Vermont Quarterly Summer 2015 by University of Vermont

VERMONT

THE UNIVERSITY OF

Q U A R T E R LY

The

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

City Life

Emma Grady ’08 Gary Green ’88 Leni Liftin ’64 Jarrett Lilien ’84 Megan Lipke ’91 Paris Smeraldo ’94 David Sweeny ’87 David Szuchman ’94 Bernard Palmer ’75 Sandy Plotkin ’65

Working & Living in NYC Emma Grady ’08 in Lower Manhattan on the way to her new job at Vanity Fair.

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VQ V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

SUMMER | 2015

President Tom Sullivan addresses the graduates at Commencement 2015 on the Green. Photo by Sally McCay Cover photo by Bobby Bruderle â&#x20AC;&#x2122;11

PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE THE GREEN Students help teach Burlington’s newest Americans; Engineering prof explores technologies for safer bridges; a conversation with author Annie Proulx ’69; and more.

CATAMOUNT SPORTS Close friends, outstanding students, and quite possibly the best line-up of distance runners in UVM history, meet the Fast Five.

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BY JON REIDEL G’06

TALKING SHOP

Bright lights, very big city. We check in with ten UVM alumni who are making their way and their mark in the Big Apple. BY THOMAS WEAVER

BY THOMAS WEAVER

IN SEARCH OF THE SMART GRID

Not quite sure what the “smart grid” really means? You’re not alone. We’re here to help with a look at the flow of power and how UVM faculty and alumni are shaping its future in Vermont.

BY JOSHUA BROWN

Eric Lipton ’87, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and Robert Rosenthal ’71, longtime newspaper editor and executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, discuss their craft, its role in society, and its future.

NEW YORK CITY 10

UVM PEOPLE

For thirty years Jane Sarkin ’81 has run the show behind the covers of one of the most striking magazines on the newsstands, Vanity Fair.

ALUMNI CONNECTION UVM’s Rainbow grads are urged to keep in touch with the university and fellow alumni, and the growing LGBTQA affinity program makes it that much easier.

CLASS NOTES EXTRA CREDIT On the road again with Celia Woodsmith ’07 as she and fellow musicians in Della Mae tour in support of a hot new album.

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[PRESIDENT’SPERSPECTIVE Arts continue to thrive, enrich the UVM experience

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

he University of Vermont has a long tradition of excellence in the fine arts. Leaders and stewards of the University have invested in the fine arts since well before the Fleming Museum was established in 1929 to house the University’s collection of art and artifacts. Janie Cohen, director of the Fleming and noted Picasso scholar, continues this legacy as she employs and teaches the most innovative curatorial technology. This spring, she used a variety of new visual technologies and cultural sources to curate “Staring Back: The Creation and Legacy of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon.” The University, with the generosity of alumni and friends, continues to support fine arts across campus. Last summer alumna Michele Cohen ’72 and her husband Martin enabled the University to acquire the Taft School, adjacent to campus, to expand space for Department of Art and Art History. In addition, summer interior renovations will begin in the Music Building and Recital Hall. After celebrating its 40th Anniversary this past fall with a visit and lecture from playwright Tony Kushner, the Department of Theatre will soon begin renovations of its much beloved Royall Tyler Theatre. Over the last two centuries, UVM has attracted a multitude of artists, writers, and musicians. Our faculty includes poets Stephen Cramer and Major Jackson, author Greg Bottoms, scholar/artist Tina Escaja, composers David Feurzeig and Patricia Julien, and musician and 2015–16 University Scholar Ray Vega, to name only a few. The Departments of Theatre and Music and Dance engage the University and the local community with exciting live performances throughout the academic year. The Lane Series collaborates with the Flynn Theatre to bring world-class performing artists to Burlington, and this is just one of our partnerships that foster the arts in the community. Why is it so important for the University as a research institution of higher education to invest in the fine arts? Critics of higher education often complain that the study of sculpture, music, or theatre will not prepare students for a competitive job market. UVM’s successful graduates, however, demonstrate the undeni-

able benefits of a broad liberal education with extensive offerings in the fine arts. Studying the theory, application, and discipline of the fine arts at the University develops creativity and problem-solving skills and enables students to find rewarding careers. For instance, students have found inspiration at UVM that launched remarkable careers in the creative arts like Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Annie Proulx ’69, best-selling author Gail Sheehy ’58, sculptor Richard Erdman ’75, fashion designer Rachel Comey ’94, former president and CEO of Southeby’s Bill Ruprecht ’80, and film producer Jon Kilik ’78. Many UVM students study photography or perform in one of the many musical ensembles at the University while studying diverse majors. Studies show that students involved with activities on campus excel in their academic courses and are more likely to graduate on time. Most importantly, by participating in the fine arts, our students advance creativity and discover community, pleasure, meaning, and the aesthetics of life. New research from Dr. James Hudziak, professor of psychiatry and director of the Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families, connects brain maturity and learning with musical training and understanding; the study supports Plato’s assertion that “the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.” In the fall of 2014, american cartoonist, MacArthur Fellow, and UVM Marsh Professor-at-Large Alison Bechdel demonstrated the principle of learning through the practice of art when she offered medical students a workshop on drawing to help them connect with patients. At UVM, we long have known that the fine arts engage the heart, nourish the spirit, and create a thirst for discovery that extends well beyond college. The arts are essential for a richer understanding and deeper appreciation of the purpose and meaning of life. As we work together to create a bright future for the University, the fine arts will continue to flourish and to stimulate our vibrant community for generations to come. SALLY MCCAY

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

VQ EDITOR

Thomas Weaver

ART DIRECTOR

Elise Whittemore CLASS NOTES EDITOR

Kathleen Laramee ’00

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Joshua Brown, Sarah Tuff Dunn, Rick Green ’82, Jay Goyette, Kathleen Laramee ’00, Jon Reidel G’06, Amy Sutherland, Tim Traver ’78, Amanda Waite’02 G’04, Jeff Wakefield PHOTOGRAPHY

BEAUTY

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HISTORY BURLINGTON SPIRIT

UVM

Jeremy Allen, Thomas Brennan, Joshua Brown, Bobby Bruderle ’11, Jeff Clarke, Deanne Fitzmaurice, Ruth Fremson, Eric Hudiburg, Ian Thomas JansenLonnquist, Andrew Lahr, Sally McCay, Arthur Pollock, Gus Powell, Dorothy Schnure ILLUSTRATION

Alison Bechdel

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The University of Vermont: Tradition Looks Forward captures UVM in striking color photography and text that will stir memories for all alumni. A great gift for new graduates... or older ones.

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Hardcover, 112 pages, $29.95 Available through the UVM Bookstore:

GREEN THE

GATHERING NEWS & VIEWS OF LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY

Students connect with Burlington’s newest Americans

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

hen sophomore Eric Venezia enrolled at UVM to study and play goalie on the men’s soccer team he looked forward to the usual experiences of college life. Befriending a 69-year-old man from Bhutan and helping him become an American citizen wasn’t among them. The unlikely relationship between Venezia, a secondary education major, and Saran Chhetri, a rice farmer in his

native Bhutan who now lives in Burlington after fifteen years in a refugee camp in Nepal, was forged during a service-learning course taught by Barri Tinkler, assistant professor of education. Every Thursday evening students in her “Citizenship and Education in the U.S.” class met at the O’Brien Community Center in Winooski to help adult refugees from Russia, Bhutan, Uganda, Nepal, South Sudan, Vietnam, and other countries prepare for

the U.S. citizenship test. Tinkler, who started the course a year ago, added the service-learning component in the fall after volunteering as a tutor at the citizenship class herself. She worked closely with Gabe McGann, a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program, who started the citizenship class in Winooski through the nonprofit Serve Burlington. “It has been an incredible experience to work

with Saran,” says Venezia, who completed twenty-five field hours of tutoring as part of the course. “We have a mutual respect for each other and just enjoy working together. It’s powerful to know that it could have a direct impact on his life if he gets citizenship.” Before Tinkler brings students to the O’Brien Center, she provides an overview of the immigration and naturalization processes in the United States with a focus IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST

ALISON BECHDEL, TOP; SALLY MCCAY, BOTTOM

hands in the air before shyly covering a huge smile. [ENGINEERING]

BETTER SENSING FOR SOUNDER STRUCTURES

t the height of rush hour, on the evening of August 1, 2007, an eight-lane steel truss bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis suddenly collapsed. Dozens of vehicles plunged into the water, and thirteen people died. Eric Hernandez, an expert on structural engineering at the University of Vermont, wants to make sure this doesn’t happen on another bridge. Combining novel algorithms with existing sensor technologies, he’s developing new, lower-cost techniques to interpret the vibrations in bridges and buildings. His goal is to create affordable tools for engineers and regulators to more accurately forecast the remaining life of a structure—whether it’s a decades-old bridge or an National Science Foundation support advances Eric Hernandez’s work on bridge safety.

earthquake-shaken building. To support his research, the National Science Foundation granted Hernandez, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, a five-year, $500,000 Faculty Early Career Development Award. “We want to know: can we accurately estimate when a structure will fail? Then we’d be able to step back and say, ‘it has between twelve and fourteen years left of service. We should plan now so that in ten years it has been replaced,’” Hernandez says. “Right now that information is often not known.” Engineers had inspected the Minneapolis bridge annually and were concerned about its condition—it was slated to be replaced in 2020. But they didn’t expect, nor were they able to forecast, its catastrophic failure. “Instead of just relying on visual inspections, we could be using sensors,” Hernandez says, to assess the structural health of “buildings, bridges, tunnels, and wind turbines—

FUN HOME

It’s not often that a New York Times story on a new musical taking Broadway by storm features a Burlington, VT dateline. The April 8 Times piece opens with Alison Bechdel, author/cartoonist of the graphic novel Fun Home—now a musical that earned five Tony Awards, including Best Musical— teaching a UVM gender studies class. Bechdel visits classes and lectures at the university periodically as a James Marsh Professor-at-Large. The program brings individuals of international distinction such as Bechdel, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, to campus for collaboration with faculty and students. While Fun Home has quickly become a tough ticket at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre, the woman behind the story drew a full house to Ira Allen Chapel for her UVM Honors College lecture last November.

SUMMER 2015

on the refugee system and related educational policies for English learners. Students examine theories about second language acquisition and how these theories support or conflict with current debates in the field of educational policy. Tinkler saw the opportunity to join forces with McGann as a way of giving life to the course content. “The course content is designed to help students understand how the system works,” says Tinkler. “Once they understood it better, I wanted them to talk to people who are actually in the system. It’s a way of connecting the policy to the person and putting a face on the individuals that it affects. I also want students to understand how resilient the refugee population is by hearing about it first-hand.” Although most students reported feeling some initial anxiety about tutoring someone old enough to be their grandparent, it’s not detectable on a spring evening at the O’Brien Center. The atmosphere is loose, warm, and full of humor as students and their mentees sit around connecting tables listening to McGann give instructions at the front of the room. Members of the class are excited to hear that when they become a U.S. citizen they could run for public office. “You could become the mayor of Burlington, Saran!” shouts McGann as members of the class yell out words of encouragement for his candidacy. Saran Chhetri raises his

[THEGREEN

Emphasizing fitness, nutrition, and mindfulness, a new residential program seeks to counter college alcohol and drug culture.

COMMENCEMENT 2015

Nearly three thousand brand new UVM alumni received their diplomas—undergrad, grad, and MD—on May 17. The main ceremony was held on the Green with National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg delivering the graduation address. See VQ online for a link to a collective blast of social media (#uvmgrad) that captures the spirit of

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

the milestone day.

early, before there is trouble— like people get tests when we go to the doctor.” Hernandez and his students have been working in a UVM lab, and—in partnership with the Vermont Agency of Transportation— studying a bridge in Vermont to test these ideas. “We’re looking at how structures vibrate as different kinds of loads are acting on them,” Hernandez says, “and from those vibrations we can estimate their level of safety or reliability.” Vibration-sensing technologies on the market today are very good, Hernandez says. “There are sensors with enough accuracy to do the work we need to do,” he says. But they’re not cheap. “The problem is that the number of sensors that we can put on structures is limited because

of cost,” he says. That’s why he’s focused on what’s called a “minimally instrumented” approach to measuring a structure’s remaining life. “We’re proposing to determine what is the minimum number of instruments that you need,” he says, using more sophisticated computational techniques for interpreting the sensor data that is collected. Hernandez is exploring his new approach at both ends of the wear-and-tear spectrum. On one end are seismic loads—think earthquakes— on buildings. On the other extreme are the millions of cycles of loads that car and truck traffic make on bridges. Eventually, Hernandez’s new approach could be packaged into software “that could be coupled with different kinds of sensors that people

would put onto structures,” whether built into a new wind turbine or attached to a hundred-year-old bridge. [CAMPUS LIFE]

WELLNESS-FOCUSED RES HALL TO DEBUT ON REDSTONE

residence hall with lots of amenities isn’t exactly big news in higher ed. But how about one with personal fitness and nutrition coaches for every student, daily yoga and tai chi instruction and round-the-clock meditation sessions, a mentorship program matching every student with a Burlington youth, and a neuroscience course all students take taught by faculty in UVM’s College of Medicine? It might sound far-fetched or expensive, but it’s neither. It’s the concept behind SALLY MCCAY, LEFT

SALLY MCCAY

livan initiated in early 2014. Center for Health and Wellbeing director Jon Porter, who co-led that effort, said it had independently taken a very similar approach: emphasizing a motivating push toward student wellness, rather than a punitive one focused on prohibition. “It’s a stroke of good luck that we had Jim on our faculty and that he was willing to turn his attention from his international practice to our undergraduate population,” says Porter. “There’s great symbiosis between what we want to do and what he’s been working on throughout his career.” In their fondest dreams, Porter and other administrators hope the University of Vermont—with a range of initiatives capped by WE and located in a state known for outdoor recreation and health—can be a national model for how college campuses can change their ingrained party cultures to ones that are more positive and wellness-focused. Hudziak is characteristically upbeat. He expects the size of the WE community to increase every year from its target of 150 students next fall as word about it spreads, with the growing number of graduates serving both as mentors for the incoming WE class and as influencers in the larger student community. Once a critical mass is reached—Hudziak cites the number six hundred, which could take as little as three years to achieve—“we’ll impact the entire campus.”

2015 KIDDER AWARD

Professor Barry Guitar An exceptional teacher, scholar, and speech therapist, Professor Barry Guitar is the recipient of the 2015 George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award. Across nearly forty years on the UVM faculty in Communication Sciences and Disorders, the professor’s influence on students, the community, and his field is immense. Guitar teaches and supervises clinical work in stuttering. He is an expert in a stuttering treatment program for children called the Lidcombe method, which involves parents monitoring a child’s speech, offering praise of fluent speech and feedback on stuttered speech. In his courses on speech science, he experiments with a variety of teaching approaches to help students develop a life-long habit of critical thinking and find their own best ways of learning. Working with clients, Guitar brings the experience of one who has worked to overcome a stutter in his own life. Danra Kazenski G’06 was among the many alumni, colleagues, and clients in the community who wrote in support of Guitar’s Kidder nomination: “If you dabble around on Google, you will find a seemingly endless number of pages with contributions from Barry to the field. Barry is basically a superstar. But when you interact with him, he is so human, personable, and selfless that it makes you feel like you have direct access to a gentle powerhouse of knowledge who will also look you in the eyes and listen whole-heartedly as a friend.” The George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award is named in honor of the late Dean Emeritus George V. Kidder ‘22, who served UVM for more than seventy years. It has been given annually by the UVM Alumni Association since 1974.

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the Wellness Environment, or WE, a substance-free living community for first-year students unlike any other in American higher education. WE, premiering this fall in Patterson Hall on Redstone Campus, is the brainchild of Dr. Jim Hudziak, a pediatric neuropsychiatrist in UVM’s College of Medicine. Hudziak has built an international reputation by using music, fitness, nutrition, mindfulness, and powerful support communities to help struggling kids feel and do better. His widely published research includes compelling neuroimaging showing that the healthy new behaviors physically change his patients’ brains. WE will have a leave-itat-the-door policy regarding alcohol and other drugs. The idea isn’t to prohibit use, but to create a culture where students find alternatives with the help of a large supportive community. At the root is the idea that if curious college students understand how behavior, good and bad, affects their brains— via “gorgeous neuroscience,” in Hudziak’s words—they’ll opt for healthier choices. “We have a rule,” Hudziak says. “We don’t judge. We just show you the science.” The WE community’s emergence and rapid implementation represents the height of serendipity, given another key initiative the campus had under way: a comprehensive program to address alcohol and other drug issues at UVM that President Tom Sul-

[THEGREEN Alan Alda is helping scientists at UVM and beyond to communicate better: “Too often we get stuck in our own head.”

[SCIENCES]

HELPING TELL SCIENCE’S POWERFUL STORY

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

amed actor Alan Alda spoke at UVM early in the spring semester about how to get the public to fall in love with science—and why they often don’t. Then, he and a team of communications experts worked with UVM scientists on campus the next day to help them do the same: practice skills to make their research exciting to people outside the academy. Many people remember Alda from his starring television roles in “West Wing” and as Army doctor Hawkeye Pierce in the hit series “MASH.” But communication about science is a topic near to Alda’s heart after more than a decade of hosting the PBS show “Scientific American Frontiers.” By conducting hundreds of interviews with world-leading researchers for the program, he became dedicated to helping scientists tell their

own stories with clarity and vividness. The relationship begins, he said to an overflow crowd at UVM’s Davis Center, like a blind date. “Can I trust this person?” he said. “Do they have an agenda?” With the right conditions, he said, the awkward first date can transform into a committed relationship. Alda’s visit marks the launch of a relationship UVM has entered into with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, formed in 2009 at Stony Brook University. The center’s mission is to enhance understanding of science by training the next generation of scientists to communicate powerfully with the public, elected officials, the media, and others outside their own discipline. Not only do scientists need to translate their specialized vocabularies to reach public audiences, Alda noted, but they need to pay close attention to the profound—and universal—human need

and capacity to tell stories. “What’s at stake? So what?” Alda said. Science is an a unfolding story of tremendous power, he said, but “you have to give us a reason to care about your research.” Too often, he noted, scientists try to prepare with an inflexible script. To help them “connect emotionally and intellectually,” he said, with whoever their audience is—TV reporter, undergraduate classroom, cocktail party friend, or a National Science Foundation program officer—“you need to enjoy the playful connection with another real person,” Alda said. “Too often we get stuck in our own head.” To help, Alda Center staff led teams of faculty through theatre-style improvisation exercises that required close attention to the experience and action of others in the room. They also had practice sessions to distill the core of each faculty member’s message about their research, and brief lectures on fundamentals of good storytelling. The daylong communications workshop drew dozens of science faculty from UVM and other Vermont colleges, including Johnson State and Middlebury. It was the first of several workshops that will be held on campus. Future sessions will include more faculty in the sciences and

STUDENT FOCUS

LEFT: JEFF CLARKE; RIGHT: ANDREW LAHR

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ly fishing in Mongolia for the world’s largest trout species, Hucho taimen, may be a fly fisherman’s dream, but for Frances Iannucci, a senior honors student in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, it was all about serious research last summer. Mongolia’s inland rivers, including the Eg-Uur, are some of the last strongholds for taimen, an endemic trout that can reach up to six feet and weigh 230 pounds. “Mongolia was fascinating,” Iannucci says. “Standing in Ulaan Bator, the capital, you can see where the city just stops and the grassy steppes begin. There is only one fisheries biologist in all of Mongolia. I felt that our team was a bridge to conservation there.” Iannucci, who began her college career as an environmental science major, switched to fisheries after a summer working for the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Lab on Lake Champlain. “I always knew I was more interested in what lived in the water than the water itself,” she said. Professor Jason Stockwell’s research work on food webs in Lake Champlain got her started on climate impacts to the lake’s fisheries. Specifically, she looked at cyanobacteria blooms. Blooms increase with nutrient pollution and warming waters, possibly disrupting natural diversity and displacing higher value food sources. Her UVM thesis was shaped by her study of taimen in Mongolia. “There are major gaps in knowledge of taimen,” Iannucci says. “Taimen use a variety of foods, from fish and aquatic insects, to terrestrial foods—even birds and mammals, for example, but little is known about their relative importance.” By looking at stable carbon isotope signatures, she hoped to identify the taimen’s principal foods. “Trout are coldwater specialists. As waters warm and food sources shift, will taimen adapt?” The remote field station—a few yurts and a small lab—brought together American and Mongolian students and senior researchers. “The collaboration made it especially fun,” Iannucci says. Mornings, she took a metal boat upstream to the best fishing, returning to camp with her catch for the collection of tissue samples. And fieldwork invariably comes with unanticipated duties—Iannucci kept the neighbor’s goats away from a solar oven used to dry samples. Last September, the UVM senior traveled to Montana to present a poster on her Mongolian work at the prestigious Wild Trout Symposium. After graduating this spring, she joined UVM professor Breck Bowden’s lab in Alaska, looking at the influence of melting permafrost on nutrient cycling in Alaskan streams. Eventually, she hopes to go to graduate school, adding that, someday, she’d love to revisit Mongolia.

[THEGREEN

White House shoutout

broaden to other disciplines, including the humanities. As part of the new relationship, UVM is also in discussion with the Alda Center for possible semester-long communications classes developed for graduate students. Alda’s lecture was part of the Dan and Carole Burack President’s Distinguished Lecture Series.

First-year student Gina Fiorile was among eight Americans honored at the White House in February for their extraordinary work to enhance climate education and literacy across the country. The eight “Champions of Change for Climate Education and Literacy” were cited for “inspiring students, educators, and citizens to learn about climate change and to develop and implement solutions.” Awardees included high school and middle school teachers, university professors, non-profit and national park workers. Fiorile was the only student. As a high school student in Saranac Lake, New York, Fiorile was instrumental in planning the Wild Center’s Adirondack Youth Climate Summit—the subject of the documentary The Resilient Ones, produced by Mountain Lake PBS and Bright Blue EcoMedia with Jon Erickson, UVM professor of ecological economics. The summit educates students and their teachers about the impact of climate change and invites attendees to create climate action plans to lower the carbon footprint of their own schools. As a University of Vermont first-year student majoring in environmental studies, Fiorile has helped Erickson bring that model to Vermont. She served as a consultant to Erickson’s ecological economics course this past fall as they planned the first annual Vermont Youth Climate Summit, which brought 150 Vermont high school students and dozens of teachers to UVM in December. The summit was hosted in partnership with Sen. Bernie V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

Sanders, who kicked off the event by charging Vermont

high schools to take the lead in climate action planning in their communities. Not only has the youth summit model migrated to Vermont, it’s also been chosen by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to become a national model for climate change education.

[CAREERS]

A NOVEL APPROACH TO ‘WHAT’S NEXT?’

“

esigning Your Life,” an innovative class on creative decision-making spawned at Stanford University, has sparked significant buzz. Fast Company calls it no less than “the future of higher education.” UVM students are getting a taste of this future thanks to Eugene Korsunskiy, who cotaught DYL at Stanford while earning his master’s of fine arts. Korsunskiy came to Burlington when his wife accepted a faculty post at UVM and has imported the DYL course with him. “Eugene has a great teaching style and an ability to put students at ease with this sometimes challenging material,” says Stanford’s Bill Burnett, DYL’s co-creator and a former designer for Apple. Together with Dave Evans, who co-invented the mouse for Apple, Burnett developed the DYL concept. Essentially, it’s about creative decisionmaking: using a multidimensional and outside-the-box approach to solve a “wicked

problem.” The design-thinking focus of the course means that instead of simply saying “I want to be in finance” and applying to Manhattan-based financial firms, students are taught to create “An Odyssey Plan” that takes into account many other facets of their future life—including feelings. Burnett cites research demonstrating how Stanford’s DYL lowered dysfunctional career beliefs, increased students’ ability to be more creative, and improved career self-efficacy. “We also receive emails from students one to three years after the class indicating they are still using the tools that they were taught,” he says, “and that they feel that they are more at ease with their career and life progress than their peers.” The course has quickly found a following at UVM— due to both content and the charismatic teacher. Korsunskiy began instructing three sections at UVM spring semester and reminds each of his sections that part of their homework is to tell their friends about “Design Your Life.” Word is already out, however, with the fall course quickly filling near capacity. With the potpourri of philosophies from Annie Dillard to Zappos CEO Tony Hseih, there’s plenty of gray matter at work here. But does it leave too much gray area for students who’ll need actual greenbacks to survive once they graduate? “This class is not about helping students build a roadmap for a career,” SALLY MCCAY

CASTING SHADOWS Thomas Brennan, professor of art, describes his recent work as “photogenic drawing,” the original term coined by Henry Fox Talbot in 1835. “I like using that term for this work, because it establishes a historical place for the ideas,” Brennan says. “Many of the images in this room are about collection and display. They are very early nineteenth century. That’s when natural history museums begin to be created and have a place in the public imagination.” Brennan’s shadow images—which range from birds in museum collections to an electron density map of penicillin to an 1860s model of the solar system—were on display this spring at Burlington City Arts on Church Street. Read more about Brennan’s work: uvm.edu/vq

American Bittern, Botaurus lentiginosus (courtesy of Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University)

SUMMER 2015

[THEGREEN Teacher Eugene Korsunskiy, right, talks with students Joseph Oteng, left, and Garrett Milner.

explains Korsunskiy. “It’s more to help students fine-tune their decision-making muscles going forward, understanding that life is a continuous exercise in decision making.” “The question, ‘What are you going to do after graduation?’” gets tossed around a lot,” says student Victoria Lee, adding that her approach toward typically awkward situations such as networking nights, career fairs, and interviews has changed because of the course, which has also led to several job interviews. “Eugene just is the man—he has a unique way of helping us

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

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reframe situations, recalibrating our idea of the future as not one big task after graduation but a series of thousands of small decisions that we’ll always be making, and that’s something I’ll carry with me the rest of my life.” [AWARDS]

SULLIVAN HONORED FOR LEADERSHIP IN LEGAL EDUCATION

President Tom Sullivan has been named the 2015 recipient of the American Bar Association’s Robert J. Kutak Award, honoring an individual who has significantly

enhanced collaboration between the academy, the bench, and the bar. “Tom Sullivan’s career and many accomplishments exemplify the spirit of the Kutak Award,” said Joan Howland, chair of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. “As a visionary and committed leader in higher education, Tom continues to strive to bring legal educators, the judiciary, and practicing lawyers together to develop creative solutions to myriad issues, including the challenges associated with ensur-

ing equal access to justice for all segments of American society.” Before being named UVM’s 26th president in 2012, Sullivan was active in legal education in many capacities. He began his career as a member of the faculty at the University of Missouri Law School and then as a faculty member and associate dean at the Washington University Law School in St. Louis. He was named dean of the University of Arizona Law School, then dean of the University of Minnesota Law School before serving as senior vice president for academic affairs and provost there from 2004 to 2012. In addition to his extensive administrative experience, Sullivan is also a nationally recognized authority and prolific scholar on antitrust law and complex litigation.

[ QUOTE UNQUOTE ]

In very short order, Al became one of the leading lights in the field, wrapped in modesty and great mentorship and generosity—a pretty unusual combination. DR. EZEKIEL EMANUEL, University of Pennsylvania, remembering his friend and bioethics research colleague UVM professor emeritus Alan Wertheimer, who passed away in April.

