Vermont UNIVERSITY OF
Q U A R T E R LY
“Professor Taylor sparked in me a curiosity that I couldn’t shake. I read books and wrote papers not because he required me to, but because for the first time I felt like I had ideas, my own ideas.” —Kyle Barry ’04
NATIONAL PARKS CENTENNIAL
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UVM AT 225
SUMMER 2016
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IVY FRIGNOCA ’83
Vermont Quarterly DEPARTMENTS
2 President’s Perspective 4 The Green 20 Catamount Sports 22 New Knowledge 42 Alumni Voice 44 Class Notes 64 Extra Credit FEATURES
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America’s Best Idea
As the United States celebrates the centennial of its national park system, Professor Bob Manning joins multiple UVM faculty and alumni to write a “Thinking Person’s Guide” to these national treasures. | by Robert Manning, Megan Camp ’84, Jennifer Cirillo ’95, Rolf Diamant, David Harmon, Thomas Hudspeth, Nora Mitchell, Ben Minteer G’96 ’99
Hiking into the Sunset with Bob Manning
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UVM History 101
Advice on the ways of the trail from a veteran professor and inveterate longdistance walker.
As the University of Vermont marks a milestone—225 years since its 1791 founding— we offer some CliffsNotes on our heritage. | BY THOMAS WEAVER
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UVM PEOPLE: Ivy Frignoca ’83
From Lake Champlain to Casco Bay, alumna Ivy Frignoca has been driven to help protect and preserve the waters she loves. | BY STEPHANIE BOUCHARD
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Head + Heart
Beloved professor of political science and founding dean of the Honors College Bob Pepperman Taylor is this year’s Kidder Teaching Award winner. | BY THOMAS WEAVER
COVER: Bob Pepperman Taylor, professor of political science, recipient of the 2016 George V. Kidder Teaching Award from the UVM Alumni Association. Photograph by Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist ’09
SUMMER 2016 Watching the campus buildingscape rapidly transform is keeping students entertained on the walk between classes these days. The view pictured is from an upper floor of the Discovery Building, first step in UVM’s new STEM Complex. Discovery is scheduled to open May 2017, and the Innovation Building (replacing Cook) will open two years after that. Also in the works, new residence halls to the north of Bailey/Howe Library, due to open August 2017. | PHOTOGRAPH BY SALLY MCCAY
| PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE
Making the residential college experience count Recently, on a beautiful weekend in May, I had the honor of conferring degrees on nearly 3,000 University of Vermont seniors and graduate students. Pondering the essential definition of humanity in the digital age and the usefulness of acquired knowledge in an increasingly technological and roboticized world, acclaimed author and journalist Gail Sheehy ’58 urged the graduates to make their mark in the world by daring to care. In a time when digital and networking technologies make it easy to earn a college degree without ever leaving home, it is critical to recognize and actively foster that which makes the residential learning experience so valuable. Beyond academic discourse and discovery, the campus and classroom environments provide opportunities for students’ self-exploration and personal development, so richly available at this influential time. The transition from high school to college is a passage of tremendous importance. It is a time of exploration, a time when students engage with new relationships, experiences, and points of view. For most it is the first time they’re in an environment free of parental oversight; the first time for most to be completely self-directed in how they manage their time, how they socialize, and how they respond to the inevitable stresses and challenges of life. It is also a time when the structure and function of the young adult brain, still actively developing, is deeply and irrevocably influenced by the behaviors in which we choose to engage and the environments in which we live, work, and play.
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Recognizing the investment in the future that each and every UVM student represents, and given the lasting influence of the residential college experience, we have a responsibility to create a campus environment in which students can truly thrive, both in the classroom and in the community at large. At the University of Vermont we have seized the opportunity to launch a new Wellness Environment (WE) for incoming students. The new WE living and learning environment merges a peerpositive, substance free residence hall— featuring a fitness center, yoga and meditation studios, and a teaching kitchen—with courses in neuroscience and brain development, incentivized programs for pursuing wellness, and a mentorship commitment pairing each Wellness Environment student with a Burlington youth or senior citizen. As reported by media nationwide, including CBS, NBC, and the Boston Globe, our new Wellness Environment has a non-negotiable, leave-it-at-the-door policy regarding alcohol and other drugs, dispelling the myth that substance use needs to be part of the college experience and creating a culture in which students engage in alternatives with a supportive community of peers. By focusing their curiosity and desire for learning into curricula that explores teenage and young adult brain development, the program seeks to engender healthy behavioral choice-making through a science-based program that will set the stage for lifelong wellness, to fos-
ter the enjoyment of exploring life with a cadre of similarly committed friends, and to expand the students’ experiences beyond campus to the Burlington community at large. Opportunities for extracurricular exploration and substance-free stress release abound, from cooking classes and PX90 fitness workouts to yoga sessions and group violin lessons. Each WE participant is paired with a master’s-level dietetics student as a nutrition coach; fitness trainers are seniors majoring in Exercise and Movement Science. Connecting through shared interests, Wellness Environment students share activities with their community mentees, along with information they are learning on the four pillars foundational to wellness: good nutrition, adequate sleep, daily exercise, and mindfulness. The final project for the program’s flagship course— “Healthy Brains, Healthy Bodies: Surviving and Thriving in College”—requires each student to design a program that helps to improve the wellness of the University community, the city, or the state. The brainchild of world-renowned child psychiatrist and UVM College of Medicine Professor James Hudziak, the Wellness Environment opened in August 2016 with 120 first-year students, one-third the number who applied. In a signal of the desire for this kind of focused, engaged option for campus living, due to popular demand the program is set to take over another residence hall and enroll 560 students in this coming academic year, nearly quadrupling in size in just one
SALLY MCCAY
year. Fifty of those 560 students will be dual-enrolled in the Honors College, setting the stage for other cross-over enrollments in the future. The program is set to be housed in the new residential hall currently under construction in the center of campus, opening in August 2017. A residential learning experience creates vibrant discourse and opportunities for interdisciplinary engagement and learning, and it also teaches skills for managing life. There is no better time to set the stage for healthy choice-making than when our stu-
dents arrive at college, when they are in the throes of both new explorations and risk-taking, and when the young adult brain is still developing. In this time of critical exploration, this kind of learning—about how to build a baseline for health, how to make responsible choices for our wellness, and the ways in which our vibrant engagement can make a difference in the world—sets students on the path to lifelong success. It makes the residential college experience vitally relevant for the twenty-first century. —Tom Sullivan
BEAUTY
VERMONT
HISTORY BURLINGTON SPIRIT
UVM
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. Hardcover, 112 pages, $29.95 Available through the UVM Bookstore:
uvmbookstore.uvm.edu 1-800-331-7305 & at the Davis Center or Church Street stores
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EDITOR Thomas Weaver ART DIRECTOR Elise Whittemore CLASS NOTES EDITOR Kathleen Laramee ’00 CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Stephanie Bouchard, Joshua Brown, Megan Camp ’84, Jennifer Cirillo ’95, Rolf Diamant, Sarah Tuff Dunn, Jay Goyette, David Harmon, Thomas Hudspeth, Kathleen Laramee ’00, Robert Manning, Andrea Martone ’76, Nora Mitchell, Jeff Minteer G’96, ’99, Mark Ray, Jon Reidel G’06, Annie B. Seyler, Amanda Waite’02 G’04, Jeff Wakefield PHOTOGRAPHY Adam Brill, Joshua Brown, Nicholas Bucci, Andy Duback, Shawn Everhart, Sabin Gratz ’98, Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist ’09, Brian Jenkins, Todd Klassy, Sally McCay, Kevin Morris, Charlie Nicholson, Joe Roman, Amanda Waite, Lisa Ware ADVERTISING SALES Vermont Quarterly 86 South Williams Street Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 656-7996, tweaver@uvm.edu ADDRESS CHANGES UVM Foundation 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 656-9662, alumni@uvm.edu CLASS NOTES Derrick Dubois ’13 (802) 656-0802, classnote@uvm.edu CORRESPONDENCE Editor, Vermont Quarterly 86 South Williams Street Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 656-2005, thomas.weaver@uvm.edu VERMONT QUARTERLY publishes March 1, July 1, November 1. PRINTED IN VERMONT Issue No. 75, July 2016 VERMONT QUARTERLY University Communications 86 South Williams Street Burlington, VT 05401 VERMONT QUARTERLY ONLINE uvm.edu/vq VERMONT QUARTERLY BLOG vermontquarterly.wordpress.com instagram.com/universityofvermont twitter.com/uvmvermont facebook.com/universityofvermont youtube.com/universityofvermont SUMMER 2016 |
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YOU SHOULD KNOW
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After all those years roofing, my father was making something like thirty-two dollars a week and bringing up seven of us on that.” Dr. Robert Larner ’39 MD ’42 on being the lone member of his family to attend college. With thanks to scholarship support, the Burlington native earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees at the state university. Long a generous supporter of the UVM College of Medicine, the alumnus and his wife, Helen, made a historic gift this spring. See page 13.
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WELLNESS
Students in UVM’s Wellness Environment (WE) residence hall organized a race that drew some-800 runners for a healthier alternative to April 20th’s, umm, traditional activity. Read about national media coverage of WE – go.uvm.edu/we
The White House has invited UVM and Burlington to join the thirtyfive city-university partnership focused on bringing data, analytics, and innovation to local government. Read more: go.uvm.edu/metro
2 NEW DEGREES: BS BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING BS DATA SCIENCE Part of new initiative to expand UVM STEM education with hopes to double STEM enrollments by 2020.
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games played in a Catamount hockey uniform. That’s where alumnus Jeff Schulman’s path to becoming UVM’s new athletic director began. See page 20.
ROTC’s finest: The U.S. Army Cadet Command selected UVM as one of eight winners of the annual MacArthur Awards, recognizing the top Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs in the nation.
Lake Champlain and its watersheds and their health and resilience in the face of extreme weather events are the focus of a study led by UVM and supported with a new $20 million award from the National Science Foundation to Vermont EPSCoR. Read more: go.uvm.edu/lake
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RIGHT: IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST ’09
THE GREEN News & Views
CELEBRATING STUDENT RESEARCH UVM’s annual Student Research Conference has become part of the fabric of campus life, marking its tenth anniversary on April 28 when the conference took over most of the top floor of the Davis Center. In poster sessions and presentations, both undergraduates and grad students showed off their studies and honed their skills for taking complex research and making it accessible to a general audience. Nearly four hundred students presented on their discovery, innovation, and creativity at the 2016 conference. Second-year medical student Eric Schmidt is pictured explaining his research, a collaboration with UVM faculty exploring questions around tobacco use.
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Green Gitmo
ENVIRONMENT | In February, President Obama announced plans to close the notorious military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Whether he’ll be able to is a hot political question. Recently, Joe Roman, a conservation biologist at UVM, and James Kraska, professor of law at the U.S. Naval War College, posed the next question: what to do with Gitmo after the detainees are gone? Their answer: transform the naval base into a marine research center and international peace park. The new proposal was published in Science, one of the world’s top academic journals, on March 17, days before the U.S. President’s trip to Cuba. The piece quickly drew international media attention with stories in publications such as The New Yorker, The Guardian, Discovery, Christian Science Monitor, and many other outlets. “Guantánamo could become the Woods Hole of the Caribbean,” says Roman, an expert on ocean ecosystems in UVM’s Gund Institute for Ecological
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Economics and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, referring to the famous U.S. ocean science center. “This could be a powerful way for the Obama administration to achieve the President’s 2008 campaign promise to close the prison—while protecting a de facto nature reserve and some of the most important coral reefs in the world.” Kraska sees advantages for the U.S. military as well. “Our view is that the proposal looks down range to what might be possible or beneficial for the natural environment and for the Pentagon,” he notes. The Department of Defense faces an “overhang of base infrastructure,” Kraska says, meaning that it may need to trim its operations and will likely be exploring which military installations to close. “The naval base at GTMO is a prime candidate” for closure, Kraska notes, “and could generate positive externalities”—like repurposing the navy facility into a research station for the benefit of marine conservation. CORBIS
“This model, designed to attract both sides, could unite Cuba and the United States in joint management, rather than serve as a wedge between them,” the two scholars write, “while helping meet the challenges of climate change, mass extinction, and declining coral reefs.” Roman and Kraska’s op-ed notes that Cuba has more than 3,000 miles of coastline, including some of the most pristine mangrove wetlands, seagrass beds, and tropical forests in the region. Perhaps as “an accidental Eden,” Roman says—because of Cuba’s years of political and economic isolation— and mostly from Cuba’s determined conservation efforts over the last few decades, the nation’s coral reefs, fish diversity, and marine life are “unparalleled in the Caribbean.” “The future of Cuba is very uncertain,” says Roman. The influx of U.S. tourism dollars and business investment could turn Cuba into another Cancun, Mexico, with “high-rise hotels as far as the eye can see,” Roman says. Or the island nation could pursue a more “sustainable, eco-friendly path,” he says, building on strong traditions of environmental protection, and complementing its world-leading expertise in urban and low-input agriculture. Roman and Kraska believe a new purpose for the naval base could help Cuba continue on the green path.
TOP LEFT AND BOTTOM RIGHT: JOE ROMAN; TOP RIGHT CHARLIE NICHOLSON
Cuba Classroom Faculty member Joe Roman’s provocative thoughts on repurposing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, drew international attention this spring. With a field class over spring break, he gave a circle of UVM students firsthand experience with the land and culture of this Caribbean island now center stage as diplomatic relations with the United States thaw. In Natural Resources 395, “From Ridges to Reefs: An Experiential Learning Trip to Cuba,” seven UVM graduate students, one UVM undergrad, and two Cuban graduate students studied how the limestone-dominated landscapes of Cuba connect to each other. Ancient-coral highlands flow down to iron-red farmland, coastal plains, tropical forests, mangrove swamps—and out to some of the most pristine coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean. “Agroecology and marine conservation are the two main subjects of this course,” Roman says. “The students are looking for connections between the two systems and between our two countries.” SUMMER 2016 |
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| THE GREEN REMEMBERING TUNA Outside Ira Allen Chapel on April 29, banners decorated in Rastafarian colors waved in the sunlight. Inside, on stage, thirty-six debate trophies, two cardboard versions of the Doctor Who time-traveling TARDIS, and Vermont reggae musician Bobby Hackney paid tribute to a man both eclectic and legendary: Alfred “Tuna” Snider, the Edwin W. Lawrence Professor of Forensics. “This is a room that Tuna created,” said Becca White ’15 to the chapel full of family, friends and generations of UVM debaters gathered to pay tribute to their coach, who passed away in December. Many came to know Snider as co-founder of the Vermont Reggae Festival and host of the the WRUV radio show “Reggae Lunch.” Even more knew him as an internationally renowned debate coach, who traveled to forty-five countries on nearly every continent to advance the art of debate—in developing nations, under communist regimes, and in wartorn territories. The New York Times remembered him as a “a scholar, rhetorician and evangelist who sought to heal the world through debate.” He was also, Wired magazine reported in 2008, “one of Doctor Who’s biggest American fans.” “In many ways Tuna was my reallife Doctor Who,” said White, former Lawrence Debate Union president and one of seven speakers who took the stage to remember Snider. “He was an eccentric, lovable man who solved problems, who would bring brighteyed young people on his travels around the world. Tuna may not have had a TARDIS—that we know of—but in the same way the Doctor learned from his companions, he took lessons from his students, and he kept that in the highest regard.”
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Professor Tiffany Hutchins uses eye tracker technology on Skype in her study of children with autism.
Answers in the eyes COMMUNICATION SCIENCES | Where do your eyes focus during a conversation? An innovative study by UVM researchers reveals that for children with autism spectrum disorder, the answer depends on the emotional intensity of the conversation. The study, published in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, shows that children with the developmental disability fixate longer on a speaker’s mouth rather than the eyes when the conversation turns emotional. It’s the first study of its kind to use eye tracker technology to monitor eye movement during an interactive conversation, and the results could affect the way speech therapists treat the estimated one in sixty-eight children who struggle with the social, communication, and behavioral challenges caused by autism spectrum disorder (ASD). “What you talk about really matters for children with ASD,” says lead author Tiffany Hutchins, assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. “You just change a few words by talking about what people do versus how they feel and you can have a profound impact on where eyes go for information.” Although it is unclear why children with ASD look at mouths more frequently during emotional conversations, Hutchins theorizes that talking about emotions strains executive function. Emotionally charged topics “likely place high demand on working memory, which, when a threshold is surpassed, makes rendering information from the eye region particularly difficult,” she says. Consequently, the child with ASD may start searching elsewhere for more accessible information.
Hutchins’s findings are also significant because eye information may be more relevant in conversations about emotions. As a result, children with ASD miss the chance to understand the relationship between facial expressions and underlying thoughts because they neglect the abundance of social meaning given in the eyes, she says. “It’s probably a situation where the poor are getting poorer,” Hutchins says. “If I’m asking you to talk about emotions, and that makes you even less likely to look in my eyes when you really need to go there because I’m more likely to be showing other evidence of an emotion like anger with my eyebrows, you are missing even more. It’s not that there’s no emotional information in the mouth, but during dynamic conversational exchanges they are missing a number of cues that a typically developing child would not.” Hutchins’s co-author, Ashley Brien, a UVM graduate student at the time of the study, is now a speech pathologist at a school district in northern Vermont. The pair are now considering how the study affects the way speech pathologists work with students with ASD. For example, they say therapists should think about the consequences of telling a child with autism to look intently into their eyes. “Some social skills programs and many treatment goals for children with autism involve trying to get them to initiate and sustain eye-contact during interaction” says Hutchins. Brien adds that the consequences of these practices, like increased anxiety, could be counterproductive. As Brien says, “some of the interventions that are used are not time tested or evidence based, but we’re hoping to change that.” IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST ’09, RIGHT
STUDENT FOCUS |
NATIONAL CHAMPS Khalil Lee and Taylor Brough proved themselves a formidable debate duo in 2015-16. Early in the season they won a match at Harvard and drew wide attention with a revolutionary maneuver—making the essential equity of the judging protocol an item of debate. And they closed their year in April with a national championship in the Cross Examination Debate Association Tournament. Brough’s ten-plus years of experience and technical prowess are a cornerstone of the team’s success. Lee, a novice just last year, has a gift for finding an opening in the other team’s argument. “One of our biggest strengths as a team,” Brough says, “is that
both of us think of the world, the academy, and debate in really different ways, which has been difficult for us, in some ways, but it’s been really important because it’s allowed us to create in debates a real diversity of arguments.” To become best in the nation takes some degree of raw talent, but also incredible amounts of work. Brough gestures to an actual suitcase of evidence they wheel into each round and talks about the massive amount of reading and reasoning that went into its creation. But beyond the academic rigor of the experience, the team also draws other benefits from the way they approach debate. “It teaches us to be better people,” Lee
says. “We’re reading things about sexism, racism, ableism, anti-blackness, anti-queerness—all these instances of ontological violence embedded in society.” It’s a focus that would make legendary debate coach Alfred “Tuna” Snider proud. Snider, who passed away in December, promoted debate as a place to “speak truth to power.” “I wish he was here to see it,” says coach Jillian Marty-Dushane ’04, who was coached by Snider herself as a UVM debater. The CEDA win was the first national championship for a Vermont policy debate team in more than fifty years. “He would have been so happy and so excited.”
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NOW SHOWING CREAM AND L/L A pair of videos about two programs at the heart of the UVM experience for many alumni and current students have drawn thousands of looks and likes on UVM’s Facebook feed. CREAM (Cooperative for Real Education in Agricultural Management) and the Living/Learning residential program are the subjects of the short pieces, the work of photographer/videographer Ian Thomas JansenLonnquist ’09.
CREAM: go.uvm.edu/creamvideo L/L: go.uvm.edu/llvideo
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Building a better mouse INNOVATION | Cullen Jemison ’19 plans an aerospace career to use his engineering and computer skills. But before he launches it, he’s gaining experience in a different kind of liftoff—as an entrepreneur. He and friend Matt Giles are developing a business to manufacture their ergonomic computer mouse Thermouse. The product, which changes form to fit a user’s hand, won two business contests and was a finalist in the annual, statewide LaunchVT entrepreneurs’ competition. “I can’t believe it’s gone as far as it has. It’s exponentially taking off,” Jemison, of Starksboro, Vermont, says. “We started winning competitions and going to networking events, but we didn’t expect it to accelerate so fast.” As he pursues a double major in mechanical engineering and computer science, Jemison also is learning about incorporation, patents, production, packaging and distribution, and creating a third-generation Thermouse prototype. The venture began last September, when Giles, a first-year international business major at neighboring Champlain College, remembered an idea he’d had when he and Jemison were ninth graders at Mount Abraham Union High School. An avid gamer, Giles wanted more grip and comfort in a mouse. He thought of applying a plastic technology like that used to make some athletic mouthguards: heating a thermoplastic mold and making
an impression, to produce a customized mouse that fits an individual user’s hand. “We were the right pairing,” Jemison says. “Matt wanted to start a business, and I like to do engineering. Revisiting the idea made a lot of sense.” As Giles developed contest pitches and did other business tasks, Jemison created prototypes. He’s designing the third iteration now with a computer program he learned in a UVM mechanical engineering class. “I’ve always liked doing this kind of stuff. It’s really cool to build something, starting from an idea with sketches and then building the whole thing from the ground up with a computer,” Jemison says. Thermouse’s main distinction is that it’s customizable. “Other ergonomic mice are just better guesses at how a hand is shaped. By molding to the user’s hand, Thermouse is perfect for that user,” Jemison says. The plan is to distribute Thermouse through Amazon. “That way, we can oversee the process instead of micromanaging. We can continue our studies,” says Jemison, a member of UVM’s Alternative Energy Racing Organization and saxophonist in the university’s pep and concert bands. Despite this business education, Jemison will continue his engineering focus. He’s interested in an internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory or aerospace company SpaceX. LEFT: SALLY MCCAY; RIGHT: SABIN GRATZ ’98
FAV O R I T E T H I N G |
DRINK RESPONSIBLY Swinging off your backpack, secured with a carabiner, a battered CUPPS cup was an environmental statement—maybe a fashion statement, too—at UVM, circa 1990. The reusable cup, a fairly radical notion at the time, was the brainchild of the Vermont Student Environmental Program—VSTEP to the energetic and deeply committed circle of undergrads who founded the group and pushed the university toward recycling more waste and other sound environmental practices. Things we call “sustainability” now. Email one VSTEP alum about the history of the CUPPS cup and soon there’s a thread with many chiming in—John-O Niles ’91, Josh “Bones” Murphy ’93, Taylor Ongaro ’93, David Zuckerman ’95, Matthew Mole ’96. Back in the day, early VSTEPers donned coveralls and got to know the university’s garbage up close and personal. “There was a lot of dumpster diving going on then, and the number of disposable containers in the trash was rather staggering,” Murphy recalls. Creating reusable cups emerged as a proactive, practical way to address the problem. The moniker, “CUPPS: Can’t Use Paper Plastic or Styrofoam,” hammered home the message. An initial run of a thousand cups sold out quickly. Even better when all those cups quickly became part of life at UVM and the idea spread to other schools. Later, the university would provide all incoming students with a CUPPS cup to institutionalize the ethic. “There was something immediately empowering about having the manifesto right there on the cups,” Murphy says. Thanks to Nena Rich ’93 for entrusting us with her heirloom CUPPS cup for this photo.
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| THE GREEN ALUM TO ALUM BILL BRIGHT, who graduated with a degree in political science in 1991, is government relations director for the Boys and Girls Club in Washington, D.C. After working for Sen. Patrick Leahy right out of college and later as a lobbyist for twelve years, Bright decided to move in a new direction in 2012. How did networking play a role in your career shift? Networking was crucial. I was moving into youth development, and it was a new area for me. I had to look at my network of contacts differently and figure out who—and how— those people were connected. You really have to work your existing network to then build your network. What advice would you give to someone looking to change careers or find a new job? Get your resume and your narrative straight. Be ready to give specific examples of what you’ve referenced on your resume. Also, tailor your resume based on the job you’re seeking. I had five versions of the same resume. Could you share some career lessons you’ve learned along the way? I don’t think there is necessarily a right path to a particular job or profession. When you’re making a transition, be cognizant of your own professional development and how the next position helps move you forward. Companies are acting differently with employees these days, and they’re not as committed or loyal. So you have to own your professional development and build your network with an eye toward the future. Read the full interview with Bill Bright: go.uvm.edu/bright.
