ICView Magazine

Through her work as cofounder of the nonprofit Therapy Missions Inc., she has shared her knowledge and skills with those who care for children and adults with disabilities in underserved communities. Along with teams of other rehabilitation professionals, she has led, participated in, or put together 50 missions and has established partnerships in nine countries, including Mexico, Jamaica, China, Honduras, Morocco, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Ecuador, and Bangladesh. 

Although Therapy Missions assesses and treats individuals with disabilities, the main focus of Jacobs’s organization is to identify and then teach and train the local service providers and caregivers in the community so that they can continue the work after the Therapy Missions team has left. Virtual consultation is provided between mission trips. Therapy Missions has also brought teams of paraprofessionals from partner countries to the United States for training, empowering them to return to their country and train others 

At MRIGlobal, he oversaw all aspects of research across the organization’s business areas of diagnostics, medical countermeasures, and product development and repository management. His experience in programs and staffing ranged from avian influenza research to the development and evaluation of field crops for use as biomass feedstock. He managed a team of chemists, biologists, and technicians conducting biological and chemical analyses of compounds and formulations to support product development for agricultural and pharmaceutical clients. He led efforts that resulted in programs with the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Prevention and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

In 2019, the Roger K. Harris, PhD, Drug Repository Facility was dedicated in his honor. It receives, ships, quarantines, stores, and provides services necessary for clinical drug agents, products, and specimens in support of drug development.

He also held top secret government security clearances, and he led multiple research and operational intelligence government programs. Harris was often requested to brief members of the U.S. Senate and Congress on critical MRIGlobal programs that were of national interest and was also involved in preparing information for daily briefs for the president of the United States.

After a brief USO tour, DeBenedictis played with the Sammy Kay Orchestra and, when he was tired of traveling, he took a position as the house pianist at the Bon Soir jazz club in Greenwich Village. From there he made his way to Broadway, where he produced dance music for Carol Burnett’s Bonjour and Fade Out–Fade In. 

While working on the East Coast, DeBenedictis wrote music for some big names, including Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli. Then he moved his family to Los Angeles to pursue work at Universal Studios and began writing scores for television series, including Perry Mason, Columbo, Hawaii Five-O, and Matlock. In total, he estimates that he has written somewhere between 200 to 300 scores for various television shows and movies.

A music major, DeBenedictis came to speak to students in 2012 as part of the Enduring Masters series, funded in part by the generous support of Jay ’72 and Judi Linden ’73.

While at IC, she cofounded The Roundtable, a show for ICTV, with fellow colleague and MLK scholar, Sierra Council ‘15. King traveled with 17 student reporters to Washington, D.C., to cover the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The students worked with PBS NewsHour Online, shooting interviews, live tweeting, and editing web content for the Student Voices section of the website. King was also one of six student journalists to cover the 50th anniversary of the historic March to Selma, Alabama, for NBC Nightly News. 

After graduating from IC, King worked as a journalist for MSNBC. In 2017, she earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis for her coverage on the Flint, Michigan, water crisis with the Rachel Maddow Show. She is now in the graduate program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, working toward a PhD in Afro-American studies with a focus on literature and culture. Her interests are in formations of Black female identities and misrepresentations in mainstream media. In January she was awarded the 2020 Graduate Student Scholarship from the National Women’s Studies Association.

Healy drew upon that experience, and his training as a U.S. park ranger, in February 2019 when he and a fellow ranger responded to a search and rescue call in a closed area of Yosemite National Park. When Healy reached the location, he found that one hiker had already died, but there were four others who had become trapped by falling ice and rock. Healy guided them to shelter and comforted them while they waited for a rescue helicopter to arrive. After the survivors had been rescued, Healy and the other ranger were extricated and taken to safety as darkness descended and an avalanche threatened their lives.

Jordan was actually in rehearsals during the day for Bonnie & Clyde, originating the role of Clyde Barrow on Broadway, while playing the lead in Newsies at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey at night. When Bonnie & Clyde closed, Jordan devoted his full attention to the musical about the newsboy strike of 1899. 

Jordan appeared on the big screen alongside Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah in the musical film Joyful Noise and opposite Anna Kendrick in The Last Five Years. He appeared on TV in The Flash and Supergirl before returning to Broadway to appear alongside Kerry Washington in American Son, which was adapted for Netflix in 2019. 

That same year, Jordan played Dr. Pomatter in Waitress, and he was set to play Seymour in an off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March 2020. Fans stuck at home could still get their fill of Jordan in the Hallmark Channel’s Christmas movie Holly & Ivy, which premiered last November. And, in a forthcoming biopic, Jordan will play Neil Bogart, a 1970s record producer and cofounder of Casablanca Records.

An authority on business-to-business marketing and analytics, Neeson made a gift to support the creation of the Neeson Business Analytics Lab and the Neeson Digital Marketing and Analytics Lab and establish the John Neeson ’84 Endowed Software and Database Fund to support software updates and future upgrades to the lab, which opened in 2019. 

He said he views his contributions to Ithaca College as an opportunity to help the school achieve its vision and create an experience that builds on what the school already offers, creating what he called “a clear competitive advantage for IC students going into business analytics and marketing.”

“It’s my hope that students will get more thorough experience with digital marketing, have access to the latest tools and techniques, and graduate with real experience,” he said.