The University of Vermont Magazine Spring 2021 by University of Vermont

Vermont THE UNIVERSITY OF

MAGAZINE

For Our Future Health of people and planet central to UVM research

Family Business Kyla Sternlieb ’06 Jogbra Revolution Catamount Nation: Denver

SPRING 2021

UVM MAGAZINE

DEPARTMENTS

2 President's Perspective 4 The Green 18 Catamount Sports 20 New Knowledge 47 Class Notes 64 Extra Credit FEATURES

UVM PEOPLE: Kyla Sternlieb ’06

FOR OUR FUTURE

Founder and CEO of Under the Weather Pet, alumna Kyla Sternlieb is among the latest in Vermont’s line of entrepreneurs turning a better idea into a growing business. | BY THOMAS WEAVER The word “sustainability” covers much of the research focus of UVM faculty, dedicated to creating new knowledge and building new practices for a healthy environment and healthy communities. | BY CATHERINE ARNOLD, JOSHUA BROWN, KAITIE CATANIA, JANET FRANZ, RACHEL LESLIE, JENNIFER NACHBUR

GAME ON

In 1977, working in the Royall Tyler Theatre costume shop, a trio of friends stitched together the prototype of a revolution. As women’s sports have thrived across the past four decades, the humble Jogbra has been both essential gear and symbol of change. | BY KAITIE CATANIA

38 CATAMOUNT NATION: Denver Edition

The Mile High City is a magnet for many alumni looking westward after graduation. We check in with a number of Catamounts making their lives and livings along the Front Range of the Rockies. | BY THOMAS WEAVER

COVER: University photographer since 1989, Sally McCay will retire from UVM this summer. The photo of the Green and Waterman Building from last May is one of countless beautiful shots she has taken documenting the University of Vermont, the place and the people, across the past three decades. Her work will be missed.

SPRING 2021

The UVM Greenhouse: a working lab for the study of plants and a warm, vibrant refuge when the promise of spring feels far away. Photograph by Joshua Brown

| PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

Eyes on the Horizon the past year has shown us much. It has demonstrated the deeply connected nature of our world. It has underscored our shared humanity, resilience, and need for a just and equitable society. And it has highlighted that when we come together, we can achieve goals once thought unattainable. It has also laid bare that we cannot take anything for granted, and that in order to access a bright future, we must plan for one—and take the steps necessary to build it. This latter point is especially important during times of challenge, when it can be tempting to hunker down. Instead, this is exactly when we need to focus on the horizon, imagining where we want—and need—to be ten, twenty, or one hundred years from now. The Amplifying Our Impact strategic plan, which was developed with the collaboration of faculty, staff, students, and alumni, is key to achieving this goal. Since its inception last year, it has reaffirmed our core mission of student success, focused our fundamental research strengths in support of the health of societies and environment, and emphasized our land-grant mission. We have made significant progress on a number of these fronts. For example, last summer the university committed to fully divesting from fossil fuels and doing so far more quickly and comprehensively than most that have gone down this path. We immediately ended direct investments, will fully divest from public investments by July 2023 and will allow pre-existing multiyear private investments, which we stopped acquiring in 2017, to lapse without renewal. This step, unanimously endorsed by our Board of Trustees, resonates with our values. Sustainability is in our nature at UVM. We have injected new energy—and attracted additional resources—to the university’s research enterprise. University of Vermont research expenditures hit record levels in 2020—up 41 percent to $191 million—and provide a cru-

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cial boost to Vermont’s economy especially during COVID19. In total, UVM attracted thirty-nine research awards of $1 million or more in 2020, including $10.4 million to study rural addictions, $8.4 million for sustainable agriculture research, and $2.2 million to address global infectious diseases. It is a major step on our path toward achieving Carnegie Research 1 status, which will bring recognition, funding, and numerous other benefits. And we have also doubled down on our land-grant mission by launching the new Office of Engagement, which serves as a front door for private, public, and non-profit entities and communities seeking to access UVM’s many strengths and capabilities. This speaks to our responsibility to the state of Vermont, but it is also critical to the education of our students who will benefit from the internships, jobs, and many other opportunities the office will help to generate. As we pursue these strategic goals, we will continue to evaluate the structures and systems that support this work, with a focus on the success of our students and the strength of our university. The University of Vermont has changed significantly since its founding in 1791, and I have no doubt it will continue to evolve. This is how we fulfill our mission to prepare students for a constantly changing world while also serving the best interests of the state of Vermont. Recent progress has been made, of course, across a year of unprecedented challenge that has deeply affected our nation and our world. Yet, as I write, we near the close of an academic year in which we have maintained in-person classes on campus. This is thanks to the responsibility and resilience of our students, and the flexibility and dedication of our faculty and staff. Please join me in pride for all we have achieved, gratitude for all we have overcome, and hope for the bright future of the University of Vermont. —Suresh V. Garimella

ANDY DUBACK

Stay Connected to UVM with Virtual Programs.

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As a proud alum living in Florida, I am happy to be able to stay connected to UVM. I believe that my relationship with the University has strengthened during the pandemic as they have offered many opportunities for virtual engagement. These are wonderful and allow us to stay connected. Thank you to the UVM Alumni Association for keeping us all connected! Cathy Tremblay '85

Vice President, UVM Alumni Association Board of Directors

Stay Connected with Our Events Calendar The UVM Alumni Association's Events Calendar is a great resource for alumni who want to stay connected to the university. Participate in an alumniauthor book discussion, hear UVM Athletic Director Jeff Schulman discuss spring sports, or learn something new at a UVM Connect platform training. Learn more at alumni.uvm.edu/events.

Enjoy Events on Your Time with Our Events Library With our Library of Recorded Events, you can stay connected to the university via alumni programming at a time that works for you. Enjoy a Hunger Games and Da 5 Bloods film discussion with producer Jon Kilik '78, an alumni-author book discussion on Walks of a Lifetime in America's National Parks, or visit a town hall with UVM president Suresh Garimella. Enjoy programming that fits your schedule at alumni.uvm.edu/library. For information on upcoming events visit:

www.alumni.uvm.edu/events

www.alumni.uvm.edu | (802) 656-2010 | alumni@uvm.edu

EDITOR Thomas Weaver ART DIRECTOR Elise Whittemore CLASS NOTES EDITOR Kathy Erickson ’84 CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Catherine Arnold, Joshua Brown, Kaitie Catania, Kevin Coburn ’81, Janet Franz, Nich Hall, Rachel Leslie, Jennifer Nachbur, Benjamin Yousey-Hindes PHOTOGRAPHY Robert Beck, Joshua Brown, Justin Bunnell, Jonathan Castner, Elliot Debruyn, Andy Duback, Pete Estes, Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist ’09, Brian Jenkins, Sally McCay, Alyson McClaran, Jay Premack, Glenn Russell, James Stukenberg 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. 89, May 2021 UVM MAGAZINE ONLINE uvm.edu/uvmmag

instagram.com/universityofvermont twitter.com/uvmvermont facebook.com/universityofvermont youtube.com/universityofvermont

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THE GREEN

They were the Presidential Inauguration memes seen ’round the world: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders looking decidedly Bernie in a Burton parka and pair of notable mittens. Alumna Jen Ellis ’00, crafter of those instantly famous mittens, has turned the viral moment into a force for good. See page 8.

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YOU SHOULD KNOW “ For us, we had to be, and will continue to be, a sport of action as it relates to social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think what is striking to people is—with the perception of what NASCAR was—that if NASCAR can do it, boy, can everyone do it.” —Steve Phelps ’85, president of NASCAR Alumnus Phelps made a virtual return to campus for the annual Hoffman Family Business Lecture, discussing NASCAR’s efforts to combat racism and build a more diverse organization. See page 55.

NATURE’S BALM A UVM study of parks and natural areas in Greater Burlington found a significant uptick in usage during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the findings: 26 percent of people visiting parks during early months of the pandemic had rarely, or never, visited nature in the previous year. Read more: go.uvm.edu/parks

In February, the UVM Board of Trustees approved President Garimella’s proposal to freeze tuition for a third consecutive year. In addition, the board also endorsed freezing room-and-board charges and reducing student fees by 2.2 percent for the next academic year.

#10

PEACE CORPS PROPS The UVM-Peace Corps connection abides. In 2020, the university ranked No. 10 among Peace Corps Prep schools.

Two University of Vermont faculty—Andrea Villanti and William Copeland, both professors of psychiatry—have been named to a list of the world’s most influential researchers. Researchers on the list, which is based on the number of times their published studies have been cited by other researchers over the past decade, are in the top 1 percent of all scholars whose work has been cited.

PROFS OF INFLUENCE

2022

LAUNCH

In the works, a sixty-four-foot hybrid-electric aluminum catamaran to replace the aging Melosira as UVM’s classroom/laboratory on the waters of Lake Champlain. The innovative vessel is designed by Chartwell Marine and under construction at Derecktor Shipyards. Read more: go.uvm.edu/newboat

S TA Y I N G I N T H E G A M E The challenge of being a student-athlete rose to a new level during the pandemic. See go.uvm.edu/catplay for a photo/video story documenting one weekend in February, as Catamounts in multiple sports balanced the rigors of training and competition with maintaining safe practices in the time of COVID-19.

LEFT: SALLY MCCAY PHOTO OF JEN ELLIS; RIGHT: UVM ATHLETICS

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| THE GREEN

Keeping Our Balance UVM in the Pandemic Year

CAMPUS LIFE | As this issue went to press in mid-April, the UVM community was within a month of closing out academic year 2020/2021, two semesters of unprecedented challenge. Although COVID-19 cases among the student body increased during the spring semester, the outlook remained bright to complete the year as a national higher education leader in maintaining on-campus learning throughout the crisis. Soon after spring 2020 instruction shifted from in-person to remote last March, President Suresh Garimella formed the UVM Strong Fall 2020 Advisory Committee. Chaired by Gary Derr, vice president for operations and safety, the group of staff and faculty leaders drew on expertise across campus, also working in sync with state and city officials. Courses were delivered in a variety of modes: in-person with students and professors masked and socially distanced; remotely; and a hybrid of the two. Students

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signed onto the Green and Gold Promise, pledging safe and responsible behavior. They also, to great degree, adhered to regular testing for the virus, with trips to the Davis Center for a nose swab sample becoming a familiar, if not fond, part of student life. On a visit to UVM in October, part of a national tour studying best practices in higher education’s COVID-19 response, Dr. Deborah Birx praised the frequent testing at the cornerstone of UVM’s plan. “If they can do it here, it tells us that we can do it in our communities,” Birx said. “You can see that there is a coalition of the willing to really ensure that students, staff, faculty, and communities remain safe.” Though it was far from college life as usual, UVM staff worked hard to create alternate ways—such as an outdoor skating rink and fire pits encircled by Adirondack chairs dotted around campus—to foster safe activity and social connection. Catamount varsity teams remained in the game for the

most part, even as some fall sports shifted to winter or spring, leading to some incongruous sights, such as a cross-country race on the snowy campus in February. On March 14, as positive test numbers ticked up, President Garimella wrote to the campus community encouraging perseverance and keeping eyes on the promise of a not-too-distant return to simpler ways. “Finally, let us not forget, the UVM community’s performance remains among the best in the nation, thanks in huge part to the cooperation and admirable fortitude of our students. We are at a trickier juncture with COVID than it may appear, and the next few weeks are especially important,” President Garimella wrote. “We will continue to try our best—you have my word on that. But we will also need your understanding as we continue, daily and hourly, to chart uncharted paths.” Plans were also announced in March for a full schedule of courses and on-campus experience during the fall 2021 semester. SALLY MCCAY

Remote Class Goes Hollywood Top cinematographer guest stars in film course

THEN & NOW In last summer’s edition of the magazine, we shared multiple stories of the UVM family working to address and ease the threat of COVID-19. Some updates are in order. Dr. Halleh Akbarnia MD ’98 wrote about her moving experience with a particular COVID patient in her work as a suburban Chicago ER physician. In March, she gave that same patient, Michael Catania, the shot with his second vaccine dose. “To me, working this side of giving vaccine is about the biggest therapy that I could have. Giving him his shot was the ultimate,” Akbarnia says. Last spring, Estee Dilli ’15, senior associate scientist at Pfizer, was part of the international team racing to develop vaccines. A year later, Dilli describes the sense of relief as people worldwide began to get inoculated with the vaccines from Pfizer and other companies. As she received phone calls and texts from family and friends with thanks for her role in helping bring about this watershed moment, Dilli says, “My response was always the same, and that was thanking them for trusting science.” Read more: go.uvm.edu/pandemicyear

FILM | More than four decades after his two years as a UVM undergraduate, Robert Richardson returned to a University of Vermont classroom during fall semester 2020. Much had changed. In the mid-1970s, he was a young man with a budding interest in movies, signing up for every film course he could find. Today, he’s one of the world’s great cinematographers, the go-to director of photography for film directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone, and Martin Scorsese. Fall 2020 marked the debut of a new course, Film and Television Studies 131: Cinematography and the Films of Robert Richardson, led by Professor Hilary Neroni. For both teacher and students, an undisputed highlight came on October 29, when Richardson’s face—long white hair and beard—joined the familiar Microsoft Teams grid, as he fielded the class’s questions for ninety minutes. Also returning to a UVM class this semester after a long absence, Professor Emeritus Frank Manchel, a transformative influence on Richardson during his time at the university. The Richardson-Manchel relationship is a long story, detailed in Vermont Quarterly in 2012. CliffsNotes version: Richardson enrolled at UVM in 1973 to study oceanography. But, enthralled by an Ingmar Bergman film series, his aspirations shifted. The world lost an oceanographer and gained a cinematographer, as Richardson took every class he could with Manchel, a pioneer in studying film as an academic discipline. Eventually, wanting to focus on the practical aspects of filmmaking, Richardson transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design, later studying cinematography at the American Film Institute. But in 2005, Richardson and Manchel re-connected and have been “talking film”

ever since via near-daily email exchanges. Neroni and Manchel had long discussed the possibility of a course on Richardson’s films. He’s a three-time winner of the Academy Award for Cinematography (JFK, 1992; The Aviator, 2005; and Hugo, 2012). After Neroni developed the course and offered it for fall 2020, plans took a pandemic twist as the class shifted to remote delivery. Silver lining, the format allowed Manchel to be more deeply involved with teaching, effectively splitting the class with Neroni for the first several weeks. Manchel regularly sent Richardson questions to react to, which were then posted during classes. (The professor emeritus stepped aside from teaching part way through the semester after suffering a mild stroke.) Though an in-person visit from Robert Richardson was the original plan, and hopes are that will happen in a future semester, the feature attraction came when the cinematographer logged on via Teams for a questionand-answer session from his home. Well-versed in his work, students asked Richardson about everything from technical considerations when lighting scenes to the utility of a graduate degree in film to the challenges of coping with anxiety while doing creative work. Richardson was open, kind, often funny and occasionally mildly profane with his answers—like the coolest uncle imaginable. As Neroni and Manchel developed the course, Richardson was generous with his time in suggesting films, readings, and other material. Neroni says, “It was incredibly rewarding to work with him. Even just through the interaction about the course, I can see why directors love to collaborate with Richardson.” SPRING 2021

| THE GREEN

More than a Meme

Jen Ellis’s favorite meme is the one her friend Vikki Day created for her in honor of Ellis’s love for Downton Abbey: Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Dowager Countess of Grantham at tea.

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You know the blockbuster meme of January’s Presidential Inauguration—Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders sitting cross-legged on a folding chair in unlikely places—and you know the distinctive mittens that just kind of made the whole thing work. But you might not know that the creative force behind those mittens is Jen Ellis ’00, a Vermont elementary school teacher, third-generation UVM alumna, and wife of UVM English professor Elizabeth Fenton. The path to the platform at the Capitol began when Ellis sent the pair of her handmade, upcycled mittens to Sanders as a gift of gratitude and support after he fell short in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries. “I’ve voted for him since I was eighteen,” Ellis says. “I’ve always supported him and liked his policies. I gave him those mittens as a shout out to say, ‘Hey, I still think you’re awesome.’ He’s actually been wearing them for a few years.” (Ellis doesn’t make the mittens anymore, but she estimates she’s made a few hundred pairs over the years, mostly given as gifts or sold at craft fairs.) After the Bernie memes took off on January 20,

Ellis had to reset a forgotten password to log in to her Twitter account, which she hadn’t used in a year. She found 22,000 new followers and started leveraging the instant fame for fundraising almost immediately. She made three new pairs of mittens within days, two of which went to local charities to auction. One pair went to Passion for Paws dog rescue and the other raised more than $44,000 for Outright Vermont, an LGBTQ+ youth support organization. Going forward, Vermont Teddy Bear Company will manufacture the mittens and donate a portion of the proceeds to Make-A-Wish Vermont. “I felt it was important for a portion of the sales to go to charity,” Ellis says. “Many nonprofits have lost fundraising opportunities due to the pandemic and this was an opportunity to help them make up for some of what they have lost.” Ellis herself loves teaching too much to leave it for a mitten business—but she is writing a book about the experience. “The working title is ‘Generosity Brings Joy,’ and it brings us right back to the root of this whole thing. I gave someone a simple gift; I forgot about it; and it brought an enormous amount of joy when we needed it in this pandemic,” she says. “If we could just help each other and be a little bit more kind, and a little bit more generous with our own gifts, I think the world would be a better place.” SALLY MCCAY

Statehouse Pioneers Alumnae break barriers in Montpelier VERMONT | The election of November 3, 2020, marked a significant step in Vermont toward a truer democracy that hears all voices. For the first time ever, Vermonters elected a woman of color to the State Senate, Kesha Ram ’08, and an openly transgender woman to the House of Representatives, Taylor Small ’16. On January 6, the alumnae and close friends were sworn into Vermont’s General Assembly together. “We’ve just had this long, beautiful friendship and I think there is something special about this year. People that I know, that I run in circles with and that feel so underrepresented in politics, we’re all going to the Statehouse together,” says Ram, who is of Jewish and Indian heritage. Having served eight years as a representative for Burlington’s University District and the Hill Section—beginning at age twenty-two—Ram is no stranger to the game in Montpelier. She even introduced the first environmental justice bill to the House before graduating from UVM, where she earned bachelor’s degrees in natural resource planning and political science. In the other chamber, Small—Winooski’s newest representative and a graduate of UVM’s human development and family studies program—has been a known force in her community and an active grassroots organizer for some time. This will be the first time she takes the oath of office and a seat in the General Assembly. Ram kicked her campaign off in January, unaware at the time that a pandemic was coming just around the corner. Though the campaign plan was disrupted, Ram and her team—including UVM students Skyler Nash ’21 as campaign manager and Haley Sommer ’21 as communications director—continued pushing forward and connecting remotely with community members. Alternatively, Small had no intention of tossing her hat into the ring, until a retiring Winooski representative called during the summer

to see if she’d be willing to campaign and replace her. For a town like Winooski that celebrates all its residents—New Americans and refugees, queer and trans people, the elderly, and growing young families—twenty-six-year-old Small was the right person for the job. “That was the exact push that I needed to say, ‘I don’t have to wait to get into politics. I wouldn’t have to wait my turn to have a seat at the table. I can go for it right now,’” she says. She immediately turned to Ram for advice and an opinion about entering the race. “I wanted the real truth, and that is something I appreciate about Kesha, that she is always going to handle the truth head on and is not looking to mince words about it.” Within twenty-four hours of being asked, Small had her mind made up to go for it. As they begin work in virtual Montpelier, both women underscore the necessity for young people to see themselves in their representatives, to see that every voice—including their own—matters.

With mutual support through the challenge of pandemic-year campaigning, friends Kesha Ram and Taylor Small each earned a ground-breaking seat in the Vermont Statehouse.

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| THE GREEN CELEBRATING DIVERSE VOICES The Davis Center’s fourth floor, a student hub at the heart of campus, took on an important new dimension in February with the unveiling of a permanent exhibit space dedicated to celebrating diverse voices at UVM. The space, designed as a place where stories can be shared and accomplishments can be lauded, opened with a display case that honors the work, and struggles, of ten Black and African American alumni, faculty, and honorary degree recipients with photographs, biographies, and historical artifacts. While Black History Month “is a time to applaud what has been achieved, it is also an occasion to reflect on the challenges, injustices, and strife encountered by those in the past, and to energize our efforts to build a better future,” said President Suresh Garimella in a virtual unveiling event on February 10. The president dedicated the space to Wanda Heading-Grant ’87 G’03, vice president for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), for the “meaningful and lasting change” she’s created in her thirty-seven years at the university. The alumna and longtime administrative leader at UVM moved on to Carnegie Mellon University this April, becoming that institution’s first vice provost for DEI. The Davis Center exhibit is one of several universitywide initiatives proposed by President Garimella to combat racism, promote social justice, and foster greater civic responsibility in the wake of racial unrest that sparked with the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Paul Deslandes, professor and chair of history, headed the exhibition committee that brought the project to life. Virtual tour of the exhibit: go.uvm.edu/diverse

At Work and Play HEALTH SCIENCES | Alyssa Oviedo understands what it means to find and follow one’s passion. The health sciences/emergency medicine junior started dreaming about a career in health care about the same time she began kicking soccer balls, and she’s been doing both ever since. “I have wanted to be a pediatrician since I was five years old,” says Oviedo, who grew up in Clifton, New Jersey. “It’s really cool that pediatricians are able to watch kids grow up and help them maintain their health. I’m also thinking about maybe pursuing a career in emergency medicine.” A licensed emergency medical technician, Oviedo did her EMT training at UVM and she volunteers with Essex Rescue. “I learn so much every shift about health care, from clinical things to bedside manner,” she says. “When someone calls for an ambulance it can be a scary experience for the patient and their family. Being able to help them feel better is so rewarding.” Oviedo is a midfielder for the Catamount women’s soccer team, where she brings experience that includes playing for the Dominican Republic U-20 national team. Off the field, she’s active in the UVM Student-Athletes of Color affinity group and UVM She Roars, an initiative to foster gender equity in sports. An athletic scholarship and a Trustees Scholarship, awarded for outstanding academic performance, are critical to supporting Olviedo’s education and multiple pursuits. “I feel very passionately about all the work I do,” she says. “I’m grateful to be making a difference.”

Crystal Malone ’47 and her UVM Alpha Xi Delta sorority sisters pushed back against Greek system segregation. Malone, who passed away in February, is among the pioneers and leaders featured in the new exhibit. PETE ESTES

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STUDENT PROFILE |

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| THE GREEN

Legacy of a Quiet Trailblazer The first Black woman to graduate from UVM, Edna Hall Brown ’30 eased the path for future generations of students through her scholarship bequest.