SALLY MCCAY

CONVERSE HALL

UVM MEDICAL CENTER

THE FUTURE OF CENTRAL CAMPUS

CHITTENDEN-BUCKHAM-WILLS DEMOLITION

Timeline: Spring/Summer 2015 As the first phase of UVM’s Student and Faculty/Staff Housing Master Plan, Chittenden, Buckham, and Wills residence halls are being demolished this summer to make way for UVM Medical Center’s new inpatient bed replacement facility and UVM’s new first-year student housing and dining project. STEM COMPLEX

Timeline: Summer 2015-Summer 2019 (3 Phases) The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Complex will include three facilities: a classroom and office building that will replace the existing Cook Physical Science Building, a renovation of Votey Hall, and the construction of a new teaching/research laboratory building (on the approximate site of Angell Hall, which will be demolished). Its design will be visionary and forward-looking—befitting a facility whose focus is on the future, yet it will honor the past and complement the important architecture that surrounds it. The STEM Complex will align UVM and its students with some of the most promising economic development opportunities and job growth fields within the state of Vermont and beyond. On-Campus First-Year HOUSING AND DINING PROJECT Timeline: Fall 2015-Summer 2017 The 391 beds of student housing at Chittenden, Buckham, Wills Residence Halls will be replaced with 699 beds of modern housing for first-year students in this project. The buildings will also include a 500seat dining facility, Residential Life offices, and student amenity space, including a fitness center. The proposed development consists of two connected buildings: a six-story building with the dining hall component on the first floor and a seven-story building with all housing and housing-related uses. Students will be able to access Bailey-Howe Library directly from the building through the bridge connection over Carrigan Drive. UVM MEDICAL CENTER INPATIENT BED REPLACEMENT

RESIDENCE HALL

BAILEY/ HOWE LIBRARY

KALKIN

STEM CLASSROOMS VOTEY

STEM LABS

ROYALL TYLER THEATRE

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Timeline: Summer 2015-2018 The UVM Medical Center is creating a better space for patients— enhancing quality, privacy and healing, while providing more room for families with the inpatient bed replacement project. The new facility will be a seven-floor building located on the west side of the Medical Center Campus above the existing Emergency Department parking lot. The project does not actually add beds, but will allow the hospital to place more of their existing beds in private rooms, increasing the single-occupancy rate from approximately 30 percent to approximately 90 percent.

HILLS

UVM MEDICAL CENTER INPATIENT BED BUILDING

Major change is happening at the heart of UVM’s campus with the launch of several concurrent new building/ renovation projects that will transform this area.

ROWELL HALL

[JUSTRELEASED On her Mark

Mary Norris pens a period piece on punctuation, grammar, and good humor

By Sarah Tuff Dunn

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

ook at them as not so much bookends of the life of Mary Norris G’79, but as bookmarks. One, her mother’s Friday trips to the beauty parlor, which inspired a funny first-grade story that got her father laughing out loud. The other, when Norris began reading The New Yorker while pursuing her master’s in English at UVM. “I hope to move people,” she says, “but more, to make people laugh.”

And Norris accomplishes both in Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (W.W. Norton & Company), her 228page book that is as much about tickling our funny bones as it is teaching us a few thing about dashes, diacritics and, yes, dairy cows. Raised in Cleveland and dreaming of the “placid yet productive life” of bovines, she drove a milk truck until she moved to the Green Mountains for graduate school. “I think what I remember most about Vermont was that it went down below one degree, and never climbed higher for months,” Norris says with a laugh during a phone interview. “But my studies at UVM on James Thurber did help me land a job at The New Yorker.” And so it was that the hidden implications of black and white punctuation marks and spelling rather than the hides of cows, become Norris’s milieu during a nearly forty-year-career at The New Yorker. Part memoir, part instruction manual, and part a party celebrating the pleasures of Webster’s and baffling beauty of the English language, Between You & Me was and was not meant to be, says Norris. Sure, she intended to become a writer while studying at UVM, but it wasn’t until the serendipity of The New Yorker expanding its website and encouragement from senior editor John Bennett that she began penning pieces along with using the copy editor’s red pen of correction. “I’m not a guerilla copy editor,” says Norris, referring to the habit of Eats, Shoots & Leaves writer Lynne Truss correcting movie posters and such. “But through the book, I am hoping to change the world, one reader at a time. I think that is the one thing I really do feel evangelical about.” That includes getting everyone on board with the title of the book, as Norris calls the mistaken habit of “between you and I” when speaking or writing “one of most barbaric habits in contemporary usage.” Another pet peeve is comma placement, of course, which she illustrates with this confusing conundrum: “We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.” Norris also has a soft spot for spelling, having earned her first break at The New Yorker by catching the use of “flower” instead of “flour” on the magazine’s annual Christmas shopping list. “Spelling is the clothing of words, their outward visible sign,

and even those who favor sweatpants in everyday life like to make a bella figura, as the Italians say—a good impression—in their prose,” she writes. “A misspelling undermines your authority.” Note the use of those em dashes, another topic of discussion. “Dashes, like table forks, come in different sizes, and there is proper use for each,” she writes. (Not that Norris is always proper. Chapter 9, “F*ck this Sh*t,” examines the more colorful language creeping into the everyday: “Has the casual use of profanity in English reached a high tide? That’s a rhetorical question, but I’m going to answer it anyway: Fuck yeah.” Looking back, Norris admits that “it was not easy” to write her first book, rising early and aiming to craft “shapely chapters that lead one into another” through the coaching of her W.W. Norton editor Matt Weiland. “It took two years, but it felt like twenty,” says Norris, who drew upon other Vermont experiences to pull it together. Learning about how cars worked while driving a dark blue-green ’65 Plymouth Fury II (“great for scenic drives and winter sunsets”) leant her the metaphor of automobiles for mastering the mechanics of language. “You have to roll up your sleeves and join the ink-stained wretches as we name the parts,” she writes, “being careful to define them in a way that makes them simpler instead of more complicated, and see how they work together.” Those beauty-parlor visits by her mother return in discussions of bad-hair days and “the secret burden of gender” in the English language. And that other bookmark, of discovering a new magazine during her tenure in Vermont, remains in the pages of Between You & Me, which is also, in a way, an ode to the loveliness of a liberal arts education. “One of the things I like about my job is that it draws on the entire person,” writes Norris, “not just your knowledge of grammar and punctuation and usage and foreign languages and literature but also your experience of travel, gardening, shipping, singing, plumbing, Catholicism, Midwesternism, mozzarella, the A train, New Jersey. And in turn it feeds you more experience. In the hierarchy of prose goddesses, I am way, way down the list. But what expertise I have acquired I want to pass along.” SALLY MCCAY

A Conversation with Annie Proulx

hen celebrated writer Annie Proulx ’69, author of works such as The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” returned to her alma mater to receive an honorary degree at this spring’s commencement, we welcomed the opportunity for a half-hour interview. Sitting in Waterman’s Phi Beta Kappa Room after the morning graduation ceremony, Proulx talked with Vermont Quarterly editor Tom Weaver about her move to the Pacific Northwest, UVM days falling in love with art history research, and a novel-in-progress that she hopes is days away from completion.

GUS POWELL

and a bent in your family toward making things. And I noted a few of your line drawings reprinted in the book. How do the habits of a visual artist factor into your work? AP: Well, in the home I grew up in using a pencil to sketch or draw was second nature. We all did that, we all knew how to do that; two of my sisters are painters. But also here, the work that I found here when I was going to UVM was working in the museum. So I got to see lots and lots of wonderful things and many, many slides and so forth and doing an inventory of a lot of the stuff in the attic—and it was stuff. I remember the African beadwork collection. That was the point where I should have followed my interest in art and gotten involved in art history, but I was thinking just straight history then. VQ: Movement seems to be important for you. In a big picture way, across time with the many places you’ve lived. But also crosscountry skiing, hiking, riding your bike. Is this daily getting out and moving critical to your creative process? AP: I think it is for really everybody. There is something about physically walking. There is a brain connection, which I don’t understand or have never talked to anybody about, but I know it is there. If you need to solve things, structural things or plot things or even sentences or whatever, that’s the way to do it is to walk and think about it. And there is a connection between walking and image making. A lot of painters like to walk. VQ: You’ve expressed the thought that the short story is in some way a more difficult, though underappreciated, medium than the novel. Through your career have you varied your focus on the two to mix up the demands or just followed the story that seems to want to be written next? AP: There are a thousand projects in mind, but at some point you have to choose one or the other. I did consciously choose to start a large novel some years ago. I’d been thinking about it for ten years or so, but finally started actually doing the research about five years ago, and finally started actually doing the writing three years ago, and I hope I’ll be finished next week. Yeah, you’re conscious of what you’re going to be working on. I look forward to going back to short stories maybe…or maybe not. Full interview: uvm.edu/vq

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VQ: You’ve said that reading deeply and widely is the first step to learning to write. Do you remember the first moment reading really impacted you? AP: Yes, I do. It was Jack London’s Before Adam, which I read when I was about eight. It’s a quite strong book. It is an adult book full of red and tooth and nail stuff about primitive hominids, not quite cavemen. One of the chief characters, a creature named Redeye, was very much the boss of everything and was devoted to snatching up women and carrying them away and killing whoever got in his way. So for an eight-year-old this was pretty interesting stuff (laughs) and, yeah, it made a big impact on me. I didn’t realize that books could do that sort of thing because I’d just been reading The Bobbsey Twins and so forth. So, yes, that was a moment in reading, a great moment. VQ: I recall that you were involved with research with Fleming Museum collections as an undergraduate. What were the places that resonated with you at UVM and in Burlington? AP: Hmmm, (laughs quietly). Well, the library was my thing. I loved the library. One of the most marvelous things that I discovered—and I really got thrilled by this—when hardbacks with covers came in, the covers were removed and they were put in a big bin and whoever wanted those glossy covers, some of which were reproductions of famous paintings and so forth, could have them. It was really quite a wonderful grab bag, and I remember being quite entranced by that. At UVM, for the first time in my life, I learned how to use a library seriously. Of course that is not on anymore. I remember the sad day when the card catalogs began to go. VQ: Yes, I read about how you miss the way card catalogs could accidentally lead you somewhere new. AP: Serendipitous knowledge. VQ: Similar accidents happen with a print dictionary. AP: Yeah. Some publication recently asked if you could bring a book to a desert island that you were castaway on, what book would you bring. I guess lots of people were pondering this weighty question. But I had an instant answer. I’d take one of the volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary. There is everything there. VQ: In Birdcloud, you write about your mother being an artist

CATAMOUNT

SPORTS

T H E G R E E N & G O L D : W I N , LOSE, O R D R AW

The Fast Five

Making a run on UVM’s distance records Oliver Scofield, Fletcher Hazlehurst, Thomas O’Leary, Dan Moroney, Aaron Anderstrom

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

I 16

t took a few minutes for Fletcher Hazlehurst to get his head around what associate track and cross country coach Joe Gingras ’99 had just told him and four of his teammates—that they had the potential to be the best circle of distance runners to ever compete for UVM. That was two years ago. Since then, Hazlehurst and junior classmates Aaron Anderstrom, Oliver Scofield, Dan Moroney, and Thomas O’Leary have dedicated much of their collegiate lives—starting each day with a 5 a.m. run—to making that lofty prediction come true. “It’s

something that motivates us to work together,” says Hazlehurst, an allNew England selection at 10,000 meters. “It psyches me up to be part of something this big. We’re all good individual runners, but to be here together and doing all these things as a group is what makes it so exciting.” Thus far, the ‘fast five’ has lived up to their billing by rewriting the record books and closing in on a goal they set last year: to own every UVM distance record between 800 and 10,000 meters. They attribute their success to hard work, but also their closeness as athletes, students,

by Jon Reidel G’06

and friends. They pretty much live, eat, run, study, and socialize together while sharing three rooms on the same floor in Converse Hall. Walk into Moroney’s room, which he shares with Anderstrom, and it’s immediately apparent that they are running obsessed. The walls are covered with posters of legends like Steve Prefontaine and hand-scrawled inspirational quotes—“When in doubt, hammer from the gun.” They seem like brothers, which SALLY MCCAY

ONLINE

UVMATHLETICS.COM FOR THE LATEST NEWS

into off-campus next semester and I was like, ‘These guys are going to be in bed so early you won’t even know they’re there.’ Some distance runners can be a little strange, but these guys are pretty normal.” That’s assuming you consider running 115 miles a week during the summer like Moroney ‘normal.’ “There’s a simplicity to the way they go about things,” says head track and field coach Matt Belfield. “They are serious about school and serious about running. They love the sport and the team, and are true UVM guys.” Belfield, who also singles out twotime America East 400-meter hurdles champion Mallory Duncan and 110meter hurdle and heptathlon star Martin Kallur as catalysts for his program’s rise, is careful about anointing the group as the best ever. But, he says, from a statistical standpoint it’s hard to argue otherwise. “You have to give credit to different generations like Ray Allen and his contemporaries from the 1950s who were on championship teams, but quantitatively speaking, there’s no question this year’s junior class is the best.” If anyone would know, it would have to be Larry Kimball, who served as the UVM distance coach from 1990-98 and is considered the unofficial historian of Vermont running. He grew up watching the Archie Post-coached teams of the mid-1950s to early 1960s and considers them to be the standard by which all other UVM teams are measured with consideration also being given to some of the teams from the early 1970s and 80s. “The Archie Post teams that won New England and Yankee Conference titles are the gold standard, but it’s hard to compare generations,” says Kimball, now head cross country and track and field coach at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort. “But this current group definitely stacks up with anyone in the past.”

2015 Rally Awards The UVM Athletic Department hosted the eleventh edition of its annual Rally Awards, presented by XFINITY, in early May at the Flynn Center in downtown Burlington. The all-sports year-end event celebrated the accomplishments of the UVM student-athletes, honored each team’s MVP, and handed out seven major annual awards. JEFF STONE MEMORIAL AWARD Sara Roderick, track and field Kyle Chu, track and field MEG & KATE RYLEY UNDERCLASS ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Maggie Preston, swimming and diving Dom Garand, alpine skiing SEMANS TROPHY Ashley McDonald, field hockey Taylor Wunsch, alpine skiing RUSSELL O. SUNDERLAND MEMORIAL TROPHY Cassie Marion, track and field Brad Cole, soccer WASSON ATHLETIC PRIZE Ilsa Feierabend, swimming and diving Dylan Souder, cross-country/ track and field J. EDWARD DONNELLY AWARD Amanda Pelkey, hockey Kristina Riis-Johannessen, alpine skiing Mike Paliotta, hockey ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT AWARD Bill Shean ’79 received this honor presented annually to a member of the faculty, staff, or community in appreciation of loyal support and continuing devotion to the University of Vermont athletic program.

SUMMER 2015

makes the fact that they never met prior to arriving on campus from their respective home states of Oregon, Massachusetts, Wyoming, Connecticut, and New Hampshire all the more surprising. “We do pretty much everything together,” says Moroney, who owns school records at 5,000 (14:26) and 3,000 (8:20) meters, and has the second-fastest 10,000-meter time. “There are days that I don’t want to get up at five in the morning to go running, but we hold each other accountable and get each other out the door.” That accountability extends to the classroom, where they have also produced some impressive numbers: a combined GPA of 3.7 in computer science (Hazlehurst); nursing (Anderstrom); parks recreation & tourism (Scofield); medical lab science (Moroney); and biology (O’Leary). Their success on the track and in the classroom doesn’t come without a price and lots of planning. Anderstrom, who is second on UVM’s all-time 3,000meter steeplechase list, recounts a recent day: the dawn five-miler, breakfast, two classes, lunch, another class, track practice, chart reviews at the hospital as part of his major, two hours of studying, and, finally, some coveted sleep. “Some people think we’re weird or boring because of our schedules, but they respect it,” says O’Leary, who holds the school record in the mile at 4:07 and has run a 4:04 1,600-meter split as part of a distance medley relay team. “UVM is a place where people let other people do what they want,” adds Scofield, whose 5,000-meter time of 14:40 is third fastest in school history. “We just choose to run a lot.” Gingras, who is described by his runners as a ‘mad scientist’ always tinkering with their training regimen, calls the group a coach’s dream. “They go to bed early most nights,” he says. “I got a call for a reference for a house they are moving

TALK SHOP

ING

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

Eric Lipton

Photograph of Eric Lipton by Ruth Fremson, The New York Times/Redux; photograph of Robert Rosenthal by Deanne Fitzmaurice

When New York Times reporter Eric Lipton ’87 won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting this spring (the second Pulitzer of his career), we saw it as an opportunity to initiate a discussion between Lipton and a fellow distinguished journalism alumnus of an earlier era, Robert Rosenthal ’71, executive director of the non-profit Center for Investigative Reporting. Rosenthal’s career includes reporting as a war correspondent in Africa and top editorial posts at the Philadelphia Inquirer and San Francisco Chronicle. His first newspaper job was as a humble New York Times copy boy charged with a big job, the safekeeping of the documents behind the Pentagon Papers exposé.

Lipton’s first Pulitzer came in 1992 when he was honored for explanatory journalism in a Hartford Courant series on flaws in the Hubble Telescope. The latest prize recognizes Lipton’s series on aggressive efforts by lobbyists and lawyers to push state attorneys general to drop investigations, change policies, negotiate favorable settlements, or pressure federal regulators to benefit their clients. Lipton in London on assignment, Rosenthal in the Berkeley, California, CIR offices, and Vermont Quarterly editor Tom Weaver midway between, connected for a conference call to discuss Lipton’s recent Pulitzerwinning work and the state of investigative journalism in a quicksilver media age.

Robert Rosenthal energy company had given him to write, and he had essentially just put his signature on them. That was the moment that I realized that I had the kind of information I needed to deliver the story. VQ: A story like this must require considerable doggedness. I read about the thousands of emails you sorted through. LIPTON: There are a lot of lonely moments where you’re just in a room with stacks and stacks of papers, going through them and trying to figure out what is significant and what is insignificant. You’re pushing through and trying to get some sense of what the narrative is and what the documents are showing you.

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ROSENTHAL: Eric, how did you get started on the attorney general story? LIPTON: It began with a lobbyist who came to us. She was appalled by the solicitations that she was getting from both the Republican and Democratic attorneys general associations in order to get private access to state attorneys general on behalf of her clients. This was a lobbyist who deals with all of the game-playing in D.C. and, even so, was appalled by the fact that state attorneys general, people with subpoena power, were expecting her to make $125,000 contributions to get one-on-one access to the top state law enforcement officials. To think that a U.S. attorney would do such a thing, it is just impossible to contemplate. The fact that their equivalents on a state level were playing that sort of cash for access game was astounding. VQ: As you pursued it, was there a particular point when you realized you really had the story? LIPTON: Yeah, there were many points like that along the way when I was so excited I found myself walking around the office sharing with other people the amazing sort of stuff that I had found. For example, I got copies of correspondence between an energy company and a state attorney general, and he had stripped out all of the attachments, which had the letters that he was sending to Washington. Only after I got the attachments could I see that the letters he had sent were replicas of the ones the

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

ROSENTHAL: Eric, when you just talked about walking around the office it really resonated for me. I can remember jumping out of my chair realizing that I’d gotten a piece that confirmed this elaborate puzzle. It’s not only the documents. It is getting an interview where somebody confirms or starts telling you things. Or you get someone to talk who you’ve been trying to get to talk, especially on the record, for months. You just keep knocking on the door. But I think a key thing to remember is that investigative reporting is very difficult. It’s complicated. It can be risky in a lot of different ways. It really always starts with a hunch or some lead or something that you’re trying to figure out. The other thing that hap-

in, honestly, were killing a story. It wasn’t there. When you get down to the end game, you couldn’t prove it. I’ve been on both ends of that, circumstances as a reporter when an editor told me, this isn’t going to work unless you get this, this, and this, and you just don’t have it. LIPTON: Both of the Pulitzer stories I’ve worked on involved editors who were really great partners in terms of making choices in the whole process. And I think Bob’s point is really well taken that understanding the motives of your sources is critical. You can get so convinced of your facts sometimes that you can start to ignore contrary information, and that’s dangerous. I think a good editor recognizes when he or she needs to pull in the reins a bit and force you to second guess THE ABILITY TO TELL A COMPLICATED STORY IN A NARRATIVE FORM AND MAKE IT your own evidence. ACCESSIBLE AND MAKE IT FLOW IS A GREAT SKILL. IT BROADENS THE AUDIENCE VQ: For both of you, AND THE IMPACT OF AN IMPORTANT STORY LIKE THAT. I’d like to hear about the point when you transipens is that once someone like Eric has the credibility tion from investigating a story to writing it. within journalism, then people start coming to you. LIPTON: For me, writing is the hardest part of what There are amazing stories we both could tell. I I do. I tend to have collected so much information remember when I was statehouse reporter at the Bosand even so many lines of potential narrative characton Globe I literally got a phone call in which the guy ters that I could sketch, it is really a very hard process. said, “Meet me on the corner of Tremont and Beacon I’ve got all kinds of tricks of working on a park bench at 3 o’clock and I’ll be driving a gray Chevy.” And you in Farragut Square or going to a coffee shop to try to go, “What?!” Then he repeats it and says, “I’m serious,” force myself to just get something down. I find it easy and you do it. to write a straight news story—the thing happened That was a case where a guy literally handed me a today, you just kind of put the facts in order, and then box of documents that led to a complete disembowlyou send it along, leave the office and go home for ment of the Massachusetts legislature. That was totally the day. good luck. I’d done some good reporting, and it turned But a large investigative story is a different matout the guy had an amazing stack of documents. ter. But, you know, writing has always been hard VQ: How did your perspective change after you for me even back to high school and in college. Still became an editor working with investigative reporters? today, having been a writer now for twenty-five years ROSENTHAL: One of the things I always mention (laughs), it’s still hard. to reporters when when they get sources rather than ROSENTHAL: I think what Eric is brilliant at and, a document or data search, is think about motivation obviously, very successful at, is the storytelling. You and understand motivation. The reality, as factual and have to have the facts in terms of investigative reportnon-judgmental as you want to be, human nature ing and the data and documents and, hopefully, oncomes into any kind of story. An editor really needs to the-record sources, but the ability to tell a complicated be there to ask questions and to push back. I think one story in a narrative form and make it accessible and of the most difficult things in any newsroom and for make it flow is a great skill. It broadens the audience any editor is when a very good reporter really believes and the impact of an important story like that. they have something. When you push back and really Personally, writing is always hard. But I like to write. question the story, it raises doubts about your credI’m sorry to say that in some ways I really stopped ibility. But you really have to stick to the facts. being a reporter at a pretty early age and got pulled Some of the most difficult things I’ve been involved into editing. I feel that writing is also a craft and you

SUMMER 2015

get better, better, and better at it as you do more and as frequently don’t like journalists. So I think the more you get more experience. someone like Eric or myself goes out and talks to peoVQ: Looking broadly at the state of investigative ple about the public service aspect of journalism, the journalism in the United States, a paper like the Times better it is for our whole society. has the resources to put Eric on an in-depth story that LIPTON: I was reading recently that the number will take months to report and write. But what are your of trade press reporters in a city like Washington thoughts on what’s happening with smaller papers? or New York has actually grown. Specialization has LIPTON: The United States used to be filled with occurred in all of the blogs and web-based trade press great large papers and great regional papers. There as regional newspapers, because of the tremendous were multi-layers of great newspapers that had multiloss in revenue from the departure of print adverlevels of daily and investigative reporting and it just is tising, have seen enormous reductions in staff and, vanishing. It is really depressing. therefore, much less opportunity for young reporters ROSENTHAL: The lack of public service journalism out of college to get jobs. on a local level throughout the United States, even on After graduating from UVM, I got a job at The Vala county level, is really appalling and it is a problem. ley News in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Typically, that What we are trying to do here (at the Center for was the path—get a job at a small regional newspaper, Investigative Reporting) as a non-profit is think very go to the bigger regional newspaper, then try to go to differently. It is a whole different conversation about the national newspaper. That pathway is really, really what we call engagement. We have to be able to show hard nowadays. The upward mobility possibilities in the people who support us that there’s impact and that kind of chain, to me, it just doesn’t exist. something happens. We’re non-partisan; we’re not The pathway now is to go and get a job at a blog advocates; we do very high-standard traditional, factor an online publication and develop an online charbased reporting, but we really experiment in how we acter, a personality, a following and then take that to tell stories and reach an audience. Our business model a mainstream large daily newspaper. So there are still is based on serving the public interest in the most simavenues, it is just a very different process than it used ple, direct way. to be from my perspective. Our audience is not always the big audience, it is the audiSO I THINK THE MORE SOMEONE LIKE ERIC OR MYSELF GOES OUT ence that can get involved and AND TALKS TO PEOPLE ABOUT THE PUBLIC SERVICE ASPECT OF JOURNALISM, create change. Impact for us THE BETTER IT IS FOR OUR WHOLE SOCIETY. can be getting a story we do to become part of a curriculum in a school, that’s a good thing. Josh Prince, another grad from my era who is now VQ: You both, each in your own way, graduated into the CEO of a global advertising firm in New York, very different times for daily newspaper journalism. and I are always marveling at how many people from What do you tell today’s Cynic student hoping for a UVM have ended up in and been very successful in career in journalism? the media world—from book publishers to magazines ROSENTHAL: Well, I would tell them that there are to newspapers and advertising. On one of our recent still opportunities, but you can’t just think of a newsvisits to UVM we engaged in a conversation to try to paper. I think the reality is if you know how to get the understand why that is the case. We both came to the information, can write or tell a story on whatever platconclusion that it has a lot to do with the independent form and tell it well, you can self-publish in a way now spirit that is natural to Vermont, the second-guessing, that you never could before. How you make money is the willingness to be a skeptical reporter on the Cynic a complicated question. But I think in the new media staff. And after graduation that translates into making landscape there are lots of opportunities. It is just a your own way, pursuing your own path, and doing it really different world. in a way that allows you to express your creativity. For I do think the role of investigative journalism in this Josh and me and many of our friends, that is somecountry is crucial and is at risk because of the business thing we took away with us from UVM and our expemodel. People often don’t understand what we do and rience living in Vermont. VQ

NewYork City10

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

New York City— 8.5 million people living and working within three-hundredsome square miles— the diversity of individuals and endeavors is staggering. In this issue, we take a look at how ten UVM alumni have made their way in the Big Apple.

By Thomas Weaver Photographs by Bobby Bruderle ’11

GARY GREEN ’88 CEO/BASEBALL TEAM OWNER

ary Green is a Long Island native, lives and works in Manhattan, and says, “There is no city in the world where the opportunity is as great and the pace is as fast as New York. Once you work here, I think it would be impossible to work anywhere else.” But this decidedly New York-minute guy finds his balance 1,200 miles away in Omaha, Nebraska. Green, CEO of Alliance, a building cleaning and maintenance company that has thousands of employees and services properties that include Citi Field, home to the New York Mets, leads a dual professional existence of sorts. He is also the owner of two minor league baseball teams—Richmond, Virginia’s Flying Squirrels and Omaha’s Storm Chasers. The key to living in New York, Green says, is escaping it on a fairly regular basis. “You need to have a readjustment, get out for things to slow down. No matter how I leave New York, when I come back from the Midwest, I’m always in better shape mentally.” None other than Warren Buffett offered Green a key tutorial in Midwest 101. The legend of the financial world was among the previous owners of the Omaha Storm Chasers. For the press conference announcing ownership transition, Green asked Buffett if he would introduce him as the new owner of the team, perhaps helping the community accept the out-of-towner. Buffett agreed to do it, but first had a word of advice. Green pauses and laughs as he recalls the moment. “When Warren Buffett says ‘let me tell you something,’ you make sure there is silence and that you listen.” Buffett’s wisdom: “You may own this team, but never forget that this team belongs to Omaha.” While Green relishes his visits to Omaha during baseball season and the chances to connect with players and fans, he’s also set sail in the Twitterverse (@ ChasersOwner) with a following at 36,000 and climbing as a regular way to connect with the community. Meanwhile back in New York, Green’s days at his offices on 36th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, are a far cry from when he spun the maintenance business out of his family’s SL Green Real Estate, beginning with eight employees and a basement office on Second Avenue. He describes his job as one of those typified by a lack of typical days, with everything from client relations for the business services operation to weighing in on the design of a minor league championship ring drawing his attention. “I juggle and balance a lot,” Green says. “I love all the businesses that I’m in.”

