The University of Vermont Magazine, Fall 2020

Vermont THE UNIVERSITY OF

MAGAZINE

keeping bees The Plight of Pollinators

Po Murray ’89

Yudi Bennett G’74

State of Cheese

Mamava’s Message

Navigating the Pandemic FA L L 2020

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On July 13, The New York Times offered a quiet place in turbulent times with photographer Caleb Kenna’s drone photos of Vermont.

Among them: this lone tree at UVM’s Morgan Horse Farm in Weybridge.

See the full NYT piece: go.uvm.edu/kenna

UVM MAGAZINE

DEPARTMENTS

2 President's Perspective 4 The Green 16 Catamount Sports 18 Alumni Voice 48 Class Notes 64 Extra Credit FEATURES

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NAVIGATING A PANDEMIC

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UVM PEOPLE: Po Murray ’89

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As many students returned to the university for on-campus, in-person classes during the fall semester, institutional planning and community responsibility have been paramount. | BY THOMAS WEAVER Alumna’s national advocacy for gun control measures grows from tragedy of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. | BY THOMAS WEAVER

PLOT TWIST

Helping direct films and building careers for people with autism, alumna Yudi Bennett’s unique path in the movie business. | BY THOMAS WEAVER

30 KEEPING BEES

36 40

Pollinators, critical to ecosystems and the food web, are under threat in Vermont and worldwide. Faculty, staff, students, and alumni are working to better understand and meet the challenges. | BY JOSHUA BROWN

DISRUPTIVE DESIGN

In founding Mamava, Sascha Mayer ’93 and business partner Christine Dodson created private spaces for nursing mothers and sparked wider discussion of breastfeeding. | BY KEVIN COBURN ’81

TRUE TO THE LAND

Vermont’s artisan cheesemakers, many of them alumni, are among the best in the world. UVM food science expertise has been key to helping this Green Mountain specialty carve out its niche and thrive. | BY KAITIE CATANIA

COVER: Drury’s long-horned bee, Melissodes druriellus Photograph by Joshua Brown

| PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

Nurturing Talent Across America the twin crises roiling society right now—the coronavirus pandemic and pervasive racism—are intertwined and reinforce one another. A way to address both is to nurture the talent for science and technology among underrepresented students across America.

Consider these two examples: When David Lucero arrived at the University of Vermont from Queens, New York, in 2004, this first-generation college student had little direction. After a professor in an intro biology course engaged him in her research tracking Chagas disease, he became passionate about disease ecology, eventually earning a PhD at the university. Today he is a much-published expert in disease transmission studying Zika, Legionnaires’ disease, and COVID-19.

Kizzmekia Corbett was a high school sophomore in rural North Carolina when she interned in a chemistry lab at the University of North Carolina, where the scientists she met ignited a lifelong passion for research. After earning an undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a PhD from UNC, Corbett is today an NIH immunologist playing an important role in the government’s efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine.

Lucero’s and Corbett’s experiences speak to a basic truth, that a talent for science, the capacity for hard work, and the desire to make a contribution are found at every income level, among all ethnicities, races and genders, and in every area of the country.

Often, all it takes is a spark—a role model, a mentor—to turn potential talent into a fulfilling life of scientific achievement.

If the coronavirus outbreak has taught us anything, it is that we can no longer afford to squander the talents of large segments of our population—a lesson reinforced by the strife the country is now experiencing and by the frustration forged by racism, ingrained prejudice, and years of opportunity denied. To develop the vaccines, diagnostics, treatments, and community-appropriate messaging that we’ll need for the next public health crisis, we need to harness every bright mind.

A new report, Vision 2030, from the National Science Board, makes clear that we are falling short.

The number of women and students from underrepresented groups in the nation’s science and engineering workforce has grown over the past decade. But because the workforce grew so rapidly overall during that time, the share of both women and minorities in the overall workforce declined.

To be representative of the U.S. population by the year 2030, much more rapid increases will be needed. Vision 2030 estimates that the number of women must nearly double, Black or African

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Americans must more than double, and Hispanic or Latinos must triple over the next ten years.

If we are to meet the challenges ahead, it is urgent that we find and train these “missing millions,” in the National Science Board’s parlance. What can be done to accelerate the progress we’ve made and bring even more women and diverse students into the science and engineering workforce?

Exposing young people to mentors and role models isn’t the only answer, but as the examples of Lucero and Corbett show, it can be a powerful tool.

I know the power of role models from my own experience.

When I was growing up in a middle-class family in central India, my parents modeled hard work, demanded long hours of study from my siblings and me, and instilled in us a love of learning. And teacher after passionate teacher throughout my school years demonstrated that by working hard, I could master complex material, grow as a person, and lead a life dedicated to discovery. Later, I was able to serve as a mentor myself, tutoring economically disadvantaged kids while I was in college in India and as part of an NIH-supported program that brought minority students from area schools to university science and engineering laboratories in Milwaukee.

Unfortunately, mentors and role models don’t appear magically. To have an impact at scale, mentoring initiatives require intentionality and financing.

That is why it is so important that we formally recognize and significantly increase support for mentoring programs across the board. Congress recently introduced a bipartisan bill called the Endless Frontier Act that would greatly increase funding for the National Science Foundation, including for education. That is a bold step in the right direction, given that the minority-oriented mentoring programs the foundation sponsors—such as initiatives within NSF INCLUDES—could be substantially bolstered. Universities also have a part to play by expanding promotion and tenure guidelines to include documentation of mentorship efforts. And the business community must be far more intentional in creating internships that offer mentorship to underserved populations.

Every young person in America deserves to have the kind of mentoring experience that so dramatically altered the paths of Lucero and Corbett. In the next pandemic, our lives may depend on it.

—President Suresh Garimella This essay was originally published by Scientific American on June 22, 2020.

ANDY DUBACK

FROM THE EDITOR Alert readers will notice a subtle change with this issue. We are no longer Vermont Quarterly, but are now The University of Vermont Magazine (UVM Magazine among friends). Full disclosure, we haven’t been a “quarterly” magazine for a number of years. Old titles die hard, you know. But as we will now shift from three annual issues to two, it is clearly time for a new name. Financial challenges faced by UVM, and throughout higher education, are at the core of this decision.

Between issues, we encourage you to keep up with the latest at the university via uvm.edu and our multiple social media channels. And as our future May and November editions arrive in the mail, we hope you’ll continue to enjoy the ways the magazine connects you with today’s UVM and reconnects you with your own time at the university.

Best, Thomas Weaver, Editor

UVM MAGAZINE

EDITOR Thomas Weaver ART DIRECTOR Elise Whittemore CLASS NOTES EDITOR Kathy Erickson ’84 CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Joshua Brown, Kaitie Catania, Kevin Coburn ’81, Christina Davenport, Andrea Estey, Janet Franz, Nich Hall, Rachel Leslie, Erin Post, Christopher Veal ’14 MD ’21, Jeffrey Wakefield, Benjamin Yousey-Hindes PHOTOGRAPHY Clayton Boyd ’09, Joshua Brown, Bear Cieri, Andy Duback, Aliza Eliazarov, Rowan Elleman, Brent Harrewyn, Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist ’09, Brian Jenkins, Caleb Kenna, Sally McCay, Tomoki Nomura, Kate Turcotte ’09

Fleming staff reflect on the collection and our current moment

“This painting reminds me of a maze—which is exactly how this time in history feels to me. We are navigating uncharted territory in so many ways . . .”

—STEPHANIE GLOCK business manager

Ernst Benkert (American, 1928-2010), Half-Inch Grid, 1962. Oil on canvas.

Museum purchase 1972.2 © The Estate of Ernst Benkert, courtesy D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc.

CORRESPONDENCE Editor, UVM Magazine 617 Main Street Burlington, VT 05405 (802) 656-2005, tweaver@uvm.edu ADDRESS CHANGES UVM Foundation 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 656-9662, alumni@uvm.edu CLASS NOTES alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes UVM MAGAZINE Publishes May 1, November 1 PRINTED IN VERMONT Issue No. 88, November 2020 UVM MAGAZINE ONLINE uvm.edu/uvmmag

instagram.com/universityofvermont twitter.com/uvmvermont

ON VIEW THRU SPRING 2021 / WWW.FLEMINGMUSEUM.ORG

facebook.com/universityofvermont youtube.com/universityofvermont

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THE GREEN

SIGN OF THE TIMES Friendly reminders were all part of the plan as UVM worked towards a safe re-opening for the fall semester. See page 20 for a look at how the university has navigated in-person and remote learning across the past several months.

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YOU SHOULD KNOW “ If they can do it here, it tells us that we can do it in our communities. You can see that there is a coalition of the willing to really ensure that students, staff, faculty, and communities remain safe.”

—Dr. Deborah Birx, Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, visiting UVM on October 10, part of her national tour gathering information on best practices in higher education regarding COVID-19 response. See page 13 for the story.

26%

UVM received $181.7 million in research funding during the 2020 fiscal year, surpassing last year’s amount by $37.4 million, or 26 percent. Much of the surge in funding supports key research priorities—the health of society and health of the environment—laid out in the “Amplifying Our Impact” strategic vision document.

Read more: go.uvm.edu/surge

TOP LGBTQ RANK BestColleges, in partnership with Campus Pride, recently rated UVM among the Northeast’s Best Colleges for LGBTQ students and as the top school in Vermont. Read about the Prism Center’s recent move to new headquarters in Living/Learning: go.uvm.edu/newprism

KEY CROP See how UVM researchers are helping Vermont apple growers adapt to evolving varieties and markets: go.uvm.edu/applevideo

CUB REPORTERS Student interns at UVM’s Community News Service, an extension of the new Reporting and Documentary Storytelling minor, are helping Vermont media outlets maintain the vital flow of information and fabric of community fostered by local news. Read more: go.uvm.edu/localnews ALL IN THE FAMILY Pramodita Sharma, Daniel Clarke Sanders Chair of Family TOP Business at UVM’s Grossman School of Business, was recently named one of the Top 100 Family Business Influencers by “Family Capital,” a publication dedicated to the global family enterprise sector. Read more: go.uvm.edu/familybiz

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PRESIDENT TO PRESIDENT

JOSHUA BROWN

Tom Sullivan, UVM’s twenty-sixth president and now a professor of political science, has been elected president of the American Bar Foundation. As Sullivan takes on this leadership post, he continues in his new UVM role as a professor of political science, with a forthcoming book, Speech and Expression: Constitutional Principles and Current Debates, scheduled for publication by Cambridge University Press in 2021.

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Protecting Our Planet Trustees approve fossil fuel divestment

SUSTAINABILITY | On July 14, the UVM Board of Trustees voted unanimously to divest the endowment of fossil fuel investments, adding another milestone in UVM’s long history of leadership on environmental issues.

The university will immediately end new direct investment in fossil fuels, will fully divest from public investments in fossil fuels by July 2023, and will allow pre-existing multi-year private investments, which it stopped acquiring in 2017, to lapse without renewal. UVM will continue investing in opportunities that focus on sustainability, climate change mitigation, and other environmental, social, and governance issues. And it will accelerate an engagement campaign with managers of its commingled funds, asking that they factor the financial risks of climate change into their investment decision-making process and share their framework for doing so with UVM. “Divesting from fossil fuels is the right thing to do for the University of Vermont, given our history and longstanding commitment to sustainability efforts,” said President Suresh Garimella.

“As the climate crisis deepens, divestment—here and at other schools—is also the right thing to do for our environment and future generations. As we work to have a tangible effect on emissions,

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divesting brings attention to the global need for governments, organizations, and individuals to aggressively confront the challenge of climate change.”

The board’s decision to divest came as the climate crisis is becoming increasingly more acute and after several years of student advocacy, which culminated in a series of presentations students and faculty made to the board in November 2019.

“The students put a great deal of work into making their case, and it showed,” said Ron Lumbra ’83, chair of the UVM board. “The Board appreciated the research they did and the effort they made to understand the complexity of this issue.

Our subsequent review, which took into account financial trends and societal shifts, made today’s decision clear.”

Trustee Carolyn Dwyer G’18 led a Sustainability Work Group to gather input and explore divestment. “Sustainability is integral to who we are as an institution,” she said. “We approached this recommendation—and the resulting decision—in a way that was methodical, principled, and built on strong foundational knowledge. I’m proud of the decision, and of the way we reached it.”

Read more about UVM’s commitment to sustainability: go.uvm.edu/sustain BEAR CIERI

Bradford Proud

Scholarship funds students from alumna’s hometown

STUDENT SUCCESS | Harriet Pratt Peterson ’52 passed the days of her youth in Bradford, Vermont helping out around the family farm. Her grandfather was known throughout the area as the “King of Strawberries,” and to save money for college, Peterson spent her summers knelt down in the fertile clay of the Lower Plain picking the sweet, red berries that had put Bradford on the map. When she set off for UVM, as her mother had done in 1923, she was relieved to receive scholarship support to help cover the remainder of the costs. In 2018 Peterson decided to return the favor, establishing the Margaret Jenkins Pratt Scholarship in memory of her mother. When the first student recipient was named in early 2020, she was inspired to make another significant contribution that will more than triple the fund’s impact, bringing it to a total of $1 million.

“I found myself in a position that I could perhaps repay some of it, because I could not have gone to UVM without the help from the Wilbur Fund and others,” she says. “I just wanted to do what I could because I had gotten help when I needed it.”

As an enduring legacy of the Pratt women who left the farm for bustling Burlington, the scholarship provides support to women from Bradford who wish to enroll at UVM and further their studies. Margaret Pratt was a firm believer in education.

After raising her family, she returned to work as a SALLY MCCAY

first-grade teacher at Bradford Elementary, where she influenced the lives of countless children.

Aside from two years in study at UVM, Pratt lived all of her ninety-eight years in Bradford. You could cart a fresh load of Bradford berries to the markets in Boston in two and a half hours, but standing on Main Street, nestled in the heart of the Connecticut River Valley amid open farmlands and views of the White Mountains, you feel like you’re worlds away from anywhere.

That’s why Jessie Daigle, the inaugural recipient of the Pratt Scholarship, was surprised to receive support from a fund that was tailor made for students like her—though it came at just the right time. The junior communication sciences and disorders major lost her part-time job due to the pandemic, and the Pratt Scholarship helped to keep her afloat during her studies. Like Pratt, Daigle also wishes to pursue a career in public education, as a speech-language pathologist.

“I’d like to work in an elementary school, helping young children work through their disorders and find their voice in a confident manner,” she says. “I hope I can be the same kind of wonderful educator that I’m sure Mrs. Pratt was.”

Peterson’s gift will foster the work of Bradford women like Daigle for generations to come. She knows better than most that a seedling, given enough time and proper cultivation, will grow deep roots, blossom, and bear beautiful fruit.

Jessie Daigle ’22, first recipient of the Margaret Jenkins Pratt Scholarship, is studying for a career as a speech-language pathologist.

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A SOLDIER’S STORY Though military service runs in Stephanie Wobby’s family, her mother cried when she told her she had enlisted in the U.S. Army at seventeen and would be following in the footsteps of her grandfather and uncle, who served in the Philippine Commonwealth Army of the U.S. Armed Forces Far East and the U.S. Air Force, respectively.

The weight of the experience— and the sheer heft of military gear—is at the heart of Wobby’s essay “7 lbs. 8 oz.,” which was selected first runner-up in the 2019 Los Angeles Review Literary Awards for creative nonfiction.

The essay, originally written for

Remembering Gail Sheehy

an assignment in Professor Greg Bottoms’s creative writing class, explores the realities and anxieties of enlisting. It details intimate moments from the early stages of her seven-year career as a combat medic, from privacy on a basecamp latrine and bonding sessions with her platoon unit in Baghdad, to her first time holding a weapon in basic training.

Read more: go.uvm.edu/soldier

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ALUMNI | The UVM community lost one of its brightest lights with the passing of alumna Gail Sheehy ’58 on August 24. The bestselling author, a pioneering woman in national media, and one of the leaders of the New Journalism movement, died in Southampton, New York, due to complications of pneumonia.

Her 1976 book, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, was named one of the ten most influential books of our time by the Library of Congress.

Sheehy published profiles and biographies of iconic figures, such as Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Hillary Clinton.

The alumna was close to her alma mater across the past five years. She returned to campus to deliver the 2016 commencement address, visiting Burlington a month prior to interview seniors as background for her talk.

The next spring, Sheehy spent two weeks living in a UVM residence hall, a time during which she taught a seminar for aspiring undergrad journalists and led a workshop with faculty on how to share their work broadly via media. She also got to know her residence hall mates well in conversations and interviews, as she collected information for a book project focused on Millenial daughters and their Boomer mothers.

Referencing her 2014 memoir when she addressed UVM’s Class of 2016, Sheehy said, “The theme of my life is daring. Never be afraid to cross barriers.”

TOMOKI NOMURA

N E W O F F I C E O F E N G AG E M E N T:

A Front Door to UVM LAND GRANT | President Suresh Garimella is a believer in academic institutions, especially landgrant universities, playing a leading role in local economic development. “Because Vermont, as much as any state in the nation, faces a series of daunting challenges—from population decline to stagnant economic growth—that a land-grant university like UVM is powerfully equipped to address,” he noted in a recent op-ed piece.

Vermont’s economy has long been characterized as a contest between those placing a premium on environmental protection, the foundation of the state’s recreation and tourist industries, and those who believe growth is hampered by an anti-industry sentiment, high taxes, and a brain drain that forces young workers to seek jobs and careers outside of the state.

Chris Koliba, professor in the Community Development and Applied Economics Department at UVM, and the first director of the new UVM Office of Engagement, is trying to change that dynamic.

With the support of $2 million in funding from the Vermont Legislature, his office is taking on an ambitious new role directing UVM’s considerable expertise towards community economic development in the state.

“The challenge of building a resilient economy and resilient communities is especially salient now as we work our way through the COVID crisis,” Koliba notes. “What we need to do is figure out ways not to just bounce back, but to take advantage of new opportunities as a result of this disruption.”

Koliba has devoted his career to research in public administration; food, energy, water, and transportation infrastructure; and complex adaptive systems.

He sees several silver linings on the horizon, one being the changing nature of the workplace.

“There’s a seismic shift towards the work-athome model,” he said. “It doesn’t work in every industry, but Vermont’s reputation for strong education and an outstanding quality of life can be powerful magnets to attract skilled workers who are discovering they can work from almost anyANDY DUBACK

where. What better place than here?”

The Office of Engagement is fundamentally charged with responding to challenges laid out by Vermont Governor Phil Scott ’80 during his 2020 State of the State Address: an aging population; the need for additional skilled workers; and inadequate growth in the number of well-paying jobs.

Koliba will lead efforts to provide expertise in writing and submitting state and federal grant proposals, coordinating internships, attracting UVM alumni back to Vermont, workforce training, and positioning the university to collaborate with local enterprises to address economic development opportunities.

Koliba sees the office, located at 109 South Prospect Street next to Waterman, as the university’s “front door” for private, public, and non-profit entities and communities looking to access UVM’s many strengths and capabilities.

“I’m optimistic and excited about the connections and innovation this office will facilitate,” said President Garimella when the formation of the program was announced in the spring. “UVM is uniquely positioned to help Vermont communities and businesses evolve and capitalize on current resources in new ways.”

“Vermont’s reputation for strong education and an outstanding quality of life can be powerful magnets to attract skilled workers who are discovering they can work from almost anywhere.”

—Chris Koliba

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| THE GREEN

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Internships Abide Among the myriad impacts on society, the pandemic threw a jumbo-sized wrench into the time-honored summer internship for college students. Many employers revoked the offers they made to students pre-COVID-19.

Of the ones that didn’t, nearly half converted them to virtual internships, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

“Students in virtual internships may have had to scale back their expectations,” says Amanda Chase, the internship coordinator in UVM’s Career Center. “But really good work can still happen virtually. Students can still make important networking connections, gain experience to list on a resume, develop their skills and try out work in a particular field.”

At UVM, students persisted despite the challenges, with hundreds—assisted by staff in the Career Center and in the academic units—experiencing a pandemicinflected internship this summer.

While for many that meant centering their work in front of a computer screen, some, like Olivia Lopez ’21 in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, were out and about, with masking and distancing pre-cautions, of course. Lopez’s workplace was UVM’s 476-acre Jericho Research Forest, where she partnered with two fellow Rubenstein School students to mark plot centers for data collection to monitor the forest’s growth and health. The internship lined up perfectly with the career Lopez plans in forestry, ideally researching forest health and trees’ ability to store carbon and slow climate change. “It’s very applicable, and I’m gaining a lot of insight,” she says.

BRIAN JENKINS

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NNS | T 3 HQE UGE RS ET EI O

will all be thrown away. If they do work, we’ve saved ourselves years of time in manufacturing vaccines. The only way any COVID vaccine could even have a prayer of coming out in 2020 or 2021 is through this type of approach. In the past, the fastest vaccine ever developed was about six years, and that was Merck Ebola vaccine. Most of the time, they take probably twelve to twenty years, and now we are trying to do this in about a year, so that’s really unprecedented too.

