special honors

College recognizes six new ‘Alumni of Distinction’

John Dillin

C. Del Galloway

Maryfran Johnson

Jamie McIntyre

Donald Thomas

Bonni Tischler

Six graduates of the College have been named Alumni of Distinction, Dean Terry Hynes has announced. They bring to 74 those who have been recognized from among the more than 20,000 alumni. The six will be honored at the College Awards Dinner on April 4.

They were recommended to the Dean by the Alumni and Professional Relations Committee after a vote of current and emeritus faculty.

The honorees are:

John Dillin, JM 1958, retired recently after 38 years as a reporter and editor with The Christian Science Monitor. During his tenure he reported from Vietnam, Atlanta, Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., and was also managing editor. He started his career as a reporter for the St. Augustine Record and The Tampa Tribune. At the time of his retirement last July he was associate editor and Washington Bureau chief. He is currently on a special assignment for the 100th anniversary of the Monitor in 2008. He received the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Washington correspondents in 1993.

C. Del Galloway, PR 1981, MA 1983, is executive vice president and COO of Husk Jennings Advertising and Public Relations in Jacksonville. He is the newly elected treasurer of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). He was director of corporate communications for AT&T American Transtech and worked in account management for Young & Rubicam and Cohn & Wolfe in the Tampa Bay area and Caraway Kemp Communications in Jacksonville. He was chair of the North American Public Relations Council and the Florida Public Relations Association (FPRA). He is a former chair of the Public Relations Advisory Council and member of the College Capital Campaign Steering Committee.

Maryfran Johnson, JM 1978, is editor-in-chief of Computerworld, a national newsweekly with a circulation of 255,000, and vice president of editorial content for Computerworld.com. She supervises a staff of 65. She is a computer technology consultant for CBS Evening News. She was founding editor of Computerworld’s Client/Server Journal in 1993. She earned a B.A. degree in French literature from SUNY-Albany, and an M.A. in journalism from Ohio State University.

Jamie McIntyre, TEL 1976, is military affairs correspondent at the Pentagon for CNN in Washington, D.C., a position he has held for 10 years. In that time he has traveled more than 400,000 miles and reported from more than 55 countries. He covered U.S. and NATO operations in Somalia, Iraq, Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda and Kosovo. Prior to joining CNN in 1992, he spent 12 years at Washington’s all-news WTOP radio and as host for the Sunday morning magazine program Capital Edition on WUSA-TV in Washington. He and his wife, Roberta, TEL 1976, have two children.

Donald Thomas, PR 1968, is COO of the American Cancer Society, a position he assumed in February 1998, and is based in Atlanta. He has spent his entire career with ACS, where he now supervises a budget of $500 million, a staff of 6,000 and nearly three million volunteers. He rose to executive to vice president of the Florida division in 1990 and joined the national staff in 1994. He is a member of the Public Relations Advisory Council and the College Capital Campaign Steering Committee.

Bonni G. Tischler, TEL 1966, is chief of the office of field investigations for the U.S. Customs Service and the first woman to hold that position. In 1971 she was one of the first federal sky marshals and became a special agent in 1977. Now a 29-year veteran at Customs, she is the highest-ranking female federal government agent. She was the first woman to head a field office in 1987. In 1997 she was named to head the Office of Investigations, where she oversaw 4,500 agents and investigative personnel at 152 locations in the U.S. and 26 foreign countries. In her current position she supervises 13,000 employees and 300 ports of entry. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Center for Women and Policing in 2000. In 1984 she received the Julie Y. Cross Memorial Award in recognition of her achievement in aiding women in law enforcement. She earned a master’s degree at National-Louis University.