How the course works

The capstone experience spans two courses. In the winter term, GAM 4100, cross-disciplinary teams form and move through pre-production — developing concepts, building early prototypes and laying out a project plan. In GAM 4200 during the spring semester, those same teams advance through the full production pipeline: pre-alpha, alpha, pre-beta, beta, gold master and release.

Throughout both semesters, teams follow the Scrum framework — holding sprints, daily standups and milestone reviews like a professional studio would. Students take on defined roles in the development process, including programmer, level designer, environment designer, and narrative designer, and are accountable for delivering at each stage.

“I think the ultimate skills gained from the capstone experience are working under constraints and collaboration,” said Pratheep Paranthaman, associate professor of computer science and coordinator of the game design minor. “We don’t always know what technical complexities we’ll run into, or what might slow the development process. But that’s where the real learning happens — solving the unknown, working through an ambiguous development landscape.”

The games

— Angry Sea Studios

“Your Friend, Sam” is a mystery adventure and puzzle game, where players return as the childhood friend of a boy who vanished a decade ago. Collecting clues, solving puzzles, and fighting off corrupted creatures, players work to piece together what happened. The game launched on April 29.

For Aidan Spoerndle ’27, who served as a gameplay programmer on the project, seeing it go live was the payoff for months of sustained work.

“It feels really exciting to have a project that I tirelessly worked months creating actually be published for everyone to play,” Spoerndle said.

Keeping the technical scope in check, he said, was what made it achievable.

“There’s no such thing as a small game,” Spoerndle said. “The reason we were able to accomplish so much in such a short amount of time was that we kept the technical aspects enclosed in a smaller scope and allowed our narrative and art elements to exist in a larger scope.”

Carter Puckett ’26, also a gameplay programmer on the team, says the minor’s coursework prepared the team for what production actually demands.

“The minor helped me understand the full process of making a game — game design principles that make games fun, playable, and achievable,” Puckett said “In game development, you will always run into things that you are unfamiliar with or don’t know how to do. “Knowing how to do research and use online resources is essential to improving your skills.”

— InDecision Studio

“Onslaught” is an action-adventure game set in Betham, a decaying western mining town suspended above a sea of clouds. Players take on fighting toward Sanctuary, climbing and battling through vertical environments in third-person combat while managing resources against escalating enemies. It was released on May 14.

Owen Crider ’26, who served as a level designer, says the production process that never quite ran smoothly — and a team that worked through it anyway.

“We encountered a lot of bugs, and even though it seemed like every week there was something new to deal with, we always sorted it out,” Crider said. “I also learned how important it is to always be talking to your team.”

Beyond the technical work, Crider said, the program offered something harder to quantify.

“The game design program for me is really a community,” Crider said. “I’ve built lots of friendships with people who are funny and helpful. Since everyone knows the problems and how tough it is to make a game, everyone is encouraging of one another.”

Noah Gartenberg ’27 says game development also comes with intense demands.

“There are so many different parts and finding ways to conserve energy and momentum becomes extremely important despite any and all setbacks,” Gartenberg said. “You need to rely on and trust whoever you are working with, because that is the only way to make any sizable game in any decent amount of time without burnout.”

“Back In my Day,” is a strategy-puzzle game built around an unusual mechanic: time only moves when the player moves. Players guide a grandma home from work through levels that mix puzzle logic and projectile-based encounters. The game was

released on May 5.

What students take away

Several students pointed to the game design minor’s coursework — and its faculty — as what made the capstone possible.

“All of the knowledge and expertise from Dr. Paranthaman and Professor Hollingsworth helped me think through various problems in ways I never would have without the courses,” Spoerndle said.

Puckett encourages other students to add game design as a minor.

“Every class in the game design minor was the class I most looked forward to that day,” Puckett said. “I hope that if any Elon student has any interest in making games, they try out the game design minor because it is a great opportunity.”

Noah Gartenberg says the class left him ready for more.

“In the minor, we learned various aspects of working in modern game engines, and we learned the fundamentals of game design, in addition to how to work with others who may not come from the same disciplines as we do,” Gartenberg said.  “Many of the classes left me with a whetted appetite for more game development, more creativity, more discussion with like-minded individuals. The program succeeds at teaching how to make games — in spades.”