An internationally recognized physician-scientist, Dr. Beth Kirkpatrick has a decades-long history of leadership in the field of vaccine testing and development. In 2001, she launched the UVM Vaccine Testing Center, and since then, the VTC has grown to assume a prominent role in the development and evaluation of vaccines for globally important infectious diseases such as dengue, cholera, rotavirus, and other pathogens. Kirkpatrick is also principal investigator and director of UVM’s Translational Global Infectious Disease Research Center of Biomedical Research Excellence.

Dr. Beth Kirkpatrick larner college of medicine

How are past successes in vaccine development informing the work going on across the globe on a COVID-19 vaccine? On the flip side, what is unprecedented about this effort?

KIRKPATRICK: We have multiple twenty-first-century tools at our disposal that are transforming the vaccine field. They have grown out of concerns that vaccine development was too slow to respond to epidemics, including Influenza and Ebola epidemics. For example, there’s been a lot of progress with computational means of understanding the parts of the pathogen necessary to put in a vaccine. We also have new vaccine platforms or types, including those based on genetic sequences; these allow the rapid construction of new vaccines. The field has also figured out how to overlap clinical trial designs, which also speeds things up. All of these new measures save us a significant amount of time and make vaccines that are more precisely designed. And what we understand about the human immune response is just phenomenal now. Immunophenotyping—getting a display about what exactly is going on in the immune system—has been transformational.

The other thing that’s unprecedented in COVID vaccine development has nothing to do with the science, and that’s the financial investment.

The government is doing what they call at-risk vaccine development, manufacturing the vials of vaccine to have them ready even before we know whether the specific vaccines work. If they don’t work, these vials

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What are the key questions researchers are focused on as they work towards a vaccine? How can wide use of (and trust in) the vaccine be promoted once we have one that has been thoroughly tested?

KIRKPATRICK: The goal isn’t going to be one coronavirus vaccine. It’s multiple, first-generation coronavirus vaccines. Over the next few years though, I would not be surprised if we have better vaccines. The top issue is always, safety, safety, safety. After that, we want to know about immunogenicity—the immune response your body has that suggests you’re going to be protected. And then finally, the efficacy. In vaccine world, this means that when you’re confronted in your real life with the infection, how well will the vaccine prevent you from getting sick.

I would say the foundation for vaccine safety review has been quite robust, and has stood the test of time.

Generally, until recently at least, there has been trust of the system. At the same time, and especially now, there has to be transparency with this data and this process.

I would anticipate that any company that has phase III data will release much of it through the publication process. For those of us who work on vaccines, I think we also have an obligation to educate the public about the process. I do think we need to help people regain trust in this system because of the politicalization.

How is UVM involved in COVID-19 research and public health efforts?

KIRKPATRICK: There’s a huge amount of coronavirus research going on. We have researchers here who are part of a national group working on the agents that prevent COVID-19 patients from having blood clots, so anti-thrombolytic agents. They’re involved in some fairly big work there. Many faculty at the university are doing service work and consulting with the state health department and university on safe guidelines for school reopening and on how to use diagnostic tests. There’s lot of participation from the faculty at the medical center and the state level for all of these things. It’s pretty great.

ANDY DUBACK

“Biologists are trying to put together the history of life on Earth and that is done by examining all of the constituent organisms that live here, not just the ones that are easy to find.”

—Michael Sundue

Dr. Deborah Birx tours UVM, lauds virus safety efforts CAMPUS LIFE | Dr. Deborah Birx, Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, visited UVM on October 10, part of her information-gathering tour of colleges and universities that have successfully re-opened this fall.

Praising efforts that have kept UVM’s COVID-19 cases among the lowest of any campus in the nation, Birx said, “If they can do it here, it tells us that we can do it in our communities. You can see that there is a coalition of the willing to really ensure that students, staff, faculty, and communities remain safe.”

Birx held separate meetings with UVM President Suresh Garimella, university public health and infectious disease experts, and a diverse group of students.

She also connected remotely with representatives from the governor’s office and Vermont Department of Health, and she toured the campus facility where more than ten thousand students get tested every week.

UVM has maintained an extremely low positivity rate since its extensive testing protocol began in early August. As of October 4, the university had received 60,297 JOSHUA BROWN

student test results. Of those, only twentyfour were positive, resulting in a positivity rate of 0.03 percent.

At a press conference following her tour of campus, Dr. Birx spoke to what she sees as the keys to UVM’s success in the first months of the semester. “What we have learned from universities that have done well through this fall season is they spent the spring planning. They brought the people together in a multi-sectorial approach as President Garimella did, working with the governor, working with his health team, working with the mayor, working with the community, and working with the staff, faculty, and students. And they created an environment of transparency and data sharing—also creating the sense that the data would be used for decision making and any changes that needed to occur based on that data,” Birx said.

She added that mandated testing was also critical to success at all of the schools she has visited, to a great extent because of the constant reinforcement of positive behaviors.

Discussing her meetings with undergraduates and medical students, Birx noted

Emily Sullivan and Ashley Hayes, seniors in nursing, meet with Dr. Deborah Birx in UVM’s Clinical Simulation lab.

the importance of student leadership in helping UVM maintain among the lowest positivity rates even while providing a significant amount of in-person coursework.

To that point, she also lauded the flexibility and creativity that went into re-purposing and maximizing campus facilities for safe instruction, including putting up large outdoor event tents to expand study space.

In closing, Dr. Birx stressed the importance of another pillar of the university’s mission—research. While bio-medical study of the virus and the development of vaccines and treatments have been exceptional worldwide, she also mentioned some of the other disciplines that will play key roles now and going forward. “Behavioral science research, mental health research.

How can we better understand the stressors and anxieties that people face with this virus? How we remain socially engaged but physically distanced will remain critical.”

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From Crop to Cup Team seeks solutions for coffee farmers and communities

AGRICULTURE | When walking into a meeting of the Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative (ALC), a research collaborative based at UVM, it’s likely you will be greeted by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. But for many in this group, the relationship goes far beyond the familiar comfort in that cup, as their work centers upon ensuring a sustainable future for coffee and the farmers who produce it.

Co-directed by Ernesto Méndez, professor of agroecology and chair of the Plant and Soil Science Department, the ALC engages in research both in the Northeast and internationally, with a focus on understanding and seeking solutions to issues facing our food systems using agroecological approaches. In 2017, the group began working with smallholder coffee farmers in Nicaragua and Mexico to study diversification strategies to help them become more resilient to the growing impacts of climate change and a volatile global coffee market, which leave many farmers unable to make ends meet.

“Coffee is not just a commodity that came from a crop— it’s a lot more complicated than that not only ecologically, but also socially and economically,” says Janica Anderzén, doctoral candidate in the Department of Plant and Soil Science and member of the collaborative. “Diversified, agroecological farms are key to strengthening coffee farmers’ resilience in a system that keeps changing.”

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The ALC’s philosophy to conducting research “for farmers, with farmers” is not just a commitment, but a guiding principle that informs every decision, conversation, and step of the research process, says Méndez. Utilizing a participatory action research approach, the process centers around the co-creation of knowledge and places equal value on Western scientific ideologies, as well as indigenous, traditional, and other forms of knowledge. The process begins with—and depends on—establishing deep trust with community partners and working collectively to identify problems and work towards solutions.

The three-year project involved concurrent studies at both research sites. As the projects come to a close, the findings have not only informed real on-farm decisions, but show how meaningful, transdisciplinary collaboration can create lasting impact.

“The process is not just about gathering this information, but about giving this information back to generate change,” says Rigoberto Hernández Jonapá of the of the CESMACH cooperative, the ALC’s collaborating partner in Mexico. CESMACH is using the research findings to design its first strategic plan on on-farm diversification and has successfully secured additional grant funding to help their members implement diversification strategies that have come out of the research, which will become increasingly important as the challenges facing farmers continue to grow.

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M E D I A

Wild at Heart

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Alumna explores nation’s relationship with nature in latest book On a mid-September morning, as millions of acres of wildfires rage across the American West, author Alice Outwater ’82 discusses our nation’s current and historic relationship with nature through the acute focus of climate change. She describes the transformation she sees firsthand in the high mesa country where she lives in southwest Colorado—three-inch-wide cracks in the soil, 500-year-old trees dropping their limbs as they fight to survive a twenty-year drought.

It’s not a happy picture. And Outwater, clear-eyed and straight-talking, educated as an engineer, is no Pollyanna. Yet, she says, “We don’t have to do environmental despair.” It’s an opinion informed by years of immersion in research and writing for her latest book, Wild at Heart: America’s Turbulent Relationship with Nature, from Exploitation to Redemption, published in 2019 by St. Martin’s Press.

Outwater tells her story across twelve chapters, exploring aspects such as the relationship to the land of native peoples; impacts of industrialization and agriculture; nineteenthcentury urbanization and the rise of parks preservation; and the environmental activism of our times, among others. Wild at Heart, listed as a Pulitzer Prize candidate, is engrossing to a casual reader while also seeming a likely choice for a text in a college environmental studies course.

The name Outwater might have a familiar ring to many in the UVM community. The writers’s father, the late John Outwater, was a longtime professor of mechanical engineering, and her mother, the late Alice Outwater, was a veteran counselor in the university’s Counseling and Testing Center.

The author earned her UVM bachelor’s in engineering, followed by a master’s from MIT. Her work on the clean-up of sludge in Boston Harbor led to her first publications, initially writing about the management of bio-solids for engineering journals, then publishing Water: A Natural History, 1997, for a lay audience. She also wrote The Cartoon Guide to the Environment, partnering with artist Larry Gonick.

While Outwater confesses that her recent

research revealed that some aspects of our nation’s exploitation of the natural world were worse than she had realized, she also found hopeful trends, often realized in extremely quick pivots, motivated by changes in public attitude or legislation—the redemptive side of the American coin.

Case in point, Outwater shares the dynamics of a nineteenth-century craze in women’s fashion for birds. Quoting an 1872 British book of commerce: “a new and very pretty ornamental application of feathers is that of the entire head and plumage of some birds for fans and fire-screens; and the brilliant heads of many of the humming-bird family, mounted as necklets, ear-pendants, and brooches, form a novel species of jewelry.”

While that trend sparked a global feather market that put a great strain on some species (pity the era’s egret with its showy dorsal plumes), it eventually was key to the formation of the National Audubon Society, as Boston’s blue-blood women united, organized a national feather boycott, and rallied for protection of birds.

Reflecting on positive change in her native Vermont, Outwater observes the dramatic return of some species—bears, white-tailed deer, turkeys, loons—since her own childhood.

Her research opened her eyes to the degree to which “connectivity,” creating travel corridors for wildlife, is taking place nationwide. More broadly in society, Outwater finds hope for the future of our relationship with nature in slowing population growth, Millennials eschewing car ownership, the wide interest in sustainable agriculture and restoring wildlife.

“I wrote this book because history shows that we should not despair,” Outwater says.

“We have solved many environmental problems in the past. We saved the whales, healed the ozone hole, and cleaned up our air and water. We stopped killing everything. When you see how far we’ve come, it seems like dealing with global warming is just the next step.”

Bob Weiler ’75 G’79 draws on his experience as founder of Brimstone Consulting Group for The Core 4: Harness Four Core Business Drivers to Accelerate Your Organization, published in July.

The book explores leadership, change, alignment, and energy as keys to enabling a business to move forward through challenging times.

Pearl Stuart, first-year student in UVM’s music business and technology major, released her second album as the fall semester began.

Performing as “Pearl,” she wrote, sang vocals, and produced the nine tracks on the album, “Angel,” available on Spotify and other listening platforms.

Stephen Cramer, poet and senior lecturer in English, is editor of the new book Turn It Up! Music in Poetry from Jazz to Hip-Hop. The anthology includes work by eighty-eight poets (in sync with the number of keys on a piano) with poems organized around musical genres—jazz, blues and rock, and hip-hop.

English professor Anthony Magistrale and former student Michael J. Blouin ’06, now a professor at Tennessee’s Milligan University, teamed up on the recently published Stephen King and American History (Routledge).

Josh “Bones” Murphy ’94, recently featured in this magazine for his film Artifishal, is out with a new film, titled Purple Mountains. The movie follows legendary snowboarder/climate activist/founder of Protect Our Winters Jeremy Jones as he confronts the issue of climate denialism and tries to find common ground in the mountains—one voter at a time.

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| C ATA M O U N T S P O R T S

New Leadership at the Gut BY | NICH HALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY | BRIAN JENKINS

Head Coach Todd Woodcroft brings deep NHL experience to college game.

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For Todd Woodcroft, nothing

about his first head coaching job has been “normal.” He went through the interview process remotely and, due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, he wasn’t able to set foot on campus for four months after being introduced as the new head coach of the Catamount men’s hockey team. Now he guides his student-athletes at UVM through a fall unlike any other in the program’s storied history.

Woodcroft received his introduction to Vermont hockey and Gutterson Fieldhouse in the late eighties, coming to Burlington to watch his brother Craig, who played for Colgate, face the Catamounts. “Seeing my

older brother battle here is something I will never forget,” says Woodcroft. During his time as a professional scout with the National Hockey League’s Calgary Flames, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota Wild, and Washington Capitals, he would return to Gutterson to watch college free agents and teams’ respective draft picks. The coach recalls, “Each time, I left knowing that the Gut is truly an icon in college sports, not just college hockey.”

For Woodcroft, hockey has always been a family affair. His younger brother, Jay, also played the collegiate game, at Alabama-Huntsville. Jay is now head coach of the American Hockey League’s Bakers-

field Condors, while Craig is head coach of HC Dinamo Minsk in the Kontinental Hockey League.

In 1993, looking to unite their expertise and work together, the brothers formed a hockey school. Starting small, within ten years they were in sixty cities across the world. “Those will always be the best memories I ever had with hockey,” says Woodcroft. “The lessons I learned from my brothers and all we created continue to inspire me today. When all is said and done, I want to be a part of building something.”

Woodcroft has achieved at the highest levels of the sport—winning a Stanley Cup in 2012 with the LA Kings and two IIHF World Hockey Championship gold medals.

Considering what he has accomplished at the pro level with a self-proclaimed “perfect job” as an assistant coach with the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets, one could be forgiven for asking why college hockey, why UVM? For Woodcroft, it comes down to continually challenging himself and making an impact on the lives of his players. “I want to see if all I have learned is something that I will be able to teach,” Woodcroft says. “This exact age group of players is one where I believe I can have the most influence, developing them as young men and hockey players.”

Woodcroft is the fifth head coach in the UVM program’s history. His immediate predecessors Jim Cross, Mike Gilligan, and Kevin Sneddon each led the program for seventeen or more seasons. Gilligan and Sneddon helped the program reach new heights, amassing six NCAA Tournament berths and two Frozen Four appearances, in 1996 and 2009. Connecting with that tradition, Woodcroft has spoken with more than a hundred alumni of the program since being named head coach in April.

“The University of Vermont is a world-class institution with a rich history,” says Woodcroft. “It is my goal to carry on the legacy

of this program in a fantastic city and state with passionate fans.”

There is more to be excited about for the men’s and women’s hockey programs at UVM as the transformational renovation of Gutterson Fieldhouse began to take shape this summer. A brand new NEVCO videoboard and auxiliary scoreboard will be the first things fans notice when they’re in Gutterson Fieldhouse again, an initial glimpse of the future as the University’s Athletic Facilities Project continues to reshape Vermont Athletics.

For Coach Woodcroft, the first step to reinvigorating the men’s hockey program was meeting the student-athletes. In these unique times, that meant arranging for introductions over video and phone calls.

“Connecting originally with players over video chatting was the least of my concerns at the time because I knew that soon we would meet in person, and soon we would be on the ice together,” says Woodcroft. For the new coach, watching his team adjust to the adversity and obstacles presented by COVID-19 has been a master class in understanding their desire to compete. “If you think about it, the truly elite athletes and the truly elite teams accept the discomfort.

They embrace it, knowing that winning will never be comfortable.”

It’s often said that a head coach is only as good as his staff; based on that metric, Vermont men’s hockey is in good hands.

UVMATHLETICS.COM | THE LATEST NEWS

The first step for Woodcroft was retaining Jeff Hill ’08 as an assistant coach. Hill began his sixth season with the team this fall. In addition, Woodcroft added two volunteer coaches with vast NHL experience. An NHL veteran of 673 games and former Boston Bruins defenseman Mark Stuart joined the staff as a volunteer assistant coach.

And Mike Babcock will be joining the Catamounts as a volunteer advisor to the coaching staff. Babcock has coached more than 1,300 NHL games, winning a Stanley Cup with Detroit in 2008. In September, Woodcroft announced the final piece of his coaching staff, former associate head coach at American International College Stephen Wiedler.

On September 9, Woodcroft and staff were able to take the ice with their team for the first time. Practicing pandemic safety pre-cautions, the team practiced in three separate “pods” of nine student-athletes at a time. Woodcroft sees a silver lining in the protocols: “This allows the players to learn how the coaching staff sees the game, how we want to teach it, and what our language is,” he says. “We can connect much better with the players as individuals in small groups.” As the team continues to work towards a safe return to competition this fall or winter, Woodcroft hopes this focused time with his new team will be the launching pad for a new era of Vermont Hockey.

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| ALUMNI VOICE

“Why did they shoot me so many times?”

Jacob Blake asked his father as he began to regain consciousness in the ICU after he was shot seven times by the Kenosha Police. His father fought back tears as he struggled to answer a question so innocent yet so remarkably tragic.

“Why did they shoot him so many times?”

Maria Hamilton thought to herself as she sat at a memorial service for her son, Dontre Hamilton, who was shot fourteen times by the Milwaukee Police six years ago.

“Why do they shoot us so many times?”

United in Kenosha BY | CHRISTOPHER VEAL ’14 MD ’21

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I shouted, with all the ferocity that question deserves, in unison with more than one hundred protesters, on a sunny day as we marched through the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin. This question became the newest chant for a movement that has turned the final words and names of Black lives cut short by police brutality into a rallying cry for justice.

I’d just made the long drive from Vermont to Wisconsin, motivated by a deep need to add my voice to the protests, a small gap in my clinical schedule making that possible. The situation in Kenosha felt especially close to home. Born in Detroit, I’m a Midwesterner at heart. Today, my parents live in northern Illinois, just across the state line.

As my voice began to crack from the four hours of continuous shouting through my N-95 mask, I found myself breathless. The irony of my brothers and sisters in arms chanting “I Can’t Breathe!” was certainly not lost on me. I stepped away from the group and pulled down my mask. With my eyes closed, I enjoyed every bit of the Lake Michigan-infused air that effortlessly coursed through my lungs as I deeply inhaled.

I opened my eyes to find a water bottle being held in front of me.

“You’ll never survive these without this…

Here!” said the woman, gesturing the bottle my way.

“I should have known better—Thanks!” I said, as I took the bottle without hesitation, “I guess I’m new to this.” “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that, all of us get that inspiration to march sooner or later… You from here?” she asked. “Twenty minutes south of here, but I just pulled in from Vermont…How about you?”

COURTESY CHRISTOPHER VEAL

“Wow! Vermont?!” her eyes widened. I chuckled and shook my head in agreement, acknowledging the random nature of my presence here from the remote state. “Me? Well, I’m from Milwaukee, but I just got back from walking out here to D.C. for the March on Washington!”

I looked at her in amazement. I asked her to repeat herself in case I misheard her, but I hadn’t. She, along with twenty of her fellow activists walked 750 miles to raise awareness about police brutality and racial inequality. The march was inspired by George Floyd, but it was accelerated by Jacob Blake, whose shooting occurred only days after they left Wisconsin. By the time they made it to the National Mall, their twentyperson group had grown to a crowd of more than seventy. And after all that, she is still marching. Her infectious energy and unwavering devotion to social justice reminded me of the incredible people leading this revolution.

On a stormy Saturday in Milwaukee, I joined the Blake family in another march and rally. “All this rain don’t stop the pain!” an activist shouted through her bullhorn, galvanizing the more than 150 people gathered in Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, despite the miserable conditions. I stood in my Larner College of Medicine white coat carrying a sign with Jacob Blake’s famous question “why did they shoot me so many times?” As I waited for the march to begin, I noticed a tall Black woman in a long black coat with a large afro waving at me. Confused, I looked behind me for someone the wave could have beckoned. Seeing no one, I returned my gaze her way and pointed to myself. The woman nodded her head and continued to gesture for me to come her way.

The woman, a reporter for a national newspaper, introduced me to Maria Hamilton. Ms. Hamilton wore an afro that was smaller than the reporter’s but more vibrant with its purple color. The reporter wanted a photo with me holding my sign with Ms. Hamilton.

Greater meaning rose from the words written on my sign when it was being held by a mother whose son was shot fourteen times by the police.

After the photo was taken, I turned to Ms. Hamilton and expressed my condolences for the loss of her son. I also relayed my immense gratitude for her presence on this rainy day. “We are a beautiful people,” she said. “We are powerful. And we can win if we stay together.” For a mother that has been through so much, I couldn’t help but be struck by the optimism and strength in her voice. Our conversation was interrupted by the reporter who brought us together. The

Blake family was gathering for a photo with the civil rights leaders who came to support the march—Ms. Hamilton was one of those leaders. I thanked Ms. Hamilton again, and watched her join the Blake family.