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Understanding Refugees’ Reality SOCIAL WORK | Early in the spring semester, Professor Susan Comerford tells the students in SWSS 055, “Working with Refugees,” her fundamental expectations for the social work course. Those expectations apply to the teacher as much as they do to the students: “If you leave this class with only an intellectual understanding, then I have not done my job. You need to understand this on a personal level.” The “this” at question is the reality of the lives of refugees at home in a new land. As the world grapples with a refugee crisis of historic proportions, it is an apt time for college students to be gaining understanding of these issues. Perhaps not so apparent is the truth that Burlington, Vermont, circa 2016 provides a rich learning environment in this realm. Since 1989 more than 6,000 women, men, and children have started new lives in the Green Mountain State through the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program. Their countries of origin are many—Burundi, Congo, Sudan, Russia, Iraq, Burma. The greatest concentrations have come in waves from Vietnam, Bosnia, Somalia, and Bhutan. And students could scarcely find a better guide into the lives of refugee communities than Susan Comerford. For the first phase of her adult life, nearly from the day she graduated with her undergraduate degree, Comerford worked directly with and for refugees. Initially that meant putting her basic EMT skills to use in refugee camps on the ThaiCambodian border; later that experience would inform advocacy work on policy
issues in Washington, D.C. Looking back, Comerford says she had no “visions of grandeur,” just a deep desire to help that turned into a focus for the next fourteen years. Comerford says “being in solidarity with refugees didn’t end” when she joined the UVM faculty in 1998. Her connections in the Vermont refugee community are deep, helping facilitate the many service learning projects that give students in the course direct experience working with new Americans through local schools, support agencies, community centers, and the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program itself. UVM undergrad Medina Serdarevic (pictured) is from a refugee family herself. Working with students at the King Street Center, she would sometimes hear them greeting their parents in their native language at the end of the day. It came full circle, reminding her of her own first years in the United States. “I have learned so much in this class,” she says. “But one thing I’ll carry with me is the power that stories hold. Stories shape who we are. And by sharing them we are able to create relationships and help communities grow.” While Serdarevic knows the reality of the refugee journey firsthand, Comerford hopes all of her students will dare to reflect on their own lives within that context. “You need to deal with the possibility that this could be your own reality someday,” she tells the class one afternoon. “These are ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” ANDY DUBACK
T H E C A M PA I G N F O R T H E U N I V E R S I T Y OF VERMO NT
President Tom Sullivan and Dean Rick Morin with Bob and Helen Larner. quintessential story of a local boy who became successful and is sharing his good fortune with the university that gave him his start.” As a self-described “small town kid” from Burlington’s Old North End, Robert Larner grew up the youngest of seven children of a local roofer. He was the only one in his family to go to college. “After all those years roofing, my father was making something like thirty-two dollars a week and bringing up seven of us on that,” he remembers. He was able to attend college thanks to scholarship support he earned in part from winning the state championship as a high school debater. Larner built a successful medical practice in Los Angeles following World War II and decided he wanted to start giving back. “I wanted to help other medical students have the kind of stimulating, gratifying practice of medicine that I’d had,” he says. Since 1985, the Larners have assisted hundreds of UVM medical students through the Larner Loan Fund, now valued at more than $8 million. The fund has the dual intent of easing the financial burden of medical education for students while simultaneously fostering a “culture of philanthropy” among alumni by encouraging Larner Loan recipients to give back to the College of Medicine when they became successful in their own professional lives. The Larners’ generosity, through these gifts and many others, has substantially advanced UVM’s medical mission. “The support of Bob and Helen Larner has changed the face and the future of our College of Medicine,” said Dean Rick Morin. “This latest gift will allow us to create the Larner Learning Commons, with the space and resources to develop the best teaching technologies and techniques.”
Larners’ legacy of support reaches historic level MEDICINE | Dr. Robert Larner ’39 MD ’42 and his wife, Helen Larner, say their philanthropic support for UVM is intended to ensure that the medical education provided by the University of Vermont College of Medicine is recognized as “second to none.” The couple’s latest gift, $19.7 million in commercial property and cash—is the largest one-time gift in the university’s history—and establishes them as second to none in their philanthropic support for UVM. The Larners’ lifetime giving to UVM now tops $33 million, a figure ranking them as the most generous donors in the 225-year history of the institution. The commercial property, valued at $18.7 million, will be held and managed by the UVM Foundation, with the income it generates directed to the College of Medicine to invest in its medical education programs. A $1 million cash gift was also included. “We are overwhelmed by the generosity of the Larners and their commitment to ensuring that medical education at UVM is truly second to none,” said UVM President Tom Sullivan in announcing the gift at an April meeting of the UVM Foundation’s National Campaign Council. “This is the
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UVM FOUNDATION BOARD The following alumni were elected to a three-year term on the UVM Foundation’s Board of Directors at the board’s spring meeting: Kathy Battistoni G’85 James Betts ’69, MD’73 William Meezan ’67 H. David Reines MD’72 Claudia Serwer ’67 Sadly, Bill Meezan passed away in May. See page 63 to read about his life and legacy of support for UVM.
UVM FOUNDATION FELLOWS The University of Vermont Foundation recently welcomed six individuals as the inaugural members of the Foundation Fellows Program, honoring emerging and future alumni leaders of the university and foundation. The new fellows are: Scott Bailey ’09 Dana Gulley ’10 Molly Kelly-Yahner ’11 Germain Mopa ’05 Brian Sozansky ’11, G’12 Christopher Veal ’14
Campaign Progress CAMPAIGN GOAL $500M CURRENT GIFTS $300M
SUMMER 2016 |
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| THE GREEN
Podium Perspective
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MUSIC | The road to the UVM Symphony’s spring concert likely began in the splendid isolation of director Yutaka Kono’s basement home office. That’s where, after he and his wife’s two young daughters have gone to bed, the associate professor of music settles in for a 9 to midnight round of work nearly every evening. A good deal of that time is spent studying scores for upcoming concerts. Kono also leads the Burlington Chamber Orchestra. “There is always something interesting that I never thought of when I look more deeply at a score, like how the instruments are connected or how the theme is transformed. It is like starting to do a puzzle,” he says. In rehearsal, the final sound emerges each time the musicians and conductor run through a piece. “It is always a two-way communication,” Kono says. “Sometimes students will bring an interesting way of playing a particular section or phrase. Say we have a melody played by the violins, clarinets, and flutes. If I like the way the violins are playing it, I’ll encourage the flutes and clarinets to listen to and imitate that way of playing. Ultimately, I see my job as trying to unify the sound of the orchestra,” he says. But what might have sounded unified during dress rehearsal can splinter in performance. Asked about riding out such moments, Kono smiles broadly, laughs, and says, “Oh, it is a very stressful job!” The skill to maneuver through is forged in those late-night study sessions at home where, by poring over the score for hour upon hour, Kono comes to internalize its every nuance. “If I didn’t know the score backwards and forwards, I might start panicking myself if someone came in a quarter-beat too soon. I might think that’s how it goes and I hadn’t noticed it. So I have to have the confidence of knowing every detail,” he says. And in that confidence, Kono finds the calm to devise a way to get the train back on the rails and communicate the way forward to his musicians. “It is really an improvisation, you just have to think of it at that spur of the moment, and know exactly what you want to do.”
SALLY MCCAY
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| THE GREEN HOLOCAUST CENTER HONORED The Carolyn and Leonard Miller Center for Holocaust Studies has been named the recipient of the 2016 Robert J. McKenna Award for Program Achievement. The honor was presented in March by the New England Board of Higher Education. UVM’s Miller Center promotes scholarship, education, and public awareness about the events that brought about, comprise, and continue to emanate from the Holocaust. Drawing upon the expertise of faculty from across the university, the center offers an undergraduate minor field in Holocaust Studies and supports graduate training in various disciplines. Study of the Holocaust at UVM traces to the late Professor Raul Hilberg, author of The Destruction of the European Jews, still considered a foundational work on the subject. Professors David Scrase and Wolfgang Mieder were instrumental in founding the center to honor Hilberg upon his retirement. In 2006, Leonard and Carolyn Miller made a gift of $5 million to UVM to support Holocaust Studies, funds that support professorships and the renovation of the Billings Library, where the center will ultimately be housed. The Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professorship is held by Francis Nicosia, and the Leonard and Carolyn Miller Distinguished Professorship is held by Alan Steinweis.
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Surprising Malaria Find BIOLOGY | Two years ago, Ellen Martinsen ’00 G’09, was collecting mosquitoes at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, looking for malaria that might infect birds—when she discovered something strange: a DNA profile, from parasites in the mosquitoes, that she couldn’t identify. By chance, she had discovered a malaria parasite, Plasmodium odocoilei—that infects white-tailed deer. It’s the first-ever malaria parasite known to live in a deer species and the only native malaria parasite found in any mammal in North or South America. Though white-tailed deer diseases have been heavily studied—scientists hadn’t noticed that many have malaria parasites. Martinsen and her colleagues estimate that the parasite infects up to twenty-five percent of white-tailed deer along the East Coast of the United States. Their results were published this winter in Science Advances. “You never know what you’re going to find when you’re out in nature—and you look,” says Martinsen, a research associate at the Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute and adjunct faculty member in UVM’s biology department. “It’s a parasite that has been hidden in the most iconic game animal in the United States. I just stumbled across it.” The new study, led by Martinsen, was a collaboration with scientists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, the American Museum of Natural History, the National Park Service, the University of Georgia, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee—and UVM
biologist and malaria expert Joseph Schall, professor emeritus. Though Martinsen and Schall are quick to note that they anticipate little danger to people from this newly discovered deer malaria, it does underscore the fact that many human health concerns are connected to wider ecological systems—and that understanding the biology of other species is a foundation to both conservation and public health management. Zika virus is recently making worrisome headlines and “there’s a sudden surge in interest in mosquito biology across the United States,” says Schall. “This is a reminder of the importance of parasite surveys and basic natural history.” Malaria is a major problem for people in many parts of the world—and for many species of wildlife too. It has been devastating bird species in Hawaii and Bermuda, among many epidemics. Whether it is hurting white-tailed deer in America is an open question. Martinsen suspects not, because she’d expect to see more obviously sick animals. But Schall wonders if, like some human malaria infections, the disease causes a low-level burden that hurts deer populations. They both agree that it is an area that calls for more research—and that the new study raises many other questions, including whether the parasite might infect dairy cows or other hoofed species. This project brought Martinsen full circle as a scientist. Some of the research was conducted in the same Marsh Building lab where she did her undergrad and doctoral study with Schall. LISA WARE, NZP
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A seventeen-year faculty veteran in the Psychology Department, Bill Falls was appointed dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in March. Looking back, Falls says he was initially drawn to UVM as an institution where he could both mentor undergraduates and pursue an active research career. That teacher-scholar model guides the new dean’s thinking as he works with faculty colleagues to shape his college’s future.
Dean William Falls
college of arts and sciences The College of Arts and Sciences is the academic core of UVM, dating back to our earliest days. How does the college continue to evolve to meet the needs of students and society? FALLS: We need to be able to offer our core liberal arts and sciences, but in a way that is meaningful and appropriate. We need to have the college not constantly reinventing itself, but willing to continue to move forward, continue to adjust. To make this happen I need the faculty’s energy, their vision, their interest—and I can be a facilitator. I hear a lot of really great ideas. How can we develop a new cross-university program in health and society? How can we strengthen and broaden Global Studies? We’ve got philosophers talking with political scientists talking with economists to come up with a new major that combines all three disciplines. That would be brilliant. We’ve got Art History and History talking about a museum studies certificate. We’ve got Music and Dance and the Lane Series talking about an arts management certificate. So there are a lot of these awesome ideas out there that I want to nurture and grow. The way we delivered a liberal arts education ten years ago may
IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST ’09
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not work today. Students are coming to us very anxious about their futures, about their careers. So what can we do to help them without changing the core of the liberal arts and sciences? One idea is to have a new firstyear experience program that talks to students about the value of a liberal arts education, that helps students understand that, yes, that’s your major but your degree is a liberal arts degree, and that is preparing you to think, to work as part of a team, to communicate—all critical skills for multiple career paths. What will the new STEM Complex mean to your college? FALLS: There are a lot better teaching facilities in this building and opportunities for new ways, new methods of teaching in STEM. For example, physics is proposing to take their introductory physics courses and integrate labs into them so they’re much more interactive. That’s done at MIT, Stanford, and Harvard, and the outcome data are amazing. And the fact that we’re now getting engineering, physics, chemistry, computer science, and mathematics in this complex together; there’s going to be opportunity for more collaboration just by having people close together. Arts and Sciences is home to the humanities. How do you see those disciplines meshing with the broad UVM academic experience? FALLS: We have great strengths in the humanities, across all the disciplines, and David Jenemann and Luis Vivanco are doing a great job with the Humanities Center. Are more students, at UVM and in higher ed generally, gravitating toward STEM? Yes, I understand that, but I don’t think that weakens what we’re doing in the humanities. This isn’t only about majors. If you look at History, their majors are down, but they’re teaching a ton of students. This is also about the ability of those disciplines to educate more broadly. It’s the ability to spread the love, if you will, spread the news about what humanities are all about.
SUMMER 2016 |
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| THE GREEN
Gail Sheehy urges class of 2016:
“Dare to Care”
Photos and more on Commencement at
go.uvm.edu/2016grad
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COMMENCEMENT | Famed author Gail Sheehy spun out a commencement address to the University of Vermont’s Class of 2016 that transported her audience back to the UVM alumna’s own college days in the late 1950s, put them on the presidential campaign trail in 1968, and dared to ponder the essential definition of humanity in our technological age. Putting a new spin on French philosopher Rene Descartes’ famous phrase “I think, therefore I am,” Sheehy told the grads, “Today, we may better define what sets us apart as humans with a different declaration: ‘I care, therefore I am.’ Caring may be the key to establishing the unity of mankind.” Caring and daring were central themes throughout the commencement address by the Class of 1958 UVM alumna, a pioneer of “new journalism” whose seventeen books include Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, named one of the ten most influential books of our time by the Library of Congress. On a cool, overcast May morning, Sheehy spoke from the podium in front of the Waterman Building. Assembled before her across the university green were an estimated 2,937 graduates and thousands more friends, families, and faculty. The degree recipients hailed from 41 state and 22 countries.
Speaking to the importance of daring, Sheehy described two key moments in her life as she furthered her education and career. A single-mother after the end of her first marriage, an early stumble in her writing career behind her, Sheehy enrolled at Columbia University, studying for her master’s degree in anthropology with the famed Margaret Mead. “Mead was the new American cultural prophet,” Sheehy said. “She encouraged me to become a cultural interpreter: “Whenever you hear about a great cultural phenomenon— a revolution, an assassination, a notorious trial, an attack on the country—drop everything. Get on a bus or train or plane and go there, stand at the edge of the abyss, and look down into it. You will see a culture turned inside out and revealed in a raw state.” She would put that advice to the test when the editor of New York magazine assigned her to cover a West Coast campaign swing during Sen. Robert Kennedy’s 1968 run for the Democratic nomination for President. Sheehy described her initial reticence to jump out of her comfort zone in covering politics. She spun the tale of a harrowing small airplane flight in rough weather, interviewing Kennedy as the plane bounced through a fierce storm over the Cascade Mountains. Two days after her interview, Kennedy was murdered. “If I hadn’t taken that risky trip, I wouldn’t have had an insight about Kennedy. And with my education in the humanities, I knew what I could do with that insight,” Sheehy said. “I didn’t have to write about politics like the boys do, focusing on the horse race and daily polls. I could explore the character of the candidates. That was the epiphany: issues are today. Character is what was yesterday and will be again tomorrow. From then on, this became my motto: when I fear, I dare.” SALLLY MCCAY
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The Knife’s Tale
Leland Kinsey ’72 has published Julia Child loved butter. Julia Child did not steal a pound of butter—the trigger (so to speak) for one of the fifty-plus recipes in a cookbook recently published by Lynn Cline ’83. Get the taste that it’s no ordinary cookbook? It’s not. The Maverick Cookbook: Iconic Recipes & Tales from New Mexico is one part Canterbury Tales, one part Kitchen Confidential and one part literary liveliness, all whisked together with clear instructions for delicious Southwestern dishes. Cline’s work was named “One of the 30 Most Exciting New Cookbooks” by Epicurious. com last fall. From a 1350s pueblo grandmother who grinds corn for cakes and a hotelier named Fred Harvey whose midnight breakfasts inspire a cinnamon-infused French toast to Georgia O’Keefe’s curried chicken and Dennis Hopper’s huevos rancheros, the stories of mavericks who make up the 184-page book are as lip-smacking as their dishes that divide the chapters. That stolen pound of butter, for example? “Billy the Kid isn’t associated with food, but the first thing he got caught stealing was a pound of butter,” explains Cline. “I knew from a young age that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a while to figure out what kind of a writer I would be,” says Cline, who wrote for the Vermont Cynic during her four years at UVM before working for the Associated Press. When Cline moved to Santa Fe in 1993, she began writing for the local paper about the vibrant art, literary, and culinary scene, “convinced that it would be better to write about things that made people happy instead of fearful,” she says. “Writing about food just happened, and swept me up. It sates my soul.” The spark for Maverick, however, came not in the heat of New Mexico, but in the piazza of an Italian woman in Florence, who cooked a life-changing pot of pasta
for Cline and her family as they traveled through the region in 2008. “All of a sudden, I thought, ‘Santa Fe is a lot like Italy,’” she says. “They are unique, and have melded recipes and ingredients through the generations—wouldn’t it be cool to write a cookbook about all the different people who came through New Mexico and how they contributed to the melting pot?” Lighting an actual stove and creating and testing the recipes was the most challenging part. We may swoon over the photos of grilled juniper-marinated venison, cowboy biscuits, and teahouse chocolate cake not realizing the hard work of Cline’s well- stirred spoon, much as it was guided by expert chefs. “I’ll never make tamales again!” she says with a laugh about the poblano-chile and Monterey-jack-cheese stuffed cornhusks created and recreated several times in homage to an 1840s “Queen of Cards” named Doña Tules. “I was greatly relieved when I found the right formula for those.” Now, there’s another region invoking Cline’s muse. During a phone interview, she reveals the secret ingredients to her next work: a Wampanoag Indian, a Mayflower pilgrim, a whaling-ship captain, a Salem witch, an American revolutionary, a founding father, Henry Thoreau, and a Provincetown painter. Yep, readers and chefs alike can one day not too far in the future be ready for the buttery Maverick Cookbook: Iconic Recipes and Tales from New England.
Galvanized: New and Selected Poems (Green Writers Press). The volume is the eighth book for the Vermont poet, who has deep roots in the Green Mountains, stretching back to ancestors who settled in the state in the early 1800s. Fellow alumnus and writer Howard Frank Mosher G’67 writes, “All of Leland Kinsey’s poetry is closely connected to the natural world, with his expert use of history, stories, characters, images from nature, rural work and avocations, and the traditions of a very harsh, but authentic, off-the-beaten-track Vermont.” Barbara Huntress Tresness ’87 is the author of Beyond a Charmed Life: A Mother’s Unconditional Love (Divine Phoenix Books). The author and her husband, Greg Tresness ’87, are the parents of son Graham, born with cerebral palsy and a non-verbal communicator. Beyond a Charmed Life is a memoir about one mother’s love for her special needs son. Midwest Book Review writes that the book “is as inspired and inspiring as it is thoughtful and thought-provoking. A simply wonderful read from beginning to end, Beyond a Charmed Life is very highly recommended for community library collections, and should be considered a ‘must’ for all parents with a special needs child of their own.” Eric Rickstad ’94 released his latest mystery novel this spring. Lie in Wait (HarperCollins) follows the twists and turns of a murder case set in tiny Canaan, Vermont. Rickstad knows the Northeast Kingdom landscape well and has grounded his past books in this remote corner of the state. The novelist’s Silent Girls was on bestseller lists in USA Today and The New York Times. Rickstad’s first book, Reap, made the Times’s Noteworty Novel list. SUMMER 2016 |
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| C ATA M O U N T S P O R T S
Defenseman to Director
Alumnus Jeff Schulman rises to top spot at UVM Athletics
BY | JON REIDEL G’06 PHOTOGRAPH BY | BRIAN JENKINS
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Summer 1989, freshly graduated
from UVM, Jeff Schulman is living as a guest in the Phi Delta Theta house, where he hobbles down the hallway with a fractured foot to take a call on the fraternity’s only phone. On the other end of the line is Boston Globe reporter Kevin Dupont, who wants to know what the Catamount defenseman thinks about being selected earlier in the day by the Boston Bruins in the NHL supplemental draft. Unaware the draft even occurred, Schulman ’89 G ’02 is convinced a friend is playing a prank. Realizing otherwise, he tells the reporter he isn’t sure what his plans are after graduation. In reality, Schulman had no intention of toiling in minor league hockey. He had already landed a coveted
spot as a Bushnell Intern with the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC), boosted by a recommendation from then UVM athletic director Denny Lambert ’54. “It was pretty funny at that time,” recalls Schulman, who had broken his foot playing pickup basketball a few weeks earlier. “On my first day of work with the ECAC, the conference commissioner showed me an article in the Globe that said I was the only no-show at Bruins’ training camp and locked in a contract dispute. I laughed and explained the situation. I considered playing briefly, but I was ready to start my career in athletic administration, and at the time I was very fortunate to land one of the few opportunities for young people to get administrative experience in intercollegiate athletics.”