That breadth of games is intentional, and the program’s aim is never purely technical.

“Our goal is to make not only game developers, but also project managers — people with leadership skills in decision-making and problem solving,” Paranthaman said. “The central core of what we do is student learning, community, and creative ownership: giving students the space to build something real, together, and see it through to the end.”

Looking ahead, Paranthaman says the program will continue to grow its library of published titles and deepen the studio simulation experience — building transferable skills in project management, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and problem solving that students can carry into adjacent industries, from software development and UX design to film production and beyond.

“Publishing twelve games on Steam is a milestone worth noting,” Paranthaman said. “But what it really represents is twelve teams of students who learned that they could start something hard and finish it. That’s the skill we’re building.”

All 12 games published by Elon game design minor students are free to play on Steam.

Cayden Tirak ’28 and Myka Thomas ’27 are the second and third Elon students to receive the award, following Jules Levanti ’25 in 2024. Tirak is also the youngest Elon student to receive the award.

“It is really exciting to have won this grant, and the funding will be able to help me take this research project further,” said Tirak, who is an astrophysics major and Honors Fellow studying “green pea galaxies” and the black holes at their center. “Being able to say I won a research grant for my undergraduate project is a huge privilege and will help me in the future pursue my dreams of doing research as a career.”

Tirak, who is from Lincolnton, North Carolina, is mentored by Chris Richardson, associate professor of astrophysics. Richardson says this achievement reflects her ambition.

“I am beyond thrilled for Cayden to earn this very competitive award, as it not only rewards the hard work she put into crafting the proposal, but will also enable her to create new opportunities to grow as a researcher,” Richardson said.

Thomas, an astrophysics major and minor from Annapolis, Maryland, is using the James Webb Telescope’s OutThere survey to identify and group galaxies to build a catalog of these galaxy groups and study how they evolve.

“It feels incredible. Receiving this award opens up so many doors, from attending conferences to connecting with others in the field, and it’s validating to see how much work I’ve been putting in paying off,” Thomas said.

Zack Hutchens, assistant professor of astrophysics and physics, says earning this award is a “serious scientific achievement” for Thomas.

“Writing a proposal of this nature requires the student to carefully identify an open research question, design a feasible yet ambitious timeline and persuasively present the scientific case for answering it,” said Hutchens. “The award also speaks to the novelty of the work Myka is leading with JWST-OutThere. OutThere is one of the largest survey programs on the Webb telescope, and I am quite proud to bring it to Elon for students like Myka to engage in.”

The 12 Undergraduate Research Scholarship awardees receive $8,000 to spend on research. N.C. Space Grant is a state-wide network of North Carolina higher-education institutions, industries, government entities, educational programs and nonprofit partners with NASA-related interests. The organization works to promote, develop and support space-related STEM research, education and public outreach.

“We’re proud to assist these undergraduate students as they begin their research,” said Sandy Canfield, assistant director of NC Space Grant. “Increasingly, we are seeing students integrate AI and machine learning into their work, which echoes emerging NASA and industry priorities.”

51±ŹÁÏÍű and the School of Communications will welcome its fifth Emerging Journalists Program Immersion cohort to campus on Monday, June 15, to kick off 12 days of hands-on journalism instruction. The 18 high school students will arrive to Elon from eight states.

“At a moment when trust, information and news literacy feel more important than ever, it’s encouraging to spend time with students who care deeply about reporting and serving their communities,” said Kelly Furnas, EJP curriculum coordinator and associate teaching professor of journalism. “Every year, this program leaves me optimistic about the future of journalism.”

The university is funding the program, allowing another group of students to develop and enhance their skills in reporting, writing, multimedia storytelling, leadership and media management. Beyond instruction, the students will collaborate as members of a working newsroom, producing professional web content, a newspaper and a television news broadcast, as well as tracking audience engagement metrics.

