Note: This is the first of two features introducing Ada Icon viewers to our two fall Icon interns. Alli Walbolt is a feature writer and Joelle George is a graphic artist.

Ada Icon viewers will see Alli Walbolt’s byline frequently this fall.

Alli, a sophomore at ONU, is from Rossford, near Toledo. She says that she first learned about Ohio Northern and Ada when her brother enrolled at ONU. He graduated in 2010 as an accounting major and today works in the finance department of Chrysler in Toledo.

She said that during visits to Ada with her family, she discovered that she liked the feel of this small town and decided to enroll at ONU after high school.

She says she always wanted to be a writer and wrote her first book when she was in the fifth grade. Hoping to some day be an author, she says that she is working on a book about baseball, which is based upon a story about her mother and father.

Ada Icon viewers can read her story on the Ada First United Methodist Church, posted at the top of the home page. She’s also written a preview of the Ada Harvest and Herb Festival and a story on Rhythm in Motion Dance Center, both posted earlier this fall on The Icon.

She is working on several additional features at the moment.  Icon viewers may soon read her columns on social media and perhaps some restaurant reviews. As a double major in Professional Writing and also in Management, she’s taking an exceptionally heavy load of 19 hours this fall.

“I’m taking Micro Economics, Accounting, Information Systems, Creative Writing Workshop, Layout and Design, German, English Studies in addition to my Icon internship,” she said.

She is a staff member of The Northern Review, the ONU campus newspaper, and also participates in ONU’s Habitat for Humanity. Last spring she traveled with the group of nearly 30 ONU students to Fairfield, Alabama, during spring break.

“I hammered siding on houses while I was there,” she said. “I hope to make another Habitat trip somewhere in 2013.”

We invite Icon viewers who have feature ideas for Alli to send them to [email protected].