“How can they do this?” I asked myself as I watched the mothers and families of those tragically lost lock arms for the picture. I tried to put myself in Ms. Hamilton’s shoes, and envision a life after such a horrible death. How does she stay so strong? It didn’t take long for me to find the answer. As the group continued to face the camera, two young men came to the front and held a flag that bore one word—Unity. Ms. Hamilton stands united with Ms. Blake because Ms. Garner (mother of Eric Garner) stood with Ms. Hamilton. Ms. Garner stood with Ms. Hamilton because Ms. Martin (mother of Trayvon Martin) stood with Ms. Garner.

Ms. Hamilton was so confident about our power as a people, and our potential to win so long as we stick together, because she experienced this power firsthand. All the mothers and families of the martyrs of this movement have stood united so history does not repeat itself. They’ve found strength in their numbers, turning their collected pain into policy and action.

As we chanted “United we stand, divided we fall” through the streets of downtown Milwaukee, the rain started to dissipate. Moments later, the sun broke through a patch of clouds and lit the path for our march to continue. I took this miraculous moment as a sign of changes to come. As we continued to march, my water-loving friend from Kenosha led our way as she proudly proclaimed, “We are ready for change!”

UVM This essay originally appeared in the UVM Larner College of Medicine Blog. A previous essay by Christopher Veal, “At the Intersection of Fear, Grief, and Love” was recently published by the Annals of Internal Medicine.

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Navigating the pandemic with careful planning and community responsibility

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when college students returned

as bright in mid-October as even the by to campuses nationwide for fall semessunniest optimist might have enviTHOMAS WEAVER ter 2020, headlines soon told stories of sioned last spring. Enrollment numoutbreaks and second thoughts. But the bers were down, but not dramatically, University of Vermont, like our home state, has weath- with approximately two hundred students choosing ered the last several months with a far lighter COVID- to defer admission or take a gap year in the middle of 19 impact than most, thanks to diligent institutional their studies. 4,266 students lived on-campus, most planning, student and community commitment, and of them in shared rooms; 4,875 lived off-campus in a measure of good fortune.

Greater Burlington; and 1,444 undergraduates elected As campus virus test results were updated publicly to study remotely from their hometowns. Courses each week—consistently registering over 99.5 percent were delivered in a variety of modes—in-person with negativity—an urge to celebrate was quickly followed students and professors masked and socially distanced; by an equal urge to knock on wood. (Indeed, with the remotely; and a hybrid of the two. weeks-long path from copy deadline to mailbox delivSoon after spring 2020 instruction shifted from ery of a print magazine, the situation may have shifted in-person to remote last March, President Suresh since this was written. For the latest: check uvm.edu.)

Garimella formed the UVMStrong Fall 2020 Advisory Still, the picture at UVM for continuing on-cam- Committee. Chaired by Gary Derr, vice president for pus education in the midst of a pandemic was about operations and safety, the group of staff and faculty

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SALLY MCCAY

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Fall 2020 was all about adapting to the circumstances as the work, and fun, of on-campus college life resumed. The beautiful events space of the Jack and Shirley Silver Pavilion at UVM Alumni House, right, was repurposed as a classroom with room to learn while safely socially distanced. Pictured: Professor Jonathan Huener’s “Modern Europe” history course.

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leaders drew on expertise across campus, also working in sync with state and city officials.

President Garimella notes that the success of the fall semester has been, to great extent, due to acting on UVM core principles—such as integrity, innovation, and responsibility—affirmed in the university’s Our Common Ground statement. “This moment has demanded the best in us, every one of us, as we’ve come together to find our way forward in the face of daunting challenge,” Garimella says.

“Our commitment to community, our commitment to caring for one another, is powerful.”

The UVMStrong group identified key priorities, as swift planning and implementation began around myriad issues: establishing a fast and reliable regimen for virus testing; retooling classrooms and alternative campus spaces for socially distanced in-person teaching; bolstering and enhancing the technological infrastructure for the demands of remote teaching and learning; developing safe approaches to campus dining and residential life; and reinforcing safe behavior in regard to masking, social distancing, and personal hygiene.

Building off of the mid-stream transition to remote teaching during spring semester, faculty retooled their courses and delivery modes in preparation for the fall semester, with many exploring ways to connect their subject matter to the moment.

Without students committing to safe and responsible behavior, all of the planning would be for naught. The Green and Gold Promise put that commitment into words, and when students returned, the vast majority put those words into action. (Anecdotal observation: the percentage of mask wearers in Burlington rose dramatically with students’ return, though Gov. Scott’s statewide mask mandate had gone into place a full month earlier.)

Provost Patricia Prelock, in frequent communication with the campus community throughout the semester, cheered faculty and staff efforts to adapt to the evolving situation and spurred students to keep

up the good work. “We are serving as a health and safety model for the entire nation,” Prelock wrote in September. “I am incredibly proud of you, and I hope you are proud of yourselves.”

One Burlington resident shared this note with UVM leaders: “I have been dazzled by the responsible and respectful behavior of the UVM community since the semester began. Both on campus and in nearby neighborhoods, students regularly mask up.

Thank you for a wonderful start to the new year.”

Fall 2020 is a semester with a decided difference, no doubt. There are no big games under the lights at Virtue Field, but the varsity soccer squads keep at practice; there are no group assignments being discussed over coffee in the Davis Center, but Henderson’s still serves the hot brew and students still find a place to study in DC. On a sunny September morning, drawing class students sketch Old Mill with a perspective from the Green; skateboarders flash down College Street; Mark Starrett’s horticulture classes tour the campus flora. Masked and socially distanced, campus life goes on.

Pearl Stuart, a first-year student in the music business and technology major, notes that the social opportunities are more limited with fewer in-person classes and other safety measures, but the connections she’s already built are strong. “Now that I’m here, I’m glad I came,” she says. “The friends I’ve made are amazing, and I know I just have to trust the process.” It’s not hard to imagine the alumni essays that might appear in publications like this one forty years from now, reflections on an interlude that was profound and formative in its challenge.

As Thanksgiving approaches, the on-campus part of the semester will end, with students completing a week of classes remotely, then taking finals from home. Looking ahead to spring, the fall semester range of instruction formats will continue.

Classes are scheduled to begin on February 1, continuing (without a spring break) to May 11, then followed by final exams May 13-18.

UVM TOP LEFT & MIDDLE: SALLY MCCAY; OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP: ANDY DUBACK; BOTTOM LEFT: JOSHUA BROWN; BOTTOM RIGHT: SALLY MCCAY

UVM PEOPLE

VOICE FOR CHANGE KOREA TO BARRE

PO MURRAY ’89 On December 14, 2012, Po Murray believed

she was living in one of America’s safest neighborhoods.

The illusion would shatter that morning when a twentyyear-old neighbor named Adam Lanza murdered his mother in their home then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary armed with an assault rifle, a handgun, and multiple rounds of ammunition.

Murray and her husband, Tom Murray ’89, had lived in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, for thirteen years, and their four children had all attended Sandy Hook Elementary.

Their youngest, Tommy, graduated from Sandy Hook a year and a half prior to the shooting and was a sixth grader at the intermediate school when the shooting occurred. The Murray family lost beloved teachers they had known for years and children from their neighborhood, as shock and grief rippled through the entire community. Though she considered herself politically aware at the time, Po Murray admits she had no sense of the weakness of gun laws. “At that moment in time we decided we needed to take action to create cultural and legislative changes to reduce the epidemic of gun violence in our country,” she says.

Initially, Murray joined with neighbors and cofounded Sandy Hook Promise to help heal the community and advocate for gun safety. A few months later, she took the lead again, co-founding Newtown Action Alliance, a national all-volunteer grassroots organization focused on advancing common sense gun laws in the state and nationally.

Rob Cox ’89, former Newtown resident and also a founding member of Sandy Hook Promise, calls Murray “a rock star in the gun violence prevention movement. A week doesn’t go by when I don’t see a photo somewhere of Po meeting with legislators or working with victims on ending this national scourge.”

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The Kim family—Po’s mother and her five children—emigrated from South Korea to Plainfield, Vermont, in the mid-1970s, when Po was nine years old. She laughs softly remembering the mutual culture shock in the small town of approximately 1,300 residents. A year later, the family moved a few miles west to Barre, where Po would meet her future husband, Tom, for the first time in sixth grade, when they faced-off in a math competition. They began dating during junior year at Spaulding High School.

At UVM, Tom studied accounting while Po was a physical therapy major. Looking back on her years at the university, she reflects that participating in the student-led takeover of the executive wing of Waterman Building, a protest to push for greater diversity on campus, was a pivotal experience. “I became increasingly aware that we could use our voices to create change,” she says.

In her advocacy work today, Murray finds hope in Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president for 2020. She believes former Vice President Biden has introduced the strongest comprehensive common sense platform to end gun violence in America.

That includes banning assault weapons, or “weapons of war,” in the tell-it-like-it-is terminology of Newtown Action Alliance. She also finds hope in the “unapologetic voices” of the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School as they rose up to demand action. She credits them with helping push red states, and states like Vermont with a deep gun culture, and some Republican lawmakers to shift course in favor of common-sense gun laws. “As this generation of students becomes voters, there will be a significant change in the future,” Murray says.

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clayton boyd ’09

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T W IST

Careers in the film industry don’t generally lead to autism advocacy, tracing the unlikely path of alumna Yudi Bennett by thomas weaver

reflecting on the fundamental allure that

Previous page: Yudi Bennett and her son, Noah. Above: On the 1991 set of Leaving Las Vegas with actor Nicolas Cage.

a career in the film industry held for her, Yudi Bennett G’74 confesses to childhood dreams of running away with the circus. Joking that she doesn’t have the athleticism of a trapeze artist, she offers that she does have one essential trait, a personality suited to the big top life on the road that the movie business offers. “You are going different places every day and every day is different,” she says. “I loved the craziness of it.”

Bennett built a distinguished career, earning her the 2003 Frank Capra Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America. But that vagabond existence making films on location was just her first act. The second began to take shape in the early 2000s, when her life became increasingly grounded at home in Los Angeles with her son, Noah.

In 2006, striving to help Noah and fellow young adults with autism develop vocational skills creating computer animation for film and television, Bennett co-founded Exceptional Minds. Under her leadership it would thrive, impacting many lives and gaining wide attention in the media, including a story on NBC Nightly News. Bennett is featured in a new book titled Becoming an Exceptional Leader: Inspiration from 14 accomplished disability changemakers, and actress Patricia Heaton shares the alumna’s path in Your Second Act: Inspiring Stories of Reinvention.

MAKING MOVIES After studying journalism and photography as an undergraduate at Simmons College, Yudi Bennett came to UVM for a master’s program in communications. At the time, those circus dreams had turned to dreams of traveling the world on staff at National Geographic. But influential professors and experiences at UVM would turn her focus to film.

She can still recall her precise film history courses taught by Professor Frank Manchel. And she found a mentor in Professor Kim Worden, who guided her thesis project, a documentary on the history of the Old Red Mill in Jericho, Vermont, then under threat of demolition.

Her film boosted efforts to save the mill and won a col-

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legiate film competition sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Forty-six years later, she laughs while talking some trash about beating out entries from New York University and Harvard, then adds, “UVM made an enormous difference in my life.”

Career breaks, particularly the foot-in-the-door kind, often don’t seem like much at the moment. So it was when Worden alerted Bennett to a film shoot in Stowe looking for production assistants. She quickly hitchhiked up from Boston that summer. Together with friend Ann Curran G’75, she applied, learned that the $25-aday in pay they’d assumed was actually $25-a-week, but signed on nonetheless. A low-budget production meant a chance to gain broad experience, and she built her first relationships in the business on that set. When, UVM master’s diploma in hand, she moved to New York City, she connected with the people she had worked with in Vermont and began getting work.

Those early jobs weren’t glamorous. Production assistant on documentaries, commercials, stitching together a living and building credentials. It’s a lesson she would share with today’s UVM Film and Television Studies majors when it comes to launching a career: “Be willing to do anything.”

After two years in New York, Bennett was accepted into the Directors Guild of America’s apprentice program.

She then worked her way up to second assistant director roles, making another key step when Alan Alda asked her to be first assistant director on The Four Seasons. The antithesis of “fake it ’till you make it,” she made sure he knew it would be her first time working at that level. Alda, who was directing his first film with the production, said, “We’re a perfect match, neither of us has done this before.”

They would pair up on four more films, simpatico in their commitment to leading film shoots with clear communication, low drama, and basic human kindness.

Bennett would earn credits, many of them as first assistant director, on more than thirty films across approximately thirty years. Kramer vs. Kramer and Broadcast News, iconic films of the era, are among the slew of projects listed on her IMDb page.

CHANGING LIVES

KILIK CONNECTION

Bennett’s life and career would shift dramatically in 2003 with the loss of her husband, Bob Schneider, to cancer.

She continued working as an assistant film director until 2006, but son Noah’s needs were too significant to balance the long, erratic hours of work on movies and life as a single parent. She stepped back. And, in that stepping back, the next act of her career in film began to emerge.

A turning point arose when Noah reached a period in middle school when he plateaued academically. “That’s your fear as a parent; you always want to see your kids moving forward,” Bennett says. Seeking other ways to engage him, she found an after-school class in computer animation. Noah took to it immediately—making animations, entering school competitions, winning prizes.

“Within two or three weeks, he knew it inside out, surprised everybody.”

Bennett and fellow parents of teenagers with autism came to see that this work could be more than a diversion; it could provide critical vocational training to address the high unemployment rates and lack of program support that young adults with autism and their families face after high school. In 2006, Exceptional Minds launched with Bennett as a volunteer staff member. Soon, she took on a full-time paid role, leading the operation as the studio grew over the next six years.

Today, Exceptional Minds is many things—at its core still a full-time, three-year educational program in film animation for young adults with autism. They also run an in-house professional visual effects and animation studio, staffed by graduates of the program, that handles contract work. And there are summer programs, two-week workshops for younger kids, and private lessons. Bennett notes they’ve connected with students in all fifty states and many different countries. And graduates of the program include the young man who inspired it, Noah Schneider.

If you’ve seen Marvel productions such as Black Panther and Captain America, Star Wars chapters such as The Rise of Skywalker and The Last Jedi, or a certain HBO series called Game of Thrones, you’ve seen the work of Exceptional Minds.

These days, Bennett’s work is more broadly focused on autism advocacy, working with organizations such as the Uniquely Abled Project and Foothill Autism Alliance.

She also remains involved with the Directors Guild, as a volunteer trustee for the DGA Pension & Health Plan.

Reflecting on what Exceptional Minds has become over the past fourteen years, Bennett lists the array of programs, the credits earned on Oscar-nominated movies, the jobs graduates have landed at places like Marvel Studios and Cartoon Network. Then she sums it up with the deepest payoff of all: “The really amazing and gratifying thing about this is that a lot of these young people’s lives have just been changed forever.”

UVM

Any discussion of UVM alumni in the film business must include the name of Jon Kilik ’78, producer of many top films, from Do the Right Thing to Babel to The Hunger Games.

Yudi Bennett keenly recalls the day Kilik showed up at her home at 22 King Street in Manhattan’s West Village. “My door buzzed and I went down and it was this kid who had just graduated UVM. Kim Worden had told him to look me up and there he was on my doorstep, saying could you help me get a job,” she says.

Poised to catch a cab to the airport for a film shoot in Florida, she cut a quick deal with Kilik: help me get all of my stuff down from the fifth floor and into the cab, get in touch when I’m back, and I’ll help you as best I can.

Kilik’s own memories of that first meeting could be Exhibit A for how to make the most from just a thread of connection. He’d prepared to meet Bennett by watching the historic preservation film she created at UVM and came poised to share his passion for and knowledge of film.

Kilik delivered on hustling the luggage down five flights, and, weeks later, Bennett delivered on her offer to help, giving the young grad a single day to prove himself as a production assistant on set. “It worked out,” Kilik says. They’d go on to work on multiple films together, including several for noted director Paul Mazursky, as Kilik learned new roles and built his own credentials and career. Through the decades, they’ve continued to collaborate and stay in touch, and Kilik has been a stalwart supporter of Exceptional Minds.

Kilik has high praise for Bennett’s work as a pioneering woman in leading film sets as a first assistant director. “She was one of the best assistant directors ever to work. She had to be.

That glass ceiling was hard to break in the late 1970s,” he says. And he’s deeply grateful to her for taking the time to listen to that kid on her doorstep. “Yudi Bennett is a true angel. Mine is one of the thousands of lives she has changed for the better,” Kilik says. “To say I owe my career to her is not an overstatement. She was my on-the-job training. She was my paid graduate school. She was my mentor and friend.”

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KEEPING

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BEES

Story & Photography by JOSHUA BROWN

sex has always been rather troublesome for plants.

Pursuing a mate is hard when you have roots and no brain. When the first bees came to be, perhaps 125 million years ago, they took flight as botanical matchmakers—and remade the world.

In one of the greatest love stories on this planet, the co-evolution of bees and flowers may explain what Charles Darwin called “an abominable mystery”—the explosion of diversity in flowering plants during the Age of Dinosaurs. What had been a world dominated by the earth tones of stout cycads, tree ferns, and sober pines—suddenly discovered hot pink and perfume. Instead of just tossing themselves upon the wind, plants found a much more reliable means of having sex: bees and other insects carrying pollen. So they began to compete fiercely for the attentions of these creatures, advertising with ever-more alluring and elaborate flowers. Plants invented sweet nectar to reward bees and longer tubes to let in only favored species; bees developed longer tongues to extract the nectar, and specialized hairs and baskets on their legs to carry wads of pollen home to their young.

Today, the plant kingdom is dominated by flowering plants— and the pollinator world by bees. There are some twenty thousand species of bees globally, four thousand in the United States. In the tiny state of Vermont, there are more than three hundred species of wild bees—miners and masons, carpenters and bumblebees, sweat bees and cuckoos—some in complex social groups, many solitary, living in hollowed out sticks and holes in the ground.

And, yes, apis mellifera, the domestic honeybee, has played a central role in remaking the world too, providing not just honey but pollination to many gardens and crops.

Now this dual bee story is faltering: the deep-time story of wild bees, and the nine-thousand-year-old story of domestic bees that probably began in pottery jars in northern Africa. Many species are declining, battered by habitat loss, climate change, hypertoxic neonicotinoid pesticides, sterile lawns, and exotic diseases.

Numerous people across the University of Vermont are working to understand bees and how to protect them. Here are a few snapshots of the many UVM researchers, teachers, and students who love this ancient love story, who want to keep bees.

BUZZI NG O N B LU E B E R R I E S After collecting blueberries at test plots at UVM’s Aiken Laboratory, on Spear Street, and Waterman Orchards in Johnson, Vermont, Joanna Santoro ’21, cuts them open, puts them under a microscope in professor Alison Brody’s on-campus lab—and starts to study the seeds in each plump fruit. She’s looking for a sign that bees have visited.

“You see those bigger seeds? They’ve been fertilized,” she explains.

All summer, as part of her thesis research in the Honors College, Santoro watched bees on high-bush blueberry plants—one of Vermont’s most important specialty crops.

She counted how many flowers they visited, and how long the bees spent at each flower. “Most of them were bumblebees,” she says.

That bees buzz may not come as news. But for blueberry plants—and their owners—buzzing means business.

These plants, native to North America, evolved to be pollinated by bumblebees and a few other solitary bees. The bell-shaped blueberry flower holds its pollen firmly inside anthers that open into a pair of pores, like a salt shaker. To

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get this nutritious meal takes a buff bee that can vibrate its thoracic flight muscles at the right frequency to shake it out. Brody and her students are deeply interested in this “buzz pollination,”—but only as one link in the larger question of how blueberry plants make a living.

“Often we just think about two-species interactions, a plant and pollinator, a bush and a bee,” says Brody, “but plants have many interactions, beginning from the soil up.” Blueberries don’t just depend on wild bees—they also depend on mycorrhizal fungi in the ground for scarce nutrients that affect their capacity to offer rewards to bees—like nectar and pollen. Brody wants to know how inoculating blueberry plants with these fungi might shape their fate.

“Buzz pollination is cool, but ecosystems don’t function with a single super-cool example. That’s not an ecosystem.

That’s not a community,” says Brody. “I’m interested in understanding the many links that lead to what evolutionary biologists would call ‘plant fitness’ and what a farmer calls ‘yield’—lots of berries.”

POLLINATO R -F R I E ND LY P LANT I NG S Professor Taylor Ricketts, director of UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment, swipes a white bug net over a field full of goldenrod, Joe Pye weed, and Jerusalem artichoke on the edge of a community garden in Burlington. Above the flowers, gigantic, improbable bumblebees, like the 747s of the insect world, dive headlong into yellow pools of pollen. And above Ricketts, a row of solar panels turn toward the sun.

Fossils suggest that until about 135 million years ago, almost all plants paired on the wind. Male pollen, carried by air currents and faint hope, might happen to fall on a female ovule. Almost none did. But a few beetles and other insects discovered that this wasted pollen was nutritious and, when flying about to look for food, would accidentally carry grains of it from one plant to the next—becoming the first, clumsy, pollinators.