The Immersion experience also features several off-campus activities. The students’ schedule includes media tours of WUNC News and WTVD-TV in Durham. They will meet with state Rep. Jay Jeffers at the North Carolina State Capitol, visit the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, and enjoy a Winston-Salem Dash baseball game.

“One of the most encouraging parts of leading the Emerging Journalists Program is getting to work with students who care deeply about thoughtful and ethical storytelling,” said Colin Donohue, EJP program director and an assistant professor of journalism. “It’s rewarding to watch them grow as journalists and collaborators, and their enthusiasm reminds me why this work matters.”

Students will earn four hours of college credit for completing the Immersion experience and be paired with an Elon student mentor, who will offer guidance and assistance as students work on their own projects back home and prepare their college applications.

The program, established in 2021, is designed to educate high school students who are interested in pursuing careers in journalism and the media industry. This year, 192 high schoolers from across the country applied to the program – a record number – and all were invited to participate in the virtual Exposure experience in the spring.

“The students who apply to EJP are already asking thoughtful questions about journalism and impact,” Furnas said. “Our goal is to give them the foundational tools, mentorship and newsroom experience to start answering those questions in their own work.”

The report, , published on June 9, spotlights Elon for meeting the standards set by literacy experts for coverage of the most effective methods of reading instruction. Specifically, this means the program is preparing aspiring teachers in all five components of scientifically based reading instruction, including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary, and avoids many instructional practices that research has shown to be ineffective or counterproductive for teaching children to read.

A child’s ability to read proficiently in the early grades shapes everything that comes next in school and in life, yet according to , four in ten fourth graders in North Carolina cannot read at a basic level. Teacher preparation is one of the most direct levers available to change that, but only if it is aligned to the research-based instructional methods that have been proven to help most students become successful readers.

Elon’s program in the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education is part of a growing group of teacher preparation programs nationwide, helping transform how future teachers are trained to teach reading.

“Every child deserves a teacher who has been well prepared to teach reading, and every teacher deserves the opportunity to enter the classroom ready to help students succeed,” said NCTQ President Heather Peske. “Across the country, many teacher preparation programs still do not fully align with the science of reading, but 51±ŹÁÏÍű is demonstrating what strong preparation can look like.”

NCTQ’s methodology is informed by a panel of reading experts, teacher preparation faculty, reading advocates, and measurement experts. To evaluate the quality of preparation being provided, a team of experts at NCTQ analyzed syllabi, including lecture schedules and topics, background reading materials, class assessments, assignments, and opportunities to practice instruction in required literacy courses for elementary teacher candidates at 51±ŹÁÏÍű. 

To earn an “A,” programs needed to demonstrate that coursework for future elementary teachers includes all five core components of scientifically based reading instruction and avoid teaching more than three instructional methods that are unsupported by the research on effective reading instruction. To earn an A+, programs needed to exceed those targets and not teach any instructional practices that are unsupported by research.

See NCTQ’s report, , for more information about 51±ŹÁÏÍű’s coverage of the science of reading and to see how 51±ŹÁÏÍű compares to other programs in North Carolina or across the country.

51±ŹÁÏÍű NCTQ

The National Council on Teacher Quality: NCTQ is a nonpartisan research and policy organization on a mission to ensure every child has access to an effective teacher and every teacher has the opportunity to be effective. We believe a strong, diverse teacher workforce is critical for providing all students with equitable educational opportunities. Fore more information about NCTQ, visit .

Developed in collaboration with the City of Charlotte, the challenge focuses on how local businesses and communities may be affected as the proposed Red Line corridor moves forward. Participants will work in teams to explore real data, uncover insights and develop practical recommendations that can help city leaders better understand potential impacts and identify opportunities for support.

The event will take place from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at 51±ŹÁÏÍű in Charlotte, located at 330 W. Tremont Avenue. No coding, programming or analytics experience is required.

“The Charlotte Decision Challenge reflects the kind of work our MSBA Flex program is designed to support,” said Mark Kurt, associate dean for the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business. “Participants will have the opportunity to use data in a practical, accessible way while contributing ideas that can support real decision-making in the Charlotte community.”

Individuals and teams are welcome to participate. The event is designed for anyone interested in business, analytics, public policy, economic development, transportation, community engagement or civic problem solving.

