Catching up with OHIO’s Cutler Scholars Program alumni
For the past 22 years, dozens of Ohio University students have had unique, life-changing experiences thanks to the visionaries and donors behind OHIO’s Cutler Scholars Program.
Ohio University’s premier merit scholarship program, the Cutler Scholars Program provides promising young adults a four-year scholarship, mentorship, and academic enrichment and experiential learning opportunities—all with a goal of cultivating leaders in all aspects of life, change-makers and advocates for justice. The incoming first-year students selected for the program live together, participate in weekly colloquium and engage in activities that include outdoor leadership and international experiences, as well as public service and career-related internships.
The program is the result of alumnus Wilfred R. Konneker, BS ’43, MS ’47, HON ’08, and Jack G. Ellis, a former vice president for development at OHIO, who were discussing ways to recruit high-achieving students to Ohio University. Their vision gained the support of then-President Charles J. Ping, and in the fall of 1996, Ohio University welcomed its first six Cutler Scholars, named after OHIO’s founding father, Manasseh Cutler.
Thanks to the support of dozens of generous donors, the Cutler Scholars Program has expanded over the years. This past fall, 15 first-year students began their OHIO legacy as Cutler Scholars.
Ohio Today news recently caught up with five Cutler Scholars alumni who reflected on favorite memories of the program and how it has contributed to their personal and professional success.
As an Ohio University undergraduate, J. Warren McClure and Stephen H. Fuller Cutler Scholar Jackson Lavelle (back row, far left), BA’ 14, was the president of the Student Alumni Board (SAB) and occasionally mentors current SAB members.
How did being a Cutler Scholar shape your OHIO experience?
Jackson Lavelle, BA ’14 and J. Warren McClure and Stephen H. Fuller Cutler Scholar, associate at Jones Day: The Cutler Scholars Program helps and inspires its students to become better leaders, more intellectually curious and further engaged in their communities. This support and inspiration motivated me to seek leadership roles within student government and other organizations, attend speakership series outside of my academic discipline and give back to Ohio University and Athens in new ways.
Jackson Lavelle is an associate at Jones Day’s law firm in Columbus, Ohio.
Jordan Templeton, BBA ’10 and Beth K. Stocker Cutler Scholar, learning designer at Wildfire Education: It kind of had everything to do with it. Being a Cutler Scholar sort of transcends what you do in many ways. Part of it is just being in a community of other scholars that meet weekly and you’re discussing a shared book that you’re all reading and that often has connections that you think about in other courses that you’re taking. And then, for me, one of the most powerful experiences was being able to tailor the enrichment experiences that the scholarship allows you to do each year to what I was studying. For example, I was really interested in economic development, so my junior year I spent time working at a microfinance institute in Nicaragua. Each year, the enrichment experiences I did as part of the scholarship sort of helped to better develop my understanding of development and poverty in places within the United States and across the world.
Toby Fallsgraff, BSJ ’04 and David C. and Joan Herrold Wood Cutler Scholar, freelance/contract digital strategist: The Cutler scholarship experience was the biggest throughline in my entire college experience. I was involved with a lot of different groups, like OU College Democrats, and I did some reporting and journalism and worked for The Post for a while and worked for ACRN the radio station and other political and progressive organizations on campus. Throughout the whole time I was there, the one constant was the Cutler scholarship, so it was like a cornerstone of my OU experience. Part of it is you start with an Outward Bound experience, so my college experience started before I even showed up on campus for the first quarter.
Cheryl Mukosiku, BS ’17 and Botswana Top Achiever Cutler Scholar, graduate student at St. George’s University: I liked having CQ (Cutler Colloquium). That was always good because it gave me a sense of community. It was a very safe space to discuss pressing issues. So yeah, I would start with that.
Regina Beach, BSVC and BSJ ’09 and Lizabeth K. and Charles R. Emrick Jr. Cutler Scholar, freelance writer and online English teacher: Cutler’s an awesome opportunity to be with other like-minded people in a really small, intimate setting. Ohio University is huge, and as a freshman, you feel like you don’t really know what’s going on, but the Cutler scholarship is super intimate and you get to know the directors and meet with upperclassmen every week. You get this built-in family of support and mentors and people who have done it before, so it makes a big university setting feel a lot smaller.
Beth K. Stocker Cutler Scholar Jordan Templeton, BBA ’10, is seen teaching mathematics in a seventh-grade classroom at High Tech Middle Media Arts.
