Notable Alumni

Al DeGulis ('56) is man of elegance and courtly manner. After graduating cum laude from John Carroll, Al earned an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and went on to great success in investment management, first with Central National Bank and then with Alliance Capital Management. With his beloved wife, the late Helen, Al raised three great children. In the community, he has been an exemplary man for others, serving as a trustee of St. Vincent Charity Hospital and a financial consultant to the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine; as an investment volunteer of the Cleveland diocese and a force in the George Dively School of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. For his alma mater, Al has been the son upon whom the family of John Carroll University has relied for guidance, support, generosity and enthusiasm, Al has been a trustee of John Carroll and a president of our Alumni Association. We are blessed because he lives in the university's neighborhood. We are doubly blessed because we live so powerfully in his heart. When he was president of his alma mater's alumni, Al DeGulis said,"We must do everything we can to support this university so that it continues to be a vital and deeply Jesuit center of higher learning." Al has brought to that great mission the profound gifts of his intelligence, leadership, and dedication.

Timothy John Russert, Jr. ('72) was an American icon and one of the most trusted figures in the media. As senior vice president and Washington bureau chief for NBC News since 1991, he was a magnetic presence as the managing editor and moderator of “Meet the Press,” the longest-running, most-popular and most-influential of the Sunday morning political talk shows. Mr. Russert was a dominant force in the news media. He and his colleague Brian Williams co-moderated the Democratic Debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton last February in Cleveland.
When people remember the Bush/Gore cliffhanger in November 2000, most of them see Mr. Russert's face and hear his voice as he guided the nation through that thicket. Son of the now-famous “Big Russ,” a Buffalo, New York, truck driver, the younger Russert was president of the Student Union at John Carroll, and a respected campus figure during a tumultuous era characterized by Vietnam War protests. He won the Robert Beaudry Man of the Year Award in his senior year and received an honorary doctorate in 1997. He loved John Carroll and was an alumni stalwart who supported the University in many ways, including a special appearance in Cleveland last year to raise funds for John Carroll’s scholarship initiative for low-income families.

Beverly Hawk ('75) went to South Africa as a high school exchange student and the savage injustice of racial apartheid she witnessed changed her life. She took a path in which she was the minority, pursuing Black studies and African studies, and that path led her, eventually, to come to teach at a historically black American college, and it took her on scholarly Fulbright expeditions to Kenya and Malawi. Initially, as an academic bearing a Ph.D., Beverly Hawk's was a process of scholarly seeing. While the scholar endures and the seeing never ceased, her process has also become a process of feeling and touching and helping. As she saw apartheid when she was a girl, she saw AIDS as an adult academic; she saw, among other causes for grief, the fact that the land of Malawi contains among two million orphans among its 10 million souls. She says now, "AIDS ate my research agenda." She also says, "To be of service to the continent we study, Africanists must address today's health crisis." Beverly Hawk is endeavoring to do that. She has raised funds and built cultural bridges and she is studying public health so that she can find ways to help heal. She is moving deeper into the process of seeing and feeling and touching and helping.

It does not quite do justice to Don Kuratko ('74) to call him an academic. Force of nature might be a more illuminating description. While the Chicago native may not have invented entrepreneurship education, he has most definitely established a large equity stake in that branch of academia. Kuratko has published eight books, including the leading text in use in American universities, Entrepreneurship, a Contemporary Approach. He has written more than 150 articles on launching your own venture. Entrepreneur magazine said Kuratko is the top entrepreneurial educator in the land. The program that he created at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, was assessed as the No. 1 state university program in America. He's been named Entrepreneur of the Year, elected to the National Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame, judged to be that National Outstanding Entrepreneurship Educator, and he has effectively annexed Ball State's teaching awards - 14 consecutive years for the College of Business Teaching Award, all four of the university-wide teaching honors Ball State bestows. As the Stoops Distinguished Professor, Kuratko is the first to be named a distinguished professor of the Indiana institution's college of business. One of the nation's leading voices of entrepreneurship, the professor has inspired visions and trained a multitude to meet the challenge of bringing visions to life.

Bishop Edward Pevec ('56) has long been celebrated (quietly) for humility, gentleness and the intensity of his loving attention. In his 54 years as a priest of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese, Edward Pevec has been the one who was quietly and gently present when you were sick or your heart was broken or you needed to talk or needed him to bury your father or marry your daughter. When he became a bishop in 1982, the newspaper said that "Bishop Pevec sees his role as bishop the same as his role as priest: being Jesus to others. He hopes others will be Jesus to him." He has been a powerful vicar of Christ and he has walked in the world in such a way that his message inviting others to be Jesus to him has never failed to be strikingly clear. Before Edward Pevec became a bishop, he was a memorable pastor and an important religious educator who used well his doctorate in education in leading generations of seminarians. Since his elevation - a word that exists in tension with his deep humility - Edward Pevec has been a spiritual anchor for the Catholics of northeast Ohio. In a time of profound challenges for the Church, Bishop Pevec continues to serve as an exemplar.

More alumni news and events can be found on the JCU Alumni website.