Meanwhile, wasps were making a decent living as carnivores. No one knows exactly how, but some ancient wasps may have fallen into flowers, gotten dusted with pollen and carried it back to their nests. This protein-rich pollen became part of what wasps fed their young, perhaps to tide them over when, say, flies were in short supply. Over generations, this lineage of wasps evolved to gather more and more pollen as food. When they had gone 100 percent vegetarian, they weren’t wasps anymore. They were bees.

“Now about ninety percent of flowering plants need bees and other pollinators to reproduce,” Ricketts says. “So the world is green because of pollinators. And about seventy percent of crops benefit from pollination—so our food system is intimately tied to pollinators too.”

Sure, butterflies, hummingbirds, ants, flies, and bats do some pollination work. But perhaps eighty percent of animal-pollinated plants rely on bees. “Bees are the professional pollinators of the insect world. Everything else that pollinates does it as a side hustle,” says Jason Mazurowski, a 2019 graduate of UVM’s Field Naturalist program, who teaches a course on native pollinators. He’s been working with Ricketts on an effort to understand the potential for growing bee-friendly plants under the solar fields popping up across Vermont. “The Department of Energy estimates that by 2030 we’re going to have three million acres of solar fields in this country,” Mazurowski says, setting out a fluorescent-blue cup to catch and count tiny bees under the towering solar panel. “That’s a lot of old farmland that might support pollinators.”

It’s one of many bee projects housed at UVM’s Gund Institute, a globally recognized center of research on bee conservation—from Burlington’s Intervale floodplain to coffee plantations in Costa Rica. A team of UVM scientists at the Gund made international headlines demonstrating an alarming decline in native bees across the United States.

“Many native bees pollinate crops more efficiently than honeybees do,” says Ricketts—providing most of the pollination on Vermont farms, including for tomatoes, squash, and apples. “And domestic bees certainly don’t pollinate many native wildflowers and plants—that ninety percent,” Ricketts says. Which is why he and other Gund researchers are focused on maintaining habitats for native bees within landscapes that people occupy. “Let’s share,” Ricketts says.

“Ecosystems and our economy benefit when we keep wild bees living where we live—in and around our agriculture.”

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P E ST I CI D E P I CK-U P

V ERMONT BE E LA B

With a clipboard and a quiet back-and-forth sweep of the head, Jessica Cole walks through a meadow at UVM’s Horticulture Research and Education Center.

She’s waist-high in a late-summer riot of wildflowers, with rows of ripening grapes and apples as a backdrop—so it’s hard to believe we’re only a few hundred yards from subdivisions and car dealerships along Shelburne Road. Cole’s first pass through this research plot was for counting flowers; “nine species,” she says, including two clovers, a member of the rose family, and an oxalis, “that yellow one there, which tiny sweat bees love.”

Now on her second pass, she’s counting the bees.

She’s tallied honeybees, a common bumblebee species, several kinds of sweat bees in the genus Lasioglossum, and a bee in the genus Agepostemon, “a metallic green sweat bee,” Cole says.

Cole—a graduate of the University of Mississippi, third-year doctoral student in biology, and member of UVM’s QuEST training program in environmental problem-solving—wants to know how pesticides may be affecting these bees. A raft of global research shows that bees in agricultural areas suffer profound harm from several classes of pesticides. But what about in non-farming areas? “That’s an additional exposure that hasn’t been much considered,” Cole says—though it’s known that some of these toxic chemicals can blow and flow for miles. Cole’s research found pesticide residues in soils, flowers, and bees in sites across Chittenden County. “Plants will translocate these pesticides— absorb them from the ground—and put them into their pollen or nectar,” she says, “which could be bad for bees visiting flowers.” Now Cole is exploring how flowers may express different levels of pesticides—pondering what it might mean if bees are getting poisoned by roadside weeds and backyard gardens.

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On the second floor of Jeffords Hall, in the new Vermont Bee Lab, research assistant professor Samantha Alger G’18 looks over data sheets from UVM student outings to nearby apiaries—they’ve been working for her on the National Honeybee Survey. On the other side of the room, business major and lab technician Lily Burnham ’21 measures out half a cup of dead honeybees in ethanol. “That’s approximately three hundred bees,” Burnham says. Soon she’s shaking the bees in a sifting jar over a plastic tub—looking for tiny red mites that fall against the white plastic.

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“Eleven,” Burnham says. “That’s a lot of mites,” Alger replies.

Some of the students in Alger’s introduction to beekeeping class call her the bee whisperer. But she might be better described as a bee advocate—for all bees, wild and domestic. “The Bee Lab got started because, as a graduate student, I was working on RNA virus spillover—and the big takeaway of that was to show that viruses are moving from honeybees into wild bee populations,” Alger says. “Well, how do we stop that? There’s no cure for the viruses, but maybe if we improve the health of honeybees we could reduce the chance of spillover into wild bees.”

In a non-denominational patch between the UVM Catholic Center and University Heights dormitory, a field of Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod, and purple New England asters grows where there used to be close-cropped lawn. In the middle of the field stands a rectangle of chainlink fence and inside the fence stand four towering beehives. This is the home of the UVM Beekeepers, a burgeoning club started in 2016, now with more than a thousand students on their listserv. One of the newest is freshman Alissa Frame ’24. This is her first visit to the beeyard, but she’s entirely calm behind her veil, peering into an open deep-box, thrumming with thousands of bees. “I want to get to know bees better,” she says, “and get some hands-on experience.”

She draws out a frame of comb and holds it aloft under a hot fall sun. A few drips of honey and a large dollop of bees dangle from the bottom edge. She hands the frame to Eric Coughlin ’22, the club’s president, who eases it into a new box. They’re rearranging frames of comb to redistribute honey reserves that the bees will need to survive a long Vermont winter. “There’s a lot of honey here,” says club member Allie Film ’22. “Look, here’s some capped brood,” says Coughlin, showing Frame, “and you see that

B EE CAMP US

The biggest threat to honeybee health is a parasitic mite, Varroa destructor, introduced into the United States in 1987. Poorly managed, the mites overwhelm and kill honeybee hives—and are a vector for viruses, including deformed wing virus and black queen cell virus, that harm honeybees and, Alger’s research shows, jump into bumblebee populations via shared flowers.

Now, commercial and hobbyist beekeepers in Vermont can drop off samples of bees from their hives for free examination at the bee lab; scientists there will help the beekeepers understand their mite load and look for another disease called Nosema. The lab also has plans to help beekeepers improve queen bee genetics and test

white speck? That’s a larva.”

Both this new meadow and new apiary exist, in large part, because of the efforts of professor Mark Starrett in the Plant and Soil Science Department. He’s the advisor to the beekeepers club—and has been, like a busy tenured bee, building and tending new pollinator gardens all over campus. “They’re full of native plants that provide nectar and pollen to honeybees, wild bees, butterflies—lots of pollinators,” he says, standing near some of his handiwork outside the Aiken Building, where a wedge of zinnias, coneflowers, sunflowers, pink buckwheat, black-eyed Susans, milkweed, and meadow blazing star light up the landscape.

Starrett’s work helped lead the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation to designate UVM as a “Bee Campus USA,” the only land-grant university in New England to receive the recognition. Working closely with professor Stephanie Hurley in his department, as well as colleagues in the Environmental Program, campus planning, grounds crews, and many others— Starrett aims to “have our community look around with a pollinator-friendly eye,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to just grow turf, but try to see the world the way a bee sees it.”

for another major honeybee threat: American and European foulbrood.

Alger has long loved honeybees and has worked alongside commercial beekeepers in South Carolina, Hawaii, and the Northeast. After she finished her PhD at UVM she spent the fall working in the bee yards of renowned Vermont beekeeper Chas Mraz of Champlain Valley Apiary—but she’s clear about what they are.

“They’re non-native. They’re livestock animals,” Alger says. “A huge misconception in the public is that honeybees serve as the iconic image for pollinator conservation. That’s ridiculous. It’s like making chickens the UVM iconic image of bird conservation.”

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DISRUPTIVE NGIS ED

PROVIDING PRIVACY FOR NURSING MOTHERS, MAMAVA PODS ALSO FOSTER PUBLIC DISCOURSE AROUND BREAST-FEEDING

By KEVIN COBURN ’81

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M

Mamava headquarters at 180 Battery Street in Burlington exudes the energy and bustle you’d expect of a startup business. On a Monday morning last spring, Sascha Mayer ’93 settles into a quiet corner of a large, open workspace with a stunning view of Lake Champlain. The smell of fresh paint wafts down a nearby hallway—new quarters are being prepared to accommodate a workforce that now numbers more than forty staff.

“We took on twelve new employees last week, so we’re a little cramped,” Mayer says apologetically.

There are no spacious corner suites even for the company founders.

Mayer, company CEO, and her longtime business partner Christine Dodson, COO, sit opposite each other at a shared desk just large enough to park laptops and coffee mugs. A nameplate on Mayer’s desk reads “Mom Boss.”

Mayer is a mom herself—she and her husband, Aron Merrill ’90, have two children, and there’s a symmetry between her personal and professional lives. Mamava designs, builds, and services lactation pods for nursing mothers. Because the pods are portable and easy to assemble, they can be installed wherever there’s a twenty-six-square-foot space in a mall, office, arena, or university building. Their innovation is informed by their personal experience of working and raising families, a balance that can be easily thrown into chaos for women committed to breastfeeding.

Production of breast milk is a “use it or lose it” proposition—women need to pump throughout the day at roughly the same rate at which a baby feeds in order to maintain their milk supply. Mayer and Dodson, a mother of three, say they have pumped at trade shows, airports, corporate retreats, and base-

SALLY MCCAY

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ball games, even in the back seat of a car owned by one of their business clients.

“Aside from the social discomfort many mothers have about pumping in public, the process is logistically hard,” Mayer says. “You need to plug the pump in, assemble it, attach the apparatus, store the milk safely. God love you if you can do all that gracefully.”

Mayer refers to the Mamava pod as a new “product category” (it’s not just a better mousetrap, it’s the only mousetrap on the market), and the market is responding. Mamava was founded in 2013 and didn’t hire its first paid employee until 2015. But by the spring of 2020, the company had sold 1,300 units in forty-eight states. And another important step came later this summer with Walmart’s decision to install pods in one hundred stores, the first national retailer on board.

Mayer grew up in Ohio and went to high school in suburban Albany, New York. Her high school years were defined by a strong ethos of social justice and playing on the field hockey team. During her college search, a drive up Route 22A through the lower Champlain Valley was her first real introduction to Vermont and UVM. “I can remember almost giggling about how perfectly the landscape reflected what I thought Vermont should look like,” she recalls. “A lot of places you visit don’t measure up to the mystique—Vermont really delivered.”

UVM proved to be a perfect fit for her academic, social, and athletic interests. Mayer played varsity field hockey while majoring in sociology and minoring in women’s studies. She also formed lasting friendships with progressive-minded peers who shared a passion for equality and social justice.

“Another motivating factor was that I knew Vermont had one of the first female governors,” Mayer recalls. “Being from New York, I heard a lot about what Madeleine Kunin G’67 (a Distinguished Visiting Professor at UVM since 2003) was doing. I felt like Vermont would be the right place for me.“ After interning for then-Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle as a senior, Mayer’s first job out of college was working as a receptionist in the Burlington office of Bernie Sanders, then Vermont’s U.S. Representative.

Coming to feel she was more suited to the private sector than politics, Mayer migrated to the Burlington firm JDK Design. A daughter of two artists, the design business came naturally to her. Mayer’s focus evolved from account management to brand strategy, an emerging role in design firms that emphasized deep market research.

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“That’s where the sociology background came in,” she says. “Many brand strategists seem to have a sociology or anthropology degree. One of my clients was Seventh Generation, which was developing a line of diapers. So, I’d go into homes and talk with people about how they kept house, what was important to them, what their challenges were.”

The spark for Mamava came on Labor Day 2006, when Mayer read a New York Times feature outlining the challenges mothers faced trying to breastfeed after returning to work. The piece struck a nerve for Mayer, who at the time was nursing her second child. It also opened her eyes to a class system that had emerged in the United States around breastfeeding.

“If you had autonomy in your position and an office door you could close, maybe you could meet your breastfeeding goals,” Mayer says. “But so many women work for an hourly wage, or they don’t have support or privacy at work. That realization got me back to my activist, progressive roots. It just didn’t sit right, and I decided I was going to do something about it.”

She and Dodson, a colleague at JDK design, went to work designing something that could make breastfeeding a sustainable activity for working mothers. There were false starts and many distractions—“we were raising those babies and there was also a recession in there”—but they doggedly moved ahead with research and prototyping.

One of the first prototypes looked dismayingly like a port-o-potty. Try, try again. “We wanted to telegraph something that was really new,” Mayer explains. “That’s why the shape was so important.

We were looking for a different design gesture that people hadn’t seen before.”

Through their association with top corporate clients at JDK, they had already received a crash course in organizational development. They worked with national companies like Merrill footwear (Wolverine Worldwide), Levi’s, Lululemon, Nike, and Burlington-based Burton Snowboards.

“We got to visit the campuses of these organizations and saw what worked and what didn’t work. It all informed how we built Mamava.”

Eventually they worked with a company that had been building kiosks for malls that understood the importance of modularity. The finished Mamava product has a clean, curvy design reminiscent of an Airstream camper. The unit rests on castors, so it can

“ One of the challenges was this tough conversation

around women’s bodies, and health and wellness. We wanted it to be about choice, not about judgment—if you don’t breastfeed, that’s fine. If you, do that’s fine, too. If you do, let’s make sure there is the infrastructure and support out there.”

—Sascha Mayer

be wheeled from location to location. The interior is customized for the comfort of mom with adjustable heat controls and ventilation, easy-to-clean Corian surfaces, and USB outlets to recharge cellphones.

There are four models in the company’s online catalog including an ADA version wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair, a Mamava Solo (more compact and suited for work spaces), and a Mamavamini designed for installation in an existing lactation or wellness room.

The company offers a mobile app where customers can find pod locations and thousands of other lactation rooms across the country. The app enables moms to access pods through a Bluetooth connection. Mamava pods are built by Springfield, Vermont, plant Konrad Prefab, so the units are a true Green Mountain enterprise from design to fabrication.

Mayer sees the company as not just filling a product niche, but advocating for choice and freedom for women in the workplace. The company motto is “Nursing should be a right, not a privilege.” Their aims received a legislative boost when Congress passed the Fair Labor Act in 2010 which includes provisions for breastfeeding.

“One of the challenges was this tough conversa-

tion around women’s bodies, and health and wellness,” Mayer says. “We wanted it to be about choice, not about judgment—if you don’t breastfeed, that’s fine. If you, do that’s fine, too. If you do, let’s make sure there is the infrastructure and support out there.”

Mayer and Dodson worried initially that the Mamava concept might be misinterpreted as a way of hiding pumping and breastfeeding from public view. “What happened was actually the opposite,” Mayer says. “Because of the disruptive nature of the design, I think the pods represent this form of choice architecture that elevates the conversation around breastfeeding and brings it front and center.”

Last February, Mayer and several of her associates (at least seven UVM alumni work at the company) attended a small opening ceremony that celebrated the Mamava pod installed in UVM’s new STEM complex.

“It struck me that if this beautiful new building had been installed with a lactation room, it might have been hidden away in a corner somewhere,” says Mayer. “The pod location encourages discussion. And how apropos for a life science building, right? I mean we’re talking about this super-important biological function that supports life.”

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TRUE TO THE LAND The craft and science

of Vermont cheesemakers

by kaitie catania TRUE OR FALSE: The stinkier the cheese, the better?

“I’d have to say false,” Andy Kehler ’93 says. “I love a lot of stinky cheeses, and some stinky cheeses can be really sweet and delicious, but some really taste like garbage.”

Given that Kehler and his brother Mateo have earned dozens upon dozens of national and international awards for the cheeses they make at Jasper Hill Farm, it’s probably safe to trust his palate on this one. The Greensborobased Kehler brothers are among a growing number of artisanal cheesemakers in the state carving out a space for themselves on the world’s stage and directing the spotlight right at Vermont.

It’s no secret that Vermont cheese is exceptional. To understand why and what makes these cheeses and their makers so unique, the indisputable first stop in a search for answers should be Paul Kindstedt ’79 G ’81, the go-to guru of Vermont cheese. “You have the imprint of place in products like cheese made here because they’re made by our artisans that are really able to amplify the sort of neat character of Vermont,” says the professor of food science at UVM. It’s known as terroir, he explains, things like soil, water, climate, geography that get into the cheese. “There’s no question that the place leaves its imprint in empirical ways that can be measured in terms of flavor compounds, sensory details, and certain nuances of flavor.” But he’s adamant that it’s also the brain power of the makers that contribute just as much as the terroir to the final product. And many of those folks, Kindstedt adds, are descended from the University of Vermont.

Ten Jersey cows produce the fresh milk that goes into Orb Weaver’s artisanal cheeses, now made by Kate Turcotte ’09 and husband Zack.

KATE TURCOTTE ’09 (2)

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Andy Kehler (left) and brother Mateo (right) have farm grounds that are as singular as their famous cheeses.

The bright blue space barn, painted by muralist Tara Goreau, represents a time they sent their Bayley Hazen Blue cheese to outer space. (Really.)

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As cliched as it sounds, the beginning of cheese greatness in the Green Mountain State starts with hippies. By the 1980s, the back-to-the-land movement from the decade prior had manifested into a significant number of small-scale farms scattered across the state, with a strong emphasis on environmental consciousness. Cheese, a value-added product derived from milk produced on the farm, became a natural fit for this farmstead population looking to live and work sustainably with the land.

But caring for chickens, milking animals, and growing crops is one thing; aging cheese, working with unpasteurized milk, and experimenting with bacterial cultures is a totally different ballgame.

And if done wrong, can be hazardous. With no formal training in food science or safety regulations, “It was the Wild West,” Kinstedt says of the cheeses being produced. That’s when the acting commissioner of the Vermont Department of Agriculture Ronald Allbee ’67 stepped in.

He tapped Kindstedt, a newly hired cheese science researcher at UVM at the time, in the summer of 1988 to develop a short cheesemaking course to get these farmstead cheesemakers up to speed. “We had a waiting list and we had cheesemakers from as far away as Wisconsin coming to our summer course in Vermont. I was shocked.”

Recognizing the need for information, Kindstedt published American Farmstead Cheese: The Complete Guide to Making and Selling Artisan Cheeses, which distills the science and technical background needed to make small-scale cheese safely and successfully. Kehler admits that after nearly twenty years in business, Jasper Hill refers to Kindstedt’s guide on a regular basis. The book has been “a huge

help in elevating the overall quality of cheese across the country,” he says.

But technical know-how aside, making the best cheese first requires getting your hands on the best milk. With more than seven hundred dairy farms along the hillsides of Vermont, there are certainly plenty of options to choose from. Dairy farming is the largest component of the state’s agricultural economy and, according to the 2020 Vermont Agriculture and Food Systems Plan, cow milk alone accounts for upwards of 65 percent of the state’s agricultural product sales. And that milk is the base for some sixty cheesemakers in Vermont.

However, not all milks are created equal. For example, award-winning cheddars from Shelburne Farms—where a handful of UVM alumni oversee every step of their cheesemaking operations—are derived from purebred Brown Swiss heifers. At Orb Weaver Creamery in New Haven, ten Jersey cows supply the milk for the small creamery run by Kate Turcotte ’09 and her husband. And while Jasper Hill started with forty Ayrshires, it was sixty goats that got Bob Reese ’79, Allison Hooper, and Vermont Butter and Cheese Company (now Vermont Creamery) up and running in Brookfield. Though their milks may vary, these cheesemakers agree that the only way to get the best milk is to produce it themselves—from healthy, happy, grass-fed animals.

“The philosophy of Vermont cheese is just trying to work with the amazing high-quality milk that we have and creating a product that’s true to that milk and true to that land. It’s really much more about maintaining the integrity of the milk than about trying to manipulate it,” says Turcotte.

To that end, Shelburne Farms maintains a regiCALEB KENNA

mented grazing schedule that involves shuffling their herds across a network of pastures, 120 acres in total, connected by what dairy manager Sam Dixon ’85 calls a “cow highway.”

“You’re getting the unique characteristics of our soils, our grasses, all going directly to the cows, directly to the milk, and then being made into cheese. Each day a unique batch of cheese is made based on where the cows are grazing,” he says.

During Vermont’s deep winter—and the occasional dry summer months—dairy cows, goats, and sheep get their nutrients from dry grass and feed rather than the lush, green pastures they feed on in summer and fall. “You need to be a much better cheesemaker to be able to anticipate those changes and end up with consistently high-quality products day in and day out,” Kehler says. “Which is why it’s important for us to have control over how the cows transition from the barn to pasture, or from pasture back into the barn.”

Control. This is the key characteristic that separates Vermont’s artisan cheesemakers from the rest.

At the core of every exceptional cheese is a precise balance of science and craft (and patience, of course). And when it comes to that, Jasper Hill Farm might be the gold standard among cheesemakers in Vermont and beyond.

