Defining Moments

Danny Wuerffel: 20th Anniversary of Winning the Heisman Trophy By Sara Perlman, TEL 2017 “My experience at Florida, both as a student and football player, had a great impact on my life and continues to do so on a daily basis.” It has been 20 years since Danny Wuerffel, B.S.…

Ramon Looby began his academic career in the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, but upon graduation he knew that he wanted more. He had a passion for communication and found a kindred spirit in the UF College of Journalism and Communications. That kindred spirt was Dr. Lynda Kaid,…

Lainey Johnson Garcia considered herself an “impressionable” undergrad and one class with Dr. Mary Ann Ferguson left an impression that she would carry throughout her career. Dr. Ferguson encouraged her students to consider the role of business to be a force for good in the world and as communicators, to…

Scott Tatter, B.S. Telecommunication 1984, had his defining moment one night at a music nightclub. Tatter graduated from the CJC with a degree in hand and had no clue what his future held. He was supposed to be a football phenomenon, but that never happened after he blew out his…

I had just transferred from that other state university in Tallahassee, looking for a better male/female ratio and a chance to experience the college party life I had heard so much about. While there I “majored” in psychology, sociology, English and even accounting (a five-hour “C” helped motivate me to…

I knew I wanted to be a journalist well before I came to UF, but most of my defining moments came during my time there from 1979 through 1982. By the time I came to UF, I had already interned at the Poynter Institute and thought I was a real…

Summer internships are often remembered as grueling unpaid work. For Tom Kelleher, now chair of the CJC Advertising Department, he remembers his summer internships as defining moments in his life. As a pre-dental undergraduate student at the University of Florida, Kelleher would spend his weekends in St. Augustine, Fla., surfing…

WRAS-FM 88.5 was playing in the background when I stretched across my bedroom floor, laid Rolling Stone in front of me and opened its cover to read stories that led me to further question the Reagan administration. That moment in 1984, one that I repeated again and again during the…

You don’t rise to senior levels at one of the largest insurance companies in the world without a few defining moments. For Juan Andrade (JOU, POL ‘86), those defining moments came at three different stages of his life. The first was his grounding and education at the University of Florida…

Jennifer Boardman (PR ‘93) loved news and, upon graduation, headed to Atlanta to work for CNN. After a few years, she struggled with what she really wanted to do in her career – news or marketing. At that time, news marketing was pretty traditional – running on-air promos to build…

Adam Bornstein (MAMC ’08) was a lifelong fan of the University of Colorado, his parents’ alma mater, where he also attended intent on becoming a psychology researcher.  Two years after he graduated, while doing research at the university, he had an “aha moment” when he decided that what he really…

Early in Bruce Kallner’s career as a budding sportscaster in Des Moines, Iowa, he interviewed Hall-of-Fame golfer Gary Player.  The golfing great treated Kallner with such respect that it made a lasting impression about character and dignity and how to treat those in a professional environment. He also interviewed baseball Hall-of-Famer…