beyond stephens

From arts to current events to crime, veteran journalist Paula Zahn ’78 has covered it all.

Whether behind the anchor desk or in the field reporting, for the past 30 years journalist Paula Zahn ’78 has covered the gamut of stories that have affected us all. The news veteran has interviewed former presidents and world leaders, athletes and artists, and co-anchored the 1994 Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway.

During her 10 years at CBS News, Zahn co-hosted the morning news program with Harry Smith and anchored CBS Evening News Saturday Edition. At ABC, she anchored news segments for Good Morning America, and she hosted the daily news program The Edge with Paula Zahn on Fox News Channel. She joined CNN in its New York bureau on Sept. 11, 2001, and spent her first day reporting on the attacks on the World Trade Center. She went on to host the primetime show Paula Zahn Now before leaving the network in 2007.

Since October 2009, she’s been at the helm of Investigation Discovery’s weekly newsmagazine series On the Case with Paula Zahn, a behind-the-scenes investigation of some of the headline-grabbing criminal cases of the day. In each episode, airing on Sunday nights, Zahn interviews the people closest to the case—the victim’s family as well as the law enforcement investigators and lawyers on both sides to present a variety of viewpoints.

A pair of Stephens biology students experiment making a line of perfume under the Susies Ideal Scents brand.

“Each oil,” Krystal Theison ’13 says, “has a specific scent associated with it that makes the perfume unique.”

Music stars Taylor Swift and Jennifer Lopez and the late Elizabeth Taylor all have perfumes on the market, so why not several enterprising Stephens biology majors? Making a signature scent, after all, does in fact require a background in science.

Students in Tri- Beta, Stephens’ national biology honors society, have begun to put their noses and scientific knowledge to use by mixing their own signature scents based on the College’s Ten Ideals.

Initially, Laura Kline ’11 of Jackson, Minn., was inspired by a guest speaker discussing perfumery and gas chromatography during a Quantitative Analysis class. Kline took the idea one step further, incorporating the Ten Ideals to make a line of perfume as a fundraising project for the Natural Sciences department. During Kline’s graduation ceremony in December, a sample of the first perfume from the Susies Ideal Scents line, named “Creativity,” was presented to Stephens College President Dianne Lynch.

New York alumnae come together to support Books for Kids.

“Laughing for Literacy” fundraising event on Feb. 29 at the Carolines on Broadway Comedy Club in New York City. Pictured (L-to-R): Carol Anderson ’66-’68; Shawna Doster, executive director of Books for Kids; Karith Foster ’96; Sydney Turner ’11 as Clifford the Big Red Dog; and Rachel Gross ’93.

When Books for Kids executive director Shawna Hamilton Doster hired Carol Anderson ’66-’68, a longtime event planner and resident of New York City, to plan and produce two fundraisers for the organization, she probably didn’t anticipate that she’d contracted a force of nature.

An avid reader, Anderson understood the New York-based organization’s mission to promote literacy for all children, especially those who are from low-income families and who are at-risk preschoolers. She quickly started recruiting the tight-knit community of Stephens alumnae in the area.

Heather Hay ’93, in talent acquisitions at Ogilvy & Mather, joined the Books for Kids Board of Directors, and Karith Foster ’96, a comedienne, author and motivational speaker, became an organization spokesperson.