For musical theatre star-in-the-making Samantha Pauly ’12, there were some major disappointments in 2018, enough to make someone without her persistence quit. True to her form, though, Pauly stuck with it and had a banner career year in 2019, with 2020 promising to be even better.

Adeline (Berg) Blundy’s recollections of her time at St. Francis School of Nursing are a little bit fuzzy, but then that’s not surprising. As a member of the Class of 1941, it’s been almost 80 years since she graduated.

“That’s a long time ago,” said Blundy, who turned 102 on Aug. 5, 2019.

There was never any doubt about the chosen career of Viterbo University student Nicole Sanders. “My mom is a nurse, and I used to play with my toy medical kit ‘treating’ people when I was a kid,” said Sanders, a senior from Belleville. “I always knew I wanted to be a nurse.”

As a singer, Ann Schoenecker has applied her supple soprano voice to everything from opera to oratorio to musical theatre throughout the United States and Europe. Before coming to Viterbo, where she chairs the music department, Schoenecker taught at the Performing Arts Studios in Vienna, Austria, Luther College, the University of Minnesota, the University of Missouri.

Her college career was just a few months old when freshman Stephanie Sesvold realized her chosen major wasn’t quite right for her and what she really wanted to be was an attorney.

Logan Bjerkos, a senior social work major at Viterbo University, admits she was worried about the cost of attending college when she was considering where to study.

“I was terrified going into college, thinking about how I was going to afford this,” she said. “But Viterbo worked really well with all of the financial aid, the grants and scholarships.”

Gregory Cano is from Palatine, Ill., and has dreamed of becoming an engineer since he was a high school freshman.

Cano is now a sophomore engineering major at Viterbo University and is well on the way to making that dream a reality. He hopes to eventually work in mechanical engineering, but is enjoying the broad focus of his engineering studies at Viterbo.