

Two New Hires for the Advancement Team
Sammie Emsick Becker ’05 has accepted the Director of Events position at Mercy High School and began her new role on June 13, 2022.
Since graduating from Mercy, Sammie earned a bachelor in elementary education, a certificate in Catholic School leadership, and most recently, a Master of Science in educational leadership. Outside classroom teaching, she has served as the athletic director for St. James for the past three years where, in conjunction with supervising all things athletics, annually planned the “Spring Fling” fundraiser where dollars raised went straight to the athletic program. Her most recent “Spring Fling” event set a record for money raised for St. James. She further has event planning experience by way of her time at Dundee Bank, where she was the community involvement coordinator and worked closely with various Omaha businesses to promote and grow relationships with key stakeholders of the bank via special events.
She’s married to Tyler Becker and has two boys Ty (12) and Drew (10).
Welcome back to Mercy Sammie!
Brian Altenhofen began his new position as Director of Marketing and Communications on July 5th.
He comes to Mercy with a wealth of knowledge having earned a doctorate degree in communication and technology studies from Texas A&M University and teaching at Truman State University for the past five years. He also served as the Director of the Truman Leadership Scholars, mentoring and programming leadership experiences for Truman Scholars. Prior to his academic career he spent five years as a Jesuit Scholastic.
He is married to Michaela Cullan Altenhofen who will return to Mary Our Queen Catholic School teaching 3rd grade. They have four children Dylan (16), Lily (9), Dominic (7), and Clara (3).
National History Day Winners
Mercy High School took home 13 prizes in the 2020 Douglas County National History Day competition at Metro Community College’s South Omaha campus on March 6. Mercy swept all four places in both the group exhibit and individual exhibit categories. Our students also earned ribbons in group documentary, individual documentary, group live performance and historical paper. Here is a list of the winners:
Senior Group Exhibit
1st Place Ellee Houghtaling and Samantha Burns, “The Little Rock Nine”
2nd Place McKenzie Moore and Clare Euteneuer, “The Breakthrough of Fingerprinting”
3rd Place Karina Rief and Josie Pellerito, “Can You Still Hear the Bird?”
4th Place Lilee Surdell and Marielle McDonald, “Period. End of Story”
Senior Individual Exhibit
1st Place Baylin Davis, “Making Waves: The Woman Who Ran the Boston Marathon”
2nd Place Bridget Koley, “Jazz: Breaking Racial and Musical Barriers”
3rd Place Carolyn Hire, “Breaking Barriers in Omaha: The Omaha Star”
4th Place Makayla Kennedy, “Dissections by da Vinci”
Senior Group Documentary
1st Place Maysa McCormick and Josie Browning, “First Impressions: The Type of Story
You Wouldn’t Expect” about the invention of the printing press
2nd Place Grace Larson and Dani Stolze, “Momentous Memes”
Senior Individual Documentary
1st Place Lindsey Wessling, “New Sports in the Olympics”
Senior Historical Paper
2nd Place Megan Streff, “How Superheroes Changed America’s WWII Participation”
Senior Group Performance
1st Place Molly Vankat, Kateri Pantoja, and Clara Jones, “The New Collossus”
concerning Irish immigration to America
Overall, Mercy had 36 students in the competition. The 13 prize-winning entries qualify for the state competition on Saturday, April 18, at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln.