Ken Keuffel

Jody Daniels ’77 of Athens, Ga., has been on a remarkable musical journey, both as an instrumentalist and as a songwriter.
A fixture of the Grassland String Band since its founding in 2013, he plays banjo, guitar, and mandolin in the ensemble, which began life as a trio with a bluegrass feel but came to absorb influences of jazz, blues, gospel, Cajun, and rock as its membership grew to seven players. He has also written many of the songs that Grassland performs, describing them as “preachy” b...

Rick Thames ’75, an alumnus of Pfeiffer College, has written a book that should interest anyone who cares about the declining state of local news in the United States and what can be done to address it.
The book has a working title of Why Local News: A Memoir and Plea to Help Rescue an Endangered Form of Journalism, and McFarland Books will publish it within a year. It’s a response to some alarming trends in an industry that employed Thames as both a newspaper reporter and editor between 1978...

The vast majority of Americans do not exercise, even though the benefits of exercise are widely known. Why? And more to the point, what can be done to turn this situation around?
Dr. Katie Collins ’15, the recipient of this year’s Pfeiffer University Presidential Merit Award, has begun uncovering some intriguing answers.

Quang Vo, a sophomore piano performance major from Vietnam, is making quite a name for himself — and for Florida Gulf Coast University’s Bower School of Music & the Arts — throughout the state and internationally.

FGCU alum is on his way, having developed an app that connects music fans.

A pilot program designed to enhance the teaching skills of professors in Pfeiffer University’s undergraduate and graduate programs has been so successful that it will continue indefinitely, its chief organizers say.
The program, which confers a Pfeiffer Faculty Teaching Certificate (PFTC), offers monthly workshops, each on a different topic. Workshop topics include everything from teaching strategies to overcoming bias in the classroom.
Since 2022, two cohorts of 15 professors each have parti...

By the 1990s, David Smith ’70, the recipient of this year’s Outstanding Alumni Award, had established himself as a loyal supporter of his alma mater.
He was making regular financial donations to Pfeiffer, hosting gatherings of Pfeiffer alumni at his home in Charlotte, N.C., and staying connected through campus service days. He often rooted for the Falcons at various athletic contests, including those involving the men’s tennis team, on which he played so well in the 1960s that he became a mem...

Vince Eury ’87, who majored in music education at Pfeiffer College and sang in its Concert Choir, likes to make his voice heard. And he keeps finding new ways to do it.
“I’m always on the lookout for the next adventure,” he said. “Versatility has become one of my calling cards.”
Eury’s resume bears this out. A resident of northern Virginia who lived in Salisbury, N.C. during much of his youth, he has been a professional singer for some time. When he performs, his rich bass reveals a knack for...

23 teachers from 20 countries participated in the third Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement (TEA) program hosted by Florida Gulf Coast University from Jan. 24 to March 11.

Patricia “Patty” Clarke Erickson ’71, says that when her daughter, Sarah Erickson ’03, was four years old, she boldly proclaimed her intention to attend Pfeiffer and then never wavered in her wish to follow in her mother’s footsteps — and those of Patty’s mother, Carol Whittaker Clarke-Avrick ’45.
Carol attended Pfeiffer when it was a junior college, at the height of World War II. After that, she graduated from Greensboro College, but when she tells stories about her “college days” — and ther...

Darryl Green ’89 of Baltimore believes so deeply in the power of forgiveness that about 10 years ago, he forgave Kimyon Marshall, the man who murdered Ruben Cotton, Green’s younger brother, in 1988, when Green was a junior at Pfeiffer University, majoring in criminal justice. The story of Green’s journey to forgiveness has attracted the attention of multiple media outlets, including People Magazine (earlier this month), and it’s made him a sought-after speaker on forgiveness around the world....

Fayetteville, N.C. (June 23, 2023) — Earlier this month, several budding scientists, all high school students, participated in a free, two-week, residential summer camp on the Fayetteville State University (FSU) campus. Their mission: to take a crash course in climate change and the cutting-edge technologies that address it.
Funded by NASA, the course was called Earth Science and Geospatial Science and Technology: Cutting-edge Technologies for Examining Climate Change (CTECC). It was taught b...

Allayna Vanderheid, who graduated with a master of physician assistant studies in December, gained a favorable impression of the program long before she enrolled at Florida Gulf Coast University. This came courtesy of favorable reviews of the program from her sister, Zoe, a 2021 graduate.
So, when the time came for Allayna to consider PA programs, FGCU topped the list of possibilities.
“Zoe really loved her program at FGCU,” she said. “It was an easy decision for me to add it to my applications. When I had an admissions interview, they liked me, and I liked them, and it worked out perfectly."