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The Bruins’ loss was UVM’s gain, as the ECAC experience would serve as a launching pad for Schulman’s career, which took a significant step on April 6 when President Tom Sullivan introduced him as the university’s ninth director of athletics. The announcement was well received by Catamount Nation, many of whom felt Schulman was a worthy heir to his three predecessors and mentors: Lambert (1973-1992); Rick Farnham ’69 (1992-2003); and Robert Corran (2003-2016). “One of the things I am most proud of is that I’m able to follow in the footsteps of three athletic directors who have been such outstanding friends and mentors and who have led this department for fortythree years with an incredible level of professionalism and integrity,” says Schulman. “While I’ll certainly have my own leadership style, I’ll draw often on what I’ve learned over the years from Denny, Rick, and Bob. ” If Schulman’s performance since returning to his alma mater in 1993 as assistant athletic director is any indicator, the next chapter for UVM Athletics should be a fruitful one. Schulman, who has served as senior associate athletic director for the past twelve years, has overseen the department’s financial operations and worked with Corran to transform the Archie Post Athletic Complex, including Moulton Winder Field; the Frank H. Livak Track & Field Facility; and Virtue Field. Phase II of the Virtue Field project starts this summer with the addition of permanent seating for 2,500, a press box and hospitality space, and an events plaza connecting all three facilities at the Post Complex. Growing up in Buffalo, New York, Schulman spent much of his early years at a nearby middle school watching older kids play sports. He loved the competition, but also found himself intrigued by the manner in which the games and events were organized. He started running the clock at games and worked as a ball boy whenever
possible. “I’m not sure why, but I was just really interested in watching how athletic events were being managed,” he says. Schulman’s intrigue with sports management grew during his years as a UVM student-athlete. His friends used to joke that if they couldn’t find him, all they had to do was check the UVM athletic schedule to know his whereabouts. Schulman recalls being the only fan at a baseball game on a frigid day at Centennial Field when Rick Farnham asked if he’d run the scoreboard and serve as the public address announcer. He gladly accepted and became a regular fixture in the Centennial press box. Instead of rooming with fellow varsity athletes on East Campus, Schulman opted for Chittenden-Buckham-Wills residence halls, based on a recommendation from his cousin but to the dismay of his coaches. “It was one of the best decisions I ever made, because it exposed me to a whole group of classmates who weren’t athletes,” says Schulman, a political science major who was inducted into the UVM Boulder Society as a senior. “It’s an experience that stuck with me and informed one of my top priorities as AD which is to make sure our student-athletes are fully integrated into the student body as a whole.” On the ice, Schulman excelled as a 6-foot-3, 210-pound defenseman for a hockey team that was starting to come into its own nationally. Named by the Burlington Free Press to it’s All Decade Team, a major glory-days moment came at the Boston Garden in an upset win over eventual national champion Harvard in the 1989 ECAC Semifinals. The Cats were down 2-0 with nine minutes to go in the game when Schulman ripped in a shot from the blue line. “He really cranked that thing,” Harvard Coach Bill Cleary told the Harvard Crimson. “Holy smokes that was a tough shot.” Then, with less than three minutes left in regulation, Marc LeBruex ’89, tucked the tying shot into the corner of the net. In overtime, Schulman assisted on
David Browne’s ’91 rebound goal that finished off the dramatic rally. Today, taking charge of UVM Athletics, Schulman has definite goals for a program he’s convinced can take winning to new heights without surrendering its academic soul. “This has never been the kind of institution that is willing to compromise its integrity, academically or otherwise, for the sake of competitive success, and I don’t think we need to,” he says. “I intend to maintain an emphasis on academics and the studentathlete experience while at the same time ratcheting up the competitive level across the board. We can win championships and have top GPAs and graduation rates.” Schulman is well aware that facility improvements are critical to achieving this vision. Hardly a day goes by without someone asking him if he thinks he can facilitate the construction of a new events center either on campus or through a local partnership. “One of my top priorities is to work with President Sullivan and our Board of Trustees to vet the different options for a new events center and chart a realistic course for us to move forward as quickly as possible. This will happen at the same time we are developing facility plans to meet the recreation, fitness, and wellness needs of the entire campus,” says Schulman. “By necessity, I anticipate having a heavy external focus and I’m confident that we have a critical mass of alumni, donors, and passionate fans who want to support UVM athletics by helping make these facility improvements a reality.” Well aware of the big job ahead, Schulman says he’s most thankful for the support of his wife, Deb Lichtenfeld ’95, and their children, Theodore, Gabriella, and Mara. “I’m incredibly fortunate that my family enjoys being around UVM Athletics as much as I do. It’s obviously a very timeconsuming job,” he says. “For us, it really is a family affair.” VQ SUMMER 2016 |
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| NEW KNOWLEDGE
Healing with Seaweed Cancer to punctured lungs, applications are promising Rachael Oldinski would like
STORY & PHOTOGRAPH BY | JOSHUA BROWN
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to cure cancer, replace cartilage, and patch punctured lungs—with seaweed. Okay, it’s more complicated than that. But, one afternoon this spring, behind the locked doors of her lab in Votey Hall—the Engineered Biomaterials Research Laboratory—the professor points to three of her graduate students and four undergrads. “Everyone here works with alginate,” she says, “which is purified seaweed.” You might call it the goo lab. Canaan McKenzie ’16 holds up a clear strip of gelatinous plastic that he made with several natural products including alginate and collagen. “The collagen is from the livestock industry,” he says. “It’s exactly the same stuff as goes into Jell-O.” Sarah Blatt ’16 is working with Oldinski to create a jelly to see how well it will
mimic the properties of the inner region of the human spine. Normally, this nucleus pulposus gel is the shock absorber within the discs between each vertebra. “But in disease, that jelly leaks out,” Oldinski says. So, as a senior project, Blatt is looking for a “material replacement,” she says. “We also work, literally, with snot,” Oldinski says with an unguarded smile. “We have several projects that use hyaluronic acid,” the clear goo that the body creates to lubricate joints, shape eyeballs and, yes, “it’s snot,” Oldinski says. Underlying the great-fun-with-squishystuff ethos of the lab, Oldinski has a deadly serious set of goals. One is to do basic work on the mechanics and chemistry of these various goos, a family of materials called hydrogels. “Can we create products that are smart—that are responsive to changing pH
or temperature or biological conditions? Can we create products like skin, that stretch and reorganize themselves over and over without failing?” Oldinski asks. On the other side of the bench from her, doctoral student Spencer Fenn squirts a purple blob of alginate onto a glass slide and spins the slide inside a small centrifuge. He then places the goo-covered-slide inside a box filled with green LED lights. Because of complex manipulations he’s done to the goo’s chemistry, under the light the long strands of polymers within the liquid will link with other strands. After a few minutes, he takes out the slide. “See, it’s become a hydrogel film. It’s no longer a liquid; it’s a solid.” Fenn has been spearheading a research effort to use alginate gels to create a kind of Band-Aid for the lung. Whether from a car crash or disease or battlefield injury, once a lung is punctured it is difficult to seal and heal, since it is constantly inflating and deflating. He and Oldinski and others in both UVM’s College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences and College of Medicine have developed a patch that looks promising for clinical use. Once it is freeze-dried, a surgeon will be able to cut a piece of the hydrogel, apply it to the wound and let it rehydrate from the body’s own water. Then, using a scope with a green light, transform the goopy patch into an adhesive lung sealant. This innovation promises to be non-toxic and a recent study by the lab team shows that the patch can withstand lung-like pressures. But Oldinksi’s top goal for developing hydrogels and other engineered biomaterials is to find better forms of drug delivery, particularly for cancer treatments. Fenn holds up his slide to the light. It glows a faint pink. “It’s red because of doxorubicin
hydrochloride, which is a chemotherapy drug,” Fenn says. He’s mixed the drug into the alginate patch, as well as into alginate microparticles—that were also mixed into the liquid before being treated with the green light. “It’s a hydrogel inside a hydrogel,” he says. In another room of the lab, Oldinski’s team experiments with lines of human cancer cells. Eventually, this drug-soaked patch will be tested there to see how well it works. “The patch and the particles will release the drug at different rates,” Fenn notes—aiding a steady flow of medicines locally in the body. “After a doctor removes a tumor, there are often residual cancer cells left,” he says. “You could apply this patch on the site of the surgery, which would release high concentrations of the chemo drug there, but keep systemic concentrations down.” At the other end of the lab bench, doctoral student Tianxin Miao works quietly, using a tabletop shaker to mix water and oil in a beaker. It’s part of a complex process to create nanoscale alginate particles. “They’re like a meatball of water, seaweed, calcium chloride and a drug,” Miao says. Except the balls are thousands of times smaller than the period on the end of this sentence. What Miao, Oldinski, and Jeffrey Spees, a professor in UVM’s College of Medicine, have discovered they can do with these tiny particles of seaweed may “be huge,” Oldinski says. “It could be a brandnew treatment for cancer.” The nanospheres Miao created are “really ninja beads,” Oldinski says. Recent reports show that a naturally occurring protein, called fibroblast growth factor 2, that sends signals on the outside of cells, behaves very differently—if it gets inside a cell. There, it can function like a hormone
to inhibit growth and kill cells—including cancers. Using this knowledge, Miao and Oldinski mixed the growth factor into a highly engineered form of their alginate meatballs, called alginate-graft-PEG, and then released them into a sample of human lung cancer cells. The scientists were pleased and amazed that the nanospheres slipped past the cells’ surface receptors for the growth factor— and got inside. There, the tiny alginate balls moved to the cells’ nuclei “and released their bomb: the growth factor,” Oldinski says. “It kills the cancer.” In Montreal, on May 19, Tianxin Miao presented the team’s results to the World Biomaterials Congress. It’s a “stealth mechanism,” she notes, that shut down the growth of the lung cancer cells. At its foundation, Oldinski’s aim is to imitate nature “to replace nature,” she says—but then to use the replacement materials to restore regular biological function. Take the cartilage in a knee. She and her students study the mechanics and elasticity of complex mixes of natural materials that could be used to replace damaged cartilage. “This stuff is squishy,” she says holding up a plug of alginate gel, “it’s similar to the cartilage in your knee.” But a deeper solution to the problem requires a deeper imitation of nature. “For true healing, the gold standard is cell replacement,” Oldinski says. And she sees a role for hydrogels in that too: she and her students are working on products that could be used to temporarily replace damaged cartilage but would also carry drugs and stem cells that themselves would attract the body’s own stem cell production. “If we can lead the body to produce its own new cartilage,” say Tianxin Miao, “then you don’t need a plasVQ tic patch anymore.” SUMMER 2016 |
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AMERICA’s
BEST I IDEA Celebrating the
centennial of
our National Parks excerpts by Robert Manning Megan Camp ’84 Jennifer Cirillo ’95
Rolf Diamant
David Harmon Thomas Hudspeth Ben Minteer G’96 ’99
Nora Mitchell
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n the words of author Wallace Stegner, our national parks are “America’s best idea.” As the U.S. National Park Service marks its centennial on August 25, 2016, the celebrations and recognitions are many—from public events to Ken Burns’s documentary film series to a new book, A Thinking Person’s Guide to America’s National Parks, edited by Robert Manning, Rolf Diamant, Nora Mitchell, and David Harmon. Manning, UVM’s Steven Rubenstein Professor of Environment and Natural Resources, is a forty-year veteran of the faculty and an international expert on park management issues. This collection of essays on different dimensions of the parks coincides with Manning’s retirement. (See page 30.) In addition to Manning, his fellow editors and contributors have multiple ties to UVM as faculty or alumni. The book is richly illustrated with photos of the type you might expect: Utah’s Delicate Arch, the rugged seashore of Olympic National Park, Denali’s towering summit in Alaska. But there is also the unexpected: Minuteman Missile National Historic Site; New York City’s Stonewall Inn, birthplace of the modern gay rights movement; or poet Carl Sandburg’s North Carolina home. The essays push readers to deepen their understanding of our parks beyond sublime landscapes, considering them as reserves and resources that help us to better understand our shared natural, cultural, and historic heritage. Read on for excerpts.
“The national park system is clearly not static, but has evolved and expanded over space and time. Historically,
Americans
valued
parks primarily for their monumental landscapes, especially in the American West, but today we also value them as ecological reserves and reservoirs of biodiversity; as places of history, public memory, and cultural traditions; as outdoor classrooms and laboratories; as models of sustainability; and for their contributions to local economies. Behind each national park is a story—often many stories—that help bind us together as a nation and society.” from Chapter 1, by Robert Manning, Rolf Diamant, Nora Mitchell, and David Harmon
TODD KLASSY
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“I
“E
verywhere you turn at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, you will see conservation. Hike along the sinuous carriage roads and trails under a high canopy of hemlocks and beeches, and you are walking through almost 150 years of American forest conservation history, from the earliest application of professional management to contemporary practices of sustainable forestry. This relatively small cultural landscape tells an outsized story of how this exploited and largely devastated woodland was healed by a progressive program of reforestation, natu-
ral regeneration, and thoughtful, uninterrupted conservation stewardship. A different side to conservation history can be experienced on a tour of the brick, Queen Annstyle Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller mansion, containing the most significant collection of American landscape paintings in the national park system. Part of a larger collection of 400 paintings and prints, the magnificent Hudson River School landscape paintings that adorn the mansion’s walls illustrate the power of art in the nineteenth century to foster public awareness and national pride in America’s natural heritage.” from Chapter 2, by Rolf Diamant
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grew up in rural Maryland on Chesapeake Bay, where my father was a marine biologist stationed at a remote research facility. Recreation was never farther away than the short walk down to my dock and boat. But after college, I found myself in the United States Coast Guard, stationed in San Francisco. Yes, this was a good assignment, and I enjoyed the city and the Bay Area, but this was my first experience living in an urban area and I needed periodic respite. My first outing was to Yosemite National Park, about four hours away by car—close enough for a long weekend and far enough for a real change. Other than on Sierra Club calendars, I’d never seen a landscape like this, and it captivated me. After a few visits, I started to get over my awkwardness in the mountains and I became more proficient at hiking and camping, graduating from short day hikes in Yosemite Valley to backpacking trips in the high country. I decided to go to graduate school when I finished my Coast Guard obligation, study park management, and become a National Park Service ranger—maybe even someday a park superintendent. But school was another revelation; for the first time, my studies absorbed me, and I decided to stay on for a doctorate and a career teaching others about our remarkable national parks. Fortunately, my teaching and research takes me to many of the national parks, each seemingly more beautiful and enticing than the last.”
STUDY, HARBOR ISLAND, LAKE GEORGE, BY DAVID JOHNSON COURTESY OF MARSH-BILLINGS-ROCKEFELLER NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK
“the nation may not have had the rich cultural history of its European ancestors, but it offered monumental landscapes comprised of towering mountains, great rivers, giant trees, iconic wildlife, and most of all, seemingly unbounded wilderness. The early national parks grew, at least in part, out of a strong sense of nationalism—recognition that the great scenic landscapes of North America were a vital component of our emerging national and international identity and that our society had the maturity and responsibility to save representative examples of this endowment as national parks. The parks also emerged as a response to the Romantic Movement, the feeling that civilization—in the form of big cities with increasing problems, along with the abuses of the Industrial Revolution—needed parks and wilderness as an antidote. In short, people would be better for visiting the national parks. Recreation is, after all, “re-creation.” SHAWN EVERHART
from Chapter 4, by Robert Manning SUMMER 2016 |
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“Y
ou can visit Yosemite 180,000 African Americans in the National Park online federal army during the Civil War. by listening to the pod- After the war, the Buffalo Soldiers cast “A Buffalo Sodier belonged to a handful of African Speaks,” or watching the video “Buf- American regiments that remained falo Soldiers.” Ranger Shelton John- in regular army service. Alongside son, a master storyteller in the time- white units, they protected some honored tradition of great National of the earliest national parks from Park Service interpreters, presents poaching and illegal grazing. This the carefully researched story of story of early African American an African American cavalry unit involvement with national parks that patrolled the park in the years was nearly forgotten, but this probefore the National Park Service’s gram revived it, and it’s a widely establishment in 1916. These sol- recognized example of how interdiers belonged to segregated United pretation can find new stories by States Army regiments that traced becoming more inclusive. their roots back to the EmancipaThe national park systems tion Proclamation and Abraham may well be America’s greatest Lincoln’s decision to enlist almost classroom.” from Chapter 2, by Hudspeth, Camp, Cirillo
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“A
s we look to the future, some of the biggest threats to national park wilderness will have little to do with debates over issues like whether motorized rafts should be permissible in the Grand Canyon, but will instead concern the broader ecological resilience and integrity of wilderness. Climate change, intensive urbanization, prolonged drought, the disruption of biogeochemical cycles, pollution—these and other
COURTESY OF ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, MANSFIELD LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA
forces of human-driven environmental change have suggested to many that we may be living in a new geological era, the “Anthropocene,” or the age of humans. As this term implies, we exert a significant degree of influence on the wild, and this influence will continue to affect both the ecological and experiential aspects of wilderness in the parks, from predicted changes in iconic park landscape features (the retreat of the glaciers in Glacier National Park due to climate change, for example) to accelerating declines and extinction of park flora and fauna (for instance the loss of Joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park due to warming temperatures and changes in rainfall). The Anthropocene is a further challenge, then, to the traditional idea of wilderness as a place free from human manipulation, change, and control.” from Chapter 2, by Manning and Minteer
ADAM BRILL
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Walking into the sunset with Bob Manning
A
s you read this, chances are Bob Manning is walking a trail in the wilds of the American Southwest, his wife/ co-author/stalwart hiking companion Martha at his side. The forty-year veteran of the faculty, winner of the 2010 George V. Kidder Teaching Award from the UVM Alumni Association, retired in May and moved to Prescott, Arizona, drawn by the high-desert and abundant parks and public lands. As the Steven Rubenstein Professor of Environment and Natural Resources and a leading expert on park management issues, spectacular landscapes have long been a central setting for Manning’s work as a teacher and scholar. His innovative studies of trends in park use, crowding, and related issues have helped the U.S. National Park Service develop ways to help visitors enjoy these iconic places without loving them to death. That same work earned Manning the University Scholars Award in 1999. For the past fifteen years, long-distance walks through naturally beautiful and culturally intriguing landscapes have grown into a passion for Bob and Martha Manning. They shared the gospel in their 2013 book Walking Distance: Extraordinary Hikes for Ordinary People (Oregon State University Press). And they’ve written a sequel, due for publication next spring, documenting thirty more hikes and sharing advice in related essays.Before Professor Manning headed west, we sat down to talk walking. What draws you to the trail? Long-distance walking slows life down. For me, normally, the days go by in a flash, the weeks go by in a flash, never having the clarity that moments of leisure can provide. Walking just simplifies things. Everything else just seems to fall away. When I’m on the trail, my primary concerns are finding my way to my next destination and my next meal. It’s pretty basic. You’re walking, seeing things, thinking about the things that are really important. It can bring clarity at times. Of all the walks you have done, what’s your favorite? The John Muir Trail, 210 miles from Yosemite Valley south to the summit of Mount Whitney. Well, 220 miles because you’ve got to get down off the mountain. You pass through the Yosemite High Country, King’s Canyon and Sequoia national parks. The glaciers came through and eventually retreated, and this is what they left. They are so high, and and there
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is such a short growing season—it hasn’t changed much for 10,000 years. The High Sierras are just glorious. Can’t get enough of them. It’s also the cultural, historical legacy of that region. John Muir was so powerful and so eloquent. His presence is strong there. I love the way you go over Muir Pass and then it is a day’s hike to the next pass, which is Pinchot Pass. Gifford Pinchot and John Muir were two leading figures in America’s Conservation Movement, arguing very different environmental philosophies and helping shape management of the national parks and national forests the trail traverses. To walk over Muir Pass and then to walk over Pinchot Pass, the history is just overpowering. What about a favorite day hike within the national parks? The first thing that comes to mind is Acadia— perhaps the North Ridge Trail to the top of Cadillac Mountain. After only about a half-hour or so, you pop up out of the trees and on to long open stretches of bare granite where you can see much of the island and seascape. I’d also strongly recommend the park’s historic carriage roads, now used primarily by hikers and bikers. And try to time your hike to include tea and popovers at Jordan Pond House. Acadia is a wonderful park, the crown jewel of the Northeast. But it’s a relatively small national park that’s heavily used. In fact, it may be the most intensively visited national park, at least in terms of people per acre. But even with that intense use, hiking the park’s trails offers moments of solitude. It seems like you and Martha are well-adapted to the trail and to one another as hiking partners. Have you had trying times, difficult moments on the trail? Oh, I think every hiker does. In our books, Martha and I encourage people to try long-distance walking. I don’t want to scare anyone away, so I probably shouldn’t mention the time I got caught in quicksand in a Utah canyon. (Laughs.) More typically, I just find myself pretty tired at the end of a long day on the trail; once I’ve walked fifteen miles or so, it can start to feel a little too much like work. Walking Wales’s beautiful Pembrokeshire Coast Path was a bit of a misadventure. I’d been trying to talk Martha into the hike for years, but she resisted, saying “It always rains in Wales.” But I kept working on her, and finally she agreed. We walked for SALLY MCCAY
fourteen days and it rained for thirteen of them. (Laughs.) It didn’t threaten anyone’s life, but it was a misadventure of sorts. It’s these kinds of things that have led to Manning’s Dictum: “You can’t have real adventures in life without some misadventures along the way.” The next book has short essays with each trail, and one of them is called “Adventures and Misadventures.” The point is, a few misadventures are bound to happen, but you don’t have to make them really hard moments. Accept them, learn by them, grow in them. There’s a cult of going light among serious hikers. What’s your vice? What do you take that is too heavy? Maybe too much on the food side. You know the freeze-dried stuff for backpacking? I can’t do it; it is just awful. We might take Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese, which is definitely a step up over freezedried products. It takes a little longer to cook, uses more fuel, and is a little heavier. But for me, it is worth it. Although, we can overdo it. Our hike on the John Muir trail was seventeen days and we ate Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese seventeen nights in a row. Fortunately, it comes in different flavors. Still, that was a little monotonous. The cheeseburgers and fries we had in a diner the evening we finished the hike was, at that moment, one of the best meals we’ve ever eaten. What’s your favorite hike in Vermont? I guess it would have to be the Long Trail. It has the history of being the first long-distance trail in America and for us, personally, was the first long-distance trail we hiked. It set us on the course for hiking all over the world. Another favorite is Shelburne Farms, a regular “practice walk” for us. If you take the loop all the way around, it is about six miles. If I didn’t live in Vermont and travelled to the state to hike at Shelburne Farms, I wouldn’t be disappointed. This is a strikingly beautiful cultural landscape, so I try not to take it for granted. What trails and terrain are still out there that you haven’t walked yet? The Himalayas are one. I haven’t done any trekking. I’m not a climber, but there are some nice hikes to be done in this remarkable range of mountains. Patagonia is another blank spot on my hiking map. Will I get to these places? Well, isn’t that one of the things retirement is for? VQ SUMMER 2016 |
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W HEREAS the education of youth is necessary for the advancement of morality, virtue and happiness, and tends to render a people or state respectable; to promote which, establishment for seminaries and colleges have ever been patronized by
all good governments: and whereas several grants of land have already been made by this state, and private, liberal donations have been offered for promoting so useful an establishment, with the same, which demand the
attention of this legislature, for laying the foundation for an institution so beneficial to society: Therefore, T is hereby enacted by the general assembly of the state of Vermont, That there be and hereby is a college
I
instituted, and established at such a place in the township of Burlington, in the county of Chittenden, as the corporation hereinafter named shall think most convenient.
As the university marks the 225th anniversary of its founding, we offer uvm history 101, a short course by Thomas Weaver
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uvm history 101
1800
“Having Honorable views toward the Public and having a desire to make the Place I have chosen for my residence respectable by the Establishment of Liberal Arts and Sciences I therefore name Burlington for that purpose...” —Ira Allen
Rev. Daniel Clarke Sanders is appointed the first University of Vermont president. He does everything—chopping down the towering pine trees to provide a clearing for the campus, cataloguing the first library, helping plan the construction of the first building, and serving as the university’s entire faculty for the first seven years.
1804
First graduating class, the four graduates each paid $12 per year in tuition.
1811
Royall Tyler—the first American playwright, chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, and a professor of law—joins the university faculty. His grandmother writes: “He professed to me that he was going to Vermont, then considered the outskirts of creation by many, and where all the rogues and runaways congregated, and for that reason considered a good place for lawyers.”
ALL HISTORIC PHOTOS COURTESY OF UVM SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
1791
UVM is incorporated by the state legislature.
1790s
During the almost decade it takes the trustees to establish the institution in Burlington, 816 citizens of Burlington pledge $2,310 to fund the university’s first building, library, and “philosophical apparatus.”
1812
1823
1829
War of 1812 – U.S. Army headquarters in Burlington with four thousands troops. The university suspends operations and rents the College Edifice for use as a barracks for the troops. The UVM Medical College graduates its first class. Medical studies boosts the overall university enrollment from twenty-two to seventy. President James Marsh writes the introductory essay to the American edition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Aids to Reflection.” The UVM faculty publishes a thirty-two-page pamphlet “Exposition of the System of Instruction and Discipline Pursued in the University of Vermont.” Together, these place UVM as a progressive center of humanistic educational thought.
1801 The College Edifice is built—“a 1807 chapel, a philosophical room, two society halls, a medical hall, a library, a mineral museum, a recitation hall, and forty-six rooms for students.”
1824 A chimney spark ignites the
roof, destroys the College Edifice. Burlington, prosperous due to lumber and other trade, pledges $8,000 from its 2,500 residents for the new building. The new structure is built in three separate sections to guard against fire. The original College Edifice lives on in the 300,000 bricks salvaged from the fire for re-use in the new building.
old mill and the university green
1789
1825 Marquis de Lafayette lays the
cornerstone for the Old Mill. The UVM Green, upon which a statue of Lafayette will one day stand, is a cornfield.
1837 Alvin Twing leads a student
effort to landscape and put a fence around the land that forms the University Green.
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prominent alumni 1834 William A. Wheeler, vice president of the United States from 1877 to 1881, graduates.
1836
1840 Henry Jarvis Raymond,
founder of The New York Times, graduates.
1875 Ellen Hamilton (left)
and Lida Mason graduate, the first women admitted to UVM and the first women in the nation admitted to Phi Beta Kappa.
Professor Joseph Torrey returns from a trip to Europe, a mission to buy books to build UVM’s library collection. The captain of the steamboat carrying Torrey home fires a cannon across the water of Lake Champlain to announce the professor’s evening arrival. Students ring the college bell and light some 1,600 candles in the windows of Old Mill to welcome him.
.
1865
1877 George Washington
Henderson, the first African-American in the nation admitted to Phi Beta Kappa, graduates.
1879 John Dewey, Burling-
Through the Morrill Land Grant Act, 150,000 acres of government land are available to support the establishment of an agricultural college in Vermont. UVM is designated as the state’s land grant institution when Vermont legislators pass an act uniting UVM with the new State Agricultural College. The sale of the government land will bring in $131,563, nearly doubling the assets of the university.
building boom 1883
Old Mill renovation
1885
Billings Library
1896
Williams Hall
1901
Gymnasium (Royall Tyler Theatre)
1906
College of Medicine Building (Dewey Hall) Morrill Hall
1907
1865
UVM’s first uniformed athletic squad, the baseball team, is established. The university’s green and gold colors emerge several years later.
1940
President Guy Bailey dies while in office. Since 1920, his tenure included construction of Slade Hall, Fleming Museum, Southwick Building, and the gift was received to fund the Waterman Building. Bailey guided UVM through the Depression without faculty pay cuts and was known for helping students in financial need in a very generous and personal way. The downside of this comes about after his sudden death, when it is discovered that the university is running a deficit of $500,000. A special appropriation from the Vermont legislature and alumni contributions help the university balance the books.
1950
The UVM Dairy Bar opens under the leadership of Professor Henry Atherton ’48 G’50. The beloved home of UVM ice cream becomes a campus institution, housed in the Carrigan Dairy Science Building, until its close in 1995. The Dairy Bar’s chrome stools live on in the Davis Center.
ton native son who becomes the father of progressive education in the United States, graduates.
1924 Dorothy Lang, a native
Vermonter, becomes the first woman to earn her MD from UVM’s College of Medicine.
1969 Annie Proulx, Pulitzer
1909
The university creates a home economics department and hires its first female faculty member, Bertha Terrill.
1921
The university purchases the Buell Estate on South Prospect Street, creating the heart of Redstone Campus. Robinson Hall and Redstone Hall are converted for use as women’s dormitories.
1929
James Wilbur leaves the university a trust in excess of $2.5 million, money that will seed a long-standing scholarship fund and also provide funds for Ira Allen Chapel and the statue of UVM’s founder on the green.
1930
The cornerstone is laid for the Robert Hull Fleming Museum. Leading American architecture firm McKim, Mead & White designed the museum, as well as other UVM buildings—Waterman, Southwick, and Slade Hall.
Prize winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” graduates.
1976 Gail Sheehy ’58 publishes Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, a bestseller that will one day be named one of the ten most influential books of our time by the Library of Congress.
1983 Phish plays their first
concert for a handful of fellow students in Harris-Millis.
1997 Jody Williams ’72
receives the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
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PHISH: DANNY CLINCH; STOOL & PROTEST: SALLY MCCAY
1953
1955
During the era’s Red Scare, the university fires Professor Alex Novikoff, a biochemist and cancer researcher in the medical college, for his refusal to answer questions before a Congressional committee investigating communism. In 1983 the university acknowledges the mistake and awards him an honorary degree. President Carl Borgmann leads an effort to have the Vermont legislature designate the university as “an instrumentality of the state.” Vermont public funds no longer support solely the agricultural college, but help to fund the entire university with the intent to subsidize the tuition of instate students.
1961
Nearly two-thirds of the student body turns out to volunteer for the singleday move of 250,000 books from the Billings Library to the new Bailey Library.
1961
UVM Professor Raul Hilberg publishes his landmark volume The Destruction of the European Jews.