Breakfast, lunch and refreshments will be provided at no cost.

Related Articles

• Strategic multifaith engagement shapes the Elon campus experience
• Elon students and faculty extend multifaith engagement to the community

One of the central goals of Elon’s Multifaith Strategic Plan is to “support opportunities for multifaith learning and engagement for all members of the Elon academic community,” including through academic opportunities. While many students at Elon may take a single course during their time at Elon that focuses on the study of religion or spirituality, a select group of students specializes in academic multifaith learning: religious studies majors.

Last month, 11 students graduated from Elon with degrees in religious studies, the largest number of Religious Studies majors graduating in a single year since 2012.

“The number of majors in our department has grown substantially over the last several years,” said Geoffrey Claussen, professor of religious studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies. “Students seldom come to Elon planning to major in religious studies, but students often take courses during their first year that whet their appetite for further learning. They are able to recognize how the critical study of religion helps them to understand the world, and they appreciate the mentorship and community that our department offers.”

Religion is anything

The course that hooked Tracey McCarty ’26 on religious studies was “Religion and American Popular Culture,” taught by Andrew Monteith, and explores how religion can be found in many unexpected places in popular culture and imagined in radically different ways.

“I was taught a very specific concept: religion is anything,” McCarty said. “This was a game-changer for me. To understand religion not as a cohesive and strict definition, but as this conceptual ball that can be shaped in any way. Seeing religion as not an institution, but as a thing that a single person can define for themselves, was beautiful.”

One of the goals of Elon’s Multifaith Strategic Plan is to develop courses that “support student learning about diverse religious, spiritual, and secular traditions and identities.” In the Religious Studies department, these include “traditions” courses that explore how sets of traditions often viewed as static religions are characterized by significant diversity and can be depicted in very different ways.

Tess Trayner ’26 explored the diversity of Buddhisms in “Buddhist Traditions,” taught by Pamela Winfield.

“We traced Buddhism from its founding more than 2,000 years ago through its development across Asia and into the West, and Dr. Winfield refused to let us treat any of it as exotic or static,” Trayner said. “The unit on Orientalism and Buddhism in America helped me better understand the decontextualizing nature of mindfulness apps, yoga studios, and how to approach the version of Buddhism most familiar to American audiences. Learning to see Engaged Buddhism as both an authentic tradition and a phenomenon shaped by Western projection gave me tools I now reach for constantly – tools for noticing whose version of a tradition gets centered, and why.”

Another Traditions course, “Jewish Traditions,” taught by Claussen, featured opportunities to role-play debates about how Jewish tradition should be understood. In this class, Trayner had the opportunity to step into the shoes of thinkers with whom they sympathized and others whose views they found reprehensible.

“I discovered that wrestling with viewpoints I disagree with sharpens both my disagreement and my empathy,” Trayner said. “It is one thing to read a Jewish thinker. It is another to inhabit them long enough to understand how their historical moment shaped what they could imagine.”

Multifaith at home and abroad

Elon’s Multifaith Strategic Plan also commits the university to developing “pathways for experiential and engaged multifaith learning,” including through study abroad courses that “support engagement with global religious communities.”

Trayner had a significant learning experience taking “India’s Identities,” a course taught in South India by Amy Allocco and Brian Pennington. The course “deconstructed what I thought I knew about Hinduism, and rebuilt it with a critical emphasis on vernacular practice and the lived religion of regular, everyday people. As such, the class refused the traditional classroom format. Instead, Dr. Allocco’s deep roots of connection in Chennai meant we sat in living rooms with the most incredible people.”

Students have also been equipped by their Religious Studies coursework to engage with communities closer to home. Alyssa Carney ’26, for example, volunteered at the Burlington Masjid, teaching English to newcomers. Experiences of working with displaced people led her to propose a new unit for her “Engaging Islam” course, taught by Ariela Marcus-Sells.

What makes this course unique is its ‘build your own path’ structure, which allows students to shape the direction of their learning based on their interests and experiences, Carney said.