Their facilities boast a 22,000-square-foot aging cave nestled beneath a hillside on the farm, as well as a laboratory where they study the microbial communities and bacteria in their milks and cheeses, which are what ultimately make or break the product while it ages. It also helped them save some time and money by bringing inefficiencies to light; like trying to enhance the flavor of a raw milk winniJOSHUA BROWN (3)

mere by washing a brine on the surface to inoculating its ripening bacteria.

What they found when they analyzed the cheese in the lab was that there was no way that ripening bacteria could survive the natural flora that already existed on the surface of that cheese. In other words, the cultures they purchased, their brining and time spent washing had zero effect whatsoever. “The lab allows us to take a look at this invisible world comprised of those little communities of bacteria and see if they are actually contributing to either the quality, the texture, or the flavor profiles of the cheeses that we’re making,” Kehler says.

It’s a huge resource for them, and it’s one that they welcome neighboring creameries and cheesemakers to explore. The same goes for their aging cave. In fact, Shelburne Farms ages a cloth-bound cheddar in the Cellars at Jasper Hill, and six other producers have claimed real estate among their vast shelves, including Landaff Creamery, Cabot Cooperative Creamery Cheese, Von Trapp Farmstead, and Scholten Family Farm.

“The cheese industry has become very, very close,” says Bob Reese, co-founder of Vermont Creamery. “They support each other. You can call any of the cheese companies and ask them for advice, and if they couldn’t offer it themselves, they would probably have a good reference point.”

When Reese and Allison Hooper started making goat cheese in 1985, they knew full-well that they were embarking on a pioneer journey, into territory that no Vermont cheesemakers had ventured before.

They relied on the expertise of folks like Kindstedt and Catherine Donnelly—a professor and food pathogens expert at UVM—as well as the resources

Paul Kindstedt (right), Vermont’s go-to expert on cheese, walks the Cellars at Jasper Hill with Andy Kehler (left).

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For Vermont Creamery founders Alison Hooper and Bob Reese (above), it’s no goats, no glory when it comes to their pioneering goat cheeses.

But for cheese business beginners, Kate Turcotte and husband Zack (above right), staying true to the traditions of Orb Weaver are at the heart of their cheeses. Working at Shelburne Farms, Jack Duncan ’17 (opposite page) is among the many young food and nutrition science grads finding opportunities in Vermont.

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and assistance from UVM, which spared a vat in their dairy farm where the duo produced their very first batches of goat cheese, right on campus. “Not a lot of people know that,” Reese says.

So, when their goat cheese business won the U.S. Small Business Administration’s “Small Business of the Year Award” for Vermont in 1996, they paid it forward and invited cheesemakers from all across the state to showcase their products at the awards ceremony, hosted at Shelburne Farms. The pair have since retired and sold Vermont Creamery—a decision that took some soulsearching, Reese says—to Land O’Lakes, but remain connected to the people and the industry they helped pioneer. In fact, the business is still personal to Reese, whose son Matthew stayed on after the purchase—along with every other Vermont Creamery employee—as director of finance.

As more of these original Vermont cheesemakers exit the arena, the next generation is looking to harness that knowledge and experience. At Orb Weaver, for example, Turcotte and her husband, Zack, are carrying the torch of the farm’s original owners Marjorie Susman and Marian Pollack. After thirty-seven years at the helm, both women were ready to retire, but not quite ready to give it all up. They’re in the process of transitioning their farm over to Turcotte slowly, teaching her and Zack everything they know: all the recipes, when to milk the cows, when to turn the cheese, when to cut the curds. “The only difference, as of right now, is that there are two different people making the cheese. Same cows, doing everything the same, and that’s really our goal,” she says.

The learning curve is steep, to be sure—like figuring out how that cow got in the water tub sideways kind of steep—but it isn’t Turcotte’s first time at the rodeo. The young cheesemaker got her start at Shelburne Farms as a tractor driver while in school. After LEFT & BOTTOM: COURTESY VERMONT CREAMERY; RIGHT: ALIZA ELIAZAROV

graduating with a degree in ecological agriculture, she advanced to become the head cheesemaker before her departure. Dairy manager Dixon notes that you can still spot a glimpse of Turcotte at the farm today. “Over there, that’s Kate Turcotte,” he says pointing to a poster in the milking parlor with her photo on it.

And an even younger cheese enthusiast, Jack Duncan ’17, now manages the well-oiled machine that is Shelburne Farms’ creamery.

At twenty-five, the Atlanta native was drawn to Vermont’s working landscape after having grown up visiting regularly with his family.

He knows every bit of the farm’s cheesemaking process—from the time the trucks haul the milk up from the dairy to the aging processes and nuances they add to their cheddar over time.

But it’s a career that almost didn’t happen. With an interest in science, Duncan made it through two years of UVM as biology major before he switched to a nutrition and food science (NFS) major. It was a more tangible science with a practical application he could see. And also eat.

“The opportunities that Vermont offers to young grads coming out of the NFS program is really exciting. The trust that the industry in Vermont has in that program is an amazing leg up for a lot of graduates,” he says. And with the sheer number of Catamounts out there herding cows, testing milks, creating cultures, washing rinds and making brines, and patiently waiting to see if it was all done right, it’s no wonder the taste of this place is making its rounds and impressing palates far and wide.

But if your palate is still on the fence about the stinky cheeses, try asking yourself ‘what’s the story?’ next time you eat one, Turcotte suggests. “A good cheese will have a beginning, middle, and end. When you have a really rich milk and cheese that is so connected to the land, you’re able to taste a kind of story. It’s not one dimensional.”

UVM LEFT: BRENT HARREWYN FOR SHELBURNE FARMS; RIGHT: IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST ’09

CHEESEMAKING 101: THE BASICS • Get really, really good milk. (See previous pages for reference.)

• Decide what cheese to make and add the appropriate acid or starter cultures to the milk. This is one of the key steps that separates cheddar from swiss, provolone from mozzarella, etc.

• Add rennet, an enzyme that links proteins together or, in other words, coagulates the milk.

• Once coagulated, cut the-soon-to-be-cheese into smaller bits, known as curds. Want a drier, ageable cheese like a cheddar? Cut smaller curds. The size affects the overall moisture.

• Stir and, depending on the cheese, cook the curds in the liquid whey they’re floating in, or wash and proceed as described with water. The higher the temperature and longer the curds cook, the drier the cheese will be.

• Moving quickly, drain the whey from the curds.

Depending on the cheese, salt the curds and press them into desired cheese shape—wheel, log, block, etc.—or press curds into shape and then salt the surface.

• Depending on the cheese, you can eat it right away or age it to perfection. Most of our cheesemakers use unpasteurized, raw milk, which requires at least sixty days of aging before its able to enter the market.

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VIRTUAL ALUMNI WEEKEND 2020

In early October, the UVM Alumni Association was grateful to once again give alumni a chance to engage with each other and with UVM. This year’s program was completely virtual, enabling over 850 alumni and friends of the University to participate safely from home. And this is just the beginning. The Association looks forward to presenting many more informative, engaging, and fun virtual events and programs in the future.

If you would like to sample the Alumni Weekend 2020 experience or find a list of upcoming virtual events, visit alumni.uvm.edu

UVM A

2020 DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD Kristina Pisanelli ’97 (Washington, D.C.) Pisanelli has worked tirelessly to enhance UVM’s reputation and benefit its alumni for more than two decades. During her tenure as president of the Alumni Association Board of Directors, she has played important roles in a wide range of projects, including the fundraising and construction of the UVM Alumni House. From her public support during the establishment of the UVM Foundation, to her hosting and mentorship of UVM students visiting the nation’s capital, Pisanelli has proven herself a tireless and humble volunteer who always answers the call to support her alma mater.

2020 ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Lyndia Downie ’83 (Norton, MA) Lyndia Downie is president of the Pine Street Inn, the largest homeless services provider in New England. Based in Boston, the inn provides a comprehensive range of services to thousands of homeless men and women each day, with a goal of helping them achieve stability and permanent housing as quickly as possible. Downie’s strategic approach in coupling housing with other supports (access to health professionals, job training, and substance abuse services) has helped bring the city’s population of unsheltered homeless individuals below two percent.

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The annual UVM Alumni Association Celebrating Excellence awards ceremony recognizes the outstanding contributions that our alumni and faculty make in their local, national, and international communities. Inaugurated in 1958, these awards are the highest honors that the UVM Alumni Association confers. To watch the award videos, read more about our 2020 award winners, or nominate a fellow alumnus please visit www.alumni.uvm.edu/awards

GEORGE V. KIDDER OUTSTANDING FACULTY AWARD Todd Pritchard ’85, PhD’98 Todd Pritchard is a senior lecturer in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He teaches a range of courses from “What’s Brewing in Food Science” to “Food Technology and Food Microbiology,’ and is well known on campus as an engaging lecturer and an exceptional advisor who goes above and beyond in his work with students.

He is the forty-sixth recipient of the Kidder Award, which honors one fulltime UVM faculty member each year for excellence in teaching and extraordinary contributions to the enrichment of campus life.

OUTSTANDING YOUNG ALUMNI AWARD Sasha Fisher ’10 (New York, N.Y.) Sasha Fisher is the executive director and co-founder of Spark MicroGrants, a non-profit organization that helps communities— primarily in East Africa—design and launch their own social impact projects, such as income-generating goat-rearing, produce businesses, or even schools. In 2018, Fisher was selected to join the inaugural cohort of Obama Foundation Fellows, a group of “civic innovators” who are working to improve communities around the world.

2020 ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Harold E. Eaton Jr. ’77 (Woodstock, VT) Harold Eaton—known as “Duke” to his friends—is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Vermont, appointed by Governor Peter Shumlin in 2014. Justice Eaton is regarded by his peers in the legal profession as an outstanding mentor with a deep understanding of the law and an ability to explain it clearly to colleagues, legal interns, and law clerks. Nominators praised his passion and dedication, his courtesy and fairness to litigants, and his common-sense decisions.

CLASS NOTES Life beyond graduation

MAIL YOUR CLASS NOTES:

UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401

SUBMIT YOUR CLASS NOTES: alumni.uvm.edu/notes

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Send your news to— June Hoffman Dorion 16 Elmwood Drive, Rutland, VT 05701 junedorion@gmail.com

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Rose Eisman Boyarsky writes that she is “still here” and enjoying a daily swim at the retirement community where she lives. She would love to hear updates from other members of the class.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Send your news to— Mrs. Harriet Bristol Saville 1510 Williston Road, Apt. 11 South Burlington, VT 05403 hattiesaville@comcast.net

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Send your news to— Louise Jordan Harper 573 Northampton Street, Holyoke, MA 01040 louisejordanharper@gmail.com

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Chuck McMahon writes to call attention to the passing of Dorothy “Dottie” Scott Hopkins, a friend and member of his church in Baltimore. “Dottie was a strong woman, devout and enormously kind. She would tell us stories of her time at UVM ‘when it was all women,’ meaning the men were away fighting in World War II. We knew she was 93 and would not live forever, but we had hoped she would be around to join us for our daughter Margaret’s graduation from UVM (CEMS) in 2023. We will remember her in spirit instead.”

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association

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61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Howard Grue passed away on June 17, 2020. He is survived by his wife Marilyn White Grue, and leaves behind two sons and their families. Robert “Bob” Perkins points out that in the last issue’s Class Notes we incorrectly stated that the senior living facility where he lives in Rutland Town, Vermont, used to be the UVM College of Technology. We regret this error. Bradford Worthen ’76 shares that William “Bill” Worthen passed on February 27, 2020 at the age of 97. He was the husband of the late Rae Mactiernan Worthen. Bill served in the Army Air Force during the Second World War before enrolling in the UVM College of Agriculture. With the rank of First Lieutenant, 8th Air Force Bill earned the right to copilot a new B-17 Flying Fortress headed to Europe to assist the Allies in defeating Adolf Hitler. Stationed in Knettishall, England, Bill’s initial commitment was to fly twenty-five bombing missions, but he volunteered for ten additional missions as well. Returning from his thirty-fifth and final bombing run on Christmas Eve, 1944, Bill’s B-17 was badly damaged by enemy fire, injuring his captain, the pilot. Three of the aircraft’s four engines had been hit and failed, but Bill took control of the plane and crash landed in a field in Belgium. All were rescued by Allied Forces and all survived. Bradford says that one of Bill’s most famous missions was not a bombing run at all, but a top-secret flight. His crew was selected to escort Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. on what was an ill-fated attempt to deliver a lethal blow to the enemy. Bill’s crew was to provide escort coverage for Kennedy.

Positioned 500 feet off the right wing of Kennedy’s plane when it blew up, Bill’s B-17 became inverted due to the violent explosion. He and his pilot had all they could do to control their plane. Soon after the war, Bill was in Hyannis, Massachusetts, for a weekend getaway. John and Bobby Kennedy heard he was nearby and met up with him on the beach near the Kennedy Compound, eager to learn more of the

fate of their oldest brother and thank Bill for his bravery. At UVM, Bill was a member of the varsity Nordic team (specializing in ski jumping) and he continued to ski his entire life. He enjoyed a life-long friendship with his Delta Psi fraternity brother, hunting buddy, and best man John Kubin and his wife, Sally.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Walter Bailey has fond memories of sitting in a snowstorm watching a Vermont football game against Norwich.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Tom Gage, a member of Sigma Nu, married his high school sweetheart six days after graduating from UVM and ROTC. Following his military service, he was employed for more than forty-five years in the petroleum industry in various managerial positions. His wife passed away four years ago, as they neared their 62nd wedding anniversary. Tom now lives in Bayhead, on the New Jersey shore, but still maintains a home in Ridgewood, New Jersey, as well. He has kept in touch with several classmates just recently, but would love to hear from others at thomasgage@verizon.net.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Carol Sutherland is still enjoying her pleasant rental condo in Denver, which has a big balcony overlooking a little green park where people play with their dogs and picnic in the shade. She is active in the Unitarian Universalist church. Hal Greenfader has spo-

ken to many classmates who, being vulnerable to COVID-19, are all hunkered down in their “vintage 1950’s bomb shelters,” swamped by industrial quantities of toilet paper and Lysol. Unfortunately, since they were all wearing masks, their muffled words were unintelligible... except for the occasional curse about pandemic living, Hal reports. Sidney Rossuck spent his last several years prior to retirement with International Flavors & Fragrances as corporate vice president, Far East. He is married, has four children, and lived in Indonesia, Japan, and, for the final 18 years of his career, in Hong Kong. Now he is retired and has a cattle ranch called Sandlewood Farm in Boaz, Alabama, where he lives and his family raises Black Angus cows. Class Secretary Jane Battles writes, “Wherever you may be, may you just stay safe. In thinking of all the other wars, flus, epidemics, tragedies, and crises, we, at our age, have endured, we continue to hang tough. As does everything, this too shall pass. As I write, I am on the coast of Connecticut and have just witnessed a wonderful scene: the Mayflower out of Mystic Seaport, in the distance, and now working its way home to Plymouth, Massachusetts. It is a sight to behold. If any of you live in that area, try and make a point of visiting. There must be a run on UVM’ers in this neck of the woods.

I can’t remember when I’ve seen so many UVM Catamount t-shirts! The annual Tri Delt Reunion (’55 and 56’ers) will not be happening for the first time in 65 years this fall. We shall shoot for 2021. Do send me some news about you, yours, and others!”

Send your news to— Jane Morrison Battles 200 Eagle Road, Wayne, PA 19087 janebattles@yahoo.com Hal Lee Greenfader Apt. 1, 805 South Le Doux Road Los Angeles, CA 90035 halisco@att.net

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Audrey Rubin Stein celebrated her 85th birthday virtually! Carol Parker Day’s UVM legacy is now firmly established. She has two daughters, one son-in-law, four grandsons, and three granddaughters-in-law who have graduated from UVM! Plus, she is delighted to report that she now has four great-grandchildren to spoil.

Send your news to— Jane K. Stickney 32 Hickory Hill Road, Williston, VT 05495 stickneyjane@gmail.com

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Edward “Ed” Walker and his wife, Marsha, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in White Plains, New York, on August 7 with their family. Ed is still actively practicing law in New York City and, as a former captain of the UVM golf team, is “shooting his age or better.” He would love to hear from classmates, friends, and fraternity brothers.

Carroll “Bud” Ockert reports that his wife, Jenny, has established the Col. Carroll A. Ockert Scholarship for graduate students studying public health at the Brown School at her alma mater, Washing-

ton University in St. Louis.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Arthur Tauber is marvelling that he has reached the age of 84. “Growing up, who would ever have thought someone could be 84 years old? I certainly never did…. I am now that age and, to be perfectly honest, I feel like I am a solid 54 years old…. I am very fortunate to be in good health today at 84.” He is thankful for his wife, Sandy, and notes that they have been married for 60 years. He hopes to be in touch with his classmates for many, many years to come. Stephen Rozen wonders what one can say about months of shelter in place, other than that he is “still surviving.” He has played a lot of golf and swam many laps, but has missed restaurants and volunteering. He finally enjoyed an outdoor lunch at a restaurant with classmate and fellow Tau Epsilon Phi brother Charlie Pitman ’58 MD’61.

Stephen still lives in Naples, Florida, and Wallingford, Connecticut.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Cary Whitmore Ericson now resides in a senior living facility in northern Connecticut, and finds herself missing the waters of Long Island Sound. Cynthia Mindick Weitz is reflecting during this pandemic and thinking about how lucky she and her classmates were to grow up with so much freedom and opportunity, and how fortunate so many are to be able to shelter safely. She enjoys remembering her carefree college days, her travels, her continuing education in the arts, and the richness of her life.

Send your news to— Henry Shaw, Jr. 112 Pebble Creek Rd, Columbia, SC 29223 hshaw@sc.rr.com

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Jean Young Weaver and her husband, Charlie, are enjoying retirement in Largo, Florida, during the winter and at their camp on a lake in Readfield, Maine. They are feeling blessed with “OK” health and wondering who in their 80s does not have some type of problem? Jean loves thinking of her great years and friends at UVM. Debby Schultz writes that David Schultz had been looking forward to his 60th class reunion, but unfortunately time was not on his side and he passed away at the end of May 2020. He loved Vermont and UVM, and came for most of his class reunions. David, Debby, and their family enjoyed the fall foliage here for years, and also spent many Fouth of July weekends watching the fireworks on Lake Champlain with their friends Shelly Weiner ’60 MD’64 and Louise Weiner ’61. They eagerly came to campus to visit their son Steven Schultz ’87, and then later their grandson Ethan Lazarovitch ’15. David

and Debby were married for fifty-eight wonderful years, and she notes that, “he was a terrific, caring, fun person and is missed and loved by all who knew him.” Alfred “Al” Peterson sends greetings from Colorado. He wonders if anyone can believe it has been 60 years since graduation?

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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David O. Hill has just published a book: Summer Birds of Percé: A Tourist’s Guide. The book has 216 pages with more than 440 color illustrations describing 174 species that occur at the end of the Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec in summer. For more information contact birdbooks@att.net. The Maine Bar Association has presented Paul “Moon” Murphy with a Life Member Award recognizing his fifty years of “faithful and meritorious service to the bar.” He points out that, “It’s really a testimony to my durability,” but says that he accepted it in the same spirit it was offered.

He is still looking forward to more years of serving clients while extending vacations and spending more time with his wife, Angela, his children, and eight grandchildren. Bob Murphy ’61 G’82 writes to say that he feels, “extremely fortunate to live in a state (Vermont) where the officials have taken seriously the threat of the coronavirus, and have managed to bring the early spread of the virus down and keep it low. Lynda and I have been keeping mostly to ourselves throughout, limiting contacts, wearing masks, and trying to do the right thing so that we neither get infected nor infect others. The one thing that keeps me sane is running. The one thing that keeps Lynda sane is exercises at the local senior center.” They are both looking forward to the day when a vaccine is available and they can resume, “a more normal existence.” Things were a bit slow in July, Myrl Jaquith reported. “The bad news is it’s uncomfortably hot and humid in the Florida Panhandle every day. The good news is that my air conditioner is successfully keeping up with it. So far, the hurricane season hasn’t been bad for us. We’re hoping it will stay that way for the rest of the season.” Nancy Kimball emailed to say that “despite the challenges in our country with the pandemic, protests, violence in some cities, and other issues, my daily life as a home-based wildlife rehabilitator continues without interruption. At present I have seven juvenile opossums, four owls, two hawks, one kestrel and one raven—although the census can change at any time. All of these animals have to be fed, have their cages cleaned, get medical care when necessary, and be prepared for release. These tasks keep me focused and active. And luckily there hasn’t been any shortage of frozen mice for my raptors!”

