Alumni Profiles

Michael Timm ’04 was a double major in English and anthropology. He was heavily involved in the College Days newspaper, first as a writer and then as its editor. Under his leadership, the paper won numerous awards for excellence, but, Timm says, “The greatest reward was the camaraderie forged deadline after deadline.” Between his sophomore and junior years, he traveled to Peru, where he worked with an archaeological field team from UCLA surveying the Lake Titicaca basin.

As a free-lance writer in Milwaukee, Timm has written a book about the history of the Robertson-Ryan Insurance Agency; now he’s writing a book about the history of the Coakley Brothers moving company. He edits an independent newspaper, Bay View Compass. During the summer of 2009, he studied creative writing at the University of Oxford in England. He has written and directed two interactive murder mystery plays, with a third soon to be performed at Milwaukee’s Alchemist Theatre. The next stage in Timm’s multifaceted career path will be pursuing a master’s degree with an emphasis in environmental journalism at UW-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences.

Kristen McCullough ’04, who double majored in English and communication, considers literature to be the most revealing study of life, people and history. She says, “Working with the English faculty at Ripon, I dabbled in creative writing, brought prose to life on film, coauthored an independent study course in Native American literature with Professor Kate Sontag and, most importantly, explored the workings of my own mind.” Outside of class, she was on the editorial board of College Days, and she presented original research at three national conferences, including a paper on the effect Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club had on her audiences.

After Ripon, Kristen spent five years in nonprofit management consulting, helping mission-driven organizations craft compelling messages about the value they bring to constituents and to the world. Finding herself drawn to the individuals she met along the way, she returned to school and pursued a master’s degree in clinical social work, emphasizing the psychological, economic and political forces at play in the lives of individuals. “I am now a therapist in child welfare,” she says, “I work alongside vulnerable children, parents and families to uncover and re-author the story of their lives and the lives of their communities.”