What is your favorite memory of being a Cutler Scholar?
Lavelle: During weekly colloquium sessions, we were often joined by faculty members who were experts on the topic that we were exploring for the given quarter or semester. I always looked forward to hearing from these professors, who were often from different academic disciplines than my own. These sessions helped me see new points of view and taught me to think creatively about the issues at hand.
Templeton: That brings up two to mind for me. The first is a more regular one. It was just meeting in our weekly colloquiums, and I can remember everyone around the rectangular table and engaging in discussion that wasn’t about a right answer, but rather points of view on very complex issues, like race in America or poverty in America. So that’s a common one that, when I think of the program, I think of the conversations that happened there.
(From left) Beth K. Stocker Cutler Scholar Jordan Templeton, BBA ’10; College of Business alumnus Bill McCormick, BBA ’08; and Dr. James H. and Nellie Rowley Jewell Cutler Scholar John Simmons, BBA ’10, are pictured in China where, as OHIO undergraduates, they are participated in a College of Business global competitiveness program.
When I think of more powerful moments, it was certainly the experiences I had because of my travels through the enrichment. I remember working in Thailand with an organic farmers network and getting to harvest rice with them and make a meal and then learn about the process of their developing businesses around their organic products and selling them at markets.
Fallsgraff: The Cutler scholarship, there were a lot of different components to it. You’re required to do an internship, volunteer, study abroad and work in a business environment as well as the Outward Bound. All of those experiences were each memorable and life experiences—things that I think about constantly. It forced me to get out of my comfort zone over and over again, and it made me feel like I could live anywhere and worked in any environment and set me up for success.
The program did that for me, but in terms of my favorite memory, I just think every week the colloquium where a group of the Cutler Scholars get together and talk about an issue that is particularly relevant in current events. It’s kind of like the modern-day salon where you’re talking about what’s going on in the world. They were regular and something I could look forward to as an environment where there would be open discussion and different perspectives, especially later on. My group of people, at least I, initially felt more shy, and a little later people felt less shy and those conversations were more powerful. So, I would say the colloquium was probably my favorite memory just because it was a constant. It’s what I think about first when I think about the Cutler scholarship.
Mukosiku: It would have to be either our incoming retreat or the senior one. I think it was nice to have both because I remember the first one and how we were all nervous and didn’t know each other and were kind of like, ‘What are we getting ourselves into?’ And then being able to go back four years later and, you know, so much growth, so much we’ve accomplished and so much we wanted to do. I think that, for me, was one of my most memorable Cutler moments.
Beach: One time I brought my pet rabbit to our colloquium sessions, which was really funny. I adopted a rabbit from the Buckeye House Rabbit Society. A French professor, Herta Rodina, at OU fosters out rabbits, and my landlord on Mill Street didn’t allow cats, so I adopted a rabbit and he came with me to Chicago after I left Ohio University and he became like our little mascot.
Also, the summer experiences are incredible. I taught English in Tanzania and went sea kayaking in Alaska, I studied abroad in Germany with Ohio-Leipzig European Center (OLEC), I worked for the Ohio Newspaper Association, and I don’t know if I would’ve done any of those things without the assistance of Cutler.
David C. and Joan Herrold Wood Cutler Scholar Toby Fallsgraff (center), BSJ ’04, is seen with fellow Ohio University students and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland at an OHIO Homecoming. Photo courtesy of Christopher Dilts
How has being a Cutler Scholar helped you professionally and personally?
Lavelle: “The professional and personal worlds often require the same skill to succeed—connecting with individuals who are different from yourself. The program’s weekly colloquium coupled with programs and speakers at Ohio University gave me a diverse knowledge and experience base from which I constantly draw to connect with individuals from various backgrounds.”
Templeton: Well, professionally it certainly had me engaging with people from all walks of life—people who have similar backgrounds to mine, people who have different ones in a variety of different stages in their experiences. So we might be having dinner with a benefactor who is in their 70s or 80s and has had this amazing career and experience to offer, and you’re also sitting next to someone at the Cutler Scholars table who may have grown up in a very different neighborhood, and so you learn how to engage with and interact with people from all walks of life and all ages and really connect.
Then, personally, it was everything. I think through the enrichment experiences, which I would have never been able to have without the support of the program, where I traveled to China, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Thailand. Those helped for me cement that I wanted to be working in social justice and eventually led me into education because I saw that as the biggest barrier to social mobility regardless of what country I was in—it was their access to an education.