Send your news to— Steve Berry 8 Oakmount Circle, Lexington, MA 02420 steveberrydhs@gmail.com

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Jules Older and Effin Lawes Older ’64 are leaving San Francisco and moving to New Zealand. They invite FA L L 2 0 2 0 |

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| CLASS NOTES you to come see them in Auckland! Careful readers might have noticed the item in the summer issue of the Vermont Quarterly citing Sheila McGinley Cornish as the first Catamount to join the Peace Corps. Dr. Jeffrey Steckler has “finally” retired from his orthopedic surgery practice. He plans to winter in Naples, Florida, with his wife of fiftyfour years. Judy Mehrhof Barrett has relocated to a retirement village in High Point, North Carolina. Two of her five grandchildren graduated from West Point, one is a junior at Washington and Lee University, and two are seniors in high school. She would love to hear from other alumni in the area.

Send your news to— Patricia Hoskiewicz Allen 14 Stony Brook Drive, Rexford, NY 12148 traileka@aol.com

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James Durrell has published an autobiography of his first 21 years titled, Growing Up a Maniac. Ken Miller and his wife, Joan, have three married sons and eight grandchildren who have spent the summer at their house in Sagaponack, New York (usually not all at one time). Ken plays golf four times a week. Jack Shabel reports that classmate Karl Kieslich passed away on May 3, 2020. Karl was a close friend of Jack and Benny Becton during their years playing on the varsity basketball team. “He will be missed by his friends and family,” Jack says. “We will miss seeing you and talking about old days. Sleep well.”

Send your news to— Toni Citarella Mullins 27 Lighthouse Point Road, Highlands, NJ 07732 tonicmullins@verizon.net

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Ellen Stark Gold and her husband, Mike, celebrated their fifty-fifth anniversary in August with family outside in their daughter’s yard in Bethesda, Maryland— just like they had for three birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, two graduations, and the Fourth of July. No hugs and no Shabbat dinners, but they are healthy. They are participating in virtual musical events, lectures, and book groups, and Ellen encourages everyone to “stay healthy.” Judi Swartz Rosenthal was scheduled to present her mandala art exhibition, titled “Discovering Judi,” on March 19, 2020 at John F. Kennedy University in San Jose, California. It was postponed due to COVID-19 and will be rescheduled. Some of her artwork can be viewed at www.fineartamerica.com/artists/judi+rosenthal.

Judi can be reached at mandala.artiste@gmail.com.

Class secretary Sue Griesenbeck Barber sends greetings to all, and hopes everyone is safe from COVID-19 and getting along well with all the new rules. Sue shares the sad news from Jackie Schieb that her husband of fifty-three years Barry J. Schieb passed away on March 31, 2020.

Send your news to— Susan Barber 1 Oak Hill Road, P.O. Box 63, Harvard, MA 01451 suebarbersue@gmail.com

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After practicing optometry in several states for almost fifty years, Albert “Albie” Pristaw retired on August 1, 2020. He recalls a wonderful career working in prisons providing eye care to inmates in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York and says, “It was good to help those with less opportunity in life. I am ready to be a grandparent and go fly fishing. UVM will always be a blessing in my life.”

He enjoys spending time talking with his 1961 Chittenden roommate Joe Pogar, and with Bob Russo ’64. He is gratfeul that UVM gave them the opportunity to create and nurture lifelong relationships. Nancy Dixon Eckhart passed away on April 7, 2020 due to complications from a prior surgery. She is survived by her husband Bill Eckhart, two children, and three grandchildren.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Alec Lyall was the founder of a soccer club in the fall of 1962, a swimmer in 1963, and a dropout in 1964.

After serving in Vietnam, Alec tried to return to UVM in 1966, but there was, as he puts it, “no room in the class.” He is a retired pilot, but counts his three sons as his greatest accoplishment. He remembers fondly his UVM coaches Les Leggett and Harold “Hal” Greig. Dr. Donald Sawyer shares that his wife of nearly fifty-two years, Anne, passed away in April after a long battle with Alzheimer’s.

He appreciates all the wonderful notes he has received from UVM friends.

Send your news to— Kathleen Nunan McGuckin 416 San Nicolas Way, St Augustine, FL 32080 kkmcguckin@comcast.net

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Thomas Carlson and his wife, Susan Bowers Carlson, reside in Cambridge, Vermont, in the summer and travel to their condo in Hollywood, Florida, in the winter. Their son, also a graduate of UVM, his wife, and their three children live in Jericho. In 2001, Thomas retired from teaching physical education at Hinesburg Elementary School after 35 years, and Susan retired from teaching language arts at Essex Middle School in 2004. As a hobby, they raise and show English bulldogs, which can be seen on their website www.greenmtbulldogs. com. Thomas says, “Life has been good to us.”

Janice Moncsko Cassidy’s son, astronaut Chris Cassidy, was fortunate to serve as Commander aboard the International Space Station as part of the Expedition 63 mission. He launched on April 9, scheduled to return to Earth in October. “What a good time to be in outer space,” Janice offers.

Send your news to— Jane Kleinberg Carroll 44 Halsey Street, Apt. 3, Providence, RI 02906 jane.carroll@cox.net

MAIL YOUR CLASS NOTES:

UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401

SUBMIT YOUR CLASS NOTES: alumni.uvm.edu/notes

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Jeffrey Freeman’s latest book, The Guru of Haze Mountain, a militarypolitical suspense novel, came out earlier this year. Pat Hall Hunt has finally retired from Disability Images and is now staying home most of the time. Linda Firliet Keating ’68, G’70 is living in Florida with her husband of fifty-two years, John. They have six grandchildren living in LaJolla, California. Karin Schumacher received the Dr. Ronnie Leavitt Award for Leadership in the Promotion of Social Responsibility in Physical Therapy from the Health Policy and Administration Section of the American Physical Therapy Association at its annual meeting in February 2020. She founded the Cross-Cultural and International Interest PT Group in 1985, now titled the Global Health Special Interest Group, to develop resources, promote intercultural rehabilitation practice in minority U.S. communities and lesser developed countries around the world, and to encourage cultural-competency teaching in professional schools of physical therapy.

Karin is semi-retired and lives in Denver, Colorado.

Jack Rosenberg is flourishing in his second career as an artist, with pieces being selected for mulitple juried exhibitions under the auspices of the Maryland Federation of Art. Additionally, his work was chosen by this year’s jury to be included in the Garrett Park (Maryland) Invitational 2020 Show. Rick Howard spent ten days visiting the South Shetland Islands and Antarctic Peninsula. He reports that, amazingly, the weather was perfect—sunny, no wind, and temperatures 28-45 degrees. Among the breath-taking scenery, he saw lots of wildlife, including thousands of penguins sitting on eggs and more than fifty humpback whales.

Send your news to— Diane Duley Glew 23 Franklin Street, Unit 2, Westerly, RI 02891 ddglew@gmail.com

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Reflecting on the recent passing of John Lewis, Jim Betts ’69, MD’73 writes, “During my term as a member of the UVM Board of Trustees, Representative Lewis was awarded an honorary degree at Commencement. I had the opportunity to have breakfast with him and our group of Trustees. It was certainly a transformative conversation.” Jim goes on to say, “As I pen this, we are all engulfed in the pandemic. California is experiencing a surge, and I feel a complete shutdown is looming. Our hospital is slammed as this is the middle of trauma season, notwithstanding dealing with COVID-19. Our alma mater is planning to continue with a combination of virtual and on-campus education. We’ll see if that is sustained. I’ll miss returning to campus this fall for a Foundation Board meeting. I trust everyone is staying as safe as possible. Looking forward

to our 55th, if I can continue to dodge the virus until ’24! Still in full-time practice and serving on the Big Sur Fire Department and as a tactical physician with the SF Division FBI SWAT team. All keeps me occupied and out of trouble! I was married last summer (4th of July!) to Liz Cochran, a pediatric anesthesiologist with whom I trained 40 years ago when we were at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. We almost wed then, but she was returning home to Omaha, and I was coming west. We figured we’d work it out over time. Well, not to rush into anything, we did, 38 years later! We are both still in full-time practices and were commuting back and forth from our homes in Nebraska and California.

The pandemic has put that on hold for now. Lots of calls and Zooming. With the finances of higher education a challenge with the pandemic, I would urge us all to contribute whatever possible to our alma mater. Everyone stay safe and I’ll see you all in ’24.” Jon Meyer’s book Love Poems From Vermont: Reflections on an Inner and Outer State, won the national Best Poetry Book category for 2019/2020 in the Reader Views Literary Awards. The book is available from the UVM Bookstore, and all proceeds go to support scholarships at UVM. You can follow Jon on Twitter: @jonmeyerpoetry. Robert Moeller is living in New Hampshire, “a Catamount in Wildcat country,” where he is enjoying the Conway Scenic Railroad and the Mount Washington Cog Railway.

He is currently modeling the Swanton, Vermont, sections of the Central Vermont and the Saint Johnsbury and Lamoille County railways.

Send your news to— Mary Moninger-Elia 1 Templeton Street, West Haven, CT 06516 maryeliawh@gmail.com

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After graduation, John Persing ’70 M.D.’74 went to on to the College of Medicine, then residencies in neurosurgery and plastic surgery at the University of Virginia. His clinical work focused on kids with craniofacial disorders both in the United States and abroad.

He moved to Yale Univeristy to continue this work, and has been there as professor and chief of plastic surgery for nearly three decades. He has also represented organized plastic surgery in policy and academic issues at certain points during his career. He has been married to his wife, Susan, for forty-nine years, and they have two children, both plastic surgeons. He is retiring next June, “and still cannot play a decent round of golf.” Lorraine Parent Racusen ’70 M.D.’75 and Richard Racusen ’70 Ph.D.’75 are enjoying retirement. They have managed to spend some time in their family home in Vermont, despite the pandemic making that more difficult. Their sons Chris and Darren ’11 are in the San Francisco area, working at home. Chris and wife Michelle just welcomed their second daughter, Alice Suri RacusenYi. Penrose Zimmerman Jackson writes that she is weathering the “Year of COVID” well in northern Vermont. She was already working remotely (both paid and volunteer), so that has not been a big change. Penrose has co-edited a book titled The Evolution of Community Benefit: Perspective on Progress that is being published by Frontiers in Pub-

lic Health. She looks forward to seeing many classmates at a future gathering in Burlington.

Send your news to— Douglas Arnold 11608 Quail Village Way, Naples, FL 34119 darnold@arnold-co.com

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After forty-seven years of teaching at Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts, David Pierce has retired and moved to Randolph Center, Vermont. Dr. William Zeichner is a general surgeon in rural Louisiana and chief of staff at Natchitoches Regional Medical Center. After graduating from UVM, he completed medical school at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, a surgery residency at Detroit Medical Center, and transplantation and vascular surgery fellowships at Detroit Medical Center and Atlanta Medical Center. He is a surgeon, emergency physician, and addiction specialist. His wife, Trish, is a counselor, his son William Zeichner, Jr. is an anesthesiologist, and his son Ben is a family physician. William reports that he is a sixth degree black belt in Shorin Ryu karate, plays classical guitar, is a 32nd degree Mason, and enjoys skiing with his family. While frantically driving around her Burlington neighborhood looking for Zayda, her escaped Saudi desert dog, Annie Viets stopped to ask a pedestrian if she had seen the fugitive. What a surprise that the walker turned out to be Marybeth Siska, who said she had been living with husband, Bill Rust, in the area for seven years. The dog was momentarily forgotten as they reminisced about old friends.

“Were your ears ringing Bob Hawes, Paulette Frisbie, Walt Blasberg, Nancy Heckman Blasberg, and Sarah Sprayregen?” Mona Stein Klaber was joined by her Alpha Epsilon Phi roommates Susan Adler Weingarten and Wendy Holtzman Nuba in New York City in March. Mona says, “It’s always great to see Sue and Wendy and it’s hard to believe that we first became life-long friends fiftythree years ago. I love them both dearly.” Rob Sydney sadly reports that two dear friends and classmates passed away this year: Doug Kerr ’72 (died December 13, 2019), and Jay Keillor (died May 21, 2020). They were all fast friends since their days at UVM, along with Arnie Brown and Tom Watkinson ’70. “We remaining three have felt a big loss since losing Doug and Jay within six months of each other,” Rob says. Ellen Bleecker Liversidge ’71 MS’72 is moving back East after spending ten years in San Diego, and is looking to be in touch with classmates from her speech pathology master’s program. Now fully retired and writing, her last speech work was with children on the Navajo Reservation in Shiprock, New Mexico. Myron Grauer reached out to say that he received a terrific video communication from UVM. Sorry I didn’t call you back Myron! The student in the piece even pronounced his wife Grazyna’s name correctly!

Class Secretary Sarah Sprayregen writes, “Greetings from Vermont at the end of July. I hope you are all staying well. I write as I approach the onemonth mark of my retirement from UVM. It was a hard decision as I loved working with amazing colleagues (including faculty) and the alumni, parents,

and friends who support our alma mater in significant ways. I figured it was time to spend more time with my children and grandchildren and tending my gardens anytime I felt the urge to get in the ‘dirt.’ It’s been a bit surreal, but all good. It’s always great hearing from classmates, which usually coincides with the Vermont Quarterly landing in folks’ mailboxes. Just so you all know, I will keep my UVM email address, but you can also reach me at sarahsprayvt@gmail.com. If anyone wants to be our class secretary, I’m happy to pass this opportunity on—I’ve always thought that Owen Jenkins would make a fabulous class secretary! Owen?”

Send your news to— Sarah Wilbur Sprayregen 145 Cliff Street, Burlington, VT 05401 sarahsprayvt@gmail.com

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Robert Frost Sydney ’71 reports that his good friend, neighbor, and ski buddy, Doug Kerr died on December 13, 2019 following a three-year battle with cancer. Despite his illness, Doug skied over 60 days during his last winter while retaining his great sense of humor.

Send your news to— Debbie Koslow Stern 198 Bluebird Drive, Colchester, VT 05446 debbie2907@gmail.com

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After being division chief of Community Internal Medicine at UMass Medical School, Andrew Miller has stepped down to return to primary care for another year in Douglas, Massachusetts. He will fully retire in 2021 and wishes the UVM community a safe and healthy journey through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Proud grandparent Donald Lefebvre reports that his granddaughter Heather Lefebvre ’20 graduated from UVM with a degree in nursing. His grandson Devin Lefebvre graduated from Montana State University in 2018 and 2019 with degrees in psychology and philosophy. Following their reading of Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars in 2009, Charlotte “Charli” Cohen Sheer’s ’73 G’75 fifth grade students began an enrichment activity about the causes and effects of the Holocaust. The learning initiative evolved over the next ten years as a schoolwide Community Service Learning activity called the Holocaust Stamps Project. More than eleven million stamps were donated from around the world, one for each of the eleven million victims of Holocaust atrocities. Students in kindergarten through twelfth grade used thousands of the stamps to create a series of eighteen collage pictures intended to promote understanding of what happened during, and since, the Holocaust.

The entire collection of stamps and artwork will become the centerpiece of a national Holocaust Remembrance exhibit at the American Philatelic Center in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. More about the Holocaust Stamps Project can be found on the Foxborough (Massacusetts) Regional Charter School website and on the Holocaust Stamps Project Facebook page.

Send your news to– FA L L 2 0 2 0 |

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| CLASS NOTES Deborah Layne Mesce 2227 Observatory Place NW Washington, DC 20007 dmesce@icloud.com

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Melanie Choukas-Bradley and Jim Choukas-Bradley, who met at UVM, celebrated their forty-fifth wedding anniversary in June. Jim is an attorney and Melanie is a naturalist and author with two books out in 2020: Resilience: Connecting With Nature in a Time of Crisis and Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island: My Year with the Kingfisher. Susanne “Sue” Geier Spalding ’74 G’76 and her husband, Ken, were in New Zealand when COVID-19 travel restrictions were implemented. A planned fiveweek trip turned into eleven weeks, and they were able to see much of the country before and after the shutdown. Sue notes that it was, “a beautiful place to be stuck!” Class secretary Emily Schnaper Manders shares, “I hope everyone is staying safe and well. And I hope to hear of reunions and adventures as soon as this pandemic is over!”

Send your news to— Emily Schnaper Manders 104 Walnut Street, Framingham, MA 01702 esmanders@gmail.com

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The COVID-19 adventure continues for Deborah Sample Kim, who deployed to support the New York City Office of Emergency Management in March and April. She has also been serving as a contract tracer with the University of Utah School of Medicine and Utah Department of Health. “I never thought that 45 years later I’d still be practicing as a nurse,” she says. “Please mask and social distance!”

John Geller, Fletcher Baltz ’77, and Jeff Davis ’76 met at Jay Peak for a day of skiing last spring just before the ski area closed. Afterwards, they met with Steve Burns ’82 G’04 in St. Johnsbury for dinner. The next day they drove around northern New Hampshire visiting the New England Ski Museum (they recommend it highly) and other ski areas, including Black Mountain and Cranmore. Claire Tessier, Ph.D. retired from the University of Akron in August, concluding a thirty-year career as a professor of chemistry. Michael B. Bruehl, M.D. died on June 16. After graduating from the UVM College of Medicine in 1975, he completed his residency in family medicine in Bangor, Maine, and spent almost 40 years caring for patients in Orono and Greater Bangor. As a student, Bob Weiler ’75 G’79 built, taught, and led Wilderness Experiences, an outdoor orientation program for freshman. He also played football for UVM and was inducted into the UVM Athletic Hall of Fame in 2019. For the past 40 years, Bob has held leadership positions in companies including the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business, and Grand Circle Travel. Twentyfive years ago, Bob founded Brimstone Consulting Group. Drawing on his experience and Brimstone’s work, Bob has written The Core 4: Harness Four Core Business Drivers to Accelerate Your Organization. The book was published in July. According to

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Bob, the book is, “everything you already knew, but forgot to remember.”To learn more, visit www.brimstoneconsulting.com/core-four.

Send your news to-Dina Dwyer Child 102 North Jefferson Road South Burlington, VT 05403 dinachild@aol.com

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Leon Corse was recently recognized by the Red Cross for two hundred lifetime blood donations. He began his 25-gallon journey donating during his UVM years, when on campus drawings were held in Billings.

Julie Halpern is glad to be a retired school counselor in the year of, “the Plague, the election, and the almost hurricane here in Hawaii.” She remains grateful for her years spent in the Green Mountains. Her daughter Samay is a DJ and son Kris an entrepreneur. She loves reading and walking, but her plans to substitute teach this year are “on the back burner.” Andrea Kalisch Casey reports from Oregon that she has been surviving COVID-19 by, “staying in touch with nature.” Enjoying a pandemic getaway from New York City, Allyne Prupis Zorn visited Jackie Levine in Burlington for some quality time hiking and biking. Donald P. Hunt has fully and completely retired, and says that, “it feels great.”

He feels lucky that he sold his buisness (Hunt’s Tax Service in Newport, Vermont) last December, before the pandemic turned tax season into an extended seven-month ordeal. He had already sold another business (Hunt Financial Services) five years ago. He describes retirement in the Northeast Kingdom as, “close to idyllic,” regardless of the masks and social distancing. He is playing golf five days a week, competing in online bridge tournaments, and spending quality time at home with his wife, Andrea. One son is a Vermont State Trooper getting married next summer, and another is a U.S. Army helicopter pilot who has given Donald two grandsons to play with, round out his activities, and keep him grounded. “I wouldn’t ask for more,” he says.

Send your news to— Pete Beekman 2 Elm Street, Canton, NY 13617 pbeekman19@gmail.com

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Craig Lewis and Donna Marineau Lewis have moved back to shore after seven years of living on their boat Mighty Fine. Craig retired from Pfizer Animal Health in 2013 after 26 years. They own a condo in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but still visit Vermont in the summer months in their R.V., staying in New Haven at Rivers Bend Campground. “Life is good,” he reports. “It was a great adventure cruising up and down the East Coast and in the Bahamas, now on to the next chapter!” His phone number is 802-233-4290 for those who want to reconnect. Kathleen Brown Sorkin has retired and moved to Leesburg, Virginia to be close to her first grandchild. Her daughter gave birth to a baby boy, Oscar, in March. She is hoping that all are staying safe and well during this pandemic.

Send your news to—

UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Stan Przybylinski took a trip down memory lane with members of his championship intramural basketball team, Cosmik Debris, tracking down Jeff White ’77 using the internet and Greg Davis ’79 with the help of the UVM Alumni Association. Randall White ’83 was another member of the team.

Doug Reed has been named the president and CEO of Meridian Associates, a multi-disciplinary civil engineering, LiDAR mapping, and survey firm. Doug has more than thirty years of experience providing consulting services to municipalities, state and federal agencies, and private businesses in New England. Jeff Parker hosted the first annual “What Ales You Invitational Golf Championship” at the Sugarbush Resort Golf Club. In attendance were Mark Forhecz, Jeff Small ’79, Greg Allen, Bruce Parmenter ’80, Jeff Carr, Bob Dacey ’81, Jeff Nick ’80, Dave Caccavo, Jim Wells and Les Brownell. He hopes that next year will include Jeff Pratt ’79 and Kere Baker ’78. The “Billy Baroo” award was won by Jeff Nick.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Dinah Minot Hubley is currently running the City of Portland, Maine’s local arts agency: Office of Creative Portland. If you are an arts lover, musician, writer, dancer, or visual artist living in or moving to Maine, reach out to her at dinah@creativeportland.com and she will loop you in. Bill Miller has been back in Vermont for 20 years, after leaving Colorado. He is active as a contractor restoring barns and homes. Steven Backs G’79 has been a wildlife research biologist with the State of Indiana Division of Fish & Wildlife since 1979. He was recently awarded the 2020 Chase S. Osborn Award in Wildlife Conservation by the Purdue University Forestry and Natural Resources Deparetment.