1964
1969
1972
1974
Professor Hubert Vogelmann and grad student Thomas Siccama ’62 G’64 ’68 mark out plots of forest to monitor on four of Vermont’s tallest peaks. It would prove to be an important first step in Vogelmann’s discoveries regarding how acid rain was damaging mountaintop forests. Kake Walk is abolished. Part of the university’s Winter Festival since 1893, the dance performance/ competition, rooted in minstrel shows and featuring students in blackface, had stirred protest on campus beginning in the 1950s. New professor Carl Reidel leads the founding of the nation’s first university-wide interdisciplinary environmental program, putting UVM at the forefront of the environmental movement and the creation of progressive public policy. Royall Tyler Theatre is established as a performance space and home for the Theatre Department in the 1901 red brick gymnasium building.
catamounts 1912
Albert Gutterson follows his graduation from UVM with a gold medal in the long jump at the Olympic Games in Stockholm.
2005
Vermont upsets Syracuse, 60-57, in the first round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament.
1926
Students vote on UVM’s mascot. Catamounts prevails over other options—tomcats, camels, or cows. Really.
2009
1972
Barbara Ann Cochran ’78 wins the gold medal in slalom at the Winter Olympics in Sapporo. From 1956 to the present day, UVM alumni athletes have competed in every Winter Olympics.
Men’s hockey reaches the Frozen Four in the NCAA Tournament, a feat also achieved by the 1996 team. Six former Catamounts— John LeClair ’91, Martin St. Louis ’97, Eric Perrin ’97, Tim Thomas ’97, Patrick Sharp ’02, Viktor Stalberg ’09—have their names engraved on the Stanley Cup as members of NHL Champion teams.
1991- Catamount women’s basketball 1992 team is undefeated through the entire regular season. They repeat that streak in 1992-93.
2012
Vermont skiers capture their sixth NCAA Championship. The Catamounts were also national champs in 1994, 1992, 1990, 1989, and 1980.
1991
Students occupy the executive wing of the Waterman Building in protest of what they see as a lack of progress and administrative commitment to building diversity and multicultural awareness .
2001
Thirteen students from Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx begin their first year at UVM. This initial Urban Partnership Program will grow and spawn others, taking a key role in building a more diverse student body.
2002
The Gund Institute for Ecological Economics is established at the university with the help of $7.5 million in funding support from the Gund family—alumni Zachary ’93 and Grant ’91 Gund and their parents, Lulie and Gordon.
2003
Steve Rubenstein ’61 and his wife, Beverly, announce a landmark gift of $15 million in support that will result in the first named school or college at UVM, the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.
2004
Celebrating the 200th commencement in the university’s history, the graduation ceremony returns to the green.
2007
The university dedicates the Dudley H. Davis Center and celebrates the successful conclusion of the $250 million Campaign for the University of Vermont, among the key achievements of Daniel Mark Fogel’s presidency.
2013
The administrative headquarters for the College of Arts & Sciences, 438 College Street, is named Lattie F. Coor House. The designation honors a revered UVM president, who served the university from 1976 to 1989.
2015
UVM sets its sights on the future with groundbreaking on a state-of-theart STEM Complex for teaching and research. President Tom Sullivan announces a $500 million goal for Move Mountains: The Campaign for the University of Vermont; the campaign launch includes news of a $20 million gift from Steven Grossman ’61 and the renaming of the School of Business in his honor.
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UVM PEOPLE Ivy Frignoca ’83 by Stephanie Bouchard photograph by Kevin Morris
LAKE CHAMPLAIN
Even before her years at UVM, Ivy Frignoca fell in love with Lake Champlain on family visits to Vermont. Home to some of the oldest fossilized coral in the world, witness to a revolution, the long northern lake’s intrigues run deep. Frignoca would begin her undergraduate studies at UVM as a child psychology major, but environmental studies pulled at her. Until she was exposed to the option at UVM, she hadn’t realized she could make a career out of her passion for water. In her sophomore year, she switched majors, self-designing a major in environmental studies. It was a decision that shaped the rest of her life. “The goal of my major,” she says, “was to be the conduit or the voice between all the technical data and information that scientists had and the public, so that through information and education, I could help protect the lake.” .
THE COURTROOM
After graduation, Frignoca would work as a park naturalist and then chief of conservation education for the State of Vermont. Nearing age thirty, she took a new direction to strengthen and broaden her skills as an environmental advocate—she enrolled at the University of Maine Law School. After graduation she didn’t dive right back into the natural resources field, though. Instead she took the advice of lawyers who did untraditional things with their law degrees: she practiced law as a trial lawyer first. “It was really phenomenal advice,” she says, because it taught her the skills of learning how to cope with very big conflicts and emotional situations and people; making sense of lots and lots of information; and finding creative solutions. All skills she needed to have to be the sort of water advocate she wanted to be. Over nearly two decades, she honed her skills as a trial lawyer, professionally returning to the natural resources field when she joined the Conservation Law Foundation in 2012 as a staff attorney.
CASCO BAY
Today, Frignoca is based in South Portland, Maine, and is the Friends of Casco Bay’s newly-named Baykeeper, a role that meshes perfectly with the goal she set out with her UVM major years ago. As the nonprofit’s Baykeeper, she advocates on behalf of Casco Bay, working to protect and restore its water quality, much as she did for Lake Champlain during her years in Vermont. As Baykeeper, she works with fishermen, businesses, government agencies, citizens, and other stakeholders to identify threats or potential threats to Casco Bay and to come up with and implement scientifically sound solutions that are also practical and effective. She is even working on projects that mirror some of the work she did on Lake Champlain. In her current role, one of the issues she is focused on is nitrogen loading in Casco Bay, which parallels her work with phosphorous loading in Lake Champlain. Unlike those early days, however, today Frignoca is in a position to shape the policies that impact the bodies of water she loves so much. “It’s such a wonderful full circle because everything that I studied or the things I worked on combined with all the policy work and legal review—it’s all coming together in this position,” she says. VQ SUMMER 2016 |
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HEAD + H EA RT
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photograph by ian thomas jansen-lonnquist ’09
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N I A S S O C I AT I O
KIDDER TEACHING AWARD 2016
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bob pepperman taylor the individuals and experiences that have
shaped Bob Pepperman Taylor as a teacher are many—his own college professors to fatherhood to being a lousy guitar player. But let’s begin with one that traces to the political science professor’s first days in the halls of Old Mill in 1986, a freshly minted PhD on a noguarantees, one-year appointment. New to town, Taylor and his wife, Fran, lived in an apartment in a St. Paul Street threestory that looked more likely to house students than faculty. The couple’s son, Aaron, was a baby; daughter, Rachel, was on the way. There was a lot to figure out. For the young faculty member many students would come to call “BPT,” one of them was just the basics of how one prioritizes this business of being a college professor. Taylor quickly found a role model in Professor Alan Wertheimer, a top-flight scholar and pioneering thinker on ethics, but also a highly dedicated teacher. “Al not only wanted to know about my research and wanted me to read his, but he also wanted to know about my teaching. To see somebody with the stature of Al working on his writing assignments, trying to figure out how to teach his text better was very influential,” Taylor says. “From the minute I got here, that was the standard set by the senior guy.”
by thomas weaver SUMMER 2016 |
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When Wertheimer had been in Taylor’s place, a young professor new to UVM in the late 1960s, that same standard was set by a senior guy named Raul Hilberg, internationally renowned scholar of the Holocaust. This legacy is alive and well in UVM’s Political Science Department. Humble and deferential, maybe even a little embarrassed by receiving both the Kidder Award and the University Scholar Award this year, Taylor seems more eager to talk about his colleagues than himself. He mentions the teaching skill in political theory of relative newcomer Alex Zakaras. He speaks to the longtime influence of close friend and colleague Patrick Neal—“Don’t talk at the students, talk with them. The classroom is a place for conversation and not just one-way lectures. Pat embodies that in the highest way.”
“
Professor Taylor sparked in me a curiosity that I couldn’t shake. I’d follow him to his office, arguing and asking questions. I’d email him in the middle of the night to explain a point I had not thought of in class, but that had startled me awake at four in the morning. I read books and wrote papers not because he required me to, but because for the first time I felt like I had ideas, my own ideas, and I wanted desperately to test them and get them down on paper.” KYLE BARRY ’04, J.D., DIRECTOR OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS, ALLIANCE FOR JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, D.C. “My family and I had moved to the States as refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina just one year prior to my enrolling in college. Bob (as he always insisted we call him) sensed my difficulty of fitting in and at the time seemed like the only person at UVM who understood where I was coming from. He was kind enough to open his own home to his students, inviting us for dinners with his family, and I remember many long conversations I’ve shared with him and his wife, Fran, about war, displacement, and all the pain and suffering that came out of that. He understood the challenges that I was facing without pity and judgment, and made sure that I knew there was a place for me at that campus when I truly felt I didn’t belong anywhere. What is even more remarkable, he urged me to write about my experiences, a path that eventually taught me to express my anger and disappointment with the world creatively. This exercise and lesson proved to be invaluable because they ultimately led me to the field of visual arts where I finally found my voice.” ˘ ´ ’02, ARTIST, NEW YORK, NEW YORK AIDA SEHOVIC
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Taylor works around to the integrity of the teacher-scholar model and the fact that it “isn’t propaganda, but is our aspiration” in the Political Science Department: “We should never forget that is our strength.”
a tuesday morning in spring semester,
students in Taylor’s “Nature & Democracy” class walk into 523 Old Mill and take seats around the large conference table. Arched windows along the west wall look out across the Green and Lake Champlain beyond. The professor takes account of who is yet to arrive as he stands near the doorway. He notes one student’s haircut—“I almost didn’t know who you were!”—and expresses hope that another, carrying baking pans, might have banana bread for the class. (No such luck, but the student seizes the opportunity to make a pitch for the Outing Club bake sale later in the day.) His manner and rapport bear out the words of ˘ ´ ’02, who wrote in support of alumna Aida Sehovic Taylor’s Kidder Award nomination: “Bob is one of the kindest, funniest, and most approachable people I have ever met. Not everyone has the unique ability to make others feel at ease and included, but Bob has truly mastered this skill.” A scholar of American political thought whose six books include a focus on the life and writings of Henry David Thoreau, the “Nature & Democracy” class is squarely in Taylor’s intellectual wheelhouse. Emerson, Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, Wendell Berry, Al Gore, and Bill McKibben are among the many on the syllabus. Sitting at the head of the table, Taylor is given to hand gestures and facial expressions, the quizzical to the comical. He ventures his own thoughts and poses questions. If no one raises a hand, he’ll look around the room: “Emma, what do you got?” Later, sitting down for an interview in his office, Taylor discusses his approach to teaching and how it has evolved through his career. “Early on I came to see how important it was to have the classroom be a safe environment,” he says. “It is a place where we’re free to explore things that you’re not really free to explore in other contexts. Classrooms are special places that way. You can toy with ideas. They might be unpopular or they might be appalling, but you have to think them through. “Teaching is a mysterious profession, because you don’t really know for sure what is going on all the time. Early in my career, I would give lectures that I thought were really effective then on exams
“
Marching around the lecture hall in a pair of green Dickies trousers and a tweed coat, Bob Taylor was the perfect teacher. Navigating from St. Augustine to Jean Bethke Elshtain, usually without notes, he was part philosopher, part performer. I found myself, for the first time, considering my place in the world relative to others. The political philosophy upon which my professional and political careers have been built originates in that room in Williams Hall.” TIM ASHE ’99, VERMONT STATE SENATOR BURLINGTON, VERMONT
or in papers it was clear that people hadn’t understood. I learned that I had to pay a lot of attention to students and kind of hope for the best.” Taylor pauses for a long time, then continues, “But, you know, in all honesty, I think there are two main things I’ve always felt to be key to doing my job. One is just to prepare. That just pays off, because you’ve got more sense of the possibilities in the class if you’ve done your homework. The other is that you have to like and care about your students. If anything, I’ve grown to like this age group of people more and more over the course of my career.” Taylor speculates that he’s become more interested in—and understanding of—this age group as he’s put some distance in age between himself and students and as he and his wife have raised their own two children. That empathy makes Taylor a valued advisor and a lifelong friend to many students. It was also among the traits that made him an ideal choice to be the founding dean of UVM’s Honors College. His four years of leadership helped to build a soulful underpinning for “The H-Coll” as a place that pushes students academically within a strong sense of community. But for all the Phi Beta Kappa members and national scholarship winners Taylor has helped to find their paths and thrive, he says some of his most memorable students are the ones who struggle. “I have a full appreciation for the complexity of being twenty years old,” he says. “There are times when students are irresponsible and when there is only so much I can do for them. I’m not their daddy. But all they need to do is reach out a little and I’m happy to reach back. The temptation is to reach only the ones who are fully engaged, but the more challenging work is to try to get to everybody. Sometimes I’m better at that, and sometimes I’m worse.”
“Professor Taylor has supported me and advised me through many of my scholastic adventures as well as the ups-and-downs of being a young adult. Without his guidance, I might still be trying to choose an undergraduate major or too nervous to pursue graduate studies. Instead, and to this very day, I have a Post-it that reads, ‘Good luck, kiddo! —BPT” on the wall near my desk. Although I may not remember the occasion, I am comforted knowing he is only a phone call away and remains ever ready with words of wisdom or simply to listen.” LAURA BALZER ’08, PHD, POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW IN THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOSTATISTICS AT THE HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
“It was not until studying with Professor Taylor that I discovered what I was truly capable of. He had very high standards and his classes were among the most difficult on my course load. But in addition to challenging me, he also communicated that he believed in me and cared about me as a person. This combination of intellectual rigor and genuine empathy was exactly what I needed.” KATE HUBBARD ’02, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION, E.L. HAYNES PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL, WASHINGTON, D.C.
As Taylor looks back on his own growth as a teacher through the years, he suggests that taking up the guitar for several years was one of the best things he’s ever done for his teaching. “I worked on something I wasn’t particularly good at. It was humbling. It made me appreciate people that I teach for whom the things that I teach are not easy,” he says. “And that made me really think about how to talk with people and deal with people for which this stuff is not their natural way of thinking.” Taylor pauses, and with a look of resignation says, “I’m just not a good guitar player.” VQ SUMMER 2016 |
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| ALUMNI VOICE
Nobody can tell me I didn’t try anything I didn’t know what to do to get over you I tried magic and potions but I could not shake you loose From my dreams, strange as it seems It’s like you never left at all I guess I just can’t forget you It’s like you never left at all Somethin’ inside me just won’t let you go Dave Mason (“It’s Like You Never Left,” 1973)
It’s Like You Never Left BY | ANDREA MARTONE ’76 PHOTOGRAPH | AMANDA WAITE ’ 02 G’04
Andrea Mastrocinque-Martone is on the Class of ’76 40th Reunion Committee and a self-proclaimed UVM Reunion “junkie” who has attended every reunion since graduation.
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Anyone remembering the
lyrics of this nostalgic song will agree that no magic and potions can shake loose our memories of our UVM days. True, people grow, people change. Yet there is an innate sense of self that is always there which college reunions—especially the milestones—can bring out in us in ways that years of therapy cannot. Our UVM class reunions are small slices out of time, unattached to reality, not dependent on anything but goodwill, a sea of smiles, and belly laughs. For alumni of my vintage, this is all peppered with ’70s music that instantaneously catapults us
back into a time warp to the dorms at Harris/Millis, the Shoeboxes (RIP), Redstone, Jeanne Mance, or the Living Learning Center. But perhaps more important, class reunions are a celebration of “us” and of the friendships that we began as teens and have endured, rekindled, and how these friendships impacted our lives, then—and now—and will always be cherished. Delving deeper into our psyches, what do you think is the real reason we go back to our college reunions, especially the milestones? One reason is this: Reflecting back to
REUNION | SEPTEMBER 23-25, 2016
our younger selves, our college days were where we began to shape the adults we were to become for the rest of our lives. It was a herculean task confronted by a bunch of complete adolescent amateurs. Stay with me on this thought, I think you’ll get it. It wasn’t just the college life stage of adolescence that had profound consequences for our soon–to–be adult lives, but it was the interactions of this developmental transition in which the memories of “our college days” took shape in our minds. Meaning? UVM was a formative life experience—as much social as it was academic—in which we encountered a clash of potential identities, one of which we would choose to stay with us for years to come. A second thought: Our return to our Green Mountain roots is fueled by a kind of cosmic curiosity, because no other event or opportunity in our lives can show us how “seasoned” we’ve grown or how wise we’ve become. The reunions give us the opportunity to mingle for a few hours with those who started out with us on the journey, only to return as equals, as adults. With graying, thinning (or gasp!….balding) hair and thickened middles, we look deeply into the eyes of our old college buddies, and we are pleased to see that their love for us reflects the person we used to be, the person we always wanted to be, and the person we are today. Yet still the same. “You haven’t changed a bit!” we all seem to say, and simultaneously LOL at the Big Fat Lie, acknowledging our dependency on prescription eyeglasses and noting small pouches puckering at the edges of our mouths. We chat endlessly of the challenges we faced as parents and the joys of becoming grandparents. We speak of divorces, careers, retirements—even deaths—all the while sharing magic and communion in having been young together at UVM. A third thought: dreams came easily then, as the future lay before us. There was intimacy in those days that cannot be duplicated in the present, as these are the peers who—at one place in time over four
short years at UVM—knew our shoe size, favorite cafeteria meal, college romances and “firsts,” favorite eight-track, ski slope, and our deepest and darkest secrets. Weekdays were for serious studying (well, sort of), and weekends for frat, sorority or dorm parties—not trimming hedges, schlepping kids to soccer games, contributing to 401Ks, or scheduling colonoscopies and knee replacements. In our UVM days, we not only had hours to spend talking to our friends, but hours of things to say to them. Decades later, we stand before one another racking our minds to remember where did everyone go after graduation? Who did they become? Who did they marry? Who became successful, entrepreneurial, amassed a fortune in the dot.com era, or was smart enough to invest in “weirdnamed” start-up companies like Microsoft, Google, Twitter, or Facebook? We wonder who achieved their true potential. Which leads to the most crucial reunion question: Have we? In my mind, the real revelation is that we are not so gravely concerned with what our classmates think of what we’ve done with our lives, as much as what we think of how we view ourselves. Are we happy with the choices we made in our lives since we graduated UVM? Did we have the vision in those days to choose the right career? Had enough life adventures? Did we take too many wrong turns, too many foolish risks, and waste precious time? Did we pursue our passions, live a purpose-filled life? Live where we wanted with someone we wanted to be with? And what if it’s all still out there, still waiting to be had even decades after graduation? That idea—not what we look like at a reunion, wear, did or didn’t do, or what other people think of us—is the most gut-wrenching and exciting facet of our reunion thinking. The radical thought might push us to think outside of our daily routines, into the exhilarating and (for some) discomforting realization that
our lives are not yet done and we can still transform ourselves, blossom, and still grow just like we did during our college days at UVM. And OMG (our kids would be shocked at the notion), that we are still developing human beings—even nearing our milestone reunions and birthdays. Yes. Still capable of surprising somebody. Maybe even ourselves. So it’s been how many years since you returned to your alma mater for a reunion… or not? The novelist George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) had it right way back in the nineteenth century when she wrote, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” We can, after all, take a sharp turn off the straight road some of us may have been driving on all our lives, hit the throttle on our hybrids and head up Route 89 for Vermont. Turn on Pandora or Sirius full blast and tune into the ’70s channel to get in that groovy kind of mind set. Guaranteed the Marshall Tucker Band’s hit “Take the Highway” will be playing. “Take the highway Lord knows I’ve been gone too long Lot of good days, yeah Hear me say... I’ll be back someday Memories of your love still linger on” Let’s take a wild guess and say it is followed by Wild Cherry’s ’76 hit “Play that Funky Music.” Then, appropriate for an autumn reunion in Vermont, Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” And then back to where we began these thoughts, Dave Mason sings “It’s Like You Never Left” as you come over that rise on the highway and once again see Burlington, the lake, the Adirondacks spread out before you. Approaching our fall 2016 reunions, I can tell you I know two things with absolute certainty. That funky music still tells our story, and Dave was right: It’s like we VQ never left. SUMMER 2016 |
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CLASS NOTES Life beyond graduation
Samantha Berthelette ’15 has been accepted into Florida State University’s doctorate program in philosophy.
My professors from UVM have been “ extraordinarily helpful and supportive… I absolutely could not have done it without them.” —Class of ’15
Jon Kilik ’78, a leading film producer who has collaborated with directors from Spike Lee to Robert Altman and, most recently, produced The Hunger Games series, opened his art-filled West Village home in New York City for an event with alumni, President Tom Sullivan and his wife, Leslie (Class of ’77), and Dean William Falls, College of Arts and Sciences. Kilik told those gathered about the influence of Professor Frank Manchel and how meeting film industry professionals delivering guest talks in his classes inspired him. In turn, that has inspired Kilik to return to UVM nearly annually to meet with today’s students. He encouraged his fellow alumni to support the university in the particular ways that resonate with their own experiences.