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STUDENT SUCCESS | “Here’s a maid from sunny Baltimore. From the way she reads Latin we think they must speak it down there… She expects to enter U.V.M. next year. We know she’ll make good.” So reads the St. Johnsbury Academy yearbook entry for Edna Hall Brown, who spent a year at the preparatory school in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom before enrolling at UVM in 1926. Brown, the first-known Black woman to graduate from UVM, did, indeed, make good. After capping her standout academic career at UVM with a bachelor of science degree, Brown went on to earn a master’s from the Teachers College at Columbia University in 1932. From there, she returned to her native Baltimore and taught the sciences— especially mathematics and physics—in the public school system until she retired as head of the science department at Dunbar Senior High School in 1970. As a teacher, she remained a rigorous student herself, pursuing additional post-graduate study. Teaching was not the only way that Brown invested herself in her community. She was active in the historic Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and a dedicated member of the DuBois Circle for sixty-two years. The DuBois Circle was founded in Baltimore in 1906 as a women’s auxiliary to work alongside DuBois and the members of the local branch of the Niagara Movement in their fight to

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address the social, political, and economic injustices faced by Black Americans. Upon her death in 2000, Brown furthered a family tradition of passing on some of her hard-earned wealth to relatives. But she also did something new: she left a large portion of her estate to help minority students go to college. Half of those resources went to the United Negro College Fund, and half came to the University of Vermont, “to be used for their scholarship fund for minority students.” Recognizing the ongoing need for such support, the university used the gift to create the permanent Edna Hall Brown Scholarship Fund, a fitting legacy for this unassuming trailblazer. Maya Dizack ’20 is among the students aided by the Edna Hall Brown Scholarship and other support. A committed environmental scientist and advocate, Dizack was moved to learn the story behind the Edna Hall Brown Scholarship that helped make her UVM education possible. “I’m smiling right now knowing that this support came from a woman of color who lived a really wonderful, intelligent, and humble life,” Dizack says. “For me, the funding validated a sense of belonging—somebody actually believed in the values that I hold. Knowing that someone else with similar identities had a similar story and went forward and succeeded—that is so inspiring.”

BENEATH GREENLAND GEOSCIENCES | In 1966, U.S. Army scientists drilled down through nearly a mile of ice in northwestern Greenland—and pulled up a fifteen-footlong tube of dirt from the bottom. Then this frozen sediment was lost in a freezer for decades. It was accidentally rediscovered in 2017. In 2019, UVM scientist Andrew Christ looked at it through his microscope—and couldn’t believe what he was seeing: twigs and leaves instead of just sand and rock. That suggested that the ice was gone in the recent geologic past—and that a vegetated landscape, perhaps a boreal forest, stood where a mile-deep ice sheet as big as Alaska stands today. Over the last year, Christ, a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Arts and Sciences and Gund Institute, and an international team of scientists—led by Paul Bierman at UVM, Joerg Schaefer at Columbia University, and Dorthe Dahl-Jensen at the University of Copenhagen—have studied these one-of-a-kind fossil plants and sediment from the bottom of Greenland. Their results show that most, or all, of Greenland must have been icefree within the last million years, perhaps even the last few hundred-thousand years. “Ice sheets typically pulverize and destroy everything in their path,” says Christ, “but what we discovered was delicate plant structures— JOSHUA BROWN

perfectly preserved. They’re fossils, but they look like they died yesterday. It’s a time capsule of what used to live on Greenland that we wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else.” The discovery helps confirm a new and troubling understanding that the Greenland ice has melted off entirely during recent warm periods in Earth’s history—periods like the one we are now creating with human-caused climate change. Understanding the Greenland Ice Sheet in the past is critical for predicting how it will respond to climate warming in the future and how quickly it will melt. Since some twenty feet of sea-level rise is tied up in Greenland’s ice, every coastal city in the world is at risk. The new study provides the strongest evidence yet that Greenland is more fragile and sensitive to climate change than previously understood—and at grave risk of irreversibly melting off. “This is not a twenty-generation problem,” says Paul Bierman, a geoscientist at UVM in the College of Arts and Sciences, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, and fellow in the Gund Institute for Environment. “This is an urgent problem for the next fifty years. Greenland may seem far away, but it can quickly melt, pouring enough into the oceans that New York, Miami, Dhaka—pick your city—will go underwater.”

MEDIA The new research, published March 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, received international media coverage, including outlets such as: Washington Post Nature Forbes CNN Le Monde WNYC: Science Friday

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| THE GREEN

New Dean in Town: meet noma anderson “The power of language is just amazing to me; how you can read a book or listen to a conversation and—even though you’ve not physically experienced it—through language, you are there.” On the surface, this is a mindset that might seem suited for a poet or novelist, but for Noma Anderson, the new dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, it’s what drew her to a career in speech-language pathology. “Our wants, our needs, our thoughts are all expressed by language,” she says. Anderson comes to Vermont from the University of Tennessee Health Center, where she served as dean prior to her appointment as special advisor to the president on diversity and inclusion. An expert in communication sciences and disorders and a leader in inclusive education and cultural and linguistic diversity, Anderson’s skill set is apt for tackling the challenges of the day. As she steps into her new role, we caught up with Anderson for a quick conversation about priorities and key experiences that have shaped her. Here are four things to know about the new dean.

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As impressive as Helen Keller was, it was her teacher and lifelong companion Anne Sullivan that inspired Anderson as a child. “My mother was a teacher, so I was fascinated by who Helen Keller’s teacher was and who taught her to do all that—how to sign in people’s hands and for them to sign in hers, I wanted to know who taught her that,” she says. Though Anderson’s interest in communication disorders sparked early in childhood, it wasn’t until her first year at University of North Carolina at Greensboro that she considered a career in it. Her clinical expertise is in pediatric speechlanguage pathology and treating children with developmental disabilities. She puts a premium on culturally competent patient care. “Racial health disparities are a major problem,” Anderson says, “and the communication between patients of color and health practitioners has not been the best—in fact, it’s been historically poor.” She notes that while the COVID-19 pandemic is exposing a truth that practitioners have known for decades, the need for health care professionals to meet their patients where they are—with understanding and effective communication—is vital. From where she sits, Anderson sees an opportunity for speechlanguage pathologists to become leaders by advancing cultural competency, a critical

skill in their field, across all health and wellness specialties. Her hallmark as a teacher, leader, and practitioner is building professional development in cultural and linguistic diversity. Grounded in an appreciation for the distinction between “disorder” and “difference,” cultural and linguistic diversity is an inclusive concept that Anderson first took up as an undergrad, at the encouragement of a professor. “He was a strong proponent of us understanding the differences—that dialects are not communication disorders; they are a linguistic variety of American English,” she says. It became a cornerstone of her teaching during her sixteen years at Howard University, a historically Black school in D.C., where she prepared students serving families of color to graduate with the resolve and expertise to advocate for their patients. UVM’s values sealed the deal. Anderson was struck by a phrase in the first few sentences of the Amplifying Our Impact strategic vision. “‘Health’ was right there— ‘the health of our societies and the health of our environment,’” she recalls. A few paragraphs later into the university’s commitment to student success and action plans for inclusive excellence at every school and college, “I thought, this is a perfect fit for me. Their values are my values,” she says. TOP: IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST ’09; RIGHT: SALLY MCCAY

Strengthening the Grid INNOVATION | As renewable energy sources increasingly factor into power grids worldwide, Packetized Energy, a start-up spawned by UVM research, has become a leading developer of software and smart devices that help utilities and consumers manage electricity demand. Research collaborators and company co-founders are Mads Almassalkhi, Jeff Frolik, and Paul Hines, professors in the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. This winter, Packetized was awarded $2 million from the California Energy Commission under their BRIDGE (Bringing Rapid Innovation Development to Green Energy) program. The award will create one of the largest distributed energy resource networks from residential devices in California. “This is a really big step for us,” says Hines. “We already have eight projects across the country and one in Canada, but this will be our largest project to date.” With about a dozen employees based in Burlington, Packetized has a number of UVM alumni on the team. Hines explains that the company’s key innovation is making the electricity grid

work more reliably with large amounts of renewables like wind and solar. “The power grid was built for an older model, where you turned on a central coal or nuclear plant and it just ran. Wind and solar come and go when they want to, and that creates real challenges for running a power system that was designed around these older fossil fuel plants.” While solar and wind have long held promise as sources of cleaner, cheaper energy, their ephemeral nature—solar panels collect energy only when the sun shines, and turbines are immobile when the wind isn’t blowing—doesn’t play well with the grid. The genius of Packetized Energy is providing a “glue technology” that turns home appliances like water heaters, dryers, and H-VAC systems into systems of virtual batteries that can be coordinated at scale. The company produces smart controllers for these appliances and a cloud-based software platform called Nimble that “talks” with the controllers, simultaneously

listening to demand requests and pricing data from utilities. Hines says the technology helps consumer demand and utility output stay in balance. Wider adoption could help mitigate complete system meltdowns like Texas experienced this winter. Packetized Energy’s overall mission is to “enable clean, affordable, resilient energy for all people,” and Hines sees a confluence of factors that make the company’s solutions the right set of ideas at the right time. One factor is the growing public consensus about the danger of global warming and the pressing need for clean energy solutions. “The other factor is the commercial driver,” says Hines. “Wind and solar are just plain financially cheap, and you can build plants for purely economic reasons. That’s where you really see change. Now, Shell and BP are getting into the game, so it’s not just for ultra-green environmentalists. This is real business now.”

SPRING 2021

Portrait of the Artist

Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York Penguin Press By Alexander Nemerov ’85 In his latest book, alumnus Alexander Nemerov examines the life and work of twentieth-century painter Helen Frankenthaler across the decade when her art was emergent and at its most vibrant. Author and subject share some personal history rooted in Vermont. Nemerov was born in the state in 1963, when his father, poet Howard Nemerov, taught on the faculty at Bennington College. Helen Frankenthaler was among the elder Nemerov’s students during that era. But beyond that distant connection, Alex Nemerov, chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University, did not dive deeply into Frankenthaler’s work until he stood before her 1958 painting “Hotel Cro-Magnon” at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2016. He recalls gazing at it longer than all of the other works in the museum combined. Soon after, he wrote a piece that attempted to capture what had transfixed him. Noting that Frankenthaler’s work is often celebrated for its freshness, Nemerov says, “What I understand that freshness to represent is the experience of life unfolding, what we call lived experience—seeing Lake Champlain change color, feeling our feet on the grass as we look at it, anything really, holding a warm cup of coffee in one’s hands. She was portraying life as lived and

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turning it into representation before it could become fossilized, petrified as a kind of semblance of itself.” Fierce Poise has a personal feel to it, with Nemerov referring to the painter as “Helen” throughout. The author suggests that in addition to being about the artist, her art, and the heady swirl of life among the abstract expressionist era circle in New York City during the 1950s, the book is more broadly striving to capture the feeling of living through one’s twenties—Helen’s, his own, his students’s. Writing a book based on story rather than argument is a departure for Nemerov, who, by his own estimate is “miscast as an arguer,” a challenging scholar to pigeonhole. “I’m more interested in creating a space for contemplation, which is a quasireligious space,” he says. “And that’s my definition of what I do as an academic.” He adds, with a laugh, that is why his books tend to have “truly bizarre call numbers.” The opportunity for the new direction arose when a literary agent, who happened to be a fellow UVM alumnus, Elias Altman ’07, contacted Nemerov out of the blue suggesting he would be well-suited to writing a story-based book for a popular audience. In his cold call, Altman noted that they shared a UVM writing teacher in Professor David Huddle. Nemerov had been contemplating a book about Frankenthaler, and, with Altman’s help, the course was set. The result is a book that will leave those fortunate to have been on the UVM Green for Alex Nemerov’s 2018 commencement speech with a similar sense of inspiration and connection to our own lives, born of the author’s keen eye, insightful mind, and verbal grace. On a rainy Sunday morning at UVM, Nemerov spoke to the essential nature of “private illuminations” that “allow us—carefully, tentatively, but sometimes with great power and purpose—to move through the world.” In the introduction to Fierce Poise, con-

sidering not just Helen Frankenthaler’s life but all of our lives, the author proposes: “The moments of a day’s existence are often a homely combination: a pigeon waddling on the sidewalk, an overflowing trash can, the bright white shirt and black glossy hair of a passerby. Focused on bigger things, larger goals, we learn to ignore such ephemeral experiences. But who is to say that fragile sensations do not carry their own weight, that they do not amount to a rich record of who we are, who, indeed, we will have been?”

Timeless Lessons

Taking the Fight South: Chronicle of A Jew’s Battle for Civil Rights in Mississippi Notre Dame Press By Howard Ball In 1976, early in his career, Howard Ball landed an attractive offer for a tenure track position at a large state university. The only possible catch, it seemed, was that the professorship was at Mississippi State, a geographic and cultural leap for a young, Jewish, Bronx-born academic. But Ball and his young family packed up the moving van. They would spend six years in Starkville, Mississippi, making waves, making a difference, making friends, and living to tell the tale nearly forty years later with the recent publication of Taking the Fight South: Chronicle of A Jew’s Battle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. UVM professor emeritus of political science and past dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Ball is a noted historian, whose dozens of books include a landmark biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, A Defiant Life, and Murder in Mississippi, which chronicles the Mississippi Burning killings of 1964. At age eighty-three, living in Richmond, Vermont, with his wife, Carol, a former UVM mathematics lecturer, Ball shares not only his academic expertise but also his own family life in the new book.

B O O K S Taking the Fight South filters the political through the lens of the personal. Readers learn of Ball’s testimony before a congressional committee studying extension of the 1965 Voters Rights Act and his tireless advocacy work with the American Civil Liberties Union. There are stories about his kids and stories of a professor finding his way in a new academic environment. Perhaps less expected, a chapter on Ball’s work as a high school football referee, known to his crew as “Rabbi.” For an outsider in the Deep South, love of the game provided a ready bridge. A scholar has a natural bent towards documentation. And that’s what Howard Ball did through his six years in Mississippi—jotting down his experiences in a journal, saving press clippings and photos, filing them away with little thought to publication as other projects absorbed his time through the years. The stories would later coalesce as he shared them with friends at Ohavi Zedek Synagogue in Burlington and polished a manuscript. Perhaps Taking the Fight South was just waiting for these times. The rise of Donald Trump triggered many things across our nation, among them, Professor Emeritus Ball’s desire to add his voice, shaped by his experience in Mississippi, to renewed calls for racial justice in America.

Healthy Eating, Healthy Earth Sustainable Kitchen: Recipes and Inspiration for Plant-based, Planet-conscious Meals. Herald Press By Heather Wolfe ’03 “How I grew up was really influential,” says Heather Wolfe ’03 of her new cookbook, Sustainable Kitchen: Recipes and Inspiration for Plant-based, Planet-conscious Meals. A lifetime Vermonter, her roots begin in a log cabin built by her father near Woodstock, with composting toilets, and no electricity. “We lived really close to the land.” Now a registered dietitian and certified health and wellness coach, still in

the Woodstock area, she and her family maintain an environmentally-friendly flexitarian lifestyle—comprised of a plant-based diet with minimal waste—and of course, a gigantic garden. With photography and design by friend Jaynie McCloskey, Sustainable Kitchen was a two-and-a-half-year passion project for Wolfe that combines healthy eating and sustainable living tools, farm-to-table recipes, and a manual for making sense of it in our everyday lives. Taste-test the book with the recipe below.

SPRING VEGGIE & PESTO PASTA (Serves 4)

Nothing says spring like bright, fresh shades of green. Here we’ve got asparagus, arugula, peas, and pesto, the first tastes of the season. Serve warm or as a cool salad. 8 ounces pasta, any variety 1 (8-ounce) bunch asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces (about 2 cups) 1/2 cup fresh or frozen peas 1 1/2 cups cooked cannellini beans 1/2 cup chopped roasted red peppers 1/2 cup classic basil pesto kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper freshly grated Parmesan cheese for garnish a few handfuls arugula (optional) 1. Cook pasta, adding asparagus and peas to the pot to boil for the last 3 minutes of cooking. Drain and return to pot. 2. Mix in beans, roasted red peppers, and pesto. Stir gently over low heat until beans are warmed and sauce evenly coats pasta. 3. Season to taste with salt and pepper and top with freshly grated Parmesan cheese. 4. If desired, add a handful of arugula over the top or under as a bed for extra spring greens.

BRIEFS | Kimberly Zieselman’s 2020 memoir XOXY delves into her discovery later in life that she was born intersex, leading to the Class of 1988 alumna’s work as a human rights activist. Professor Emeritus Robert Manning and his wife, Martha, have added a new edition to their series of Walks of a Lifetime books, guides to spectacular hikes that can be tackled by mere mortals. Walks in America’s National Parks are the focus for the intrepid Mannings this time out. Ed Tracy ’76 recently published Gorilla in the Room and Other Stories, a work inspired by his battle with cancer that follows multiple directions, including memories from his undergrad years. In early January, Lesléa Newman ’77 published I Wish My Father, a memoir-in-verse. Newman’s poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Life Before the Virus,” which we shared in the summer issue of the magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Wolfgang Mieder, University Distinguished Professor of German and Folklore, adds to his deep catalog of books with The Worldview of Modern American Proverbs.

SPRING 2021

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

Champion for Justice

Student-athlete’s journey leads to social justice advocacy

BY | THOMAS WEAVER

After injuries sidelined him as a basketball player, Skyler Nash ’21 has focused his drive on effecting positive change in the local community. Opposite page: Nash celebrates the 2019 America East Championship with Catamount teammates.

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Skyler Nash came to UVM

in 2017 with his focus on basketball, determined to help the Catamounts pile up victories and develop his potential for a chance at a pro career. Hitting his first collegiate shot, a three-pointer against perennial power Kentucky at Rupp Arena, was an auspicious start on that road. But just nine games into the season, he would suffer a season-ending ACL injury. It was the onset of a cruel cycle of rehab and reinjury that would lead to the end of his playing days during the 2019-20 season, though he has remained part of Coach John Becker’s program, a supportive teammate at practices and on the bench at home games.

A cancer survivor from his high school years, Nash knows adversity and changing paths. In fact, it was in his Chicago hospital bed that Nash was struck by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words: “Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere.” And as his hoop dreams faded, Nash has doubled down on his commitment to acting on the resonance King’s words held for him. He credits Coach John Becker for helping empower his change in focus and staying with it. “He was really the first person who gave me the courage to move in this direction and follow what ultimately was my dream in terms of doing this work,” Nash says. At a point when he lamented not ABOVE: GLENN RUSSELL (2019); RIGHT: BRIAN JENKINS

BRIEFS Mathias Tefre won the 2021 NCAA Championship in giant slalom. Tefre was among nine Catamount skiers earning All-American honors at the championships, held in New Hampshire. In the overall team results, UVM placed sixth.

spending enough time with the team, Nash shares that Becker told him, “You’re doing what you need to be doing and what I want you to be doing.” Though graduation is this spring for the community and international development major, he has already been at work across the past year, balancing studies with two jobs: public policy and research analyst in the City of Burlington Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging Department and director of Next Generation Justice, a fledgling non-profit working with prosecutors on policy. In 2020, Nash also managed the successful Vermont Senate campaign of Kesha Ram ’08, the first woman of color elected to the chamber. Searching to describe her fellow UVM alum, Ram says: “Skyler, I always forget how young he is. He carries himself so professionally, he holds so much being an athletic leader, running a campaign, being a tall Black man in Vermont, working on racial justice issues in the State House. I learned as much from him, I think, as he learned from me.” Though he takes pride in having a role in Ram’s success, Nash says he thinks he’s a “one and done” when it comes to political campaigning, preferring the nitty gritty of governance and policy work as ways to effect change. Nearly from the moment he arrived on campus, Nash has been committed to staying in Vermont beyond his college years. And as he’s come to know the state and its people, particularly through his

work on Ram’s campaign, that commitment has only grown. Comparing Vermont to his native Chicago, Nash says he was immediately struck by the sense of inclusion. “You hear the stories and feel the palpable energy of togetherness and inclusivity and that everybody’s equal,” he says. “And that was new to me because that’s not something that you view as tangibly in a place like Chicago, because as diverse as it is, it is also equally as segregated, racially, culturally, and by class.” But over time, Nash came to see where some myth may cloud reality. “Vermont, in a lot of ways it is a fantastic microcosm of the issues that we face as a country,” he says. “We have this really fantastic story that so many of us are attached to, and I think it’s that story that makes us really exceptional. But because of belief in that story, we sometimes skip the steps of actually doing the hard work necessary to making this an inclusive, equitable place for all people.” Helping his adopted home state get there is what Nash is all about as he charts life after UVM. “It is really crazy for me to sit here now four years later and see where I’m at in this community and the way that it has accepted me,” Nash says. “But it also remains a constant challenge for me, and a lot of people I work with, to recognize that while we’ve been accepted, so many people have not. There’s continuously so much work to do every day to get the state to where it could be and should be.” UVM

UVMATHLETICS.COM | THE LATEST NEWS

The men’s basketball team earned their fifth consecutive America East regular season championship. A semi-finals loss to Hartford, eventual America East tourney champion, denied the Cats another trip to the NCAA Tournament. Ryan Davis ’22 won the conference’s Kevin Roberson Player of the Year, the fifth year in a row the honor has been presented to a Catamount. First year Anna Olson ’24 was named the America East Rookie of the Year in women’s basketball, the fourth time in program history a Catamount has earned the honor. Olson led the Catamounts this season with 13.3 points-per game and 6.8 rebounds-per game. On January 4, she became just the third player in league history dating back to 1984-85 to win America East Player and Rookie of the Week in the same week. Olson is also the ninth Catamount to earn three or more Rookie of the Week honors in a season.

SPRING 2021 |

| NEW KNOWLEDGE

When Family and Business Meet you know that feeling when you

BY | KAITIE CATANIA

PHOTOGRAPH BY | ANDY DUBACK

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finally realize something and then you can’t stop noticing it—you seem to find it everywhere? That’s how a class or conversation with Pramodita Sharma, director of the Family Business Institute at Grossman School of Business, might leave you—seeing family businesses everywhere. Sharma is renowned for her extensive research on succession, governance, entrepreneurial leadership, and sustainability, which serves as the “go-to” literature in her field. Recently the inaugural SchlesingerGrossman Chair of Family Business was named among the top one hundred influencers in family business by Family Capital, a London-based online magazine. When asked about the significance of family businesses and why she chose to build a career around it, “Dita”—as her students call her—makes it clear why she’s earned a reputation among Grossman students as one of their most beloved professors. “What did you do this morning? What did you eat? What are you wearing? What are you using right now?” she asks in a non-invasive way, but rather a genuinely

curious way. She wants to make that connection between each individual and the enormous entrepreneurial ecosystem that unknowingly affects them. “Every single product, everything you touch comes from a business family. Who is manufacturing it? Who is distributing it? We tend to use the products and services of business families, and these families remain in the background,” she says. Of course, there are the well-known heavy hitters like the Walton family of Wal-Mart, the Buffet family of Berkshire Hathaway, the Murdoch family behind Fox News, and France family behind NASCAR. Together they employ nearly three million people and earn more than $750 billion in revenue. But what Sharma challenges her students to understand is that those billionaire families aren’t the norm, nor are they the only ones worth studying. They’re just the tip of the iceberg. A family business is defined as any business involving two or more family members, with a majority of ownership or control belonging to a family. It’s estimated that roughly 90 percent of American businesses are family-owned or controlled.