The award recognizes “an individual who, by writing, research, teaching or other personal accomplishments has made significant contributions to wildlife conservation in the state of Indiana.” With great sadness, Janet Harris shared the news that Randy Harris, her husband of thirty-seven years, passed away May 18, 2020. She noted that he loved spending time in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Send your news to— Beth Gamache bethgamache@burlingtontelecom.net

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David Shaw is currently working as an attorney for the Marinosci Law Group, P.C. in Southington, Connecticut. Tim Anderson has relocated to the Charlotte, North Carolina, area after thirty years between Texas and California. He has a new position with Elior North America and has enjoyed becoming

acquainted with Scott Berkman. With two UVM alumni in leadership positions at the company, Tim knows that it is, “bound for nothing but success!” He is learning to acclimate to much warmer weather and “air you can wear,” and adjusting back to his native eastern time zone. He sends a shoutout to Pete Castrichini, who he enjoys keeping up with, and hopes to see everyone for the fortieth reunion next year.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Kathy Lee Bishop is the co-editor of the second editon of Acute Care Physical Therapy: A Clinician’s Guide, a textbook which came out in 2020. Carol Delaney started a new position as the livestock specialist in the Animal Health Division at the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry in March. At the same time, she moved to Wells, Maine. She finds the residents of Maine to be very nice and welcoming people, and values the close connection of state government with Extension and other agriculture service groups.

Jamie Fagan and his wife, Katie, now have three grandchildren. Jamie recently took a fishing trip with his retired friends John Carter ’81 and Jim Atwood ’83. He is still loving his work at J. P. Morgan Chase & Company managing money for families. John Alden and Deborah Scott Alden celebrated their thirty-sixth wedding anniversary on

June 2: “And to think it all started in Frank Sampson’s sociology class...”

Send your news to— John Peter Scambos pteron@verizon.net

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During the early days of the pandemic, Fr. Lance W. Harlow, founder of the St. Nicholas Project, collected charitable donations exceeding $27,000 for food cards for the boys and girls at the Kurn Hattin Homes for Children in Westminster, Vermont, which had to close temporarily. This six-state charitable campaign benefited families struggling with limited economic resources to provide food for their children. Fr. Harlow extends, “a huge thank you to UVM alumni who contributed.” For more information, visit: www.thestnicholasproject.com.

In fall 2019, Daniel Kelin completed a second Fulbright-Nehru teaching fellowship in Northern India as a guest faculty member at the National School of Drama. Laura Cicia DiBacco writes to say that when Martha Auble Alderman passed away after a battle with cancer in July 2019, she and a group of nine other classmates who have been friends since freshman year found strength in sharing photos and stories from their years at UVM. Laura, Karen Rosenwater Schloss, Pam Christlieb Plesons, Lisa Campisi Casey, Jacqueline “Kiki” Sirop Nissen, Katherine Young Hurley, Bill Horn, Dean Holden, Nelson Marass and David Wallace were all stunned by her loss, but grateful

that they were able to get together in Vermont for their 35th Reunion in 2018 for a fun-filled weekend

by Lake Champain. Laura says, “Thanks to that trip and our great UVM memories, Martha will stay forever in our hearts.” Julie Stevenson is very excited that her daughter, Natalie Meyer ’24, is a first-year at UVM! Although it will be a different experience than when she started, Julie knows that Natalie will love all that the university has to offer. Julie’s mother is the late Shirley Gray Stevenson ’41, so Natalie will be a third-generation Catamount.

Send your news to— Lisa Greenwood Crozier lcrozier@triad.rr.com

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Andrea Van Liew is a consultant with Global Learning Partners, a company that helps organizations create virtual and in-person adult learning opportunities.

She is also a certified Life Cycle Celebrant, ready to help you host any ceremony for your stage of life.

She can be reached at andrea.vanliew@gmail.com.

Not even a pandemic could keep apart Ellen Price, Sarah Fay, and Joann Forgit. With social distancing and their typical camaraderie and laughter, they enjoyed their annual summer get-together. Claire Sierra has been living in Oregon for twenty-five years, now in the Columbia River Gorge, where she and her husband own a historic, award-winning Class Notes continue on page 58

IT’S ALL ABOUT WHO YOU KNOW. And just like University of Vermont alumni, we’ve always been fond of green. Together, we’re committed to keeping our planet healthy.

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NEXT GENERATION CATAMOUNTS

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UVM MAGAZINE

UPPER RIGHT: JOSHUA BROWN; UPPER LEFT & BOTTOM: SALLY MCCAY

MOVE-IN 2020 Joyful, tearful—with a tremor of anticipation and/or apprehension here and there —dropping kids off at college is a milestone for parents and new students alike.

Children of UVM alumni have grown up with green-and-gold around the house, made visits to Burlington for games or college reunions or skiing. So, even masked in the midst of a pandemic, Vermont feels like a second home to these new students.

And to their UVM alumni parents, it’s a trip back in time, rich in nostalgia for what was and pride in what awaits. We checked in with a circle of them as they unloaded boxes from their cars and moved into residence halls to begin fall semester.

by JOSHUA BROWN

REICHELT FAMILY Alex Reichelt ’24 moved into his freshman dorm, Simpson Hall, with help from his dad, Kurt Reichelt G’02. But in a sense his grandfather, William Curt Reichelt, Jr., UVM Class of 1965, was there too. “I want to study engineering, probably civil engineering,” Alex says. “I excel at math.” And Alex’s grandfather also studied civil engineering.

“My dad said, ‘Follow what you want to do,’ but my granddad has been trying to get me to be an engineer,” Alex says. “I went down that road myself, but there’s inspiration there, too.”

“He’s following in Opa’s footsteps,” says Kurt.

Alex was born and raised in Stowe, and his Uncle Bill, William Curt Reichelt III, is director of UVM’s varsity ski program—so it’s not that surprising that, when Alex is not studying, he loves to ski. “It’s a huge part of what I do,” he says. “Freestyle—jumps and rails.” Alex doesn’t race. “He was never interJOSHUA BROWN

Kurt Reichelt G’02 and son Alex Reichelt ’24.

ested in red, blue, red, blue, red,” Kurt explains. “He just wanted to go upside-down.”

As for this upside-down historical moment with COVID-19, Alex says. “It’s going to be day-by-day.”

Then he points to his mask. “It stinks that we have to move in like this. But we learn a lot under these FA L L 2 0 2 0 |

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Victoria Gonzalez ’24 and dad Phillip Gonzalez ’91. Corinna Cademartori ’24 and parents Gregg and Emilie Cademartori, both ’94.

conditions—about how to manage,” he says. “Just follow the guidelines so everyone stays safe until we get back to life as normal.” Then he adjusts his mask again. “Normalish,” he says.

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she says, listing some of the qualities she likes about the campus and city. She plans to major in a science and go pre-med. “I want to be a doctor,” she says, “and a Spanish minor—a lot of my family speaks Spanish, and I love the language, and hope to be fluent by the time I graduate.”

Victoria Gonzalez ’24 looks out across the quad in front of Wright Hall. “Yes, I’m proud to say I am Latina,” she says. “It took me a while to say: ‘I love listening to Spanish music.’” And then she looks at her dad, Phillip Gonzalez ’91. He helped her— and others at UVM when he was a student here—develop the same pride. Born in Puerto Rico, he moved to Massachusetts at age seven—and started at UVM in 1987.

“As a kid in Boston, I got used to not being around a lot of other Latinos,” he recalls. “But for a lot of other Latino students at UVM, back then, especially those coming from inner city New York and Philadelphia—it was hard.” Which is why he and a friend founded the Alianza Latinx student club on campus.

“At the time there was no Latino club, so we got together with the faculty of the ALANA program and we started working on it sophomore year,” he says. He recalls going with other Hispanic students to Montreal to find familiar food and music — and then he was part of the takeover of the president’s office in Waterman Building in April 1991 to protest racism. “It’s a thrill, almost thirty years later, to see the club still here and thriving,” he says. “We had trouble getting sixteen students to a club meeting; now 350 come for our annual fundraiser.”

He’s brought his daughter to Vermont and UVM many times. “I had my first ‘tour’ when I was twelve and I instantly fell in love,” Victoria Gonzalez says. She got into seven other colleges but there wasn’t any difficulty in choosing UVM. “The lake, the environmental vibe, the fresh produce, the energy,”

Growing up outside Boston, Corinna Cademartori ’24 visited Burlington every year—coming to town for UVM basketball games. “One of my earliest memories is seeing the big Catamount mascot,” she recalls.

Her parents, Emilie and Gregg Cademartori, met at UVM and both graduated in 1994. “We met on Halloween, sophomore year,” Gregg recalls. For a week, they only knew each other by their costume names: “Jeannie” from “I Dream of Jeannie,” and “Dieter” from the SNL skit “Sprockets.”

“We became a UVM family and we always kept coming back for basketball games,” says Emilie, “the kids with foam cat paws and face paint.”

Now, Corinna is continuing the family’s BTV connection.

She’ll be starting in the UVM nursing program. “I’ve been doing volunteer work to help others my whole life so it’s a good fit,” she says. “I’d like to work in an ER, a fast-paced setting.” She feels the pain and loss of COVID-19. “But it’s getting me ready for the real world in a hospital,” she says. “I almost feel like the pandemic is setting me up to be successful as a nurse because I’m going in at such a hard time.”

Her parents do own up to encouraging Corinna to attend UVM. “I can’t say we didn’t have an influence,” says Gregg, laughing, and he’s particularly excited about the opportunities for his daughter to train as a nurse. “Having a clinical setting

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CADEMARTORI FAMILY

Lars Jensen ’24 and parents Stew ’90 and Lisa Jensen ’89 G’96. Patrick Welsh ’24 and parents Gail ’86 and Jay Welsh ’89.

right outside your dorm door is a great fit, and not something you find at many other schools,” he says.

For Corinna, one of the draws of UVM is Lake Champlain.

“We used to drive by the lake as kids—but I’ve never gone swimming in it,” she says. “I can’t wait to get in the water.”

JENSEN FAMILY It’s move-in day for many first-years—and Lars Jensen ’24 is looking for his wallet in the car while he waits for clearance to move his stuff into University Heights North. “That would have been a pretty major thing to have not brought with you,” says his dad, Stew Jensen ’90, cheerfully and being helpful in that way that eighteen-year-olds find, well, you know.

Still Lars—planning to be a mathematics major—stands tall and smiles when asked about his interest in backcountry skiing. “Yep, love it,” he says. “Just getting started.” Actually, he’s been skiing for years. “At Cochran’s when he was really little, then Bolton, and for the last five years at Sugarbush,” his dad says. It’s in the family to ski: Stew and his wife Lisa Jensen ’89 G’96—now assistant director of the Vermont Attorney General’s Consumer Assistance Program housed at UVM— met in a ski course Stew was teaching his own freshman year at UVM. The family has been on the slopes ever since, including through Stew’s work. “My ad agency primarily works with ski resorts,” he explains.

Following some of the same trails as his dad, Lars says, “I’m curious about the mathematical side of business and am curious to learn how mathematics can be used to help businesses run more efficiently. I’m also planning on getting my MBA at JOSHUA BROWN (4)

some point after I graduate from UVM.” On the ski end of things, Lars has cut new terrain for the family with his backcountry interests. “Last year, he got skins, touring bindings, touring boots—and off he went into the woods,” his dad says. “It’s great for him, but I just love chairlifts.

If God had intended us to walk up the mountains, he wouldn’t have invented the chairlifts.”

WELSH FAMILY Jay Welsh ’89 enjoys ribbing his son, Patrick Welsh ’24. Dropping him off at Harris Hall, he jokes, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back every weekend.” But Pat’s mom, Gail Welsh ’86, jumps to her son’s defense, laughing. “Oh no you won’t,” she says. “I promise, Pat, I won’t let your dad out of the house unsupervised.”

Still, it’s clear the whole family loves being in Burlington and being on campus. Gail and Jay met at their first job in Hartford, Connecticut, after graduation from UVM—and they’re excited for what lies ahead for their son. “It feels great to be back here,” says Gail. “The campus looks fantastic,” says Jay, noting the new science complex and central campus residence hall. “There are a lot more buildings.”

One big change for Gail: “The Cat buses,” she says. “We had to walk everywhere. But it’s the same vibe, the same welcoming vibe. It feels like home.” For Pat, his on-campus home is on the first floor of Harris, just down the stairs from where his dad was as a first-year. He plans to major in Business Administration, and he’s not sure what extracurriculars he’ll take up—but he’s clear about how he feels following his parents’ footsteps at UVM. “I’ve always loved Vermont,” he says. “It didn’t take any convincing UVM to come here.”

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| CLASS NOTES inn, retreat, and wedding venue: The Balch Hotel.

She offers spa, wellness, art therapy, and soul coaching experiences for women. She has published her first book, The Magdalene Path: Awaken the Power of Your Feminine Soul, which “guides women to deeper spiritual connection and purpose by reclaiming the lost history of Mary Magdalene.” Claire has not been back to Vermont since graduating, but misses it. She says she loves Oregon, probably because it is so similar. She would love to hear from classmates in Oregon and beyond at Claire@MagdalenePath.com.

Send your news to— Abby Goldberg Kelley kelleyabbyvt@gmail.com Shelley Carpenter Spillane scspillane@aol.com

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Maude Hinsdale Farrington and Alan Farrington became grandparents, “finally.” Nolan Alexander was born this May and has been sporting a UVM onesie in Wichita, Kansas, where Maude and Alan moved in 1985 and raised two daughters. Sherri Steinfeld Maxman is a thirty-plus year resident of New York City and spends summers at her home on Block Island, Rhode Island. She is an independent college counselor (specializing in working with students with learning disabilities) and is always thrilled to put UVM on her students’ lists of recommended colleges. Joel Schmutz has lived and worked in Alaska since 1988 as a research biologist for the federal government. Recently, he took some leave and spent time in Antarctica as a naturalist guide on a large ship. Phil Dobbyn lives in Reading, Massachusetts, with his wife, Meghan Burke, and two dogs. He reports that “pandemic life” has him tired of his own cooking. Phil loves the industry and feels good about the work he does for a community solar company. He and Meghan bought an apartment in Rome in December 2019 and are hoping to spend some serious time there in 2021 and beyond.

Send your news to— Barbara Roth roth_barb@yahoo.com

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Michel Messier and Melissa Calvin Messier’s ’87 son, Matthew Messier ’14, earned a master’s from Northeastern University in education administration. Their daughter, Morgan, works in a cardiology/neurology catheterization lab. Hugh Barron and Chris Kostanecki make regular sunrise pilgrimages to Mount Baldy in California. After an early career in banking followed by a long career in sales and marketing (including owning a promotional marketing franchise), Kimberly Knox has “found her true joy reconnecting with a childhood passion.” After improving her own health through the power of food, Kimberly returned to school to pursue her lifelong passion for food and natural healing. With coaching certifications from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, Kimberly has coached and cooked with hundreds of clients to help them achieve their health goals. She is the creator of the bioenergetic cooking method, an organic whole food, non-inflammatory approach

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to achieving more energy for life. Kimberly’s revolutionary method cookbook will be available for the holidays. inthekitchenwithKK.com Send your news to— Lawrence Gorkun vtlfg@msn.com

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Adrian Paul married his partner, Marvin, not long ago and they split their time between San Francisco and the high desert of Reno, Nevada. Adrian regrets falling out of touch with his friends from UVM and, since he is not on Facebook, encourages them to contact him by email at atheop@hotmail.com.

Michael Dwyer and Margaret Penny Dwyer are proud to announce that their daughter, Madeline Dwyer ’24, is now a first-year at UVM. Send your news to— Sarah Reynolds sarahreynolds10708@gmail.com

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Deborah Williams Haire’s son, Wesley, started in the UVM Larner College of Medicine’s Master’s of Medical Science program this fall. After many years, Jason Sanders is finally fulfilling his dream of living abroad. He sends greetings from Caicedonia, Colombia. Barry Gogel has received a Leadership in Law Award from the Maryland Daily Record.

Send your news to— Cathy Selinka Levison crlevison@comcast.net

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Nathaniel Prentice is doing well with a family of four and a “zoo” of six animals. He is working as the clinical director of a mid-sized therapy private practice and still playing too many musical instruments and getting into too many hobbies—the most recent of which is ham radio. He has been volunteering through the Department of Homeland Security’s Citizen Corps providing mental health care and COVID-19 testing services during the pandemic.

Send your news to— Maureen Kelly Gonsalves moe.dave@verizon.net

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Laura Channing Baecher finds it hard to believe that her UVM graduation was thirty years ago. She is a mother of three, whose oldest is now looking at colleges himself. Laura is a professor at Hunter College, City University of New York, in the field of teaching English as a second language, where she prepares K-12 teachers to serve multilingual learners. Ken Field is serving as the chair of the Biology Department at Bucknell University. He was recently awarded a National Science Foundation Rapid Response Research Grant to support his work on coronavirus infections in bats. Lisa Every O’Doherty and Karin Johansson Nicholson were thrilled to move their sons, Colin O’Doherty ’23 and Jake Nicholson ’23, into Hamilton Hall last fall. Nothing made them happier than having their sons carry on the UVM tradition and become roommates just like they were. Adam Page lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts, with his wife,

CLASS NOTES ONLINE

alumni.uvm.edu/notes Kelly, and their two daughters. He is a corporate attorney. Their oldest daughter, Lilly Page ’23, is excited to be a sophomore this fall. After more than twenty-fine years working for UVM, Ruth Henry is now a senior philanthropic advisor at the Vermont Community Foundation. She is still living in Burlington and enjoys working with others who share her love of all things Vermont. Just before COVID-19 hit, she spent five “glorious” days on Rum Point, Grand Cayman, with Jane Works Tarsy, Meg Schwartz Smith, and Sheila Diestel. She snorkeled with sea turtles, learned to play pickle ball, “and drank rum, of course!”

Send your news to— Tessa Donohoe Fontaine tessafontaine@gmail.com

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Meg Landry ’91 G’02 moved from Hong Kong to Concord, Massachusetts, to be close to family and friends.

After a career as a speech-language pathologist, Meg decided to combine her passion for homes and people by working at Barrett Sotheby’s International Realty as a sales associate. She says to stop by her office in Concord Center to say hello if you are in the area. Eric Patel has started a company called BostonExO, New England’s first Exponential Organization (ExO) incubator, which helps companies thrive through continuous business model innovation. Emily Fleschner serves as executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association near Boston, and also as an elected city councilor in her hometown of Newton. She has three boys, ages twelve, fifteen, and seventeen. She says that her, “activism started at UVM where I founded the first animal rights group in 1987, Students Organized for Animal Rights (SOAR). Our big victory was getting the foodservice to switch to dolphin-safe tuna.” She has many happy memories of her UVM days and still tries to visit Vermont as often as she can. Debbie Howarth has been named interim assistant dean of the College of Business at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Send news to— Karen Heller Lightman khlightman@gmail.com

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Eric Martin is pleased that his son Wyeth Martin ’24 will be attending UVM alongside Ethan Hubbard ’24 (son of Adam Hubbard and Alison Steers Hubbard ’95) and Cece Pennell ’23 (daughter of Courtlandt Pennell and Anne Lamb Pennell).

Jonathan A. Siegel has been appointed to the Agricultural Personnel Management Association’s Board of Directors for the 2020-2022 term. Jonathan is a principal in the Orange County, California, office of the law firm Jackson Lewis, where he provides advice and counsel to management regard-

ing labor and employment law.

Send your news to— Lisa Kanter jslbk@mac.com

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This past New Year’s Eve, several members of the class of 1993 took a once-in-a-lifetime cruise around the world. Phil Reed meticulously planned for the group consisting of Jeffrey Drinkwater, Jon Heaton, Alex Frink, Jordan Berg, Jamie Chabot, Jamie Lehouiller, Bill Beer, and Peppi Nitta.

They started off in Alaska and ended up circumventing the globe with stops in Sevastopol, Russia (to see the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet) and had a brief stop in Kazakhstan to see Borat at a comedy club. The group reunited with fellow alum Jeff Rosenblum who had been hiking the dunes of Madagascar and continued on with stops in Kandahar, Tripoli, and Somalia. (The group is already planning a ski trip for 2021 to the Koreas (both North and South). (Editor’s note: Ha, ha. To quote Borat: “Very nice.”)

Send your news to— Gretchen Haffermehl Brainard gretchenbrainard@gmail.com

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leegenung@me.com

Send your news to— Valeri Susan Pappas vpappas@davisandceriani.com

Send your news to— Cynthia Bohlin Abbott cyndiabbott@hotmail.com

John Gorman, his wife, Ali, and daughter, Eva, moved to London last January. John is a managing director with Nomura Securities. Grey Lee now manages corporate partnerships for the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), guiding certifications for Zero Carbon, the JUST label, Living Buildings, and more. In his off-hours, Grey reports he, “serves as Dungeon Master (via crystal ball) for some nieces and nephews including children of Adam Hyde ’97 and Neil Dalal ’97).”

