During his time at Montclair, Leon reported on the college sports teams, serving two years as sports editor for The Montclarion and eventually worked as the sports editor for La Campana, the yearbook.

Leon J. Zimmerman with his yearbook opened to his yearbook portrait.

Upon graduation, he continued his quest for journalism by attending graduate school, majoring in Journalism at Penn State University. Having no undergraduate journalism coursework, he was accepted as a “special student” with the requirement of completing 18 credits of undergraduate journalism courses before full acceptance.

After completing a semester of journalism classes, he searched for a role in sports journalism. While he did not get a job as a sports writer, he accepted a position as a regional news reporter for the newspaper known as The Bergen Record, getting his foot in the door. For more than a decade of writing, he moved on to roles covering the county courthouse, the state house bureau in Trenton, and becoming politics editor. Covering politics and government, Leon covered the 1967 USA-Soviet Union Summit Conference in Glassboro State College, the New Hampshire primary and the Republican National Presidential Convention in Miami in 1968, as well as Presidents, Senators, Members of Congress and New Jersey state legislators.

But this leads to the most important question. Did Leon ever fall into his original passion of sports journalism? You now have the chance to find out! Leon visited Montclair, nearly 70 years after graduation, on February 12, 2026 and donated a copy of his book which can be found in Sprague Library for your reading pleasure.

In September 2024, English professor invited Zimmerman back to campus to share his experiences as an English major and how the major shaped his future. During his most recent visit to campus in February, Zimmerman also gave a copy of Bylines to Story Lines to Professor Gonzalez, who was surprised to find that Leon also included a note about the September 2024 visit in his collection.

His book can also be ! You can read the synopsis here:

“This is a memoir that tells the stories behind the stories that the author wrote during his career as a newspaper reporter and columnist, and later as a public relations consultant and lobbyist. It covers the eventful years of the Sixties and beyond in New Jersey and national politics and includes a surprising cast of the famous and forgotten. Replete with newspaper clippings and photographs, this book offers the reader an interesting glance at moments in history and an impressive career. Organized in easy to digest chunks, Bylines is an easy and pleasant read, as told by an award-winning writer.”

Read the original news item on the Sprague Library’s news feed. 

As a high school student, she wrote for a local newspaper in Sewickley, PA. There, she wrote features on zoning meetings and other local government meetings. “I knew the importance of being involved and paying attention to what happens locally,” she says. After high school, she received her bachelor’s in English language and literature from Pennsylvania State University, and eventually moved to New Jersey.

After moving to New Jersey, Mundell became the associate director of University and Community Relations at ����vlog. Taking advantage of the tuition benefit offered to employees, she worked full-time while earning her master’s in English. Her thesis, Burning Down the House: Reclaiming Homeplace in Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills and Mama Day, examined the influence of geographic places and power structures on the development of individuals and communities.

Her education at Montclair gave her the abilities to become a critical thinker and thoughtful communicator. “Humans understand the world in narratives,” she explains. “So that has helped me along the way, to be able to synthesize what I hear from other people and then turn that back to them to find solutions.”

She used these skills to build a career in relationship building. After working in higher education, Mundell transitioned to the healthcare industry. Mundell advanced at RWJBarnabas Health and is now vice president of development for Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.

While growing a career as a development professional, Mundell held community leadership roles in Bloomfield Township. In 2017, she was appointed to the Township Council. The mayor at the time asked her if she would consider running to be the 1st Ward councilwoman. “I gave it some thought, talked to my husband, and it felt like a good thing to do,” she recollects. “My predecessor at the time stepped down from his seat early, so I was appointed to fill his vacancy.”

When the former mayor decided to run for State Assembly, he asked Mundell if she would consider running for the post. “We had made all this progress together,” she says. “And I know for him, it was really important to leave it in good hands…somebody that would keep that momentum moving. And so he asked me to consider running [for mayor]. And again, I went back to my husband,” she says with a chuckle. “We had the conversation, talked about what that would mean for us and decided that, yes, it was something that I was interested in, because I think I was the best choice to continue to move things forward.”