Sharma puts it this way: “If I have an idea for a widget, who’s going to lend me money first? I’m probably going to go to people who already know me or trust me, who will say, ‘Ok I’ll take a chance on you.’” From there, that simple investment can be a one-generation operation or grow into a multi-generational organization that changes hands with the times. In fact, the oldest family-owned business operating in the United States today was originally founded in 1623 in Constantinople (known now as Istanbul, Turkey). The business? Zildjian cymbals—as in the musical instrument you might find on a drum kit. The family’s metal craft survived nearly four hundred years of ownership, multiple wars and revolutions, and an international move. For scholars like Sharma, there’s a lot of history, innovation, and governance to unpack in a business like that. “The literature has moved beyond ‘family business or not family business.’ Most businesses are family businesses. Let’s now understand the ones that do thrive and why others don’t thrive,” she says. Closer to home in Vermont, the von Trapps might be the first family that comes to mind, but they are far from the only business family in the Green Mountain State. American Flatbread at Lareau Farm in Waitsfield, Rhino Foods in Burlington, and even the award-winning craft brewery The Alchemist in Stowe are all family businesses. They’re also among the select winners of the annual Family Business Awards—established by Sharma in 2012— to recognize successful homegrown businesses. Through the years, many of these local business owners have made guest appearances in Sharma’s classes to share their knowledge with students. “Connecting to people runs very deep for family businesses. It’s not only their name on the product or their services, but it’s their loyalty to customers, communities, employees. The trust and the pride, those are distinguishing factors of family businesses,” she says. And the respect and recognition for her support is reciprocal. “Dita’s a go getter,” says Ted Castle ’74, owner and president of Rhino Foods. “She’s out there trying to have closer ties to community members and businesses in Vermont, and she’s very good at nurturing

relationships. She deserves a lot of credit for being authentic in her efforts. She’s very authentic about making the business school be bigger, broader, better, and more distinguished, doing everything it needs to do to be a great institution.” The cookie dough producer for Ben & Jerry’s ice creams (Rhino Foods) and drum cymbals from Zildjian are a far cry from the behemoth that is Wal-Mart or the salacious businesses featured in hit shows like HBO’s Succession and Fox’s Empire. And Sharma wants to dismantle the high-powered, cutthroat rendition of family businesses we tend to see in the media. In reality, they’re kind of the opposite, she says. “At UVM, if you go into any school with a named chair or endowment of any sort, there is a business family behind it. ‘Grossman’ is a third-generation family business,” she says of the school’s namesake, Steven Grossman ’61, whose family manufactured custom corrugated packaging. “And Steve Schlesinger, who partnered with Grossman to endow my position, is a second-generation business leader of a market research company his mother started,” she adds. “I’m sitting at a school that exists because of a family business, at a university that relies on the generosity of family businesses. We say they are the biggest philanthropists in the world and they are the biggest community builders in the world, but that’s not an image that’s portrayed in the media.” Coming from a business family in Northern India herself, Sharma understands the mischaracterization first-hand. Though she briefly dabbled in her family’s manufacturing and distribution business, it wasn’t for her. Now, having lived all over the world before settling at the Grossman School of Business in 2011, she brings an intentional global perspective to her teaching and to the school—literally. Before these virtual times in January 2020, the annual international family case competition she spearheads brought eighteen universities from eleven different countries to UVM’s campus to talk family business. “My charge as a faculty member is to prepare our students for the world that we are going to build and lead. When we cannot take our students around the world, we try to bring the world to them.” UVM

SUSTAINABILITY IS GOOD BUSINESS Building on their existing body of co-authored research, Pramodita Sharma and Sanjay Sharma, Dean of the Grossman School of Business, offer a granular view of ways in which family businesses implement sustainable business practices in the 2021 book they co-edited, Pioneering Family Firms’ Sustainable Development Strategies (Edward Elgar Publishing). The collection describes the sustainable development journey of fifteen business families committed to using their enterprises as a force of societal good. In turn, each family reaps benefits of high economic returns, while contributing to society and environment. The youngest family firm is in its twenties, while there are others over one hundred years of age. Size, industry, locations vary. But all these business families share a deep shared commitment towards sustainable development, control over strategic decision-making in their firms, and trans-generational continuity intentions. Family values embed their enterprises with a strong sense of purpose to achieve their chosen sustainable development goals. Professionalized systems and processes foster the development of capabilities, and partnerships with a variety of stakeholders ensure the simultaneous achievement of social, environmental, and profitability goals. SPRING 2021 |

UVM PEOPLE FOR THE LOVE OF DOGS KYLA STERNLIEB ’06

by Thomas Weaver

Photograph by Justin Bunnell

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Across more than a year of pandemic living, we’ve been reminded of the importance of pets in the lives of so many. Whether it was the comfort of longtime furry friends or adopted new ones helping us cope with the isolation of remote work and school, the emotional role of cats and dogs in human families has been affirmed. Alumna Kyla Sternlieb is a deep-down dog-person. Remembering Ruffy, a beloved Wheaten Terrier, she says, “Ruffy changed my life for the better in every way a dog can.” And that headstrong terrier, who passed away from cancer in 2014, also played a key influence in Sternlieb’s career, inspiring her founding of Under the Weather, a line of freeze-dried foods for ailing pooches and other pet wellness products. Summer 2012, Ruffy had a bout of stomach troubles familiar to dog owners. Also familiar, the standard treatment of shifting to a bland diet. Pressed for time to get to the grocery store, Sternlieb wondered about a quicker, simpler way when people are juggling a sick pup with everything else in their lives. She searched the web, found nothing, but in that void discovered a business niche for a healthy “just-add-water” product. The road from light-bulb moment to national brand would require multiple considerations and no small number of dead-ends, Sternlieb says. Distribution methods, shelf life, the right manufacturer, and coming up with just the right name were among the tasks. With many pet products on the market, many names are trademarked. “Ruffy Rice” got nixed. As she mentioned her start-up to friends, Sternlieb often used the phrase “under the weather” to describe an ill dog. With clear sailing on that trademark, the decision was clinched. “I grabbed the name, which is the perfect fit because we are so much more than

a bland diet/rice company now. We have about fifty wellness products for dogs and cats that target all different health issues,” Sternlieb says. Today, Under the Weather is a Vermont entrepreneurial success story. Based in Winooski, the eight employees include a number of UVM alumni. And the product is manufactured locally by Green Mountain Animal, a plant in South Burlington. The explosion of pet ownership across the past year and ever-growing opportunities via e-commerce have contributed to rapid development for Under the Weather. Looking back, Sternlieb says she was confident from the start, secure that her own experience as a pet parent was universal: “I knew from day one this was going to work. I never once secondguessed myself.” Looking forward, Sternlieb sees a rising trajectory. “As long as we keep growing and having fun, we will keep going. I cannot imagine doing anything else,” she says. “The pet industry is tight-knit, filled with interesting and compassionate people.” At home, a next generation of dogs rounds out the household for Sternlieb and her husband, Bruce Lisman ’69. Chloe is a thirteen-year-old Yorkie and Henry is a five-year-old basset mix; both are rescues. At work, the late Ruffy’s inspiration continues with Under the Weather’s advocacy for shelter animals, an effort that flies under the banner of “Ruffy Rescue.” UVM

SPRING 2021 |

FOR OUR

FUTURE by Catherine Arnold, Joshua Brown, Kaitie Catania, Janet Franz, Rachel Leslie, Jennifer Nachbur

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V U EVRMM M OA NG T AQZUI N AE R T E R LY

Sustainability. It’s in danger of being a buzzword. OK, fair enough, it is a buzzword. But can we agree it’s a buzzword that matters, one with critical consequence for our collective future? And it’s a word that encapsulates many of the research strengths of the University of Vermont, the same priority on healthy environment and healthy communities described in the 2020 Amplifying Our Impact strategic document. In this issue, we offer a window on a sliver of that work—from managing the public good of urban trees to keeping Vermonters safe in the pandemic—as our faculty create new knowledge and build new practices to help societies thrive today and for generations to come.

Helping lead a return of Vermont-grown wheat crops is among the agricultural innovations led by UVM Extension professor Heather Darby. Photo by Joshua Brown SPRING 2021 |

THE WEIGHT OF WATER WATER SCARCITY HAS BEEN A SOURCE OF REGIONAL conflict and war throughout human history. As the world’s fresh water becomes increasingly scarce due to climate change, cooperation among countries, regions, and villages sharing water resources across borders will be critical to ensuring an equitable distribution of this fundamental resource. UVM’s Asim Zia has made it his mission to address this global challenge through environmental diplomacy and grassroots organizing. Last year, Zia was awarded a Fulbright Global Scholar Award from the U.S. Department of State to spearhead a project to identify scientific, technological, and policy solutions for ensuring clean water across three transboundary river basins—the Indus, Jordan, and Amazon—which collectively sustain more than 237 million people in the bordering countries. “Fresh water is critical for health, the production of food, and energy,” says Zia, professor of public policy in the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics and a fellow in the Gund Institute for Environment. “In these large-scale rivers, the actions of one upstream partner can have a significant effect on downstream populations. Because water is a limited resource, power differentials and transboundary conflict can lead to famines, migrations, and water wars.” Climate-induced droughts and floods, which have become increasingly common in the Indus, Jordan, and Amazon river basins, further intensify the fight for clean water. Using an action-research approach, Zia is building a network of community partners, scientific institutions, and governments from across these basins to set up and agree upon principles of ecological cooperation. When the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, Zia’s Fulbright support will take him to Pakistan, Israel, and Ecuador, working at the local, national, and international policy levels to improve border relations and water-use practices, as well as within communities to inspire grassroots social change. One of the main findings from Zia’s previous research was that although these types of environmental diplomacy meetings can be fraught with identity politics and strife, people tend to come together around the issue of water quality. “It was really one of those ah-ha moments,” says Zia. “Even in these highly conflicted areas, people are willing to talk to one another when it’s about water quality.”

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CHENAB RIVER, PART OF THE INDUS RIVER BASIN, PHOTO BY MOHIT TOMAR

“A strong majority of Americans support the Endangered Species Act and see wildlife and wild plants as a public good. So what will it take to help landowners protect these species? Think of what could happen if we got federal decisionmakers, governors, conservationists, industry leaders to sit down together to help both species and landowners. With the right leadership, you could get broad bipartisan support to make the Endangered Species Act an even better tool for preventing the loss of biodiversity.” —Joe Roman, professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and Gund Institute for Environment. Roman was among a leading group of conservation scientists and policy experts who authored a piece in the journal Science pushing for deep improvements to the Endangered Species Act.

JOEL GARLICH-MILLER, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE

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MODELING A PANDEMIC’S SPRE AD THE ANSWER MIGHT BE TWENTY-THREE. “But it’s probably not,” says Laurent Hébert-Dufresne—professor of computer science and an expert on the mathematical modeling of epidemics. The question is: how many people in a group is too large during the COVID-19 pandemic? Of course, any gathering, even of two people, presents some risk of spread. But researchers and policymakers have pondered over the last year where the tipping point is—ten? Twenty-five?—between keeping the disease in check and having it spread like a housefire. In a new study, Hébert-Dufresne and his colleagues clarify that these kinds of thresholds are real and powerful but he’s impatient with the search for a simple-minded single number. Instead, he wants people to understand why it’s been so important, during the COVID-19 epidemic, to close schools, shut restaurants, cancel concerts, and empty cruise ships. “A lot of people wonder if it’s necessary, if it’s reasonable,” he says, “and the answer is yes.” Not all diseases are like this, but COVID-19 appears to “live at the mesoscale,” Hébert-Dufresne says—the scale of universities, hospitals, churches, and other medium-sized gatherings of people. Therefore, attacking it at this scale is a more powerful and efficient way to stop the spread than solely relying on individuals to wear masks and keep their distance. Standard models assume that diseases simply move by dif-

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fusion through a pattern of random mixing. One-person-tothe-next-interactions, of course, at a basic level, are how the virus spreads. But Hébert-Dufresne’s new study, in Physical Review Letters, shows that more sophisticated models, that have “higher-order structures” built in, can identify how hotspots can form, say, within one school. In short, real lives are not a web of random contacts but are organized around social institutions. When an epidemic localizes around one of these kinds of structures, it could be that the odds of catching the virus “on the street,” Hébert-Dufresne says, would be 1 in 10,000, but at a Pearl Jam concert might jump to 1 in 10. “So it makes sense to focus our interventions on these larger structures,” he says, at least as much as on individual behaviors, like masks and handwashing. And with a vigorous effort to limit large gatherings, the “math makes it clear,” he says, that, at certain moments, an epidemic “can suddenly collapse.” “We need a healthy society to be sustainable,” HébertDufresne says. “My work over the last year has ranged from COVID, to hate speech, to how farmers adopt innovations to face climate change—all efforts to understand and model how things spread. A lot of our problems right now boil down to the fact that we don’t understand flows—of information, disease, ideas.” JOSHUA BROWN

B E T T E R WAY S T O M A N A G E PA I N DR. JON PORTER DESCRIBES THE PEOPLE UNDER HIS CARE as heroes: they fight daily battles against debilitating backache, arthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic headaches, and other issues, braving unrelenting pain as they manage their lives. For years, these individuals fought their pain with traditional medical weapons—opioid medications, steroid injections, surgeries—bringing short-term relief and, for some, addiction, depression, and anguish. Still, Porter says, they persevere in quests for respite, dignity, and joy. Porter, medical director of the UVM Medical Center Comprehensive Pain Program, knows that yoga, nutrition, mindfulness, massage, and acupuncture can help people manage pain more effectively than traditional approaches. Paying for these therapies is tricky though. For health insurance providers, covering the costs of surgeries, shots, and pills comes easier. To change this paradigm, Porter and a team of UVM researchers gather qualitative data from people participating in thirteen weeks of evidencebased integrative therapies paid for by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont. The program aims to support participants’ self-efficacy and provide tools for coping with pain, while measuring health improvements and ELLIOT DEBRUYN

impacts on health-care spending. “We want to demonstrate to society the value of this novel approach to pain,” Porter says. “Blue Cross wants to know if it works. They want their subscribers to be healthier and to reduce costs.” Study participants attend group meetings and receive therapies at a clinic in South Burlington. The clinic includes a studio for gentle movement, teaching kitchen for culinary medicine classes, and rooms for massage, acupuncture, Reiki, physical therapy, and substance abuse counseling. Preliminary data show significant changes in key areas: Participants report reduced pain, improved physical function, better sleep, and fewer visits to primary care and emergency departments for pain relief. “The results show a statistically significant improvement in patient outcomes,” says Adam Atherly, director of UVM’s Center for Health Services Research at the Larner College of Medicine. He collaborates with Porter and Janet Kahn, a research assistant professor at Larner and massage therapist at CPP, on the study. “The research asks, ‘Does this program work at UVM Medical Center?’ Early evidence shows that it does. People are getting better,” Atherly says. “Blue Cross has been looking at the claims data, and they see it’s working. As the payer, they are satisfied that it’s a reasonable investment. The next question is, ‘Can it be replicated?’” “We’re helping individuals feel more hopeful and confident in working with their pain. The cost savings will be huge, and cumulative,” says Porter. “If we can help someone in their thirties or forties find ways to deal with their pain, it will help them for decades.” SPRING 2021 |

IMPROVING LIVELIHO ODS AND LIVES WHEN IT COMES TO IMPROVING LIVELIHOODS, successful solutions often require looking generations into the future. But for scholars and researchers who work with subsistence communities—where economies are driven by basic needs like food, water, and shelter rather than the market—successful solutions also require a sustained relationship with the community, says Srinivas Venugopal, assistant professor in the Grossman School of Business. “We have come to realize that in working with local communities in subsistence marketplaces, our allegiance, and indeed our accountability, lies not just with our discipline but also the local communities we operate in,” he writes in a paper published by the Journal of Consumer Affairs. Venugopal’s research on the nature of consumption and entrepreneurship in these communities has taken him the world over, most recently to a small fishing village in Chennai, in South India, where the effects of climate change have disrupted traditional fishing livelihoods and techniques passed through generations. To design and evaluate a successful intervention, he employed what he calls a community-centric approach; “the prime directive of [which] is ‘do no harm,’” he writes. In the fishing village, an apparent entrepreneurial solution

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to restore the declining revenues among fishermen brought on by climate change might be to invest in power boats or improved technology to track and catch more fish. But this traditional discipline-centric approach would eventually cause greater harm to the community overtime through overfishing and continued ecological disruption in the sea. Venugopal’s community-centric approach instead tapped into a community action research team in the region with preestablished trust and credibility among local fishermen. Using on-the-ground connections to consult with fishermen, the research incorporated their existing techniques—like wading into estuaries on foot, or the effectiveness of small fiber glass boats versus commercial boats. Ultimately, it’s an approach that yields a wider net for exploring practical social interventions to improve and honor the practice. And over time, the sustained relationships will provide continued insight into the issue and facilitate a constant feedback loop in search of viable solutions. “There’s nothing that one person can do from the outside; it has to be done from the inside, in a sustainable way,” Venugopal says. “They are the agents of change, already engaged in the fight. How can partners catalyze it?”

GETTY IMAGES PADDY PHOTOGRAPHY

“People routinely ignore facts on a whole host of issues, including climate change. So, if Democrats base their strategy on facts, then that’s

W HE N P UBLIC HE ALT H M AT T E R S M OST

a problem.”

IN NO OTHER YEAR HAS THE VALUE OF PUBLIC HEALTH

—Deborah Guber, associate profes-

expertise been more obvious, or lauded, than during the COVID-19 pandemic, and at UVM, that is embodied in Dr. Jan Carney. A former Vermont Commissioner of Health, Carney has been a stalwart advocate throughout her career, with a long record for launching critical initiatives that improve community health. During her twentytwo years at UVM, Carney’s contributions have extended far beyond her role as associate dean for public health and health policy at the Larner College of Medicine. In addition to directing hundreds of medical-student-run public health projects, her efforts have yielded the TobaccoFree Campus Policy, an online Master of Public Health degree, and suite of graduate-level and certificate-based public health programs, among other changes. When COVID-19 hit, Carney’s rise to the challenge shone an even brighter light on UVM as a trusted community source for medical information. Not only did she guide UVM’s policies and help craft the Return to Campus plan, but she also implemented educational and research activities designed to help people get the information and services they need most. With support from UVM Continuing and Distance Education, Carney brought together campus experts for free virtual community education webinars on the SARS-CoV-2 virus, prevention practices, and mental health and school strategies. To help social service agencies identify funding for community health and social needs, she launched an unprecedented statewide survey in partnership with United Ways of Vermont that also served as second-year medical students’ required public health projects. The results provide insight into the unique needs of rural versus urban communities, and issues like food access, financial stress, medical, and social needs.

sor of political science, in an article

david lipschultz ’96

titled “The surprising reasons why people ignore the facts about climate change.” The publication Grist featured the research of Guber and colleagues, which was published in the journal Environmental Politics. “With the help of machine learning, Guber and her colleagues analyzed millions upon millions of words from Congressional floor speeches from 1996 until 2015,” the Grist article noted. “They found that Democrats tend to make arguments about climate change backed up by facts and evidence, while Republicans tend to tell stories, using imagery, emotional appeals, and humor to sway people to their side. According to Guber, Republicans are ‘communicating in ways that may ultimately be more effective.’” SPRING 2021 |

URBAN ARBOR PHILADELPHIA, LIKE EVERY CITY, knows where its roads go. Its government has maps of streets, sewage treatment plants, electrical substations, and storm drains. “Urban areas have long focused on this kind of ‘gray infrastructure,’” says Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne, director of the UVM Spatial Analysis Lab. But how well do cities know where their trees go? “You manage what you measure,” says O’Neil-Dunne. “Increasingly, communities realize that they want to protect and manage their green infrastructure as well. Trees are a public good.” Which is why Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and dozens of other cities and counties work with the Spatial Analysis Lab to develop detailed counts and maps of their urban tree canopies. Using satellite imagery, aerial photography, advanced spatial statistics, huge amounts of computing power—and a small army of undergraduate assistants—the lab gives mayors and planners a scintillatingly beautiful, and shockingly precise, view of the living roof that makes a city pleasant and cool. In 2011, scientists from the UVM lab completed a tree canopy assessment for Philadelphia’s parks department. When they repeated the analysis in 2019, the team found that, over a decade, Philadelphia had lost more than a thousand football fields worth of its tree canopy. If a thousand

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actual football fields disappeared, someone would notice. Leaders and conservation activists in Philadelphia had been noticing. The lab’s discovery that trees were being removed from residential land at a rate that outpaced efforts to replant—1,980 acres of canopy gained, but 3,075 acres lost—has helped spark renewed efforts to plant trees, and the launch of a ten-year urban forestry plan aiming to push the city’s tree cover from 20 to 30 percent. “It’s awesome to see how drastically a landscape can change in just four years,” says Dayna Ullathorne ’21, one of the many students who work in the Spatial Analysis Lab in UVM’s Rubenstein School. She’s been scouring image files—correcting for tree shadows and misidentified buildings—for a canopy mapping effort in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The scale of this new project is bigger than the one completed in Philadelphia, but the fundamental facts are the same: trees reduce summer temperatures through transpiration, they provide habitat for birds, they lockaway prodigious quantities of climate-warming carbon, and they even reduce crime. “When you click between new and old images, you can see where a pipeline has been built or young trees have been planted,” says Ullathorne. “It might not seem like a huge deal when you’re on the ground, but from above you can see how everything is connected.”

