Mari Radford - Protecting Communities with a Global Vision

Mari Radford has been an integral member of communities in parts of the world that many Americans may be familiar with through newspaper headlines and the evening news, but few have ever experienced firsthand.

Helping ensure the safety of civilians and soldiers in war torn Mogadishu, Somalia, whose conflicts inspired the reality-based Black Hawk Down.  Evacuating refugees escaping tribal violence in Rwanda. Building communities from the ground up in Russian Georgia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Radford, 46, has been a ground level witness and participant in events on the global stage. Graduating with a Master’s degree in Community and Regional Planning (CRP) from Temple University Ambler and walking in graduation ceremonies on May 14 — Radford is also the keynote speaker for the Ambler College Graduation Ceremony — she intends to use her global perspective to help plan the safety of our communities for today and tomorrow.

Her journey from history major to U.S. State Department employee to CRP master’s degree recipient begins in Oregon continues to Africa and Asia and ends in Ambler — though this ending is just the beginning of the next chapter of her life.

READ MORE

Kimberly Karczewski - Ready for Her Close-Up

Meet the next Barbara Walters.

You may not know her name yet, but you will. Kimberly Karczewski will make sure of that.

On May 14, Karczewski will graduate — Communications degree in hand — with a stellar 3.88 average. And that’s just the first step in her plan for the future.

“Within Communications, I felt like there were a lot of different things that I could do, a lot of different avenues to explore — broadcasting, public relations, marketing. I knew I’d get a feeling for, and a background in, a lot of career possibilities,” she said. “With Ambler, I fell in love with the campus immediately. I had a terrific tour guide and I liked the fact that it offered residence halls so I could enjoy that experience. Everyone I met was very welcoming and friendly.”

Spending her entire four years at Ambler, Karczewski has left an indelible mark on the campus community. Beginning in her freshman year, she immediately became an integral part of student life on campus in addition to introducing prospective students to everything that Ambler has to offer as an Owl Ambassador for four years and a Freshman Orientation Leader during her sophomore and junior years.

READ MORE

David Burns - Partnering for Success

David Burns credits one thing above everything else that has most contributed to his success at Temple University Ambler. For Burns, the support of his family — wife Geralyn and sons Sam and John, the latter of whom will be transferring to Temple in the fall — was not simply welcomed, it was essential.

“My wife was the A number one fan for me doing this, coming back to school and always doing my best. It was a perfect situation where I could return to the classroom and still be on deck for parent-teacher conferences and the needs of my family,” said Burns, 58, who will graduate with a degree in Landscape Architecture on May 14. “It’s a true partnership. I don’t think it could be done without significant other support.”

Burns’ journey to this next phase in his life began in 2001, when he started at Ambler as a non-matriculated student after serendipity struck and provided him with his first piece of information about the campus programs.

“I was a medical supply salesman for 25 years. We were living in California when my wife took a job with Wyeth and we moved to temporary housing here — that’s where I received a flyer from Ambler addressed to a previous resident,” he said with a laugh.

READ MORE

Jennifer Johnson - The Art of Design

Jennifer Johnson is a veteran of the Philadelphia Flower Show.

While many of Temple University Ambler’s Landscape Architecture graduating seniors have maybe one or two years of Flower Show experience under their belts thanks to the hands-on, design-build nature of the program, Johnson has eight.

A graduate of W.B. Saul High School in Philadelphia, Johnson had already been a volunteer at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s premiere event for four years running. She wasn’t about to let that streak end when she made the natural transition to the Ambler Campus.

“I asked to volunteer as a freshman and as a sophomore. It gave me the opportunity to see how the exhibits were built and to interact and learn from the students in the classes ahead of me,” she said. “When I was asked to lead the graphics team for the 2008 exhibit (“The Big Four Mississippi Meander”), I was extremely honored and returned to volunteer again in my senior year. The terrific benefit of design-build projects like our Flower Show exhibits is that you get to see a concept become a design and then that design is constructed and built by hand — it gives you a real sense of accomplishment.”

Johnson came by her passion for landscape architecture and design quite naturally.

READ MORE

Ada Sklyarsky - Safety in Numbers

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Ada Sklyarsky took a less than direct path to Temple University Ambler and her B.A. in Accounting.

While Sklyarsky will graduate with an exemplary 3.95 average when she walks during Temple Commencement ceremonies on May 14, it was a “long, strange trip” as the song goes to get to the cap and gown and that trip begins in Nikolaev, Ukraine.

“A lot of our family had already moved to Philadelphia and California. Everyone could feel the collapse coming, so my parents made the choice to move and it was certainly the right one,” said Sklyarsky, who came to the U.S. at the age of 8. “I remember feeling kind of sad at first, but I adjusted quickly. Within the first three months, I was speaking English well enough to attend school.”

After completing high school, Sklyarsky took five years off — what she jokingly refers to as the “lost years” — to travel to various parts of the world, get married, and “read Dostoyevsky.”

“I was a teenager and I wanted to have fun, I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I knew at that point I wasn’t yet ready to put my best effort into college,” she said. “I traveled around the U.S., visited Austria, and returned to the Ukraine, where I met my husband Vasyl.”

READ MORE

Michael Cristinzio - Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Michael Cristinzio is one of those rare students that knows exactly what he wants to be when he grows up.

His family’s business, the 21-acre Green Acres Nursery and Garden Center in Colmar, turned 30 this year. He fully intends to keep it going for another 30 and has already been hard at work developing a plan to expand the business and help it thrive for years to come.

“I’ve been working there since I was a little kid. I always wanted to go into the family business and knew I needed to learn more about the industry, which is what brought me to (Temple University) Ambler,” said Cristinzio, of Chalfont, who lived on campus for his first two years while commuting as a junior and senior. “Speaking with other people in the industry, Ambler has a great reputation for its landscape architecture and horticulture programs. With the teacher to student ratio alone, I knew it would be a good place for me to learn and gain experience.”

With a 3.87 grade point average, four years of intensive study in the deeply intermeshed horticulture and landscape architecture programs in addition to a focus on marketing and business courses — not to mention a newly minted degree in Horticulture — Cristinzio is ready to take that next step and he’s already provided a comprehensive glimpse into his vision for expanding Green Acres Nursery.

READ MORE