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NYC 10

LENI STECKLER LIFTIN ’64 LONGTIME PROTOCOL DIRECTOR NYC MAYOR’S OFFICE

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very job has its day. But hosting back-to-back meetings with Silvio Berlusconi and Vladimir Putin rises to a special level on the challenge index. That day, some months in the wake of 9/11, was one of many memorable experiences in Leni Liftin’s two decades working as director of protocol and assistant commissioner in the New York City Mayor’s Office, where she served mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, as well as Bill deBlasio. Her role, Liftin explains, included the myriad considerations and logistics when foreign dignitaries meet with New York City’s mayor. As protocol director, Liftin prioritized the requests, vetted them with the U.S. State Department, arranged, and attended the meetings. With typical understatement, Liftin says, “It was an opportunity to see some very interesting people, how they speak, and what they’re like in a very informal setting.” Those very interesting people included Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Benjamin Netanyahu, secretaries general of the United Nations, and many heads of state and foreign ambassadors. The Berlusconi-Putin double header was complicated by the fact that the Italian president was late to his meeting (as was his habit, Liftin adds). Keeping on schedule meant a last-minute helicopter flight to Randall’s Island, where Russian Premier Vladimir Putin would join Mayor Bloomberg and other leaders in a post-9/11 ceremony honoring NYC firefighters. Recalling the terrorist attacks on the towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Liftin’s voice fills with emotion. As she stepped out of the downtown subway station not far from City Hall that morning, she saw the towers on fire, heard the sirens, the panic in the streets; she went to her office, where she watched television alone as the towers crumbled and moments later all went black outside her window, then white with dust. In the weeks and months to follow, Liftin would coordinate trips to Ground Zero by Mayor Giuliani and foreign dignitaries paying their respects. “The first time I went there, I cried my eyes out,” she says. “You can’t imagine what it looked like. It was the most unforgettable experience I’ve ever had.” While the tragedy of the day struck Liftin on a human level and would add a new level of challenge, and mission, to her professional life, one senses that it also reached her deeply as a Brooklyn native and longtime Manhattan resident. Liftin puts it simply: “I love New York.” And though she is now retired from the Mayor’s Office, she has no plans to leave the city. She’s doing consulting work, and Liftin, an accomplished artist before her career in city government, is also picking up her paint brush again.

SANDY PLOTKIN ’65 MANHATTAN MANUFACTURER

fatefully cold. The Aha Moment. Plotkin realized he had the factory floor, the equipment, and the skilled workers to build a better way to keep a pizza hot. Though some of CarryHot’s products are manufactured in China, many of them are made by his twenty-five employees working right on the edge of Midtown Manhattan. “Each one of them is a superstar and does what three normal people would do,” Plotkin says. “These people are highly, highly productive.” Bronx-born, Plotkin came to school at UVM largely because of the recommendation of an uncle, a WWII vet and Vermont grad who earned his degree on the GI Bill. Plotkin jokes that he “knew that there were other forms of life” outside of New York City and wanted to experience something different during his college years. Recalling his arrival in early-sixties Burlington, Vermont, he says, “Mars. It was like landing on Mars… and it was wonderful.” But New York is in Plotkin’s soul—“there’s really nothing about New York that I don’t love,” he says— and he would return there after graduation, working for more than a decade in the corporate world at Pfizer before joining the family business. Retirement? “Sure. When my keys fall out of my pocket, and they carry me out. That will be the end,” Plotkin says. “I’m having too much fun to retire. Retirement is not part of the program.”

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inance, theater, fashion—New York City can lay claim to being the global center in a wide array of fields. But “Food Delivery Capital of the World” is likely not a distinction that comes to mind for most. Sanford “Sandy” Plotkin would be an exception. “New York is where people order food any time of day or night. Whether it’s sushi or pizza, this is where the business is,” Plotkin says. And there’s a very good chance that New Yorkers, and millions of more people throughout the United States and worldwide, find their food piping hot on arrival thanks to Sandy Plotkin and his team of employees at CarryHot USA, the world’s top manufacturer of insulated food delivery bags, headquartered in Manhattan on West 33rd. CarryHot’s success story begins, you might guess, with a cold pizza. But first some background: Sandy Plotkin’s father founded Avon Belt and Trimming Co. in 1932. They manufactured parachute straps for the military during World War II, and later grew and morphed into the world’s third leading belt manufacturer with licenses such as Christian Dior. Avon was a highly successful enterprise. But that changed—slowly, then quickly—as the garment business moved to where the labor was cheapest. As he tells it, Plotkin was at home, depressed about his dwindling business, pondering what was next. He ordered a pizza that was delivered

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PARIS SMERALDO ’94 & MEGAN LIPKE ’91 RESTAURATEUR & ARTIST

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rooklyn and Hudson Valley. Artist and restaurateur. The duality of alumni couple Megan Lipke and Paris Smeraldo’s life and work together is never quite so simply expressed as those days that Megan loads their car with fresh organic produce they’ve grown at their home garden in Ghent, New York, slides her recent paintings on top, and heads south for the two-hour drive to Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, home to their restaurant, Northeast Kingdom, and Lipke’s studio space in the city. In 2005, the couple leapt into the New York City restaurant business in unlikely Bushwick, defined at the time by drug dealers and open prostitution on the street, Smeraldo recalls. A bouncer at the door was necessary to keep things secure. With a family background in the restaurant business, Paris says “that has always been what I wanted to do without really knowing what I wanted to do.” For a pair of native Vermonters (Megan is the daughter of longtime art history prof Bill Lipke), the origins of the Northeast Kingdom name seem plain. There is that, Smeraldo says, both of them love that remote, ragged corner of the state. But there’s also a deeply buried double entendre—Bushwick is in the northeast corner of King County. But most importantly is what Northeast Kingdom suggests of the vibe they hoped to create in their restaurant on an urban frontier. “We were enamored of this idea of stumbling across something, a warm cabin, a hunting cabin, a refuge where you’re not expecting to find it,” Smeraldo says.

Despite the odds, Northeast Kingdom found quick success in Brooklyn with a contemporary American menu emphasizing “the seasonality of the northeast.” A lot has changed since the early days when Smeraldo was in the kitchen and Lipke ran the front of the house. They now have a chef and a manager and keep things running with trips to the city. Smeraldo’s focus remains on the restaurant, Lipke on her art, and both juggle life with their three young children. Things have also changed for Bushwick, now a more likely neighborhood for their restaurant and a friendly place for artists. Megan’s studio is just two blocks from the restaurant, making it easier for her to do those produce drops then show her work to dealers. With her work in more than twenty shows last year, things are thriving on that front, as well. “What at first seemed like it would be a crazy balancing act and two separate things, became really two things that are very close,” Lipke says. “Because the artists come and get the burger at the restaurant and their studio is just down the block. I always meet friends who are painters at the restaurant. It just happens to be at this point a very exciting art community, full of a lot of collaboration.”

JARRETT LILIEN ’84 FINANCIAL EXECUTIVE ARTS ADVOCATE

prises needed him most. Plans to build their U.S. market would bring Lilien back to New York in 1996, and another transition followed not long after when E-Trade bought TIR Securites in 1999. Across the next decade, Lilien would hold CEO and COO roles at E-Trade before leaving in 2008. He now leads his own financial services venture, Bendigo Partners. Lilien’s days are split between work and family and finding time to workout, sometimes with a trip to the boxing gym. Volunteer leadership on arts boards, such as WFUV Radio and the Baryshnikov Arts Center, is also another focus these days. Listing those pleasures of New York City Life, Lilien counts access to the best in the arts, particularly music. As president of the Jazz Foundation of America, he champions support for aging musicians in difficult financial circumstances. Lilien led efforts to create a concert at Harlem’s Apollo Theater featuring musicians aided by the foundation, a fundraising effort that has greatly increased the organization’s capacity. “Jazz musicians live the life of an entrepreneur, making their own way without a whole lot of help and security,” Lilien says. “We’re doing all we can to provide that safety net.”

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anhattan native Jarrett Lilien’s career in finance has included years living in some of the world’s great cities—London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. But he says he probably didn’t fully appreciate his own “hometown” until he returned there to live in 1996. “As a kid growing up here I took it for granted to some extent,” he says. “It was just what I knew.” But before he gets to what he loves about NYC, Lilien comes clean about what he doesn’t love: “Sometimes I walk down the street, shake my head, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my god. This city.” He rattles off the frustrations—noise, dirt, traffic, and, let’s say, many New Yorkers’ forthright nature. “There are a whole lot of reasons not to live here,” he says. “If you are going to live here, though, you need to use the city. It is just a special place and that’s why we stay, because the positives are so big.” It’s also, you know, not a bad place to do business. In that regard, Lilien has built an impressive success story since graduating from UVM with his degree in economics in 1984. In his mid-twenties, Lilien says he and some of his contemporaries were quickly growing impatient with their career trajectory. “We felt that the only reason we didn’t have the jobs we wanted was because we were twenty-seven instead of thirtyseven. And none of us had the patience to wait ten years.” Joining with friends (including fellow UVM alumni John Lord and Scott Chace), Lilien launched TIR Securities, a global institutional broker. They would grow to execute trades in fifty-five global markets, join sixteen global exchanges, and set up businesses in multiple countries. A global citizen by that point, Lilien went where his enter-

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ather and daughter, Bernard Palmer ’75 and Sydney Palmer ’14 came to know very different cities during their undergraduate years in Burlington. Sydney knew the Burlington that is the darling of media best lists for everything from tech innovation to the arts to craft brews to outdoor recreation. Bernard knew a sleepier place. For a guy who grew up in Harlem, calling it a “city” then would have been a stretch. “Those were the days when you could still drive up Church Street,” Palmer says with a laugh. Recruited to play basketball for the Catamounts, Palmer recalls his desire to experience a different environment made him choose Vermont for his college education. While Burlington may have been a little somnolent, he found a solid education in business and made friendships among his basketball teammates that endure to this day. Beyond endorsing his alma mater for his younger daughter’s college years, Palmer has long been a stalwart UVM Alumni Association volunteer and advocate for the university. “I just like helping out and seeing the school thrive. UVM is a gem in the rough. I just try to point people in the right direction because it did a lot for me,” Palmer says. Aside from his UVM experience and time earning his MBA at the University of Cincinnati, this son of the city has spent his whole life in New York, New York. For the past ten years, Palmer has served as a top human resources administrator in the New York Public Schools. His job involves HR oversight of thirty-two high schools scattered through every borough but Staten Island. A lot crosses Palmer’s desk—hiring of teachers, administrative and support staff; labor relations; and lawsuits, among other matters. Seldom a dull moment or predictable day, he says. “When I was hired, the guy who hired me said this is not a nine to five job. I was never accustomed to that anyway, because I always worked more than eight hours a day anyway. It’s constant. We do HR here everyday.” Before the NYC schools job, Palmer built a twenty-year career in HR at Time Inc., his job among those lost after the 2000 merger with AOL. Asked about the shift from a media industry to education, from a private business to a public enterprise, Palmer says the fundamental ethic that drives his work remains the same. “The foundation is that both places are organizations with people with a goal. The only difference from corporate is that it is a revenue driven and this isn’t,” Palmer says. “You still have to deal with people, satisfy people, work with people, and do the best you can.”

BERNARD PALMER ’75 NYC PUBLIC SCHOOLS LEADER

EMMA GRADY ’08 FASHION, ETHICAL STYLE MEDIA

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t was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. And, to be honest, I don’t know if I would even do that again—to move to New York with nothing but a few bags of clothes,” Emma Grady says, recalling the leap to live her dream. Grady’s professional focus as a fashion writer and ethical style expert didn’t lack for audacity either. Straight out of UVM, she built her credentials writing on eco-focused topics through an internship in Newport, Rhode Island, with the editor-in-chief of treehugger.com and Planet Green. Grady’s interest in fashion traces back to childhood watching old Hollywood movies with her father. She was deeply drawn to the classic styles. Her passions connected when Grady convinced her editor to assign her coverage of New York’s Fashion Week from an eco-conscious angle. Not long after, Grady made that leap to New York, living the freelance writing life with all of its rewards and challenges. “I interviewed everyone from RFK, Jr. to the actor Adrian Grenier,” she says. “That’s one of the great things about New York—there are so many events going on and opportunities to meet people. I hit the ground running.” Emmagrady.com gives a sense of the diversity of the young alumna’s endeavors. She co-founded the Ethical Writers Coalition, edits Past Fashion Future, an internationally acclaimed website she founded, and has juggled it all with jobs to help pay the rent. On that front, Grady just took a big step by landing work as a contributing video associate at Vanity Fair magazine. “Ethical fashion expert” begs some definition, and Grady obliges. She considers everything from human rights issues for garment workers to the eco-friendliness of cotton production to businesses that build socially conscious practices into their brand identity. Grady notes that beautiful design and style are always critical—classic and timeless are her watchwords. Given that, it’s not surprising that Grady is a big fan of vintage clothing, enjoying the thrill of the hunt, the individuality, and an ethic found in wellcrafted clothes worthy of being mended rather than tossed. A native of Maine, Grady says her years in New York have been a learning experience—with work, with apartments, with negotiating a subway system for the first time in her life. “All of it was completely foreign to me,” she says. “But there was no place else I could imagine myself right after college. I had to be in New York.”

NYC 10 DAVID SZUCHMAN ’94 ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY

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ooking back on his nearly twenty-year career as a prosecutor and attorney in public interest roles, David Szuchman considers his most challenging work. It doesn’t take him long to describe a 2004 case while he was working with the Department of Justice focused on child exploitation and obscenity crimes. The United States V. Mariscal involved the prosecution of a man who created and sold videos of child sexual abuse. HIV-positive, Angel Rafael Mariscal traveled to countries such as Ecuador and Cuba where he found children to exploit, participating in and filming the sexual acts himself. “On a case like that, you leave for work every day feeling like you’re wearing a white hat,” Szuchman says. Negotiating hurdles such as securing cooperation from the Cuban government, Szuchman and his colleagues earned a guilty verdict and a sentence of approximately one hundred years. “There’s just a feeling of complete redemption for the work you’ve done,” he says. Szuchman, now executive assistant district attorney and chief of the investigation division in the New York County District Attorney’s Office, found his interest in public interest law emerging during his UVM years. He studied political science and took leadership roles with the College Democrats on campus during presidential campaign years

that saw President Clinton and Vice President Gore both visit Burlington. Straight out of Hofstra Law School, Szuchman landed his dream job with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. “I knew graduating from law school that would be an amazing experience and opportunity to do good,” he says. Szuchman’s career has also included directing the State of New Jersey’s Division of Consumer Affairs and leadership roles in the district attorney’s office on cybercrime and identity theft. New York has always been in Szuchman’s blood. He grew up just outside the city, and he and his family live in nearby Westchester County now. He commutes to work in the complex of buildings around City Hall in Lower Manhattan. Reflecting on his taste for city life, Szuchman recalls his day of re-entry to Manhattan after three years working in the relative calm of Washington, DC. “In Grand Central during the morning rush, I had to stand on the edges of the main space. There was just so much going on, so many people walking in so many different directions. I had a moment of being overwhelmed,” he says. “Then the instincts of being a New Yorker kick back in and you just plunge into the crowd and you go forward. That’s all I know.”

DAVID SWEENY ’87 URBAN REDEVELOPER

Street had shown the economics major that a more traditional path in the financial world wasn’t a good fit for him. He was also guided by an interest in economic injustice issues that he says was born during his years at UVM. “A lot of great professors opened my eyes to it in an exciting, but gentle way. It never felt heavy-handed or moralistic, it just sort of said, ‘Here’s the data.’” In Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, Sweeny led a project that would help shift the data. “I became very interested in how do you retain competitive business in an urban setting, then very interested in how you promote the formation and early growth of small businesses,” Sweeny says. In Greenpoint, the answer was the renovation of five neglected industrial spaces, creating incubator space for as many as 130 fledgling businesses. PDS Development continues to work in a similar vein, buying vacant industrial buildings in Brooklyn and Queens, renovating and leasing them. “Our buildings are always a really interesting mishmash of personalities. Diverse business owners making a diversity of things,” Sweeny says. “That can be a lot of fun because we can have somebody who is doing architectural metal working next door to somebody who is making really high-end artisanal gin next to somebody who is selling floor coverings. So they sort of represent that whole working part of the city economy.” VQ

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et’s begin David Sweeny’s story far from New York City, but in a likely place, 300 miles north in Burlington, Vermont, where the alumnus has returned on a March Friday to talk with UVM undergraduates. Sweeny, a Brooklyn-based industrial redeveloper who heads up his own PDS Development Corporation, has a central message he wants to share, particularly with the seniors who will soon be leaving college’s dewy meadow behind for what might seem a very scary professional world. “What I wanted to hear when I was graduating was a little ‘relax,’” Sweeny says. “There are lots of interesting ways to meet interesting people, to make enough money so you can live, and to learn and advance. My career, in hindsight, looks like it had a path. But I was always just, honestly, sort of entering the woods at wherever the next turn appeared.” That said, Sweeny was one of those grads that makes his yet-to-be-hired friends cringe a bit. Graduate on Saturday, move on Sunday, start work on Monday. Sweeny, who is blind, had begun to lose his sight to ocular cancer not long after graduation. But he recalls that in the spring of 1987 he still had the vision to search for a job the old-fashioned way—circle every help wanted ad that seemed remotely possible in the New York Times classifieds and send out a blitz of cover letters and resumes. That first job was with the non-profit North Brooklyn Development Association. A summer internship on Wall

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UVM PEOPLE Jane Sarkin ’81 ON THE COVER On April 8, Vanity Fair had just released their new cover story, featuring a portrait of Sofía Vergara—red dress off the shoulder, white fur wrap, looking, you know, like Sofía Vergara. Jane Sarkin, features editor for the magazine, breathes a sigh of relief during a noon-hour phone conversation. “It’s getting a lot of play because she looks amazing, and it was her first time on our cover,” Sarkin says. “There is a lot of excitement in the press and online. Sofía has a huge social media presence. That is going to be huge for her and for us.” (More huge, two months later VF’s Caitlyn Jenner cover rippled around the globe.) Leading the process on the publication’s striking covers—“the face of the magazine”— has been a key focus for Sarkin in her work at Vanity Fair over the past thirty years. Do the math. That adds up to some 360 rounds of working to find the right story, the right image, and coordinate everything that needs to be done to create a cover for one of the world’s most beautiful magazines. Sarkin credits a large crew of contributors—designers, hair and make-up artists, and, of course, legendary photographers such as Annie Leibovitz and the late Helmut Newton. “I’ve been working with the same people, most of them, for more than twenty years,” she says. “We’re like a family here. It has really been an incredible time.” Stormy weather, cancelled flights, finding out at the last-minute that the gigantic, set-designer-created planet Earth to be featured in a photo with Madonna needs to be transported across the country for a Los Angeles photo shoot, such are a few of the challenges of shooting a Vanity Fair cover. Asked about any misfires, Sarkin laughs and says you tend to forget those. Then adds, “Maybe putting Shia LeBouf in a space suit wasn’t the best idea.”

MIRACLE ON ICE

recalls. She adds an important aside, “and you got to know all of New York.” A photo editor taught her about setting up photo shoots, and Sarkin grew into a magazine jack-of-all-trades. With her skills and her connections within New York’s celebrity A-List, Sarkin would be an important addition to editor Tina Brown’s team as she built the Vanity Fair staff in the mid-1980s.

CHANGING TIMES Though her focus at Vanity Fair has remained steady for three decades, Sarkin has experienced some change in the last few years. She and husband Martin O’Connor, an attorney, have an empty nest at their home in New Jersey, both daughters having gone off to college. “It’s awful. I miss my kids terribly,” she confesses. And Vanity Fair’s publisher, Condé Nast, recently moved the magazine headquarters from Times Square to One World Trade Center. Then, of course, there are the challenges of keeping a print magazine vital in a rapidly changing media age. “We obviously have to adapt like everyone. We spend a lot of time on our web presence and thinking about how we attract new readers and young readers. But we really are going strong,” Sarkin says. “You just want to keep the magazine really, really successful. You want it to always be part of the conversation when people talk about what they’ve read recently in a magazine.” VQ

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An English major during her UVM days, Sarkin can trace her interest in the magazine business to a precise and unexpected event. February 22, 1980, the famed “Miracle on Ice” game—the United States Olympic hockey team’s upset victory over the Soviet Union—took place in Lake Placid, New York. Sarkin, a UVM student in Burlington then, recalls being drawn into the excitement and intrigued by how it was captured in the media. Paging through a copy of People, she thought “How do you do this? How do you get involved in this world?” Sarkin’s first New York magazine job would be an entry-level receptionist gig at Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. “In those days, all you did was answer the phone all day— ‘Interview, Interview, Interview, Interview,’” she

by Thomas Weaver photograph by Jeremy Allen

IN SEARCH OF THE

GRID

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he sun is trying to shine on

SMART

Rutland, Vermont. It’s a gray morning in April, but a few beams cut the clouds as Nathan Adams ’96 and I turn off Route 4 and head up City Dump Road. We pass two trucks unloading garbage at a transfer station. Then we get out of the car and start walking through the mud toward the top of this now-closed landfill. Amidst piles of melting snow, 7,722 silicon solar panels cover ten acres like so many rows of purple tabletops tipped toward the south. I’ve come here looking for the smart grid revolution. Whatever that is. The solar panels were erected on this hill by Vermont’s largest electricity company, Green Mountain Power, where Adams works as vice-president of strategy and innovation. When they’re turned on this summer, the panels will generate 2.5 megawatt hours of electricity, enough to power about 2,000 homes during full sun. Next to the panels, eight metal storage buildings hold racks of both lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries. The batteries will store four megawatts of energy. The hill slopes gently down to the Rutland High School. In the event of a blackout—say the next Hurricane Sandy—the high school can be “islanded,” Adams tells me, separated from the regional electrical grid. With only solar power and batteries, GMP will be able to

BY JOSHUA BROWN

keep the lights and heat on at the school “as long as they’re needed,” Adams says. The U.S. Department of Energy has identified this $10 million project, the Stafford Hill Solar Farm, as the first and only all-solar “microgrid” in the United States—and it goes far beyond providing power to an emergency shelter. In two hundred participating houses in the surrounding neighborhood, the hotwater tanks will soon have sensors that can wirelessly transmit their temperature back to Green Mountain Power. “Our customers will always have hot water,” Adams says, but new, sophisticated algorithms in GMP’s control center will be able to automatically shut down already-hot tanks for short periods, reducing demand when this East Rutland circuit nears peak load. Ditto for the batteries—but in the other direction: as demand spikes, say on a hot summer afternoon when people flip on air conditioners, GMP will be able to quickly turn on the batteries, pumping power into the grid from Stafford Hill instead of having to buy it from expensive “peaker” plants in the New England wholesale electricity market. It’s solar power being collected all day, Photograph by Eric Hudiburg

THE STAFFORD SOLAR HILL FARM, A GREEN MOUNTAIN POWER FACILITY IN RUTLAND, IS ONE PIECE OF A SMARTER, MORE EFFICIENT, AND MORE ECONOMICAL POWER GRID.

then “dispatched” as Adams says, when it’s most needed. “We’re developing very local energy generation and storage to optimize the efficiency of the grid,” Adams says. Sounds pretty smart, maybe even revolutionary.

Thomas Edison received a patent for the incandescent light bulb in 1880 and by the end of that decade the first electric grids were providing a one-direction flow of electricity from generators to transmission lines to transformers to light bulbs. Over the next century, the U.S. grid spread in size and complexity such that, in

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2000, the National Academy of Engineering named the

electric power grid the greatest engineering accomplishment of the twentieth century. But the twentieth century is getting to be a while ago—and the grid is showing its age. “A lot of the technology being used today in the electric grid would not have looked unusual to Edison,” says UVM engineering professor Jeff Marshall, “It’s really old stuff.” A patchwork product, the grid is increasingly congested as more and more of our economy and culture requires plugging in. Large-scale power failures—like the Northeast blackout of 2003 and the one in India in 2012 that left ten percent of humanity in the dark— highlight ongoing concerns about the reliability of the grid, whether stressed by extreme weather or threatened by terrorist attack. And the burning of fossil fuels to create electricity is a major contributor to climate change;

more than a third of U.S. greenhouse gases come from the production of electricity. Marshall leads a group of twenty-one UVM faculty who participate in the University of Vermont’s Smart Grid IGERT program. Funded by the National Science Foundation, and in partnership with Sandia National Laboratories, the five-year, $3 million program will train nearly two dozen doctoral students in an interdisciplinary cross-section of fields from engineering to psychology—all with an eye toward making the grid, well, smarter. “My definition of smart grid is the use of information

technology to make the grid work better. And by working better I mean it’s more reliable, greener, and more cost-efficient,” says UVM professor of engineering Paul Hines, an expert on power systems. Roughly speaking, in the smart grid, electricity meets the internet, and power and information flow in two directions. But underneath that tidy definition, Hines is quick to say, lies a set of hugely complex technological and cultural challenges—and a brewing set of fights about whose vision of a smarter grid will get funded. For example, to improve reliability, is it smarter to invest in hardening the grid against storm damage—Hines and colleagues ask in a recent opinion article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—or is it wiser to build “distributed generation” that spreads power production out to, say, hundreds of wind farms and thousands of solar rooftops? DOROTHY SCHNURE

storage in a traditional power grid. At any instant, the supply has to be equal to demand.” So, until recently, most utilities have seen these fluctuating power sources as no more than a boutique part of their supply. To help, Marshall, Hines, and several of their students in the UVM smart grid program are designing better control algorithms for managing wind farms that optimize their power—using on-site battery storage to smooth output. And energy storage may become the most revolutionary part of a smart grid revolution, says Mads Almassalkhi, a new professor in the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences who specializes

that big changes are coming to how we produce, move, and manage electricity. “We inevitably have to shift from fossil fuels to renewables,” says Jennie Stephens, who has faculty appointments in both the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, “the question is how fast? And how is it going happen?” Last year, four percent of the U.S. electricity supply came from wind, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration—and just 0.4 percent from solar. One of the central challenges in moving those percentages up is how to overcome what engineers call “the intermittency problem.” Wind is wonderful, until it stops blowing. Solar is swell, until a cloud passes over. “This causes the energy supply to go from full power to zero very quickly,” Jeff Marshall explains. “There is no

in power systems. For example, a new generation of electric cars could fundamentally change how we think about where our power is coming from: instead of just transportation, your e-car could become part of the grid—“a mobile energy-storage device,” Almassalkhi says—drawing power when you need it to drive, and pumping juice back into the grid when your house or your utility company need it. Charge it with solar panels in the backyard and you have a micro powerplant sitting in the driveway. This is where the smart grid becomes necessary. Going from managing the output of a few coal or natural gas power plants to organizing perhaps millions of scattered solar panels and car-sized power nodes becomes an astronomically more complex task. Which is why Almassalkhi, Hines, and others in the UVM smart grid team are exploring the best ways to coordinate vehicle

JOSHUA BROWN

SUMMER 2015

“Smart grid has become a catch-all phrase to represent the potential benefits of a revamped and more sophisticated electricity system,” writes Hines’ colleague, Jennie Stephens, in Smart Grid (R)Evolution: Electric Power Struggles, a new book that she co-authored. It’s “a vague, politically attractive, seemingly benign, and somewhat ambiguous phrase,” she writes. “After all, who would argue for a ‘dumb grid?’” “I don’t even say smart grid anymore,” Nathan Adams tells me. “It’s one of those ubiquitous terms everyone is using and nobody knows what it means.” But he and everyone I talked to in my hunt for the smart grid agree

charging. At the same time, Christopher Clement, a doctoral student in natural resources and trainee in UVM’s Smart Grid IGERT, is modeling what could happen to Vermont’s landscape if we shift most of our electrical demand to distributed solar and wind. “It’s a major impact on tens of thousands of acres,” Clement says, “that may have real conflict with current land uses, including dairy and forestry.” Various versions of this solar-meets-battery scenario have some electricity companies running scared. Today, grid-scale batteries are “tremendously expensive,” Jeff Marshall says, but that’s changing fast. Rising electricity prices and declining costs for both solar panels and batteries mean that grid-connected solar-plus-battery energy systems will be “economic within the next ten to fifteen years,” the Rocky Mountain Institute forecasts, “and could soon supply a majority of customers’ needs.” To prevent large-scale “grid defection,” where homeowners and businesses decide that their smartest grid is no grid at all, may call for new rate structures and regulations—and may require utilities to reimagine their business as something other than selling kilowatts pumped in from far-away power stations.