CLOSE TO HOME: TR ACKING CLIMATE CHANGE WHEN IT COMES TO STORIES ABOUT CLIMATE change in Vermont, it’s hard to beat Joe’s Pond in the Northeast Kingdom—where locals bet on when the ice melts. Since the 1980s, folks have put a cinder block on the pond when it freezes. When the ice melts, the block sinks—unplugging an alarm clock that captures the exact time of the melt. There’s a clear pattern. The ice is melting earlier. “When it comes to climate change in Vermont, the future is now,” says Gillian Galford, a UVM climate scientist leading the Vermont Climate Assessment 2020, an ambitious study of climate change in the Green Mountain State. “Vermonters may differ on how to deal with climate change, but they are personally connected to the climate,” says Galford, a researcher at UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment and the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. “They’re not surprised that the ice is going off earlier. They say, ‘Yes, I noticed that.’” People want a framework to make sense of these changes, adds Galford. That’s the goal of the Vermont Climate Assessment, she says, to pair science with stories, and help government and citizens understand the future impacts. “We want to help people to feel more prepared, to make better decisions, and be more resilient to climate change,” says Joshua Faulkner, research assistant professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, who co-leads the project. ANDY DUBACK

All the best climate science suggests Vermont will become a warmer and wetter place to live and work. The Vermont Climate Assessment 2020 is using advanced climate research and data modeling to understand how rising temperature and precipitation—as well as more extreme events, such as droughts, and other climactic variables—will impact key sectors, including the economy, health, agriculture, water, energy, transportation, and forests. Take the town of Rutland, Vermont, which now experiences ten to twelve days of extreme precipitation a year, but used to encounter only four, says Galford, who worked with town planners. “When they have that data—that Rutland is experiencing three times as much heavy precipitation—it’s something they can use to make decisions to spend tax dollars to plan roads and infrastructure,” says Galford. “They can plan for that trend to probably continue for the next decade or two, if not longer.” Team member Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, professor of geography (pictured above, right), led the Northeast chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, an effort mandated by U.S. Congress in the Global Change Research Act. Working toward the next national analysis, Dupigny-Giroux says, “It’s important to look at local impacts, and how those can bubble up and affect national impacts. None of the changes—fall foliage changing earlier, ski industry impacts—occur just within our state borders. Impacts happen on a regional, continental, all the way up to the global scale.” UVM SPRING 2021 |

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GETTY IMAGES ROBERT BECK

GAME ON THE HUMBLE ORIGINS OF A REVOLUTIONARY GARMENT BY KAITIE CATANIA 2020 WAS AN INTERESTING YEAR for fashion. Comfort reigned supreme across Zoom meetings far and wide, and pants were optional. For many women, the year brought fraught relationships with the bra to levels of resentment on par with the sixties. But their time-honored frustration is what also made it possible for 2020 to be a pretty great year for the sports bra. “We all want to be comfortable,” says Hinda Miller P’17, who co-created the garment in 1977, known then as the Jogbra. “And it proved to be a comfortable bra.” Last spring—more than forty years after its creation—the sports bra and its inventors Lisa Lindahl G’77, Polly Smith, and Miller were named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF). The revolutionary garment that “enabled women's participation in

athletic activities and advanced women's health and well-being” earned its place in history alongside ibuprofen and the hardhat. However, long before committee members at NIHF recognized the sports bra as a symbol of gender equality, it was the University of Vermont that first paid homage to the feminist design. In 2005, a bronze plaque was cast of the original Jogbra and proudly installed in its birthplace: the costume shop at Royall Tyler Theatre.

CUT, STITCH, REPEAT “I was solving my own problem, and I had no idea that it would have the impact it has,” says Lisa Lindahl, who conceived the concept of a sports bra. “I just wanted to be comfortable when I was running.” SPRING 2021 |

Previous page: Brandi Chastain in the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup Final, Polly Smith's early sketches. This page: the first Jogbra ad featuring cocreators Hinda Miller and Lisa Lindahl.

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Lindahl took up jogging in the mid-seventies at the height of the sport’s popularity, averaging thirty miles a week while working and studying education at UVM. “I disliked the job I had at the UVM admissions office, so every lunch hour I would walk up to the fieldhouse where there was a tenth-of-a-mile track, and that's how I started running. On that track. It was terrible because I couldn't even get around it once, and when I finally made it around ten times consecutively, I was elated.” It wasn’t long before she took on Burlington’s formidable hill and established a regular route along Riverside Avenue as an allseason runner (no small feat in Vermont). Driven by the meditative qualities it offered, running worked wonders on Lindahl’s mind, but it took a toll on her body when she did it in a regular bra. She experimented with smaller bras, multiple bras, and even no bras before best friend Polly Smith stepped in with some sewing skills. A costume designer by trade, Smith joined Lindahl in Burlington for a summer and worked at the annual Champlain Shakespeare Festival, based out of UVM’s Royall Tyler Theatre. It was there, in the costume shop, that Smith began the process of deconstructing two jockstraps (yes; you knew this was going there) and retooling them into what she and Lindahl were then calling the “Jock Bra.” It was also there that they brought in Hinda Miller, an assistant designer at the costume shop and the final piece of the puzzle. “I think I was very much urged by the sisterhood of second-wave feminism,” Miller says. Both she and Lindahl imagined a day in which women could run and exercise with the ease, maybe even toss off a t-shirt just as their male counterparts did. Together they made prototype after prototype in search of a design that hit all the marks: stable straps, clasp- and hardware-free, comfort, breathable, and minimal bounce. The testing process was anything but expert, Lindahl admits, having been the sole model and tester for the bras. “I went running in our early prototype and Hinda actually tried running backwards in front of me to see how much I bounced. All I knew was that it felt comfortable and it felt better, and that I wanted to make more of them,” she says.

In the end, the most successful designs all featured straps that crossed over the back, irritant-less seams, and a thick elastic band around the ribs for support, features which still define sports bras today. They built the garment using a new textile that was soft, stretchy, and absorbent—cotton-lycra, known today as spandex—and got a utility patent for the design on November 20, 1979. The patent reads: “The product is the first athletic supporter for women; it is called the ‘JockBra.’ It is a brassiere that holds breasts firmly against the body to minimize any movement that may cause discomfort. At the same time, it is designed for comfort, has perspiration absorbing properties, and straps that will not slip off the shoulders no matter how vigorous the activity is that the athlete is engaged in.” When they settled on the name Jogbra (slightly less salacious than Jock Bra), it was off to the races.

THE LITTLE STATUTE THAT COULD Their wholesale retail business boomed immediately, to a tune of 25 percent sales growth over the first few years. And so, too, did opportunities for women’s participation in sports and athletics. Just as Jogbra entered the market, the effects of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 began to materialize for school-aged girls and women in 1975 when it was enforced. "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance," the law states simply, in just thirty-seven words. And that wide rule included sports teams. “Title IX was a good thing in terms of it saying, ‘You don't get any money, honey, unless you're open to both sexes,’ which is great. But what it didn't do was take away the discomfort and the self-consciousness that girls and women felt,” Lindahl says. Athletic programs at UVM were better positioned than most other universities of its scale for the drastic changes to come. In 1971—a full year before Title IX passed—former President Ed Andrews established a task force for women’s athletics that looked into all the necessary resources it would take to even-out the playing field for men’s and women’s sports at UVM: time, money, staffing, transportation, scholarships. All of it. The task force saw the deficit was there. But by 1980, inroads were being made to the robust athletics programs seen today, and they keep building. In 1981, the first year in which the NCAA offered championship women’s sports and began tracking their participation in college athletics programs, roughly 74,000 women athletes participated on fewer than

5,000 sports teams. By 2018, those numbers jumped to nearly 220,000 women on 10,695 teams.

UNLEASH THE GIRLS Out of the gate, Jogbra’s first print advertisement struck a tone that was ripe for its time. It featured a photo of Miller and Lindahl running together in just bras, shorts, and sneakers, with a tagline, “Jogbra. No man-made sporting bra can touch it.” Practical, purposeful, and with a dash of cheek. A while later, they printed another ad of them in the bras, but instead of running, Miller and Lindahl were sitting together, toasting with cocktails. “Last year we couldn’t afford to run this ad,” the headline said, addressing the stigma and resistance they overcame as one of the first woman-owned businesses in the sporting goods industry. Lindahl and Miller had a successful twelve-year run growing Jogbra—Smith took her costume design talents to The Jim Henson Co. where she went on to design multiple Muppet costumes and earned multiple Emmys. Miller and Lindahl sold their business to Playtex Apparel, where the Jogbra eventually moved into the Champion family brand. Having stayed on through the business’s acquisition, Miller was able to work on apparel for the 1996 Summer Olympics women athletes, including bras for the U.S. Women’s Volleyball team. On the heels of the Olympics, one watershed moment launched women’s sports into the respected, competitive field it is today: Brandi Chastain’s winning shootout penalty kick at the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final. In front of some 90,000 fans packed in the Rose Bowl, Chastain nailed the shot to an eruption of cheers, threw off her jersey, dropped to her knees, and bared her black Nike sports bra to the world in unfettered celebration. It’s one of the most iconic moments in sports, and a particularly special moment for the sports bra. Today, that black Nike sports bra hangs framed in Chastain’s home. “She was a blazing image of the strength and the victorious feeling that women get when they win world championships,” Miller says. “And that’s what Lisa and I wanted in the very beginning.” “It wasn’t until much later that I began to understand the impact,” Lindahl says, “and that it wasn’t simply about function and comfort, but the sociopolitical implications for women as well. The ripple effect through, literally, generations—I am now seventy-two-years-old and the sports bra is still being written about, talked about, and implicated in feminism.” Today, the women of Jogbra no longer log the same miles as their runs from the seventies, but their outlook on health, wellness, and feminism JAY PREMACK

remains unchanged. The sports bra business gave them the tools and experience to approach work with passion and purpose. Miller has stayed close to campus since her days in the Royall Tyler Theatre and currently serves on the advisory board of the Sustainable Innovation MBA program, and is a proud parent of her 2017 SIMBA graduate, Noah. After serving nine years in the Vermont legislature as a state senator for Chittenden County, she pivoted her focus to socially responsible entrepreneurship. Today, she is humbled to support the largest national health movement for Black women, GirlTrek, with her health and wellness expertise. As VP of the Board of Directors of the Epilepsy Foundation of America, Lindahl went on to advocate for people with epilepsy, a condition she’s lived with nearly all her life and to which she credits her problem-solving skills. With the help of Burlingtonbased Dr. Lesli Bell, she also designed and marketed a compression garment for breast cancer survivors to help ease the painful swelling of truncal lymphedema, a common condition among survivors. Lindahl, a life-long visual artist and writer, has written multiple books including her latest, titled Unleash the Girls: The Untold Story of the Invention of the Sports Bra and How it Changed the World (and Me). She leads a full life as an artist and activist, and continues as an advocate for people with epilepsy. Polly Smith is still her best friend. “There's always hope for what's coming next. New ideas, solving problems creatively, and not putting up with things that don't feel right,” Lindahl says. “And you know, clothing and fashion will always be a mirror of what's going on in our culture, politics and society." UVM

Hinda Miller, Lisa Lindahl, and Polly Smith at the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

SPRING 2021 |

DENVER edition

catamount nation

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ranted, equating Burlington and Denver requires a significant multiplier on matters of elevation and population. But there are commonalities: cities where a love for the outdoors, particularly winter sports, is pervasive; strong cultural influence of college students and young people; and, in the case of Burlington-Boulder, even twin vibrant city centers, Church Street and Pearl Street, that share the same urban designer. No wonder Denver is a magnet for many UVM alumni who look westward after graduation. In this issue, we check in with a number of Catamounts making their lives and livings along the Front Range of the Rockies.

Principal photography by James Stukenberg

By Thomas Weaver

CHUCK OLNEY ’98 NOW: Mile High Stadium is an iconic landmark in Denver, standing tall along the west side of I25. It’s home to the NFL’s Broncos, of course, but the stadium is also a venue for many other events. As director of business development for the Denver Broncos, Chuck Olney leads the effort to drive revenue produced by hosting events, from a Rolling Stones concert to the Denver BBQ Festival to long-range work with FIFA to bring World Cup soccer to the stadium in 2026. Summing it up, Olney says, “Our business team is able to create many different experiences for audiences in Denver, while helping contribute to the bottom line for the Broncos organization.” UVM: Olney notes that his political science major shapes his approach in multiple aspects of his work. “It always kicks in when we’re determining financial and asset deal points with partners we do business with,” he says. “Political science philosophies directly translate to our business world when we settle on how much to give or take within our dealings. When my PR hat is on for work, I will often use polisci strategies to help sell and market our citywide events.” A post-graduation internship at Mad River Glen was Olney’s entrée to sports marketing, eventually leading him to Colorado and a job with Warren Miller films. DENVER LOVE: Though Metro Denver has grown immensely in Olney’s twenty-two years there, he says that for him it still has an appealing similarity to Burlington in smaller city feel and a common mindset. Skiing with friends and family, catching a show at Red Rocks, and sneaking in a round of golf when he can, are top among his favorite pursuits.

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DIANE RABA ’80 NOW: Retired from a career in education, Diane Raba remains involved in the field through leadership on the board of Firefly Autism. Across her thirteen years helping to advance the organization, Raba has helped it grow into a leading treatment center using applied behavior analysis to meet the needs of clients and families. “Our professional staff and board members are instrumental in sharing information that improves community awareness about inclusion and diversity,” she says. The new Firefly Campus Treatment Center, a not-for-profit enterprise, is headquartered in a thirty-thousandsquare-foot building in Lakewood. UVM: As an elementary education major at UVM, Raba was part of the innovative American Primary Experience Program (APEX). She credits it for laying

the groundwork for a multi-faceted career as an educator and instilling a dedication to lifelong learning. “APEX taught me how to work in a collaborative environment with other professionals and how to create a collaborative environment in classrooms. I learned how to implement hands-on learning and meet individual needs.” Raba and her husband, Todd Raba ’79, met at UVM; they’ve been married for forty years and have two daughters. A forestry major at UVM, Todd’s career as a business leader has largely been focused on the utility and smart energy industries. DENVER LOVE: After living in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Iowa, the Rabas moved to the Denver area in 2007. “We love the beautiful outdoor environment and lifestyle,” Diane says. In particular, she recommends that visitors to the Rockies check out the town Evergreen, where she and Todd live. “The

CHUCK OLNEY ’98

hiking is excellent,” she says. “There’s a gorgeous little lake near the town center, as well as a quaint shopping area and interesting restaurants.”

IAN POND ’13 G’15 NOW: As NASA’s Artemis Program aims to put astronauts back on the moon in 2024, Ian Pond takes a role through his work as a senior mechanical engineer with Lockheed Martin. The young alum leads the thermal analysis for the design of two radiators on the Ascent Element, the vehicle that will take astronauts to the lunar surface, serve as their home there, and then get them safely back to the Orion spacecraft for their return to Earth. Designing for a livable temperature for the crew is deeply challenging, Pond says: “It’s really driven home the true harshness of space outside of Earth’s atmosphere.” UVM: After earning his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, Pond continued on for his master’s degree in thermo/fluids, working with Professor Yves Dubief. A townie from Burlington, he spent summers working for Lake Champlain Transportation Company, the ferry boats where his father, Steve Pond ’73, was a captain for decades. DENVER LOVE: Acknowledging that the exodus of traffic into the mountains on weekends can be “horrendous,” Pond adds, “the wait is worth the experiences you can have.” For him, that ranges from mountain biking in Steamboat Springs to skiing to big game hunting. Last fall, Pond says elk season took him at least a thousand miles around Colorado, Flat Top Mountains to the Grand Mesa: “Sadly, I came up empty-handed.”

I grew up in. The exposure to people so different than me allowed me to learn things about myself and the world around me.” As she earned her master’s in Higher Education Student Affairs, Bradley gives a great deal of credit for her development to “a brilliant, diverse cohort of fellow learners.” Among faculty, Professor Emerita Kathy Manning was instrumental in helping build her confidence professionally. “Kathy pushed me to be intellectually curious about everything, leading me down a path of being a continuous learner and educator.” DENVER LOVE: Perfect day Akirah Bradley style: brunch in Denver, wander a local farmer’s market, head to the mountains to “get lost in nature for a few hours.” She adds, “I’m happiest when I’ve worked hard to get to the highest peak of the hike and sit and take in all the views.”

AKIRAH BRADLEY G’07 NOW: Vice chancellor of student affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Akirah Bradley oversees some thirty-three departments united by the common goal of promoting student success, in and out of the classroom. Building connection among students is key to that in the best of times, especially challenging in the midst of a pandemic. Bradley expresses pride in the work of her staff over the past year to facilitate campus life that is both safe and appealing to students. Speaking more broadly of her work, she says, “What I find the most fulfilling is being on a college campus and seeing the incoming students every year who have a different way of navigating the world than the class before them. It ignites a shift and change for higher education to continue to reimagine and reinvent to best provide this new generation of students with the tools to be successful.” UVM: As a Black queer woman from Philadelphia, Bradley reflects that “Burlington, Vermont, could not have been any farther from the environment LEFT: JAMES STUKENBERG; RIGHT: PATRICK CAMPBELL

AKIRAH BRADLEY G’07

RICHARD BARRETT ’66 NOW: Fitting Richard Barrett’s career into one neat box just won’t work. His diverse entrepreneurial pursuits across decades fall roughly under the umbrella of technology, computing, and engineering. But, through investments and partnerships, his impact expands far beyond those fields. Coloradans might be familiar with one aspect of Barrett’s work through his ownership of the St. Julien Hotel and Spa in Boulder, where Richard’s wife, Elaine, also joined the project team to create a look and feel that celebrates Boulder and the surrounding landscape. Richard’s role as a former principal at cycling/sports apparel company Pearl Izumi connects directly with his longtime passion for running. And philanthropy, through the family Barrett Foundation, is also a key focus: from support of higher education, including engineering internships at UVM, to improving healthcare in the United States and India.

UVM: A mechanical engineering major and Sig Ep brother during his years in Burlington, Barrett remembers lessons from the early days of computing, as he learned Fortran programming. And the outdoors were just as central to his life then in Vermont as they are now in Colorado. He was a regular on the slopes of Mad River Glen and Mt. Mansfield and shares a keen memory of the late fall day he hiked up the mountain for some early skiing and bumped into Billy Kidd doing gates, just months before he would take gold in the 1964 Winter Olympics. DENVER LOVE: “Running trails are everywhere here… and not boring ones,” Barrett says. Running the trails or skiing the slopes, he loves the abundance of outdoor options in Colorado, a place he says felt like home from the moment he moved there in 1970. These days, with both of their daughters also living in Colorado, Richard and Elaine enjoy joining up for a family hike. One can’t-miss favorite? Eldorado Canyon State Park.

RICHARD BARRETT ’66

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CARLA MIRABELLI ’99 NOW: After working at the national level on education policy and fundraising, Carla Mirabelli wanted to see the fruits of such advocacy through direct work on the ground. That led her to Metropolitan State University of Denver, where she’s been on staff for the past twelve years. Her latest role is director of the Center for Urban Education and the TRIO Upward Bound Program, pre-collegiate initiatives serving the local community. Approximately a quarter of the MSU Denver student population is Latinx, and more than half or the undergrads are first-generation college students. Mirabelli is particularly proud that local high school students who initially connected to the university through afterschool programs are now MSU students and working as mentors in the program that mentored them. “It’s beautiful to see this pipeline, this continual system of connection, getting more kids to college,

creating more opportunity,” she says. UVM: Mirabelli was all about the Lawrence Debate Union during her UVM years, crediting the program for developing skills in making compelling arguments and advocating for others that have been critical to her career. Now, as she plans a move to Vermont this summer, Mirabelli hopes to get involved with UVM Debate again as a volunteer and contributor to support the efforts of Professor Helen Morgan-Parmett ’00, an LDU teammate from her undergrad years. DENVER LOVE: Just a block away from home, Cheesman Park is a go-to spot in the city for Mirabelli. She praises the park’s Rocky Mountain views, rich history, and vibe that reminds her of urban parks back east. During the pandemic, it was also a place to find a rare sense of community, when neighbors would gather at eight o’clock in the evening for a cathartic collective howl.

carla mirabelli ’99

ALY MCCLARAN

SPRING 2021 |

BRANDON DYSKTERHOUSE ’88

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BRANDON DYKSTERHOUSE ’00 NOW: Years of experience as an elite alpine skier and coach helps inform Brandon Dyksterhouse’s work as CEO of TheFeed.com, the largest sports nutrition, supplement, and recovery gear store in North America. The Boulder-based company (familiar to Tour de France fans from broadcast commercials) is on the rise with 100 percent growth annually over the past three years. Dyksterhouse gave professional skiing a shot after graduation, until injuries made him shift course to coaching, still part of his life. Successes on that front include leading the University of New Mexico to the program’s lone NCAA Championship in 2004 and serving as head coach for the U.S. Ski Team across two seasons, focused on working with Mikaela Shiffrin as she won twelve straight slaloms and the 2015 World Championship. UVM: Coursework as a business major and training as a varsity athlete (1997 NCAA champ in giant slalom) was a substantial load. Dyksterhouse also piled on a number of part-time jobs—bartender to window-washer—to help make ends meet. “I didn’t have a lot of money at UVM and remember feeling cramped for time,” Dyksterhouse says. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but it really prepared me to be flexible professionally and adapt on the fly.” DENVER LOVE: Dyksterhouse grew up a military brat and has lived all over the world. He says Colorado is the first place that felt fully like home, embracing the sunshine and countless trails. Married to Natalie Biedermann, a former Colby skier, the couple welcomed their son, Dutch, in 2019. A dedicated cyclist these days, Dyksterhouse already has a long-term plan for a father-son go at the Leadville 100 mountain bike race when he turns sixty and Dutch hits seventeen.

