John Whittier-Ferguson

John Whittier-Ferguson is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1990. He attended Kenyon College (graduating in 1977), and did his graduate work at Princeton University (1985-1990). In the years between 1977 and 1985, he played music professionally, waited tables, did a good deal of bike touring and bike racing, lived in a couple of fairly primitive (and wonderful) houses in the North Carolina piedmont, spent lots of time outdoors and also taught English at two different Quaker High Schools (three years at Baltimore Friends School; two at Carolina Friends School). His research interests center around literary modernism: works written from the end of the 19th century up through the Second World War, with particular focus on the poetry of T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and the prose of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

Elaine Chottiner

We are pleased to introduce one of our speakers, Elaine Chottiner. Here we provide a biography of Dr. Chottiner, in her own words:

"I grew up in McKeesport, a small steel town near Pittsburgh. Bullwinkle and Rocky got stuck in McKeesport several times. Fortunately, I didn't. I came of age in the late sixties and arrived at the University of Michigan in 1967. I graduated with a B.A. in Russian literature and went to California where I worked on a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature at Berkeley for two years. I spent three years working as an affirmative action analyst at the University of California, completed the pre-medical requirements and returned to Michigan in 1976 to attend medical school. I graduated in 1980, completed my internal medicine residency in 1983 and my fellowship in hematology and oncology in 1986. I remained at the University as junior faculty from 1986-1991 - teaching, seeing patients and doing basic laboratory research in molecular genetics. In 1991 I decided to focus upon patient care and joined a private practice at Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital where I have been a hematologist/oncologist for twenty years. I specialize in breast cancer and blood disorders. I have been a member of the Committees on Practice and Communication for the American Society of Hematology for 12 years. I'm leaving my practice at the end of the year to return to the University of Michigan as a hematologist. I've come full circle (or maybe that's not true -- I hope I don't end up back in McKeesport)."

Dr. Chottiner is the first of the many speakers that we are excited to introduce to you. Here, you will have access to the profiles of all of our speakers. This year, we have a range of fascinating and personable speakers that we hope you are excited to meet and learn from!

Keynote Speaker: Michael Oneal

We are pleased to introduce you to this year's Annual Day keynote speaker. Mr. Oneal will give the morning address, which will be followed by the breakout sessions. We will be providing biographies, throughout the coming weeks, of all the speakers so that students have as much information about the fascinating professional they will have a chance to hear on January 25th.

Michael Oneal is a senior business writer for the Chicago Tribune covering a broad array of subjects ranging from global economics to child-product safety. He has led a number of award-winning projects for the business section and was a member of the six-person reporting team that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Journalism for a series of stories on unsafe toys that helped focus public awareness on the issue, leading to major changes at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. He has reported in China, India, Europe and throughout the United States.

Oneal was Tribune’s lead reporter on the global economic crisis, reporting in Washington and Chicago, and was responsible for chronicling the bankruptcies of both his own employer, Tribune Co., and its chief rival, Sun-Times Media Group. Other notable projects have included a multi-part, front-page series telling the story of how Boeing Co. pulled itself back from the brink against Airbus, which Tribune nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and a series of stories on the Sears takeover, which won the breaking news award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Another front-page series on how one American company’s fateful outsourcing decisions changed lives forever in India and Indiana received an honorable mention from the Overseas Press Club and was a finalist for the Scripts Howard Foundation National Journalism Award.

Prior to joining the Tribune, Mr. Oneal was co-founder and executive editor of a financial Website called SmartMoney.com, which won several major awards including the 2001 National Magazine Award for New Media Design. Oneal spent nine years prior to that writing and editing for BusinessWeek magazine in New York and Chicago. He began his career with American City Business Journals as part of a start-up team that launched highly profitable weekly papers in San Jose, Sacramento and Milwaukee.

Mr. Oneal was a 2001-2002 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan and earned his B.A. from Stanford University. His freelance articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, SmartMoney, Golf Digest and Italy’s Corriere della Sera. He grew up in Ann Arbor, MI., where he graduated from Greenhills School in 1978. He currently lives with his wife, Anne, and five-year-old son, Charlie, in Chicago.