CRHS grad to be featured in Discovery Channel TV series

"The experience was great, it is a lot harder to act natural on camera than I thought it would be, but it was still a lot of fun," McCauley said. When watching the show, McCauley thinks, "most people will be surprised how hard it is dealing with airports and customs officials in other countries.

There is also a lot of danger involved in flying small airplanes over the ocean." The TV company has not announced when the series will air.

McCauley, who began skydiving in 1986, said he loved skydiving and saw an opportunity to make a career out of it. In addition to being a ferry pilot, McCauley co-owns "Skydive Twin Cities," based in Baldwin, Wis. McCauley, his wife Cathy, and their children, Claire and Connor, live in Menomonie, Wis.

As Anoka-Hennepin students prepare for the future, McCauley advises them to find a line of work that they love. "If you do what you love you'll never have to work a day in your life," he said.

Coon Rapids High School alum works at the tip of the world

After graduating from Coon Rapids High School in 1990, Alicia Ulwelling went to The College of St. Benedict to study piano. Sophomore year, she changed her major to education, but quickly decided she wouldn't be ready to stand in front of a classroom until she ventured out and learned more about the world. Ulwelling changed her major and graduated with a degree in biology.

That interest to learn more about the world has taken Ulwelling to the far reaches of the globe.

After graduation, Ulwelling worked at RockyMountain National Park in Colorado where she led winter ecology snowshoe walks and shared natural history information with park visitors. While working at the park, Ulwelling was introduced to wild land fire and aviation through the Alpine Interagency Hotshot crew, a specialized crew of 20 who fight large fires across the country.

From there, Ulwelling moved to Utah where she worked at Zion National Park and Dixie National Forest, and earned a certificate in geographic information systems (GIS). Ulwelling then moved to Grand Canyon Nation Park where she worked with the fire effects program.

It wasn't long before Ulwelling grew interested in the Grand Canyon Helitack crew. After spending three seasons on this specialized crew, Ulwelling gained the experience and knowledge necessary for her next adventure - working as a helotech in Antarctica.

Since October 2008, Ulwelling has spent three Antarctic summers, October through mid- February, working at McMurdo Station. A scientific research center, McMurdo is located on the southern tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency. It is operated by the U.S. Antarctic Program and is a branch of the National Science Foundation.

Ulwelling works for a helicopter contractor and transports science personnel and equipment to field sites. Scientists at McMurdo study animals and issues including penguins, seals, climate change, nematodes, and glaciology. Ulwelling enjoys her work and said each day is different.

"Some days we fly through the mountains of the Dry Valleys where a lot of the climate change research is happening," Ulwelling said.

"Other days we land on the sea ice and need to drill through to confirm that it is thick enough to land a Bell 212 helicopter before we can shut down and allow the Weddell seal researchers out to work. Some days we fly to Mt Erebus, an active volcano, at 10,000 feet."

"Each flight is different depending on the weather and the angle of the sun as it rises high in the sky. By mid-December, there is 24 hours of sunshine. I also enjoy meeting the people and scientists as they are involved with interesting and important research."

When people find out she works in Antarctica, Ulwelling is most often asked: how cold it gets, minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit in October; how warm it gets, 34 degrees Fahrenheit in February; are there penguins, yes; and are there polar bears, no, they live in the Arctic. Ulwelling is also asked about her most memorable day.

"One day I was standing at the sea ice edge watching and listening to numerous Orca whales surfacing and breaching while some curious and comical Adelie penguins were grouped on the ice," Ulwelling said.

After Ulwelling's work wraps up in February, she spends time traveling to warm destinations and visiting family. Ulwelling then heads off to Montana where she works with the Flathead National Forest conducting botany surveys.

As Anoka-Hennepin students prepare for their futures, Ulwelling recommends they get out of their comfort zones, stretch their imaginations and say "yes" to opportunities when they arise.

"Get out and travel the world, see how other people live and make friends from other cultures," she said. "If there is something that catches your interest, if there is something that you would like to do, go. Do what you can to learn about and protect our wild places, support science, and increase your knowledge and respect for the natural wonders that we all love."