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

I’ve come to UVM’s Gund Institute for Ecological

Economics to continue my search for the smart grid. It’s a fine, sunny day in May, but Dan Fredman ’03 picks up his smart phone and texts his wife back at their apartment—and asks her to turn on all the lights and crank the air-conditioning. Next to him on the table is a device that looks like a digital picture frame. It’s an “in-home display” and it may be the way the smart grid, someday, gets into your home. For many people, smart grid—if it means anything at all—means a smart meter. In the wake of the economic crisis, $4.5 billion in federal stimulus money was directed in 2009 toward building the U.S. smart grid. In Vermont, $69 million came in, matched by an equal amount of in-state funds, for installation of digital smart meters and now about ninety-two percent of Vermont households have one. It used to be that once a month a meter reader would come walking by. “Now, in Burlington, smart meters collect how many kilowatt-hours are being consumed every fifteen minutes, and automatically transmit this information back to the Burlington Electric Department every eight hours.” If nothing else, smart

meters—combined with other grid sensors—have helped utilities to more quickly respond to power outages. But one of the central promises of this massive investment of government resources in smart meters was that it would allow homeowners to see how much electricity they’re consuming, giving them a tool to conserve energy and save money. So far, that hasn’t happened much. There are many reasons why the smart meter promise hasn’t yet been met. One is that, to most people, the readout on a smart meter is gobbledygook: who balances their checkbook in kilowatt-hours? That’s where an in-home display can help: it collects information from the smart meter in real-time and translates it into dollars and cents. As part of their doctoral research in the UVM smart grid effort, Dan Fredman and Elizabeth Palchak are working with Burlington Electric to deploy two hundred in-home displays to volunteers in rental apartments around town. Fredman points to his phone, which is receiving a signal from an in-home display back at his apartment. Before his wife turned on all the lights, the screen showed that he was spending three cents an hour on electricity. Now it’s showing thirty-three cents, a tenfold increase. “If we kept this going 24/7 that’s like $300 a month,’” Fredman says—and texts his wife again asking her to turn it all off again. “The fundamental point of this study is to see what happens to people’s behavior when they get real-time information about their energy use and costs,” he explains. One cohort of volunteers in the study will be offered an incentive—their monthly bill paid off—it they’re able reduce their consumption the most in that group. Does clear information, or competition, or a combination of both, compel renters—who don’t have a financial incentive to take on traditional efficiency investments like insulation or new appliances—to reduce their energy use? Fredman, like many other scientists studying the social nature of our energy systems, wants to know “what moves people and what behavioral strategies work best to help them to conserve?” Digging under the layers of new technology, there’s a growing body of evidence that the grid will only be as smart as we are. VQ

ALUMNI

CONNECTION

Keeping Connected

To get involved with the affinity group or to support the LGBTQA Center, visit

go.uvm.edu/affinity

cifically for its reputation as a Top Ten Trans Friendly University. “I tried to find the LGBTQA community as soon as I got to campus because I knew that’s where I belonged,” Gieselman recalls. That statement is a far cry from alum Sanford Friedman’s experience as a member of the class of 1973. Friedman, who came out during his sophomore year, did not have a single gay friend at UVM. In fact, he didn’t encounter another gay individual during his entire time on campus. As the keynote speaker at this year’s Rainbow Graduation ceremony for LGBTQA students, Friedman urged Gieselman and the rest of the Class of 2015 to stay in touch with each other and UVM. “The challenges of my generation were different from the ones you face and my generation had to face them alone. Today, by being out and proud we can fight these oppressions together.” The LGBTQA Center and the UVM Alumni Association have launched an LGBTQA Affinity Group where alumni and students can connect on Facebook, LinkedIn, and at sponsored events regionally to network and support each other. Friedman and Michael Upton MD’94 have been tapped as the group’s first leadership team. “Over the years we have managed to connect one individual LGBTQA alum to another with really great results,” says Dot Brauer, director of the LGBTQA Center. “But we know there is potential for so many more great connections out there.” For Rocko Gieselman, the Affinity Group represents an important continuation of the undergraduate experience. “I’m passionate about improving the experiences LGBTQ-identified people have on campus,” says Gieselman. This on-going commitment, as Friedman told the new grads, is exactly the point. “I want you all to stay in touch so that when you return to campus someday you can be, as I am today, proud and humbled by the progress UVM has made.” —Kathleen Laramee ’00

SUMMER 2015

SALLY MCCAY

As a transgender student, Rocko Gieselman was drawn to UVM spe-

[ALUMNICONNECTION One word: Internships New donor support expands opportunities

by Kathleen Laramee ’00

he all-important internship is key to a rich undergraduate education and landing a great job after graduation. No surprise there. Recent surveys show that a full 70 percent of new hires fresh out of college will have an internship or co-op experience on their résumés. President Tom Sullivan has led a campus-wide effort to enhance career programs and building internship opportunities is a central component. But the economic realities of financing summer internships, which are often unpaid, prevent many students from seeking them out. At UVM, a new trend of internship scholarships funded through private philanthropy is aiming to change that. The Anna Whitcomb ’73 Scholarship, awarded to undergraduates pursuing internships that promote the common good with mission-based/non-profit organizations, is helping support Greta Hasler ’16 during an unpaid internship with the Sierra Club in Washington, D.C., this summer. Studio art major Kailey Rinder ’16 is spending her summer sewing, drafting patterns, and assisting on photoshoots as an intern with an indepen-

dent fashion designer at Carleen. The newly established Sanford Plotkin’65 Arts Internship Scholarship is providing the funds for her to afford life in the Big Apple. Also new this summer: a geography internship funded by Matt Glass ’90, a women’s scholarship fund for internships in chemistry and physics, and internships for students in the Rubenstein School funded by the Crowley Family, among others. Back at UVM, the university’s first-ever internship coordinator, Amanda Chase, is on board and working to create new opportunities and help students sort through the options and find the right fit. Since her appointment, internships posted on Catamount Job Link, the system students use to apply, have more than doubled over the past two years. Students who use them wisely know that these summer experiences are steps along the road to eventual employment. For Greta Hasler, the ultimate goal is a job in environmental policy. “I’m hoping to make connections to colleagues at the Sierra Club this summer that I will be able to maintain for the rest of my career,” she says.

UVM & The Penn Club Socialize in

the Franklin

Living Roo

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

Stay or Put Guests

Alumni Benefits Worldwide – Access to 150+ Reciprocal Private Clubs A NYC Historic Landmark Home Base in Midtown Manhattan for UVM & You

Up in Guests Room

Become a Member Today! Connect at www.pennclub.org Work out

ess Center

at the F itn

Attend Lectures & Host in Even

t Spaces

Indulge in Gourmet

Cuisine

PRO F ILE S IN G I VI NG

CBW: GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN The Chittenden-Buckham-Wills residence halls are coming down this summer, but there’s still a chance to purchase a brick from one of the fabled “Shoeboxes.” Much-loved

To ‘educate another kid’ Ken Wheeling’s estate gift honors parents

and much-hated, the seventy-year-old dorms are making way for a new 700-student residence hall and an expansion at the University of Vermont Medical Center. For $50, the University of Vermont Foundation will send you a clean-but-authentic CBW brick

E-mail: donna.burke@uvm.edu SALLY MCCAY

complete with commemorative plaque. The price covers shipping and handling and a $25 donation to the UVM Scholarship Fund. For more information, google UVM Shoeboxes. And whether you’re in the market for a brick or not, we’d like your memories of the Shoeboxes. Please take a few minutes to post a picture or unforgettable CBW moment. Go to #UVMshoeboxes or alumni.uvm.edu/ shoeboxes/ to share your memory.

ALUMNI CALENDAR JULY

South Hero, VT July 23 UVM Night at Snow Farm Vineyard Fairfield, CT July 30 Summer BBQ at Fairfield Beach Club

AUGUST

Boston, August 16 Red Sox vs. Seattle Mariners Burlington, August 28 Move-in Day Burlington, August 30 Convocation

SEPTEMBER

New York, September 1 U.S. Tennis Open

OCTOBER

Burlington, October 2-4 Reunion, Homecoming & Family Weekend

For details & registration

alumni. uvm.edu

SUMMER 2015

enneth Wheeling, a retired teacher and former director of the Shelburne Museum, is a man of wide intellectual interests and a strong devotion to his community in Monkton, Vermont. Classical languages and history have been focuses of his own study and teaching, but Wheeling’s most consuming passion is for horse-drawn vehicles—the buggies, surreys, and sleighs that were commonplace conveyances in bygone Vermont and beyond. In fact, the familiar hexagonal red sign that marks the entrance to his Monkton property reads, not “Stop” but “Whoa.” Wheeling is one of the world’s foremost authorities on horse-drawn vehicles, having amassed a library and archives on the subject and travelled the world lecturing and adding to his passion for them. And his Monkton barn is packed with vintage examples of the horse-drawn carriages that were once as common as cars on the Vermont byways. For some forty years, Wheeling has made his home in Monkton, where he has served the community as the zoning administrator, town moderator, and justice of the peace across the decades. A recent estate gift will ensure that his positive influence on this Vermont town continues for generations to come. Upon his death, Wheeling’s estate is to be liquidated and the proceeds used to establish a scholarship for a UVM student or students from Monkton. The generous gift was made in honor of his late parents, Kenneth John Wheeling and Loretta Marie Wheeling. “I owe them. I owe them big time,” Wheeling says of his mother and his father—a doctor who practiced obstetrics and gynecology at Saint Francis Hospital in Port Jervis, New York. “They saw that I got educated, and my brothers and sisters. And who remembers?” he asks wistfully. The Kenneth John Wheeling and Loretta Marie Wheeling Scholarship, an endowment estimated at $1 million, will give first preference to a student of the College of For information on including the University of Vermont in your Medicine. If no such candidate exists from estate plan, contact — Monkton, it will be awarded to an undergraduate student from Monkton in any of UVM’s Donna Burke schools or colleges. Office of Gift Planning “I hope some deserving students from The University of Vermont Foundation Monkton will benefit,” Wheeling says. “My Phone: 802-656-3402 dad and mother would just be pleased that Fax: 802-656-8678 they could educate another kid. Maybe not 411 Main St. just yet,” he smiles knowingly, “but someday.” Burlington, VT 05401-3411

[ALUMNICONNECTION

#moveuvm Last August, thousands of graduates, friends, parents, and students joined UVM’s first-ever online move-in day welcome celebration. With pictures, stories,

UVM

videos, and messages posted on social media,

FUND

the event reinforced an

2015

old Vermont tradition— offering a warm greeting to students joining the campus community. As part of the day, more than 500 people contributed nearly $100,000 to UVM scholarship programs. Hundreds of others uploaded pictures to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This summer, the Move-In Day Giving Challenge will return larger than ever on Aug. 28, when new students arrive on the UVM campus.

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

Please join us online that

day at #moveUVM with a picture, a memory, or a bit of advice.

Together, we can do great things.

aelyn Burbey is ready to go. A sophomore in the Honors College from San Marcos, California, in her first two years at UVM she has been a stand-out student, double majoring in environmental engineering and mathematics and making the dean’s list every semester. Last year she received the June Veinott Award, given to the female student who, at the end of her first year of study, shows the greatest promise of success in the engineering profession. She is a cadet sergeant with the UVM Army ROTC “Green Mountain Batallion,” where she earned the Superior Cadet Award last year and was on the Ranger Challenge Team this year. After graduation? “I’m hoping I get commissioned in the Corps of Engineers,” she says. Make a gift today at “It really sets you up well for a professional uvmfoundation.org/ career. Once you get out of there, you’re giving/online. ready to go.” Kaelyn is also a recipient of the Rockowitz Endowed Scholarship for students studying in the Honors College. And that’s a great thing. Scholarship support for deserving students continues to be a top priority for UVM and the UVM Foundation.

UVM FOUNDATION Grasse Mount 411 Main Street Burlington VT 05401 802-656-2010 888-458-8691 (toll free) www.uvmfoundation.org

CLASSNOTES

UVM ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

GREEN & GOLD AFFINITY GROUP

LIFE BEYOND GRADUATION

Connecting alumni ages 60+

alumni.uvm.edu/ getinvolved/affinity

‘‘

UVM turns out some of the most ambitious, innovative, and caring people the world has to offer. Normal and boring are not in our DNA.

33-64

GREEN & GOLD REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Kathryn”Karie” King Dawalt recently celebrated her 99th birthday! Kathryn met her husband while her parents were stationed in Vermont at Fort Ethan Allen. Both her father and husband graduated from West Point and she proceeded after her marriage and graduation to be a busy Army wife traveling all over the world with her husband and family. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Send your news to— Mary Shakespeare Minckler 100 Wake Robin Drive Shelburne, VT 05482

75TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Thelma Wolinsky Seltzer died in New York City June 27, 2013 at age 93. She won a scholarship to the University of Vermont by writing an award winning essay, “My Mother’s Dinner Set.” She met her husband, Leo M. Selt-

zer, while studying at UVM. Thelma graduated with a degree in business administration and Leo with an MD. During WWII, while Dr. Seltzer served in the U.S. Army in Europe, Thelma worked in New York on the top secret Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb subsequently dropped on Japan and which hastened the end of the war in the Pacific in August 1945. Barbara Brainard Fretthold ’73 writes, “I’m sorry to report the death of my mother, Mary Skinner Brainard. She was living in Beverly, Massachusetts, and passed away on October 26, 2014, after a short illness. She had to drop out of college due to the war and unfortunately was never able to resume her studies. But because of her wonderful recollections of the time she spent there, I ended up attending UVM myself. I have been reading through her saved correspondence and enjoyed hearing about UVM in the late thirties and early forties.” UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

SUMMER 2015

80TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your

upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

’’

—Ian McLaughlin ’03

[CLASSNOTES

Gwen Brown sent a note and a photo of Fred Webster’s Concord Coach Replicas in Orleans, Vermont. His business is the Coventry Coach Factory and his replicas are crafted in line with the ruggedness of the hillside of the great Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, where they are being built; finessed in line with the beauty of nature’s art in those hills; slightly imperfect in line with that of the builder. A copy of the photo can be found in the alumni photo gallery. Bill Rice ’75 wrote to thank Gwen for reaching out to his mother, Hester Rice, prior to her death in March. Hester was 95, when she passed away in Montpelier, Vermont. When she graduated from UVM, she did so cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She married Forrest Rice of Derby, Vermont, in Boise, Idaho, where he was stationed at Gowen Air Field. They returned to Vermont in 1946 and resided in Newport. She had a son, William Herbert, and afterward she worked at a radio station, taught third and fourth grades, and worked at Associated Insurance Agencies. She was an active member of the United Church. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

Patty Pike Hallock gave a talk at the Congregational Church in Rutland on her time spent in the West Indies. The grandson of Mary Beth Bloomer, Matthew Asa Bloomer ‘00, was recently elected to the Board of Aldermen in Rutland, continuing a family tradition of service to the community and state. Matthew is the son of William Bloomer ‘73. I will be having cataract surgery soon. They say that’s a piece of cake! Please send me news of what you are up to. I hate blank columns. Send your news to— June Hoffman Dorion Maples, Apt.114 3 General Wing Road Rutland, VT 05701 junedorion@gmail.com

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street

Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

70TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Nancy E Ciaschini ’73 shared that her mother, Mary Boardman Ciaschini, age 90, passed away on Feb 2, 2015 in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Mary was born in Saint Albans, Vermont and was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. She was the wife of the late Walter A. Ciaschini to whom she was married for 60 years. They resided in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for over 30 years until retiring to Venice, Florida, in 1986. They also enjoyed summers at their home in Greensboro, Vermont. Mary retired from Berkshire Life Insurance Co. She spent many rewarding years volunteering with her church, museum, historical and library organizations. She always enjoyed keeping in touch with her Theta sisters and attending many class reunions, as well as winter and summer sports, quilting and baking. Send your news to— Mrs. Harriet Bristol Saville 468 Church Road, #118 Colchester, VT 05446 hattiesaville@comcast.net

Ken Lanouette called to report the death of his wife Jane Smith Lanouette on November 11, 2014. She was known as Midge in college. She was a good friend and sorority sister of mine and we’d always kept in touch. She will be greatly missed by her family and friends. I have recently reconnected with Anita Ross Pinney. She is not only a UVM classmate but a high school one as well. I’m looking forward to news from other ‘47ers! Send your news to— Louise Jordan Harper 15 Ward Avenue South Deerfield, MA 01373 louisejordanharper@yahoo.com

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

VQEXTRA online

Send your news to— Gladys Clark Severance 2179 Roosevelt Highway Colchester, VT 05446 severance@bsad.uvm.edu

65TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Dr. Mike Wiedman says, “We will be at Oxford University, Mitford College, researching and studying this summer. Prior, I’ll be following my wonderful wife and good sport, Irene, again up the trails in Zermantland Lower Matterhorn, re-climbing. Still active in medical offices, Harvard Professor, Mass. General and Mass. Eye Infirmary. Homecoming to Beacon Hill, Boston, this September. Do write or visit. We have five climbing floors.” As your class secretary and one of the volunteers for planning our 65th Reunion, I am writing to urge all those in our class who are able, to plan to attend! The dates are Friday, October 2 to Sunday, October 4. As you saw on the postcard sent to us all, special events are planned at that time for all Reunionyear classes. It would be very good to hear from you soon, especially if you have any ideas about suggestions for when we see each other again at the Reunion. Doug Tudhope is another of our classmates who agreed to be on the planning committee. Send your news to— Hedi Stoehr Ballantyne 20 Kent Street Montpelier, VT 05602 hedi.ballantyne@gmail.com

Claire and Dick Fink sent a very creative Christmas card from Florida with a picture of a holiday palm tree with wrapped gifts under it that Santa must have left. Charles Wiley writes, “This, 2015, has been quite a year so far. In February I retired after 48 years on the board of the O.M. Fisher Home Foundation which owns and operates The Gary Home in Montpelier. In recogni-

PENELOPE EASTON ’44 “I was so blind the first couple of months I was there. I didn’t see the native people, and neither did the other white people. But then I saw how the native people’s fishing and hunting and preserving of fruits and berries had to last them through the winter.” —Penelope Easton ’44 on her work promoting nutrition in Alaska in 1948. Read more about Easton’s experience then and her experience now telling her story as a firsttime author in her nineties.

read more at

uvm.edu/vq

tion of this event the board had the library renovated, remodeled and dedicated to me and my wife Carol (who passed away in December, 2014). This was a very moving event for me. The Gary Home is a copy of the Converse Home in Burlington and presently has a few UVM alumni living there. Then the announcement of the demolition of the ‘Shoe Box’ dormitories at UVM brought back ‘moving’ memories of the fall of 1947 when we moved into the new dorms. The smell of fresh paint and new furniture is still with me today. I remember being awakened at midnight to the sound of bowling in the hallway outside our door. Someone had set up beer and whiskey bottles as ten pins and taken the round door knobs off the doors to use as bowling balls. Caution—wear shoes or slippers in the halls. Then the announcement of the day (1947) that this was the first class in excess of 1,000 students in UVM history. Quite a year!” Send your news to— Valerie Meyer Chamberlain 52 Crabapple Drive

Shelburne, VT 05482 valchamber@aol.com

Beverly Barker Wiggins ’50 writes, “My husband, Harry B. Wiggins, of Scottsdale, Arizona, died on March 9, 2015.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Shirley Eva Bryant Money of Centerville, Massachusetts, passed on March 2, 2015. At UVM she was vice president of the Student Women’s Association, officer of Alpha Chi Omega Sorority, and officer of the Student Christian Association and the Interfaith Council. On July 10, 1954 she married Max Money in the Putney Federated Church and then moved to Napa, California, where sons Steve, Tom, and Peter were born. In 1972 the family moved to Centerville, Massachusetts, where Shirley and her husband have lived for forty-two years. Shirley’s greatest

love was her husband Max and her family. Judith Griffin McKelvey ’79 writes, “Dr. Ray Evan Griffin passed away peacefully in West Glover, Vermont, on December 21, 2014 at the age of 92. He attended UVM on the G.I. Bill and then the University of Maryland Dental School. He had a dental practice in Bellows Falls, Vermont, for many years. He leaves a long legacy of UVM grads including his children, Rodney Griffin ’72 G’73, Ronald Griffin ’74, Robert Griffin ’75, ’80 and Judith Griffin McKelvey ‘79, his daughter-in-laws: Margaret Hammond ’71, Dr. Pamela Hinds ’73 and Kathleen McGinty Griffin ’79, and his granddaughters, Sarah Griffin ‘11 and Hannah Tobey ’18. Sarah’s UVM graduation banner and a UVM Golf Team hat were proudly displayed at his memorial service on December 27, 2014. Arthur Sarlat writes, “I visited UVM on September 14 for the first time in 61 years. What a change! We were graciously hosted by a member of the Alumni Association to whom we give many thanks. The campus is still beautiful. Two of

my family have attended UVM: Alicia Law LaCour G’04 and Jordan Sedwin ’14. I mourn the loss of TEP fraternity, and think of Dean and Mrs. Kroepsche who hosted my last semester.” UVM Thetas Jane Wilson Durie and Bunny FitzSimons Smith ’54 join me to bring sad news of the loss of our dear friend Jean Hawley Navarra on March 15 of this year. We enjoyed more than half a century of annual mini-reunion UVM lunches in Palo Alto, California. Looking back at college days, Bunny says, “I well recall Jean. She always looked so calm and poised. No one ever wore a camel’s hair coat better than Jean.” It is good to remember the happy UVM days as, one by one, our friends and classmates finish their final life journeys. Classmates, please send news of your current activities and UVM memories to me via snail mail. I love to hear from you and promise to include whatever you send in the next Quarterly. Send your news to— Nancy Hoyt Burnett 729 Stendhal Lane Cupertino, CA 95014

Creative Community Imagine dining each night with your neighbors who are writers, musicians, professors, activists, and artists. These are just some of the people who live at Wake Robin. Be part of a community that dances, debates, paints, writes and publishes, makes music, works with computers, and works with wood. Live the life you choose—in a vibrant community of interesting people. We’re happy to tell you more. Visit our website or give us a call today to schedule a tour. 802.264.5100 / wakerobin.com

SUMMER 2015

2 0 0 WA K E R O B I N D R I V E , S H E L B U R N E , V E R M O N T

[CLASSNOTES

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

60TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@uvm.edu. Don Panoushek ’54 shares, “I received a call from Jeff Hughes telling me that his mother, Joyce Bosley Hughes ’55, had passed away earlier in the day. She was the wife of the former Dr. Charles Lloyd Hughes ’53, Col. U.S. Army, Ret., a UVM graduate and a very good friend of mine since childhood in Fair Haven, Vermont. Joyce was a native of Burlington, Vermont. She is survived by Jeff and six other siblings. She had been stricken with dementia. Joanne Murray Blakeman writes from Montpelier, Vermont, “Just can’t believe it’s been 60 years!” Send your news to— Jane Morrison Battles Apt. 125A 500 East Lancaster Avenue Wayne, PA 19087 janebattles@yahoo.com Hal Lee Greenfader Apt. 1 805 South Le Doux Road Los Angeles, CA 90035 halisco@att.net

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

Carol Parker Day writes, “Our fourth grandson to attend UVM, Joshua Blouin ‘15, is graduating this year. He has studied wildlife management in the Rubenstein School.” Marsha Pearl Jamil shares, “When the kids were little, we (meaning ‘I’) took care of various pets: a nervous Shetland pony, a mean goat, rabbits, ducks, huge snapping turtles, etc. Months ago, when Ben brought home a handsome siennabrown chicken, I said, ‘no thanks, give it to the grandchildren.’ But he wanted fresh eggs, so he set the hen up in our flower room. Lo and behold one egg, then a few days later another, then another and another. Then the hen got sick and could hardly stand. So why not call the leader of America’s chicken and egg industry, our very own internation-

ally-famous Gil Dedrick. I had shown Ben newspaper articles about Gil’s accomplishments and Ben was suitably impressed. After they discussed potential remedies, I got back on the phone and Gil said, ‘Marsha, give it away or kill it.’ My husband remarked, ‘How come every time you need any info, the top man/woman in the field always turns out to be a UVM graduate?’ Simple answer, ‘We’re a special breed.”’ Virginia (Ginny) Rosse MacEntee writes, “I recently retired from the State University of New York at Oswego. But I still teach a special education course online that our preservice teachers need for certification. I spend 6-7 months in our condo in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. The rest of the time I live outside of Syracuse. I frequently travel to visit our children and grandchildren who are scattered from Alaska to Switzerland.” Send your news to— Jane K. Stickney 32 Hickory Hill Road Williston, VT 05495 stickneyjanek@gmail.com

Len Kreisler writes, “I have been my wife’s caregiver, primary physician and power of attorney for about 10 years: Joan Dorfman Kreisler. She fell and broke a wrist and hip while celebrating Thanksgiving 2014 in Scottsdale, Arizona. She is now in a group home in the area. You can see my last entry into my Caregiver blogs (www.doctorlenk.com). We met at UVM and have many great memories.” Susan Cochran says “I am still serving as president of the League of Women Voters of Maryland. My two-year term will be over at the end of May. My husband, Carter, and I went to Burlington, Vermont, at New Year’s to visit my sister, Ann Lanzet ’61. In summer we will go up to stay on the lake. We saw Shirley Campbell Prushko and John Prushko and Loran Dean Brown last summer and expect to visit with them again in 2015. Visited San Francisco last fall and made excursions to Muir Woods, a dream I’ve had, Yosemite and Napa Valley. My first time in San Francisco, if you can believe it.” Recently on the way home from Florida, Julie and Bob Dempsey Jr. stopped to visit with Janice and Doug Burke, classmates now living in Hilton Head. They report, “We had a nice visit and dinner

