 300-year-old house in Germany.

Dillon McArdle has been named the director of the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center effective July 1. He succeeds Michael Ranscht, who became executive director of university relations in 2020.

Melissa Edgar, who graduated May 16 with a BS in biology, had already been accepted by the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth campus. She recently learned she had been awarded the Dean’s Scholarship, an incredibly prestigious and rare four-year, full-tuition medical school grant.

Thanks to COVID-19, the volleyball standout Maya Roberts has another year of eligibility. And thanks to Viterbo’s 4-plus-1 program, a year from now she’ll be graduating from Viterbo again, this time with a Master of Arts in Servant Leadership degree.

Rather than jump directly into a career after graduation from Viterbo, Marne Boehm '20 was inspired by her ethics studies to devote a year to volunteer service with Mercy Volunteer Corps in San Francisco. She loved it so much, she will do a second volunteer year, this time in Philadelphia. 

Nathalia Duque's musical theatre and business management studies at Viterbo have served her well since she graduated in 2018. She is a performer at Hong Kong Disneyland, a job she landed thanks in part to an internship at Walt Disney World during her time at Viterbo.