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Cheryldee Huddleston likens her experience in the College of Fine Arts to being a sponge that soaked up knowledge and techniques from her professors. For Jenny Laird, those same mentors helped her peel away the surface layers so she could find the truth in her writing.

Since receiving master’s of fine arts degrees in playwriting, Huddleston and Laird have had numerous works published and performed, both receiving prestigious awards for their works.

Huddleston recently won the esteemed PEN Center USA 2002 Literary Award for Drama for her play Who Loves You Jimmy Orio?, which she wrote while attending UNLV.

“(Professor) Davey Marlin-Jones and (former professor) Julie Jensen trusted I had talent and told me to write whatever I needed to write," Huddleston says. "They gave me a home to help me turn myself inside out. Davey taught me the dramatic power of silence, and Julie knocked my socks off. I was like a sponge. They made it very clear to me that I could write whatever I needed to write.”

Who Loves You explores love, race, magic, sexuality, and hope in a story set in a 1966 Tennessee trailer park. PEN Center judges described the play as “richly symbolic theatrical work with fresh characters, vivid dialogue, and a timeless theme.”

“Winning this award has been wonderful,” Huddleston says. “The announcement was made in June and the ceremony was in October, so I had a long time to relish it.”

Huddleston received a $1,000 cash prize and had her play published by Dramatic Publishing. Her other plays include Children of an Idol Moon, Madame John’s Legacy, April 10, 1535, and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Her work has been produced throughout the country, including Vital Theatre in New York City and Oakland Public Theatre. She now lives in Pleasant Hill, Calif.

Laird, a 1996 graduate, teaches playwriting at DePaul University in Chicago and is a resident playwright with Chicago Dramatists, where her play Ballad Hunter received its world premiere and a nomination for the Jeff Award for New Work. Her recent play, Sky Girls, received a National Endowment of the Arts development grant and is being featured in Chicago’s Northlight Theatre through March 9.

“My time at UNLV was a life-altering experience,” Laird says. “It was sort of like hiking at high altitudes. You know your muscles should hurt because you’re working really hard, but the lack of oxygen has you feeling punch-drunk. So, you continue to put one cramped foot in front of the other, simply admiring the view, completely unaware of the intensity of the climb.

“Looking back, I see that my professors helped me to peel away layer after layer of artifice, fear, and southern politeness in my writing and in myself.”

Laird says Marlin-Jones seemed to give her covert lessons in writing. “Everything from my writing to the way I walk through the world was influenced by his explicit and uncompromising commitment to ‘truth.’” she says. “Though he could have just as easily coerced the truth in my writing to the surface, instead, with a few swift strokes and a magician’s sleight of hand, Davey would pick the fleas off of any beast I placed before him, take their temperature, sing to their soul, breathe life into their wayward imaginings, and then gently return them just where he’d found them – all the while letting me believe that I was the one with the real power to nurture.”

“Jenny and Cheryldee are two students who arrived with extraordinary talent and skills,” says Jeffrey Koep, dean of the College of Fine Arts. “They are the type of students whom we shall justly be proud of for years to come. Watching such talent mature and develop was exciting, and continues to be so.”

The two playwrights both hail from the mid-Atlantic region of the country, Huddleston from Maryland and Laird from Virginia. When they met at UNLV, each says, it was if she had known the other for years.

“Jenny and I had many discussions,” Huddleston says. “She was one of the few people I would show my work to and she was definitely my favorite writer in the program.”

“We were kindred spirits,” Laird says. “We both had an affinity for lyrical realism in our writing and we were both very interested in exploring the creative process as much as the technical end of writing.”

Huddleston arrived in the MFA program a year after Laird and they participated in many writing workshops together.

“Cheryldee is a fantastically talented writer and a lovely human being to boot. Our friendship was definitely one of the bonuses I received as a result of attending UNLV,” Laird says.

When 16-year-old Marcus Threats started his first job as a busboy at the Four Queens Casino Hotel, he quickly saw how limited his options would be without a college degree. Now, he hopes to inspire minority teens to seek more than just a job after high school.