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at their beautiful retirement home.” Jay Zwynenburg writes, “This year has been one of the greatest ski years in recent Vermont times. I was able to ski every week starting with the first week in January until mid-April except for Presidents Week when I was in Naples Florida. (Too crowded on the slopes in Vermont.) Continuing to stay active and healthy by working and enjoying what I am doing.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Steve Rozen writes, “I am a Florida resident now but I do spend five months in Connecticut. I am still working as an oral surgeon, but only on request. I was all set to throw in the towel, but ended up doing another year. I will end it with another mission to Honduras in the spring with UConn Dental School. I keep trying to retire, but they don’t let me! It must be that Vermont work ethic that I accidentally picked up. All I can say is life is good here in paradise (Naples).” Carolyn Hunt Wall Cheney tells us, “I enjoyed seeing several UVM classmates at a Burlington High School 60th reunion last summer as well as re-connecting with my other high school classmates. In addition, I always find the Vermont Quarterly an excellent way to keep up with the interesting and varied activities of students and faculty. I haven’t done a lot of traveling since I last wrote but did enjoy trips to Cancun and Cuba, back before it opened up. I keep busier than I want to some days and

enjoy the music and sports at Eastern Washington University as well as all that Spokane has to offer.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Diane (Deedee) Weiss Mufson tells us, “In February, Marsha Eisen Schorr, Helen Kruk Leddy and I, (UVM roommates) and our husbands had a wonderful time celebrating our 56th reunion in Naples, Florida. Deedee and her husband, Maury, who live in West Virginia, are snowbirds in the Miami area. Last year, Deedee published her first book, Dispatches of a Columnist: Opinions on Politics, Kids, Common Sense and Sex, which is available from Amazon. Marsha and her husband, Sam, live in Scarsdale, New York, and spend a couple of winter months in Naples. And Helen and her husband, Bruce, live in Lehigh Acres, Florida, year round.” Lois Annable Rupert writes, “You’ve probably heard of the big ice storm in Tennessee in February. We were without power for six days. Fortunately we had a propane gas vented fireplace that helped us survive, along with burning 16-plus candles. We went out for breakfasts and had dear friends that invited us for evening dinners. Our community and surrounding areas looked like a war zone; people said the weather was equivalent to an F-2 tornado. Many homes had damage from falling trees. Glad to see summer now!” Lois also went on a cruise last year to Alaska with her husband, Dave. A photo of it has been posted on the Alumni Association’s web gallery. Send your news to— Henry Shaw, Jr. 112 Pebble Creek Road Columbia, SC 29223 hshaw@sc.rr.com

55TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Brian Harwood sends a reminder to the Class of 1960, “Our 55th Reunion is this October. Tick tock!” Howard Busloff shares,

“Living well. Winters in Florida, summers in New York City. Would love to hear from others.” Anne Gulick Heck shares, “As usual, our annual Florida reunion for Tri Delta Sisters occurred this winter for a luncheon get together. This included Joan Billington Dickson and her husband, Bob, Jean Young Weaver and her husband, Charlie, Joan Birmingham, and Anne Gulick Heck and her husband, Jack. This tradition has been going on for several years. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

and both of them summited Kilamanjaro. I hope to visit in May and we’re planning on a safari to see gorillas. I’m still working in forensic psychology, but always cut way back in winter in order to ski guide. Best wishes to fellow classmates.” David Dibbell submitted that: “Sandra (Bailey) Dibbell, spent the month of January with her sister Connie Garcia in beautiful South Africa. The trip included a tour of the major metro areas and an exciting five-day safari where a good variety of wildlife was encountered.” Kathe Allen writes: “We (that would be with Rolly, of course) have been in Islamorada in the Florida Keys for February and March. On the way down we spent a few days in Charleston with Caroline Tyler Nordquist and her husband, Don. Judy Morse Baxter and George Baxter ‘60 spent a week with us in the Keys. In April we are heading out to Los Angeles to visit our son David Allen ‘90. While there, we plan on seeing Jerry Edelstein and Roy Ackerman. We hope that any UVMer who is in the Lake George area will come for a visit. It is hard to believe we have lived on the shores of Lake George for 15 years.” Connie Paulding says, “We

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SUMMER 2015

Jan Mashman emailed, “I have been in full-time practice of neurology, but will start part time this year. I’ve also been teaching UVM medical students at Danbury Hospital primary teaching hospital of UVM College of Medicine. I spent time this winter at our home on Dewees Island off Charleston, South Carolina, with Susan celebrating 55 years of marriage. Bob Hobbie and his wife, Joyce, visited. Our two children and four grandchildren are well.” Julie Cass Kullberg emailed, “We still spend our winters in Clearwater, Florida, and our summers on Irondequoit Bay in Rochester, New York. We plan on spending some time on Cape Cod this summer. After a visit to our older son and family in Needham, Massachusetts, we will join my sophomore year roommate, Julie Hall Werher, and husband Bill for a stay at The Old Maine Inn in Poland Springs.” Jim McCarthy, his wife, Paula Mills, and their son, Ian, are living in Costa Rica for a year while Ian attends La Paz Community School in Playa Flamingo, Guanacaste. Ian will have a pretty good command of Spanish inasmuch as 50% of the instruction for reading, science and humanities is done in Spanish. They have taken side trips to Peru, Nicaragua and Panama. Great year, but looking forward to returning home to Durango, Colorado in July 2015. Jim says they can also offer advice to fellow UVMers contemplating travel to Costa Rica- jimmccarthy625@gmail. com. Paul Murphy says: “I just heard that Wills, Buckham, and Chittenden will be torn down and replaced. I still have great memories of touch

football games, excursions to the us joined an educational tour. A week Dairy Bar, and the quarter mile walk later, I joined two of my grandchilfor Soggy Food. Nevertheless, with dren for a gala birthday get together rooms like a cheap motel, unreliable near Nashville. We were there for one heat, and noise amplifying walls they of the snow and ice storms which just should have gone a long time ago. I added to the drama.” Linda Farnkoff am pleased I can share memories of (Artus) Kirker sends, “My residence Wills with Bill Mooza, Bob and Pete is in Georgia, Vermont, where I built Weiss, Pete Nelson, Bob Goldman a home in 2004. For nine years I have and my great nephew, James Conbeen in the Vermont State Guard, ley ’94. RIP Wills!” Susie Sells Hodgand currently serve as a Captain at son emailed, “We moved again to 1BN (VSG) in Saint Albans. Since Kingsmill in Williamsburg. Our new 2007, I have produced and hosted a address is: 122 Harrop’s Glen. We are weekly, live, public access cable teleon the golf course and loving this vision program called “Sound Off.” My resort life!” Louise Magram Weiner grandson, Erik Ross Artus, an elechad dinner with UVM grads who were tro-mechanical engineer in Charvisiting Naples, Florida: Stan Messenlotte, North Carolina, has set a date ger ‘60, Shelly Lipsett and their wives for his marriage to Abigail Dodd, enjoyed seeing each other again after an RN, in Vermont, this September. ever so many years! The UVM conThat is the excitement in my life....for nection lasts forever! Ruth Engs says, now. Best regards to our classmates.” “We now spend a few months during Roger Zimmerman reports: “For the the winter at our condo near Pensacfirst time in 29 years I didn’t guide a ola, Florida. While there, I am having backcountry ski trip to Yellowstone a wonderful time being a docent at National Park. It was a good winthe National Naval Aviation Museum. ter to stay home in Maine as we had It’s the third largest aircraft museum a big snowpack and cold temperain the country. I’m still doing research tures—for me, a great winter. Daughand working on another book.” Grater Heather is in Africa (Uganda) on ham Phelps wrote, “Just returned a Global Health Initiative Fellowship. from a great trip to Cuba. Twenty of Wife Lynne1 visited her in February UVM_4.5x4.45_PSC_HR.pdf 1/16/15 12:09 PM

802-863-7897 • pillsburyseniorcommunities.com 47

[CLASSNOTES have moved to Florida. Our address is: 645 Marina Point Drive, Daytona Beach, FL.” And from your class scribe: I’m sorry to report the death of two classmates: M. Joe Barry on March 7, 2015. Joe retired in 1997 after 31 years as a physics instructor and chairman of the Science Department at Burlington High School. Bernard Germain on February 18, 2015. Bernard served for two years in the U.S. Army at Governor’s Island, New York. He was a Vermont State Social Worker for many years serving the children and youth of the state. Later, he retired from years of work at IBM in Essex Junction. In his retirement until just a few years ago, he worked part time for the Colchester, Vermont, School District. I was also sorry to receive the news of the passing of Shelly Weiner ’60 MD ’64, the spouse of our class president. Our sympathies to Louise Weiner and her family. Send your news to— Steve Berry 8 Oakmount Circle Lexington, MA 02420 steveberrydhs@gmail.com

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

Beverly Knight Cone moved to Oak Hammock, a senior living community, in Gainesville, Florida. Barbara Rifkin Levy just survived three years as chair of the Board of Trustees of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, and writes, “I am finding retirement to be more and more to my liking. Admittedly, I am still involved with the symphony which continues to get better and better every year. I am also finishing a 12-year term and position as immediate past chair of the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ International Ethics Committee. My husband, Martin, and I are making the most of these years for travel and have had some exciting experiences along the way. I wish all my classmates the joy of rediscovering life after work!” Judy Cohen ’58 writes, Jim Rosenblum owns a NASCAR team that races in the truck series—#28 FDNY—representing the Fire Department of New York. His crew is mostly retired firemen and policemen from New York City. He was awarded a Liberty Medal by Mayor Bloomberg of New York for his efforts for the Widows and Children’s Fund after 9/11. Richard (Dick) Aldinger tells us, “Janet and I are still living in Orlando, Florida. We cele-

brated our 50th wedding Anniversary in June of last year with a family party in Branson, Missouri, and a western road trip to such memorable sites as Mount Rushmore, Custer’s Last Stand, Pike’s Peak and the Devil’s Tower. In 23 days we travelled 6,000 miles, and visited 17 states.” Send your news to— Patricia Hoskiewicz Allen 14 Stony Brook Drive Rexford, NY 12148 traileka@aol.com

Greetings classmates! It’s been awhile since you heard from me. As the years flew since our 50th Reunion, so did my life, as I’m sure so did yours! As I think back to our Reunion, I remember the bittersweet feelings of seeing so many of you, yet feeling the loss of many of our friends and family. One of my former roommates, Elaine Stauber, Lainie as we know her, writes, “Here’s what I’ve been doing since Reunion. I make the effort to spend time with my twin grandsons, Evan and Drew, both wrestlers, who will be graduating from eighth grade this June. Their Iowa cousin, August, will graduate from high school in May and I will make the trip to celebrate with her. Then in June, the four of us will spend two weeks in Italy, their graduation presents. Time spent with my New Jersey family, daughter Karen, sisters and cousins, is usually around the dinner table! My Colorado family, daughter Kelly, and her husband Chris, and I spend our time on the ski slopes in winter and on the hiking and biking trails the rest of the year. We recently participated in Pink Vail, an event to raise funds for cancer research. Last weekend, it was the Lindsey Vonn, epic race finals where we all won silver medals, bestowed on us by Lindsey! Yet, with all of these wonderful opportunities with family and friends, my best choice was to begin ballroom dance with a most dedicated teacher and partner. We are now competing in international Latin throughout the USA. I won my first championship in New York City this past February, we were thrilled!” Elise Moeller Widlund writes, “Having moved back to Vermont, Woody ‘64 and I could not be happier. Living at Wake Robin CCRC has been exciting, busy, social, and rewarding as we find like-minded, humor-

ous, curious and interesting individuals. Photography still keeps us both busy and engaged. Love to hear from other UVM grads.” Mary Bunting Decher says, “Life has been full of family, horses and dogs, and enjoying the wonderful mountains. But we live way out here in Washington State so not too many sightings of UVMers with the exception of a few wonderful regulars such as Nora Barclay Terwilliger, Joan Powell Kerzner, and Marty Russell Wade. If any of you are coming this way, send an email. We’ll make it happen!” Send your news to— Toni Citarella Mullins 210 Conover Lane Red Bank, NJ 07701 tonicmullins@verizon.net

Harold M. Frost, III writes, “I have turned my experience as a research scientist in New Mexico after acquiring a major disability, into a potential lesson learned that others with disabilities can benefit from, too, should their own employers become more progressive on this D & I matter as a business imperative, not just as a strategy for complying with statutory law like the ADA of 1990. One such employer is The University of Vermont where I was an unpaid research associate in its Department of Physics in 20052007.” Jeffrey Graham asked if the folks who wrote about their lives since graduation in the Memory Book for our 50th Reunion, would be willing to share with others in our class column. “It would be nice to have more news to share. It may be 50 years but we all remember what our years were like!” Effin Older has created a second app. Her first, Kickass Grammar, is for adults and kids. The second, Grammar in your Pocket, is for teachers and students. It’s available on Edmodo, “the Facebook of education” where it is one of the top three paid apps. Mickey Steinberg is looking forward to another golf match between “old” fraternities, Phi Sig vs. TEP. Last year’s matches were cut short due to weather and scheduling, but the TEP’s (Neil Yeston and Steve Ratner) were finally victorious over the “Fern Hiller’s” (Howie Gorney and Mickey Steinberg). Bob Leavitt writes, “Body pieces have been repaired and some removed. It seems a bit of dementia moving in, but I’m

hangin’ in there.’ Song: ‘I’m busy doin’ nothing, working the whole day through trying to find lots of things not to do. I’d like to be unhappy but I never can find the time.’ (The rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, if I recall correctly.) Best to all!” Robert A. Silverstein shares, “In the last two years I travelled to New Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, and Kohima, Nagaland. Body is (not so) slowly breaking down, mind still functioning, and will head back to India as long as I have the health and money. But Albany is a nice place to do laundry, watch my Yankees lose, pig out on pizza, and get some rest with my own filth, rather than a hotel’s. Hope the class of ‘64 is growing old gracefully, or at least growing old.” Carl B. Martin IV ‘95 writes, “My father, Carl B. Martin III, passed away on January14, 2015. This would have been his 50th Reunion. Dad graduated with a bachelor’s in economics and played for the UVM baseball team where he threw two one-hitters: one against University of Rhode Island and one against University of Connecticut. The full obituary can be found at: www. memorialsolutions.com. Send your news to— Susan Griesenbeck Barber 1 Oak Hill Road P.O. Box 63 Harvard, MA 01451 suebarber@verizon.net

50TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Noel Davis Induni is finally retired and settled down in Essex Junction. He writes, “During the good weather I spend most of my time trying to get my golf ball to go where I want it to go and my dogs to go where I want them to go on the agility course. I haven’t been all that successful in either endeavor but it has been fun trying. During the winter, I just spend my time waiting to get back to it.” Stephen Joslin retired from Vermont Mutual Insurance Company. Maintaining and spending time at historic Camp #10 in Lewis, Vermont, and watching the electronic world pass him by. Mark Ira Berson says, “I’m looking forward to my 50th

Reunion, the birth of our sixth grandchild, slowing down, traveling, and more time at Cape Cod. All is well.” Richard Turrone writes, “In my eleventh year of retirement and continue to enjoy growing wine grapes and making wine in the Sierra Foothills. California is in its fourth year of drought. We sure could use some of the Green Mountain rainfall.” Gail Marie Perlee shares, “I’m enjoying my fifteenth year of retirement on my desert acre with my two dogs, and still doing my Morgan horse research and writing.” William Porter retired from his vice president of labor relations position at Southern New England Telephone in 2001 after being in various marketing, operations and human resource assignments during a 34-year career there. He served in the U.S. Army as a first Lieutenant in Vietnam after graduation and was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service in a combat zone. William is currently working part-time as a property risk insurance consultant and a player assistant at a golf course in Naples, Florida. He and his wife, Maureen, spend six months in Florida and six in Connecticut. Daughter, Jennifer, lives in Milton, Massachusetts, with their grandchildren, Cecily, 11, and Lucy, 3. Send your news to— Colleen Denny Hertel 14 Graystone Circle Winchester, MA 01890 colleenhertel@hotmail.com

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ily farm.” Donald E. Sawyer continues to enjoy retirement. He writes, “I have been travelling more and I am really looking forward to a Rhine River cruise on Viking in May. Hard to believe that our 50th Reunion is in 2016 and I look forward to attending.” Michael Karel finally wrote that book he always wanted to write. Published by Northshire Press (Vermont!). The Patrol is available on Amazon. Harvey Bazarian sends special accolades to classmate and Senior Senator Dick Sears for his excellent work in the legislature. A group of us including Dave Mathews, Don Mayland, Jack Lylis, Rusty Brink, Ed Kinary and others meet annually with golf as an excuse. Tim “Dolly” Madison writes, “I am still running a Financial Planning Practice in Alpharetta, Georgia, as a Certified Financial Planner. Though retired from both GE and The CocaCola Company, the financial planning practice keeps me busy 50 hours per week, but it is something I truly enjoy doing. In my spare time, I teach the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University class at our church. My wife, Linda, and I do as many things as we can with our three grown children and eight grandchildren, five of whom live in Georgia and three in Maryland. This May we will attend college graduation for our oldest grandchild–the things that make you feel old!” Don’t forget (and how could you forget?) that our 50th Reunion is in 2016. This will be a special time for us, so please stay tuned for updates as we approach this milestone. Send your news to— Kathleen Nunan McGuckin 416 San Nicolas Way

St Augustine, FL 32080 kkmcguckin@prodigy.net

Donna Baraw Wheeler is divorced and living in Stowe, Vermont. She is expecting her first grandchild in July—a girl! Carol T. Pratt ‘68 says, “Spencer G. Pratt, of Glastonbury, Connecticut, passed away on January 10, 2015.” Barbara Clark Kay has recently retired to Stowe, Vermont, and has joined the UVM Regional Alumni Board. Barbara practiced general dentistry in the Boston area and taught at Tufts Dental School. She was involved with the Tufts Alumni during her career and served as president. She and Anne Brown ’66 are forming a new alumni group called the UVM Alumni Association Green and Gold Affinity Group. This group is for connecting our generation of UVM alumni for social and educational purposes. Barbara hopes to reconnect with many of her classmates through this group. Send your news to— Jane Kleinberg Carroll 44 Halsey Street, Apt. 3 Providence, RI 02906 jane.carroll@cox.net

Norman ’69 and Jeanne Merrill say, “Richard Merrill ’02 graduated from the West Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine in Lewisburg and is currently a fellow in pulmonary intensive care at the Leahy Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts.” Since graduating, EvaLynn Schultz Loy taught elementary school. After several years, she returned to school to receive a second master’s in expressive art therapy. In 2004, she moved to New Hampshire with her husband and began focusing on her own painting. Since then, her work has appeared in many national and regional juried exhibits. Evie’s paintings are part of private collections from the East to West Coasts. She’d love you to take a look at her website: www.eva-lynnloy.com. Jeffrey Kuhman was proud and honored to represent UVM again at the inauguration of incoming University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel last August. (He also represented UVM at outgoing President Mary Sue Coleman’s inauguration in 2002.) He writes, “The marching and seating order is determined by your university’s founding date, so

with UVM’s 1791, I was right up front with the ‘big boys!’” Joanne Koledo Kuhman writes, “Kudos to Doug Arnold ’70 and wife Barbara for once again organizing a mid-winter minireunion in Naples, Florida, in February. In addition to the hosts, Ron Tice ‘69 and wife Mary, Peter Doremus and wife Jane, Jack Stroker ‘69 and wife Lindsey, John and Sally Hines ‘69 , and Jeff and Joanne Kuhman met at Miller’s Ale House for an evening of reminiscing and embellishing. Contact Doug Arnold if you plan to be in the Naples area next February. David John Salls writes, “Enjoying semi-retirement from 20 years in consulting. Living in Charlotte, North Carolina, since 1990 and my wife and I have two daughters and four granddaughters living close by and grabbing a lot of our attention! Playing golf and spending time also on woodworking. Would enjoy knowing other UVM folks living near Charlotte. Contact me at dsalls68@gmail. com.” Jeff Freeman recently bought a house in Mount Dora, Florida and published fifth novel, Mid-Life Friends and Illusions. Peter D. Jones shares, “After 30 years in the Air Force, seven years in career education and another seven years in the defense industry working for corporate America, my fun meter was pegged. Retired to pursue my search for the perfect cappuccino, a reliable golf swing, and arranging road trips for my running gang. The Vermont City Marathon in 2014 was wet and windy, but also nostalgic. One last look at Wills Hall, memories of Dr. Gregg, Coach Archie Post, and that bar in Winooski where we never drank before turning 21... all came flooding back. I dread looking at the VQ obit page for fear of names I remember fondly, but time marches on. See you at our 50th, fellow classmates.” Paul Malone writes, “Since graduation and after his military tour of duty in Vietnam, former football captain, Dan Martin returned to Connecticut and became a highly respected high school and collegiate football official, eventually being inducted into the Connecticut Football Referee Hall of Fame. Along with his officiating, for more than 35 years, Dan became volunteer leading committee member in the Greater New Haven Chapter of the National Football Foundation, which is affiliated with the NFL Hall of Fame. He had a

SUMMER 2015

Norman Rosenblum is in his third two-year term as mayor of Mamaroneck, New York. Anne Seeman Brown is on the UVM New York Regional Alumni Board, and along with Barbara Clark Kay ’67, is actively organizing the UVM Alumni Green and Gold Affinity Group. This group will consist of UVM alums age 60 and above. Its mission is to connect UVM alums for social and educational purposes and will concentrate in areas of the country where more retired alumni reside. Anne is very excited for the start of this group and is asking for classmates who would like to be engaged in this endeavor to contact her at Anne00s00brown@aol. com. We appreciate her efforts. Mary Eddy Semones writes, “After many years living in states other than Vermont, I am again a Vermont resident. Have retired and returned to the fam-

UVM ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

[CLASSNOTES major role in selecting scholar athletes in the state for collegiate scholarships from the Foundation. In September, Dan was selected (one of four nationwide) by the National Football Foundation to be honored for his years of service. Alongside the NFL Hall of Fame inductees, Dan was feted at the annual Hall of Fame inductions awards event at the Waldorf Astoria. Dan and his wife, Carol, reside in Huntington, Connecticut, and would like to hear from classmates.” Send your news to— Diane Duley Glew 23 Franklin Street 2 Wheeler Farm Westerly, RI 02891 ddglew@gmail.com

Send your news to— Mary Moninger-Elia 1 Templeton Street West Haven, CT 06516 Melia1112@comcast.net

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

45TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Richard Prince writes, “After 45 years of lurking, it’s finally time to check in. I’ve lived in Southwest Florida for several years after a career of teaching high school math in Essex Junction, retiring in 2001. While at Essex, I started and directed summer school and adult education programs, and in later years, was active in the local Teachers’ Association. During retirement, I’ve kept busy with online auction sales, handyman work, and lots of domestic travel. I still own rental property in Vermont and get to Burlington at least twice a year.” Wayne Conner has recently retired for the second time from the Aerospace Contract Engineering field to Sebastian, Florida with his wife and the geckos. He enjoys golfing and visiting grandkids in Kansas, South Dakota and Vermont. Send your news to— Douglas Arnold 11608 Quail Village Way Naples, FL 34119 darnold@arnold-co.com

It’s April as I write this and I’m reporting on winter and spring notes from classmates.

I suggest that the Class of ’71 find a replacement for me, since I totally forgot the deadline for the “spring” issue and am now backtracking with news. The good thing is that I just visited Myron Grauer at his office at Capital University Law School in Columbus on April 16, and I have more news! On the replacement front: I suggest that Owen Jenkins take the position of class secretary —he’s got great stories and a wonderful sense of humor. Richard and I spent an afternoon with Owen and Wendy Reilly Jenkins ’73 soon after the returned from an Australia/ New Zealand month-long trip. We went to the Vermont Stage play, and grabbed a drink following where we discussed the American “tourist” who wears plaid and talks loudly (Sarah’s description), only to notice that Owen was wearing a plaid shirt. From Myron Grauer: After twenty-four and a half years as a law professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio (and having before that taught for ten years at Southern Illinois University and the University of Cincinnati), Myron Grauer writes that he decided to trade his life as an academic bum for life as a part-time ski bum and took emeritus status from Capital after the fall 2014 semester. Unfortunately, he did not have the good sense to be loyal to UVM and come to the great piles of snow in Vermont this past winter, but instead went to Whistler for most of February, 2015, which had the worst ski season in memory, with the entire town and the bottom one-third of the mountains green at that time. As a result of this experience, he now is having withdrawal symptoms from his old life as an academic bum and plans to be a visiting professor in the fall of 2015 at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law where he will teach one class. Then maybe he will get smart in his semi-retirement and come to Vermont to ski for part of the winter of 2016. I also saw Chris Warden Malley and her husband, Ed, at their office (The Lawyers Group) where they develop media advertising. Ed and Chris were hard at work, but took some time to chat about UVM, classmates and news in their lives which includes having two children out of college and in the work world. Ed and Chris had just seen Jeff Faller,

and I need to check with Jeff on the details, but his son is off and running in the organic farm business. I will fact-check this in the next column. Chris and Ed planned on visiting Gretchen Whitney in D.C. in April. And, back to winter: I hope folks saw that Walt Blasberg received a Distinguished Service Award at the Celebrating Excellence Dinner at the Davis Center (covered in the last Vermont Quarterly). His old friend, James Leopold ’74 (Jonathon Leopold’s ’71 brother) was there with his wife Candis to enjoy the proceedings. There is also news dating back to early November: I saw Robin Ackerson Peterson in Minneapolis when Richard and I were there for a family wedding. Robin gave me a tour of her offices at Coldwell Banker Burnet Homes where she works very full time and is still loving her career. Robin and Fran will be in Vermont in May when their son, Derrick, graduates from the Albany College of Pharmacy, Colchester, Vermont campus. He’ll be moving back to Minnesota with his fiancee to finish up two hospital rotations. Peter A. Rousseau and wife Billie Gates Rousseau (Virginia Tech ’73) are pleased to announce that their oldest son, Charles Peter, has completed his Master of Philosophy degree requirements at Emmanuelle College at the University of Cambridge UK. Charles graduated with an evaluation of ‘Distinction’ from the examiners who graded his dissertation, the highest achievement possible. Charles will be attending Yale University to obtain his doctoral degree in English literature beginning in September 2015. Peter and Billie are looking forward to visits to New Haven and hope to enjoy it as much as they have Williamstown and Cambridge in years past. Peter and Billie are still working and enjoying it too; Peter in the insurance business and Billie as an elementary school teacher in Richmond, Virginia. In their spare time they hang out with their three grandchildren in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where daughter Elena and husband Mark reside. Peter says “the simple life is the best life”. God, family, country and career, in that order. So simple and so fulfilling! Many of us know that Bonnie Christensen ’73 sadly passed away in January. She was a friend to everyone

she met, and a brilliant author and artist. Since this writing, I learned that both Mags Caney Conant and Jason Robards attended Bonnie’s memorial service March 21. Speaking of Mags, her daughter, Molly Conant ‘06, will be getting married this summer and she and Steve Conant ’78 converted a garage into a studio which is amazing. She will have the perfect spot to create artwork when she retires from Burlington High School in June 2015. I took a walk with Joanne Czachor Magliozzi on New Year’s Day (what a great way to start 2015) in Palm Beach and we talked about life, family and memories which was great fun. I also caught up with Doug Wells in Greenwich, Connecticut; we talked about the whereabouts of classmates and the renovations of the former Delta Psi House which will be dedicated as our Alumni House in the winter of 2016. Later in January, I was fortunate to attend the Salman Rushdie lecture at Ira Allen Chapel and sat next to Penny Delaire Pillsbury, who reminded me that she’s happily retired. She is still passionate about literature and Vermont libraries! I also ran into Wendy Reilly Jenkins ‘73 there. Elise Anne Guyette writes that she is retired, with two grown daughters and two published books, “I have been busy creating the Burlington Edible History Tour (http://www. burlingtonediblehistory.com) with Gail Rosenberg. We researched the many ethnic groups that built Burlington with a focus on their food businesses and food traditions. Then we found five farm-to-table restaurants to partner with us. We take a leisurely walk along the waterfront and on Church Street learning history and eating five times. It’s been great fun, especially seeing a number of UVM alumni on the tour!” Charlotte Ely MacLeay writes that she is still in Montpelier, travels often, has four wonderful grandkids within a four-hour drive. She is retired and enjoys serving on UVM CNSHS Advisory Board. She writes, “The nursing program has come a long way since ‘71! CNSHS can use your donations. I see Clara and Skip Knapp ‘72 annually at least. Great ski year in Vermont.” Carol Liddiard Hocker shares, “My husband and I have been living on the Big Island of Hawaii for about 16 years, and believe me, I do

not miss those New England winters. We grow exotic fruit, purple sweet potatoes, coffee and cacao and we’re perfecting our chocolate making from pod to bar. There’s never a shortage of volunteer tasters. If you find yourself on the Big Island, I’d be glad to give you a little tour and some samples. Bob Lynch shares, Tom McLaughlin passed away on February 24, 2015 from cancer. Tom was an outstanding football player and member of Kappa Sigma.And from another classmate, Mary Shaw Sondgeroth: “We’ve been parenting Zoe who is now 3.6 years old for the past three years. Not having parented earlier in life, it has been an incredible joy and challenge. I guess you could say that my husband, Dan, and I have taken on parenting a toddler in retirement. She will definitely keep us young! All the best to you and please send my love to Liz Mead Foster. Sure wish you guys weren’t so far away.” I think Mary may take the prize for having the youngest child in our class, outpacing Tom Reilly and Jason Robards, whose sons are teenagers now. Finally, my twin grandsons turned five on April 15 which I cannot believe, and I cherish every moment I spend with them. Richard Witte and I will finish our coast-to-coast walk of the U.K. starting May 1. Wish us luck! We begin where we left off and end up on the east coast of England at Robin’s Hood Bay (North Sea) 100+ miles. Stay tuned for more news in the next issue and please send me your updates. Send your news to— Sarah Wilbur Sprayregen 145 Cliff Street Burlington, VT 05401 sarah.sprayregen@uvm.edu