Michigan. She built lifelong friendships with classmates and found impactful faculty mentors, Ian Worley and Stephanie Kaza in particular. “I remember Ian for always challenging me when I spoke up in class and pushing back on my strongly held views,” she says, then adds, “I would love to be as certain now about everything as I was when I was twenty!” As an adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado, Pappas says she strives to reach the bar her UVM mentors set for engaging and motivating students. DENVER LOVE: When she moved west for law school, Boulder was Pappas’s first Colorado home, and she found a comfort in the similarity of Church and Pearl streets. Apologizing for sounding Centennial State cliché, she says skiing (Blue Ox and China Bowl at Vail), hiking (Royal Arch in Boulder and Herman Gulch to Herman Lake in the high country), and sunshine (year-round) are key attractions. UVM

VALERI PAPPAS ’95 NOW: As an attorney and managing partner with Davis & Ceriani law firm, a central focus of Valeri Pappas’s practice is litigating securities fraud cases for aggrieved investors. “One of the most fulfilling things about my job is the ability to resolve a case for someone who has lost a significant amount of money, sometimes their life savings,” she says. “By recovering some or all of that investment, we’re able to give them back some of their safety and security.” Also fulfilling, her management role, navigated most recently through the challenge of remote work during the pandemic. “Despite the oddities of this time, watching our associates learn and grow as they take on more responsibility in our cases is one of the best parts of my job,” Pappas says. UVM: Drawn by the environmental studies major, Pappas transferred to UVM from the University of JAMES STUKENBERG

VALERI PAPPAS ’95 raja gopal bhattar g’07

UVM Alumni, You’re Amazing. For the latest and greatest alumni news Visit online Class Notes They’re what you flip to first in the magazine but did you know they’re also online? Keep up with all the amazing happenings of your UVM-people with online class notes. These notes can be sorted by year, school or college, and even note type. They’re updated on an ongoing basis, so you don’t have to wait for the next print issue to see what your friends are up to.

www.alumni.uvm.edu/notes David Whiteside ’05 Jon Fishman, the drummer and namesake of the band Phish, helped David Whiteside organize his first major fundraiser in 2004 to benefit Black Warrior Riverkeeper, a nonprofit Whiteside founded as his senior thesis at the University of Vermont. Fast forward to February 2020, and David again partnered with Jon and others to co-host Downstream. The concert raised money for his nonprofit Tennessee Riverkeepers, founded to protect and preserve the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers by enforcing environmental laws and educating the public. Submit your Class Note today at:

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CLASS NOTES Life beyond graduation

June Dorion writes, “Although I have not heard from any members of the class, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all a healthy and happy year ahead. I was 98 in June and was serenaded by about thirty friends on the front lawn, all wearing masks. It was overwhelming. Although the world has changed dramatically for the members of our class since graduation from UVM, the concern and love of friends has not. So we have much to be grateful for. We offer our sincere condolences to the family of Mildred (Millie) Anderson Layn who passed away on January 3, 2021. Millie lived a long and productive life. She will be greatly missed.” Send your news to— June Hoffman Dorion 16 Elmwood Drive, Rutland, VT 05701 junedorion@gmail.com

Judy Tarshis ’73 writes with great sadness of the passing of both her father, Robert Tarshis, and sister, Ellen “Elly” Tarshis ’75. Robert graduated from UVM and joined the war effort as an engineer with NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. After WWII, he returned to his home in Montreal with his bride Ethel to work in the family business, raise a family of three daughters—all UVM graduates, and eventually go into business for himself. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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

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

Theodore (Ted) Battles, and his wife, Lisa Olsson Battles ’47, migrated from the Green Mountains through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Oklahoma before settling in the West Texas town of Midland. Com-

bining his lifelong passions for sports and writing, Ted was the sports editor for the Midland ReporterTelegram for nearly 40 years. Ted was the editor for UVM’s Cynic newspaper in 1948, the same post held by his cousin, Doris “Impie” Battles, in 1924. Ted was conscientious in his coverage of local and regional sports. He was a pioneer in the racial equality arena, as evidenced by his coverage of the local black high school’s state football championship in the early 1960s, which most local papers and writers did not even consider. Ted was inducted in 2014 into the Midland Sports Hall of Legends, the first sportswriter to be so honored. He also won several Texas Sportswriters awards. Ted acquired a passion for skiing in his fifties and schussed areas in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and the Alps over the next three decades. His traveling companion in the twenty-first century was UVM friend, Pat Buckingham Ballou ’47. Ted and Lisa raised two sons: Byron, a retired telecommunications consultant in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Brandon, who lives near Fort Worth and is an aviation consultant. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

David Huntley ’83 shares that his mother, Marilyn Lynn Davis Huntley, of Middletown, Connecticut, passed away in January 2021 from complications of COVID-19. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Roberta Leslie Bicknell Piper, author, psychological counselor, sportswoman, and feminist, died on October 4, 2020, at a nursing home in Littleton, Colorado. See online class notes for details on Roberta’s remarkable life and a photo of her sailing on Crab Orchard Lake in the 1980s. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Theodore (Ted) Thomas of Bennington, Vermont, and Lawrence Larry Reilly of Barre, Vermont, met in Rutland to celebrate their 92nd birthdays. Ted’s wife, Norma Fowler Thomas, passed away in April 2020, and Larry is the caretaker for his wife, Constance Carpenter Reilly ’53, who has Alzheimer’s. Ted and Larry first met at UVM freshman registration in 1948 after serving in the US Army. Both resided at Buckham Hall and were members of the Theta Chi fraternity. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Richard C. Wolfe (formerly Alumni Prexy) is still going strong. He lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, and continues to operate his Nantucket properties. He’d love to hear from you! Virginia Vincent passed away in August 2020. A Montana resident, she was active in the US Forest Service and served as a fire lookout specialist for more than 30 years. She was also a leader in bird watching field trips and worked and volunteered at the University of Montana’s plant collection herbarium. Mary (Molly) Beresford writes, “What a great way to share with other UVM friends. I so enjoy reading about everyone!” Her life as a recent widow has led her to parts of the world she’d never seen. Just before the COVID-19 lockdown, she had a fabulous trip to Vietnam. See online class notes for a photo of Mary in Ha Long Bay. Rose-Marie Tarbell had a wonderful talk with former roommate Joan Friendburg Griffin during the December holidays. She writes, “So many good memories, our special group of eight gals doing the five-year nursing program at UVM was so very different than today’s program. Both Joan and I keep very busy learning, providing social services for others, and learning to live with COVID. We were in Mary Fletcher when polio was being controlled; penicillin became a wonder drug, as well as streptomycin, and the installation of radium to kill uterine cancer. I am forever grateful for two ladies who believed it was on the right course of studies at the time, Dean Simpson and Faye Crabbe.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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| CLASS NOTES

Eugenia Striphas Frangos died in January 2016. Married for 56 years to James Frangos, she adored him, her two children, and two grandchildren. Eugenia cherished her fabulous UVM years and enjoyed lifelong friendships with her Tri-Delt sisters. Meredith Haas passed away on November 30, 2020. She was active in the dental hygienist profession in Georgia. She met her husband, John, skiing in Stowe at the Round Hearth Lodge. Meredith was an amazing mother with three outstanding children and five beautiful granddaughters. With a great deal of sadness, Joseph Pomeranz ’53 reports the passing of his wife, Joan Schneller Pomeranz, on October 21, 2020. She is survived by Joseph, their daughter Karen Lee, and their sons Edward ’81 and Mark. Joan earned her RN degree and worked as a public health nurse and a clinical instructor for several years until an accident injured her neck and back. She then returned to school and received a degree in computer science. Joseph writes, “Both Joan and I have always held UVM in our hearts. We met during Joan’s freshman year and remained together after that. We were married for 66 years. Our time at UVM will always be looked back on as very special.” Chuck and Jann Perkins celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary this year. Married on August 18th, 1956, they have two children and four grandchildren. Son, Chuck Perkins III ’86, has worked as a bush pilot in Ketchikan, Alaska, for 25 years. Daughter, Peggy Perkins Rieley ’89, works with her husband, Scott Rieley ’85, in commercial property development. Chuck writes, “My dad, Dr. Charles Norman Perkins, graduated from UVM in 1900, and from the UVM Medical College in 1904. The University of Vermont had a big influence on the Perkins and Rieley families. And Theta Chi Fraternity had a big influence on my social life during my college years. Jann and I have enjoyed a wonderful life, mostly living right here in Burlington, Vermont. We have traveled the world, but we always come back to Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains. I give a great big hi to all of my classmates, fraternity brothers, and UVM friends.” Class secretary Tom Gage recently had a nice conversation with Bruce Judd. Bruce is living in an assisted living complex outside of Barre, Vermont. He would love to hear from his Sigma Nu brothers and can be reached at 802-224-7956. Tom also spoke with Pattie Speer Gilman and Nate Gilman. They have lived in Ocala, Florida, for over 50 years. Nate is retired from real estate and banking, and Pattie is a retired social worker who has a passion for painting. They enjoy the company of, at last count, over 30 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, all within 100 miles of their home. Send your news to— Tom Gage 49 Twilight Road, Bay Head, NJ 08742 thomasgage@verizon.net

Roena Jones Hardy died on October 23, 2020, in Salisbury, Maryland. She was married to Richard Hardy ‘51.

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On her annual winter visit to Naples, Florida, Gerry Quinn Dankowski learned that Elaine Wittenstein Rohlin had moved year-round to The Carlisle. Gerry will return to Vermont in early spring. Her daughter, Mary Anne Sheahan ’86, grandson Hugh Sheahan ’20 and Clare Sheahan ’21 all live in Vermont. Class secretary Jane Battles writes, “Hi, Classmates! Wherever you are, I sure hope you are well and safe and have received the vaccine as we muddle through this tough time in our lives. The aging process is tough enough without this frightening episode, is it not?” Jane was saddened to learn from Ben Aibel’s wife, Nancy, that Ben had passed away in October. Ben worked as a stockbroker in Manhattan for his entire career and was a lifetime member of the Quaker Ridge Golf Club. At UVM, Ben was a former trustee, president of the Alumni Association Board, and member of the Phi Sigma Delta fraternity. Ever giving to UVM in countless ways, Ben was an all-around “great guy with a heartwarming sense of humor.” Jane writes from the Florida Keys— “a good place to stay put for the season for obvious reasons. No skiing this year! Stay well, safe, laugh a lot, and don’t forget to send her your news.” 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

After twenty wonderful years, Pauline LeMoine Cleveland, lost her job at the local library due to COVID-19. While she’s found many things to keep her busy, she misses the people. She would like to hear from any of her friends from UVM. Send your news to— Jane K. Stickney 32 Hickory Hill Road, Williston, VT 05495 stickneyjane@gmail.com

Robert Wolfe shares some fantastic news. Classmate Herb Brown has been elected to the UVM Athletic Hall of Fame. Herb has coached at the collegiate level, European professional leagues, and with the National Basketball Association. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Judy Rosenblum Cohen assists with COVID-19 testing and vaccinations, volunteering with the Shaker Heights Community Emergency Response Team. Mary Bohmer Ward shares news of the passing of her roommate Jane Eichler Sementilli on August 12, 2020, in Lakeway, Texas. After UVM, Jane completed a dietetic internship at the Mayo Clinic and returned to Mary Fletcher hospital as a

UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401

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

registered dietician. She married Ernest Sementilli in 1962, raised three daughters, traveled widely, and always shared with all who knew her an incredible smile, sense of wit, and zest for life. Mary writes, “To all of us at Gamma Phi and UVM ’58, Jane will always be special.” Stu Zeitzer “enjoys life to its fullest.” He’s been with Susie for 20 years, plays golf as often as possible, and works as a concierge in the health care industry. Patricia Theresa (Doherty) Denmead passed away on February 13, 2021, of COVID-19 in the care of the Critical Care Unit at Venice Bayfront Hospital, with her family beside her. Pat graduated from UVM with an elementary education degree and married her college sweetheart, Bob Denmead ’60, on August 16, 1957. She was a warm, caring, loving person who was well loved by all who met her. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Karl Raab and his wife Eveline enjoy retirement in Vancouver, British Columbia. Karl was recently honored as a 60-year member of the American Chemical Society. He continues his environmental advocacy as vice president for Right to Quiet Society, promoting soundscape awareness and protection. Stan Israel and Gerry Sanders, Phi Sigma Delta brothers, met with wives on Long Boat Key, Florida, to escape the cold northern winter. Denton (Denny) Morse, who played basketball at UVM from 1955-59, passed away peacefully on January 2021 in Bluffton, South Carolina. Denny’s son Rob shares that his father was alert and in good spirits for his final week, which he spent with his grown kids, brother, and sister-in-law. Send your news to— Henry Shaw, Jr. 112 Pebble Creek Rd, Columbia, SC 29223 hshaw@sc.rr.com

Elizabeth Buff Harrington shares with sadness that her husband, John Harrington, succumbed to cancer in May 2020 in Cave Creek, Arizona. Since leaving California in mid-March, Ruth Randle has spent extended time at her house on Cape Cod. She plans to return to the West Coast once the dangers of the virus and fires have subsided. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Margaret Connolly Leeper (education major and Pi Phi) divides her time between Englewood, Florida, and Big Sky, Montana. She downsized her Montana home to the tiny condo that they first bought when beginning to ski there in 1991. They are blessed to see the beautiful Gulf of Mexico and majestic Lone Mountain. Walking, golfing, yoga on the beach, and swimming are great activities to pass the time during the COVID quarantine. She writes, “Hopefully, next year will be better, but we all are so fortunate to be here.” Roy Kelly moved back to the old family farm in Berlin, Vermont, in October. Carol Overton Blanchard is isolating in her Sonata Vero Beach, Florida cottage with her two Manx cats that keep her company and keep her laughing. Her cottage is independent, so she doesn’t get the assisted living perks. Her late brother’s family also lives there and visits. Carol writes, “At 82 with an already depressed immune system, I am a prime candidate for the virus, so I am staying inside to stay alive, I hope. Stay healthy!” Jamie Jacobs ’61 MD ’65 and Jean Pillsbury Jacobs ’62 remain in Lexington, Kentucky. They moved from a three-level home to a one-level on the other side of town and love it. Since March, they’ve hunkered down, leaving only for their granddaughter’s wedding in Cleveland in October. They’re thankful for summer golf, allowing them to get out of the house safely. Jamie shares, “Like most of you, we had to cancel trips. It was two to Argentina, and one each to Russia, Scandinavia, Canada, and Colorado. I’m starting to reschedule some of these as I write. I hope this finds all of you safe and well. Best of everything to all in 2021, which won’t have to work very hard to be better than 2020.” Bob Bond joined the class of 1961 after graduating from Springfield College in Massachusetts in 1955 and spending the next two years on active duty in the Marine Corps at the end of the Korean War. Rob thoroughly enjoyed his two years at UVM, increasing his science background and falling in love with Marlene Mansfield ’59. Upon graduation, Marlene had an internship at the Hudson River State Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York, and Rob was left with, “What do I do?” He decided to teach public school science and landed a job in Cornwall, New York. This began a 35-year career of great fulfillment. He shares, “Years at UVM remain a most memorable time in my life!” Jay McGowan ’62 shares news with the class of ‘61 instead of his class of ‘62. Being a ‘five-year guy” was a good thing for Jay, as the Air Force ROTC went away in 1961 and he switched to Army ROTC. That led the way for Medical Service Corps, where he attended flight school, and learned about medical evacuation and rescue helicopters. After training, he was stationed in Vietnam, Japan, and Korea. He spent the next 30+ years in the helicopter world flying for the Port Authority of NYNJ and shares, “It was great being paid to do what I love.” He and Pat Merlone McGowan have two children living in Vermont, with the other two nearby in New Jersey. They had to forgo their annual month of living in a tent on Mount Desert Island, Maine, last summer,

due to COVID-19. Jay writes, “We are in the critical age group for getting it. How did that happen? We look forward to vaccinations and heading back to Mount Desert Campground on Sommes Sound this summer. Stay safe, everyone!” Mimi DavisNeches shares with sadness that her fantastic, insightful, and talented husband, Bob, died on March 3, 2021, just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit and isolated everyone. She’s working from home with many anxious, depressed clients. She spends time with her daughter and family and has joined a grief support group. Send your news to– Steve Berry 8 Oakmount Circle, Lexington, MA 02420 steveberrydhs@gmail.com

Approaching 51 years as a faculty member in various departments—most recently, Pharmacology & Neuroscience—Michael Collins retired in July from Loyola University Chicago. He writes, “It seemed like retirement was much earlier because, spurred by the coronavirus, the university temporarily closed our research labs and offices in mid-March, telling us to work at home as best we could! I look back memorably on years of rewarding and growth experiences derived from medical and graduate student teaching and neurotoxicity research. Now, startled that life is half over (Woody Allen quip), I will be helping my wife more with her dog and equine rescue efforts in semi-rural Illinois.” He anticipates working with others on the

important tasks of confronting our climate crisis and social injustice. Michael also plans to expand his support for a special human rights activist/ physician in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Most importantly, he looks forward to “visiting/reconnecting with old (though still young) friends from UVM.” In January, travel guru Johnny Jet, interviewed Jules Older on moving to New Zealand. The interview is available on YouTube, and you can find a direct link in online Class Notes. Send your news to— Patricia Hoskiewicz Allen 14 Stony Brook Drive, Rexford, NY 12148 traileka@aol.com

George Fortier is “Hanging on in Idaho and looking for a new normal.” He sends a hello to all. Frank Pagliaro still practices law in New York and California. Even though he loves being an attorney, he thinks this is the year to retire. He has four grandchildren that he enjoys being with and shares, “There is so much that I still need to teach them.” He and his wife want to continue annual international trips, and Frank spends a “good amount of time” as a publicly elected board member for a large health care district. For the past forty years, Marion Force Abel has enjoyed her life in Brattleboro, Vermont, where she and her husband, Peter, raised their three children, two UVM alums. All three work in various fields of medicine. Currently, one grandson is a UVM undergrad. Peter is a retired orthodontist. For more than

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| CLASS NOTES a decade, they have organized teams of volunteer dentists, optometrists, and helpers for travel to El Salvador and Honduras, where they provide dental and optometric services to poor people in rural areas. “Team Sight and Bite” has support from Rotary International clubs in these countries. An outgrowth of this is Pure Water for the World, a 501c3 organization whose mission is to bring clean water and better health to developing countries. Marion was a high school counselor at Brattleboro Union High School for almost twenty years. She and Peter are active in multiple ways—through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, historic prevervation work, music, and world travel. The couple summers in Lake George, where they race their sailboat. Marion shares, “We love woods walks with our Labrador retriever. Our appreciation for living in Vermont and the Adirondacks continues to grow.” Jim Card notes that Vermont is low in per capita cases and deaths due to COVID. Living in Miami-Dade County, he is “getting really frustrated with this pandemic. On top of that, I have not visited New England, via driving or flying, since March. Usually, I go about every two-three months to see sons and their wives plus seven grandchildren. I sure to do miss them, Zoom and visual calls have not entirely filled the void.” Class secretary Toni Citarella Mullins sends greetings to the class of ’63. She writes, “Welcome to 2021, a year that promises good health and real hugs! While this past year was surely a shock and an awakening for us, I hope that it also allowed us to look at our lives and recognize what is truly important. Perhaps, like me, you simplified, sampled, and selected people and activities that were important to you, appreciated the outdoors more, and left the daily busy stuff behind.” While Toni wasn’t able to make her annual trips to Colorado to enjoy skiing, hiking, and biking, she did take advantage of all the outdoor activities that are right outside her door. She lives in a beautiful New Jersey area, with plenty of opportunities for walking, biking, swimming, relaxing—all with skyline views of NYC. She continues with her dance partner and pilates clients, first virtually and now in person with masks worn by all. She’s also had plenty of time for reading her favorite authors. Send your news to— Toni Citarella Mullins 27 Lighthouse Point Road, Highlands, NJ 07732 tonicmullins@verizon.net

Following graduation, Richard McLenithan went to Albany Law School and settled in Glens Falls with his wife, Katie. Although he no longer practices law, they’re still there, and he works as a Channel Partner for U>Source Energy, an energy broker, and advisor. He looks forward to hearing back from classmates. Judy Rabinor is publishing her third book, a memoir, The Girl in the Red Boots: Making Peace with My Mother. Her message: Understanding how your relationship with your mother has affected your life is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Her two previous books were non-fiction: A Starving Madness: Tales

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of Hunger, Hope and Healing in Psychotherapy and Befriending Your Ex After Divorce: Making Life Better for You, Your Kids, and yes, Your Ex!. Marilyn Rivero happily retired from the UVM Medical Center in 2019 after a nursing career of 55 years. She served in the Peace Corps in Peru from 1964-1966 and as a Vermont state representative from Milton, 19912000. Marilyn has five successful, happy children, ten granddaughters, and finally, a three-year-old grandson. All live outside Vermont in many places she loves to visit, including California, Omaha, Colorado Springs, Tampa, and Boston. See online Class Notes for a photo of Marilyn and her five children. Your Class Secretary Sue Barber shares that she was in touch with Ellen Stark Gold, Susan Gershen Bachner, Phyllis Perry Marganoff, and Barbara Cross Ruccio. Once again, they discussed trying to get together for a reunion. It has been many years since they’ve gathered. They were all first-year residents in Robinson Hall. Send your news to— Susan Barber 1 Oak Hill Road, Harvard, MA 01451 suebarbersue@gmail.com

Mark Berson retired from law practice in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and relocated to Orleans on Cape Cod. Mark is active in town affairs and is a senior counselor to a Cape Cod law firm, where he concentrates on consulting, arbitration, and mediation. He and his wife miss their children and grandchildren. Mark is thankful they are safe and healthy. After graduating from UVM in 1965, Chan Chuongvan joined IBM in Essex Junction. After retirement, he and his wife, Sue Rowell Chuongvan, moved to Madison, Connecticut. Their sons, Will and Jeff, are UConn grads. Rose Levy Beranbaum’s 13th cookbook, The Cookie Bible, will be published in November 2021. Her celebrated book, The Cake Bible, is now in its 56th printing. Albie Pristaw retired from 50 years of practicing optometry. He looks back on his years at UVM as the profound opportunity of his life and values being in touch with Joe Pogar and Bob Russo ’64. With more free time, Albie and life partner Pauline Holt of West Lebanon, New Hampshire, look forward to their weekly Meals on Wheels run. They enjoy the wonderful smiles they get when bringing hot lunch into recipients’ homes. Albie is busy studying fly fishing and canoeing catalogs. He says, “I was the first in my family of Russian immigrants to attend college and made sure my children did the same. Daughter Dara is a physical therapist in the Boston area. Son Joshua invests in real estate in New York City.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

After 39 years of private practice and as a clinical associate professor of opthalmology at Brown University from 2012-2014, Sumner Fishbein moved back to Augusta, Georgia, where he is an associate pro-

CLASS NOTES ONLINE

alumni.uvm.edu/notes fessor of ophthalmology at the Medical College of Georgia—Augusta University. He enjoys reading, practicing the oboe, and shares that he is “not enjoying sheltering in place!” Dennis Linnehan and his wife, Elaine, celebrated their 48th wedding anniversary. He recently published his sixth and seventh landscape photography books. Dennis takes all the photographs and designs the cover and each page with photos and text. His two new books are Yellowstone & Grand Teton Splendor— new edition, and Zion National Park Splendor. The former is nearly sold out, with 70 copies left out of 4,200. Norma Hansen Reynolds ’66 G’74 and her husband, David, live in Estero, Florida, and would welcome visits from her Gamma Phi Beta sorority sisters. She teaches piano through the Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs. After 20 years coaching high school tennis in Montana, Lois Dodge Woodard has finally retired to spend more time with family. She and her husband, Mike Woodard ’64, enjoy spending time in Colorado and Montana with their five grandsons. Send your news to— Kathleen Nunan McGuckin 416 San Nicolas Way, St Augustine, FL 32080 kkmcguckin@comcast.net

Philip Bean passed away October 26, 2020. A Vermont native from Enosburg Falls, Phillip enjoyed a long career as a professor of history at Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois. In September 2020, Roger Allbee was honored with the Vermont Lifetime Leadership Award from the Vermont Council on Rural Development. Colonel Ronald Solomson completed 22 years of Army service. His last assignment was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where was he was chief of oral and maxillofacial surgery and director of the residency training program. Dr. Solomson lives in Potomac, Maryland, with his wife of 53 years, Fern Slavkin. Their son, Matthew, was nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Claims. The family is blessed with three grandchildren, Hadassah, Noah, and Miriam. Ronald writes, “Life is good, and this country is great.” Last year, Bill (William) Butterfield let us know that his company, Creative Technology, LLC, was chosen by NASA to send their data preservation device HELIOS to the International Space Station (ISS) to see if data written on the ground would survive on the outside girder of the ISS for a period of nine months. Bill writes that the final test results conclude that there was no discernible damage to the data, and NASA has asked them to space-harden the reader and writer for the device to be permanently installed on the ISS. His company is currently in discussions with both NASA and SouthWest Research Inc. to have that done.