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Green & Gold Reunion September 23–25, 2016
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
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SALLY MCCAY
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I received a surprise note from our classmate, Dorothy “Dot” Franklin Cole, who lives in Shelburne, Vermont. I have not seen her in many years, but I remember her well. Her note brought back a rush of memories of UVM. I must comment on Dot’s beautiful penmanship. You do not see that anymore. I am ashamed to admit that mine has deteriorated. Thank you, Dot, for your kind comments. I also heard recently from my faithful contributor, Daan Zwick. His communication was captioned “The Disappearance of the Class of 1943”. He always had a way with words. He wondered if any of us were left. You better all email or write soon, so he gets a different impression. Daan’s wife, Janis, is severely ill. I am sure he would love to hear from some of you as well. I had a phone call from Mary Beth Bloomer who lives in Rutland and was calling to remind me of a memoirs class we attended together along with Art Wolk ’41. Also heard from Patty Pike Hallock who sent me some chocolates after one of my recent mishaps. UVM friends are loyal! I just know some of you will surprise me for the fall issue and put Daan’s worries to rest. Send your news to— June Hoffman Dorion Maples, Apt.114, 3 General Wing Road Rutland, VT 05701 junedorion@gmail.com
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Helen “Ells” Higgins, 93, died peacefully on January 25, 2016. Originally from Essex Junction, Vermont, she graduated with a degree in mathematics. After graduation, she moved to Hartford, Connecticut, and worked for Hamilton Standard. She met and married Brendan Higgins. They had four sons and two daughters and eventually settled in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. She taught mathematics until she was 73 years old. As we mentioned in the last issue, Kathleen J. Keenan ’71 has published a book of her mother’s writings, What God Has Done with Me: The Faith of Ione Lacy Keenan. This book, along with On Tuesdays We Iron: Memoirs of Ione Lacy Keenan, is available on Amazon.com. Coming this fall, 25,000 Miles in Vermont: The Walking Diary of Dr. Edward A. Keenan, Jr. ‘42 MD ‘44. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
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Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
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Send your news to— Mrs. Harriet Bristol Saville 468 Church Road, #118 Colchester, VT 05446 hattiesaville@comcast.net
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Send your news to— Louise Jordan Harper 15 Ward Avenue South Deerfield, MA 01373 louisejordanharper@gmail.com
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UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes Send your news to— Gladys Clark Severance 2179 Roosevelt Highway Colchester, VT 05446 severance@bsad.uvm.edu
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Willard Robertson, 88, passed away on February 18, 2016, at his home at Fillmore Pond, Bennington, Vermont. A native of Greenwich, Connecticut, “Will” was a longtime resident of Peru, Vermont. He was a graduate of Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine. Will was a Phi Delta Theta and was a Kake Walk director in 1950. It was at UVM where Will met his future wife, Mary Jean Henderson Robertson ’49. After their marriage in 1950, they moved to Michigan, lived in the Detroit area and Grand Rapids, where they brought up their three sons. They returned to Vermont in 1977 and settled in Peru, where they renovated and expanded Will’s father’s summer home. There they hosted family members and friends from around the country and pursued their interests in travel and antiques and collectables, until Mary’s passing in 2007. In 2011, Willard became a resident in the assisted living community at Fillmore Pond in Bennington. Mary Curtis Lucas ’52 shared that Jay A. Curtis, died on November 29, 2012 in San Diego, California. He was 87 years old and spent his career as a mechanical engineer for GE in California and South America. He served in World War II as a paratrooper. Usually, as your class secretary, I don’t write about myself. But I have to tell you this: those of you who remember me from our time together at UVM may know that I was born in Vienna and that my father, Richard Stoehr, was Jewish. He was a composer, who lived from 1874-1967. He also taught at the Academy of Music in Vienna for nearly 40 years until he was immediately dismissed when Hitler came to power. He was able to get a teaching position at Curtis Institute in Philadelphia for two years and later at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. Professor Dennis Mahoney, acting chair of the German and Russian Department, arranged for the Harry Kahn Memorial lecture to feature not only a lecture, but also a concert of music for cello and piano composed by my father. You probably remember Professor Kahn, who taught in the German and Russian Department from 1948 until his retirement in 1977. The event, “The Life and Music of Richard Stoehr” was held at the beautiful UVM Recital Hall. Here is a website you may want to look at: richardstoehr.com. Send your news to— Hedi Stoehr Ballantyne
UVM ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
GREEN
&
GOLD
Connecting alumni ages 60+ alumni.uvm.edu/ getinvolved/affinity
20 Kent Street, Montpelier, VT 05602 hedi.ballantyne@gmail.com
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Jean Farr Semonite and Bill Semonite ‘50 now live in Mebane, North Carolina. Bill is in an assisted living facility near their home and their daughter, son-in-law, and grandson live nearby. Jean and Bill also see their son, Todd Semonite ’88, and his wife who live at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Todd returned recently from a year tour in Afghanistan. Jean traveled extensively in 2015 to visit family in Virginia, Maine, Long Island, New York, and several other places in North Carolina. Jean Shufeldt Creighton has lived in the same home in New York, near Schenectady for fifty years. She has adult daughters living near her and six grandchildren. Jean loves to travel and most recently went to the British Isles. Dick Fink wrote in his creative Florida-scene Christmas card that he fell on the tennis court last summer and had to have rotator cuff surgery. After physical therapy three times a week we hope he is doing well now and is back playing tennis. Donald Guidoboni’s wife wrote from Plymouth, Massachusetts, that Don passed away at the age of 89 on Veteran’s Day 2015. She also said, “He loved his association with UVM all these years.” Bernard Harold Shapiro shared the death of his brother, Robert L. Shapiro MD’44, in April, 2016 at the age of 92. He was a resident of Whitefish, Montana after a long career in the San Francisco area. He was also a retired colonel in the U.S. Army. Ada Hyzer Ruesch moved from New Jersey to Rivers Edge, a CCRC, in Exeter, New Hampshire in 2013. It is the place where Beth Lohr McCarthy, Harry McCarthy, Dick Alpin, and his wife also live. “We could almost have a class reunion there,” Ada writes. Ada has a daughter and two siblings living in that area as well. Ada’s other daughter, Jessica, graduated from the UVM Medical School in May of 2015. Wonder where she is doing her residency? Patricia Haslam shared the sad news that her husband, Peter Haslam, passed away on April 24, 2016 from esophageal cancer. I am also sorry to report that Kathryn Tampas, wife of John Tampas for 54 years, died on March 11, 2016. The Burlington Free Press wrote, “Kathy Tampas’s star graced many stages but shone brightSUMMER 2016 |
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| CLASS NOTES est as a devoted wife to Dr. John P Tampas and mother of their four children.” Remember the wonderful Reunion reception Kathy and John had for us at their lovely home where the Winooski River opens into Lake Champlain? We appreciate John having served as our class president all these many years, too. Send your news to— Valerie Meyer Chamberlain 52 Crabapple Drive, Shelburne, VT 05482 valchamber@aol.com
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Jane Wilson Durie sailed on a duplicate bridge cruise at the end of May. It was round trip from San Francisco to all the Hawaiian Islands. She is enjoying living in a retirement community near one of her daughters and three grandchildren: Spencer (10), and twins, Ella and Shane, (13). She can take BART into San Francisco to UVM alumni parties. She sees Bunny Fiztsimmons Smith ‘54 and Nancy Hoyt Burnett ’53, every year for lunch in Palo Alto. Unfortunately, their other lunch companion for 50 years, Jean Hawley Navarro ‘54 died last year. Martha Riddell Murphey ‘54, visited Jane from Virginia last year. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
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This class note from Marion Heins Crane arrived in my mailbox the day before our news deadline! Marion spends time in Vermont and in Clearwater, Florida, and is still active in judging flower shows in both states. She reports that the Rutland Garden Club staged a beautiful flower show in Proctor, Vermont. She sees her brother John Heins ’52 quite often, as he lives near her. Joseph R. Noonan loved his life as an entrepreneur building a media consulting business with his soul-mate/life-partner of 60 years, Jeanne Aronson, and being the proud, loving dad to their daughter, Karen J. Noonan ’79. Joe studied electrical engineering at UVM and DeVry University. He became an accomplished professional photographer, inventor, writer and documentarist; he was the sole-creator of the award winning A Blueprint for the Past: The Razing and Replication of the Historic Pavilion Hotel in Montpelier, VT. A multitude of Joe’s articles, photographs, and magazine covers have been published nationally and internationally in Vermont Life Magazine, Encyclopedia Britannica, Popular Science Magazine, Popular Mechanics Magazine, Popular Photography Magazine and more. Joe and his family savored many adventures while sailing their yacht, META, and when they traveled extensively by land throughout Europe. Sadly, in midNovember 2015 our Joe transitioned to another world of exploration. His inimitable spirit and wit will be forever and profoundly ingrained in the psyches of each of us who knew him and loved him. If you wish to write, we would enjoy hearing from you: Jeanne Aronson Noonan at metajjk@gmail.com and Karen J. Noonan at kron33@
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gmail.com. Charles Zabriskie, Jr. sends amazing ROTC news from his home in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts. He and his wife, Star, were honored to receive, in May, 2015, the prestigious award from the United States Army Cadet Command for outstanding support of UVM’s ROTC program for 2014-15. In February of this year the ROTC program was ranked #1 among all colleges in the Northeast and was ranked #8 nationally. He says, “Simply put, some of the successes that I enjoyed throughout these many years can be traced to the leadership training I gained at UVM through my experiences in ROTC and later on active duty in the army.” Over the years, Charles has spent time in commercial and investment banking, was president of a Boston banking organization, and later managed a national recruiting firm. He and Star have two grown sons. He is looking forward to UVM Alumni Weekend in October and visiting with classmates. Jean Hakanson Hawes reports, “John and I are moving to independent living at a retirement community in Morganton, North Carolina. We will be much closer to our children and grandchildren and look forward to a new adventure.” Sonia Fuller shared the sad news that Bulen passed away on March 23, 2013 in California. Mary Eleanor “Ellie” Clark Laing writes, “UVM prepared both Bob Laing ’52 and me for a very complete life. We both obtained advanced degrees at UMass—Bob, a master’s in school administration and I obtained an MBA. Both retired from the State of Massachusetts, have enjoyed travel in Europe, the Bahamian Islands, U.S. and winters after retirement in Naples, Florida. Our family has kept us busy, as well.” Soon I, your secretary, will have a new iMac computer and an updated e-mail address. Meanwhile, please send your notes for ’53 class news to me via snail mail. Send your news to— Nancy Hoyt Burnett 729 Stendhal Lane, Cupertino, CA 95014
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Tom Gage writes, “It is with sadness that I report the passing of my wife of nearly 62 years, Betsy, on January 22, 2016. Although she was not a graduate of UVM she attended four Kake Walks with me during my years there. We have spent most of the past 20 years on the New Jersey shore in Bay Head although we still have a home in Ridgewood. We have two grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. I am also saddened to read of the passing of Ozzie Osmun and Jane Martin Thomson, two wonderful classmates. I would love to hear from my classmates by phone at 908-330-5368.” Blanche “Bunny” Fitzsimons Smith had a visit from Jane Wilson Durie ‘52 who was attending a Theta gathering at nearby Stanford. Jane had hosted a dinner in her home across the bay when Martha Riddell Murphy came to San Francisco with her daughter and family. Bunny comments that all three UVM Thetas are active and find themselves amazed to be in the octogenarian demographic but buy into the popular phrase that 80 is the new 60. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
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Raymond Walter McNamara shared, “My wife, Mary, and I have enjoyed living for the last 45 years in our beautiful home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where I retired in 1999 after 28 years in the nuclear power industry. Prior to that we lived in Sacramento, California, where I worked as a structural design engineer for ten years in the hydroelectric power industry. We are celebrating our 55th wedding anniversary this year. My daughter, Jane, lives nearby, and my son, John, lives in Florida. I enjoy playing golf, gardening, socializing, and reading with my book club. It’s been a wonderful life.” Marlene Goodenough Carr writes, “I am enjoying living in a warm climate with lots to do and many friends. My interests are lots of music, church choir, president of Lovers of Music club which buses people to symphony concerts, community concert board, water aerobics, strength training and golf. Come for a visit!” Hal Greenfader writes, “Dick Actisgrande ‘53 came to California and spent the weekend with me in La La Land (Los Angeles). Gerard “Jerry” Allen Mullen got four articles published in Muzzle Blasts, the magazine of the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association last summer. His total published works would fill about a 1/4 inch of shelf space. He recently volunteered to serve on the town Conservation Commission just in time to get involved with a controversy over trapping in the town forest.” Jane Battles sends this news, “Val Kuebler Bardis now of Colorado Springs, Colorado, writes she lost her dear husband and best friend this past January after a lengthy fight for survival. She continues to live in Colorado Springs at 2235 Palm Drive, 80918. How about those Villanova Wildcats winning the NBA Championship—talk about excitement! That unbelievable final game. And who, of course, is right there during it all but our very own Rollie Massimino. To be there was indeed a thrill beyond words. Rollie had his whole national championship team from 1985 when he was coach of Villanova there for the game as well. What a treat! I’ll wait to hear from you. More anon.” 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
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Robert “Bob” Joseph Gauthier, his wife, Rita; son, Eric, and wife, Sandy; and daughter, Lisa, and husband, Tom, have recently purchased the T-Bird Motor Inn conveniently located on Route 7 in Shelburne, Vermont. The motel has 24 exceptionally clean and spacious ground-level rooms that feature parking at your front door. It has a seasonal pool
and picnic area. All rooms have Wi-Fi and 40-inch LED TVs. They invite all UVMers to inquire about special rates for upcoming reunions and special events at 1-800-335-5029 or 802-985-3663. Nancy McGoughran Blanchet writes, “I get a lot of happiness watching my children grow and take their place in the world but I must say that I get a like amount of pleasure having my annual visit with my Tri-Delt buddies each year! I look forward to seeing them all at our 60th Reunion in October!” Send your news to— Jane K. Stickney 32 Hickory Hill Road, Williston, VT 05495 stickneyjanek@gmail.com
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Helene Sarr Kamer shares, “My husband, Harvey Kamer, passed away in August. We were married 60 years. I will be a great-grandmother in July from my granddaughter in California.” Don Kidder writes, “I’ve been living at Whitehorse Village, a full service retirement community, for 11 years. My wife, Barbara, passed away in 2008. My apartment is just over a mile from our farm, now home to two daughters in their respective houses with eldest daughter and spouse living in the original 1700’s farmhouse on the property. I keep active with several corporate board memberships and farm related projects. I recently visited Peg ’56 and Charlie Maxson ’56 and Libby Michael ‘58.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
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Charles Pitman ‘58, MD’61, sadly reports that Myrna, his wife of 53 years, has recently passed away. Don Karp is a brother in one of two sets of brothers who are cousins and UVM graduates. You can see them in a photo taken at a family function on the Alumni Association’s Flickr gallery. Don writes, “Samuel J. ‘Skip’ Laufer ’65 is my first cousin, and he graduated in 1965. He is a surgeon and went to medical school in Tennessee. At UVM he was a member of the Sigma Nu Fraternity. I graduated from UVM and then from Cornell Law School in 1961. I practiced law in New Jersey and later became the chairman and CEO of Broad National Bank, in Newark, New Jersey. At UVM I was a member of the Phi Sigma Delta Fraternity. Adrian I. Karp ’54, my brother, graduated from UVM in 1954. He graduated from Georgetown Law School in 1959 and practiced law until retirement in New Jersey. He was an honored trial lawyer. At UVM he was also a member of the Phi Sigma Delta Fraternity. William M. Laufer ’70, my first cousin and Skip’s younger brother, graduated from UVM before graduating from law school. He is also a member of the New Jersey Bar and is still a practicing senior member of a law firm in Morristown, New Jersey, where he has also been in public service.” Robert H. Tafrate, M.D., age 79, of Cape Coral, Florida, formerly of Schenectady, New York, passed away on October 9, 2015 after a courageous battle with cancer. Dr. Tafrate was a
graduate of Harrison High School, class of 1954; The University of Vermont; and Bologna University in Italy, class of 1965. He did his internship at Grasslands Hospital (Westchester Medical Center) in Valhalla, New York, his residency at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, and a pulmonary fellowship at Ohio State University Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He also served in the United States Army. Bob worked as a pulmonologist in Schenectady, New York, for his entire career. He was the chief of respiratory diseases at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady, New York, from 1972-2001. Marcella Webbe Elliot writes, “My final move is to Myrtle Beach, and we love it here. I’d welcome any fellow UVMers in the area.” Carol Conner Frei shares, “Rudy and I had a very nice visit from Joan Cook who was doing alumni work in South Florida. It was great to hear about all the additions to the campus. We have a grandson at UVM in his second year and hope to visit before too long. We went to Holland to see the tulips, followed by a river cruise to Basel, Switzerland where we lived for two years.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
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Send your news to— Henry Shaw, Jr. 112 Pebble Creek Road Columbia, SC 29223 hshaw@sc.rr.com
Green Living At Wake Robin, residents have designed and built over four miles of walking trails. Each Spring, they make maple syrup in the community sugar house, and each Fall they harvest honey from our beehives. Residents compost, plant gardens, use locally grown foods, and work with staff to follow earth-friendly practices. Live the life you choose—in a vibrant lifecare community. 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
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
| CLASS NOTES
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Howard Busloff writes that he is living well, splitting time between New York City and Florida. Grant L. Corson ’61 writes, “I am happy to announce the near completion of the restoration of my 1910 power dory. The boat was originally powered by a hit-and-miss gas engine but the restored boat will be driven by an electric motor. Much quieter. My wife, Mutsumi Corson (director of the Japanese Language Program at UVM), and I are looking forward to exploring the many small lakes and rivers that abound in our fair state in the new boat.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
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Louise Weiner reports she shared a delicious dinner with Susan and Shelly Lipsett who spent the month of March in Naples. It seems that retirees are as busy as when we were working, albeit now enjoying the grandchildren, traveling, playing bridge and volunteering! Life is good! Louise, our class president, also says, “Listen up, Class of ‘61. Another milestone is upon us, our 55th Reunion! Please think about returning to campus September 23-25 to celebrate a casual and purely social weekend together. Get some friends to meet you there and we’ll all have a wonderful time reminiscing about the good ole days and the remarkable changes on campus. It will be a trip down memory lane.” Kudos to Steve Grossman for the accolades given to UVM’s Grossman School of Business! Caroline Braun Leone says: “Nothing new, children and grandchildren are healthy. Oldest one graduates from high school this year (not sure how she became old enough!) Andy and I are enjoying family and retirement; economy must be a little better because book business was better than the year before and this year looks like it is going to surpass last year; mild winter, yea! Unusually warm spring, not good for my flowers, otherwise, life is good.” Jan Mashman emailed: “I will be retiring from the practice of neurology this year and Susan and I will be moving to Charleston, South Carolina. We have had a beach house on Dewees Island, South Carolina, near Charleston, for the last 12 years and have come to the conclusion that this is a wonderful city to live in. After living in Ridgefield, Connecticut, for 46 years we are leaving with some sadness and trepidation at the loss of many ties.” Jim Rogers writes, “In January we took a great trip to Sedona, Arizona, with four UVM graduates: myself, my wife, Connie Anderson Rogers ’63, and our friends John F. Dick MD ’67, and his wife, Katherine Brush Dick ’67. We hiked for a week in the spectacular red rocks and visited five national monuments: Montezuma’s Castle, Montezuma’s Well, Tuzigoot, Walnut Canyon, and Sunset Crater; plus, we visited the V Bar V Ranch and the Meteor Crater. It was cool and the snow in the Flagstaff area at 6000’ looked like frosting on the layers of Walnut Canyon. Jerome, a mining ghost town,
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was also a highlight. We sound like travel guides!” Karen Kellers Marino Donovan says: “While in Naples, Florida, this winter I reconnected with Jane Umpa Kerr and we really enjoyed catching up and plan to get together again. We both wondered if each other had heard from Penny Fienemann Cox, Sally Hale Ashworth, Judy Enright Daly or Ginny Worstell Duffy. We would love updates from all of them. 55 years! Where did they go? Seemed like yesterday when Jane and I reconnected after 40 years.” John Cruickshank writes, “We came back to Vermont after living in California for over 40 years, bought the local weekly newspaper in my hometown (Northfield, Vermont) and am still hard at work. I guess I’ll never retire as last October, I published my first novel, Jason’s Ladder about the life and loves of a young San Francisco lawyer beginning his career in the late 1950’s in that spectacular city. Presently, I’m working on another novel set in 1950’s Vermont to be entitled For Sale, A Piece of God’s Country which should be out later this year.” And from Roger Zimmerman, “This past winter was my 30th year of backcountry ski guiding in Yellowstone National Park. This summer my wife, Lynne, and I will be leading a trip to Glacier National Park. Lynne leads it and takes me along to provide the Grizzlies with a meal. Daughter Heather is studying in London at the School for Asian and African Studies. She has been living and working in different countries – India and Uganda. I’m still working, but have cut way, way back, especially in the winter. If I make it to the 55th in September, I’ll ride over on my bike, which will be way faster than running.” Joe Furgal reported, “I became bored with my retirement from Berkshire Life (since 2002) and decided to take a real estate course to see if I’d like it. It’s sales and I’ve been in sales one way or another all my life. The end result is I have my license and at age 77, I’m enjoying it, but am busier than I anticipated. Four granddaughters, ages 4-13, also keep me busy traveling to soccer and basketball games. They’re great students and super athletes, taking after their mother. I did lose my wife, Audie Scofield Furgal ’65, to lung cancer in January of 2012, but life goes on.” Send your news to— Steve Berry 8 Oakmount Circle, Lexington, MA 02420 steveberrydhs@gmail.com
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This winter, Jules Older was the San Francisco Chronicle’s Slope Dope, which means their ski and snow sports blogger. His posts appear on SFGate.com. Michael Lawrence Adess retired in 2010 after 30 years as a public health service scientist officer detailed to the U.S. Coast Guard in New York and Washington, D.C. He writes, “I’ve been married for 38 years to Susan and we have two daughters; Lea is a teacher of deaf and blind children in West Palm Beach, Florida, with two daughters, Emily (2 ½) and Julia (4 ½) and is married to Elon. Our younger daughter, Shana, is a lawyer in Brooklyn, New York. I had a marvelous time, academic and social, at UVM, and would very much like to hear from the
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MENTAL PROGRAM REUNION
September 23–25, 2016
Gather with classmates and faculty who participated in the 60s and 70s.
alumni.uvm.edu/ experimental
wonderful friends I made there.” Forrest “Woody” Manning is still living in Middlebury, Vermont. He is a survivor of kidney cancer and everything is fine now. He is retired, though he is very busy doing substitute teaching in the Middlebury High School, usually for history class, but he also does wood-working, Latin, science, English and math. He is having a blast at his age! After reading about the old freshmen dorms being demolished, he thought about starting college in ‘58 and remembered the beanies we wore for a week! He recalls the class walk and other old traditions that are long gone and what good times we had back then. He would love to get in touch with classmates and members of his fraternity, Phi Mu Delta. His email address is: fcgmvt@sover.net. Send your news to— Patricia Hoskiewicz Allen 14 Stony Brook Drive, Rexford, NY 12148 traileka@aol.com
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Dear classmates, we received several responses to our recent class notes regarding the loss of some of our members. For example, Charity Greenwood Henderson, had a deluge of memories after reading of the loss of Elaine Stauber, who was fun, funny and a great friend. Charity wrote that our time is short and we should not waste a moment as each day is a gift. Although she wasn’t able to make our 50th Reunion, she’s looking forward to our next one. In the meantime, Charity wrote that she and her husband, Doug, spent time on the Cape with Pat Bishop McKean ‘62 and her husband, Gordon. Charity said that time stands still when they are together, it’s like it was only yesterday that they were at UVM. As Charity mentions, we all have friends that engender the same feelings. Ann Maynes Gladding also noted the sad news about our friends and classmates passing. She too stated that we often lose touch and that its time to reconnect. She and Tony Russo and Bob Pasco were good friends that she lost track of after their twenties and would like to reconnect with Bob. Ann moved to Santa Rosa, California, a year ago after living in Tuxedo Park, New York, for 35 years. She’s enjoying the active, outdoor lifestyle, hiking in the mountains and along the coast;
skiing four hours away and all the great amenities of San Francisco, as well as the great wine! Ann would like to be in touch with Bob Pasco, and I’m sure many of us would like to have up-to-date contact information for other class mates. The Alumni Association Office is the best place for contacts as I don’t always have the information. Email them at alumni@uvm.edu. Best wishes, from Colorado ski country where I am spending time with my daughter, Kelly, and her husband, Chris, before heading back to New Jersey to continue my new life as a competitive ballroom dancer! Send your news to— Toni Citarella Mullins 210 Conover Lane, Red Bank, NJ 07701 tonicmullins@verizon.net
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Darrell Simino shares, “My wife, Betty, and I continue to stay busy in our retirement life, going to the Y regularly, trying to keep the body in motion. Betty is a volunteer case reviewer for the Department of Children and Families and I just finished my stint preparing taxes for seniors and lower-income taxpayers (my seventh year). Both are very rewarding experiences that benefit others. We also volunteer at the Boston Marathon: one day in Boston, handing out bibs to runners; and a second day in Hopkinton, working in the corrals. What an exciting day! This is our 11th year at this job. We also are quite active supporting/attending activities for our four grandchildren (ages 4-11). Robert A. Silverstein tells us, I have not “gotten a promotion, won an award, started a business, gotten married or had a child. However, in lieu of those enriching experiences, in May, July, and December 2015 I took a few planes and went to Kohima, the capital of Nagaland. I know that this will bore most of you, but here are the reasons I went. There are almost no American or other tourists, no golf courses, pools, skyscrapers, New York pols, movie houses, or interstates. There are: potholes with a bit of road mixed in, a rather pathetic monsoon season, some beautiful scenery, an insurgency movement, a parallel independence movement (of which I’ve joined in, until India voids my visa; for a brilliant analysis of the movement, see The Morung Express, 5 April 2016, by a non-Naga with a name identical to mine), a few friends (until they read the article), and a charming Baskin Robbins and KFC in nearby Dimapur, connected to Kohima by one of the worst roads in India. There also is the added delight of the state being Christian (thanks to a few blessed American missionaries back in the 19th c. who decided to save the souls of the Nagas by convincing them to bury their primitive animism for the sophistication of Christianity) and the population speaking English (thanks to the same blessed Americans). There is also the usual corruption that is endemic in India, but a refreshing change from New York because in Nagaland the corrupt pols there get re-elected, not sent to prison. But enough about me, what about you? Do you play golf?” Ruth Anne Barrows Woodruff writes, “Where to begin after all these years? Fifty-two years since graduating from the school
MED PHOTO
A Champion for Primary Care
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n 2000, Dr. Ruth Seeler endowed a scholarship at UVM to help students meet the cost of their medical education. The scholarship is awarded annually to a third- or fourth-year student specializing in primary care. To ensure that the fund meets that need into the future, Dr. Seeler has committed $2 million in her estate plan to be added to the Ruth Andrea Seeler M.D.’62 Scholarship in the UVM College of Medicine. To date, 18 students have been awarded some $145,000 from the fund. The college estimates the bequest will enable it to increase scholarship awards to primary care students by approximately $90,000 annually. “There is a dearth of primary care physicians. We have a desperate need for them, but students are drawn to traditionally higher paying specialties, particularly in view of the need to pay off their student loans,” Seeler says. “I want to help reduce the debt burden for students who want to specialize in primary care so they can afford to do so.” Dr. Ruth Seeler earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont in 1958 and her M.D. from
UVM’s College of Medicine in 1962, the only woman in her graduating class. A very engaged alumna, she was president of the UVM Medical Alumni Association Executive Committee from 2008 to 2010, was presented the Service to Medicine and Community Award in 1998 and the A. Bradley Soule Award, the highest UVM medical alumni honor, in 2007. She is currently a member of the UVM Foundation’s Leadership Council, providing leadership to grow philanthropy for UVM and the College of Medicine Frederick Morin, dean of the College of Medicine, says “This very generous bequest from Dr. Seeler can make a career in primary care a real option for students who might otherwise be focused on paying off student loans. This is very focused and meaningful philanthropy.” Dr. Seeler currently serves as emerita professor of pediatric hematology-oncology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago.