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jamin and Elana Fertig in January, 2015. Sam Simmons Salisbury returned to work in September after a year-long sabbatical from Salisbury School. He writes, “While I was away, I was able to enmesh some serious research under the auspices of the International Boys’ Schools Coalition and traveled extensively: all over North America, the UK, South Africa, and Australia. I facilitated a symposium in Dallas on the state of sports in schools today for a collection of coaches and athletic directors from all over the country. The year off was hardly all work, as I had time to reconnect with old friends in Minneapolis, Burlington, and Philadelphia, and am now back at Salisbury without any administrative responsibilities, teaching three sections of English, and shepherding a Reflective Teaching Initiative for experienced teachers. I don’t know how much longer this teaching thing will last; for now, I love it without the distractions of the Associate Head’s/Director of Studies Offices. Elizabeth (Beth) Allen writes, “Retiring to the magnificent state of Utah has been amazing! The geology and the natural beauty is a wonderland for outdoor enthusiasts. My husband, Craig Blouin, and I feel like we’re on vacation year round. Retirement has allowed us to give time to organizations committed to protecting wilderness areas (Save Our Canyons) and addressing climate change (Citizens’ Climate Lobby). Interestingly enough, the founder of the SLC Citizens’ Climate Lobby is none other than a fellow UVM graduate, Bill Barron ’89. Our son, Nate, moved to Utah six years ago to pursue his passion for skiing the backcountry. He’ll

be returning to school this fall at the University of Utah. Christopher Blair BA, BSME ’72 shares that it has been a busy six months. As principal, chief scientist, and tuning conductor for AKUSTIKS, Blair has been involved in the opening of four new performing arts facilities: the Tobin Center in San Antonio, Sala Cecilia Meireles in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Sala Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte (Brazil), and the new Ordway Concert Hall in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Responsible for the firm’s approach to room acoustics design, he and his partners are currently working on David Geffen Hall (the replacement for Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.) Send your news to— Debbie Koslow Stern 198 Bluebird Drive Colchester, VT 05446 debra.stern@uvm.edu

Send your news to— Deborah Layne Mesce 2227 Observatory Place N.W. Washington, DC 20007 dmesce@prb.org

Debra Maria Vinci writes, “It is hard to believe that I have been at the University of West Florida for 10 years! I am now associate chair for the Department of Exercise Science and Community Health. This year I received a $197,000 grant to develop a continuing education curriculum for childcare providers to promote physical activity and healthy eating in childcare settings. When I am not busy at work, my husband, Bill Bereki, and I are busy transitioning into our new home and enjoying the beautiful white sand beaches (southern ‘snow’) of the Gulf Coast of Florida.” Cecilia Elwert writes, “I continue to enjoy my now 10 years of very meaningful work with mostly 80- to 90-plus-year-olds of various cognition levels at the Adult Day Center of Elderly Services in Middlebury, Vermont. Hiking continues to be my passion and I’m currently chipping away at the Northeast 115 peaks above 4K-twice. Once in winter and another round the rest of the year. Proud to say I’m a double ADK 46erwinter and regular round. Thinking about hiking the Long Trail end to end again (first time was the fall after graduating UVM) when I eventually cut back at work. In the meantime

I’ve set my sites on an adventure outside my comfort zone: a climb of Kilimanjaro this coming August!” Send your news to— Emily Schnaper Manders 104 Walnut Street Framingham, MA 01702 esmanders@gmail.com

40TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. I know it is hard to believe, but it has been 40 years since we graduated from UVM! October is a great time to do a little leaf peeping and see some old (and I do mean old) faces as we celebrate our Reunion October 2-4, 2015. I received some news from Jane Haslun Schwab who wrote, “As one life comes in, one goes out...we had our first grandchild, Harrison William Haun born October 24, 2014, to our daughter Lindsay and her husband, Paul. They live close by so we are having a ball. It is with sadness that I report that my husband of 37 years, William Schwab, passed away on March 1, 2015, after a threemonth battle with pancreatic cancer. It is an insidious cancer with a terrible survival rate, but my girls and my nieces have organized a team for “Willie’s Warriors,” Purple Stride Run for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network to be held in New York City, April 11, 2015. They have raised over $10,000 in his name and I’ll be there cheering them on. I have had wonderful support from friends including my Pi Phi sisters-I love you.” John Krowka has opened Kensho Farms, growing fine organic produce in Boonsboro, Maryland. (www.kenshofarms.com) John continues his work as a senior microbiologist at the Personal Care Products Council in Washington, D.C., and can be contacted at johnkrowka@gmail.com. Susan Frazier Blum will be presenting a workshop in September at the International Fascia Congress, in Reston, Virginia, on “Treatment of children with postural imbalance and associated motor impairments with Total Motion Release, in innovative indirect concept”. She developed the continuing education seminar -Total Motion Release (TMR for Tots) and teaches physical therapists and occupational

SUMMER 2015

Patty Quinn Thomas ‘72 G’76 has been a UVM men’s hockey fan since January of 1970. Recently she was interviewed on WCAX about her passion for the men’s teams and a Vermont banner that was given to her in 2005. The interview by Scott Fleischman, Burlington’s Channel 3 Sports, occurred in December at Gutterson when UVM was playing Air Force. You can see the interview at www.wcax.com. Arnie Fertig is proud to announce the birth of his second grandchild, Aviva Shayla Fertig, to parents Ben-

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therapists internationally as well as continuing to treat children in her private practice in York, Pennsylvania. Her husband, Jeff, is now retired, but busy as her office manager and his work with local charities. Gina Rayfield met up with roommates Kathy Bowers Turhune, Carol Wolk Herbert and Birdie Flynn for a mini reunion in Massachusetts. “We had not all been together in one location for many years. Had a blast catching up and facetiming with other UVM friends like Jonny Cruz and Larry Onley. ” They hope to get together again at their 40th in Burlington this year. Gina also celebrated the recent UVM graduations of her daughters Sasha Rayfield Borax ‘12 and Blair Rayfield Borax ‘14 and is proud to be a legacy family. Petter Kongsli writes, after graduation from UVM 1975 and University of Idaho 1978 (Master of Architecture) I have practiced as an architect designing and building homes in and around Oslo, Norway. Our family consists of my wife who is also an architect and five (almost) grown up kids, each working or studying in different fields (acting, architecture, foreign relations, marketing, high school). In order to keep a good health XC-skiing has a high priority for us. We have been participating in ski marathon events (54, 70 and 90 km distances). I miss and think of the many fine people I met in my years at UVM. I hope I will meet some of you again in the reunion of 2015? Susan Spackman Jones is going on 36 years working at DHMC in the ICN. She writes “I have three grown sons two of which are married and four grandchildren. Enjoy traveling to Virginia to visit the grandchildren and see the historic sites. My husband Dewey has been pastoring the same Baptist church in Meriden, New Hampshire for 37 years. David John Alberico has been married to Jane Lavallee Alberico ’73 for 34 years. He says, “I retired from active duty in the USAF at the rank of Lt. Colonel in 1997 with 22 years of service. Recently retired from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in April after 18 years of service as an Aerospace Safety & Airworthiness Engineer and Sr. Manager. Looking forward to having more free time for travel, to spend more time with the grandkids, and to visit with family members in Vermont.” Richard Cassidy, of Hoff Curtis

in Burlington, was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. Richard Cassidy is a founding member of the Hoff Curtis Law Firm in Burlington, where his practice focuses on personal injury and employment litigation. He was a long time member and chair of the Vermont Board of Bar Examiners, has represented the Vermont Bar Association in the American Bar Association House of Delegates since 1999, and served a three-year term as a member of the ABA Board of Governors. He has represented Vermont as a member of the Uniform Law Commission since he was appointed by Governor Howard Dean in 1994, and currently chairs the ULC Executive Committee. Cassidy and his wife, Becky, reside in South Burlington. Sharon Spaulding Crane says, “I moved abroad with my husband, William Scott Crane, Jr. in April of 1999. We lived in Saint Petersburg, Russia; Keila, Estonia; and most recently, Luxor, Egypt. Because of my parents’ ailing health (my father recently died with advanced Alzheimer’s Disease and my mother has vision problems), I relocated back to Burlington, Vermont in late December 2014. In Egypt, I was able to indulge my hobby, Egyptology, and obtained both a certificate and diploma from the online program at the University of Manchester in the U.K. My husband passed away in November of 2010 and I’m a rare American who can claim to have lived through the Egyptian Revolution (2011) and military overthrow of President Morsi (2013). As for myself, my husband, Ted Child ’74, and I have just spent the majority of the winter in Florida. Whitney Watts ’74 and his wife, Lori, live in the same development. We all feel like we are back at college; lots of cocktail parties and fun, a lot of outdoor activities, meeting new people and having to avoid putting on the freshman 10. Our three sons all married within 12 months; Tom Child ‘04 married Lauren Collins ‘06, Peter Child, a St. Lawrence grad, married Sara Talbot ‘05, and Kevin Child, a Williams grad, will marry Sarah Brown, UPenn, in May 2015. Ted calls it a hat trick. Hope to see many of you in October at our Reunion. On May 5, 2015, Gerry Hunt lost a valiant battle with cancer. Gerry was a lead in the original cast of The Contrast, the opening show of the Royall Tyler Theatre in 1974. As a

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member of the 40th Reunion Alumni Committee last fall, Gerry produced a digitized recording of The Contrast —the only existing tape recording of the era. In recent years, Gerry, and his wife Elaine, established Vermont Students to Africa. For information, visit: http://www.vermontstudentstoafrica.org/. Send your news to— Dina Dwyer Child 1263 Spear Street South Burlington, VT 05403 dinachild@aol.com

After 38 years of fundraising for UVM, St. Lawrence University, and Clarkson University, I have retired. I was fortunate to work for three great institutions and value the many friendships made with alumni and colleagues over the years. Barb and I are looking forward to spending more time at our camp on Trout Lake and will remain in the North Country for the foreseeable future. The 10th anniversary of UVM’s thrilling OT victory over Syracuse prompted Porter Hunt to write how much he has enjoyed seeing the television highlights and then reading the Vermont Quarterly reliving the moments of the day and getting current updates on the stars of the game. Porter and his brother, Gerry Hunt ’75, attended the game as guests of The Hartford for their sales performance with their products. What a game it was!...and they’re still talking about it, even 10 years later. After bouncing around for a few years after college, Porter had a stint in the Army in Bamberg, Germany as the Battalion Signal Officer in a field artillery unit. He met his wife and son

there and brought them back to the U.S. in ‘84. He has been an income tax professional in the family business in Newport, Vermont, ever since. His professional career allowed special opportunities including serving as president of Vermont Tax Practitioners Association, a state-wide group of peers, and as a 23-year member of the planning and teaching staff of the UVM Extension System’s Annual Income Tax School. Porter and his wife, Andrea, welcomed their first grandchild Henry Porter Hunt on October 10, 2014. The proud parents are their son, Kurt, and wife, Jenny. Kurt is an Army Captain helicopter pilot. Their older son is a Vermont State Police K-9 trooper. Porter traveled to Alabama for the sixth annual golf trip with UVM Sigma Phi brothers Kurt P. Haigis ’77 and Paul Low, Jr. ’80. In Alabama they are hosted by the most gracious Paul Low, Sr ’55, a Sigma Phi of the previous generation. After a 21-year Navy career and 10 years in government contracting with Blackwater and Atlantic Diving Supply, Phil Hurni ‘82 recently formed his own Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, Defense Venture Holdings, providing various products and services to the USG. He lives in Virginia Beach with his wife, Angela, son Jake (starting Virginia Tech this fall), and daughter, Sarah. He writes, “Hello to old Coolidge dorm rats, Kappa Sigs and Rugby Teammates. If you’re ever in the Virginia Beach area get in touch. I’ve got the first round!” Leon Corse writes that he continues to operate the family dairy farm in Whitingham, Vermont. He was recently elected to the Meat Executive Committee (MEC) of Wisconsin based CROPP cooperative. CROPP is the parent company of consumer products brands Organic Prairie (meat) and Organic Valley (dairy). He is the first individual outside of the mid-west to sit on the MEC. I end my column with a heavy heart over the untimely death of Mark Byrne. Mark passed away on March 5, 2015 at St. Luke’s Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri, following a tragic fall. Mark had an accomplished and recognized career spanning 35 years in marketing, sales, business operations and consulting and he was distinguished for his leadership, most recently as president and CEO of IBT, Inc. of Kansas City. Close friend and Sigma Nu frater-

nity brother Chris Wallace was with Bronto at the end. Sigma Nu brothers Scott Macomber and Tom Wheeler ’77 were joined by Tom Sherrer, Mark’s childhood friend and football teammate at UVM who spoke glowingly at his memorial service of Mark and the impact he had on all of us. Jan D’Angelo said it best “if there was ever anyone who fit the description of ‘prince of a guy’ it was Bronto; great personality, totally selfless and genuine.” A campus memorial service for Mark will be held on Saturday, July 18, 2015 in Billings North Lounge at 1 p.m. James Velvet Wimsatt passed on April 17, 2015 in New York City following heart surgery. James will be fondly remembered for his contributions on and off stage at the Royall Tyler Theatre and the Champlain Shakespeare Festival in mid 70’s. Send your news to— Pete Beekman 2 Elm Street Canton, NY 13617 pbeekman19@gmail.com

Ginger Hinman McEachern writes, “At the time of publication our eldest daughter will have graduated from Lesley University College of Art & Design in May. Our youngest will be a junior at Saint Lawrence University in the fall. I am a full-time artist and an owner of Five Crows Gallery and Hand Crafted Gifts in Natick, Massachusetts. I stay busy with my own art; watercolor painting and mixed media as well as serving on the board of a local business group, the Natick Center Cultural District Board and Public Art Subcommittee. Natick has a very active art scene, never a dull moment!” Nansi GregerHolt writes, “I’ve been living in North Carolina since 1978, so now it’s home, but we love visiting Vermont. We have become diehard Tarheels and are grieving the end of basketball season (especially because our arch rivals won the NCAA tourney). I work as a nurse practitioner, live with my husband of 33 years. Both daughters have left the nest, are gainfully employed and happy, visit often and we have grand dogs. I travel, quilt, hike and love life. Come on class of ‘78, let’s hear what the rest of you are doing. If you’re ever in Chapel Hill look me up!” Marjorie Cohen writes, “The years fly by so fast. So many friends come and go in our lives. I often wonder where people are, how they are doing. Too many to list. Fortunately Facebook helps reconnect. My two best friends from college are still in touch: Libby Carney Manahan and Sue Spies. I live in Colorado but I miss New England and especially Vermont. Still skiing, working with military and families providing short-term solution-focused counseling.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 alumni@uvm.edu/classnotes

Liz Millard shares, “In July 2014 several physical therapy classmates from 1979 enjoyed a fun weekend together at the Lake Conesus, New York, home of Sandy Meyers Wilcox. It was the

perfect setting for stand up paddle boarding competitions, boat rides, several Finger Lake winery tours, a concert on the lake and a lot of laughing and catching up. Along with Sandy, the group included Jennifer Yonkers Lind (Virginia Beach, Virginia), Lisa Fernandez (Boise, Idaho), Liz Maccini Millard (McLean, Virginia), Mary Tautkus Winslow (Newberry, New Hampshire), Paula Jenkins LaRose (Milton, Vermont) and Linda Potash Marchese (Oakland, New Jersey). We are planning our 2015 reunion this August at Jenny’s home in the Virginia Beach area. We would love to hear how all our classmates are doing.” After retiring last year, Nancy Orben Small is moving, with her husband, Roger, to the banks of the beautiful Delaware River in Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania, where they love to entertain family and friends! She writes, “With two daughters, Alexandra Small ‘05 and Meghan Small MD’12, getting married this summer, it’s been nothing short of busy this spring. After sneaking in some water skiing this summer, we plan to hit the road in the fall to explore more of our amazing National Parks.” Deborah Richin writes, “This past year has been full of transitions and exciting life changes. I moved my financial planning practice after 15 years to UBS Financial Services, and just passed the one-year mark. If you ever feel like things are in a rut, shaking up your world and business will certainly add a spark. My daughter got engaged during the holidays so this year has been a whirlwind of wedding planning, and the big event is not until next year. I would welcome reconnecting with fellow classmates on LinkedIn, the 21st-century version of a virtual campus. Life takes us all in different directions but the fun times we shared at UVM, always come along for the journey.” Send your news to— Beth Gamache 58 Grey Meadow Drive Burlington, VT 05401 bethgamache@burlington telecom.net

35TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@

uvm.edu. Ken Heideman tells us, “I have been director of publications at the American Meteorological Society in Boston for 17 years. It is a dream job for me in a career that started as a geography major at UVM under the guidance of Dr. Charles Ryerson. Thank you, Chuck!” Ed Gallagher writes, “I will be participating in the Pan Mass Challenge this coming August for the 16th-straight year. I usually see my fraternity brother Matt Dustin out there on the road or by the beer tent. I have a corporate team, Convergex Cyclers, which partners with a young girl who was treated successfully at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. We always have room on our team.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

Mark W. Knight writes: “I retired from The Vanguard Group’s Asset Management Services on June 30, 2014 (and received a beautiful, engraved, Simon Pearce bowl). Health issues from a spinal cord injury sustained bodysurfing in California in 1987 finally took their toll and my doctors and I decided it was time to leave the stress of work behind. I am now volunteering for PennEnvironment and am a Peer Mentor at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I also work on my still photography skills and won a blue ribbon in the still life category at The Sandwich Town Fair in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire, this year!” Karen Kaplan writes, “Hi all! I’ve done my double major in English and mass communications proud. I’m an editor at the science journal Nature, specifically of the Careers section, where I commission and edit articles about federal science policy across all nations, non-academic career options for young researchers, and life at the bench and beyond. My office is in D.C. and the company is based in London, so I travel there a couple times a year—great fun! Hope to make it to a reunion one of these days! William (Bill) Hawkey was installed this past September as the 23rd headmaster at The Pennington School in Pennington, New Jersey. Pennington School is an independent 6-12th

SUMMER 2015

Patricia Boera writes, “Just back from a delightful Easter weekend trip to New York City where I met up with my sister, Donna O’Harren ‘92 and her family. This year marks my 25th as a member of the dynamic career services team at Champlain College. Hello to classmates from 1977 as well as to those I worked with on the Res Life teams in Jeanne Mance and McAuley halls and students who worked on the Ariel.” Ellen Thompson continues to work with educators in her role as director of instruction and information services for the Essex Town School District in Vermont. She also spends much time at her gallery and cafe in Grand Isle, Vermont. Grand Isle Art Works represents 70 Vermont artists including Ellen and her husband, Jim Holzschuh. Ellen works with fiber from their own angora goats and alpacas, while Jim turns wooden items for fiber artists and more. Bill Klipp and his wife, Linda, just finished a three-plus year volunteer photography project to digitize the collections and records of the Matanzas Pharmacy Museum in Cuba. The project was sponsored by the Cuban Ministry of Culture and Patrimony and resulted in over 36,000 images. Check out www.CubaPhotos.net to see photos.

Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes

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grade day/boarding school. Bill’s two sons, Billy and Steven, are both graduates of Pennington and daughter, Ellie is in the 7th grade at the school. Kathleen (Kathy) Perry Hall reports, “I am still enjoying my chosen field of physical therapy after 34 years of practice! I recently changed jobs and I am employed at The Alpine Clinic in Franconia, New Hampshire. The clinic is associated with the U.S. ski jumping team. I am working with some top-notch orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists. I had a great mini reunion with fellow UVM alums Anne Scotti and Maureen Corey Gibeault. We enjoyed reminiscing about our time at UVM. Next year is our 35th reunion and we decided that it would be great to get together with our classmates!” Steve Morse is alive and well in the Charleston, South Carolina, area. He has three kids in high school (two boys and youngest is a girl) and works as a relationship sales manager for BB&T Mortgage Correspondent Lending. He says, “Classmates: Feel free to contact me through LinkedIn (I’m not on Facebook) or at SMorse@bbandt.com— especially if you are in the Southeast!” Linda Johnson Norris writes, “I got to ski with famous old UVM alumni and ski team members from the late 70’s and early ‘80s! The UVM gal pals had a mini-reunion at Stowe on March 31 and the spring skiing was fabulous! Gail Lebaron ’79 (of Vermont and California), Sheila Whalen Cook ’79 (Pennsylvania) and Hilary EngischKlein ’79 (Vermont and Ottawa) joined me, their former soccer teammate, for a great two days of ski, sun, spa and laughter. Sheila brought the expensive wine and a great time was had by all while Gail toured us around the beautiful Stowe Mountain Lodge and spa where she works. Hilary just completed her Stowe, Vermont Kids on Top ski program for children cancer survivors so the venue made for a great celebration of good health and outdoor fun for all! We missed you Clev, Grace, Phantom, Alice and all—book your 2016 calendar now! Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 alumni@uvm.edu/classnotes

John Bartlett says, “Been living in Southern California now for 20 years with wife Cynthia and three boys: Cameron, Jackson, and Dylan. Still proud to be a UVMer living on the West Coast. However, as a former player I remain curious about why varsity baseball has not been reinstated at UVM. Jim Carter G’80 has done a great job with the club team and agrees that we should “bring it back.” Bill Currier is doing well as head baseball coach at Fairfield but he would be even better as returning coach of the varsity Cats. Please join me in logging on to the Friends of UVM Baseball site and voicing your opinion or donating to the cause. Baseball, apple pie, and UVM. Nice combination, don’t you think? Go Cats Go!” [Editor’s Note: Eliminating a varsity sport, particularly one with the roots and tradition of UVM baseball, is never an easy decision. The UVM administration has reviewed the financial resources needed to return baseball to varsity status. It would be a steep challenge, requiring $20 million in a permanent endowment. As John has shared, the athletes and Coach Jim Carter are proudly representing the university at a club level, and UVM applauds their success on the diamond.] Bret Kernoff published two books in April of 2015. As a consulting special educator and a board certified behavior analyst, Bret published one text called A Teacher’s Guide to Applied Behavior Analysis designed for teachers facing maladaptive behaviors. The other text is called The Path to Passing the BACB Exams for BCBA and BCaBa. This technical journal is designed to help applicants pass the certification exam to become a behavior analyst. These books were edited continuously by Diana Paul Kernoff ‘84. Bret can be found on the web at behavior institute.org. Sas Carey directs the non-profit Nomadicare, which supports the sustainability and cultural survival of nomadic peoples by harmonizing traditional and modern medicine and documenting nomadic lifeways, lore and heart songs. For 21 years, she has been traveling to Mongolia working with nomads and has written a book about it, Reindeer Herders in My Heart (2012) and made three feature documentary films, “Gobi Women’s Song”(2005), “Ceremony”(2015), and “Migration”

(2015). She gives presentations and travels with her book and films. Her most recent presentation was for the 100-year-old Explorers’ Club in New York City. Karen Partridge Earley shares that Lisa Fite DeYoung hosted her for a visit at her home in beautiful Salida, Colorado. They spent three action-packed days enjoying the mountains and desert and catching up while snowshoeing, skiing and climbing 700-foot sand dunes (at Great Sand Dunes National Park). Lisa, a.k.a. the mountain mermaid, is a creative, independent spirit whose motto in life is create, play, thrive. You can find her online home at mountainmermaidstudios.com. Amy Beth Perkins Moore writes, “I continue to reside in Yorktown, Virginia. I spend quite a bit of time traveling to visit my children, Meghan (age 23) and Sean (age 20), family and friends as well as for various organizations where I volunteer. For a family and friend dinner of 12 in Big Sky Montana in March, seven of us at the gathering were UVMers. My big brother Dave Perkins ‘78, Carmen Thomas McSpadden ‘81, Doug McSpadden ‘81, Dave’s children Polly Perkins ‘09, James Perkins ‘11 and Polly’s boyfriend, Ryan Crocker, PhD candidate for 2015. Carmen and I were UVM field hockey teammates and had not seen each other in 32 years. The years melted away. It was absolutely amazing to be able to catch up in person. We won’t let it be 32 years before we link up again as we want to continue to be able to swoosh down the slopes together. We all had a blast! A picture of the seven UVMers sporting Catamount attire was sent to the UVM alumni online photo gallery. Send your news to— John Peter Scambos pteron@verizon.net

The Khabele School in Austin, Texas, is excited to announce that after an extensive national and international search, Ted Graf has been named its next head of school, effective July 1, 2015. Graf is a career-long independent school student, teacher, and leader, who holds degrees from the University of Vermont, Brown University, and the School for International Training. Graf will lead this model independent school into a new era of the school’s student-centered, globally

minded learning community, serving students from early childhood through 12th grade across three campuses. Citizens Financial Group, Inc. today announced the appointment of Donald H. McCree as vice chairman and head of commercial banking. He will serve on the company’s executive committee and report to chairman and CEO Bruce Van Saun. McCree will join Citizens effective September 1, 2015. McCree comes to Citizens having served in a number of senior leadership positions over the course of 31 years at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and its predecessor companies. He has extensive experience in commercial banking gained through positions at JPMorgan including head of Corporate Banking and CEO of Global Treasury Services, head of Global Credit Markets, North American co-head of Fixed Income, European co-head of Investment Banking and head of European and Asian Syndicated Finance. He also served as head of Wholesale Risk Management and head of Treasury and Corporate Development. He retired from JPMorgan in mid-2014. Al Jackson writes, “Last fall my son, Evan ‘18, began his freshman year at UVM. When we moved him into his dorm room on Redstone, it brought back such good memories of my days living there. While much has changed at UVM since my day, it was nice to see that some things remain the same.” Blair MacKenzie Van Brunt writes, “I am still living in Sherborn, Massachusetts, for the last 20 years and see so many wonderful UVM friends over all these years. Inspired by our daughter who has a rare disease, I’ve recently started a communications consulting business called Rare Disease Perspectives LLC which works with companies in the pharma and biotech space to create, strengthen or refine communications with the patient populations that they serve.” Send your news to— Lisa Greenwood Crozier lcrozier@triad.rr.com

Liz Moore Axelson writes, “I love living in the Hudson Valley of New York with Rusty Boris. We enjoy snowshoeing and hiking nearby; day trips to the Catskills; New York City or so many other places in the Kingston-New Paltz area. We love visiting my son, Ben, and daugh-

ter-in-law, June, in Syracuse; and family in the Burlington, Vermont, area. I’m a senior planner at Morris Associates Engineering.” Barbara Emond and her fiancee, Osama Alshaykh, moved to Newton, Massachusetts, last year, and successfully launched Tabeeb.org, a media collaboration service to strengthen medical teams. Tabeeb recently partnered with NanoHealth, winner of the 2014 Hult Prize, Clinton Health Initiative, to provide care to the urban poor in India. Send your news to— Abby Goldberg Kelley saragrant2001@yahoo.com Kelly McDonald jasna-vt@hotmail.com Shelley Carpenter Spillane scspillane@aol.com

30TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Brian Sanderson had a chance to spend some time with Pat-

rick Sharp ’04 recently at the Keith Relief Fundraiser in Chicago. Brian says he couldn’t have been nicer in meeting and talking with a fellow Catamount. Craig Mabie writes, “During the last year I wrote and published a book, Freedom from My Self Moving Beyond the Voice in My Head. It documents my personal experiences: childhood bullying, growing up and coming out as a gay man, attempted suicide, dealing with a chronic disease and loss of voice. The book has significant references to my time at UVM. I have continued close ties with the university—see photo at alumni. uvm.edu/1985. In this photo, taken this past September on the rim of the Grand Canyon, I am second from the left. The other good friends are fellow 1985 UVM grads. We had just completed a multiday backpacking trip through the canyon. The book is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.” Sue Koehler-Arsenault moved to Rockport, Massachusetts, in November 2014 with her husband, to open the Art of David Arsenault gallery (artofdavid.com). Sue is looking forward to connecting with UVM alumni in the Boston area where she

is busy working as an interfaith minister (revsue.net). She is also on the faculty of One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in Manhattan, where she teaches seminars and workshops on the spiritual care of the dying. Penni Pomeroy writes, “Can’t believe our 30-year Reunion is upon us. I’m looking forward to attending. The empty nest is fast approaching as our daughters will both be in college in the fall. I’m happy to say that one attends UVM and the other will also be in New England.” Send your news to— Barbara Roth roth_barb@yahoo.com

David Nadel writes, “I am, and have been for the past eight years, assistant general counsel at Douglas Elliman Real Estate in New York City.” Linda Frawley Lorrey writes, “Hard to believe that almost 30 years have passed since my UVM days! By the time this is published my husband John and I will have lived 25-plus years in the southern coast of Maine; will soon be celebrating our 25th anniversary; we’ll have one daughter in her senior

year at Bowdoin College; one daughter in her sophomore year at MIT and our youngest daughter narrowing down her college choices as a high school junior—where did the years go?! With so much of our time spent on colleges in recent years it really brings back great memories of my time at UVM...I hope my daughters will think back on their college years as fondly as I do!” Thornton Tomasetti, the international engineering firm, announces that Gunnar Hubbard, a principal and the firm’s sustainability practice leader, has been elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture (AIA). He will be honored during the Investiture of Fellow Ceremony at the 2015 AIA Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, in May. Hubbard has more than 25 years of experience as an architect, consultant, educator and advocate for projects throughout the United States, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. He has played a key sustainability role on a wide variety of projects including CityCenter Las Vegas, an $8.4 billion mixeduse complex; the green certification for 12 million square-feet of existing real estate in Sweden; and a net zero

UNITING EXTRAORDINARY HOMES

SUMMER 2015

with EXTRAORDINARY LIVES

fourseasonssir.com

To view videos of this property and others visit fourseasonssir.com/video

Each Office is Independently Owned and Operated.