“For me, it created an opportunity to connect my volunteer work with my academic inquiry. As I was working closely with migrant communities, I became particularly interested in the topic of displacement within Islam. This led me to propose a unit based on a textbook chapter, ‘Refugee Horizons,’ which focuses on the experiences of Muslims in Myanmar, particularly the Rohingya,” Carney said “Through this unit, I explored how the Rohingya negotiate their Islamic identity in the face of systemic violence and ethnic cleansing, deepening both my academic understanding and my connection to the people I work with at the masjid.”

Advancing Equity

The Multifaith Strategic Plan also directs Elon to “explore new modes for student learning about religion and race, especially in connection with the Advancing Equity requirement.” The Religious Studies Department offers multiple courses each semester that meet that requirement.

This spring, Trayner took an Advancing Equity course titled “Religion, Race and Resistance,” taught by Sheila Otieno. Through courses such as this, Trayner said, “the department has prepared me to take real questions into the world. Dr. Otieno’s course gave me a framework for connecting religious and racial construction to the systems that shape American life, and how I can become a more intentional and thoughtful participant in America’s futurity.”

McCarty shares that their understanding of race and religion were shaped by studying Judith Weisenfeld’s “Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake” in the religious studies senior seminar, taught by Marcus-Sells, exploring “how racism in America not only shaped psychiatry but also how Black religion is viewed. This perspective of religion as a political force in the world made me more knowledgeable about how the current society we’re in was created.”

McCarty found that the department provided an inclusive space for exploring interesting and challenging questions.

“The department has always been welcoming to anyone who has joined,” McCarty said. “I’ve been able to form great connections with those in the department, and they’ve been incredibly open to accepting diverse worldviews.”

Carney connected her experience as a religious studies major with the larger institutional objectives found in the Multifaith Strategic Plan.

“The Religious Studies Department at 51±ŹÁÏÍű actively advances the goals of the multifaith strategic plan. It does so not through a single initiative, but through an ecosystem of mentorship, community engagement, creative coursework and genuine care,” said Carney.

Trayner emphasized the importance of Religious Studies in the current political climate.

“Thanks to this department, I’ll leave Elon with a degree in religious studies and a much harder-won inheritance: the habit of holding complexity, the conviction that ordinary people are experts on their own lives, and the trust that careful, plural study of religion is exactly the kind of preparation this fractured moment is asking of us,” said Trayner.

This story is the fourth and final in a series of stories focusing on 51±ŹÁÏÍű’s Multifaith Strategic Plan.

The article, “,” was co-authored by Jennifer Stephens, director of Academic-Residential Partnerships and assistant professor of education; Jill McSweeney, assistant director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching & Learning and assistant professor of wellness; Nina Namaste, professor of Spanish and assistant director of First-Year Seminars in the Elon Core Curriculum; and Brandy S. Propst, director of Elon 1010 and assistant director of Academic Advising.

The collaborative nature of this work is, in itself, a unique reflection of Elon’s approach to the first-year experience, as it brings together offices across academic affairs and student life to create a unified and campus-wide ethos to the first-year experience, which they argue is essential but often missing in institutional approaches to the first-year experience.

The piece explores how institutions should view the first-year experience as a culmination beyond first-year seminars, and that in doing so, it requires us to see this as a unique pedagogical context that differs from teaching students in their sophomore to senior years of college. The authors present a framework for faculty development in First-Year Pedagogies, incorporating CATL’s Teaching for Equity and Inclusion work, and faculty, staff, and student data at Elon. The framework asks educators to think intentionally about who they teach, what they teach, and how they teach, all within a commitment to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusivity.

The article outlines how other institutions can put this framework into practice, by sharing how over the last two years, Elon has developed specific faculty development opportunities to bring together faculty and staff from across first-year experiences (e.g., residential learning communities, gateway major courses, advising seminars). The goal of this work has been to build shared values, language, and classroom strategies focused on preparing students to be engaged, autonomous, and self-directed learners during their college degree and supporting students through the numerous transitions they experience during their first-year at college.

This work reflects why Elon has earned national recognition for the first-year undergraduate experience and emphasizes the importance of uplifting and supporting staff and faculty in order to continue to best support our first-year students.