Mundell won the election this past November, but doesn’t see her gender as the main story. “I’m not here because I’m a woman, but that I am a woman could inspire someone else to try something that they didn’t feel like they fit in the space for,” she says. In her short time as mayor, she recruited more than 70 dedicated volunteers to serve on committees in town and created new committees to increase community involvement, demolished the town’s old DPW building (a 20-year eyesore), facilitated repairs to the roof of the adult library, creatively financed the renovations to the township’s much beloved children’s library without the township taking on new debt and launched senior programming for retired community members.

When contemplating how her time as an English graduate student at Montclair has prepared her for roles in development and as mayor, she emphasizes the transferable skills learned. “Education prepares you for anything,” she reflects. “English majors will save the world – our minds are open to different things.”

For current students, Mundell advises to explore and seize opportunities for growth. “Take advantage of all of it. You’ll never have another time in your life where you will explore and learn things at the pace you want,” she urges. Her career trajectory evolved because of her willingness to try new things. “Take every opportunity that presents itself,” she says. “I worked at Montclair and had the opportunity to further my education, so I took that. I was approached for the town council, I said yes. I was approached to run for mayor, I said yes.”

Since graduating, Mundell has stayed connected to Montclair as a guest speaker, neighbor and recently, as a member of the President’s Advisory Board for the Bloomfield College integration. She enjoys speaking to students about how an education from Montclair prepares a student for anything. “I have a graduate degree in English, but I don’t teach, I work in health care. You can study literature, you can study liberal arts, and you could become a mayor.”

She encourages students of any background or major to think about careers in public service and get involved in their local communities. Mundell suggests reaching out to local elected officials to build relationships and attending town meetings and events. By being present, students can get inspired to see how they might contribute, and how they can create their own story.

“I’ve always believed that you have the power to make change where you live.”

Lee Behlman is a professor of English at ����vlog, where he’s taught since 2006. He’s a scholar of Victorian literature and his most recent publication is a 2023 book from Palgrave-Macmillan called , which he co-edited with Olivia Loksing Moy from Lehman College-CUNY. He teaches classes on nineteenth-century poetry and fiction, the Bible as Literature, The Golden Age of Children’s Literature, and most recently, on Detective and Crime Fiction. He grew up locally in Queens and has been a dedicated customer of Watchung Booksellers since the moment he moved to New Jersey.

Nick Hernandez teaches English at and loves spending his time rock climbing, playing in a band, and reading. His head is usually in the clouds but he still manages to balance a comically small tea cup on his person throughout the day. His favorite class to teach is dedicated to reading by Angela Davis, kindly provided by a generous .

Halliwell began working in the pharmaceutical industry as a summer job and found herself enjoying the work. Her writing and communication skills made her stand out, and at the end of the summer she was offered a position at the company. She accepted and turned that position into a 35-year career.

In her discussion, Halliwell emphasized the importance of her English degree, both in her own career and in the future careers of Montclair students. “As English majors we should be self-confident in the skills we’ve developed as a result of our major studies,” she said. “As an MSU graduate with a degree in English, you have a level of expertise that other job candidates don’t when it comes to writing, speaking, and critical thinking.”

These qualities were among those Halliwell mentioned she looks for in prospective employees. When discussing the hiring process with students, she was honest about what makes an applicant stand out, saying “If [a candidate] is confident in themselves, that goes a long way…Don’t doubt yourself.” Halliwell also emphasized the importance of active listening and critical thinking, along with other soft skills like teamwork.

Halliwell also noted the important skill of networking. She encouraged students to work on their personal “elevator pitch,” and demonstrated how to give one through a mock conversation with Professor Jeffrey Gonzalez.

In her presentation, Halliwell encouraged a conversational atmosphere with students, asking for their thoughts and encouraging questions. Students asked questions on how to join the workforce and how to pivot careers, which Halliwell answered with engaging clarity. She urged students to take “calculated risks,” pointing to her own career as an example of a calculated risk that really paid off.