Richard Langs has authored four books about the East Bay Regional Park District and runs a volunteer program supporting the golf course in the regional park. Claudia Serwer writes, “Other than Zoom, what could we possibly be doing during this pandemic? The most important thing is we are alive and well. Sadly, we have lost two friends to COVID. We are hunkering down on Cape Cod, where we feel it is safer than Manhattan. Stay well, everyone.” David Zarling, PhD MBA, is developing a Coronavirus vaccine to produce sterilizing anti-viral immunity. Dr. Cody Meissner, professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine, met with President Trump in the Oval Office in September to discuss options for control of COVID-19. Send your news to— Jane Kleinberg Carroll 44 Halsey Street, Apt. 3, Providence, RI 02906 jane.carroll@cox.net

Phillip Canfield, ’68, MD ’72 shares a note after seeing a picture of Science Hall where he proudly spent many hours during all four years as an undergraduate. He writes, “I remember looking out of top windows towards Lake Champlain on almost always cold days. I remember as a freshman undergrad looking over from fourth floor of Converse Hall towards Mount Mansfield and the medical complex.” After four years, he got “the coveted acceptance” to the UVM medical class of 1972. Phillip will never forget his teachers and classmates who cared for him in times of dismay and gave him the best medical fund of knowledge that served him for 45 years of practice. Phillip retired in 2017 and sends blessings to all. Like most, Sarah Dopp has had an unusual year. During the pandemic, her very-part-time-job at the UVM Medical Center came to an end. She’d been there for 52 years. Sarah misses both the atmosphere and her colleagues. She has more time for reading and involvement with many non-profits. Sarah was named an honorary trustee of the Vermont Historical Society and attends board meetings. She continues to serve on the board of the Vermont Humanities Council and on the External Advisory Board for the UVM Libraries. She misses seeing her lady Cats play basketball this winter! Sarah shares distress at potential cuts to the humanities at UVM: “Liberal Arts/Humanities form the true foundation for every other discipline, so this seems an unwise course! Two more years till our 55th—if we all get vaccinated! Be well, everyone!” Brenda and Lee Roy send thanks for the condolences on the passing of their son Travis. “We continue to be in awe of his outreach and the impact he had on others,” they write and share a quote in the chapel at Trav’s beloved Tabor Academy that reads, “‘Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works.’ This must have made an impression on Trav. He certainly was a bright light in our lives, and it seems in many others. His smile, kindness, and genuine good will were apparent for all to see.” It’s been a busy and rewarding year for Jack Rosenberg. He was one

of 55 artists selected from 522 entries for the MFA Light and Shadow exhibition by juror Joseph Di Bella and has received recognition through several venues for his photographic work. Jack’s work can be seen at Alignm2atViewbug. Jeff Barnes sends greetings to classmates. Send your news to— Diane Duley Glew Unit 2, 23 Franklin Street, Westerly, RI 02891 ddglew@gmail.com

Forty-five years after joining James J. Dowd & Sons Insurance Agency, Inc., Robert Gilbert stepped down. Formerly a senior marketing representative with Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., he serves as chair of the board for that 122-year-old firm. He also serves as chair of the board of trustees at Holyoke Community College, completing his tenth year as a trustee. Bob wishes his Sig Ep brothers “best of health and good fortune.” Nancy Elaine Bathgate Mullany ’69 G’00 peacefully passed away on August 27, 2020, in Arvada, Colorado, following an eleven-year battle with Alzheimer’s. She is survived by her husband of 50 years, Richard (Dick) Mullany ’70, and their family. At UVM, Nancy was nicknamed “Gate.” She was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, serving as president for one year, and known by her sisters as “The Guiding Light” as they commonly depended on her for advice in doing what was right. Nancy graduated in 1969 with a bachelor’s in comparative religion, and in 2000 she earned her UVM master’s in special education. Nancy taught at Richmond Elementary School in Vermont, where she loved her work and students and was respected and admired by her colleagues for 38 years. Lee Jacob ’69 MD’73 has been at work at a medical clinic for the uninsured in Georgia, helping through the pandemic. He encourages other retired medical professionals to consider coming off the sidelines to serve. “It takes a community to address the crisis, and I believe that it is very appropriate that Larner College of Medicine’s vision has community as one of the four strategic priorities,” Lee writes. “With apologies to all the UVM professors I abused (or, more likely, never met since I didn’t go to class) and to the shock and astonishment of my friends and classmates at UVM,” Ron Tice shares that he was named 2021 Corporate Lawyer of the Year in Toledo, Ohio, by Best Lawyers in America. This is the fourth time since 2010 he has received this honor. Now completing his 47th year in practice, he is “gently slipping into retirement.” Ron has been married to his college sweetheart, Mary, for 51 years, and they have two beloved children and four beautiful and brilliant grandchildren. Ron writes, “Life has been good to me and mine. Still connected with UVM friends Jeff ’68 and Joanne Kuhman ’68, John Hilton ’68, Paul Malone ’68, Larry Lawrence and Jack Stroker. My only question: Where is Jerry Hartson?” Jim Betts ’69 MD’73 wrote with greetings from California and wishes that “we can be on the mend as a country, both medically and politically.” Jim expressed admiration for UVM efforts to adapt teaching modes during the

pandemic and encouraged critical charitable support of our alma mater during these challenging times. He adds, “Although our 55th is still a few years away, I’ll look forward to being on campus with everyone. Stay well!” After 48 years working as a criminal defense lawyer, Stephen Kunken is officially closing his office in Commack, New York. He will do occasional legal work from his home in Huntington Bay. Stephen plans to devote more time to golf, pickleball, baseball, swimming, and Peloton. After 43 years living in California, Leslie Leslie and her husband, Jacques, decided they were ready to leave. The fire season’s anxiety and smoke-filled days became too much. They called Leslie’s dearest friend, Ned Macsoud of Woodstock for help relocating. This May, they will be moving back to Woodstock, Vermont, and will rebuild the Green Point Platinum home they’d built in Mill Valley, California. Leslie shares that she “feels blessed to be able to return to a place that has always felt like home.” She looks forward to reconnecting with dear old friends. Eileen Underwood ’69 G’81 enjoys retirement in Burlington. Although the pandemic has limited travel, she’s found a silver lining in the online offerings from organizations such as the Chittenden County Historical Society, the Genealogy Society, and even her yoga studio. Send your news to— Mary Moninger-Elia 1 Templeton Street, West Haven, CT 06516 maryeliawh@gmail.com

Wendell Brooks was among 100 St. Louis-area educators to receive Emerson’s Excellence in Teaching Award. Colin Hunter shares with sadness that Kathryn Craig Hunter passed on August 11, 2020 after a two-year battle with cancer. Colin writes, “Her passing was gentle and pain-free in the kind hands of the Hospice of the Piedmont in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is now at peace.” Thomas Varricchione finished his 50-plus-year career with 30-plus years of running clinical studies and patient registries and navigating the medical device regulatory process. Looking forward, he plans to “make a lady happy and swing clubs more often!” Send your news to— Douglas Arnold 11608 Quail Village Way, Naples, FL 34119 darnold@arnold-co.com

In October 2020, William Anderson and his wife moved to South Carolina. They enjoy ocean walks, golf, and retirement, in general. They plan to visit with their four granddaughters during Vermont summers. Penny DeLaire Pillsbury retired from her position as director of the Brownell Library in Essex Junction, Vermont, in 2014. She worked in libraries for 53 years. She and husband Keith Pillsbury ’69 have bicycled around Vermont traveled internationally via bike tours. Other favorite activities include gardening, St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir, and researching family history. Their daughter Ellen married Sarah Seifert in Minneapolis last SPRING 2021 |

| CLASS NOTES July, and their son Caleb Pillsbury married Mallory Briggs in 2019. Class Secretary Sarah Sprayregen shares the following news. Greetings from Burlington. As you will see from the signature line of this issue’s ’71 Class Notes, Owen Jenkins and I will produce Class Notes moving forward. I was delighted that Owen offered to be co-secretary after several years of my cajoling him! Sarah begins with the very sad news of Paul Sprayregen’s sudden passing on December 14. It is a devastating loss for their children, Robert ’01, Mary, and Richard. As many local friends know, Paul began his career in the Burlington area right after graduation. He founded ICV (construction and real estate development), and for almost 50 years, his projects transformed Burlington and surrounding communities. You can also find his office buildings and condominiums throughout New England and the Palm Beaches. Sarah appreciates the kind words of dear friends and classmates and feels fortunate to have Liz Mead Foster on speed dial, Mags Caney Conant available to take walks, and connecting with Joanne Czachor Magliozzi. “We are closing in on our 50th Reunion. Please mark your calendars for October 1-3, 2021, to virtually gather to celebrate.” Visit alumni.uvm.edu for program details, and feel free to write sarahsprayvt@gmail.com if you have any questions. Sarah’s heard from Myron Grauer, and they agreed that it would be great to invite the ’70s classmates to join our reunion in the fall. Jason Robards called Sarah after he learned about Paul’s passing and they had a wonderful chat. He and Myron see each other in Columbus, and he keeps busy with kids and travel. Milo Shelly sent holiday greetings with an update that he and his family are well in Modesto, California. His oldest granddaughter, Kaylin ’23, returns to campus for her nursing clinicals. Newly appointed class coSecretary Owen Jenkins shares: “I did not offer to serve, nor is it entirely true that Secretary Sarah merely cajoled me for several years. Fake news. She pressured me for many years. That said, I have accepted the appointment and will do what I can to fulfill it to the best of my ability. Now that I am fully retired, I view it as an opportunity to connect with classmates and other members of our UVM family. Since Covid hit, Wendy ‘73 and I have hunkered down at home with lots of Netflix and minimum in-person contact with anyone. 2020 was a very difficult year for so many reasons.” Noting losses of alumni and other members of the UVM community due to COVID-19 and other causes, Owen spoke to the passing of legendary Catamount hockey coach Jim Cross. Tributes to Coach Cross included poignant memories from Bob Rosenthal ’70, who earned a place in UVM fans’ hearts on the ice before going on to a long, remarkable career in journalism. After 27 years, Eugene Heiman retired from her practice of Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine in 2017. She has worked and lived in the Houston area since 1980. And Owen adds: “On the evening of the January 6 attack on our Capitol, the local news featured an interview with Garrison “Nicky” Nelson, one of my political science professors, now retired. As he did 50 years ago, he offered in-depth insight into the roots of

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the insurrection and the future of the Republican party and our democracy. I wish he had appeared in a Zoom meeting. I am sure the discussion would have been as lively as his classes.” Send your news to— Owen Jenkins P.O. Box 224, South Hero, VT 05486 Wojenkins22@gmail.com Sarah Wilbur Sprayregen 145 Cliff Street, Burlington, VT 05401 sarahsprayvt@gmail.com

Philip Lahar shares that as he reflects on his UVM experience, he appreciates the positive influence two teachers had on his life: Alan Broughton for creative writing and Paul Paganuzzi for classical Russian language and literature. Paula Lemerman has lived in St. Louis since 1972. She graduated from St. Louis University School of Law in 1983 and (mostly) enjoyed a 31-year career as an associate county counselor for St. Louis County. Sadly, they lost their 25-year-old son, Micah, to his years-long struggle with anxiety and depression. On the brighter side, she’s been married to her husband, “a good man and great friend,” since 1987. They’re shareholders of the Green Bay Packers! Their daughter Rachel, who lives and works in Manhattan, is also a shareholder. Paula shares, “It has been a long and exhausting year for us. I’ve worked in my garden and read a lot of political non-fiction. Here’s to a better year (travel, vaccinations, good health, and friends) for all of us.” Jeffrey Lewis is navigating the COVID-19 era. He writes: “I’m thinking that we are all called to some serious development in our thinking about the future, our economic organization, our imaginations, and our spiritual nature.” After a long career in the stove business, Charlie Page is retired and living in Randolph, Vermont. In 1972, Charlie left Vermont in a pickup truck to live in a teepee and work in the Maine woods as a logger. It was there that Charlie got his first job in the hearth industry. He is an avid gardener and woodworker and reports that he still has all his fingers! He recently reconnected with Derrick Semler and read his memoir of his time building a music school in Laos for amputees injured by unexploded ordnance from the Vietnam war. Charlie shares, “Derrick is an accomplished blues musician and it has been great to read the memoir and hear his original songs and clean guitar riffs. You can reach Derrick by e-mail at derricksemler3@gmail.com for a copy of his book or CDs.” Send your news to— Debbie Koslow Stern 198 Bluebird Drive, Colchester, VT 05446 debbie2907@gmail.com

Ann Taylor was a pre-med/psychology major at UVM. After graduation, she took a trip to Morocco and Europe with two UVM classmates. Ann shares, “Visiting many countries at the height of the hippie days did me in for medical school. However, I had to know how the human body functions. So, I joined the

CLASS NOTES ONLINE

alumni.uvm.edu/notes third physical therapy class at UVM after protesting the Vietnam War, etc. for a semester.” Ann went on to a long career working as a physical therapist in Vermont’s Addison County. Wayne Davis and Becky Pardee Davis ’75 hope everyone is well and on their way to getting vaccinated! They are anxiously awaiting post-vaccine visits to their eight grandchildren (three in London, three in Phoenix, and two in Denver). Wayne had both knees replaced in February 2020 and is recovering nicely, thanks, in large part, to Becky Pardee Davis’s (RN) excellent nursing skills! They would love to hear from former classmates. Judy Peterson retired from her position as president of UVM Home Health and Hospice in January 2021. She shares, “It is a fabulous organization, and I have been honored to serve as its leader for the past eight years. Now I look forward to post-Covid travel, enjoying family, and catching up with old friends!” Deena Wener ’73 G’74 served as chair of the Communication Sciences and Disorders Program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, from 19922018, and then returned to teaching full time. After thirty-one years of administration and instruction, she retired in January 2021. Dan Loh (UConn Law 1976) retired after a 43-year career in business and law. Dan led investor relations programs for two Fortune 500 metals and mining companies; counseled semiconductor, footwear, and internet companies in Hong Kong and Taiwan; and served as vice president of Atlas Air Worldwide, among other career endeavors. Dan and his wife, Patty Freeman Loh (Trinity College, Burlington, 1974), who continues her career as a special education teacher, look forward to spending time on Long Island Sound’s shores and with their three children and their families, including several grandchildren. Send your news to– Deborah Layne Mesce 2227 Observatory Place NW Washington, DC 20007 dmesce@icloud.com

After years of talking about a WDW Hall reunion, Paul Kenny shares that they finally did it via Zoom. Scott Stanwyck, Bob Merritt, Bob Wieler ’75 G’79, and Paul had a digital reunion, the first since ’74. William Spina ’74 MD’78 is a semi-retired orthopedic surgeon living off the grid in the Kingdom. He has a new grand-daughter, Rory. He sends best wishes to all and would love to hear from Bev Howell ’78 and Nancy Baker! Emily Manders usually goes to the UVM Holiday party in Boston but, this year, thanks to Covid, she attended the party virtually. She shares, “It was great to see other UVMers. The Scavenger Hunt was so much fun, especially since I won a delicious basket of Vermont goodies (that were consumed very quickly!). It was great to see

how many UVM or Vermont items everyone still has. My thanks to the organizers.” Send your news to— Emily Schnaper Manders 104 Walnut Street, Framingham, MA 01702 esmanders@gmail.com

Wayne Davis ’73 and Becky Pardee Davis hope everyone is well and, on their way, to getting vaccinated! They are anxiously awaiting post-vaccine visits to their eight grandchildren (three in London, three in Phoenix, and two in Denver). Wayne had both knees replaced in February 2020 and is recovering nicely, thanks, in large part, to Becky Pardee Davis’s (RN, ’75) excellent nursing skills! They would love to hear from former classmates. Judy Tarshis ’73 writes with great sadness of the passing of both her father, Robert Tarshis, and sister, Ellen “Elly” Tarshis ’75. Elly graduated from UVM with an art education degree and returned to her home in Montreal to find work. She gained great joy and satisfaction from teaching and found a place to begin her career in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. Elly continued her education at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She settled there and taught high school English and Art for 25 years until her retirement. Elly passed away unexpectedly in December 2020. After 40 years in Corvallis, Oregon, Ginny and Paul Adams have moved “over the mountains” to Bend. They are surrounded by the Cascades’ high peaks and endless recreational choices. They share, “The best part is being close to our daughter, son-in-law, and delightful four-year-old granddaughter.” After 35 years in the mortgage industry, Jeanne Boucher retired in 2019. Until COVID hit, she and husband Bob enjoyed indulging in their favorite addiction—travel. They can’t wait to hit the road again! Lew Comenetz has a great career in live event broadcasting as a senior video engineer covering events such as the 1996, 2002, and 2010 Olympics, the 1998 and 2000 Goodwill Games, and live NBA, NFL, and Major League Baseball broadcasts— including three World Series. Additionally, he’s worked on feature films and concerts. He continues to work where possible, although a changing industry, the COVID situation, and other factors have narrowed the industry. Send your news to— Dina Dwyer Child 26261 Devonshire Court 102 Bonita Springs, FL 34134 dinachild@aol.com

Randolph Oppenheimer was one of the 83 attorneys included in the 2021 edition of The Best Lawyers in America. Susan Barbuto completed two terms on the UVM Rubenstein School Board. She is a board member of the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference. Susan recently received an honorary proclamation by her mayor for 20-plus years of community environmental education, outreach, and activism. Andrea Casey is happy to announce her daughter’s marriage and her son’s engagement. Friendship is sacred to a group of

UVM alumni who spent their university days as roommates and friends. For the past few decades every June, they meet up at the Stowe Mountain Lodge to reminisce about their days in Burlington, and to reconnect with their youthful hearts. This group inlcudes Amy Jacobs ’77, Joan Segal, Tish Beitzel-Vredenberg ’77, Suzanne Gebo-Whitney ’77, Jan Sherman, Sue Edson-Wisniak and Andrea Mastrocinque-Martone. See their photo in online Class Notes. Andrea Mastrocinque-Martone writes that our class is “in stealth mode” to celebrate our 45th reunion. Please mark your calendars for the weekend of October 1, 2021 to virtually gather to celebrate. Please visit alumni.uvm. edu for program details and join our Facebook page (UVM Class of ’76 45th Reunion) and also feel free to write us at: uvmclassof76@gmail.com if you have any questions from your class reunion volunteers. Wilmington, Vermont, was simply not rural enough for Don Nelinson. He now resides in a log cabin in Whitingham, Vermont, where all friends and classmates welcome. Paul Prior writes, “Still my greatest accomplishment since graduating in 1976: performing on drums with rock legends Little Feat.” Edward Sall is transitioning to life in Scottsdale, Arizona, within the next two years. There, he’ll be seeing a lot of Robert Kornfeld and maybe Barry Gustin. Ed hopes a lot of the boys can make it out there for a reunion next year! Lynn Vera retired after 30 years in education, most recently as a high school counselor. She enjoys gardening and time on the water; and is “itching to travel post-COVID.” She recently recon-

nected with two long ago UVM friends. Kareen Wortman and Keith Wortman ’77 retired and moved to Aliso Viejo, California, to be closer to their children. Send your news to— Pete Beekman 2 Elm Street, Canton, NY 13617 pbeekman19@gmail.com

Andrea Bonnar hopes all are surviving the pandemic. “Who would have thought such a thing would happen in our lifetime?” She is well but was forced into an earlier-than-planned retirement. More free time allows her to return to her sewing hobby. Rick King ’77 G’81 retired from Thomson Reuters after 20-plus years as CIO and CTO. He looks forward to more time to do what he wants, and his roles chairing the Airport Commission and state IT Panel. Cindy Hayes Little, Barbara Goldberg Best, and Patty Donlan Greenfield got in their annual reunion visit in September. They went to Martha’s Vineyard and had a blast! They were “very careful with masks” and did not get COVID! 2021, they’ve vowed to go to Newport, Rhode Island. Cindy shares, “We have such a great time on our annual excursions!” COVID jumpstarted Wendy Nelson into early retirement, and it also taught her some significant lessons. She writes, “Appreciate all you have. Prioritize those you love, practice patience, and stay flexible. I feel oddly blessed by 2020!” She looks forward to a wild and crazy happy hour with dear old friends soon.

10,000 Members Strong Find your long-lost friends on UVM Connect. Alumni use the UVM Connect platform to find long-lost friends, mentor students, search for employees or employment, and more. Not a member yet? Join this vibrant UVM community at

www.uvmconnect.org

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

Alison G. Brown served as interim CEO of the University of Maryland Medical Center’s two hospital campuses in Baltimore for all of 2020 through the COVID-19 pandemic. She’s been with UMMC for 28 years and remains president of UMMC’s Midtown Campus hospital. Paul Zuckerman shares the sad news of Brian Evans’s passing in April 2020. Brian was a dear soul and a close friend to many of us in the classes of ’77 and ’78. After 42.5 years as an RN, 24 of those as a nurse practitioner, Nansi (Nancy) Greger-Holt retired. She plans to “volunteer at the COVID vaccine clinics, be a grandma in Asheville, North Carolina, quilt, hike, and play with my husband of 38 years.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Physical therapy classmates Sandy Meyers Wilcox, Liz Maccini Millard, Lisa Fernandez Eldridge, Mary Tautkus Winslow, Jenny Yonker Lind, and Linda Potash Marchese (and Paula Jenkins LaRose in spirit and via Zoom) met for a Social Distance Pandemic 2020 weekend at the Narragansett, Rhode Island, home of Sandy and Dean Wilcox. They enjoyed COVID-safe activities, including time on the beach, scooter-car touring of Newport and the Cliff Walk, crafting, a delicious Lobsta Boil, and sunset kayaking. Lots of reminiscing with ’70s music, games, laughs, specialty drinks, bourbon and vodka tastings. The exhibition New York Responds—The First Six Months, Digital Image, in the Museum of the City of New York includes Teressa Valla’s work. The exhibit is sourced from approximately 20,000 artworks and objects. Teressa writes, “I bring witness to essential workers in the still-unfolding events of COVID.” See her image in online Class Notes. Send your news to— Beth Gamache bethgamache@burlingtontelecom.net

The daughter of Kristin Foster and John S. Foster ’79, Holly Foster ’23, is a sophomore at UVM. Kristin bought the whole family UVM swag for Christmas. Sally Mitchell is a retired elementary school art teacher. She lives on an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine, creating and selling her art and enjoying the island life. Kim Bacon McLellan is also on the island. Sally has three grown children, five granddaughters, two cats, and one husband. Throughout the pandemic, Kimberlee Nicksa has felt lucky to stay in touch via weekly Thursday night Zoom calls with her AXO sisters: Allison Fraser, Jan Waterman Cohen, Mary Jarrett, Nancy Lee Monroe, Betsy Faunce Andrews ’81, Pam Rogal Zlota ’81, and Bonnie Caldwell ’81. Kimberlee

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writes, “We graduated from UVM 40 years ago, and our friendships are still rock solid. Miss our in-person visits, but found a wonderful way to stay connected! Go Cats Go!” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

For the past twenty years, Steve Morse has been in Charleston, South Carolina. He works for New Jerseybased Arc Home Loans and has a son in Hawaii, and a son and daughter in colleges in the south. At the age of 60, Julia Whitney received a J.D. from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. Brad Aldrich successfully transferred ownership of Aldrich + Elliott, PC (A+E) to his two business partners Wayne Elliott and Jason Booth ’04. A water resources engineering firm in Essex, Vermont, A+E employs seven graduates of UVM’s civil engineering program. Composer and songwriter Dave Hall continues his musical life in this period of pandemic and isolation. In addition to writing music for theater and film, he’s president of the Board of Clarion Concerts, an organization that streams concerts of classical, bluegrass, and Iraqi Maqam music during the pandemic. They also host panels on topics including Racism in Classical Music. Visit these websites for more information: www.clarionconcerts.org, www.davehallmusic.com. Karen Kaplan is a senior editor at the science journal Nature (based in London, UK). She celebrated her twelfth anniversary in December and works in the DC office (remotely for now). Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Lauren-Glenn Davitian continues to help grease the wheels of democracy at CCTV in Burlington. She stays in touch with her UVM pod. Send your news to— John Peter Scambos pteron@verizon.net