For information on including the University of Vermont in your estate plan, contact Donna Burke, Office of Gift Planning The University of Vermont Foundation 411 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401-3411 PHONE: 802-656-3402 FAX: 802-656-8678 E-MAIL: donna.burke@uvm.edu SUMMER 2016 |
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| CLASS NOTES of education and nursing. Did nursing for 12 years, then raised a family and did volunteer work for 12 years, then did graduate school in transpersonal psychology, and worked as a marriage and family therapist for 16 years. And, finally I accompanied my husband through his 10 years with Alzheimer’s from which he died two years ago. We shared a wonderful 42 years together. He left behind four daughters, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law, two grandsons, two granddaughters, a granddaughter-in-law and this past year two beautiful greatgrandsons were born into the family. I’m presently traveling and living in a Mercedes Sprinter van, heading for the East Coast. The only thing planned is spending August on Cape Cod. I would love to hear from anyone remembering me after so long, nursing class friends, roommates, and all others. Phone: 650-722-1221, email: woodruffjr@comcast.net.” Duane Barber ’63 and your class secretary attended two hockey games this season. One was UVM vs. Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, and the other UVM vs. Boston College at Chestnut Hill. Both were losses for UVM but a great attempt for the wins. It is always fun to see the green and gold performing. School pride after fifty years. I guess once a cheerleader always a cheerleader. Wishing you all the best for a great summer. When you get a chance, drop me a note with some news. Send yor news to— Susan Griesenbeck Barber 1 Oak Hill Road, P.O. Box 63 Harvard, MA 01451 suebarber@verizon.net
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Mark Ira Berson reports, “Ellen and I are out and about to see our six grandchildren in California, Michigan and Massachusetts. We look forward to their visits at our home on Cape Cod. All the best to my classmates. It was a joy to see you at our 50th. Long life to all.” Gerard John “Jerry” Smith writes, “A small gathering of the 1964/’65 brothers of Sigma Nu was hosted by Jerry and Gene Ellen Smith at their Bentwater home on Lake Conroe in Montgomery County, Texas. Richard Lawson, Mike Crane, Scott and Wendy Severance and Paul and Mary Hurley travelled from their various Florida, Maine, New York and Hilton Head, South Carolina residences to play ‘remember when’ and see if we still had the ‘right stuff’. The six days were filled with typical Texas activities to include golf, tennis, an RTV tour of Buena Vida Ranch, followed by qualifying with an AK-47, AR-15, and other assorted weaponry indigenous to the state; boating on Lake Conroe with a lunch stop at Wolfies for Mud Bugs (Google it); bocce on the pine straw; judicious hot tubbing; church at the Lone Star Cowboy Church (Google it); a private screening of the original, unedited movie Animal House; and repetitive sessions of eating and drinking. Previous gatherings have been hosted by Scott and Wendy Severance at their Lake George Camp; Paul and Mary Hurley at Trickey Pond, Maine; and Richard and Judith Lawson at their Rehoboth, Massachusetts, home. We are planning a late August
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gathering in 2017 when Mike Crane will host the fraternals at his family camp on Upper Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.” Send your news to— Colleen Denny Hertel 14 Graystone Circle, Winchester, MA 01890 colleenhertel@hotmail.com
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50th Reunion September 23–25, 2016
If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@uvm.edu. Barry Gordon shares, “After careers in law and business, my wife, Leslie, and I have retired to South Carolina to be near children and grandchildren. We are enjoying our newfound freedom. We look forward to seeing old friends at our 50th reunion.” Norman Coleman writes, “The ‘What was Kake Walk’ debate was enjoyed by Norm Coleman, Warren Kaplan, Larry Miller and Larry Roth ’67 following a series in the Vermont Cynic on “Racism at UVM” for which we were interviewed. Our follow-up opinion piece printed in the April 8 issue, with a longer version on-line, discussed the importance of context and described what was essentially a Winter Carnival. The university is considering future events to bring back alums and we felt that a better understanding of the past rather than painting it simply as ‘racist’ would be useful, particularly so in the current xenophobic era requiring both effective confrontation and also addressing issues of inequality that adversely impact many people and society. Would ‘What was Kake Walk: good and bad’ be an interesting colloquium for our 50th Reunion and for UVM?” Craig Watt retired after 34 years of practice in emergency medicine and occupational medicine in the Detroit area. He shares, “My wife, Christine, and I live in Richmond, Virginia, near three of our grandkids. Another grandson is in Edinburgh, Scotland, with our daughter and her husband. We travel when we can. Last time I was in Vermont was in 2009 when I attended a medical conference in Burlington. I saw many, many changes at UVM on that visit. I see an occasional Vermont license plate here in Virginia (the green is distinctive from 1/2 a mile away). Best wishes to all.” Plans are in place for our 50th Reunion, and we hope that you have had the opportunity to make your reservations for the grand September 23-25 event. Rooms are still available in the Burlington area, so at this point you will be able to find accommodations. We have some fun events in store, and we would love to share time with you. Please contact me or the UVM Alumni Association if you have questions. See you soon! Send your news to— Kathleen Nunan McGuckin 416 San Nicolas Way, St Augustine, FL 32080 kkmcguckin@prodigy.net
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Janice Moncsko Cassidy shares the sad passing of John J. “Jack” Cassidy on November 23, 2015 of cancer. John Capron was Jack’s classmate, roommate and best man. He tells us that Jack put up a cou-
rageous four-month battle with advanced gastroesophageal cancer. His loving family was by his side. Jack always made it a priority to stay in touch with his UVM classmates and Delta Psi brothers, arranging impromptu mini reunions from time to time. Howard Solomon writes, “In August 2015 I caught a 16-lb. bicuda in the Rio Sao Benedeto, in the Brazilian jungle. This was certified by the International Game Fish Association as a new all tackle world record.” Bill Meezan and Claudia Serwer were each elected to serve a three-year term on the UVM Foundation Board of Directors at the board’s spring meeting. Both have been longtime donors and volunteers and, most recently, active members of the UVM Foundation Leadership Council. Send your news to— Jane Kleinberg Carroll 44 Halsey Street, Apt. 3, Providence, RI 02906 jane.carroll@cox.net
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Paul E. Sackevich is enjoying volunteer work with the local Warming Shelter for the homeless, delivering Meals-on-Wheels, tax counseling with the VITA/ TCE program as well as doing some part-time work with a mentally-challenged young man. Life is good and he is always grateful for his time at ATO with his fraternity brothers. Send your news to— Diane Duley Glew 23 Franklin Street, 2 Wheeler Farm Westerly, RI 02891 ddglew@gmail.com
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James Betts MD’73 was elected to serve a three-year term on the UVM Foundation Board of Directors at the board’s spring meeting. Jim has been a longtime donor and volunteer and, most recently, an active member of the UVM Foundation Leadership Council. Send your news to— Mary Moninger-Elia 1 Templeton Street, West Haven, CT 06516 Melia1112@comcast.net
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Sherry Jones Peterson retired after 40 years in the non-profit field in Richmond, Virginia. She spent the last 17 years as the CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association Greater Richmond Chapter. She continues to be an Alzheimer’s Advocate, presently serving as an ambassador to one of Virginia’s senators. She and her husband, Bill, are looking forward to doing some traveling. Send your news to— Douglas Arnold 11608 Quail Village Way, Naples, FL 34119 darnold@arnold-co.com
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Jim Seder writes, “My daughter Zoe, has a master’s in special education and Spanish and is teaching in an elementary school. My eldest daughter, Brea, has an LCSW and both are working in Chicago. Both
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living with his wife, Anne. He writes, “My hobbies are reading, motorcycling, and working out. My UVM days seem like a million years ago, but would love to hear from any classmates who remember me and those very interesting times. Meadville is in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania and halfway between I90 and I80. For any old friends passing through, feel free to look me up.” Send your news to— Debbie Koslow Stern 198 Bluebird Drive, Colchester, VT 05446 debra.stern@uvm.edu
writes, “I have reached the ranks of the retired and my wife, Nancy Zeliff Leblanc, and I moved to the outer Cape Cod (Eastham) to begin enjoying retirement. We are 1/4 mile from the Cape Cod Rail Trail and less than a mile to great beaches. I started retirement earlier than Nancy who is finishing up her last year of teaching in central Massachusetts and will join me full time in June. Our family is growing with three grand-children and a fourth on the way. All three of our children live within a short day’s drive in the Boston area. When not working on fixing up our new home I am either biking or volunteering at the National Sea Mary Ann Leone shares the sad news Shore Salt Pond Visitors Center. If any UVMers are that her husband, Frederick W. down this way please stop in, it is a great source of Leone, Jr. passed away from scleroinfo on the National Sea Shore Park.” Kris Garnjost derma on December 27, 2013. reports, “Still happily living in beautiful little WindSend your news to— sor, Vermont in the bucolic Upper Valley. GraduDeborah Layne Mesce ating one from college and one from high school 2227 Observatory Place N.W. this spring. Enjoying working with kids on the Washington, DC 20007 slopes and at the American Precision Museum— dmesce@prb.org the beginnings of mass manufacturing. Come visit us!” Steve Rice shares that he and his wife, Anna, Joanne Artz shares, “For the first moved in January to their new home in Murrells time since graduating, one of my colInlet, South Carolina. “We are living in a 55-plus lege friends visited me in late April community near the ocean. We walk the beaches 2016! Sue Lewis Degener ’73, one of my dearest every day, and enjoy being outside,” Steve says. sisters in Gamma Phi Beta, spent a couple of days “After living in New York state for over 30 years, it in Evansville on her way home to Vermont from was time for a change, so we headed south.” Steve visiting family in the southwest. For nearly 40 years would love to hear from old classmates at swinI’ve been the one to travel to Vermont and drive ner123@aol.com. “The coffee is on, if you come around the state to visit sorority friends, so it was down this way,” he writes. Paul Kenny shares that wonderful to finally be able to share my southern he is opening a new luxury residential real estate Indiana surroundings with Sue!” Bruce Leblanc brokerage franchise as Engel & Volkers Sun Valley, Pillsbury_SouthOpenHouse_Sept_4.5x4.45.pdf 1 9/22/15 3:33 PM
MENTAL PROGRAM REUNION
September 23–25, 2016
Gather with classmates and faculty who participated in the 60s and 70s.
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alumni.uvm.edu/ experimental
better get married soon. My son Tal graduated from Wharton and has been working in private equity in London for several years and is opening up his own firm in Los Angeles (loves to surf.) It helps to have an intelligent wife.” Joyce Thornton writes, it is with sadness that I tell you of the passing of John Blais on September 26, 2014. He was in the class of ‘71 with his twin brother, Jeff Blais, who lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Robert W. Davis writes that Mike Towner’s wife, Jan, sent him an email with the sad news that Mike died from complications of type 1 diabetes, last summer. Suzanne Fageol shares that she is working in the field of somatic trauma education. She is enjoying living on Whidbey Island, Washington, with eagles in the backyard and the beach below her. Alice Smith ’69 shares that Patricia Renaud Ribolini of Montpelier, Vermont, passed away on March 3, 2016. Mary Curran Campbell and Colleen Johnson Hale are saddened by the passing of Patricia. Patty was a courageous fighter in her battle with ovarian cancer. She passed away just over one year after her diagnosis. Her friendship will be deeply missed. Send your news to— Sarah Wilbur Sprayregen 145 Cliff Street, Burlington, VT 05401 sarah.sprayregen@uvm.edu
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Helen Scheidecker Riehle writes, “Life has been busy; I was elected to chair South Burlington City Council and recently appointed to fill a vacant seat in Vermont Senate where I had served earlier for four terms. I recently retired from Vermont Health Connect as executive director. During the summer months my husband of 44 years, Ted Riehle ‘70, and I can be found in our backyard gardening and playing with our three golden retrievers.” David Holton shares that the following UVM grads spent a week skiing in Chamonix, France, this winter. Lu Ann Dillon ’76, Suzanne Dirmaier ’78, Greg Dirmaier ’76, Ruth Chiles, David Holton and Steve Berry ’76 had great fun skiing in the Alps. Steven Himelfarb writes, “Delta Psi, those were the days...living the ‘life’ in Rhode Island ...hit me up?” Doug Peacock reports that he is retired and
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| CLASS NOTES in Idaho. Scott Davis has been enjoying his retirement over the past three years after many years as a school administrator at a secondary technical education center in Laconia. Sarah Davis ’75 also recently retired as an elementary teacher in Ashland, New Hampshire, after many years in education. Scott and Sarah are enjoying their time with traveling, skiing, riding bikes, and other outdoor activities on the lakes and hills of Vermont and New Hampshire. Send your news to— Emily Schnaper Manders 104 Walnut Street, Framingham, MA 01702 esmanders@gmail.com
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Steve “Zeke” Gardiner relaunched the management development firm founded by his grandfather in 1928 and carried on by his father. After spending 30 years running leadership development in a Fortune 500 company and a pharma firm, he specializes in conflict resolution and developing high potentials. His sessions are upbeat, highly interactive and immediately impactful. His theater experience at UVM greatly assisted him. Carolyn Gorham Guest shares, “I am currently the director and lead teacher at the Balch Nature Pre-School at The Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont. I also am an independent paper cut artist.” Jane Haslun Schwab says, “Life has sure changed for me after losing my husband last year, but I am doing well. I retired and spend a lot of time with my grandson, and I have a granddaughter on the way, May 10. I am lucky to have a great support system of family and friends, and I look forward to my annual Pi Phi Girls’ Weekend in May, this year in York Beach, Maine.” Candace Whittemore Lovely travelled from her home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, to visit Massachusetts this past April. She is an artist, who paints in the Impressionist style, and was in Massachusetts to attend the Fresh Air Event at the Copley Society and commissioned to do some portrait paintings. She stayed with Emily Schnaper Manders ’74 who hosted a successful Coloring Book signing party for Candace at her house in Framingham, Massachusetts. Candace and Emily also had dinner with Margo David DiIeso ’74. You can find more of Candace’s art work at www.candacelovely.com. Send your news to— Dina Dwyer Child 1263 Spear Street, South Burlington, VT 05403 dinachild@aol.com
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40th Reunion September 23–25, 2016
If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@uvm.edu. It is with great sadness that Joan Ambusk ’84 wrote to announce the passing of Rob Roy Macgregor. He died in October, 2015 after a brief but brave battle with pancreatic cancer. Rob grew up in Connecticut and after graduation lived briefly in Utah and California before permanently settling back in Ver-
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mont. Rob was a key member of the Viking Nordic Center staff in Londonderry for 20-plus years. The rest of the year, he was a self-employed stone mason, whose well-crafted walls and other projects can be seen throughout southern Vermont. After a lifetime in Vermont, Stephanie Hahn Nolan has been living in Nashville, Tennessee, for seven years near two of her four children (and going on three grandchildren). She teaches choral music at Saint Cecilia Academy on the Dominican Campus, and is loving life in Music City and the warm, sunny south! Skip Beitzel writes, “It is with great sadness that I communicate the passing of our dear friend Steve Brown. Steve was suffering from multiple ailments and passed peacefully and painlessly this past weekend in Providence, Rhode Island. He was surrounded at his bedside by his family. Steve was really looking forward to our 40th Reunion this September. We’ll certainly honor our memories of Steve (along with Chip Greene) when we’re back up at UVM in September. We all represent a remarkable class for UVM. Steve was a part of this legacy of our enduring friendships.” To read a tribute to Steve career written by Scott Mackay ’74, visit http://ripr.org/ post/rip-providence-phoenix-publisher-stevenl-brown. Fred Royce writes, “In October, I completed my work as a museum technician at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site and am currently seeking my next position.” Samuel Press says, “I’ve been living in quiet medical retirement since 1998 in the Old North End of Burlington. I’m nominally of counsel to my law firm but do no substantive work. I judge for the Lawrence Debate Union when possible, but debate has changed so I’m a bit of a dinosaur. It takes effort to keep up with Vermont’s many excellent microbreweries, with about a dozen in and around Burlington alone.” Kathleen Walsh MacAndrew ’77, dental hygiene, writes, “Four classmates from 1977, Peggy Boemig Cavanaugh ’77, Lisa Tiraboschi ’77, Leslie Keyworth Hills ’77 and I are wondering if any of you are interested in reconnecting in 2017 (Yikes! 40 years since we took those awful Board Exams!) If you are interested, please email Kathy at: Kathy.macandrew@gmail. com. We’d love to have our ‘Big Sisters’, Class of ’76 and ‘Little Sisters’, Class of ’78 join us! Marcia Pryzbylo Pierce ’78 is in on this, too! Spread the word!” Send your news to— Pete Beekman 2 Elm Street, Canton, NY 13617 pbeekman19@gmail.com
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Debra Lyn Bassett has been named the inaugural John J. Schumacher Chair in Law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. She became a tenured law professor in 2004 and is the author of a treatise, four casebooks, and 40 law review articles. Kevin Fisher writes that he and Tripp Blair ‘76 reunited for a swim meet at the New England Short Course Swimming Championships after 40 years! Still able to churn some water! Kirk Robinson writes, “In response to Ron Nye’s questions regarding chronic Lyme Disease in the 2015 fall
UVM
EXPERI
MENTAL PROGRAM REUNION
September 23–25, 2016
Gather with classmates and faculty who participated in the 60s and 70s.
alumni.uvm.edu/ experimental
issue: Ron, I’ve had chronic Lyme for five years. I lost 60 pounds in the first three months but have regained 20 pounds and stabilized well, and have resumed a very active life. For me, a gluten and dairy free diet have been doing the trick, but also keep your sugar intake low; and I keep a bottle of doxycycline antibiotics with me at all times in case of a flare up.” Dr. Paul Dunkling traveled south last fall for a weekend of SEC football hosted by fellow alum Steve Wilenski. Steve and his wife, Jill, live in Germantown, Tennessee, where Steve is the human resources director for the city after several leadership positions in healthcare management. Their ultimate destination was Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for a memorable game day experience with the national champion Alabama Crimson Tide. A friendship formed long ago at UVM added another special chapter as they shared an amazing day and night filled with the traditions, charm, tailgating, pride and passion of an energized 102,000+ fans. The Wilenskis are a “house divided” with son Andrew finishing his graduate degree in finance at “Bama” and daughter Lauren a public relations major and student ambassador at UT-Knoxville. ‘Roll Tide/Go Vols & Go Cats Go!’ Per Steve, “College football is a year-round obsession best understood by those of us who live here, with one more now added from Shelburne.” Andrea Howard Bonnar shares, “Celebrating our 40th anniversary this year with my husband, Peter Bonnar ’76! Our son is training for his first marathon to be run in May on the Maine coast.” Patricia Boera writes, “I’d like to remind Vermonters and visitors to our beautiful state that there’s a great, free event taking place in Middlebury during the week of July 10 through 16. Look for me under the big white tent on the Village Green during the 38th Annual Middlebury Summer Festival-on-the-Green.” Kathleen Walsh MacAndrew, dental hygiene, writes, “Four of your classmates, Peggy Boemig Cavanaugh, Lisa Tiraboschi, Leslie Keyworth Hills and I are wondering if any of you are interested in re-connecting in 2017 (Yikes! 40 years since we took those awful Board Exams!) If you are interested, please email Kathy at: Kathy.macandrew@ gmail.com. We’d love to have our ‘Big Sisters’, Class of ’76 and ‘Little Sisters’, Class of ’78 join us! Marcia Pryzbylo Pierce ’78 is in on this, too! Spread
the word!” Anne Ainsworth Holtz writes, “A contingent of Thetas (Cindy Cotton Orrick, Anne Ainsworth Holtz, Pam Wales, Debbie Brooks Mango, Andrea Sweed) convened in South Carolina to celebrate the year of reaching a major chronological milestone, to attend the wedding of the daughter of Polly Chesire Yoas, but most importantly to try and remember the last names of good looking but strange guys who lived on South Prospect Street and the numerous happenings during their storied tenure at UVM. Perhaps due to the aforementioned chronological milestone and numerous bottles of wine, the group failed to satisfactorily recall names or many of those infamous events. Therefore, plans are being made to reconvene at a yet to be determined location in the near future!” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
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Michael Durkin writes, “I am working for Booz Allen Hamilton managing the Patient Safety Program at Patrick Air Force Base. Enjoying living on the Space Coast with my wife, Bonny. Looking forward to another yearly reunion with UVM/Christie Hall best friends Bob Hopwood ‘79, Gary Catlin ’79, and Topher Slack ‘79. This year we will explore the Inner Harbor in Baltimore.” Mark
Kaufman, Ken Koffman, Charlie Trapani, Robert “Bob” Kraus ‘77, and Ron French ‘77 all got together in August 2015 at Peter Katz’s Lake Tahoe home. They all had a great time catching up on past UVM times and learning to play pickleball. Recalling very competitive glory days ended abruptly with a mishap on the pickle ball court. Still a very good time was had by all. Marjorie Cohen writes, “I can’t believe that many of us are turning 60 this year. I have never been better. Working in South Korea, providing mental health counseling with the military. Still keep in touch with a lot of friends from UVM and wonder what happened to some others. Anyone know where Chris Angell is? Amy Lazarus? Dave Drake? The Spring Street residents. I miss Vermont. We were so, so young.” Kathleen Walsh MacAndrew ’77, dental hygiene, writes, “Four 1977 classmates, Peggy Boemig Cavanaugh ’77, Lisa Tiraboschi ’77, Leslie Keyworth Hills ’77 and I are wondering if any of you are interested in re-connecting in 2017 (Yikes! 40 years since we took those awful Board Exams!) If you are interested, please email Kathy at: Kathy.macandrew@gmail.com. We’d love to have our ‘Big Sisters’, Class of ’76 and ‘Little Sisters’, Class of ’78 join us! Marcia Pryzbylo Pierce ’78 is in on this, too! Spread the word!” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association 411 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401 Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
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Catherine Eftimiou DiMaratino writes, “I am director of talent for TimeTrade Systems—a Massachussetts-based software company and I am interested in connecting with UVM alumni.” Jeff Newton represented UVM at the inauguration of the new president at the University of Miami. Jeff is a member of the UVM Foundation Leadership Council. A group of 1979 physical therapy grads (including Mary Tautkus Winslow, Sandy Meyer Wilcox, Paula Jenkins Larose, Linda Potash Marchese, Liz Macini Millard and Lisa Fernandez) gathered for a mini-reunion in August 2015 at the gorgeous waterfront home of Jenny Yonker Lind in Suffolk, Virginia. We kayaked on the James River, dined on the Spirit of Norfolk cruise ship, battled the riptides of Virginia Beach, created masterpieces at the Mermaid Factory and laughed throughout the weekend as we caught up on each other’s lives. A huge thanks to Jenny and her new husband, Greg, not only for opening up their home to such a motley crew, but also for renting a huge van to transport all of us around all weekend!” Nancy Orben Small shares, “My husband, Roger Keller, and I are living in beautiful Upper Black Eddy, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River. Our little stone house is sandwiched between the river and the beautiful Delaware Canal, where wildlife abounds and the stars shine brightly. I often travel to Vermont for visits with one of my daughters and for business consulting purposes. Stop in
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| CLASS NOTES for a visit!” Dean DeNicola writes, “I am still a professor at Slippery Rock University doing research in freshwater ecology. I often communicate and collaborate with Al Steinman, who is the director of the Robert B. Annis Water Resources Institute at Grand Valley State University. Al and I moved in different social circles and didn’t know each other at UVM, but we ended up both getting our doctorates in the same lab at Oregon State University in the 1980’s. We were both inspired by UVM professor Dr. Philip Cook ’57 to study algae.” Julie Lundgren shares, “I am still working as an ecologist in the Natural Heritage network after all these years, in New York state for the past eight years and am now affiliated with SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. My base of UVM field classes in dendrology, botany and wildlife continue to serve me well, whether dealing with all our forest health issues or finding rare species. I also enjoy mentoring the next generation of field biologists—and they need and want more botany and field studies (UVM are you listening?). Hope to see some of you this year rather than waiting for the next Reunion.” Send your news to— Beth Gamache 58 Grey Meadow Drive, Burlington, VT 05401 bethgamache@burlingtontelecom.net
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Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
Karen H. Kaplan writes, I’m an editor at Nature, an international science journal based in London, United Kingdom, and work in the company’s D.C. office. I’m a Connecticut native, but since graduating from UVM, I’ve lived in Boston; Charleston, South Carolina; and the D.C. area for the last 12 years or so.” Kathleen Perry Hall says, “I continue to work as a physical therapist and made an employment change a little over a year ago. I now work for the Alpine Clinic in Franconia, New Hampshire. It is a sports medicine and orthopedic clinic that is associated with the U.S. Ski Jumping Team. I work with a group of fine PTs and orthopedic surgeons. I still love what I do and feel fortunate for my education at UVM.” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni@uvm.edu/classnotes
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Peter Lareau writes, “I saw the most recent Vermont Quarterly and noticed the update from Tim Goddette on his time in Virginia and comments about others who we ‘paddled around with’ in grade school, high school, and at UVM. Great to hear they are all doing well. I myself am going on 34 years here at Glens Falls National Bank & Trust Company as a chief risk officer. My wife, Heather, and our four kids have really enjoyed life here in the Glens Falls region and boating on Lake George. I still get back to Burlington to visit my parents and friends frequently with periodic stops in down-