[CLASSNOTES energy LEED Platinum education center in Maine. Send your news to— Lawrence Gorkun vtlfg@msn.com

Kathleen Collins Woodward writes, “Enjoying life in Hanson, Massachusetts, with my husband, Tim, of 20 years and our four children (Caroline 17, Kristina, 15, Courtney, 13, Timothy Jr (TJ), 11)! Looking forward to college tours with our oldest!” Send your news to— Sarah Reynolds ssrey2@verizon.net

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

Public Health Service Captain Sara B. Newman has been selected as the director of the National Park Service Office of Public Health. Newman will lead the National Park Service’s public health efforts and serve as the principal advisor to the director for public health programs that affect 300 million visitors a year. Newman will also serve as the commanding officer for the public health operating division, administratively managing 48 officers detailed to offices and bureaus in the Department of Interior. She has worked with the National Park Service for the last eight years, developing the public risk management program and providing policy, guidance, and technical support to parks undertaking a range of visitor injury prevention initiatives. Matthew Natt reports that he and Steven Wolf ’87, Dan Krason, Tom Bell ’89, Mike Wolfson ’89 and Monk Higgins had a mini-reunion heli skiing in the Canadian Rockies in March 2015. Seventy thousand vertical feet was skied and Team Vermont acquitted themselves well in all regards. Michael Dwyer writes “Our business, Association Headquarters, a professional-services firm in suburban Philadelphia that specializes in helping non-profit organizations achieve their mission, create value, and advance their causes, industries, and professions, continues to grow and expand service offerings. We just recently rebranded, creating four main divisions within AH—a full-service association management company (AMC); a marketing and communications agency; a meetings and events management team; and a division that focuses on other custom

solutions, and the response has been tremendous. My wife, Penny Dwyer ‘87 (the former Margaret Briggs Swallow) and I have three great kids, Chandler, is on a full Navy ROTC scholarship at Boston University studying mechanical engineering; Owen is a freshman in high school and UVM is on his radar (he loves lacrosse); and Madeline, 13, is in 7th grade. Soccer is her sport but she also runs track. We often get up to South Burlington to visit with our best friends and fellow UVMers, Kim Morin Steinfeld (from Jericho, Vermont) and Gene Steinfeld.” Wendy Webster Farrell writes, “I took an Arizona vacation with my husband, Skip. We visited all ten major league spring training parks and saw all 15 teams that train in the Phoenix area. While attending a Colorado Rockies spring training game I spot a guy wearing a UVM baseball cap. I yell, ‘Hey UVM’, he turns and we start chatting. Small world. It was Dave Clavelle ‘73—his younger brother went to Rice High School with my husband! We had a nice visit and promised to get together for dinner on a future visit to Arizona.” David Charles Merritt retired on disability in 2000. He writes, “Attended St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Mocksville, North Carolina. Got married last summer (July 12, 2014) to Petra. Enjoy living in a warm climate and love watching UVM sports online. Went to the Vermont vs. Duke basketball game... Oh, what a game it was! Saving for a new wheelchair van, they cost $70,000, wow!” Alan Ryan, Tim Murray, Chris Skidmore, Bill Sevigny, Chris Donovan, Mitch Blazer and Tom Dettre met for their annual camping, fishing, golf, wiffleball, darts, bocce ball and cribbage derby at Grand Isle State Park. The photo is posted on the Alumni Association’s website photo gallery. Send your news to— Cathy Selinka Levison crlevison@comcast.net

William Hunt, was recently awarded a prescribing psychologist license (conditional) In New Mexico. A first for a University of Vermont clinical psychology graduate. Dr. Hunt is the only African American prescribing psychologist in the U.S. Rob Miller and his wife Karyn Bovia Miller recently moved back to Vermont with their

two daughters, Ella and Olivia. Rob is now the president and CEO of the Vermont State Employees Credit Union (VSECU) based in Montpelier, Vermont. Marren (Mary) Sanders writes, “I am now associate professor of law and associate dean of research and scholarship at Arizona Summit Law School. Leanne Prevo Rodd writes, “I joined FlexProfessionals in March and am launching the Boston metro area. We’re a niche staffing and recruiting firm that connects small-and medium-size growing businesses with part-time, experienced professionals. Many people in our talent pool are parents re-entering the workforce, semi-retirees, or people wanting to scale back. I love helping people find meaningful work while having flexibility and balance at the same time!” Julie Homza ‘88 and Tooper Homza are still in Alaska after 25 years! They write, “We get back east occasionally and see many UVMers like Dave and Holly Cummings, Will and Mare Friend, Dave and Sue Adams, and Ally and Pat Stoops. Go Cats! Go Phish!” Deirdre Tozer-Hayes and wife Fiona TozerHayes are pleased to announce the arrival of their twin girls on February 13, 2015. Cole Ann-Marie weighing 6 lbs., 13.5 oz. and Seeley Catherine weighing 6 lbs., 14 oz. The girls were born in Sunderland General Hospital, England, where Deirdre works for the Newcastle Eagles professional basketball team’s charity. Pamela “Hoov” Eldridge Lucci writes, “Our son, Aaron, was recruited by the UVM XC and track coaches and is completing his freshmen year. He is double majoring in environmental science and music and loves it.” Mindy Goldman, Laurie Marston, Kathy Grunes, and Stephanie Oseicki attended their 25th Medical School Reunion last year and put a photo on the Alumni Association’s website photo gallery. Maureen Kelly Gonsalves reports, Dr. Christopher J. Fleury was named president and CEO of InterMedia, a global non-profit research and consulting firm. InterMedia is based in Washington, London, and Nairobi. Congratulations to Chris on a great achievement. Tommy O’Hara’s son is finishing up his first year at UVM. He writes, “It was strange to be back at UVM in the fall for Reunion weekend and parents weekend.” Kim Slomin McGarvey is a child develop-

ment specialist who recently opened UWS Parenting Support in New York City. She and her colleagues offer parenting support in groups and family consultations to parents and children up to age 10. Check out her company at www.uwsparentingsupport.com. Stefanie Conroy Wallach trekked for three weeks in the Nepal Khumbu Valley. Her small group stayed in tea houses and met many wonderful Nepali people along the way. After making Everest Base Camp and learning some basic mountaineering skills, they summited Island Peak at elevation 20,305 feet. The celebration in Kathmandu afterwards included many beers and a large steak dinner. Send your news to— Maureen Kelly Gonsalves moe.dave@verizon.net

25TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Jim Kobal writes, “Here in Atlanta, been working on getting alumni together.” Dan Beaupre lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, with his wife Amy and two children, Nick (13) and Louisa (11). Dan is vice president of experiences at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. Robert Rosen writes, “Life is good in Seattle. Jessica and I had our third child, Sloane Gibson Rosen, last fall. She along with older brothers Reece (age 8) and Lang (age 4) keep us on our toes! I am now the head of the Philanthropic Partnership Team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is truly a dream job.” Send your news to— Tessa Donohoe Fontaine tessafontaine@gmail.com

Kara Cohen writes, “This May is my 12-year anniversary of serving as the community outreach director for AARP Massachusetts, the state office for AARP. My wife and I reside in Massachusetts with our twin boys who will be 7 this September. We are brainwashing them early about UVM!” Jeffrey Wick writes, “Time flies since my last update perhaps 13 or so years ago. Married Elzy Sklar ’95 ; moved from New York City back to Burlington; have three boys (ages 11, 9 and 6);

been practicing law, coaching youth sports, learning to play the piano, enjoying volunteer service on city boards and commissions, and generally enjoying life. We’ve been blessed with good health and a great place to live... and it was a great year to ski Vermont.” Joanne Kaplan Tuckman, Karen Moseson Phillips and Brian Acrish went to the Neil Diamond Concert at Barclays Arena Brooklyn on March 26, 2015. A photo is posted on the Alumni Association’s website photo gallery. Jennifer Marra Cronin died April 5, 2015 in Atlanta, Georgia. Jen was the captain of her women’s basketball team. Following graduation, Jen was employed by American Cancer Society in New York City and then Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Georgia. She is survived by her husband, Jay Cronin, daughter Madelynn, 13, and son Jack, 10 all of Atlanta and her parents Suzanne and Richard Marra of Port Washington, New York. Send news to— Karen Heller Lightman khlightman@gmail.com

Gwen Parker tells us, “When I’m not being instructed on the finer points of wrestling,

the old facility. Please congratulate her when you see her this October! John Gorman and his wife Andreana (Andi) Lemmon and their dog are moving to Putney, Vermont. They are super excited for their 20th Reunion in October and can’t wait to see everyone! Todd Schneider shares, “I’ve been in Los Angeles since 1998 working as a stuntman and stunt coordinator. Married to Debra Lewin’90 and have two children. Loving the warm weather and our trips to Mammoth Mountain to visit the snow. Have not run across too many UVM grads out here. I’d be psyched to run into some. toddschn1@me.com.” Send your news to— Valeri Susan Pappas vpappas@davisand ceriani.com

Jackie Levin writes, “Greetings from the Pacific Northwest. My nursing career and life have taken me to the grandest places, internally and externally. My work now is as a holistic nurse coach, mindfulness teacher and the patient advocate at our local critical care hospital. Please check out my website: www.leadingedgenursing.com. My focus is to transform health care into truly being a place where everyone heals—nurses, doctors as well as the people we are in service to. Would love to hear from you and what you are up to!” Send your news to— Cynthia Bohlin Abbott cyndiabbott@hotmail.com

20TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Plans are in the works for our 20-year reunion! Hope you are all making plans to be in Burlington October 2-4. My daughter and I headed to Mexico in April with Peter Keith, Holly Keith ’96, Kelli Shonter and Chris Ford and all of their kids, to re-live college spring break with this crew (who remembers Key West 1995?), except with a much earlier bedtime. Kelli Shonter, the development director of the King Street Center in Burlington, was instrumental in raising $5.1 million for a new building that nearly doubled the size of

Ben Stigler writes, I am excited to share that I was recently appointed captain of the Lawton Park Realtors softball team in Seattle for the 2015 season. Send your news to— Jill Cohen Gent jcgent@roadrunner.com Michelle Richards Peters mpeters@eagleeyes.biz

James Sulikyan Curtis tells us, “A year ago, my family relocated from Westborough, Massachusetts, to Livermore, California, where I am now the director of shortage control for Ross Dress for Less. Send your news to— Elizabeth Carstensen Genung leegenung@me.com

I recently joined the law firm Venable LLP, where I counsel employers on labor and employment law and human resources issues. I’m still living in Brooklyn and always looking to catch up with alums for updates in this notes section! Send news to— Ben Stockman bestockman@gmail.com

Zachary J. Cohen, esquire, partner at Lesavoy Butz & Seitz LLC, was recently elected president of the Bar Association of Lehigh County at the association’s annual meeting. Zac, a litiga-

tor, focuses primarily on business, real estate, and banking disputes. He’s also successfully handled numerous tax appeals, zoning matters, emergency injunctions, employment cases, and bankruptcy and estate litigation. Zac was selected for inclusion in the 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 Pennsylvania Super Lawyers Rising Stars list, a distinction reserved for no more than 2.5% of attorneys in Pennsylvania. In 2011, he also was named Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal’s Top “20 Under 40” people in business. Dr. Amber (Fisher) Rich successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at UVM, and is now a double UVM alumna. Audrey Learned and her long-time boyfriend Keith, welcomed a baby girl with so much love into their lives on December 31. Emily Elizabeth is already wearing her UVM gear proudly! Kate O’Leary shares, “I had my second child in May 2013, daughter Brenna who joins older brother Rowen (4). I completed my doctorate in higher education administration at Northeastern in September 2014.” Send your news to— Sarah Pitlak Tiber spitlak@hotmail.com

15TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Hinman Straub, PC, Principal Janet Silver was elected president of the Albany County Bar Association, becoming the youngest woman to preside over the association in its 115-year history. Silver has been an active member of the Albany County Bar Association for 12 years, holding positions such as chairwoman of the Public Policy Committee, co-chair of the Young Lawyers Committee as well as the Continuing Legal Education Committee. She is a delegate to the New York State Bar Association. Among Silver’s priorities is to attract young attorneys to the association, just as she was pressed into service when her career began. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni@uvm.edu/classnotes

SUMMER 2015

Adam McCarthy shares, “I am president of McNamara Salvia Structural Engineers in Boston. We also have offices in Miami and New York City and I am having a lot of fun designing the structures for several exciting buildings. I recently celebrated my 20th wedding anniversary to my wonderful wife, Liz, and our three fantastic children. Philip (14), Anthony (12) and Mariana (7)) are growing like weeds. Hope all is well.” Bob Piper shares, “After nine years at Microsoft I have left to help launch a startup company in the Healthcare space: MPIRICA scores hospitals nationwide on their surgeries, based on the historical outcomes they have achieved. We incorporated in April 2014, launched our public service (www.mpirica.com) in January 2015 and received our Series A funding in April 2015. Please take a look at the product and give us feedback via the link on the site, and please look me up the next time you are in the Pacific Northwest.” Send your news to— Lisa Kanter jslbk@mac.com

video games, and animal trivia by my boys (ages 3 and 8), I have the privilege of teaching classes in environmental law and land use regulation at Wake Forest University School of Law.” Jessica Atkins Hernandez, her husband, Jose Hernandez, and big brother Grant welcomed Spencer Nolan Hernandez on July 2, 2014. In March of this year, the family moved back to Bethesda, Maryland, after almost three years in New York City. Jessica continues to work at Morrison Foerster LLP as the attorney development manager for the firm’s East Coast and European offices. Jessica looks forward to reconnecting with D.C.-area alums! Send your news to— Gretchen Haffermehl Brainard gretchenbrainard@gmail.com

[CLASSNOTES

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

I am very excited to share that Erica MacConnell and her husband, Chris Vessey, welcomed a baby boy named Calvin Mac Vessey in March. There is no doubt that he will be an incredible, and competitive, athlete. In roughly 18 years we hope to see him on the UVM ski team. Congrats Erica and Chris! In the world of Facebook I have seen some great reviews for Hutchinson Cocktails & Grill in Los Angeles, started by our very own Ian Hopper and his brother. Those living in the area or traveling through, be sure to stop by and support! Scott Dershowitz writes, “My wife Josie Freeman ‘02 and I recently welcomed our second daughter, and we’ve been living in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, since 2011. I recently opened a private geriatric care management practice- www.TheCareConnector. com.” Brooke White writes, “Much of my time at UVM was spent volunteering, serving as the director of VIA and focusing on bringing service into my academic experience. Now I am in the process of fundraising for a very important cause and hope there might be a way to involve the UVM community. This fall my five-year-old son was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder, and all of his care has been at Boston Children’s Hospital. I will be running the Boston Run to Remember Half Marathon to raise funds for the hospital. View my fundraising page on fundraise.childrenshospital.org.” Scott Goodwin reports, “In February, my wife Meagan Goodwin ‘11 and I celebrated the first birthday of our third son, Patrick Richard. I have been employed as a senior business analyst and implementation engineer with Aurora North Software since January of 2014, and continue to live in South Burlington with my wife, daughter Ellie (6), and sons Seamus (2) and Patrick.” Laura Killian Ryser writes, “After working at the University of Vermont for a few years, I am now faculty at Washington State University Extension and am thrilled to be living in the Puget Sound region with my husband and two-year-old daughter.” In other news, I am now back in Boston after a wonderful year and a half living in Europe for work. I am continuing to work for Bose Corporation. That is all we have this month, please reach out and let us know what you

are up to for the next issue! Send your news to— Erin Wilson ewilson41@gmail.com

Sueann Hansen Snodgrass writes, “I am excited to announce that I have opened my own career coaching/consulting business, called Collaborative Career Coaching. I decided to launch my business because I love helping others with all things career related... coaching, advice, job hunting, crafting resumes, LinkedIn profiles, cover letters, salary negotiation, interview prep, etc.! You can learn more about Collaborative Career Coaching at www.collaborativecareercoaching. net. Reach me at Collaborative Career Coaching at: collaborativecareercoaching@gmail.com or 732-3727801. Thanks for your support!” Richard Mark Merrill graduated from the West Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine in Lewisburg, West Virginia, and is currently a fellow in pulmonary intensive care at the Leahy Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts. Send your news to— Jennifer Khouri Godin jenniferkhouri@yahoo.com

Gabrielle Salerno Hart shares, “My husband, Jay, and I welcomed our first baby, a little girl named Osselyn Elizabeth, on August 1, 2014. Sorry this birth announcement is coming so late; she has been keeping us quite busy since her arrival.” Christian Amport and his wife, Stephanie, welcomed a baby daughter, Josephine Rose (Josie), on February 22. Christian’s brewery in East Haven, Connecticut, Overshores Brewing, also celebrated its first anniversary of opening May 1. Jon Kantor and Wendy Kantor are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Ellie Rose. She was born on March 10, 2015 in Arlington, Virginia, and weighed 8 lb., 11 oz. Samuel (2) is excited to be a big brother! We are mourning the loss of Thomas “Tommy” Mazza who left us too soon in New York City on April 2, 2015. Tommy was brilliant, with an amazing sense of humor and strong faith that led him to always help others. Gregarious, he had a personality that would fill up the room. Tommy was a great friend, one of the best people I’ve known, and is missed dearly.

Ian McLaughlin writes, “I have been teaching environmental education informally for almost 10 years at the Tanglewood Nature Center and Museum where I am the resident naturalist. I love my job, and I think back to everything I learned at UVM. It really set me up with a solid core of beliefs that still resonate today. UVM turns out some of the most ambitious, innovative, and caring people the world has to offer. Normal and boring are not in our DNA. We were geeks before it was cool. I don’t know if the world needs more Sheldon Coopers but we do need humor.” Send your news to— Korinne Moore korinne.d.moore@gmail.com

Sarah Glawe Casanovas and her husband, Joe, had their first child, Eliza Margaret, at the end of January. Billy Allen writes, “After 10 years at Burton Snowboards, spending the last five as the brand manager, Schuyler (Hoyt) Allen, our two-year-old son, Liam, and I have moved to the Seacoast, New Hampshire area, where I will assume a role as senior global brand manager at Timberland.” Nancy Morin Sunderland celebrates her one year anniversary of launching her luxury woven baby carrier business, Poe Wovens. Celebrities such as Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson, and Olivia Wilde own a Poe! Chic. Connected. Carried. Can be found online at www.poewovens.com. Send your news to— Kelly Kisiday kellykisiday@hotmail.com

10TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. Brian Daniel Anderson was recently promoted to program manager and will be married in July 2015. Send your news to— Kristin Dobbs kristin.dobbs@gmail.com

Will Alexander writes, “My fourth novel, a science fictional immigration story and the sequel to last year’s Ambassador, will be coming out in September.

I also teach for the Vermont College program in writing for children, and I’ll be moving back to Vermont this summer.” Andrea Patrikis and Evan Vana ‘05 married on September 20 in Evan’s home town of Derby, Vermont. Alumni Betsy Benton, Bud Vana, Bryant Hazelton ‘05, Brendan Hare ‘05 and Ryan Ward ‘05 were members of the wedding party. Andrea and Evan were excited to share their day with many other UVM alumni in attendance. Jessica Kowalewski married Ryan Dietrich in September 2014. Other UVM alumni in attendance included Allie Padin, Katie Carl Lucas, Adam Lucas ‘05, Kevin Bell ‘09, and Sean Connors ‘00. Send your news to— Katherine Murphy kateandbri@gmail.com

07 08

Send your news to— Elizabeth Bitterman ekolodner@gmail.com

Lauren Tucker writes, “Approaching the completion of a dual master’s in architecture and urban planning from the University of Michigan, and still missing the Green Mountains. Looking forward to the wedding of fellow Catamount Alexis Langer ‘07 and a reunion with Harper B. Reitkopf ‘07, friends from the third floor of Wing dormitory. Hope to visit Vermont soon.” Nick Carter, is managing director of Bernie Sanders for Senate and Progressive Voters of America, campaign office of Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. He took the position after three years as public affairs coordinator and lobbyist for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. Nick thanks the Integrated Social Sciences Program, particularly professors Glenn Elder and Ross Thomson, and Professor Tony Gierzynski as major influences. Weston LaBar says, “2014 was a landmark year for me. I celebrated the one year anniversary of the founding of my company, PEAR Strategies, was named as a Workforce Development Commissioner in the City of Long Beach, became the chairman of the United Cambodian Community Board the largest Cambodian organization in the nation, was named executive director of the Harbor Trucking Association, and was named to the Executive Committee for the Arts Council for Long

VQEXTRA online

Beach.” Eric Hubbell writes, “Hey fellow alumni! I’ve been working on a mobile startup in Denver for the last year and a half and we just launched Myhub on the App Store. Myhub is a fast, easy way to plan group activities and pool cash with friends. It’s perfect for vacations, festivals, bachelor/bachelorette parties and more! I’d love for you to test the platform and hear from you anytime. Feel free to reach me at eric@myhubapp.com. Go Cats!” Send your news to— Elizabeth Bearese ebearese@gmail.com Emma Grady gradyemma@gmail.com

JACKSON RENSHAW ’12 Jackson Renshaw ’12 and his partner Cassandria Campbell founded Fresh Food Generation in 2012 to add an activist twist to the farm-to-table movement, the fruits of which, so far, have been mostly reserved for the middle class and up. — Read more about Jackson Renshaw’s efforts to bring fresh, healthy food to Boston’s poorer neighborhoods.