For information about the U.S. Antarctic Program, go to: www.usap.gov.

From their father, Jeff, playing brass band compilations; to their mother, Carolyn, the principal's secretary at Coon Rapids Middle School, teaching them the words to Mamas and Papas songs; to their grandparents taking them to Orchestra Hall and the Ordway, music and theater were a part of their everyday life.

Bradley Beahen
A 1999 AHS graduate, Bradley currently lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. near his sister, Kate. In high school, he was involved in concert choir, concert orchestra, 7th Avenue, barbershop quartet and theater.

Bradley said Bruce Phelps, Kent Knutson, Michelle Hayes, Mike Halstenson, and Jan Thomsen were all major influences on his career path.

"After I was done singing for my first audition for 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,' Mr. Phelps pulled me aside and said, 'kid are you in choir this year?'" said Bradley. "I shyly said, 'no,' and with a big grin on his face he said, 'you WILL be next year!' That's really when my high school musical career began leading me to the profession I have today. I was very fortunate to have such a talented and dedicated music staff to work with and be supported by."

Prior to his involvement in high school, Bradley said his grandmother, Phil, started him in music lessons at McPhail in Minneapolis by the age of 2. In addition to the summer concert series at Orchestra Hall, Bradley said the Beahen family would take weekly trips to music stores to find new music to play.

"Both of my parents are musical as well, even though they didn't make careers out of it," he said. "I love making my dad drag out his trumpet, or play piano duets with my mom or grandma. I think in a way, the three of us have inspired them not to let go of the musical skills they pretend not to have."

After high school, Bradley started college at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, Penn. but left his junior year for his first professional job in "Plaid Tidings" at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul.

"I was fortunate to earn my Actors Equity card during that run and the Ordway was really the spring board that launched my professional career," Bradley said. "I did four more shows at the Ordway as well as 'Grease' at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre. I also joined a commercial agency in Minneapolis and did a lot of voice-over, print and commercial work."

During this past year, Bradley had his first off-Broadway experience with a standby part for the lead character in "Enter Laughing." Currently he is performing again in "Plaid Tidings" at the Gem Theatre in Detroit, MI.

Bradley said the best thing about being a performer is the ability to express yourself every day. He said he's worked in more than seven major cities and made friends from all over the world.

"Six days a week, going to work consists of performing for a live audience - and my day ends with applause," Bradley said. "I wish everyone could experience that thrill."

Although it's not very easy, Bradley encourages all Anoka-Hennepin students to follow their dreams.

"Following your dreams takes a ton of hard work and a lot of self-motivation," he said. "The work doesn't come to you, you have to find it, and with every set back you have to take a giant leap forward.

"Being from Anoka High School is a huge advantage. The school really sets you up for a lot of success."

Bob Beahen
A 2003 AHS graduate, Bob participated in orchestra, winter drum line, music theater, and concert, jazz and marching bands. He also played drums for many of the choir concerts.

As a student, John Lace, Halstenson and Hayes greatly influenced Bob as a performer and channeled him down different avenues.

"Mr. Lace expanded my abilities as a concert percussionist and jazz player," Bob said. "Mr. Hastenson did the same in concert orchestra and really pushed me in music theater to broaden my visions as a drummer and expand my sound. Ms. Hayes was a huge inspiration in music theater as well, and gave me opportunities to play in choir concerts, allowing me to further develop a wide repertoire and skill set."

Bob said he and his siblings have the most supportive parents they could ask for. He said although the three were pushed to show their dedication to school, sports and music, they were never forced to do these things; they had outlets for fun and creativity and were allowed to choose what they wanted to do.

"Whether in the living room, high school or beyond, we always had our parents in the audience," Bob said. "They showed us by way of example what hard work is and what it accomplishes."

One of Bob's favorite memories from high school was the music-theater department's 2002 trip to participate in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.

"It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to truly test ourselves as performers," Bob said. "In addition, I was lucky enough to have my sister and brother on the same stage, with me performing in the pit. Seldom do we get to share such an experience."