Regarding the daunting process of entering the workforce after college, Halliwell emphasized the importance of standing out. “Hiring managers and recruiters can receive a couple hundred resumes in response to a job posting,” she admitted.

Most importantly, Halliwell focused on affirming students. She encouraged attendees to learn outside of the classroom and to stand up for themselves. She also laid out the importance of having an end goal, saying “You can do whatever you want to, but you need a vision.”

Thanks to Mary, one of the English Department’s truly outstanding alumni, for coming and sharing her wisdom with our students.

Written by Faith Monesteri

From writing one or two stories for his Weehawken High School newspaper to being the
sports editor for two years at the Montclarion, he “wasn’t the traditional English major,”
Zimmerman explained. Intrigued by his father’s stories about famous baseball heroes of the time,
and inspired by his love of reading sports magazines, Zimmerman had ambitions to become a
sportswriter.

While he never became a full-time sportswriter, he went on to major success at The
Record. He began as a regional news reporter when he first joined its staff. “I didn’t know what
story I’d get, but it was exciting,” he stated.

His assignments got him into many interesting situations, which included Zimmerman
getting the opportunity to meet legendary Yankee players Yogi Berra and Elston Howard while
writing a story about the building of the largest Yoohoo! bottling facility (at the time) in
Carlstadt, NJ.

Zimmerman was also inside the Yankee locker room to do stories on other players. But
his most interesting sports interview came when he met and interviewed Elston Howard at
Howard’s home in Teaneck. Zimmerman got an early-morning assignment to cover a story about
the Yankee catcher and left fielder, as he’d just won The American League’s Most Valuable
Player in 1963. “The sports department didn’t do a story about this, so they asked me to go to his
house and interview him,” Zimmerman said.

He fondly remembered not wanting to wake up Howard for the story since it was eight in
the morning, but later found out that the Yankee player was already up; he’d been baling water
from the basement since 3A.M. As a result, “I was the first person who interviewed Elston
Howard for that award,” Zimmerman laughed.

He also covered stories that had him traveling to New York City, specifically
remembering writing about and interviewing a seminary student from Yonkers who was a
longshoreman on the docks of New York during the summer. Zimmerman’s journey also brought
him to Norfolk, Virginia, to land on an aircraft carrier via a WW2 fighting plane, with six other
journalists who were invited onto the excursion. He recalled bringing a “Send Help” banner that
was folded inside a road map in his car, as a joke. While on that assignment, Zimmerman met a
lieutenant commander from Bergen County who rescued United States astronaut Gus Grissom
after a sub-orbital flight mission.

Zimmerman’s focus changed when he was assigned courtroom coverage for the paper. “I
would go to the courthouse every day to check lawsuits,” he stated during his presentation.
During this period, he discovered a lawsuit with examples of racial and ethnic bias in real estate
practices in Wayne, NJ, which became a major story.

Another experience came when Zimmerman covered the murder of two policemen in
Lodi at a local bar. Because Zimmerman was headed home and the bar was on the way, he got
there before any other reporter and before the scene was ready: “I saw bodies under blankets,
before being escorted away. I worked late in the night and co-wrote the story about the murders.”
Zimmerman said. “I also covered the murder trial.” The crime that Zimmerman covered was the
Trantino Murder, one of the most famous of the era.

Zimmerman later became a political writer during his time for The Record. Covering
political figures who came into Bergen County and New Jersey, he had the opportunity to meet
eventual president Gerald Ford when he was the minority house leader, and covered large
political events in other states and territories, such as Kentucky, Idaho, Puerto Rico, and
Missouri. He also covered the Republican National Convention.

His biggest achievement was his coverage of the United States – Soviet Union Summit in
Glassboro, NJ in 1967, earning himself a White House press badge. He would later donate the
badge to Rowan University during its 100-year anniversary.

Zimmerman later left the newspaper business and focused on politics and coordinated
campaigns for New Jersey politicians. Because Leon had so many stories to tell about the first
part of his post-Montclair career, he told the audience he would be willing to come back again to
talk about those other experiences.