The record surpassed the previous high of 82.7%, set by Elon Law’s charter class in 2009. In all, 132 of 136 December graduates sat for a bar examination in winter and spring 2026.

“We are incredibly proud of the Class of 2025,” Dean Zak Kramer said. “Our graduates put in the work and supported each other along the way. Together, they raised the bar for all future Elon Law graduates.”

The nationwide result comes two months after Elon Law announced a record 91.96% first-time pass rate on the February 2026 North Carolina Bar Exam. The newly compiled data provides a broader measure of graduate success, showing that 90.9% of the law school’s 132 graduates who sat for a bar examination passed on their first attempt, regardless of jurisdiction.

The results also reflect the advantages of Elon Law’s accelerated 2.5-year J.D. curriculum in Greensboro and — beginning in Fall 2027 — Charlotte. Students graduate in December, sit for the February bar exam and, upon passing, can begin practicing law months earlier than graduates of traditional law programs. The accelerated timeline allows graduates to enter the profession and begin earning sooner.

The energy in the building around the bar exam has changed. They feel it. We all feel it. We’re looking forward to continuing this trajectory.

– Assistant Dean for Academic Success Jenny Lane

This year’s record-setting performance reflects a culture shift at Elon Law and growing momentum around the law school’s programs and outcomes. Elon Law adopted a “One and Done” motto and mindset around the bar exam, with faculty and staff expanding academic support initiatives. In particular, the Office of Academic Success provided additional coaching, workshops, practice examinations and individualized support to reinforce that message throughout students’ legal education and bar preparation.

“What is special about this class is that they truly embodied Elon Law’s ‘One and Done’ mission,” said Jenny Lane, assistant dean for academic success. “They understood the power of coming together as a community and conquering the bar exam.

“It matters when we invest in students and believe in them. The energy in the building around the bar exam has changed. They feel it. We all feel it. We’re looking forward to continuing this trajectory.”

Twenty graduates sat for bar examinations in 11 states outside North Carolina. Seventeen passed on their first attempt, including every graduate who sat in nine of those jurisdictions.

For graduates, passing the bar exam marks the culmination of years of legal study and the beginning of professional practice. For Elon Law, the Class of 2025’s record-setting results reflect the success of a model of legal education built around experiential learning, practical training, and preparing students to enter the legal profession ready to serve clients and communities from day one.

“The value proposition of this law school is incredible,” Kramer said. “A skills-based education, in 2.5 years, with incredible outcomes like this. Big things are happening at Elon Law and we’re just getting started.”

Second-year DPT student Catherine Sheehan received the ACSM Biomechanics Interest Group Student Research Award, recognizing the quality and impact of her group’s research contributions. The award highlighted Elon’s continued commitment to student-led scholarship and research excellence.

The annual ACSM conference, one of the world’s leading meetings for sports medicine and exercise science professionals, brought together researchers, clinicians, educators and students from across the globe. Elon DPT’s delegation included 11 second-year DPT students who presented findings from projects completed as part of a research course.

All six accepted abstracts featured DPT students as lead authors and presenters. Elon’s contributions included five poster presentations and one platform presentation.

The following abstracts were presented by Elon DPT students and faculty:

Relationship Between Tandem Gait Performance and Specific Physical Performance Measures Among Division I Athletes
Authors: Maci Yeager, Jennifer White, Kyra Batterham, Srikant Vallabhajosula and Jack Magill
Presenter: Maci Yeager

Cognitive Function in Athletes After Concussion and During Recovery
Authors: Carlos Guerra, Stephen P. Bailey, Rachel Rajczak, Emanuel Martinez, Caroline J. Ketcham and Eric Hall
Presenter: Carlos Guerra

Coefficient of Variance: An Alternative Criterion for Return-to-Sport After ACL Reconstruction Compared with Limb Symmetry
Authors: Graeme Pratt, Raajan Patel, Jaylen Dowell, Aidan Gallagher, Gary Johnson, MaryKay Hannah and Jack Magill
Presenters: Graeme Pratt, Raajan Patel and Jaylen Dowell

