As the daughter of a Korean mother and African American father, Sim Wimbush ’08 enjoyed the best of two cultural and culinary worlds.
Alumni Profiles
Sisters Nancy Welch Barnby ’61 and Jill Welch ’64 said they never felt under pressure to attend Grinnell College. It was just an expectation that they never questioned.
Heather Benning ’96 never thought she would be part of conversations that decided the course of the NCAA basketball tournament and other collegiate sports championships.
The journey from her hometown of Yucaipa, California, to Grinnell was notable. She was the first in her family to attend college, it was the first time she had traveled by plane, and Iowa was the farthest she’d ever been from home.
When racing was shut down by the pandemic, Neil Martin ’99, clinical director of radiation oncology and co-director of the Prostate Cancer Center at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center in Boston, didn’t stop. He did dozens of 26.2-mile training runs, the equivalent of 57 marathons in a row. Running was a stress reliever at an incredibly stressful time.
Born and raised in Nepal, Suyog Shrestha ’06 knew early on that he wanted to study physics in the United States; and in the summer of 2002, he came to Grinnell. Now a particle physicist, he’s been working at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), just outside Geneva, Switzerland, for the past decade.
Booking concerts for the College led to the Stanford's work with Cajun culture, and from there to an album, an art exhibit, and a book.
Nominated by classmates and peers, recipients have distinguished themselves by service to their professions, communities, and the College
Josh Blue ’01 faced one of the tougher challenges posed by the pandemic: how to ensure young students continue to learn amid drastically altered learning environments.
As a result of his own challenges finding services in Grinnell, Kyle Parker ’17 founded ClipDart, an on-demand mobile barber service for people who do not have reliable access to barbershop services that focus on their specific hair care needs.