The English Department and Office of Alumni Engagement were pleased to have Leon
return many decades after his graduation. His story took him from Montclair to the Yankee
locker room, to an MVP’s living room, to an aircraft carrier, to a notorious murder scene, to the
Republican National Convention, and to a major geopolitical summit–and that was just the first
part of his remarkable career.

Leon’s wife, son, and granddaughter attended the presentation to watch him tell his story,
along with a fellow 1950s English major and current English majors and faculty.

– Written by Victoria Ribarich

Castro graduated ����vlog with a Bachelor of Arts in English and a minor in Creative Writing in May 2022.

“My first day at the office was three weeks after my graduation date,” says Castro, who credits the Creative Writing program with helping her land her dream job. “I love it. This is probably what I’ll do for the rest of my career – happily so.”

Up until she entered the program, Castro says, she thought of writing as something she did alone in her bedroom. Then she was introduced to a writing workshop with visiting English Professor Rachel Carter. “She fostered such an incredible workshop environment, where I was reading other people’s work, they were reading my work, and we were giving each other feedback,” she recalls. “It was this incredibly collaborative experience, and I – all at once – fell in love with that.”

Montclair’s current Creative Writing program was restarted in 2008 by director and , a prolific writer, author and champion of his students, both present and former.

Galef notes that many of the students at Montclair are second-generation immigrants, often the first in their families to attend college, and English isn’t always their native language. Additionally, “They’re often holding down one or even two jobs and that’s tough,” he says. “The fact that they’re competing head-to-head with schools with higher profiles and they’ve done this well – I think it’s amazing, and they should be recognized for it.”

He would love to see the University’s writers embraced by Montclair Township, home to many creative types, and perhaps expand the program’s writing prizes. Currently, there are four creative writing awards, one each for fiction, flash fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, that come with prize money.

A student asks a question in a writing workshop while holding Professor David Galef’s book about writing flash fiction.

The 411 on Creative Writing

The creative writing workshops and a are open to all undergraduate students, regardless of discipline; however, only English majors may pursue a creative writing concentration. Galef is proud of the program and how it benefits students. “I’m often asked that age-old question, ‘Can you really teach creative writing?’” he says, laughing. “People who ask that question have probably never been to a workshop.”

The program covers 200-, 300- and 400-level courses. Students in the 200-level courses are often given writing prompts, but not in the advanced courses, Galef says. “You’ve got a semester to give us 40 pages, do what you want. We give more structure than that, but we don’t tell you what to do. You produce stories or sections from a longer work, and we workshop it,” he says, adding, “It’s pretty similar to what a student will encounter in an MFA program. In fact, a project in the advanced fiction workshop makes a very suitable writing sample, should you want to apply for an MFA program.”

Taking it all down in a writing workshop.

Through the Creative Writing program, students can take a variety of classes. “You may think you’re God’s gift to poetry but have you tried a fiction class? How about screenwriting? How about Young Adult? We’ve got a lot of different electives,” Galef says.

, director of the Joseph and Elda Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America, teaches a mix of classes, including food, memoir and sports writing. Author and former senior editor for Publishers Weekly, Rotella loves teaching.

“I’m kind of lucky in that the students who take my class are those who are very interested in writing,” Rotella says. “They attend all the classes, and they do the work.”

In his food-writing class, that may include tasting food and writing about it or penning a restaurant review. Rotella takes a Proustian approach to food writing. “I take them into writing about food as memory and how food – like Marcel Proust’s madeleine – once you bite into something, will spark a whole barrage of memories,” he says. “I talk about food as culture; a lot of students at Montclair State come from so many different backgrounds, that food becomes a lingua franca for discussing culture.” Meanwhile, his memoir writing “allows students to really get to know each other, feel comfortable with writing about themselves and sharing it,” he says. Lastly, sports writing is not about scores reportage but long, narrative-form writing.

Ultimately, his classes provide students “the opportunity to write something that they won’t in almost every other class at a university level,” he says. “What I want them to have, at the end of the semester, is that one piece of writing that they are really proud of that they can say they accomplished. They could show their family, they could show their kids in the future but also that maybe when they apply to grad school or for a job, there’s a writing sample there. They can say, ‘I wrote this, and I’m proud of this.’”