Threats, a casino accounting manager at The Mirage, volunteers in “Be A Rebel Day,” an event that brings local high school students, particularly those from disadvantaged areas, to campus to learn more about the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration. He also is involved in the college’s mentor program, which pairs industry professionals with current UNLV students, and serves on its alumni advisory board.

“Unfortunately, in Las Vegas a number of kids just don’t get the message that a college degree is something they really can — and should — attain,” Threats says. “They want to get out of high school, and they look forward to earning tips as dealers or bartenders. They don’t always see that, long-term, the college degree will open so many doors for them.

“It’s important for kids to know that they can work and get a degree. In fact, if you’re not working while going to the Hotel College, you’re missing out on the best part of a UNLV hotel degree. There’s no other place where you can get this kind of on-the-job and in-the-classroom training.”

The Las Vegas native said the mentorship activities also provide him a chance to give students a realistic image of the business of casinos. For example, when he tells students what he does for a living, he invariably gets the comment, “You must see a lot of money.” Not so, he says. “Auditors don’t have to see the cash; we just have to see the numbers.”

He also combats the myth that college is only for high school students at the top of their classes. “I didn’t do well in high school,” he says. “I wish I’d had better study skills coming in. I want the kids that I talk to to know that it’s never too late to get those skills. They will succeed in college if they try.”

With the exception of seven years as a Navy pilot, Threats has spent his entire working life in casinos. In high school, he worked as a busboy and cook. While working on his bachelor’s degree, he started dealing cards. Joining the Navy after graduation, he says, gave him a chance to pursue his childhood dream of flying. It also financed his adult dream of getting an MBA.

Now Threats is finishing a second master’s degree, this one in accounting, and has law school in mind for next year. “Going to school is almost like a hobby to me,” he says. “Instead of going out for a drink after work, I go to class. I plan to attend law school, and then my college education will be complete.”

Eventually, Threats wants to return to daily casino operations as a well-rounded executive. “I’m like every other person in the industry — someday I want to be the president of the property,” he says. “That’s certainly a possibility for me just as it is for the kids I talk to.”

— by Cate Weeks

He served UNLV as president from 1969 to 1973, and then as a history professor until his retirement in 1981, when he was named professor emeritus.

He was posthumously awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree during the 2002 winter commencement ceremony. “Zorn brought to UNLV the energy and dedication necessary to significantly expand the student body, add more than 100 faculty members, build new facilities, and start new programs,” President Carol C. Harter said during the ceremony. “Dr. Zorn was among the first to suggest, in 1969, that UNLV build a law school.”

During Zorn’s tenure as president, UNLV established the colleges of Hotel Administration, Arts and Letters, Education, Business and Economics, and Allied Health Professions. He oversaw the construction of the Business Services, Chemistry, Flora Dungan Humanities, and William D. Carlson Education buildings, as well as the Judy Bayley Theater, Holbert H. Hendrix Education Auditorium, and the football stadium now named for Sam Boyd.

Zorn was a “typical ‘scholar-administrator’ who saw himself as a faculty member who left the classroom for a period of time to serve as an administrator,” wrote Leonard “Pat” Goodall, UNLV’s fourth president, in Reinventing the System, a book on the history of the University and Community College System of Nevada.

He fought the lingering perception that UNLV was just a branch campus of UNR, Goodall wrote. “Zorn worked hard to define UNLV’s role within the system. …He was widely respected as a firm spokesman for the state’s southern campus.”

Before coming to UNLV, Zorn was president of Keene State College in New Hampshire and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Rhode Island. He received a bachelor’s degree from River Falls State Teacher’s College in Wisconsin and a master’s degree in philosophy and a doctorate in American history from the University of Wisconsin.

He is survived by his wife, Ann Zorn, of Las Vegas, four children, and three grandchildren.

Spring 2003| Vol. 11, No. 1

n Alumni Profiles