After graduate from AHS, Bob attended McNally-Smith College of Music for a semseter. (At the time it was called MusicTech.) After a few semesters at Anoka Ramsey Community College, Bob left school to work and move to Minneapolis. After briefly working for the Minneapolis Children's Theatre as a professional drummer/actor, Bob transitioned into a steady job. Recording and performing as a musician became a side sourced of income.

Bob eventually moved to Boston where he is working on a degree in drum set performance at Berklee College of Music.

"Berklee provides me a new venue to learn and perform that I didn't previously have access to," Bob said. "The combination of networking and skill development is mind blowing. I can literally study music that spans the globe and often times with the artists who have developed these sounds and styles."

Bob's goal is to finish his degree in the next two years and return to Minnesota to pursue his career in live performance and music theater. He said any student who wants a career in the performing arts has the opportunity to make it happen.

"It a little cliché, but honestly it's what Bradley, Kate and I have done," Bob said. "We took the opportunities that were offered to us and created opportunities when we needed them. There is no shortage of willing and able educators in the district; in fact, I found the emphasis on the arts to be outstanding when I was in school.

"Take music seriously; take art seriously; take technical prowess seriously; and you will grow as an artist. I'm the performing artist I am today because of the time I put into high school, and the educators who provided their time and knowledge for me."

Kate Beahen
The youngest Beahen, Kate, graduated from AHS in 2005. Kate said she was blessed to have talented and patient teachers in math and science, her harder subjects, and inspiring teachers in her arts classes, where she excelled. 

"To this day, I am still great friends with Michael Halstenson and Michelle Hayes who were critical influences in my career as a musician," Kate said.

Active in choir and theater, Kate said her favorite memories from AHS are all performance based. Her all-time favorite memory was the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

"Not only was I surrounded by amazing teachers and fellow classmates, but I had both of my older brothers with me," Kate said. "Who can say they've done that? It was incredible."

After high school, Kate attended Florida State University. In 2009, she graduated with a degree in music theatre.  Four months after graduation, she was living in New York City (NYC).

Kate continues to live in NYC, a few miles from Bradley, where she works a day job at Anthropologie, a retail store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.  She auditions as often as possible and has been involved in a lot of cabaret work in and out of the city. 

This past spring, Kate was asked to perform on "A Prairie Home Companion" (PHC) when it aired live from Town Hall in Times Square. Kate met Class of 1960 AHS alum Garrison Keillor when he performed at Florida State and she volunteered as an usher.

Prior to the performance in May, Keillor told the Star Tribune that the PHC episode would have some big musical numbers that "Kate can do very handily."

"She has a big belting voice," Keillor said. "Nobody told her that the American musical is dead. But nobody told me the radio variety show is dead, either. So where there is death, there is hope."

Kate said performing on PHC was an incredible, door-opening experience.

"The coolest part is to be in New York and be involved with something so personal," she told the Star Tribune. "My first professional appearance in New York is a show I grew up with, that all my friend can tune in and listen to and be part of; this is a very big thing for me."

Currently, Kate is in Indiana working at The New Huntington Theatre's annual Christmas Show. She'll return to NYC after the New Year. She said she loves what she is doing and is able to say that she followed her dream.

"Years from now, I will encourage my kids the same way that I was encouraged," she said. "I will look at them and say 'you can do whatever you want. You can be the happiest person you'll ever know.'"

For current students considering becoming a performer, Kate said not to think twice, just go for it.

"If you know in your heart that nothing will make you happier than performing, do it," she said. "And invest in your education. If it seems impossible, I promise it's not. Student loans are a fair compromise to a life of excitement and happiness."

Vincent Voelz had many interests in his days as an Anoka-Hennepin student. Music, writing, science - he liked it all. But at Fred Moore Junior High (as it was known then), he was hooked by the district science fair.

"It was a great chance to have a sizeable project that was your own creation that you had to work on a long time," Voelz said. "It was the first time we were taught the scientific method. It was very much doing science, not learning from a book. When you're in junior high, to have opportunities like that is really important."