This year, Rotella helped formalize a partnership between the Montclair Literary Festival and ����vlog.

Nurturing Dreams of Being a Writer

Author, English teacher and online editor Davon Loeb ’11 has received literary praise for his recently published book The In-Betweens, a Lyrical Memoir.

Creative Writing alumnus Davon Loeb ’11 has been getting rave reviews for The In-Betweens, a Lyrical Memoir (West Virginia University Press), a coming-of-age story about his Southern Black and Long Island-Jewish heritage.

“Engagingly delivered, candid reflections on heritage and identity,” praises Kirkus Reviews. Chicago Review of Books writes: “Utterly captivating and resonant, The In-Betweens deserves a top spot on your bookshelf.”

After earning a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing, Loeb graduated with an MFA from Rutgers University-Camden in 2015, where he started his memoir. However, the New Jersey author, English teacher and online editor at The Rumpus, Loeb credits the creative writing program with making him a better writer.

“Though I did not write any of The In-Betweens while studying at ����vlog, in many ways, the writer I eventually became, the writer I am now, has everything to do with my experiences in Montclair,” Loeb says. “Taking creative writing classes, specifically, poetry and fiction, at Montclair was really about expanding my exposure to literature, craft and workshops.”

Loeb recalls doing readings for Montclair’s literary magazine, The Normal Review. “I remember the first time I ever had a piece published, that it was there, and that I celebrated with my classmates. It felt very special,” he says.

In addition, Loeb, who is currently working on a collection of essays about parenthood and being a father, looks back fondly on learning from Montclair professors: “I remember taking poetry with Dr. Johnny Lorenz and fiction with Dr. David Galef and feeling like I learned so much about how to become a better writer – that my poetry could absolutely influence my prose, consequently, my prose could influence my poetry – that the two could equally exist in my work.”

Students listen to English professor David Galef during a creative writing workshop.

Alyssa DiPalma ’23, who earned a BA in Film and Television, won the 2023 Johnny Muller Memorial Scholarship in Fiction with “Passaic,” a story she wrote as part of a class while working on her Creative Writing minor. She credits Galef with creating “a safe environment for other writers to share their work, to critique each other’s work, to give each other positive feedback or critical feedback but in a way where no one ever felt like it was too harsh or too critical.”

Castro says she went into the Creative Writing program, thinking that she was just going to become a better writer. “I definitely did, but I came out with my career and so much more,” she says.

Both she and Loeb strongly urge ambitious undergrads to enter the Creative Writing program.

“I would recommend students take creative writing classes in different genres, especially genres they do not regularly write in,” says Loeb.

Castro encourages anyone “who is interested in reading and writing” to participate. The program, she says, isn’t “just for people who want to be authors someday. It’s for anyone who feels like they have a story, and I’m of the opinion that that’s everyone.”

Priyanka Taslim ’14 holds her book The Love Match (courtesy photo), which Publishers Weekly described as “Jane Austen meets Bengali cinema in Taslim’s joyful debut.”

Story by Staff Writer Sylvia A. Martinez. Photos by University Photographer Mike Peters (except as noted).

Read the profile .

Montclair State graduate Priyanka Taslim has come out with a novel from Simon & Schuster, , and will be giving a reading from it on April 6, 12:45-2:00pm, in UNIV 1143. All university and community members are invited.

About the novel: “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before meets Pride and Prejudice in this delightful and heartfelt rom-com about a Bangladeshi American teen whose meddling mother arranges a match to secure their family’s financial security—just as she’s falling in love with someone else.”

Montclair State graduate Davon Loeb will be reading from his memoir, The In-Betweens, on Monday, April 10, 141 Cole Hall, 5:30-6:30. Loeb has been an editor at The Rumpus, Apiary Magazine, Bending Genres, and Connotation Press. His work has appeared in Catapult Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Ploughshares, Creative Nonfiction, Joyland Magazine, The Offing Magazine, PANK Magazine, Pleiades Magazine, and elsewhere.