Performance Consistency, Quantified by the Coefficient of Variance, Demonstrates Strong Association with Hop Performance Compared with Limb Symmetry Index
Authors: Anna Longsdorf, Brittany Staves, Virginia Reep, Mary Kay Hannah, Aidan Gallagher, Gary Johnson and Jack Magill
Presenters: Anna Longsdorf, Brittany Staves and Virginia Reep

Changes in Cognitive Function Following Cardiac Rehabilitation
Authors: Stephen P. Bailey, Alex Boller, Katie Utley and James Godfrey
Presenter: James Godfrey

The Effect of Dual Tasking on Forward and Backward Gait in Older Adults
Authors: Catherine Sheehan, Karley O’Connell, Sandhra Shibu, Molly Boda, Bill Andrews and Srikant Vallabhajosula
Presenters: Catherine Sheehan, Karley O’Connell and Sandhra Shibu

The strong showing at ACSM 2026 reflects the Elon DPT program’s emphasis on integrating research into clinical education and providing students with opportunities to disseminate their work on a national stage. The presentations addressed topics including athletic performance, concussion recovery, return-to-sport assessment following ACL reconstruction, cardiac rehabilitation and mobility in older adults.

Joining the board this spring are Holland Hawkins Lamikanra, vice president and assistant general counsel at Truist; Marla Crawford, general counsel at Cimplifi; and Jack Hicks, partner at Womble Bond Dickinson LLP and former adjunct professor at Elon Law.

Elon Law’s advisory board is comprised of 21 members including legal, business and community leaders from across the country. It counsels the law school’s leadership in its strategic vision and mission of preparing practice-ready lawyers through experiential and engaged legal education.

The board is chaired by Ellen Gregg, a retired partner with Womble Bond Dickinson LLP and veteran trial attorney, recognized for her leadership in complex litigation, legal technology and professional development. She previously served on the N.C. Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism.

New Elon Law Advisory Board Members:

Marla Crawford

Tuckahoe, New York

General Counsel of Cimplifi

Marla Crawford serves as general counsel of Cimplifi, a leading integrated legal services provider, which combines cutting-edge technology with deep expertise to simplify eDiscovery and contract analytics for corporate legal teams and law firms. She is a graduate of Duke University and Boston University School of Law. Crawford brings more than 35 years of experience in the legal industry, including more than two decades at Jones Day, where she focused on discovery in complex litigation matters. She also served as associate general counsel for Goldman Sachs where she built and led the firm’s global eDiscovery practice and focused on complex commercial and securities litigation and regulatory investigations. Marla sits on various advisory boards focused on legal technology. She and her husband, James, live in Westchester County, New York.

Jack Hicks

Greensboro, North Carolina

Partner at Womble Bond Dickinson LLP

Jack Hicks is a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson, where he advises clients with legal strategies to protect their intellectual property in the global marketplace. He helps lead the firm’s manufacturing industry sector, representing a range of industries, including manufacturing, food and beverage and apparel. He was a founding member of the firm’s innovation board and is among the AI Champions at the firm. Hicks holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia and earned his J.D. from University of Texas School of Law. He previously served as an adjunct professor at Elon Law and delivered the commencement address for the Class of 2023. Active in the Greensboro community, Hicks has served on the board of directors of the National Conference for Community and Justice of the Piedmont Triad and has been recognized in “North Carolina Super Lawyer” and other publications. He and his wife, Sharon, live in Greensboro and have two adult children.

Holland Hawkins Lamikanra

Charlotte, North Carolina

Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at Truist

Holland Hawkins Lamikanra is a vice president and assistant general counsel at Truist Bank, where she advises on legal matters related to the lending activities of the commercial community bank. She earned her degrees from the University of Louisville and Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Prior to joining Truist, she held in-house counsel roles at Fidelity National Financial, focusing on real estate transactions and secured lending, and practiced law at Seyfarth Shaw LLP and Frost Brown Todd LLC. Holland lives in Charlotte with her husband, Olufemi “Femi” Lamikanra ’12 G’15, and their 9-month-old son, Lennox.