His favorite teacher at Anoka-Hennepin was science teacher Laurie Peterman, who he said really caught his imagination with her classes. "My path could have been much different had I not had a teacher like her," Voelz said.

As it is, his path has taken him from Washington Elementary to Fred Moore Junior High to Blaine High School for two years and finally to Anoka High School for his senior year.

After graduating from Anoka-Hennepin, he moved on to the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities where he completed his undergraduate work in physics in 1999. After graduation, he worked as a junior scientist in the David D. Thomas Laboratory at the U of M studying muscle proteins.

"I've always been interested in computers and biology," he said. He began graduate work at the University of California-San Francisco in biophysics in 2001, completing his Ph.D. in 2007. Now he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Vijay Pande Laboratory at Stanford University. His lab runs the folding@home program, a distributed computing project that allows anyone to download and run a piece of software to help protein-folding experiments.

Voelz explained that incorrect protein folding is linked to diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The folding@home project runs processor-intensive simulations to try and pinpoint the causes and results of incorrect protein folding.

"It's hard to simulate these experiments over large time scales," he said. "So we send the work out to people's screen savers. People can join the project and help us learn how to cure these protein-aggregation diseases. We have more than 200,000 computers, and many of them are running simulations I started."

Voelz said that some users also use the folding@home project to benchmark their processors or work as a team. "Not only can people be altruistic about donating computer time, but you can join a team and see how many points you can get," he said. "Or you can just run it as a screen saver. You can see the graphics and how the protein folds onto itself."

For more information about the folding@home project and to download the software to run the simulations on your own computer, visit: http://folding.stanford.edu.

Photo caption: Vincent Voelz works on the folding@home project, based at Stanford University. He is displaying a protein model.

1994 Blaine High School graduate researches mysteries of the brain

Matthew Hodges ate up all the science and mathematics classes that he could in high school - physics, chemistry, physical science, biology - he loved it all. He went on to Carleton College, in Northfield, Minn., with the intention of becoming a medical doctor.

When he graduated, he decided that it would be interesting to take some time and work in a medical lab to see what that was like. It turned out to be exactly what he wanted to do with his life. So he took a different track and worked on his doctorate at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Wisc.

His research interest and the topic of his dissertation was the brain stem and how it regulates breathing. "[Breathing is] boring and everyone does it, so we take it for granted," Dr. Hodges said.

After he received his Ph.D., Dr. Hodges and his wife moved to Connecticut, where he completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Yale University Medical School. His work there focused on a specific type of brain cell that produced serotonin and may be responsible for respiratory control and possibly a factor in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Dr. Hodges recently returned to the Medical College of Wisconsin as an assistant professor, where he does research and teaches courses in respiratory physiology.

He said that medical research is every bit as much of a competitive field as being a medical doctor.

"Just like a career in medicine, science takes a lot of dedication," Dr. Hodges said. "I'm 33 now and I finally have the job I want. It's just as rigorous as becoming a physician."

While in high school, Dr. Hodges was part of the Blaine High School varsity football team, in addition to competing in track and field and a member of the National Honor Society. He was recruited by Carleton, which he had never heard of before. He ended up playing football and men's volleyball for Carleton.

"[Going there] was the best thing that could have happened," he said. "In four years, I never had a multiple choice exam. A liberal arts education really forces you to be a critical thinker, to be fluent in a second language and involved in other social sciences. It pushes you to be well-rounded."

He has found research to be extremely rewarding, and said Yale was a great place to do his research.

"There are thousands of post-docs and students in that environment," Dr. Hodges said. "One of the most important things to be successful is to immerse yourself in it, marinate in the environment. Go to a lab, shadow a physician. You never know if you're as good as the best unless you go and try."

Now that his doctorate and fellowship are complete, Dr. Hodges said he feels like he's starting over again in Milwaukee.

"I have to come up with grant money, get students to come to work in my lab, and convince people that my work is worthwhile," he said.

Just the same, he wouldn't trade his work for anything else. "It's great to be back in the Midwest. I really wanted to be here in this department as a professor."