ARTHUR POLLACK

5TH REUNION OCTOBER 2–4, 2015 alumni.uvm.edu/reunion If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@ uvm.edu. In 2014, New York Citybased photographer and activist, Louise Rita Contino, partnered with Spark MicroGrants, an international social impact non-profit founded by another 2010 alum, Sasha Fisher, to develop an in-depth documentary story about the people directly impacted by Spark MicroGrants in East Africa. Louise created Picturing Wanteete, a participatory photography project designed to promote self-advocacy and strengthen community cohesion. Louise traveled to Uganda and collaborated with community members from Wanteete, the first village in Uganda to participate in a Spark MicroGrants project. Read more about Louise’s work in Classnotes online at uvm.edu/vq. Nolan Hurley writes, “After completing my master’s in physician assistant studies I will be starting a position as an orthopedic physician assistant at Northwestern Medical Center in Saint Albans. I continue to help out with local ambulance services as well!” Taylor Bergeron shares, “I got married June 8, 2013 to my amazing wife, Emily. We recently moved back to Vermont after living in Massachusetts for a couple years. We are

waiting to move into our new home that is being built in Essex. I am currently working as a financial analyst with Keurig Green Mountain Coffee in Waterbury. Looking forward to planting our roots here in Vermont! There is no better place to live.” Aaron Lopez-Barrantes writes, “I moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, after graduating where I have been playing full time as a singer/songwriter/guitarist in the city since 2011. I released my debut record in 2013, “ALB”, where I toured alongside the Chicago-based band Great Divide. I performed at the CMJ music festival, Musikfest Festival in Pennsylvania. I was a finalist in the 2014 Louisiana Singer Songwriter competition. Music has been such a big part of my life and I’m so lucky to have found a home in New Orleans. Clyde Stats and Paul Asbell were two of my professors that inspired me to pursue music and check out New Orleans. Love my UVM community! Come visit in NOLA!” Samuel LopezBarrantes is an essayist and novelist currently living in Paris. His work has appeared in Paris Lit Up magazine, SLAM magazine, Writer’s Digest and The International Forum for Logotherapy. In February, he published his debut novel, Slim and The Beast, with Inkshares Press, America’s first crowdfunded publishing house. Samuel recently had the privilege to go on a book tour and attend the American Bookseller Association’s Winter Institute. He plans to pass through Vermont during a second book tour in the fall. Send your news to— Daron Raleigh raleighdaron@gmail.com

Jaron Schaumberg shares, “I completed my master’s of anatomy at Penn State University in 2013 and have completed a second year of medical school at Debusk Osteopathic Medical School, in Harrogate, Tennessee.” Send your news to— Troy McNamara Troy.mcnamara4@gmail.com

Three UVM alumni, Trevor Michalak ‘11, Cooper FeinerHomer, Alie Sarhanis traveled to Oaxaca City, Mexico, to visit Kalyn Rosenberg who is serving there in the Peace Corps. They were all environmental studies majors and

SUMMER 2015

uvm.edu/vq

Shelburne Museum welcomes Liza Smith-Vedder as a development officer overseeing membership and sponsorship programs. Vedder comes to Shelburne Museum from the Burlington Free Press, where she worked as an ad sales executive. She received a bachelor’s in media arts with a photography and art history concentration from Purchase College, and graduated with a master’s in historic preservation from the University of Vermont. During her final year at UVM, she was the Municipal Art Society of New York’s Everett Public Policy Fellow. Prior to her time with Gannett Co., Smith-Vedder worked in the real estate development and preservation industries with positions at Blochworks, the Hartland Group, the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, and the Burlington Community Land Trust. Eli Zink ’11 married Jordan Anne Thorson in October, 2014 at Lake Mohawk in New Jersey. They met while working on the famous Cynic newspaper. Alumni in the bridal party and guests included; Kelly White, Jordan’s Mercy Hall roommate in addition to; Jennifer Mullin, Seth Corthell, Tyler Horan ‘11, Abby Parsons Horan (another UVM Mr. & Mrs.,) Kyle Luetkehans ‘11, Juan Peralta ‘12, Connor O’Brien ‘11, Patrick Alonis ‘11 and Lauren Butkus ‘12. Since graduating the couple has worked in the film/television industry in New York and Los Angeles. Eli will begin graduate studies in D.C. this fall. The couple will reside in Alexandria, Virginia. On March 1, David Volain G’14

proposed to Claire Crisman ‘14 in a snowy scene on a trail along the Huntington River. Lucky for him, she said, “yes.” The two are set to be married in July of 2016. Helen Weaver moved to Denver, Colorado, in July and is teaching kindergarten at Graland Country Day School. Ellen Stanley is immensely enjoying teaching first grade at The American School of Kinshasa in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Erica Bruno, after five years with Toyota Motor Sales USA, has accepted the position of fixed operations manager for Nissan USA covering Vermont and New Hampshire. She is also one of six fixed operation managers that is on a national committee working on new innovation for Nissan with a top U.S. software company. Send your news to— David Volain david.volain@gmail.com

[CLASSNOTES are still pursuing careers in that field: Kalyn teaches environmental education through the Peace Corps, Cooper installs solar panels in Northern, New York and Alie coordinates a sustainability-focused living learning program at Saint Lawrence University. They are happy to still have so much in common despite the distance between them! Samantha Etheridge shares, “After serving with Americorps VISTA in Worcester, Massachusetts, post-graduation, I made the move to San Francisco, California, in May 2013 to pursue a career in nonprofit leadership and urban dance. After working as a contract worker for a variety of small nonprofits in the Bay Area, such as FeelGood and African Leadership Foundation, I now hold a permanent position as programs associate for Net Impact. I also continue to pursue dance and arts administration by dancing in the professional urban dance company, Funkanometry SF, of which I am now executive director. I also founded my own dance entertainment social enterprise called Weekend Shorts that promotes body positive values in nightlife/corporate events entertainment and donates a portion of

performance profits to a local youth dance crew, The Funksters. I can be reached via LinkedIn.” Emily Meltzer and Philip Bruno are co-presidents of the Seattle UVM Alumni Group. In December, they hosted a holiday party for over 60 Catamount alumni spanning five decades! Please email uvmalumpnw@gmail.com to be added to our mailing list for future events. Jules Liebster and Pete Elliott ‘10 are getting married in Burlington this June. The couple met through friends at The Other Place in 2010 and have been together ever since. Jules and Pete couldn’t imagine getting married in any other place! Elizabeth J. Keough-Betts writes, “As one of your 2012 ‘much older’ grads I want to say that all is well. Most fun thing is the chocolate chip cookie baking I do for the Cobblestone Deli.” Send your news to— Patrick Dowd patrickdowd2012@ gmail.com

Kevin Baranello shares, “I have been working at Room2Board a Hostel and Surf School located in Jaco Beach, Costa

Rica. After living down in Jaco for several months, we realized that we needed a few more volunteers and staff members. We initiated a few social media efforts which other UVM alumni heard about, and decided that they wanted to be involved. I can now say UVM runs the front desk and keeps the reservations organized on a day to day basis. We sell tours in our newly opened Tour Office, offer/ teach surf lessons and rentals, operate a store to suit traveler’s needs, and work as waitresses/waiters and bartenders to keep the bar alive and fun. It’s a lot of work, and a non-stop party all mixed into one unforgettable setting. A big shout out to the UVM alumni who have been involved: Wyatt Fowler, Sam Evans ‘14, Hannah Rosenberg, Caleb Brabant ‘14, Bronson Shonk, Ian Anderson ‘14, and probably a lot more to come!” Read lots more about Kevin’s adventures with other UVMers in Costa Rica in Classnotes online, uvm.edu/vq. Mia Sara Haiman has relocated to Tel Aviv, Israel where she works in the International Relations Department of the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv. Send your news to— Katharine Hawes

katharine.hawes2@ gmail.com Madelaine White mswhite1991@gmail.com

14 15

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

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

[INMEMORIAM

Millicent L. Dixon ’32, of South Burlington, Vermont, April 1, 2015. Carolyn R. Nichols ’32, of Mc Indoe Falls, Vermont, March 9, 2015. Dorothy Gibson Stevens ’38, of Wells River, Vermont, March 12, 2015. Phyllis McGovern Soule ’40, G’70, of Burlington, Vermont, June 2, 2014. Elizabeth Watts Weeks ’40, of Lake Mary, Florida, February 26, 2015. Lucius Hamlin Greene ’41, of Glen, New Hampshire, February 11, 2015. Carleton R. Haines ’41, MD’43, of Williston, Vermont, March 25, 2015. Grace Meeken Hutchins ’41, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, February 20, 2015. Ora Heywood Pike ’41, of Stowe, Vermont, March 21, 2015. Mary Skinner Brainard ’42, of Beverly, Massachusetts, October 26, 2014.

Gwendolyn Marshia Brown ’42, of Milford, Massachusetts, April 13, 2015. Helen Davis Clark ’42, of Hyde Park, Vermont, February 27, 2015. Gerald L. Haines ’42, MD’44, of Rexford, New York, February 11, 2015. Hester D. Rice ’42, of Montpelier, Vermont, March 2, 2015. Catharine Shaw Erwin ’43, of Dunedin, Florida, December 20, 2014. William Henry Milne ’43, of Durham, New Hampshire, March 10, 2015. John W. Williams ’43, of Deland, Florida, April 8, 2015. Lloyd G. Bartholomew MD’44, of Rochester, Minnesota, April 2, 2015. Arlington Oscar Hazen ’44, of South Burlington, Vermont, January 28, 2015. Zelva Flower Ladeau ’44, of Bristol, Vermont, January 11, 2015.

Muriel McKee Davis ’45, of Walpole, New Hampshire, April 3, 2015. Mary Harmon Harrington ’45, of Bennington, Vermont, January 24, 2015. Herman Selig Thomas ’45, of Bedford, New Hampshire, February 2, 2015. Mary Boardman Ciaschini ’46, of North Charleston, South Carolina, February 1, 2015. Arthur Eddy Clifford ’46, of Bristol, Vermont, April 17, 2015. Alice Miller Wright ’46, G’85, of Middlebury, Vermont, January 1, 2015. Jane Smith Lanouette ’47, of Westport, Connecticut, November 11, 2014. Evelyn Olsen Davis ’48, of Burlington, Vermont, June 27, 2014. Mary Delano Dugarm ’48, of Minot, North Dakota, March 30, 2015. Rita Claire Keefe ’48, of Williston, Vermont, April 6, 2015.

INMEMORIAM] John E. Berryman ’54, of Burlington, Vermont, March 2, 2015. Katherine Mattson Lagios ’54, of South Burlington, Vermont, March 20, 2015. Frank Howard Osmun ’54, of Boynton Beach, Florida, January 26, 2015. Jane Seid Raff ’54, of Livingston, New Jersey, February 24, 2015. Joyce Bosley Hughes ’55, of Sierra Vista, Arizona, February 16, 2015. Raymond E. Leonard ’55, of Fort Myers, Florida, February 2, 2015. Robert E. Mallozzi, Jr. ’55, of Darien, Connecticut, April 11, 2015. Daniel N. Paris ’55, of Portland, Maine, January 10, 2015. Marvin David Teplitzky ’55, of Woodbridge, Connecticut, December 4, 2014. Marcia Inez Young ’55, of Groton, Connecticut, February 22, 2015. Gerald Frederick Gould ’56, of Redmond, Washington, December 21, 2015. Donald E. Holdsworth MD’56, of Wells, Maine, April 30, 2015. Karleen Chapman Knickerbocker ’56, of Philomont, Virginia, February 9, 2015. Richard Bradley Chapman ’57, of West Rutland, Vermont, March 9, 2015. Bruce R. MacKay MD’57, of Vero Beach, Florida, April 24, 2015. Richard Noah Matus MD’57, of St. Paul, Minnesota, November 15, 2014. Beverly Barker Pasch ’57, of Fletcher, North Carolina, January 26, 2015. Myron Peter Pidlyski ’57, of Amsterdam, New York, January 3, 2015. Irene Fleischman Platt ’58, of New York, New York, March 8, 2012. David Charles Bell ’59, of East Middlebury, Vermont, April 2, 2015. J. Donald Capra ’59, MD’63, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, February 24, 2015. Spencer G. Gregory ’59, of Sudbury, Vermont, January 5, 2015. Leigh R. Harlow ’59, of Windsor, Vermont, January 28, 2015. John C. Lefrancois ’59, of Fairfield, Connecticut, April 19, 2015. Patricia Adams Searfoss MD’59, of Pownal, Maine, March 2, 2015. Harold Leland Staples, Jr. ’59, of Sun City Center, Florida, March 12, 2015. Duane Raymond Tangue ’59, of Linden, Michigan, March 31, 2015. Justine Barbara Billings ’60, of East Middlebury, Vermont, April 8, 2015. Anthony L. Dausilio ’60, of Carlsbad, California, January 1, 2015. Sheldon Weiner ’60, MD’64, of Bonita Springs, Florida, January 22, 2015. M. Joseph Barry ’61, of South Burlington, Vermont, March 7, 2015.

James Thomas Casey ’61, of Ocala, Florida, April 7, 2014. Wilfrid L. Fortin MD’61, of Nashua, New Hampshire, January 19, 2015. Bernard E. Germain ’61, of Colchester, Vermont, February 18, 2015. Jon G. Graff ’61, of Palm Coast, Florida, February 23, 2015. Hugh T. McKenny ’61, of Colchester, Vermont, February 12, 2015. Alan Marsh Byington ’62, of Williston, Vermont, February 1, 2015. Elizabeth Sanguinetti Cordeau ’62, of Acushnet, Massachusetts, February 27, 2015. Alan R. Langille ’62, of Orono, Maine, April 19, 2015. Betty Harding Longley ’62, of Shelton, Connecticut, March 25, 2015. Howard W. Meridy ’62, MD’66, of Boynton Beach, Florida, January 25, 2015. Ronald R. Wilson ’62, of Cleveland, Ohio, April 3, 2015. Rodney C. J. Hill ’63, of Grand Isle, Vermont, January 10, 2015. Robert L. Cohen ’64, of Pomona, New York, October 29, 2013. Carol Markus Falis ’64, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 4, 2007. Lewis L. Jones, IV ’64, of Spring Hill, Florida, November 28, 2014. Richard George Carlson ’65, G’67, of New Haven, Connecticut, January 19, 2015. William L. Fleming, Jr. ’65, of San Diego, California, November 11, 2013. Carl B. Martin, III ’65, of Rutland, Massachusetts, January 14, 2015. Thomas O. Mongeon ’65, of St. Albans, Vermont, February 4, 2015. Dr. Leroy C. Butler G’66, of Northfield, Vermont, January 14, 2015. Judith A. Guernsey ’66, of Schenectady, New York, March 6, 2015. Carmen Sinos Gile ’67, of Shrewsbury, Vermont, April 16, 2015. Spencer G. Pratt ’67, of Glastonbury, Connecticut, January 10, 2015. Peter N. D. Watson ’68, of Avon, New York, March 6, 2015. Frank A. Wilbur G’69, of Barre, Vermont, January 10, 2015. John Bernard McShane, Jr. ’70, of Sudbury, Vermont, April 18, 2015. Alan D. Ayer MD’71, of Addison, Vermont, March 13, 2015. Dominique P. Casavant G’58, ‘71, of Auburn, Maine, January 16, 2015. Thomas E. McLaughlin ’71, of Wethersfield, Connecticut, February 24, 2015. William Paul Ridder, Jr. ’71, of Delta Junction, Arkansas, November 16, 2014. Brian Phillip Curtis ’72, of Hingham, Massachusetts, March 18, 2015.

SUMMER 2015

Ruth Haigh Mackenzie ’48, of Burlington, Vermont, March 17, 2015. Irene A. Vollbrecht ’48, of Fremont, California, April 14, 2015. Constance Pratt Wheeler ’48, of Plattsburgh, New York, March 13, 2015. John S. Winston ’48, of Boca Raton, Florida, August 17, 2014. M. Josephine Dillback ’49, of Keene, New Hampshire, March 15, 2015. Catherine Martel Gibson-Daley ’49, of Dennis, Massachusetts, December 22, 2014. H. John Malone MD’49, of Manchester, Connecticut, January 23, 2015. Benjamin F. Schweyer ’49, of Shelburne, Vermont, April 21, 2015. Margaret Jenne Gallant ‘50, of Burlington, Vermont, May 2, 2014 George S. Geer ’50, of Wallingford, Connecticut, March 12, 2015. Charles F. Miller MD’50, of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, April 6, 2015. Dr. Elbert Dickerson Nostrand ’50, of Middlebury, Vermont, April 15, 2015. Eugene F. Griffin ’51, of Atlanta, Georgia, March 17, 1997. Norma Shangraw Griffin ’51, of Atlanta, Georgia, March 19, 2015. Nicholas J. Paris ’51, G’52, of Stowe, Vermont, January 21, 2015. Forrest Scott Rose ’51, of Essex Junction, Vermont, January 10, 2015. Dean Howard Urie ’51, of Englewood, Florida, February 20, 2015. James Louis Fitzgerald ’52, of Colchester, Vermont, January 21, 2015. Roderick Matthew Goyette ’52, of Barre, Vermont, December 28, 2012. Roy F. Misek ’52, of Vero Beach, Florida, February 19, 2015. George H. Rowell ’52, of Crossville, Tennessee, January 15, 2015. Harry B. Wiggins ’52, of Scottsdale, Arizona, March 9, 2015. Loretta Worthington Chubb ’53, of Columbia, South Carolina, March 29, 2015. C. John Cox ’53, of Fair Oaks, California, August 10, 2011. Lydia Sweeney Dodge ’53, of Ocean Ridge, Florida, December 7, 2014. Leonard Francis Korzun ’53, of Shrewsbury, Vermont, January 20, 2015. Olive Smith Larson ’53, of West Springfield, Massachusetts, March 16, 2015. Shirley Bryant Money ’53, of Centerville, Massachusetts, March 2, 2015. Ruth Rugg Page ’53, of Wethersfield, Connecticut, March 9, 2015. Arthur William Wilson ’53, of Rockport, Massachusetts, December 7, 2014. Donald B. Wolf ’53, of Naples, Florida, January 24, 2015.

[INMEMORIAM Alfred Hartson ’72, of Mount Desert, Maine, January 19, 2015. Thomas Doran McGlenn ’72, of Burlington, Vermont, January 22, 2015. Sander E. Sundberg G’65, ‘72, of Ingleside, Illinois, April 15, 2015. Bonnie Christensen ’73, of Wilson, North Carolina, January 12, 2015. Terrance L. Demas ’73, of Charlotte, North Carolina, August 19, 2014. Paula Fives-Taylor G’73, of South Burlington, Vermont, January 28, 2015. Nancy Fitzgerald Fowler ’74, of Brooklin, Maine, February 1, 2015. Mark Edward Byrne ’76, of Kansas City, Missouri, March 5, 2015. Henry D. Riley ’76, G’76, of Sarasota, Florida, March 23, 2015. Robert J. Stoecklein, Jr. ’76, of Hyde Park, Vermont, April 9, 2015. Paul William Temple MD’76, of Rome, New York, January 18, 2015. Joan Palmer Young G’76, of Williston, Vermont, January 31, 2015. Jeffrey Thomas Adams ’77, of Hartford, Vermont, January 2, 2015. Heidi Lynn Bobeck ’77, of Hopkinton, Massachusetts, January 23, 2015.

Patricia Dow Lawrence ’77, of Wilton, Maine, January 14, 2015. Brian Balwierz ’79, of Chicago, Illinois, March 21, 2015. Alan Giddings Read ’79, of Foxboro, Massachusetts, March 14, 2015. Eleanor Femrite Sims G’79, of Sandy, Utah, March 16, 2015. Robin Chase Stebbins ’80, of Craftsbury, Vermont, February 3, 2015. Elizabeth Ann Wood ’81, of Sharon, Vermont, February 11, 2015. Adolf Walter Putre G’82, of Shelburne, Vermont, March 11, 2015. Mark Kenneth Garfield G’83, of Brookeville, Maryland, September 1, 2014. Laurie Christine Dietzel ’84, of Hyattsville, Maryland, January 15, 2015. Robert Joseph Ferro G’85, of Malibu, California, February 3, 2015. Steven Richard Hoffman G’86, of Tillamook, Oklahoma, February 24, 2015. Samantha Dolinger Cook ’87, of Vernon, Connecticut, February 3, 2015. Richard James Whitaker G’87, of Galveston, Texas, November 27, 2013. Theresa M. VanZile G’90, of Orleans, Vermont, January 23, 2015.

Joseph Michael Baker, III ’91, of Charlotte, Vermont, March 25, 2015. James J. Blaisdell ’91, of Dorchester, Massachusetts, January 28, 2015. Jennifer Marra Cronin ’91, of Atlanta, Georgia, April 5, 2015. Jane Creelman Graiko G’94, of Tampa, Florida, December 28, 2014. Donald Lee Horsley G’95, of Portland, Maine, March 29, 2015. Audrey Jennings Carbee ’97, of South Ryegate, Vermont, January 16, 2015. John Duncan Lloyd MD’98, of Hebron, New Hampshire, December 29, 2014. Thomas Denholm Mazza ’03, of New York, New York, April 2, 2015. Vanessa Marie Cox ’05, of Newton, Massachusetts, February 12, 2015. William Lawrence Grabow ’05, of East Moline, Illinois, January 29, 2015. Lukasz Dariusz Prokop ’05, of Cumberland, Rhode Island, December 14, 2014.

UVMCOMMUNITY

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

Dan Archdeacon,

professor of mathematics and computer science, passed away on February 18. Professor Archdeacon, who joined the UVM faculty in 1982, served the university in many leadership roles, including as director of the Mathematics Graduate Program and as a longtime member and chair of the Professional Standards Committee of the Faculty Senate. He was named a University Scholar for the academic year 2003-2004, was a Fulbright Teaching Fellow at the Riga’s Commerce School, and held numerous visiting professorships at universities throughout the world. A passionate and highly accomplished mathematician, Professor Archdeacon’s research focus was on graph theory, combinatorics, theoretical computer science, and topographical graph theory, for which he had particular interest.

Beal Baker Hyde, professor emeri- Robert Larson, tus of botany, died on March 31. After holding academic positions at the University of Oklahoma and Caltech, Professor Hyde joined the UVM faculty in 1965. His long career included strong and effective leadership as his department’s chair. Professor Hyde started the Cell Biology program. He served terms as president of the Faculty Senate and faculty ombudsman and also took his role as student advisor very seriously. Travel on sabbatical took him to England and Denmark for research and teaching at different points in his career. Professor Hyde was a World War II veteran of the Army Air Force who, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, interrupted his undergraduate study at Amherst College to enlist.

professor emeritus of educational administration, passed away on September 3, 2014. After teaching high school social studies in Massachusetts, Professor Larson his doctorate at Boston University. He then joined the UVM faculty where he would enjoy a career of thirty-one years. The author of several books, Professor Larson’s publications included three editions of Changing Schools from the Inside Out. Many of his students throughout the years included school administrators across Vermont. After retiring to Cape Cod in 1999, Professor Larson continued his commitment to education, serving as clerk for the study committee that recommended the regionalization of the Harwich and Chatham school system.

[CLASSIFIEDS VACATION RENTALS & SALES BURLINGTON, VT 25 bedroom/8 Unit Investment Property. Remember how hard it was to find housing in BTV? It hasn’t changed. 100% occupied till May 2016. 100% of renters have parental guarantees. Walking distance to UVM & Church St. Excellent, consistent income, never a vacancy in 12+ years of ownership. No smoking/pets. $2,399,999.00 btvpropertyinvestor@yahoo.com. COLCHESTER, VT Charming 1 BR cottage on Lake Champlain, near Burlington. Stunning sunsets! $825/week. Cindy ’84 757-408-5126 or cyates2010@gmail.com

GRAND ISLE, VT Rustic elegance with a sunset view. 5BR year round retreat on 520’ of private lakefront. Call Becky Moore ’74. 802-318-3164 or ramoore708@aol.com. HARWICHPORT, CAPE COD 2-4 person apt – $650/wk, June-Sept, end-road-beach: DVD/WIFI, CC Bike Trail nearby; National Seashore 15 miles. klarson93@comcast.net, 508-432-0713. MARTHA’S VINEYARD, MA Let me help you find the perfect vacation home to buy or rent. Visit our website at <www.light housemv.com>. Call Trish Lyman ’89. 508-627-4424 or email trish@lighthousemv.com.

Bill Nedde,

longtime faculty member in physical education and past head coach of the track and cross country teams, passed away on April 13. Coach Nedde taught at UVM from 1967 until his retirement in 1990. He also worked in the Cardiac Rehabilitation Program at the University Medical Center. Coach Nedde’s legacy includes the 1969 founding of what would become a hallmark Vermont road race, a five-mile route along Spear Street that he named after his coaching mentor, Archie Post. His passion during his retirement was coaching Senior Olympics. Two of Coach Nedde’s athletes, Barbara Jordan and Flo Meiler, are world record holders. of economics, passed away on February 12. Professor Thomson joined the university in 1991 as chair of the Department

ST. MAARTEN Private 4 bedroom alum family home, stunning view of St. Barth’s. Gorgeous beaches. “Culinary Capital of the Caribbean.” UVM Discount. <www.villaplateau.com>

ADVERTISING DEADLINES Sept.11, 2015 Nov. 2015 issue January 8, 2016 March 2016 issue May 6, 2016 July 2016 issue Contact: university.communications@ uvm.edu

SIESTA KEY, FL Gulf Coast is beautiful in fall. Lovely condo, pools, tennis, 2 bedrooms. Weekly. Photos+ <www.vrbo.com/609220> or 802-279-6748.

of Economics. He served the university in numerous leadership roles including chair of the Economics Department; director of the Integrated Social Science Program, which he founded; associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; and secretary and vice-president of United Academics. Thomson was a passionate and highly accomplished researcher who studied the progress of mechanization and the development of capitalist economies. His most recent book, Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age, was highly praised and is much admired by his peers.

Alan Wertheimer, professor emeri-

tus of political science, passed away on April 10. Wertheimer, a distinguished scholar in the area of political philosophy, was a thirty-seven-year veteran of the UVM faculty. In nine years as chair,

he helped build the Political Science Department into a nationally recognized program. An internationally recognized scholar, he penned countless articles in top journals and wrote three seminal books: Coercion; Exploitation; and Consent to Sexual Relations. He was selected as a University Scholar in 1995-96, one of the highest honors in the university. Some of Professor Wertheimer’s most influential work came after his retirement in 2005, when he made major contributions to the field of bioethics through his work at the National Institutes of Health in collaboration with Harvard’s Ezekiel Emanuel. SUMMER 2015

Ross Thomson, longtime professor

PAGOSA SPRINGS, CO Looking to buy or rent property in Southwest Colorado? Contact Mary Cocke ’90 at 970-946-2462 or <www.pagosamtnproperties.com>.

[EXTRACREDIT

WAXING NOSTALGIC

Catching up with Celia Woodsmith ’07

he last we checked in with Celia Woodsmith it was June 2007, just weeks past her UVM graduation. She was in the midst of an east coast concert tour as one half of the UVM-hatched guy-girl-duo Avi & Celia. Eight years later, Woodsmith is on the road again, though things have changed considerably from that summer when she and UVM pal Avi Salloway packed their guitars and camping gear in a Saab hatchback. VQ recently spoke with Woodsmith as she and her bandmates in Della Mae made a stop in Portland, Oregon, on the first leg of an eight-month tour. Woodsmith sings lead vocals and plays guitar in the all-female Americana band that is riding a burgeoning fan-

V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY

base and critical acclaim with the May release of their fourth album.

VQ: How’s the tour going? CW: Really well. We played in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and had a beautiful drive up California. On our day off we camped in the redwoods last night. It is the little things like that that make you realize you’re really lucky to be doing what you’re doing. There was a very winding, long dirt road out to a place called Gold Bluffs Beach, which we attacked with our twelve-passenger van. VQ: What venues are you playing? CW: It’s mixed, that’s sort of the name of the game. You get your anchor date, a nice theater or a festival, then you plan around that with the smaller clubs and things along the way. Just on this tour we played in a little Mexican restaurant, then a huge festival with 100,000 people the next day. VQ: What excites you about your new album?

CW: We were lucky to work with a great producer, Jacquire King. Jacquire and the material were able to pull out our deepest musical influences from each one of us in the band. I grew up listening to blues, rock and roll, gospel music. And I was able to cut loose with my vocals a little bit and employ more of the blues flavor. Though this is our fourth album, it’s the first that is self-titled because we feel like we really do sort of come into our own with this record. VQ: Are you in touch with Avi these days? How is he doing? CW: He’s doing really well, playing in a group called Bombino, an African Tuareg rock and roll band. So he’s been touring the world with Bombino and also doing a lot of work with an organization called Heartbeat, which brings Palestinian and Israeli kids together to play music. Avi has continued with a lot of the social causes that he was into when we were at UVM. VQ: Tell me about some of your most memorable moments performing with Della Mae. CW: We’ve travelled pretty extensively with the U.S. State Department. One of our first shows in Pakistan we were playing for women who had never really seen live music before, and they were just totally, totally enjoying every second of it. It’s those moments when I’m standing in a place where I never thought I’d ever be standing, playing for people I never thought I would meet, that are the most powerful for me.

It’s all happening here.

alumni.uvm.edu/reunion

Come home to Vermont. Be a part of this action-packed weekend featuring sporting events, class celebrations, faculty lectures, campus tours, and Vermont’s fall foliage in living color. Reunion years: ‘35, ‘40, ‘45, ‘50, ‘55, ‘60, ‘65, ‘70, ‘75, ‘80, ‘85, ‘90, ‘95, ‘00, ‘05, ‘10 Registration details, lodging information and a list of who’s coming at: alumni.uvm.edu/reunion

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