Jacqueline Doherty shares that after traveling for two hours each way for 23 years to work in Boston, having to work remotely for almost a year has been a challenging change. She works in grant administration at Mass General Brigham after being a lab manager and doing research for the president of the Schepens Eye Research Institute. She’s active in town committees, a local Lion’s Club member, and participates at her area 100-year-old Catholic church. Jacqueline shares, “Wishing all of my classmates and their families much happiness, health, and please be safe and be well!” Skip Gilbert was recognized by Soccer Today as one of the most influential leaders in the sport in 2020. As CEO of US Youth Soccer, the largest youth sports organization, he took advantage of the time off the field to refocus this three-million-plus-member organization’s mission. Determined to help more people enjoy soccer as a lifelong passion, his big-

picture leadership to grow the game earned top marks. Skip, and his wife, Jenifer, moved to McKinney, Texas, in June. Life has been quiet for Lisa Crozier. Her oldest, Dr. Caryn Alexis Greco, née Crozier, married Dr. Mitch Greco in September. It was an intimate and private celebration attended by both sets of parents and her youngest, Dr. Colleen Nicole Crozier. They hope to have their celebration sometime this spring. Lisa spent a week in Curaçao, January 2020, with her youngest. They had a great time—swam with the dolphins, snorkeled, with up-close encounters with sea turtles! She continues to teach Pilates at Inner Strength Pilates. They closed down for eight weeks and were able to open again in June. Send your news to— Lisa Greenwood Crozier lcrozier@triad.rr.com

In the spring of 2020, Sonja Shaver Fuller successfully transitioned to working from home. Believing it to be temporary, she occupied a corner of the first floor, two rooms away from her husband’s athome office. Over a stay-cation in January 2021, she successfully moved her at-home office to a spare bedroom on the second floor because a.) She wanted her living room back and b.) She accepted no one is coming to visit for a while yet. Sonja’s brother Eric Shaver ’88, Shelley Carpenter Spillane, Chip Spillane ’87, Abby Goldberg Kelley, and Bill Rustico joined Sonja in October 2019 at a memorial service for Sonja and Eric’s father. Sonja is “lamenting the fact I’ve seen no one pretty much since! (But it has to be.)” Jill Honigfeld Bloom lives in New Jersey with her husband, Bryan, and their three dogs. Their daughters, Jenna, 29, and Allie, 27, work and live in New York City. Jenna recently took a weekend trip to Burlington to visit her mom’s old stomping grounds, and of course, visited the Alpha Chi Omega house. Lauren O’Connor Boole resides in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband, Dana Boole ’86. Dana is CEO of CAHEC, a Community Investment Co. Lauren works part-time in a boutique. She enjoys playing tennis. They have two children, Kelsey, 26, a mortgage broker in Charlotte, and Taylor, 24, who works for an investment firm in Boston. Abby Kelley lives in Shelburne with her husband of 24 years, Jim. Son Grant Kelley ’20 graduated from business school in 2020, and daughter Sara Kelley ’23 is a sophomore at UVM studying Human Development and Family Studies. Abby has worked for UVM since 2012 in the Residence Life Department as the office manager/summer housing coordinator for Marsh-Austin-Tupper and Living/Learning. (Bring back any memories?!) She enjoys being on campus and working with the students. Your class secretary Shelley Spillane shares the following. “Abby and I each decided to write an update on ourselves for this issue of The University of Vermont Magazine. Yes, we’re still best friends and live in Shelburne, Vermont. Up until the pandemic, we would meet at lunch to work out at the Gutterson gym.” Shelley and husband, Chip Spillane ’87, work together in their family businesses. Chil-

B AC K O N C A M P U S dren Tucker, 30, and Summer, 27, moved back from New York City to the Burlington area. Their son Kidder, 24, moved back for six months but returned to Boston. Shelley shares, “As secretaries of our class, Abby and I would love more of our classmates to send us updates to be included in the upcoming issues.” Send your news to— Abby Goldberg Kelley kelleyabbyvt@gmail.com Shelley Carpenter Spillane scspillane@aol.com

The EDP Foundation has renamed their individual academic scholarship to honor the late Heidi SherrickDuston who passed on July 30, 2020, after a hardfought, twelve-year battle with cancer. Heidi was an inspirational figure in the Florida youth soccer community. Recently celebrating 30 years in business, entrepreneur Lucy Gobbi Costa and partner and husband Jack are owners of Promotional Incentives, Inc., a successful promotional products company located in Cape Coral, Florida. Their organization provides custom apparel, recognition awards, business gifts, and many branded products to organizations throughout Florida and the United States. Known for their creativity and innovation, they’ve received numerous advertising and public relations awards. In their business and personal lives, they’re dedicated to helping others be successful. Whether it’s supporting their community by serving on non-profit boards and committees or helping clients implement the perfect promotion, they are thrilled to be fulfilling their passion for helping people feel valued. Rich Gold’s second grandchild arrived in October 2020. Ford Bennet joins his sister, Maya Paul, in the Gold-Rosner family. Craig Mabie completed the Land Steward Training Program with the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests and will steward a forest reservation in central New Hampshire. Steven Sudduth continues as director of Wyonegonic Camps, an overnight summer camp for girls in Denmark, Maine. Sue Thoens moved to Bend, Oregon, and launched @TheBendProject reaching out to aspiring young people across the nation sharing the spirit of entrepreneurship. Contact Sue to be a virtual stop on the 2021 National Tour. Dale Spaulding ’85 recently joined Greenman-Pedersen Inc (GPI) as their new COO. Christer Ericsson ’86 is the CEO. GPI headquarters are in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Send your news to— Barbara Roth roth_barb@yahoo.com

William Jacoby and Patrick Jacoby ’19 had a visit from Bernie. Send your news to— Lawrence Gorkun vtlfg@msn.com

Paul Sweeney was named to the 2020 New York Metro Super Lawyers list. He is a partner in his firm’s litiga-

COURTESY NASCAR

Alumnus earns pioneering appointment in United Church of Christ

STEVE PHELPS ’85, NASCAR PRESIDENT

Growing up with visits to the Catamount Speedway in Milton, Vermont, Steve Phelps ’85 knows that stockcar racing is a sport best enjoyed in person. “When you go to a NASCAR race, it’s very sensory. You can hear the engines; you can smell the gas and the tires. It’s tactile,” he says. As president of NASCAR, Phelps also knows it’s a sport that has the potential to be for everyone, if recognized as a sport that’s welcoming of everyone. On June 10, 2020—in the wake of the death of George Floyd and at the request of the association’s only Black driver, Bubba Wallace—Phelps guided NASCAR through a decision to ban the Confederate flag at all its events. “The stance that we took on social justice after the death of George Floyd was really an industry-wide effort that started with the drivers,” Phelps says. “Shortly after, I addressed our entire industry about how we needed to do better, we needed to listen, we needed to be educated, we needed to do better overall—as a sport and as a country. I believe it was the next week we banned the Confederate flag at all of our facilities, which, for some people—including myself—was very long overdue, but we had to make sure that we were being smart about how we were going to do that. There were some people that thought that it would completely alienate our fanbase and was a foolish thing. I didn’t think so, and it’s proven to be one of the better decisions that we’ve made as a company. For us, we had to be, and will continue to be, a sport of action as it relates to social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think what is striking to people is—with the perception of what NASCAR was—that if NASCAR can do it, boy, can everyone do it. And I think that has been important for us.” This semester, on March 9, Phelps joined Wanda Heading-Grant ’87 G’03, UVM’s VP for diversity, equity and inclusion, for a virtual take on the annual Hoffman Family Business Lecture.

tion practice group. Peter Church reports that his son Ben Church ’20 graduated from UVM. Ben’s sister, Eleanor, will carry on the UVM tradition in the fall of 2021. Glen Silverstein’s daughter Mimi graduated last spring from Oberlin College and moved to Burlington to launch her art career. He is “happy to be up there more often, the school and city look great.” Glen’s younger daughter, Kylie, is a student at Bucknell. Send your news to— Sarah Reynolds sarahreynolds10708@gmail.com

Charles Spofford joined American Program Bureau (APB), a leading speakers bureau in Boston, and has inspired and motivated his clients’ audiences with amazing speakers. If you need a keynote speaker for an upcoming event (virtual or in-person), give him a shout. Dan Krason’s son, Noah Krason ’24, is enrolled as a freshman in UVM’s Honors College, They’re both looking forward to making some visits to Al’s Frys. Send your news to— Cathy Selinka Levison crlevison@comcast.net

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| CCATAMOUNT L A S S N ONATION TES

Hard Hike, Great Cause The twenty-two-mile, eight-peak traverse of the White Mountains Presidential Range will inevitably impose body- and soul-testing moments. For Dana Albrycht ’02, the challenges all hikers face on those granite ridges was greatly amplified by the fact that he took on the traverse on one leg, no prosthetic, and a pair of crutches. (Due to arthritis pain in his hip, he stopped wearing a prosthetic several years ago.) A two-time Paralympian in swimming and a marathon runner, Albrycht likes an endurance challenge and loves time in the wild. Another reason motivated his ambitious hike last fall in New Hampshire, a fundraiser, “Crutchwalker: Hiking to Help the Disabled” for adaptive sports programs and other support organizations. A varsity swimmer and captain his senior year at UVM, athletics and the outdoors have remained central to his life, as Albrycht and his wife, Jessica, raise their three children—Denali, Acadia, and Scottlyn—in Simsbury, Connecticut. Asked to rank the White Mountains hike among the toughest things he has tackled in the name of fun, he mentions the 2008 New York City Marathon. Twenty-six miles on NYC streets or peak after peak after peak in New Hampshire, both can be trying. “But here’s the difference,” Albrycht says. “Though the length and terrain of the Presidential Traverse makes it incredibly challenging, it’s just filled with so much beauty. When I’m up in the mountains is when I’m at my happiest.”

Luisa Zauli passed away on May 29, 2020. She was survived by her husband and two children. She was fortunate enough to see her daughter follow in her footsteps and join UVM’s Class of ’23. Andrew Craft PhD’89 was awarded the 2020 Humphrey Tonkin Award at the University of Hartford, honoring career accomplishments as a scholar. Andrew was recognized for his research in hydrogen as an alternative energy, an interest that began while pursuing his doctorate in chemistry at UVM under Professor Ted Flanagan’s supervision. Andrew has been a member of the chemistry faculty at Hartford since 1999. Trudy Larson and Jill Talbot Huard ’88 got together in October 2020 for a fun-filled roommate-reunion in Carefree, Arizona. Masks were worn, social distance was kept, and they had lots of laughs. Send your news to— Maureen Kelly Gonsalves moe.dave@verizon.net

Trish Ann Huie traveled from her home base in Tampa to visit Samantha Carleton in Vero Beach, where Samantha and her husband work remotely to avoid the New England winter. They had a great time connecting on a Zoom call with Chrissy Reed McGowan and Mark McGowan, Jon Hill, Carol Kallmann Kane, and Brian Kane ’88. Chrissy and Mark have a son at UVM. Samantha sends a “shout out to all our classmates; we agreed we had the best years at UVM and are planning a Burlington reunion when it is safe to travel.” Margaret (Peggy) DeLong is excited to announce that her book on happiness was recently published. Feeling Good: 35 Proven Ways to Happiness, Even During Tough Times, is a book of positive psychology techniques, chock full of relatable stories, the research and brain science behind each method, and actionable steps to find joy in everyday living. Each paperback purchase comes with a free three-month membership in an online companion program, also called Feeling Good. Kimberly Formisano hopes to visit Burlington and the surrounding area once the pandemic has passed. She has two children in college, one about to graduate. After 25 years at The Park School in Brookline, she’s decided to move on and looks forward to continuing to work in the field of education. Kimberly recently connected with Celia Luthi, who lives in Bermuda. Celia enjoys having her two girls, a senior in high school and a sophomore in college, learning from home. Kimberly would “love to connect with classmates. If the pandemic has taught me one thing, it’s the importance of human connection.” Debbie Schultz Ireland is still in Richmond, Virginia, and works as an administrative assistant at the local school board office. Former roommate, Sarah Rodier Wilkinson, lives down the road and braved the pandemic to watch Debbie’s oldest daughter marry in November 2020. Debbie and Sarah are “still roommates at heart.” Sean Martin enjoys summers in Chatham, Massachusetts,

COURTESY DANA ALBRYCHT

and watching his son catch the “big ones.” He had a great fall hooking up with Delta Psi alums in Vermont and avoiding COVID-19. He looks forward to this being over so “we can all hang out together again.” Send your news to— Tessa Donohoe Fontaine tessafontaine@gmail.com

Kevin Spillane ’91 and Stacey Payne Spillane ’91 are happy to announce the wedding of their daughter, Taylor Rime, to William Robert John Conroy. On August 8, 2020, the wedding was enjoyed by family and close friends at their home in Shelburne, Vermont. The Spillanes share, “We were overwhelmed with the loving support of our many longtime UVM friends!” UVM attendees included: Eric Krawitt ’92, Carrie and Phil Gonzalez, Jen Boeri-Boyce, Gail Rose and Doug Goldsmith, Kevin Spillane, Melissa and Marc O’Meara, Laura Busse ’92, Matt Igler, Becky ’92 and Jeff Kapsalis, and Andy Boyce. Chad Hollister writes that it’s been a tough year in the entertainment industry. He’s still making music full-time, focusing on TV, film, and sync, as gigs are all canceled. His wife, Katie, thrives as an artist in the painting medium. Daughter Riley, 15, and son Bodi, 13, are working through their hybrid school schedules and miss hanging with their friends. Chad lives in Worcester, Vermont. He hopes all are safe and well and invites classmates to “shoot him an email at chadmusic.com to stay tuned to his music world.” Last year, Eric Patel founded a start-up called BostonExO based on the best-selling book Exponential Organizations. Its mission is to help organizations thrive through continuous business model innovation. They help entrepreneurs and start-ups through BostonExO Labs. Their personal development workshop, Regenerate ‘21, has been running bi-monthly since December 2020. After working in New York City, Dallas, and Burlington, Tim Puro settled in Rutland in 1999, where he’s a full-time coin, jewelry, and antique dealer. Tim loves Rutland and lives with his two killer rescue pooches, Zella and Lucy. Elizabeth (Liz) Scharf and Jonathan Lauri Scharf ’90 celebrated their 20th year living in Middlesex, Vermont. Liz is the Community Economic Development and Food Security Director at Capstone Community Action in Barre. Lauri is the manager of informatics for Bi-State Primary Care in Montpelier. Their oldest son is a third-year engineering student at Northeastern, and their youngest is a sophomore at UVM and loving it! They keep in regular touch with Willow Older, a freelance editor in California, and Jenn Ingersoll, a high school English teacher at U-32 in East Montpelier. Send news to— Karen Heller Lightman khlightman@gmail.com

Stacey Siegel embarked on a new career as a financial advisor at the CAPTRUST, Lake Success office on Long Island. Her focus is supporting women in transition (i.e., career change, divorce, death of a spouse). SPRING 2021 |

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

After 22 years in Pennsylvania, Jonathan (Jon) Decker enjoys the peacefulness of living on the water and wearing shorts and flip-flops year-round after relocating his family to the west coast of Florida. He leads the St. Petersburg office of Merrill Lynch. Jon enjoys staying in contact with UVM friends via social media and is still waiting for his beloved Buffalo Bills to win the big one. After three decades as an activist (starting at UVM) and community organizer for environmental justice, Devorah Brous merges insights from regenerative agriculture and ancient earth-based practices to address the epidemic of burnout. She teaches a systemic approach to pause, to grow a regenerative culture in our homes, institutions, and social justice movements. Devorah did a TEDxGreenStreet original talk: An Antidote to Burnout: The Regenerative Change Cycle. She’s an experiential educator, urban homesteader, writer, and founder of FromSoil2Soul (fromsoil2soul.com). John Jacobi is proud that his daughter Molly Jacobi ’24 has started school at UVM. He writes, “The Honors College dorms are great and she loves Burlington!” Send your news to— Gretchen Haffermehl Brainard gretchenbrainard@gmail.com

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Send your news to— Cynthia Bohlin Abbott cyndiabbott@hotmail.com Send your news to— Valeri Susan Pappas vpappas@davisandceriani.com Send your news to— Jill Cohen Gent jcgent@roadrunner.com Michelle Richards Peters mpeters@eagleeyes.biz

Sean Boucher ’95 congratulates Emily Boucher for completing all the rigorous certifications to become a school library media specialist in Connecticut. Sean shares, “She persevered through a tremendously difficult year of student teaching, coursework, and certification examinations to complete her study and graduate with a 4.0 in December. You’re amazing!” Cara Stickney runs the Horse Program at The Putney School in Putney, Vermont. She has two sons, Warren, 9, and Everett, 4. Her husband, Robert, raises Wagyu beef at the Stickney Family Farm in Saxtons River, Vermont. Send your news to— Elizabeth Carstensen Genung leegenung@me.com

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Dana Devlin Brennan writes, “Hello class of 1998! Now more than ever, I wish we could all gather in person and tell stories of our times at UVM!” UVM planted the seed for her love of the great outdoors; she spends a lot of time hiking, skiing, running, and walking. Dana lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with her teenage twin boys and ten-year-old son. She’s ready and willing to get back into the working world. Let her know if you’re in the Boston area and have a job opening for a dietitian. Lloyd Douglas Fisher works as a primary care pediatrician and increasingly in IT, building content, decision support, and immunization programming for electronic health records. He’s also the chair of Community Pediatrics for his local academic center. Lloyd is serving the first year of a two-year term as president of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Little did he know that he would begin his term during a pandemic and find all of his spare time dedicated to supporting the school districts’ efforts to reopen schools safely. Fortunately for his three children (ages 12, 10, and 8), their town started school with a week on/week off hybrid model. He enjoys watching them learn how to advocate for themselves in classes. Their saving grace has been taekwondo—the local studio remained open via Zoom, and now has resumed some in-person classes. Since they are mostly home, his wife and children convinced him to add a dog to the mix. In recent years, they have vacationed with Charles Graul, Peter Juliani, BJ Allaire, and their families, and have hopes for this summer. Early winter, they enjoyed a Zoom happy hour with the Grauls, Julianis, Allaires (including BJ’s wife Emily Prescott Allaire ’02) and Chester Darling, Matt Durgin, Tara McCready Palmieri ’99, and Jackie Phelps Figueira ’99. Send news to— Ben Stockman bestockman@gmail.com

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Send news to— Sarah Pitlak Tiber spitlak@hotmail.com Melissa Corbin’s novel Soul Mate Sh*t, a memoir inspired novel, was published in October 2020. Signed copies are available at soulmateshit.com. Constance Cannon lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Constance sells residential real estate at Kentwood City Properties. She’s an avid cyclist, skier, and hiker when not working. When COVID19 gets under control, she’ll resume her frequent trips to California to visit kids and grandkids. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Erin Wilson was married on June 13. Due to COVID-19, her planned black tie wedding in NYC with 250 people at Saint Thomas Cathedral and the University

Club was moved to Ridgefield and included just family. She shares, “It was perfect this way, and we couldn’t have been happier. I got pregnant 14 days after and am expecting a boy next spring.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Elizabeth (Libby) Ehlers is completing the fourth year of her Ph.D. in wildlife biology at the University of Montana. Her research focuses on understanding factors contributing to wildlife populations’ changes and associated impacts to communities reliant on subsistence resources. She enjoys taking her husband of 14 years, Nick, their kids Bechler, 5, and Taela, 1, into Alaska’s arctic regions and the Yukon Territory of Canada to help collect data on a large, migratory herd of caribou. Ron Hirschberg is happy to share his new project focusing on COVID frontline workers and collaborative songwriting. Frontline Songs heeds the call to help healthcare workers and first responders. Learn more at frontlinesongs.com. Christopher and Kelly Ullman welcomed their second daughter, Ella Olivia Ullman, in late October 2020. They live in Wilton, Connecticut. Send your news to— Jennifer Khouri Godin jenniferkhouri@yahoo.com

Sederick Rice PhD’03 published a book, StepDads Showing Up & Showing Out: Tips for Navigating the Complex World of Blended Families. The book is his first-person perspective with learning curves and experiences that provide support, wisdom, and encouragement to men to help them fully embrace and appreciate their role as a step-father. Send your news to— Korinne Moore Berenson korinne.d.moore@gmail.com

Blank Rome LLP is pleased to announce that Michael J. Barry was elected partner, effective January 1, 2021, in the Firm’s Philadelphia office. Douglas K. Lehman G’04 retired as director of Thomas Library at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, in August 2020. He had a 42-year career as a librarian in Texas, Ohio, Florida, and Vermont. Douglas worked in Howe Library from 200-2004 and received his UVM master’s in history. Brett Walker is the chief of the Environmental Management Division at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He frequently heads to Vermont with his wife and good friend, Rachel Cook ’02, to ski, fly fish, hike, and camp. Each year he heads to Montana to visit UVM friends who are lucky enough to call that state home and enjoy all the outdoor activities he learned to love at UVM. Send your news to— Kelly Kisiday kelly.kisiday@gmail.com

C ATAMOUNT NATION

Progressive Ministry Alumnus earns pioneering appointment in United Church of Christ

As a teenager, Darrell Goodwin began composing his own sermons, recording them in his bedroom on the South Side of Chicago, then having his grandmother listen and give feedback. Asked if she offered a critical or a tirelessly supportive ear, Goodwin laughs, and says that her fundamental lesson was engaging the listener. “She would tell me, ‘Start hot, end hot, then sit down,’” he remembers. Even after studying at San Francisco Theological Seminary, earning his doctor of ministry, Goodwin says that grandma’s is still the best advice he ever received for connecting from the pulpit. Building connection is a key part of work ahead for Goodwin as he steps into a new role, the United Church of Christ’s Executive Conference Minister for Southern New England. It’s a pioneering appointment, as he becomes the first African-American LGBT individual to hold this rank in the church nationwide. Goodwin, who earned his UVM master’s in Higher Education Administration and Student Affairs (HESA) in 2005, has followed a dual path in higher ed and Christian ministry for much of his life. He’s deeply grounded in the latter, growing up attending the Pentecostal Temple Church of God in Christ that his great-grandfather founded when the family migrated north to Chicago from Chula, Mississippi. In 2000, he was ordained as a Church of God in Christ minister. During grad school at UVM, nearly simultaneous suggestions from former HESA faculty member Bridget Kelly and Beverly Colston, director of UVM’s Mosaic Center (then the ALANA Center), triggered a pivotal experience, a crucial turn on the path that would lead to his new leadership role with UCC. Both told him that many felt a desire to have a faith community for people of color at UVM. Yes, but who could lead it, Goodwin wondered. “Aren’t you ordained?” Kelly replied. So began ALANA Campus Ministry, every-other Sunday nearly fifty people packed into the lounge space of Blundell House on Redstone Campus. “We built this amazing group: students, faculty, staff, the local community, all

COURTESY DARRELL GOODWIN

Reverend Darrell Goodwin G’05

walks of life, LGBT, different multicultural family backgrounds. That was kind of my foundation of thinking of how to have an inclusive worship community. It stretched me in my theology, in my preaching, in my thought of how you make faith accessible to all people.” The United Church of Christ is among the most progressive denominations in the United States, with roots that reach back to the seventeenth century. Goodwin’s appointment makes good on pushing forward that tradition. The Southern New England Conference he will oversee (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) is the geographic heart of the church, with some 600 congregations across the region. As Goodwin outlines his plans and hopes in this new role, it’s with an eye towards helping congregations raise their profiles as places of welcome and unity. Speaking to societal divisions, acts of hate with attacks on mosques and synagogues, Goodwin says, “UCC churches, how dare us not make partnerships with the local mosques and synagogues and the Buddhist Temple and everyone else. What would it be if every town knew that they had a United Church of Christ that is committed to hope and healing and restoration?” Now based in Hartford, Connecticut, after moving out from the Midwest in early November, Goodwin says a top priority will be urging the region’s churches to look at all they do—from the make-up of their denominations to the contractors they hire to where they shop or invest— through a social justice lens. “Who is missing from our table?” Goodwin asks, posing the question in regard to race, economic status, sexual orientation. “If we think we know it all, if we don’t have a sense of wonder, then we’ll continue to sow into white supremacist patriarchal systems. But if we wonder: ‘Why are we doing this like this? Why is this the way we think we have to be?’ Then we have room for new energy, new insight, and I might use a ‘churchy’ word here—‘the Holy Spirit.’”