Toby Fallsgraff is pictured with his wife, Laura, and their daughter, Ruby.
Fallsgraff: So the first thing you do is, I chose this Idaho whitewater rafting thing. I was not somebody who did a lot of camping, and so suddenly, immediately out of your comfort zone. I think the piece that kept emerging from each experience was I found myself in a completely new environment doing something I’d never done before and I had to figure out how to make it work. Whether that’s living in France and having to speak French every day (I theoretically studied it, but it’s a lot different living there) or moving by myself as a 19-year-old to New Orleans for the summer and working for an anti-death penalty nonprofit organization and figuring out to not just learn that issue and how to write about the issue but also how to be a person in an office with a staff and how to live in a city by yourself that I’d never been to before. So there were all these things that forced you to get out from your safe spaces and be uncomfortable, but grow.
Mukosiku: I think professionally definitely giving me the confidence to express myself. You know, doing CQ (Cutler Colloquium), when we had our debates, you had to argue for what you believed in or sometimes being able to be on the other side. That would happen my first two years. It would be like, ‘OK, how many of you think this? How many of you think that? Alright, so now you’re going to argue from the other person’s perspective.’ I think that helped both professionally and personally, moving sort of from that undergrad setting to meeting people with different belief systems. I don’t feel intimidated; I feel more comfortable to challenge or listen to what other people believe or try and see things from their standpoint, and I think that came from CQ and being forced into those uncomfortable situations.
I spoke to one of the freshman Cutlers. I said I miss having CQ because it was a sure place for growth every week, even though I hated it at that moment because we had to write blogs and everything. I look back at it now and I’m like, wow, that was dedicated time to explore something other than what I was doing. I think that’s something so vital where you’re not just caught up in— like for me medicine right now—but understanding that there is more to life than medicine, and I got a lot of that from the Cutler program.
Beach: I would say that it really helped me grow professionally because right from the get-go you’re interacting with movers and shakers. I met my benefactors, the Emericks, who are just super prominent people, and just meeting so many people. Dr. Ping was at all of our colloquium sessions, so meeting the former president of Ohio University who founded the program and being able to have this connection to a huge network of influential people has been so wonderful. And then personally, you just are in this little group of awesome, scholarly, forward-thinking progressive humans, and so being able to be mentored by the upperclassmen scholars and then taking on that mentorship role and mentoring the younger students is such good personal development.
Botswana Top Achiever Cutler Scholar Cheryl Mukosiku, BS ’17, poses for one last photo before leaving Athens after graduation.
What has been your greatest accomplishment to date?
Lavelle: Ohio University and Athens gave me the building blocks to excel in law school and begin my career as an attorney in Columbus, Ohio. I am proud to now be in a position where I can make an impact in my community with the zeal that the Cutler Scholars Program instills in its students.
Templeton: I think for me it’s the opportunity to teach in a classroom. For many years for me that was teaching middle-school students and the opportunity to try and engage them in really intellectually-stimulating problems and help them find their passion for learning. Or in my work now I’m working with teachers and it’s sort of the opportunities I have to support them in designing learning experiences that will be really powerful for students.
Fallsgraff: My love for politics kind of grew while I was on campus, and I never would have drawn it up this way. I studied journalism, but I ended up doing political communications in the digital space about five years after I left OU. Just because of the experiences I’ve had and a lot of luck honestly, I ended up working on the Obama team in 2012 in Chicago headquarters when I moved here. So I was the email director there, which was kind of a lifelong dream, working in a presidential campaign headquarters and working on a team that had a very real impact on not just the campaign but, some would argue, the country and the world. It was kind of a combination of a lot of different factors.
Cheryl Mukosiku is pictured at the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association Regional Meeting in Quito, Ecuador.
Mukosiku: I would say being able to represent one of the student organizations I’m a part of. So, it is the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association, and this January we had a regional meeting. It’s an international organization, so they have chapters in Canada, South America. For the U.S. they use the American Medical Students Association as sort of the umbrella for that, and so just being able to be part of the delegation from my university that went to Ecuador and being in a room full of medical students with similar passions and just being able to brainstorm and also advocate for certain things. For me, this was a big accomplishment or more of a humbling experience. That’s something that I’ve been able to look back on and say, wow, this is what I’m working toward and I’m not on my own fighting for health equity or universal healthcare—there are other people with me.