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town Burlington. Our kids are each two years apart and our eldest is heading off to college next year! My brother John Lareau, also a Class of ’82 grad, still lives in East Dorset, Vermont, running his land stewardship business since graduation. His wife AnnMarie Demers Lareau ’84 is a teacher at a local school and his three children, one of whom is also a UVM grad from a couple years ago, are all doing well!” Daniel Colby reports, “I was recently promoted to senior vice president and business marketing market manager at Biddeford Savings Bank where I serve as the senior commercial loan officer.” Ralph P. Ergas DMD, FAAPD was recently nominated and selected for fellowship in the American College of Dentists. The ACD Convocation will take place October 20 in conjunction with the American Dental Association’s annual meeting in Denver, Colorado. Send your news to— John Peter Scambos pteron@verizon.net
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Lynn Cline has released her third book and her first cookbook, The Maverick Cookbook: Iconic Recipes and Tales from New Mexico. It was published by award-winning Santa Fe-based Leaf Storm Press. Epicurious.com, one of the first web sites for foodies, called it “one of the most exciting new fall cookbooks,” along with books by Alice Waters, Ruth Reichl, Emeril LaGasse and others. Travel + Leisure is also featuring it as a fall cookbook, too. (See story on page 17.) Lori Moran Giblin shares, “I recently traveled to Florida from Nashville, Tennessee, where we live. I visited with Carolyn Woodard Arnold in Pensacola on the way. She’s still practicing physical therapy and has had such a wonderful, varied career. On the other hand, I teach English to Speakers of Other Languages amidst Nashville’s strong refugee community. My husband is a physician’s assistant here. Our daughter is in 6th grade and loves her triathlon team.” Mark R. Wetzel writes, “I recently had the opportunity to participate in UVM’s Grossman School of Business Global Family Enterprise Case Competition as a judge. We had 24 teams from ten countries and close to 60 judges, many of whom are UVM graduates in family businesses. It was great to be back on the campus and so impressive to see what Dean Sanjay Sharma has done with the business school. It is also exciting to think about the future of the business school at UVM.” As for me, I am still teaching Pilates and knitting and continue to love both jobs! They both bring me much joy and challenges. Our youngest, Colleen Nicole, graduated from North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine in May and is currently making the interview rounds. Our oldest, Caryn Alexis, is almost done with her course work for her doctorate of musical arts at West Virginia University. She will be performing in Toronto this summer at a summer program. We are so proud of both of them! I spent ten days in Norway with my mom and youngest daughter visiting my ‘sister’ and her family where we celebrated our first Easter in Norway. We were there for the beginning of
lambing season and ended with a couple of days in Oslo before returning home. Send your news to— Lisa Greenwood Crozier lcrozier@triad.rr.com
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Maureen Truax Holland is the 27th recipient of the Association for Women Attorneys (AWA) Marion Griffin-Frances Loring Award this year in Memphis, Tennessee. Maureen, owner of Holland & Associates, PC, holistic attorneys and counselors at law, directs a firm that specializes in labor and employment law. Currently, Maureen sits as special judge in General Sessions Court in Memphis on an asneeded basis. She is the former chair of the Memphis Bar Association Labor & Employment Law Section and former chair of the Wellness Committee. Maureen lives in East Memphis with her wife, Dr. S. Taylor Williams. She has two daughters: Margot Chapman and Yvette Holland. To read more about her career, visit uvm.edu/vq. Peter G. Williams submitted a photo to the Alumni Association’s Flickr photo gallery with the caption: “UVM alumni gathered in Vernon and Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada, in January 2016, for a week of cross country skiing, telemark skiing, and longtime friendship bonding.” From left to right: Peter G. Williams of Vancouver, Washington; Paul Berkelhammer of Seattle, Washington; Crispin Prahl ’85 of Seattle, Washington; Paul Duba ’81 of Gunnison, Colorado; Doug Geller of Vernon, British Columbia; and Richard Faesy ’83 of Starksboro, Vermont. Laurie Colon writes, “I had fun catching up with Jamie Wechsler Fenster ’85 when we volunteered to work the UVM booth at her daughter’s high school College Fair. Then, I got to see my senior-year roommate, Patty DeLuca Burke ’85, while she was vacationing in Fort Lauderdale. Time flies, but the friendships remain! I’ve sent a picture of both events to the Alumni Association’s Flickr gallery!” Send your news to— Abby Goldberg Kelley saragrant2001@yahoo.com Kelly McDonald jasna-vt@hotmail.com Shelley Carpenter Spillane scspillane@aol.com
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Cassie E. Bell writes, “Sorry to have missed our 30th Reunion. Hope to see everyone at the 35th in 2020!” Adam Burack and his wife, Jessica, proudly celebrate the graduation of their daughter, Abby Burack ’16, from the College of Education. Abby is the third-generation Burack to graduate from UVM beginning with her grandfather, Daniel Burack ‘55. Abby is hoping her 7-year-old brother, Jacob, continues this tradition. Mary Jo Beaber writes, “So proud that my son, Nate Gourd ’20 will be part of the class of 2020! On our recent admitted student day, I had a flash back as we toured the second floor of Wright!” Kathy Battistoni
Stepping forward I’ve engineered, explored, and created at UVM. I’ve developed a multilayer extruder for 3D printing applications and I’ve engaged in Engineers without Borders to help a Nicaraguan community irrigate their crops. Scholarship support has allowed me to fulfill my passion in mechanical engineering. Now, I’m thrilled to have found an amazing job with the leading aerospace company—I have accepted a position with Boeing as a structural design engineer in Seattle. I can’t wait to see what the future holds!” Octavio Araujo ’16
ONLINE: movemountains.uvm.edu BY MAIL: 411 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 BY PHONE: 888-458-8691 (toll free) SALLY MCCAY
| CLASS NOTES G’85, an active member of the UVM Foundation Leadership Council, was elected to serve a threeyear term on the UVM Foundation Board of Directors at the board’s spring meeting. Kathy’s term begins July 1, 2016. Send your news to— Barbara Roth roth_barb@yahoo.com
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Paul Grieco is thrilled to say, “My daughter Olivia Grieco ’20 is following in her father’s footsteps and has chosen to attend UVM!” Bill Jacoby shares, my youngest son, Patrick Jakoby ’19 is now a freshman at UVM! It is great to get back up to Burlington now and then.” After 12 years in Sweden (Stockholm & Lund), the family of George Payne moved to Tokyo, in the autumn of 2015. George’s wife, Matilda, accepted a marketing position with IKEA, Japan. George is teaching and running his youth basketball program in the city. They will be in Japan for three or five years. Their children, Lennart and Nova-Li, attend International School with 50 nationalities of students. The family has adjusted well to that “other concrete jungle” and are enjoying it immensely. Send your news to— Lawrence Gorkun vtlfg@msn.com
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Barbara Huntress Tresness is married to fellow classmate Gregory Alan Tresness. Barb and Greg have three boys and live in Manlius, New York. Their youngest son, Graham, has multiple disabilities and uses eye gaze technology to communicate. Greg is President of Arcom Digital. Barb is an author of two books: Beyond a Charmed Life, A Mother’s Unconditional Love; and Everyone Communicates: Learn How to Talk to Me, a guidebook to communicating and socializing with nonverbal and limited communicators. Barb is an author, disability advocate and founder of CHAT Collective and Ultimate Yu. Barb released her memoir in January 2016. Kirkus Review describes the book, “A mother’s loving memoir about caring and advocating for her son, who was born with a severe form of cerebral palsy…The narrative is powerful and heartfelt.”π Midwest Review says, “Impressively well written and an inherently absorbing read from beginning to end, Beyond a Charmed Life, A Mother’s Unconditional Love is a candid and heartfelt memoir that is very highly recommended to the attention of any and all parents struggling to raise a special needs child.” Tracy Fitzgerald writes, “Hello 87! I’m still working at Suffolk University in the Center for International Programs and Services. My oldest two children are studying here as a sophomore and junior, respectively.” Brenda Bouchard Singal shares, “I am very excited that my youngest son, Aneesh, is a UVM freshman, neuroscience major, in the Honors College. I am so proud that he is a Catamount.” Greg Erdmann writes, “I haven’t checked-in in over 20 years. I moved back to Vermont 25 years ago, never looked back and have been working at several technology compa-
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nies here ever since. Currently I’m vice president of global sales at Renewable NRG Systems—traveling constantly around the world, promoting our wind and solar technologies. Amazing company, amazing area, and an amazing education at UVM! Trying to convince my daughter to stick around for Class of 2021!” Nancy Johnston Hildreth reports, “Now I will have two kids at UVM! Grace is a sophomore and Owen will start in September...what a great place to be, what a great place for my husband and I to visit!” Send your news to— Sarah Reynolds ssrey2@verizon.net
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Doug Benerofe won a national writing prize for the title story of his collection, Elba in Brooklyn. That story can be found online with Narrative Magazine. Other stories from his collection can be found online with Necessary Fiction, Catapult.co, and LiteratureForLife.net. He’s presently looking for publication of his first novel. He teaches English at a school near San Francisco. Mark “Floyd” Boyden and Lauri Watson Boyden ‘91 are owners of Boyden Farm in Cambridge, Vermont, and have transformed the former dairy into a local/natural beef grower for stores around New England, and have converted the majestic old barn into an events barn for weddings and events. Mark writes, “We have three daughters, oldest Emily is a first-year student at Montana State University and avid skier; Lucy is in high school, loves horses and competes in that; and wild child Rachel is in junior high. No farm boys? Where there’s girls, there’s boys! Had a great week together skiing in Montana with fellow classmates Brint ‘Herman’ Smith, Joe ‘Spooge’ Nugent, and Eric ‘Luke’ Krieg. Would love to hear from other classmates, or stop in at our farm.” Jill Talbot Huard shares, “I had a fabulous time visiting UVM in January to celebrate the Cats’ Meow’s 35th anniversary! It was so much fun catching up with Jackie Aldinger Hayes, Geri Brockwell Unger, Haley Veller, Gina Carmolli Steen, Lauren Swick Jordan, Sarah Buell Izzo ‘89, and getting to meet all the new Cats on the block and share in the sweet harmonies! I was able to bring my daughters and my dad to my alma mater to show them why I love it so much! I can’t wait to come back and visit again! Here’s to 35 more years! #meow35.” Christine D. Vitale writes, “After spending 17 years in municipal recreation and getting my MAT in education, I am heading to Accra, Ghana to teach middle school theatre at an international school. I hope to visit the national parks in Ghana and go on safari.” Mark Nierenberg tells us, “My wife, Lisa, and I live in the mountain town of Evergreen with our two daughters, Mia (15) and Kate (13). We would like to host anyone who may be passing through Colorado on vacation, or perhaps on college tour for your kids. I visited Burlington this fall for the first time in about 20 years and it brought back so many great memories. Hope to reconnect with some of you out west.” Joyce Letourneaut Cabrera is proud to announce, “Our eldest daughter, Cassidy, successfully led a UVM Alternative Spring Break Program helping to
build homes in Colorado with Habitat for Humanity. Cassidy Cabrera ’16 received her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from UVM on May 22. We are ridiculously proud of all that she has accomplished while at UVM!” Send your news to— Cathy Selinka Levison crlevison@comcast.net
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Robert Shire writes, “I have become an executive director with Take Shape for Life, an optimal health company. My chiropractic practice is part of the Midtown Integrative Health and Wellness Center in Manhattan. My daughter, Ilana, will be attending Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications in the fall. We also got an adorable Cavachon puppy named Coby.” Liz Porter Moran was very excited to get together with Ann Rutherford Redfield and Erika Zaff Hession in Burlington in May! Andrew Whiteley writes, “I am currently the president of the Premier Homes Division of AFA– William Rave in Southport, Connecticut. We were again named the #1 Ranked Real Estate Team in New England by the Wall Street Journal. My firm is expanding to South Florida where I am also licensed. We recently purchased a home in Palm Beach. My two sons will both be attending Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts next year—one a freshman and the other a junior. We will have our youngest daughter at home still going into third grade at Greens Farms Academy in Westport, Connecticut. Would love to catch up with old classmates.” Send your news to— Maureen Kelly Gonsalves moe.dave@verizon.net
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Send your news to— Tessa Donohoe Fontaine tfontaine@brandywine.org
25th Reunion September 23–25, 2016
If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@uvm.edu. Danielle Schwartz Shapiro recently published her first book, John Vassos: Industrial Design for Modern Life (University of Minnesota Press) which examines the life and work of industrial designer John Vassos (1898-1985). Vassos was RCA’s key consultant designer through the rise of radio and television and into the computer era. The book stimulates broad discussions of the meaning of technological design for mass media in daily life. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with her husband and twins. David Allen, CRPC, CLTC is a private wealth advisor and the owner of Balance Wealth Advisors, a financial advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc. in Wellesley and Fall River, Massachusetts. David was part of the Ameriprise Diamond Ring Club in 2005, has received the Ameriprise Chairman’s Advisory Council award multiple years; was part of the Ameriprise Hall of Fame in 2013; Ameriprise Circle of Success, 1996-2014; and was most
C ATAMOUNT NATION recently awarded Five Star Wealth Manager. Also, the Natick Visiting Nurse Association, the area’s premier free-standing, not-for-profit home health care agency, has appointed David to its Board of Trustees. Laurie Way lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. She is loving her job in donor relations at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and still does ballroom dancing as her main hobby with some local competitions here and there. Laurie and her fiancé, Paul, got engaged a few months ago and are now in the planning stage. Laurie says hello to fellow UVMers! Jeffrey Malsch writes, “Valerie Narins Malsch and I are still living in Westchester County, New York. Our oldest daughter is finishing her second year of college at Barnard, our next one is headed to Northwestern in the fall, and our third daughter is in the middle of her college search (UVM?). We get a little break after that as our son will start high school in the fall. Looking forward to seeing everyone at Reunion!” Sara Moola shares, “My company VATC is hiring geospatial web developers and software engineers. To apply go to www.vatcinc.com.” Alexander M. Perez writes, “I am a proud graduate and often speak of my time at UVM as the most amazing four years of my life. The Department of English set me on the course for success in my career in higher education. I have a master’s degree in English from Columbia University and obtained my doctoral degree in educational leadership with a specialization in curriculum and instruction. I was in the first group of juniors selected for the Buckham Overseas Scholars Program in 1989-90, the most incredible adventure of my life. Today, I serve as chair of the English Department at Lake-Sumter State College in Clermont, Florida. My husband, Ron, and I live in Orlando, Florida, and I look forward to serving UVM as an alum in any way I can. Thank you, UVM. I am who I am today because of you.” Send news to— Karen Heller Lightman khlightman@gmail.com
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Anne Phyfe Palmer’s Seattle business, 8 Limbs Yoga Centers, celebrates 20 years this year. After teaching aerobics from age 16 to 26—including stints for UVM Rec Sports at Wright Hall and at The Olympiad—Anne moved to Seattle, fell in love with yoga, and opened the first 8 Limbs in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in 1996. Now four neighborhood studios, 8 Limbs is celebrating this milestone by tackling the difficult conversation of race bias and white privilege within the Seattle yoga community, topics sparked for Anne during her time at UVM. Thomas Paul Gubbins writes, “Just wanted to let everyone know that my wife, Jennifer Gubbins, and three kids have been calling South Pomfret, Vermont, our home for the past 10 years.” Send your news to— Lisa Kanter jslbk@mac.com
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Scott Sullivan was promoted to chief ethics and compliance officer of Flowserve Corporation in May 2015. Send your news to—
Mindy Menkowitz Scheier ’93 WORK: Founder of Runway of Dreams, a nonprofit organization leading change in the
fashion world and in our perceptions of differently-abled people. The alumna notched a major achievement this spring with Tommy Hilfiger’s inaugural launch of a collection tailored to differently-abled youth. Scheier’s inspiration came from her son Oliver, who has a rare form of muscular dystrophy. HOME: Livingston, New Jersey UVM DAYS: As a fashion design major, Scheier took advantage of the College of Arts and Sciences’ dual program with the Fashion Institute of Technology to study in Italy her junior year. IN HER WORDS: “My entry point was the manufacturers. I needed to help the companies making the clothing believe that modifications were possible, that this population desired fashionable clothing, and that they are a group with spending power. Once I had those manufacturers on board, I had tremendous support for our mission.” Read more: go.uvm.edu/scheier
Gretchen Haffermehl Brainard gretchenbrainard@gmail.com
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This past Presidents Day weekend, Mitch and Julie Gould braved the negative 15-degree weather and visited Burlington for the first time in 20 years. “We toured the University with UVM futures Jake (would be class of ‘22) and Max (would be class of ‘24). The changes to Burlington and the university are so amazing. We hope to be back soon.” Send your news to— Cynthia Bohlin Abbott cyndiabbott@hotmail.com
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Send your news to— Valeri Susan Pappas vpappas@davisandceriani.com
Abe Prandini writes, “Hello, UVM! I’ve recently celebrated my 20-year work anniversary with Energizer Battery. I have worked in eight manufacturing plants, starting as a mechanical engineer, and now I am the operations manager of our plant in Marietta,
Ohio. We produce electro manganese dioxide for alkaline batteries. We are responsible for the first recycled battery content in the market, winning 2016 product of the year in the sustainable category. I’ve been married to my beautiful wife, Angie Emery Prandini ’95, since 1997 and we have one dog and one cat. We love to spend time at our beach house in Myrtle Beach in the summers. We make it back to UVM from time to time and are amazed at all the changes.” Send your news to— Jill Cohen Gent jcgent@roadrunner.com Michelle Richards Peters mpeters@eagleeyes.biz
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Send your news to— Elizabeth Carstensen Genung leegenung@me.com
Meredith Thomas Mansfield and her husband, Marc, welcomed their second child, Mason George Mansfield, on December 15, 2015. Mason joins big sister SUMMER 2016 |
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| CLASS NOTES Madison, age two. The family currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts. Jennifer Vellano writes, “I am writing on behalf of the Slade Hall Community. As you may or may not know, our food system is greatly disrupted not only on the level of state or country, it is a national epidemic. Slade offered a sanctuary of choices, where we had committees that would order from the Northeast Co-op (at the time) and shop at the downtown farmer’s markets. It was a healthful, vegetarian environment that broke ground on a campus that was already ahead of most in non-conventional thinking and I was always on the cooking team. In fact, it was my group who got the four-burner stove donated that still stands. We were self-sustaining and even taught ourselves how to compost and grow vegetables. It was amazing to come home from class and actually ‘think’ about what you were going to cook for 24 people, what you were going to eat and how in our house, we all ate together at the same time. Slade created more of a brotherhood and sisterhood than any fraternity or sorority you have or have ever had on campus. We learned how to love. We cooked together, we cleaned together, we took sun-showers to see what it would be like to preserve electricity, we taught each other life lessons that were far beyond what was being taught in other dorms because we were not a ‘dorm’, we were a family, and a house. Slade has birthed writers, musicians, artists, creators, animal lovers, educators and poets, to name a few. I get all of these alumni questionnaires in the mail and I just received one yesterday asking me to critique my experience at the Rubenstein school which was SNR when I attended. The questionnaire asked me how much the school contributed to my career, as I am 40 now. My answer? It didn’t. Slade did. I became a chef and owner of Maison Prive Chefs and G.E. Brown Fine Food & Provisions.” Jennifer Lacroix writes, “Although I’m not a member of the Professional Organization of English Majors (POEM), I am putting my English major to good use. After teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) to international college or university-bound students for over fifteen years, this fall I returned to school as a doctoral fellow at Boston University’s School of Education. As a fellow, I am researching metacognition as it relates to learning a language more effectively and efficiently. I have a wonderful 15-minute bike commute to work (year round) along the Charles River and love living in the progressive city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with my Swiss-American husband, Franz, and daughter, Helen (3).” Jessica Greenwood Boyle returned to full-time work in Global Clinical Operations for Alexion Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Send news to— Ben Stockman bestockman@gmail.com
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Happy summer 99ers! I have a few updates for you but am hoping more people will send in updates, stories and adventures for our next issue! Johnson Lambert LLP named Carolyn Rice, CPA, a partner on
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January 1, 2016. Carolyn has over 16 years of experience in public accounting and serves insurance and not-for-profit clients from the Burlington, Vermont office. Colleen Farrell Kamrad has been married to Michael Kamrad for 17 years. They welcomed their second son, Breccan Farrell, in January. He joins big brother, Declan Reed, who was born in July of 2013. The Kamrads reside in Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania, where they recently built a new home. Colleen works for GlaxoSmithKline as a sales vice president in their Vaccines Business Unit. In their free time the Kamrad family enjoys traveling and supporting the Philadelphia Flyers. Chris Frier is currently working in London. Chris, his beautiful bride, Sara, and their adorable son, Colby, have been doing what they can to jet set while abroad! Their latest adventure brought them to Dubai. We miss you guys around here but I am so happy to see the memories you are making! Please send me updates, babies, weddings, funny sightings, anything I can put in our notes! Send news to— Sarah Pitlak Tiber spitlak@hotmail.com
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Jennifer Ellis and Liz Fenton, associate professor of English at UVM, both of the class of 2000 welcomed their first baby, daughter Helen Vesta Fenton on May 18, 2015. Helen is granddaughter to Nancy Lord ’71 and Henry Ellis ’71, MD’75. She is greatgranddaughter to Mary Moore ’35 and John P. Lord ’39, MD ’42. She is also great-niece to Jane Lord ’72 and Warren Ellis ’64. Sara Hennessey Desilets and her husband, Travis, welcomed their third child, Benjamin James, on December 5, 2015. Benjamin was also welcomed by his older siblings, Zachary (10) and Abigail (8). Sara and her family reside in Essex, Vermont. Kristin Clark Lombardi ’00, MD’05 is a pediatric cardiologist at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. She and her husband, Mike, have three children: Olive, Ruth, and Pete. They hope to visit UVM this summer! Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni@uvm.edu/classnotes
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Kerri McAllister has been selected as a 2016 Grosvenor Teacher Fellow by National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions. Recognizing excellence in geographic education, this amazing professional development opportunity will be taking her to the Arctic, Svalbard, and Norway to study climate change and marine science. Jason Carmichael graduated from UVM with a degree in management information. He currently owns his own business, Galen Healthcare, with two partners and three offices. Nikole Burroughs shares, “I am still living in Bethesda, Maryland, with my three kids: Allison (6) and twins, Luke and Caitlin (4). After working for Senator Leahy for seven years on Capitol Hill, I have bounced around the foreign policy community, spending time at USAID and am currently serving as a senior advisor to the Deputy
Secretary of State for Management and Resources. Would love to hear from folks!” Send your news to— Erin Wilson ewilson41@gmail.com
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Send your news to— Jennifer Khouri Godin jenniferkhouri@yahoo.com Johnson Lambert LLP named Adam Dubuque a partner on January 1, 2016. Adam has provided audit, tax, and other related services to Johnson Lambert’s clients since 2003 and recently completed the AICPA’s Leadership Academy. He is based out of the Burlington, Vermont office. Gibbons P.C. is pleased to announce that Samuel I. Portnoy has been named director in the firm’s Business & Commercial Litigation Department in the Newark office. Samuel handles a wide range of largescale business and commercial litigation matters in both state and federal courts throughout New Jersey and New York. He has also been consistently selected to the New Jersey Super Lawyers Rising Stars list. Jon Kantor has joined the faculty of the Department of Transnational Issues at the National Intelligence University in Washington, D.C. In an adjunct capacity, Jon is teaching masters-level courses on counterterrorism and homeland security to U.S. military officers and other federal government officials. Beth Rice Bradley, her husband, Matt Bradley ‘98, and their son, Pierce (18 mos.), just moved back to Burlington after a few years between Chicago and Connecticut. Beth is owner of Foodsense, LLC, a small consulting company that helps the food and nutrition industry develop strategies to advance nutrition research and education. The Bradleys are super excited to be back in Burlington and hope to see fellow classmates that live in town or may be passing through. Congratulations to Bradley Lawrence, who married Erica Meyers, now Erica Lawrence, on June 21, 2014. Send your news to-Korinne Moore Berenson korinne.d.moore@gmail.com
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Anna “Anya” G. Gushchin finished her medical and post graduate training in 2015 and, after working in Papua New Guinea, relocated to Chicago to start working at Hines VA Medical Center and Stroger Hospital. Her next steps are to continue building an international ophthalmology training program in her new departments. Continuing with the outreach mission that started while at UVM, she will be part of a teaching team going to Micronesia this summer to work with the only ophthalmologist on the islands to provide skills-transfer training in oculoplastic and ocular surgeries. She would like to find other UVMers that have an interest in outreach work in Papua New Guinea with the goal to go back for a follow up visit next year. Theater major Rebecca Sherman is celebrating eight
C ATAMOUNT NATION Bryan Holmes G’07 WORK: Co-owner/co-founder of