SPRING 2021 |

| CLASS NOTES

Heather Gaylord shares that Brooklyn Boepple Gaylord was born in October 2020. Jeff Gutierrez married Mallory Moss on October 10, 2020, in Grand Lake, Colorado. While the wedding only included the immediate families due to the global health pandemic, it was a joyous occasion. Cassandra Miller and husband James Redmond welcomed their second child, Sebastian Alexander. Big brother Telemachus James is very smitten. The happy family of four, formerly of NYC, now live in the greater Boston area. Send your news to— Kristin Dobbs Schulman kristin.schulman@gmail.com

ner have started direct marketing their catch in New England. Boston-based Wooden Island Wild (named for a remote island on the fishing grounds in Alaska) ships their sashimi-grade wild seafood, 100 percent sustainably harvested and fishermanowned, throughout the Northeast. woodenislandwild.com. Sean and Charlotte Tallon welcomed their second child in December 2020. Claire May Tallon joins big brother Henry, who is thrilled to have a sister. Send your news to— Elizabeth Bearese ebearese@gmail.com

Katherine Murphy kateandbri@gmail.com

Amy Allen and Ryan Pickering, who met at UVM in Christy Hall, were married on October 3, 2020, in Nahant, Massachusetts. Michael Fullam has been peer-selected for the inaugural 2021 Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch for his litigation defense in product liability cases in the San Diego office of the national law firm Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP. In September 2020, Conor Hagen released a feature-length documentary called High Country. His film tells the story of Crested Butte, Colorado, a small ski-resort town nestled high in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, also Conor’s birthplace. The film has screened at various virtual film festivals around the country and received the Audience Choice award at the Crested Butte Film Festival. It played in the Colorado Environmental Film Festival in February. Send your news to— Elizabeth Bitterman bittermane@jgua.com

Benjamin Beaird joined the firm, BatesCare. Benjamin earned his J.D. from Loyola University Chicago School of Law in 2016. He provides counsel in matters including professional liability, commercial general liability, products liability, and reinsurance. Rose Weggler puts her business minor to good use as communications manager at PhotovoiceWorldwide, where fellow alumna Nora Canellakis ’20 recently joined as a content manager. Rose and Nora work closely together creating posts for PhotovoiceWorldwide’s various social media platforms. To learn more and see this UVM-duo’s work, follow the company on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @photovoiceworldwide. Rose is also making the most of her UVM degree in recreation management and tourism by managing the Maine Island Lodge in the summers. Responsible for bookings and events, Rose is a captain, ferrying guests to and from the island lodge. Her time on the UVM crew team paid off! To learn more, visit maineislandlodge. com or email Rose at maineislandlodge@mainesport.com. After ten years of commercial fishing in southeast Alaska, Tracy Sylvester and her part-

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Emma Grady gradyemma@gmail.com Henry Wainhouse joined Patterson Belknap as an associate in the law firm’s litigation department in October 2020. The year before, Henry served as a law clerk to the Honorable Lorna G. Schofield of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, a prestigious clerkship. Prior to joining Patterson Belknap, Henry was an associate at Jones Day. During the pandemic, Chad Brodsky’s company, City Brew Tours, which operates in-person brewery tours all over North America, ceased operations. As a result, he’s launched a new business, called Unboxed Enterprises, that offers virtual craft beer and nonalcoholic experiences with tasting/homebrew kits mailed to people’s homes. This new business is on track to triple his tour business (launched in 2008), which he hopes to resume in the coming months. See online Class Notes for a link to an Inc Magazine article written about Chad and his business. Erica Bruno-Martin joined Volvo Cars USA as a market manager for Northern New England. She will consult with 18 Volvo dealerships throughout Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Her job comes after ten months of unemployment due to COVID-19. Stevie Larrere and her husband Jason, along with their two daughters, Quinn, 7, and Penny, 5, have survived 2020. Send your news to— David Volain david.volain@gmail.com

Robin Craren married Jonathan Kruse on October 10, 2020, at a winery in Philadelphia’s suburbs. It was an intimate wedding with their families. David Boyd and Elizabeth (Liz) Crawford welcomed their first child, Owen, into their lives in November 2020. Send your news to— Daron Raleigh raleighdaron@gmail.com

After ten years as an NCAA D1 collegiate rowing coach at the University of Pennsylvania, Katie Lane resigned and accepted the position of communications and logistics manager with HUDSON Boat Works. A

Canadian-based company, HUDSON is the world’s most innovative rowing boat manufacturer. Additionally, she recently became a college counselor and marketing manager for Sparks Rowing, LLC. Katie moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, in August 2020. Ben and Rachel Raymond welcomed their first son, Mackenzie Gordon, on September 5, 2020. Bill Zakrzewski married Molly DiSario ’17 on August 8. See their photo in online Class Notes. Following his second undergraduate degree (radiation therapy) in 2011, Philip Bushey ’92 G’11 worked for eight years doing cancer treatment at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. In the summer of 2020, he became a realtor with Coldwell Banker in the Boston Back Bay. Philip enjoyed the transition to a new career. He is always available to help people realize their real estate dreams, homes or investment properties. Irene Chamberlain graduated with a degree in psychology and went on to get a master’s degree in physician assistant studies. She works at an urgent care in Berlin, Vermont, and recently started a flower business with her mother, Mary McGann ’77, and aunt, Eileen Dudley ’92 G’14. Irene writes, “We are all UVM alumni and share a love for gardening. We named our company for my grandmother, who passed her gardening skills on to each of us.” Located in Ferrisburgh, Marguerite’s Flower Garden grows all its flowers on a half-acre plot, from May until the first frost. They create arrangements for weddings and events in Vermont. Every year they grow a variety of sunflowers, dahlias, tulips, zinnias, greenery, and more. You can find them on Facebook, Instagram, and WeddingWire. They look forward to the 2021 gardening season and hope to hear from alumni. When Gregory Smith looks back on the ten years since graduation, he sees many wonderful events, even in 2020. He and Alyssa Wheat became doctors, got married, moved to North Carolina, bought their first house, had many excellent adventures together and with great friends (many from UVM). Now, they’re expecting the next great adventure in June 2021. Devon Snyder moved to Rutland, Vermont, with her husband John after living in Nevada for almost a decade. They’re sad to leave the sunshine but excited to settle into the Vermont community again. Benjamin Talbot completed a thruhike of the Long Trail from June 30 to July 21, 2020. Send your news to— Troy McNamara Troy.mcnamara4@gmail.com

Latimer Hoke earned a master’s in education leadership from the University of Montana in 2020. He teaches high school English and healthcare classes at Lincoln County High School in Eureka, Montana. Latimer was recognized last summer as assistant to the Coach of the Year after the Eureka Lions XC boys team won the 2019 Class B State Championship. Emily Mazzulla is a clinical psychology professor at Marquette University and a clinical psychologist specializing in trauma and resilience. She wrote a children’s book about building resilience in kids during the coronavirus called School in the Time of the Coronavirus. It’s the story of an elemen-

C ATAMOUNT NATION

By Air, By Sea Claire Geldhof ’11 helps vaccinate Alaskans

As hope is delivered via syringe around the world, in the rugged mountains and fjords of Southeast Alaska that delivery also often requires a seaplane, a seasoned pilot, and an adventure-ready nurse equipped with precious vials of COVID-19 vaccine. As a state public health nurse based in Juneau, Claire Geldhof ’11 is among these frontline workers. February and March found Geldhof in Alaska towns and villages such as Pelican, Tenakee Springs, Elfin Cove, Hoonah, and Gustavus, among others. Many of them have populations of fewer than one hundred residents, rooted in the life and livelihood of commercial fishing. All of them can be challenging spots to land a small float plane in rough weather. Regarding getting to Chichagof Island, home to Pelican and Tenakee Springs, Geldhof advises, “Lisianski Inlet can be a wind party.” These remote places are on the regular by-air and bysea rounds of Geldhof’s job, often focused on preventive health care and all-too-often taking measures to counter the life-destroying opioid epidemic that grips many in the

region. Being the final link in the chain of vaccine delivery adds a special level of urgency in this moment, but it’s built upon Geldhof’s broader sense of dedication to her work and where she practices. “These communities are incredibly special and resilient. They are also dwindling with the vast majority of population aged 65-plus,” she writes via e-mail, grabbing a rare moment when spare time and solid Wi-Fi mesh. “When I travel out to these areas, I think a lot about the landscape of the community in the next decade. Serving individuals with rural healthcare and meeting people where they are at is an honor.” The College of Nursing and Health Sciences alumna’s commitment to serving the people of Alaska is strongly rooted in her experience as a student in a very different place—Dhaka, Bangladesh, where Geldhof joined a cohort of fellow nursing students and Professor Hendrika Maltby on a public health nursing rotation during her senior year. It was a transformative experience as she learned to navigate a city of 14.4 million, worked with people in extreme poverty, and found ways around language barriers. Geldhof notes that she had struggled to find her particular fit in the health care profession until then, but was enlightened by and drawn to the essential power of listening deeply to her patients during the experience in Bangladesh. She came to see the ways a public health nurse, through work on the ground in communities, can leverage broader societal change. “I think I was born to practice nursing in the world,” Geldhof writes. “I love the capacity to meet humans where they are at and listen to stories, assess individual and community-wide problems, and creatively work to support strategies and problem solving. I embark on my tenth year of nursing empathically. Forever a student to the curiosities and provocation of the world’s needs.”

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| CLASS NOTES tary school student named Maria and her mother as they discuss thoughts and feeling related to the transition back to school (be it in person or virtual). The end of the book has nine resilience-focused coping strategies for parents and teachers to use with children during times of uncertainty. Send your news to— Patrick Dowd patrickdowd2012@gmail.com

Samantha Hughes and Zachary Martin ’12, who met nearly a decade ago on the corner of Colchester and Mansfield Ave, were wed in Aspen, Colorado on September 8, 2020, with a tiny group of family and friends. In true Vermont fashion, there was a fluke, huge snowstorm during the outdoor ceremony that added to the magic of an already unforgettable day. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

After being repatriated from Saudi Arabia, where he was teaching English at a university, Jon Lott began a campaign to run for the U.S. House of Representatives this fall (MA-8) as an independent. Zach Benoit and Kelly Lynch were married in October 2020 at an intimate ceremony surrounded by immediate family and beautiful New England foliage. Send your news to— Grace Buckles Eaton glbuckles@gmail.com

Samuel Cote is attending law school at Suffolk in Boston. Samuel interned for Justice Budd at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Megan Stuart graduated from the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine in 2020. She is in a small animal rotating internship at Tufts VETS in Walpole, Massachusetts. Megan plans to pursue a residency in small animal surgery. Rachel Fredericksen and Simon Sugerman ’17 are engaged! Anna Knapp is an advisor with Engel & Völkers in Jackson Hole. “As a graduate of the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources with a degree in parks, recreation, and tourism, I ended up right where I needed to be in one of America’s greatest ski towns,” she writes. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Molly DiSario and Bill Zakrzewski ’11 had an intimate wedding and reception at Echo Lake and Denver, Colorado. Included in the small group of attendees was Bill’s sister, Liz Zakrzewski ’16. Sarang Murthy graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a master’s degree in economics in December 2020. In January, he started a new role of strategy manager at NativeEnergy, a climate change solutions company. He will be undertaking the exciting and challenging task of helping companies meet their climate change goals. Sarang writes, “Forever proud to be a Catamount!” See online Class Notes for a picture of his pandemic-approved travels to Kerala, a southern state in India in the fall. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

the Futures Collegiate Baseball League. Kathryn Hewitt earned her UVM bachelor’s in social work. She then moved to Austin, Texas, and got her master’s in social work from the University of Texas. She still lives in Austin and recently got a job as the trauma social worker at Dell Children’s Medical Center. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Olivia J. Weale has joined her family’s bakery business, Dam Good™ English Muffins, www.damgoodenglishmuffins.com, as operations manager. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Following graduation, Nora Canellakis was hired and begun working with fellow alumna Rose Weggler ’08 at PhotovoiceWorldwide, an organization that seeks to teach people how to implement the photovoice methodology safely, ethically, and successfully to use photos to tell stories visually. Rose was her mentor throughout her internship and she was added to the team for 2021 as a content creator. To learn more and see the work they do, follow them on Instagram @photovoiceworldwide. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

After winning the league championship and being a front office member of the Organization of the Year, Katharine Arend, was named director of student-athlete development and alumni engagement for

| IN MEMORIAM 1943 1944 1945 1947 1948

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Mildred Anderson Layn Penelope S. Easton, PhD Elinor Nolan Garrison Robert Paul Tarshis A. Clement Holden Marcelino Diez Millicent Mandel Lash Crystal Malone Betsy Kipp Thurber Margaret Mary Ryan Carleton Whittemore Sprague Phyllis Page Weinrich

UVM MAGAZINE

1949 1950 1951

Aldis Lovell Dow Luke A. Howe, M.D. Lynn Davis Huntley Therese Coutu Magnant Stanley Gordon Carey Paul F. Eddy Roberta Bicknell Piper Stanley L. Burns, M.D. June Crouter Chittick Edmund B. McMahon, M.D. Howard W. Shand Robert J. Vachon

1952 1953 1954

David C. Carver Mary Burke Flanagan John H. Jackson Janet Kerin Stackpole Norma Fowler Thomas R. Bruce Carroll Hugh S. Levin, M.D. Ralph G. Norton, Jr. Mark Melvin Rosenthal Virginia H. Vincent Lillian Schroeder Boardman Eugenia Striphas Frangos

1955 1956 1957 1958 1959

Meredith Steere Haas Kenneth J. Keating Margaret Newton, M.D. Joan Schneller Pomeranz Catherine Turner Varney Herbert White, M.D. Benjamin Glasser Aibel Samuel Cutting, III Roena Jones Hardy Carolyn Goomnitz Lieber Paul R. Low Abigail Nelson McIntosh Richard B. Raynor, M.D. Anthony L. Vydra Robert E. Benoit Jan Donald Curran Robert C. Jones Edward J. McCabe, Jr. William E. Meyer, Jr. Margaret Urquhart Hutchins John C. Mesch, M.D. Joyce Zuckerman Meyers Walter F. Miner, M.D. Robert N. Mullen Patricia Theresa (Doherty) Denmead Robert L. Holenstein Mary Ann Holland Parizo Nancy Soistmann Richmond Jane Eichler Sementilli Elizabeth Phelps Thibault Marvin S. Dobert W. D. Foucher, Jr. Philip A. Goddard, Jr., M.D. Wayne Douglas Lawrence Thomas H. Lawyer Gwen Waite Moore Denton W. Morse

1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973

Lawrence Emerson Burger Seward E. Eggleston John M. Harrington Frederick R. Kolstrom William Schramm George Adam Soufleris, M.D. Nancy S. Barber Raymond H. Johnson, Jr. Elizabeth Ogilvie Kimnach Thomas F. O’Connor Courtland K. Spicer Louis Philip Brouillette Timothy R. Luzietti Roy B. Magee Hon. Rodney Allen Fisk David B. Sequist Francis L. Staro, M.D. Lawrence T. Scuder John Joseph Dancoes David O. Oliver Philip Garth Bean William D. Belville, M.D. Anne Eliot Moulton Raphael E. Victory John Roger Whitcomb Nancy Bathgate Mullany Rachella Mac Bolton Kathryn Craig Hunter Douglas G. Oakes Anthony E. Otis Paul Morris Sprayregen Edith Ferguson House Corinne Lederer Shulman Joseph K. Wetherell Paul Howard Arlein Peter Starbuck Coffrin Jeffrey Armistead Lee

1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1984 1985 1986 1988 1989 1990 1993 1999 2014 2015

Mark Winslow Biedron John S. Huppuch, Jr. Janet Goss Garvey Ernest Francis Janus Ellen Lee Tarshis Brian Carlyle Hunt David E. Mandell Maryellen Sheehy Reed John F. Thibeault Brian Allan Evans Elizabeth McClellan Parisot Thomas Frank Patterson, Jr. Cheryl Guyette Stillson Frank L. Cowan Gertrude Lillian Cross Mary Jane Harding Michael Henry Rice Carolyn S. Blake Pamela Belden Wallack Joseph Edward Corbett, Jr., M.D. Eleanor Zischkau Uckele Jeffrey Dale Hayes Barbara Morrison Streator Heidi Li Sherrick-Duston Robert Francis Closkey, Jr., M.D. Debra J. Poplawski-Wilson Scott Weinheimer Elizabeth Wynn Welch Barbara Rose Jordan Luisa P. Zauli Jennifer Sherwood Turner Ruth C. Radbill Kevin Charles O’Leary Daniel George Valley Paul Richard Jarvis, M.D. Anne Wolcott Moses

| UVM COMMUNITY CHARLES GOODNIGHT, professor of biology, passed away on September 28, 2020. A distinguished evolutionary biologist, Professor Goodnight joined the UVM faculty in 1988 as an assistant professor, rising to the rank of full professor in 1999. He was recognized as a University Scholar in 2002-2003 for sustained excellence in research, creative, and scholarly activities. In a Faculty Senate resolution after his death, Goodnight’s fellow faculty members in biology shared: “His colleagues both near and far will miss Charles’ good humor, his infectious laugh, and his strong sense of community and fellowship.” MAGGI HAYES, retired faculty member in dance, passed away on April 11, 2020, due to COVID-19. Her nearly four-decade career teaching dance at the university began in 1966. Through the years, Hayes nurtured

the dance program in multiple ways: pioneering courses, teaching thousands of students, choreographing and directing performances, founding UVM Orchesis, and leading the way in developing the dance studio in Patrick Gymnasium.

ZANDER PONZO, former professor in the College of Education and Social Services, passed away on February 4, 2021. After joining UVM in 1970, Ponzo was among the faculty who played a key role in the development of the graduate education program in counseling. Athletics and keeping active were always important to him, and Ponzo was a familiar face working out in the UVM fitness center or cheering from the bleachers in Patrick Gym.

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| EXTRA CREDIT

Last Lap You all read your class notes; I read all your class notes. For the past twenty-six years that’s been one of my tasks as magazine editor, giving them a proofing, trying to keep out of the way of alumni and class secretaries’ direct voices for the most part. Reading the full class notes always felt like a reverse journey through the arc of life, Benjamin Button UVM alumni style. Memorial tributes to old friends, celebration of grandkids and retirements, career achievements, annual hiking trips with college buddies, babies, weddings packed with Catamount friends, first jobs, a post-grad year waiting tables and skiing in Jackson Hole. It’s all there. A few weeks ago, I did my final complete read of class notes, as I’m retiring from the university with this issue. Over the years in this job, a few people have expressed surprise that the editor of the University of Vermont magazine is not an alumnus. Full disclosure, I went to college in my hometown at my state school, the University of Illinois. Vermont is my adopted home state; UVM is my adopted alma mater. My wife, Sheila, has taught statistics at UVM since 1985 and has taken enough

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UVM MAGAZINE

art, art history, Spanish, and French courses herself to perhaps earn a self-designed bachelor’s degree; our daughters, Grace ’11 and Arline ’14, are true alumni. It’s a family thing. For me, one of the privileges of working on the magazine all these years has been the opportunity to connect across all of the generations of alumni, beyond that familiarity via class notes. Writing and editing hundreds of profiles, I’ve often found that UVM alumni’s character and life paths are strongly influenced by not just the university but also our home state—its environmental ethos, activist spirit, and sense of place. Reconnecting our readers with this landscape has always been a high priority for art director Elise Whittemore, who also retires with this issue, and me. On covers, contents pages, throughout the publication, we’ve always aimed to go straight to the heart with striking photography of our campus, our funky little city, our lake, our mountains. Which brings me to that photo on this page. Yes, that’s me. No, not my horse. Austin belongs to master horseman Tim Hayes ’67, a kind, authentic, very interesting guy I was fortunate to connect with for a story. Well-trained by Tim, Austin had the skills to make me look like I might know my way around a horse, at least in the split-second of a camera shutter. I wanted to share this photo with my farewell because Tim’s story was the sort I most enjoyed reporting, writing, and sharing—a story with unlikely twists of life, personal reinvention, grounded in Vermont. (Not to mention that I’m a sucker for a corny visual metaphor. Be glad there’s no sunset.) It was a beautiful morning in the hills above Johnson in fall 2019, as ace science-writer/photographer Josh Brown and I visited with Tim and Austin. I’m looking forward to future mornings out and about on trails and back roads—more likely riding a bike than walking a horse—in this rare state, home to our University of the Green Mountains. —Thomas Weaver, Editor JOSHUA BROWN

Photo: Sally McCay, 2019.

Student Opportunity, Access, and Recruitment (SOAR) campaign

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 financial aid for undergraduates and graduate students, you further extend the opportunities presented by a vibrant, equitable, affordable, and accessible UVM education.

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Sunrises over the Green Mountains and sunsets over Lake Champlain are tour de force moments in our setting. Maybe UVM’s early leaders had that in mind when they put that rising sun on the university seal in 1807? Here’s a peek at some orange-sky Instagram favorites. From top left: @heatherjoans, @kelseycolbert ‘17, @sarah.lavoie.vt, @drew_brockelman ‘23, @kelseyreganphoto ‘12, @itsjustmarshal ‘21, @riley.k.photos ‘21, @robyn.b.photo ‘20.

The University of Vermont Magazine Spring 2021

Articles inside

Catamount Nation: Denver Edition

Game On

For Our Future

Catamount Sports

President's Perspective

Class Notes

Extra Credit

New Knowledge

UVM People

The Green