Alumni Profiles

Meet some of the outstanding alumni from the University of Dallas English program.

  Click on the name of the alumni for their full profile story. 

Zach Czaia

B.A. English, 2009

I've been a high school English teacher at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Minneapolis for 9 years, and still find myself drawing on the passion and good sense of my UD English professors, especially Dr. Crider, Dr. Waterman Ward, and Dr. Roper, in my own career as an educator.

Vallery Bergez Hrbacek

B.A. English, 2014

From Junior Poet to Senior Novel, I learned to own my ideas, to communicate them effectively, and to respond professionally to criticism or questions, even in a pressured environment.

Joseph Mazza

B.A. English, 2013

Joseph Mazza graduated from UD in 2013 with a B.A. in English.  After graduation, he taught at Great Hearts Academies in Arizona for three years before attending the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art for his MA in Classical Acting.

Claire Ballor

B.A. English, 2015

Claire Ballor is a breaking news reporter for the Dallas Morning News where she’s covered everything from serial killers and missing persons to the violent ambush on Dallas police in July. She came to the University of Dallas to study English with the intention of becoming an educator, but involvement with the campus newspaper ignited within her an unshakable passion for journalism.

Rudy Bush

B.A. English, 1997, M.A. Humanities, 2019

After graduating from the University of Dallas, Rudy Bush immediately began a career in journalism as a cub reporter for the San Antonio Express-News. His stories about topics from the annual rush for Christmas tamales to the tragic results of high-speed police chases led to an offer to work for the Chicago Tribune.

John Corralles

B.A. English, 2011

John Corrales, class of 2011,  is a news assistant for the National Desk at The New York Times. Prior to becoming a news assistant, he worked as marketing and legal assistant at a Manhattan criminal defense firm and as a reporter on the police beat at the Odessa American, a daily newspaper in Odessa, Texas.

Hunter Hammett

B.A. English, 2002 - Concentration in Studio Art

His UD education gave him a grounding in literature, culture, and the study of beautiful particulars.  Additionally, it afforded him the remarkable experience of traveling and studying abroad, inspiring in him a passion for fine food and wine, and his subsequent dedication to enology and gastronomy.

RoseMary Johnson

B.A. English, 2011

RoseMary Johnson went to work right after graduating in May 2011 for Catholic Heritage Curricula, a publisher of educational texts for Catholic homeschooling families. Her first book, an eighth-grade literature course called The Secret Code of Poetry, was published in August, 2011.

Michael Murphy

B.A. English, 2008

Michael Murphy, UD 2008, will spend ten months this year in Papua,New Guinea as a Fulbright Scholar helping to develop regulations based in part on the customary ways people resolve disputes.

Paul Spring 

B.A. English, 2011

Paul Spring graduated with a BA in English from the University of Dallas in 2011. Immediately after, he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to pursue a career in music. For his first two years he worked as a tutor and high school English teacher while playing gigs at nights and on weekend.

Michael Traylor

B.A. English, 2004

Michael Traylor, UD 2004, is a Certified Professional Landman working in the oil and gas industry. While English majors may not be normally associated with oil and gas, Michael believes that his literature background has been a benefit to his career.

Nick Wignall

B.A. English, 2007

"It turns out all that stuff about the virtues of a liberal education are pretty true: once you get past the initial hump of learning a new field’s vocabulary, the rest is well-traveled terrain—close reading, asking good questions, writing concisely. After finishing up my masters, I was sure that this psychology thing was it, so I applied to PhD programs and was accepted at UT Southwestern.”

Amanda Poulin

B.A. English, 2011

Amanda graduated from the University of Dallas in 2011 with a bachelor of arts degree in English and a concentration in Political Philosophy. She currently lives and works as a teacher of English as a second language (ESL) on Jeju Island in South Korea.

Shannon Valenzuela

B.A. English and Classics, 2000; PhD, 2007

Shannon (S.K.) Valenzuela graduated in 2000 with a B.A. in English and Classics. She married Frank Valenzuela (‘00, Politics) and then went on to study medieval literature at the University of Notre Dame. She received her PhD in 2007 and has recently returned to UD as an Adjunct Professor of English.

Mary Watson

B.A., 2009, M.A., 2010

As a senior at UD, Mary was torn between her passions for lyric poetry and for rhetoric and her lifelong dream of becoming a lawyer. While the study of the art of persuasion truly fascinated her, Mary was inescapably drawn to its practice.

Kate Wyman

B.A. English, 2008

The summer after her 2008 graduation from UD, Kate Wyman was given a 1910 Chandler & Price platen printing press. She spent that summer refurbishing its frozen gears, studying its history, and teaching herself how to make it print.

Emilie Johannes

B.A. English, 2011

Emilie Johannes graduated from UD in 2011 with her B.A. in English and an environmental science concentration. Upon graduating, she returned to her home state of Alaska as a technical writer for an energy research organization then for an independent Federal agency that dispersed grants to fund projects in rural Alaska.