Beach: I don’t know if I can just pick one thing. I just came off of a Fulbright fellowship. So, I was teaching in Laos last year, which was awesome, and one of my Cutler mentors wrote a recommendation for that fellowship. I taught English as a second language in a teacher’s training college in Laos, which was an absolutely life-changing experience.
I’ve been an educator since I left Ohio University. I joined Teach for America. I graduated in 2009, and the media industry was literally crumbling to pieces. Newspapers were laying off everyone. No one was hiring. I had so many friends who were moving back home with their parents, and I was like I need a job, so I thought I would teach for a couple of years while the industry recouped and then I ended up teaching in Chicago Public Schools for eight years. I wrote a financial education curriculum, I taught fine arts for five years, so obviously that was really impactful and meaningful, too, but then I decided, hey, I always wanted to work abroad and travel and I’m not doing those things that I said were really important to me. I applied for a Fulbright and moved abroad, and the rest is history.
I’m currently freelance writing and teaching English online, and I’m actually moving to Europe for a couple of months. I’ve been doing a lot of adventures lately, a lot of long-distance cycling, I went to Bushcraft School and lived nine weeks in Maine off the grid this past fall and did a bunch of survival training exercises, which was probably sparked in a lot of ways through my Outward Bound experience through Cutler.
Before his passing, Ohio University alumni and Cutler Scholars Program supporters Charles R. “Chuck” Emrick Jr., BSCOM ’51, MSJ’ 52, and Lisabeth Emerick, BSJ ’52, hosted annual Christmas brunches for their Cutler Scholars. The Emricks are pictured at their 2011 brunch with Cutler Scholars (from left) Colin McCrone, BS ’08; Jamie Smith, BA ’11; Regina Beach, BSVC and BSJ’09; and Kacie Scherry Baon, BSSPS ’05.
How have you stayed connected to Ohio University and the Bobcat family?
Lavelle: I’ve enjoyed mentorship roles with students from the Cutler Scholars Program and Student Alumni Board. I also participate in alumni events, from annual Homecoming celebrations to events planned by city-based alumni chapters. Fortunately, Columbus is a short drive to Athens, and I frequently see my family and friends who live there.
Regina Beach is pictured this past fall during a nine-week Bushcraft School course in northern Maine where she lived off the grid and learned survival skills such as shelter-building and tool construction, including making the frame for this bucksaw.
Templeton: Well, it was a little harder for the last seven years. I lived in Southern California and I didn’t meet very many Bobcats out there, and I hadn’t been back on campus for a really long time, but I stayed connected to the program through reviewing scholarship applications each year, volunteering to help identify who might be a really good fit for the program, participating in calls with scholars who might have had an interest in going to one of the same places that I had been as a scholar myself. In the last six months I have moved back to Ohio, so I’m finding ways to get more involved with the program, like attending their senior retreat that’s happening in a couple months.
Fallsgraff: So many people I know from my OU days, I’m still in pretty close contact. Not everybody—it’s kind of how things go—but there are a number of people who are still really good friends of mine and a number of people who are still working in politics from my College Democrat days. I cross paths with them not infrequently and a very recent and strange coincidence happened recently on a project that I’m working on. It’s funny how you run into some of these people who I saw every week for three or four years and didn’t see them at all for a while and I occasionally see them in professional settings. I also get back to Athens, not as frequently as I’d like, but I was there last January and February for the Cutler Scholars interviews for the next class, and I’m hoping to come back this fall for some sort of event with the communications school.
Mukosiku: Well, with friends definitely through social media. But then I also get the OHIO Alumni emails, so that helps keep track of more formal communications, and we still get the First Fridays (emails) from President Nellis, and so that helps give more insight as to what’s going on. I’d say for the most part, Facebook and different forms of social media.
Beach: Oh, I have such a great network of friends and colleagues that I still keep in touch with—social media is great for that. This year I helped read applications for HTC. I always try to volunteer my time. I’m getting lunch in a couple of weeks with a development person at OHIO to share my story with him and help him reach out to prospective either donors or people who can spread the good word about Ohio University. Two of my three little siblings attended OU. My little sister just graduated in December, so through her I was able to kind of get a peek into what’s going on at OU, what’s new on campus, what new bars are out, what are the trends. So yeah, I try to keep my finger on the pulse and I try to get back to Athens every couple of years.
To see a full list of Cutler Scholars Program alumni, click here.