Send your news to— Jill Cohen Gent jcgent@roadrunner.com Michelle Richards Peters mpeters@eagleeyes.biz

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Claudia Vezza Reuter recently had a book published by Wiley which debuted as a #1 New Release on Amazon in the Business Entrepreneurship category. It is titled Yes, You Can Do This! How Women Start up, Scale up, and Build the Life They Want.

Send your news to— Elizabeth Carstensen Genung

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Send news to— Ben Stockman bestockman@gmail.com Since 2016, Lauren Zidovsky has lived in Denver, Colorado, and worked as a PRN RN at the Colorado Blood Cancer Institute, alongside her husband, Dr. Marcello Rotta. She has had many roles in clinical research and quality management and coordination. They have three children: Matteo, 11; Tommaso, 7; and Giulia, 4. Lauren will be finishing her master’s in Healthcare Leadership and Management from the University of Denver this autumn.

She is thinking of all her nursing peers in this pandemic, and says “thank you” to all current and future UVM nursing students for their commitment to healthcare.

Send news to— Sarah Pitlak Tiber spitlak@hotmail.com

00

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

NEW! Alumni Business Directory Do you have a business that you would like to promote? With the new, easy-to-use Business Directory in UVM Connect, you can!

With more than 8,300 members on the UVM Connect platform, you can promote your business to fellow Catamounts, offer them special discounts, support other alumniowned businesses, and be part of a growing community.

Go to www.uvmconnect.org to sign up and start posting today.

| CLASS NOTES

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Send your news to— Erin Wilson ewilson41@gmail.com Thomas Hynes recently published Wild City: A Brief History of New York City in 40 Animals with HarperCollins. He says, “It’s a fun book with an environmental call to action. In other words, it’s very UVM!” He is pleased to finally be making the most of the writing award that he received from the English Department during his senior year. Chris Niggel has moved to Bend, Oregon, and been named regional chief security officer, Americas for Okta, a technology company focused on identity and access management. At Okta, Chris is responsible for helping customers understand data security and privacy in the cloud.

Send your news to— Jennifer Khouri Godin jenniferkhouri@yahoo.com

03

Michael Mulvey and Mary Margaret “Meg” Welch ’01 relocated with their family from Miami Beach to Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany. Michael teaches history to U.S. Armed Forces members serving in NATO. He encourages people to “say hello” if they are in the area. Heather Hawkes Wolfe has written a vegetarian cookbook titled, Sustainable Kitchen: Recipes and Inspiration for Plant-Based, Planet-Conscious Meals.

Send your news to— Korinne Moore Berenson korinne.d.moore@gmail.com

04

Robyn Buchanan King and her partner, Ryan Schauer, were married in a backyard ceremony befitting the pandemic. The ceremony was officiated and witnessed by their friends Isaac and Christina, fellow refugees from the currently defunct Cirque du Soleil.

Send your news to— Kelly Kisiday kelly.kisiday@gmail.com

05

Heather Boepple Gaylord shares the news that Grayson Noble Gaylord was born in January 2019. She is expecting “Baby Gaylord #2” to arrive shortly before this issue goes to press this fall. Paul Damon survived a large deep-slab avalanche in the Sierra Nevadas in March. He was alone (foolishly, by his own admission), and had to self-rescue. He was swept over a “formidable” cliff, hit large coniferous trees mid-air, then landed on a boulder. He suffered fractures to half his ribs and a shoulder, as well as a collapsed lung. Paul has now relocated down the coast of California from the “cool, grey city of love” (San Francisco) to the redwood-laden hills east of Santa Cruz. While he misses his friends, the parks with their eucalyptus, and the many moods of his beloved Ocean Beach, he is happy and grateful to report that he is able

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to surf again, and that he looks forward to “getting gnarly” (after work) both north and south of his adopted town. Kerry Duggan runs a successful sustainability and strategy consulting firm with a special eye toward support for clean energy, climate resilience & environmental protection, as well as policy translation into actionable outcomes. Previous roles include serving as Deputy Director for Policy in the Office of Vice President Joe Biden during the Obama administration. Duggan lives in Detroit, Michigan, with her husband and two kids.

Send your news to— Kristin Dobbs Schulman kristin.schulman@gmail.com

06

Kira Atwood-Youngstrom writes to say that, “Despite what you read, Portland, Oregon, isn’t lawless. We have an overtly militant local police department & a federal force no one asked for causing huge problems.”

Send your news to— Katherine Murphy kateandbri@gmail.com

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Send your news to— Elizabeth Bitterman bittermane@jgua.com Ryan Guthrie reports that The Yurt Camp at Mount Snow in Dover, Vermont, is on track for completion this fall and that the 2005 Live Music Floor (Wilks 4) is planning a 2021 camping reunion there. If you are interested in joining, email coldhill1985@gmail. com. He hopes this reunion will inspire other members of the UVM community to create their own reunion experiences at The Yurt Camp.

Send your news to— Elizabeth Bearese ebearese@gmail.com Emma Grady gradyemma@gmail.com

09

After ten years working at MassChallenge, a global startup accelerator, Scott Bailey has left to launch a modular housing company to help address housing affordability in high-growth communities. He writes, “If you are interested in modular housing, accessory dwelling units, or are a developer seeking innovative multi-family construction approaches to reduce costs, let me know!” For more information, visit www.bequall.com. Shari Smith is an adjunct professor at the University of New Haven teaching sociology, global studies, and economics. She was invited to be one of eight professors to pilot a new course on diversity, equity, and inclusion that is being rolled out to all incoming criminal justice majors this fall, and will be required of all incoming students by fall 2021. Nydia Guity has a new podcast, available on SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts, called “Naturally Ever After,” where she shares

CLASS NOTES ONLINE

alumni.uvm.edu/notes her own story of transitioning from relaxed to natural hair. She also shares tips to support women “overcoming emotional barriers to obtaining outward beauty.” Visit https://soundcloud.com/msguitylcsw. In March 2020, Jamison Kimberly and his wife, Emily, relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina, for work. Brittany St. Gelais Riley graduated magna cum laude from Louisiana State University, Shreveport, in May 2020 with an M.B.A. with a human resources management concentration. Emily Rodney Tufaro and Paul Tufaro welcomed their second son, Ian Bradley Tufaro, in early May. His big brother, Chase, has been settling into his new role and they are all adjusting to life as a family of four.

Send your news to— David Volain david.volain@gmail.com

10

Isabel Burnham and her husband, Sebastian Candelaria, welcomed with love their son Zephyr Strong in March 2020 in Newport, Rhode Island. Chelsea Stevenson Frederick welcomed her first son, Kellen, in early May 2020.

Send your news to— Daron Raleigh raleighdaron@gmail.com

11

Kalee Ijames Whitehouse and Tristan Whitehouse ’10 celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary and are expecting a baby in February, 2021. They reside in Vermont’s Mad River Valley and “couldn’t be happier.” Melinda Edgerly Cruzen and Kyle Cruzen met while students at UVM and were married last year. This year, they are pleased to announce thatnthey have started a worm farm in Berkshire, Massachusetts, focused on community composting and growing nutrient-dense microgreens. With the first harvest of microgreens taking place a week before the pandemic was declared, Melinda and Kyle have run into many new-business challenges. Nonetheless, they are growing their business rapidly and “loving every second.” Check out how you can support their work at berkshireworms.com. In September, Maryl Sartin started as a graduate student in the University of British Columbia’s Master of Land and Water Systems Program.

Send your news to— Troy McNamara Troy.mcnamara4@gmail.com

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Jireh Billings, Jr. has been enjoying his role as a UVM Foundation Fellow since September 2019. The Fellows Program supports the Foundation’s goals of engaging younger and more diverse alumni populations in the work of the foundation. Jireh offers

C ATAMOUNT NATION

Three alumnae working as nurses in New York City hospitals feel extreme gratitude for their friendship, forged their first semester in college, especially now as they navigate

by Janet life through a pandemic. Meredith Bridges, Alexandra Carrick, and Marlies Gaul spent almost every day together during their UVM years, graduating in 2016.

Four years later, the trio continues to spend innumerable hours together, sharing an apartment in New York City. Now, more than ever, they appreciate their shared history, common experiences, and companionship. They look forward to sitting together on their roof-top patio, decompressing and recharging from their work on the front lines of a pandemic.

From the start, friendship felt natural for Bridges, Carrick, and Gaul. “We met during our freshmen year through our nursing classes and became friends almost immediately. We shared similar schedules, spending countless hours together in the library and Davis Center, and having fun in Burlington,” Bridges says.

All three dreamed of working in New York City, near their childhood homes. By 2018 they were living together and working in Manhattan, enjoying their time in the city. Their lives changed quickly as COVID-19 cases began to spike.

“When the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York City, it was like a tidal wave,” says Bridges, a surgical intensive care unit nurse at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center. “We were just running back and forth from room to room, charting when we had a couple spare minutes, drinking water occasionally, and trying to wrap our brains around what was happening.”

For Gaul, an acute care nurse in general surgery at NYU Lan-

gone Health Care, work changed dramatically when her floor became a dedicated COVID-19 unit. Instead of caring for post-surgical patients on the road to recovery, she had to comfort patients at Franz the end of their lives.

“I’m proud to know everyone on my floor worked tirelessly to keep these patients at the end of life as comfortable and well supported as possible especially when they were not allowed to have family present,” she says. “I know so many of us coordinated calls and FaceTimes with families, and I’ll take the gratitude those family members expressed with me for a long time.”

Carrick, a pediatric trauma ICU nurse at New York Presbyterian Columbia University Irving Medical Center, recalls the fear and confusion brought on by a quickly evolving situation. Since children weren’t being as affected by COVID-19 as much as adults, her unit transformed into an adult ICU overnight. “I felt very validated as a nurse throughout this whole experience,” she says. “I became a nurse to help people during some of the worst times in their lives and due to my team’s hard work, we returned a father back home to his two-year-old son and a graduate student back home to his family in Lebanon.”

Beyond work, travel restrictions and social distancing rules prevented Carrick, Gaul, and Bridges from seeing their own families, and deserted city spaces brought on feelings of isolation. The roommates needed each other more than ever. “Sometimes we have a good cry about it all and afterwards feel a little lighter,” Bridges says. “Looking back, I feel extremely proud of how we came together to care for patients and how we all helped each other through one of the craziest times in our lives.”

Friends in the Storm

Above left: Alexandra Carrick, Marlies Gaul, and Meredith Bridges celebrate their UVM graduation in 2016 with nursing professor Christina Melvin.

LEFT: SUSAN BRIDGES

Above right: Alexandra Carrick, Meredith Bridges, and Marlies Gaul.

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| CLASS NOTES praise for both UVM President Suresh Garimella and UVM Foundation President Shane Jacobson, saying, “The future is bright in Burlington and the state of Vermont.”

Send your news to— Patrick Dowd patrickdowd2012@gmail.com

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Michelle Lefrancois married Devon Martin in September in a small ceremony with only immediate family on

Nantucket.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Send your news to— Grace Buckles Eaton glbuckles@gmail.com Ben Jensen graduated from the California State Park Ranger Academy, and will be working on the Central Coast at Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area. Margo Butler Williams married her “soulmate,” Joseph Neel Williams, of Thomasville, Georgia, on February 20, 2020. They have purchased their first home in Atlantic Beach, Florida, and are looking forward to the future. Flora Su recently passed her two-year anniversary of working at GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc., in Norwood, Massachusetts. She is part of the Environmental Site Assessment & Investigation technical practice group. Alex Linde ’15 G’18 has founded Executive Physical Therapy, PLC, a private practice that specializes in concierge and telehealth services.

During COVID-19, his practice brings therapists to patients’ homes and businesses, minimizing the risk of transmission in crowded clinical environments.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

16

Samantha L’Esperance received a kidney transplant on April 22, 2019.

Now, after a long recovery, she is back on track with her health and planning to pursue a master’s degree in speech therapy.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

17

Cheyenne Mobbs recently launched her own business providing bookkeeping and financial coaching to young adults and business owners. She strives to take the stress out of money and inspire financial confidence. After working on community conservation development and wildlife research projects in Botswana for two years, Lauren Sadowski began the fall semester at the Yale School of the Environment. She is pursuing a master’s of Environmental Management, continuing the environmental work that she started at UVM’s Rubenstein School. This fall, Meghan Egan started in the M.B.A. program at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. Katherine Amidon is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University and has been named the 2020 Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar.

She will be mentored by the recipient of the 2020 Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science, Jennifer Doudna, who led development of the revolutionary genome editing technology CRISPR-Cas9.

Katherine says that she is grateful for the strong science training she received at UVM in biochemstiry (College of Arts and Sciences) and microbiology (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences), as well as the mentorship of Professor Frances Carr, who helped her discover a love of research. Darla Quijada will be starting graduate school in the Cellular and Molecular Medicine program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She was previously in the post-baccalaureate PREP program at Yale University. Her significant other, Connor Devoe, will be starting medical school at the University of New England after completing his master’s at Boston University. Alexander Benoit completed his master of arts at Boston College

in spring 2020 and is now teaching high school English in North Carolina.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

18

Caitlin Coates completed her master of Medical Science degree at UVM this past summer. Gabriel Cohn is living in Portland, Oregon, snowboarding tenmonths of the year on Mount Hood. In-between turns, he is pursuing a Ph.D. in cancer biology at Oregon Health & Science University. He says, “If anyone is interested in talking science, please reach out!” Bethany Harris has started pursuing a Ph.D. in clincal psychology at SUNY Albany.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

19

Arielle Cheifetz and Josh Dudley ’18 were married on May 31, 2020, in Burlington, Vermont. They report that it was an intimate and joyful backyard ceremony with a couple of close friends in attendance and family present over Zoom. David Peterson was commissioned as a U.S. Naval Officer in March and is headed to Japan for two years.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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Morgan Mettler writes to say that COVID-19 changed her course completely. “Where before, I was captured by the big-city, big-paycheck post-grad plan, I am now on a trajectory towards public service. This opportunity to step back, slow down, and think, has led me to many new conclusions: being close to my family is more important than I thought, and working from home could be my new preferred working style.”

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

| IN MEMORIAM 1938 1939 1942 1943 1944 1945

1946 1947

1948

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Kathryn King Dawalt Genevieve W. Kacmarczyk Robert D. Wakefield MD’44 Patricia Pike Hallock Marie Langeway Shortsleeve Eleanor Jenkins Charles Elaine Oling Rodbart Anne Hoos Kennison Edward Byington Crane MD’47 Barbara Tennien Murphy Arlene Fritz Taylor Lorraine Kaplan Wiesen Iloene Flower Brennan UVM MAGAZINE

1949 1950

1951

Dorothy Scott Hopkins Edris Verrall Hughes Mary Kohl Pillepich Mildred Norrie Williams Ruth Marie Sprague G’64 Richard Noble Bohlen Howard W. Grue Harry D. Nelson, Jr. Eileen Molloy Sharp Elizabeth Craigie Vivas Janet Williams Carlson Elizabeth Lawrence Gadue Barbara Frizzell Gates

1952

1953

Ralph Webster Preston G’54 Bertina Pope Lawliss Arthur Raymond Lord Janet Brickner McNeil Susan Vile Messina Edward A. Peterson Frances Kenrick Shortsleeve Norma Fowler Thomas Nancy Gardner Whalen June Lantman Barnard Paul E. Boucher G’53 Ann Lister Greene David L. Parker

IN MEMORIAM |

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1956

1957

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Lorraine Bradley Smith Virginia H. Vincent Eugene M. Beaupre MD’58, G’56 Lawrence G. Gould Jacqueline A. Noonan MD’54 Ruth E. Pestle Shirley Dessell Alpert Kathryn Ballou Anderson Mary Hagar Currier William Harrison Goldman William A. Olden Robert C. Parker MD’60 Russell Allen Thompson Mary Lou Piche Every Lorraine Benedict Kress William Bowne Nichols Vivian Call Weston Richard E. Birdsall Ernest E. Bottum Jean Burch Falls Rudolph F. Kouba G’57 Matthew M. Daley Edward A. Dudley G’60 Edward A. Garand David Henderson Jane Eichler Sementilli Gail Henion Sheehy Theodore N. Mellin Martin H. Rotter Susan Flax Hein G’62 Walter D. Johnson Alan Walter Pidgeon David S. Schultz Roberta Gluck Spector Gordon U. Cobleigh T. P. Elliott-Smith Suzanne Rowledge Fallo Stephen K. Morse James Edward O’Brien MD’61

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1964 1965

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1969 1970

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Marcia Smith Rushford Walter H. Cochran, Jr. Neil F. Mara MD’62 Thomas F. O’Connor George C. Randall David R. Haas Nan Rivers Howkins Karl Vincent Kieslich James C. Raymond Myer S. Bornstein MD’65 Dennis P. Cochran Carl F. Ettlinger G’70 Earl R. Olsen Thompson Eddy Jan M. Harford Donald E. Henson Gail Seymour MacCallum Constance Cochones Cummings Susan Muriel Cottler Cornelius O. Granai MD’77, G’74 Stephan M. Hochstin MD’74 Anthony E. Otis Herbert C. Watson, Jr. G’70 Peter Durant Coburn G’75 Anna Michaud Cowen Danny Lewis Dirocco Barbara Jerry Hawes Jay Davison Keillor Leesbeth Kain Thrall Laurie Balch Huse Douglas Foster Kerr Richard D. LeCours Rodger Summers G’72 Joseph Charles Booth G’83 Andrew Caswell Hiatt Dorothy Hodgson Lyon Charles Willard Russum Nancy North Strickland Frederick Bierlmaier

1975

1977

1978 1979

1980 1982

1983

1984 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1992 1993

1994 1996

1999 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2015

John Peter Cavoretto G’75 Dennis M. Demas Jeffrey Adrian Schumacher MD’74 W. James Walford G’74 Timothy Ward Simpson Michael Boniface Bruehl MD’75 Andrew A. Jeon MD’77 Gregory Katz John Scott Miller Thomas George Lavell G’78 Andrew Mark Beals Doris Keeley Goins G’79 Randall Richard Harris David Leo Maurice Laura Bombardier Gonyeau G’82 Linda Lee Visbeck Cheryl Carr Loughlin Janice Austin Rathbun G’89 Kathy Thompson Germain George Edward Degan, Jr. Thomas Henry Schmelzenbach Robert Stewart Maloney Monica Jeanne Smith G’89 John Paul Rogers, Jr. Michael William Nobles Karen Bishop Balog Robert Newman Coffey, Jr. Gary Richard Masi, Jr. Edward Simon Gilbert Stacey Allen Nelson Rachael Rash Pelletier G’99 Jessica Anne Pomerleau-Halnon Peter M. Krag Melinda Cherie Myzak MD’10 Richard T. Jeroloman G’12 Jessica Catherine DePiano Lucienne D. Montgomery

| UVM COMMUNITY BILL DAVISON, professor emeritus of art and distinguished print artist, passed away on August 12, 2020. A seventh-generation Vermonter, Professor Davison was mentor to countless young artists, establishing the printmaking program at UVM, where he taught for forty-two years. His work has been exhibited internationally and resides in more than fifty public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Yale University Art Museum; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art.

KEN GOLDEN, professor emeritus of mathematics, electrical engineering, and physics, passed away on August 18, 2020. Professor Golden’s thirty-year tenure at UVM began in 1986, when he joined the university as chair of the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. University honors during his career included being named a University Scholar in 1992. Golden was regarded as among the world’s foremost scholars on the dynamics of strongly coupled Coulamb systems and condensed matter plasmas.

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| EXTRA CREDIT

Late last winter, Bill Lipke was keen on an idea, as he so often was throughout his life. He wanted to honor his old friend and fellow emeritus professor of art and art history Bill Davison with a retrospective publication documenting the distinguished printmaker’s work.

As both men’s health waned, it was a brave effort. Bill Lipke would pass away at the end of February and Bill Davison, six months later. In closing this issue, we pay tribute to that shared project-in-progress in a small way, and we honor their collective seventy-three years teaching and inspiring students in the studios and classrooms of Williams Hall.

Bill Davison 2.13.17 2017, 30” x 22”, watercolor monotypes /collage

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For nearly 230 years, the University of Vermont has provided students the opportunity to improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the lives of their communities. We are deeply committed to maintaining this heritage by empowering excellent students from all backgrounds to pursue their passions and prepare themselves to lead productive and consequential lives. By supporting scholarships, you further extend the opportunities presented by a vibrant, equitable, affordable, and accessible UVM education.

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The best of 2020 Vermont fall foliage collected at instagram.com/universityofvermont. Thanks to @elizabeth.mcconnell – ’23; @henryfreundlich – ’20; @izzie_feehrer –’22; @markezzo_ – ’13; @asalenssees – ’21; @riley.k.photos – ’21; @elliot.gear – ’21; @arleighnorton; @kristinnlucee, grad student.

PERMIT NO. 143