Burlington-based Citizen Cider. Holmes works with his two business partners and forty-some employees to redefine hard apple cider from homespun to hip, as Citizen Cider elbows a place at the bar beside craft beers. HOME: Williston, Vermont. UVM DAYS: Holmes earned his PhD in analytical chemistry under the guidance of Professor Giuseppe Petruccci. He puts that experience to work in heading up product development and managing the analytical lab and quality analysis/control at Citizen Cider. IN HIS WORDS: “In the early days, I was developing the recipe and a lot of the process steps and just learning. We find the more experiments, the better. Often, things happen by accident or sometimes you capitalize on problems.” Read more: go.uvm.edu/holmes
ANDY DUBACK
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| CLASS NOTES years at The Public Theater/Shakespeare in The Park in New York City. Katie Scott married Sean Williams on the island of Kauai on April, 24 2016. After a week-long stay on the island, they celebrated with family and friends in Lake Forest, California, and Maynard, Massachusetts. Send your news to— Kelly Kisiday kellykisiday@hotmail.com
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Kerry Clare Duggan writes, “This year has probably been the busiest to date for Jason ‘JJ’ Vélez and I. We bought ourselves a little slice of Detroit in the Eastern Market—which is a source of great pride since we spent so much time there when I served as the Secretary of Energy’s Liaison to the City of Detroit. Our daughter, Jaeli, is in second grade and is a reading animal. Our son, Liam, is in Spanish immersion daycare, which means Mommy (the only nonSpanish speaker in the house) is learning new words every day. As we departed from our holiday trip to Michigan, he took his 48th flight. JJ has had quite a year, his eighth as Director of After School at the Maret School. He also took on new roles, as both camp director and as the year-round program director at the Camp at Cleveland Park. After five years as a director at the U.S. Department of Energy, I moved to the Office of the Vice President at the White House, where I serves as energy and environmental (and Detroit!) policy advisor to Vice President Biden. Our family had the special occasion to share the holidays with the Biden family at their residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory.” Jennifer A. Zicherman Kelleher tells us, “I am fishing my postgrad residency at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, New Hampshire, in June after graduating in May 2015 with a Doctor of Pharmacy from MCPHS University. I will be continuing to work as a per-diem clinical pharmacist and will be living my dream of working as a veterinary compounding pharmacist at Ethos Veterinary Health in Woburn, Massachusetts.” Bryant Jones and Marie Castelli welcomed their beautiful daughter, Elliot, on August 30, 2015 in Washington, D.C. Elliot made her first trip to Vermont last fall where she visited the UVM campus and saw her cousins in Burlington. Germain Mopa was selected to serve as a Foundation Fellow at the spring meeting of the UVM Foundation Board of Directors. Fellows are emerging alumni leaders who will gain experience and insight into how the UVM Foundation operates and help insure that the perspectives and opinions of young alumni are considered by the Foundation Board, leadership volunteers, and the Foundation staff. Send your news to—Kristin Dobbs kristin.dobbs@gmail.com
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10th Reunion September 23–25, 2016
If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@uvm.edu. Lauren Koenig Giannullo writes, “My husband, Mark Giannullo ’05, and I welcomed our first child into the world on February 29, 2016! August Koenig Giannullo
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arrived happy and healthy and is a complete joy. We can’t wait to get our little Catamount up to Burlington for a visit!” Send your news to— Katherine Murphy kateandbri@gmail.com
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Jacob Dibble writes, “I work with a global corporate real estate firm based out of Los Angeles. I manage the firm’s commercial cost and project management services for Fairfield County, Connecticut and Westchester County, New York. I have a vested interest in connecting with the UVM alumni team to work with students with an interest in real estate or need guidance with job placement.” Kathleen Babcock Rivard and her husband Chris Rivard welcomed their first child a healthy and happy baby girl in October, 2015. Ryan Desisto writes, “Hallie Brox and I got married in September in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts and we had a ton of UVMers there! Tyler Lamont, Christina Grice, Scott ‘The Champ’ Kelly, Jeff O’Neil, Adam Packer, Emily Shapiro Packer, Kevin Haar, Jimmy Farah, Ben Kahn, Ben Meirowitz, Emily Landry, Liz Stubbs, Anne Brooks Adams, Michelle Marcus Dew, Graham Sexstone and Katy Brox ’05. We met freshmen year in the Chittenden and Buckham dorms and we live in Boston with our dog, Henry.” Send your news to— Elizabeth Bitterman ekolodner@gmail.com
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Brandi Gray Wirz shares, “UVM was the best experience of my life! The Early Childhood Education Program prepared me for my future career and gave me the foundation needed to use my education and experience to start my own eco-conscious school for young children that serves families of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers drawing its inspiration from the Reggio Emilia Approach. Thank you, UVM! You changed my life! Check out where my education took me: www.NLCCS.com.” Frieda Lynn Arenos is proud to announce her upcoming marriage to Roger Platt of Washington, D.C. The couple will be married at UVM on August 6, 2016. Frieda has been working for U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy since 2009. She currently serves as the senator’s legislative correspondent on health, education, human services and nutrition. Frieda is also a full-time graduate student at American University, pursuing a Master of Arts in Intercultural and International Communication. Send your news to— Elizabeth Bearese ebearese@gmail.com Emma Grady gradyemma@gmail.com
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David Bidwell and Katy Hamlin ‘10 got married on August 8, 2015 in Augusta, Maine. There were many UVMers in attendance including the following peo-
ple pictured in the photo posted on the Alumni Association’s Flickr photo gallery: Cecilia Ackerman ‘10, Burton Putrah, Hillary Hutchins ‘11, Kari Dalane, Alena Warren, Gordon Whelpley, Dakota Whelpley ‘10, Taylor Lalemand, Dan Belhumeur, Matt Brown, Stephanie Fakharzadeh, Colleen Hertz, Katelyn Esterby, Ben Kingsbury, Claire McKown, Ali Schymik, and Maria Dirolf. Since graduation, Sam Rubinoff has moved to New York City where he works as a standup comedian at night and dog walker by day. He just made his first film project called ‘Dog Days’, a six-episode web series about the misadventures of a dog walker in New York City. You can check out the web series at DogDaysTV.com. Susan M. Cirilli, Esq. has joined the Philadelphia office of the law firm, Leader & Berkon, LLP. The firm also has offices in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. She concentrates her practice in asbestos litigation, business and commercial litigation, and product liability and toxic tort defense. Katie Krawitz has recently gotten engaged to Justin Buettner of Harwinton, Connecticut. She has also been with the Animal Resource Center at Yale University for five years. Scott Bailey was selected to serve as a Foundation Fellow at the spring meeting of the UVM Foundation Board of Directors. Fellows are emerging alumni leaders who will gain experience and insight into how the UVM Foundation operates and help insure that the perspectives and opinions of young alumni are considered by the Foundation Board, leadership volunteers, and the Foundation staff. Send your news to— David Volain david.volain@gmail.com
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Teddy Dobbin writes, “Congratulations to Eamonn Berry and Gretchen Zehner on their engagement. Having said that, the New England Patriots > Pittsburgh Steelers #TB12.” Julie Camuso also sends huge congratulations to Eamonn and Gretchen on their engagement! Dana Gulley was selected to serve as a Foundation Fellow at the spring meeting of the UVM Foundation Board of Directors. Fellows are emerging alumni leaders who will gain experience and insight into how the UVM Foundation operates and help insure that the perspectives and opinions of young alumni are considered by the Foundation Board, leadership volunteers, and the Foundation staff. Send your news to— Daron Raleigh raleighdaron@gmail.com
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5th Reunion September 23–25, 2016
If you are interested in planning your upcoming reunion, email alumni@uvm.edu. Molly KellyYahner and Brian Sozansky G’12 were selected to serve as a Foundation Fellows at the spring meeting of the UVM Foundation Board of Directors. Fellows are emerging alumni leaders who will gain experience and insight into how the UVM
C ATAMOUNT NATION Foundation operates and help insure that the perspectives and opinions of young alumni are considered by the Foundation Board, leadership volunteers, and the Foundation staff. Send your news to— Troy McNamara Troy.mcnamara4@gmail.com
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After meeting in UVM’s Integrated Study of Earth and Environment program nearly five years ago, Scott Camp and Caylin McKee got engaged over Christmas and plan to be married in 2017! Emma Holmes Offer and Alex Offer ’11, celebrated their marriage on October 17, 2015. The two met as members of UVM Hillel in 2008 (although they do not remember exactly when). They currently reside in Austin, Texas. Latimer Hoke has reached the end of his first year of full-time teaching. This required a move to Lincoln County High School, Eureka, Montana (southern British Columbia). He is also volunteering for the local ambulance, search and rescue, and two ski patrols. Send your news to— Patrick Dowd patrickdowd2012@gmail.com
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Timmy Sheble-Hall writes that he is starting at Northeastern Law in Boston this fall. Emily Page Pijanowski shares, “I will be graduating from Suffolk University Law School in Boston this May with a concentration in international law. I recently began working at an immigration law firm in Boston and I am particularly interested in the practice areas of asylum and refugee protection as well as other forms of humanitarian relief for immigrants. In the future, I hope to have the opportunity to work for an international NGO as a global human rights advocate.” Devon Winter shares, “I am graduating this spring from Drexel University with a master’s in television management. I will continue on in pursuit of my MBA. I studied public communications and community entrepreneurship at UVM. Looking back, I am very happy with the education I received from UVM. I felt ready on graduation day for the working world. I also know my undergraduate studies have helped me immensely in graduate school.” Brendan Sage and Sydney Lucia ‘12 are enjoying life together in Washington, D.C. Brendan will be attending Georgetown Law this fall after spending two years focusing on nonprofit law as a paralegal at the D.C. firm of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg. Sydney is the program manager for Europe & International Organizations at the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). She began at CPSC in 2013 during the final year of her master’s program in international peace and conflict resolution at American University. They enjoy playing soccer in D.C.’s rec leagues and going for walks in Rock Creek Park with their beloved Chihuahua, Brownie. Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni@uvm.edu/classnotes
Tristam Coffin ’08 WORK: Sustainable facilities coordinator for Whole Foods Markets, overseeing practices
at facilities from Monterey Bay to northern Nevada. Earlier in his career, Coffin helped lead the effort on an ambitious Whole Foods project in Brooklyn, New York, building a store that would be a beacon of sustainability in an unlikey place, along the infamously fouled Gowanus Canal. HOME: San Francisco, California. UVM DAYS: Coffin credits the interdisciplinary knowledge base of his Environmental Studies major, coupled with experiences like working as a research assistant for the UVM Transportation Research Center, as being key to finding his direction and preparing for his career path. IN HIS WORDS: “As environmentalists, the daunting tasks before us can beat us up, and we won’t be to accomplish what we’d like to accomplish. It becomes about enjoying the small steps to make big progress.” Read more: go.uvm.edu/coffin
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CharlieDan Sheffy writes, “I’m excited to announce that after serving in a one-year position as an English teacher at Montpelier High School 2015-2016, I will be accepting a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Diversity Grant to Bavaria, Germany. There I’ll be collaborating as part of a diversity cohort of 19 other Americans, of the 140 who are awarded ETA’s. At my placement, I’ll be working with students of all shapes and sizes, but focused particularly on those from minority and immigrant backgrounds. In addition to teaching English as a foreign language, I’ll be focusing on depicting American educational values, culture, and social norms to give others a direct means of better understanding the United States and its citizens. I’m thrilled at the chance to return to Bayern and meet fellow educators, friends, and students; learn new curricula, teaching strategies and best practices; and establish life-long habits of learning in a beautiful country. Thanks to everyone who has helped me along the way, be it years of school next to each other in desks or M-F in a desk in front of you. Thanks to all of my collaborators, mentors, family and friends.” Christopher Veal was selected to serve as a Foundation Fellow at the
spring meeting of the UVM Foundation Board of Directors. Fellows are emerging alumni leaders who will gain experience and insight into how the UVM Foundation operates and help insure that the perspectives and opinions of young alumni are considered by the Foundation Board, leadership volunteers, and the Foundation staff. Send your news to— Grace Buckles glbuckles@gmail.com
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The Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) is pleased to announce the hiring of Angela Grove G’15 in the position of the NHA’s Sacerdote Chair of Education in November 2015. The NHA’s Sacerdote Chair of Education will develop and implement educational and learning opportunities at the organization for schools, students, and teachers within the Nantucket community and beyond. In coordination with the Director of Visitor Experience, the position researches, develops, and implements inspiring youth initiatives that expose audiences to the internationally significant history of Nantucket, using the NHA mission and strategic plan objectives as SUMMER 2016 |
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| CLASS NOTES guidelines for youth projects. To read more about Angie and her new position, visit uvm.edu/vq. Ben Daggett, shares a reflection from midnight, at the top of Mount Philo in Charlotte, Vermont, during the Spring of 2014, after his return to Vermont from a study abroad excursion to the country of Botswana in Southern Africa during the Fall of 2013. “The top of Mt Philo was cold. I heard the coyotes in the distance. It was like hearing an old group of friends laughing at jokes, playing cards, and raising good spirits while not worrying about what time I would show up. I love friends like that. Friends that have fun in any company. Even if you are absent or the world changes, they keep getting on with their lives like usual. Perhaps I should have been doing the same. I was trying to, but never before had I felt such longing for something out of my grasp. A longing for the wilderness, for
my old Botswana friends. A longing for the quiet of the bush of Southern Africa. It is a primitive longing that we all have engrained in our DNA. Many of us have forgotten it. Many will never acknowledge the roots at which they came from, where our bodies will all one day pay back the energy that we owe to the natural system of endless cycles that go on and on under our feet without making so much of a whisper. But if you do acknowledge it, listen for the whispers, and let it thrive inside you. It can result in astounding changes and revelations that some first world minds are not prepared for. Maybe my mind was one of those not ready to live in the wild as all humans once did. Maybe all of us are meant to be students to nature. Maybe our preparation and the path we take to revelation and transcendence is irrelevant.” Samantha M. Berthelette writes, “I have been accepted to Florida State University’s
philosophy doctorate program and will be enrolling in the fall. I am absolutely thrilled about this opportunity, as FSU has the top program in the United States for philosophy of action. My professors from UVM have been extraordinarily helpful and supportive through this whole process; I absolutely could not have done it without them. I’m so excited to start the next phase of my life and career!” Send your news to— UVM Alumni Association alumni@uvm.edu/classnotes
Lawrence Fred Lumbra ‘49, of Westminster, Maryland, February 12, 2016. John Anthony Zagroba ‘49, MD’53, of Barre, Vermont, December 30, 2015. Richard G. Kinsle ‘50, of Scottsdale, Arizona, January 16, 2016. Elizabeth Brownell Montgomery ‘50, of South Hero, Vermont, January 07, 2016. Willard Robertson ‘50, of Bennington, Vermont, February 18, 2016. Kenneth T. Robinson ‘50, of San Jose, California, February 06, 2016. Wendell E. Smith ‘50, MD’54, of Glen Allen, Virginia, February 11, 2016. Robert Hadley Corrigan ‘51, of St. Albans, Vermont, March 12, 2016. Edward A. Kamens MD’51, of Henrico, Virginia, January 01, 2016. Elouie Farnsworth Snyder ‘51, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, January 14, 2016. Ruth VanBuren Gipson ‘52, of Middlebury, Vermont, February 03, 2016. Cornelius O. Granai, Jr. MD’52, of Northfield Falls, Vermont, March 14, 2016. Helen Lauber Miller ‘52, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, January 26, 2016. Robert Lee Sturk ‘52, of Hampton, Virginia, February 22, 2016. Marianne Stanford Thornburg ‘52, of Boulder, Colorado, February 14, 2016. Paul R. Bousquet ‘53, of Woodstock, Vermont, December 31, 2015. Leland David Churchill ‘53, of Merrimack, New Hampshire, January 22, 2016. Richard P. Isper ‘53, of Fairborn, Ohio, February 14, 2016. Jean Hawley Navarra ‘53, of Campbell, California, March 15, 2015.
David Pearl ‘53, of South Burlington, Vermont, March 25, 2016. Gayl Robinson ‘53, of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, December 01, 2015. Kenneth D. Blake, Jr. ‘54, of West Brookfield, Massachusetts, December 30, 2015. Marcia Bennett Kartsen ‘54, of North Easton, Massachusetts, March 30, 2015. Denise Bell Keefe ‘54, of Williston, Vermont, February 08, 2016. John E. Mazuzan, Jr. MD’54, of Burlington, Vermont, March 23, 2016. Sara Upton Mikell ‘54, of Williston, Vermont, March 16, 2016. Betty Davis Sawyer ‘54, of Brattleboro, Vermont, February 24, 2016. Barbara Cockey Thompson ‘54, of Modesto, California, May 04, 2015. Elinor Parker Jamieson ‘55, of Waterbury, Vermont, January 17, 2016. Howard S. Irons MD’57, of Boca Raton, Florida, January 26, 2016. Steven E. Kanor ‘57, of Hastings on Hudson, New York, November 27, 2015. Donald A. Klein ‘57, G’61, of Fort Collins, Colorado, February 23, 2016. Arleen Mayer Williams ‘57, of Sarasota, Florida, March 24, 2016. Robert B. Quinlan, Sr. ‘58, G’74, of Naples, Florida, March 02, 2016. Joan Stimets Kurjiaka ‘59, of Poultney, Vermont, December 18, 2015. Patricia Macey Plumb ‘59, of St. Albans, Vermont, January 15, 2016. Susan Sproule Bell ‘60, of Shelburne, Vermont, December 05, 2015. John D. Chadwick ‘60, of Greenville, North Carolina, December 26, 2015.
| IN MEMORIAM Esther Daigneault Robinson ‘38, of Newfane, Vermont, February 16, 2016. Geoffrey P. Wiedeman ‘38, MD’41, of San Antonio, Texas, January 16, 2016. Ida Hall Sloan ‘42, of Sarasota, Florida, November 16, 2015. Ruth Nido Wight ‘43, of Harrison, Maine, February 28, 2016. Helen Ells Higgins ‘44, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, January 25, 2016. Leonard Y. Kunken ‘44, of Orlando, Florida, December 26, 2015. Noah Cyrus Thompson ‘44, G’70, of Shelburne, Vermont, March 04, 2016. Janice Preston Stafford ‘45, of Salt Lake City, Utah, December 27, 2015. Diana Barnes Schwenk ‘46, of Southampton, New York, December 04, 2015. Peter F. Esteran ‘47, MD’50, of Solana Beach, California, February 18, 2016. Grace Brewster Parks ‘47, of Sparrowbush, New York, April 26, 2015. Patricia Bennett Stoudt ‘47, of Bedford, New Hampshire, February 22, 2016. Henry V. Atherton ‘48, G’50, of South Burlington, Vermont, March 01, 2016. Ruth Millington Bill ‘48, of Plattsburgh, New York, January 21, 2016. Mary M. Downey ‘48, of Nashua, New Hampshire, January 15, 2016. Robert A. Astone ‘49, MD’55, of Rancho Mirage, California, March 13, 2016. Crofter E. Cummings ‘49, of Windsor, Vermont, February 17, 2016. Norman E. Dubie, Sr. ‘49, of Lebanon, New Hampshire, December 06, 2015. Gerald H. Greemore ‘49, G’50, of Barre, Vermont, January 13, 2016.
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James Daniel Donoghue G’75, of Colchester, Vermont, January 23, 2016. Robert I. Keimowitz ‘60, MD’65, G’63, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, March 25, 2016. Barbara Scott-Smith Tomson ‘61, of Nashville, Tennessee, November 10, 2015. Daniel T. Monte ‘63, of Barre, Vermont, February 10, 2016. Hedy M. Ries ‘63, of Madison, New Jersey, March 06, 2016. Elaine C. Stauber ‘63, of Tucson, Arizona, November 05, 2015. Arthur Kotch MD’64, of Wakefield, Rhode Island, December 06, 2015. Kathleen Ann Patric ‘64, of Lafayette, California, July 14, 2015. George Arthur Taylor ‘64, of Essex, Vermont, December 17, 2015. Thomas C. Johnson ‘65, of Windsor, Vermont, December 01, 2015. David L. Perkins MD’65, of Williston, Vermont, December 03, 2015. Alan D. Perlis ‘65, of Birmingham, Alabama, December 22, 2015. Dorothy Dix Austin ‘66, G’70, of South Burlington, Vermont, February 27, 2016. Robert W. Vigue MD’66, of Springvale, Maine, January 19, 2016. Patricia McDonald Wasatonic ‘66, of Greenville, South Carolina, January 06, 2016. Stephen B. Goodwin ‘67, of Freeport, Maine, January 05, 2016. Ralph Philip-Joseph Grenon ‘67, of Burlington, Vermont, March 21, 2016. Nancy Reynolds Davies ‘68, of Ridgewood, New Jersey, December 08, 2015. Stephen H. Jones ‘68, of Englewood, Florida, December 09, 2015. Janet Mary Stroman ‘68, of Leander, Texas, January 11, 2016. Doris Lace Underwood ‘69, of St. Albans, Vermont, March 14, 2016. H. Peter Wimmer G’69, of Shoreham, Vermont, February 18, 2016. John Leonard Amidon G’70, of Brattleboro, Vermont, November 30, 2015. Stephen James Bullis ‘71, G’74, of Colchester, Vermont, March 06, 2016. Patricia Elwert Ribolini ‘71, G’83, of Montpelier, Vermont, March 03, 2016. Glen T. Morrisseau ‘72, of Milton, Vermont, January 05, 2016. Susan Crandall Shaw ‘73, of Meriden, Connecticut, December 23, 2015. Judith A. Cohen ‘75, of South Burlington, Vermont, December 30, 2015. Linda L. Doane ‘75, of East Fairfield, Vermont, December 23, 2015. Ann Martin Musselman G’75, of Kannapolis, North Carolina, December 12, 2015. Patrick Daley ‘76, of Brooklyn, New York, February 05, 2016. Rob Roy MacGregor ‘76, of Londonderry, Vermont, October 02, 2015. Lee Wolter Richards G’76, of Mount Dora, Florida, January 12, 2015.
John Malstrom Whitaker G’77, of Leona Valley, California, February 18, 2016. Michael Paul Gervais ‘79, of St. Albans, Vermont, March 20, 2016. Donald J. Willson G’81, of Round Rock, Texas, January 01, 2016. Kerry M. Berger ‘82, of Washington, D.C., December 13, 2015. Marlene Ames Hancox ‘82, of Saint Albans, Vermont, January 12, 2016. Bethany Diane Keans G’82, of Lyndonville, Vermont, December 18, 2015.
Jennifer Fyles Potthoff G’83, of Portland, Maine, March 08, 2016. Douglas Erwin Green MD’91, of Salt Lake City, Utah, January 21, 2016. Janet Elizabeth Induni ‘91, of Essex Junction, Vermont, January 17, 2016. Matthew William Geiger ‘96, of Southborough, Massachusetts, March 09, 2016. Toni J. Lyng G’02, of Fort Edward, New York, February 14, 2016. Jane Duxbury G’08, of Providence, Rhode Island, January 19, 2016.
| UVM COMMUNITY Bill Eddy, longtime faculty member in
the Environmental Program, passed away April 29 at his home in Sutton, Vermont. Eddy taught for twenty-two years at the university and received an honorary doctorate from UVM in 1993. He brought his students the perspective of a distinguished and varied career. In East Africa in the early 1960s, he pioneered the development of Swahili language documentary films for raising awareness among African viewers about the economic importance of wildlife in the region’s national parks. In the early 1970s, Eddy worked with the Conservation Foundation and U.S. Park Service to produce a global environmental film and book titled Consider the Process of Living, a prescient presentation of the perils of environmental degradation. His last book was The Other Side of the World, Essays and Stories on Mind and Nature.
Henry V. Atherton, alumnus and
faculty member in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, passed away on March 1. He was a professor in the Animal and Dairy Science Husbandry Department at UVM, where he had a distinguished thirty-six-year career as a professor, research investigator, and Dairy Extension specialist, focusing on special interest areas of dairy and food microbiology and sanitation. A pioneering investigator on the influence of bulk-milk cooling on the quality of milk and dairy
products, that work earned him a place as a leading researcher in a 100-year history of the American Dairy Science Association. Generations of UVM students past are indebted to Atherton as the founding force behind the Carrigan Hall Dairy Bar, long a delight of campus life.
Bill Meezan ’67, alumnus and
stalwart supporter of UVM’s LGBTQA community, passed away in May. A Fulbright Scholar, Meezan was a leader in the social justice field, a national expert on child welfare issues. A resident of New York City, Meezan’s last position prior to retirement was as the Mary Ann Quaranta Professor of Social Justice for Children and Distinguished Professor at Fordham University. Meezan was also a committed philanthropist and volunteer for his alma mater, who served on the UVM Foundation’s Foundation Leadership Council and was appointed in April to the UVM Foundation’s Board of Directors. He was presented with an honorary doctorate by UVM in 2013 and is a past alum speaker at the LGBTQA Center’s Rainbow Awards and Graduation ceremony. Meezan is survived by his husband of many years, W. Michael Brittenback. Gifts to the Bill Meezan Memorial Fund at the University of Vermont will honor his memory by building support for students in UVM’s LGBTQA community who are struggling financially. To give: go.uvm.edu/meezan
Additional remembrances of faculty members Francis R. Bliss, classics, and Dale Critchlow, engineering, are posted at uvm.edu/vq. SUMMER 2016 |
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| EXTRA CREDIT
Engineers Across Centuries Pictured in 1893 with the tools of their trade, these surveying students were part of the civilengineering program introduced as UVM became the state’s land grant institution. In the late nineteenth century, graduates of such engineering programs played an integral role in the nation’s development, working on projects that ranged from improving roads and water systems to building better railroads.
1893
2015
Engineering professor Eric Hernandez shared the old photo at top with his structural analysis class and challenged them to re-create it. It happened that photographer Nick Bucci was among the students and he took the bait, rounding up friends and classmates for the shot above.
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NICHOLAS BUCCI, BOTTOM
Welcome Home Reception Friday, September 23 6–9pm Alumni House Silver Pavilion 61 Summit Street
Fall in Vermont is eVen better than you remember.
See for yourself at Alumni Weekend 2016 and be among the first to tour our brand new Alumni House. All alumni are invited to a special Grand Opening celebration! In addition, the weekend features exciting events for everyone and special reunion celebrations for the classes of 1966, 1976, 1991, 2006, 2011 and 2016.
alumni.uvm.edu/alumniweekend
alumni association
NON-PROFIT ORG US POSTAGE PAID BURLINGTON VT 05401 PERMIT NO. 143
VERMONT QUARTERLY
86 South Williams Street Burlington VT 05401
Working Together for a Better Community The University of Vermont and the Residence at Shelburne Bay are successfully collaborating to bring unique benefits to the University, our residents, their families, and the community at large. UVM Nursing Student Program The UVM College of Nursing and Health Sciences program brings current nursing students to The Residence at Shelburne Bay to provide a supervised service learning opportunity focusing on reminiscence therapy activities.
The Residence Lecture Series The Residence Lecture Series brings leaders from the University of Vermont to share presentations on a variety of topics with our residents and the greater community.
185 Pine Haven Shores Road • Shelburne, VT 05482 802-923-2513 • residenceshelburnebay.com