Ursinus College Magazine - Winter 2009/2010

URSINUS COLLEGE MAGAZINE WINTER 2009-2010 VOLUME CVIII NUMBER 2

Ursinus alumna is first Lt. Governor of New Jersey

CAMPUS VIEW “Jekyll & Hyde,” fall theater production, directed by Domenick Scudera

Notable and Quotable

“I am confident that thoughtful, responsible journalism will live on even if I have to find it on my laptop…”

—Karen Arenson, 2009 Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Ursinus through the Council of Independent Colleges. A longtime New York Times reporter, Karen visited Ursinus to speak about journalism and her career, and met with Ursinus writers and communications students.

IN THIS ISSUE WINTER 2009-2010 VOLUME CVIII NUMBER 2

INSIDE THIS ISSUE THE GATEWAY 04

WELCOME

05

BERMAN MUSEUM OF ART NEWS

06

BY THE NUMBERS

11 FACULTY EXPERTISE

FEATURES 13 DAIRY QUEEN: ANNE MENDELSON’S FRESH PERSPECTIVE ON MILKXX 19 Kim Guadagno: From Sheriff to First Lt. Governor of new jersey 23

JOURNEY OF THE HEART

Class notes 25 PROFILES 33

WEDDINGS

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URSINUS MAGAZINE

WINTER 2009-2010

38 PHOTOS

On the Cover In celebration of its 10th anniversary in 1999, the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College mounted a retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings by Peter Sculthorpe. Representing the Brandywine tradition of capturing the rural landscape, historic structures, and the flora and fauna that populate the region, Sculthorpe captures grand vistas and poetic still-lifes that are populated by artifacts. Scarecrow represents the artist’s signature style of presenting a typical Pennsylvania farm in which atmospheric effects are made tactile by the artist’s approach to color and texture. The largescale watercolor was donated by Mr. and Mrs. Dick Vermeil at the conclusion of Regions of Light: Paintings, Prints & Watercolors by Peter Sculthorpe, on view in the museum’s Main Gallery from September 17 – November 7, 1999.

The Gateway Ursinus Lauded by Middle States Visiting Team

Ursinus Lauded by Middle States Visiting Team

Editor Kathryn Campbell Staff Ellen Cosgrove Labrecque 1995 Photography Linda Johnson, Joan Fairman Kanes, Jim Roese, Adena Stevens, Jeffrey Morgan, George Widman, Nicole Kutafaris and Liora Kuttler Design Spindle Studios, Columbus, Ohio The mission of Ursinus College is to enable students to become independent, responsible, and thoughtful individuals through a program of liberal education.

That education prepares them to live creatively and usefully, and to provide leadership for their society in an interdependent world.

Chair, Board of Trustees Spencer Foreman M.D. 1957 President John Strassburger Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean Judith Levy Senior Vice President for Advancement Jill A. Leauber Marsteller 1978 Vice President for Enrollment and Marketing Richard DiFeliciantonio Vice President for Finance and Administration Winfield Guilmette Ursinus College Alumni Council President Gillian Murray 1989

Ursinus Magazine is printed on recycled paper.

Between March 22 and 25 2009, as part of a required re-accreditation process, an evaluation team including administrators from St. Lawrence University, Barnard College, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Vassar College, Hamilton College, Grinnell College and other highly selective colleges spent four days on campus. They examined all aspects of Ursinus, from curriculum, to outcomes, to policies to finances and interviewed students, faculty, administrators, staff and Trustees, and held open forums. They write: “Our coverage… was full and extensive.”

“We were very impressed by the consensus among students that the campus offers a rich and sustaining social and cultural life… one constant refrain we heard was that Ursinus feels like a family.”

Their extraordinary praise is off the charts,” said President John Strassburger. We did not think it would be possible to surpass the last evaluation 10 years ago, but happily, we were wrong.”

The reports states: “Ursinus has a culture that says, ‘we want to do the things that most impact the liberal learning achievement of students that others, less focused and determined, have failed to do and sustain.’”

“All of the 2009 visiting team members agree that Ursinus faculty, leaders, staff, students and trustees are more on the same page with regard to what should be happening and what is happening to support student achievement than at any other campus any of us knows.”

“The Ursinus of old, known for preparing physicians and scientists and for pre-professional education, is now a national leader in its commitment to

“Ursinus is truly inspiring. One comes away with a renewed appreciation of what is possible in liberal education and sees a level of student satisfaction with it all that is heartwarming.We are are deeply impressed deeply impressed withwith this this remarkable remarkable college.” college.”

“Ursinus…. truly spans the breadth of the liberal arts.”

“The combination of curricular changes and the focus on student achievement over the past ten years has transformed the undergraduate experience at Ursinus.”

“The visiting team… extends warm congratulations to all in the Ursinus Community for a decade of transformation and increased excellence in liberal education… and…by the extent to which the entire Ursinus community shares fully in a common vision with student achievement at the center.”

Read more about the report and President Strassburger’s full comments on it in the report, “Philanthropy at Ursinus College.”

WINTER 2009-2010

Director of Communications Wendy Greenberg

the high impact practices that facilitate deep and long lasting learning by students in the liberal arts.”

URSINUS MAGAZINE

Ursinus Magazine Volume CVIII, No. 2, Winter 2009-2010. Third class postage paid at Philadelphia, Pa. 19104. Ursinus Magazine is published seasonally three times a year. Copyright 2009 by Ursinus College.

Editorial correspondence and submissions: Ursinus Magazine, P.O. Box 1000, Collegeville, PA 19426--1000. (610) 409-3300, ext. 2329; e-mail: ucmag@ursinus.edu.

Ursinus College has received rave reviews from a visiting team from prestigious colleges.

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URSINUS COLLEGE MAGAZINE WINTER 2009-2010 VOLUME CVIII NUMBER 2

The Gateway Upcoming Exhibits

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS The Philip And Muriel Berman Museum Of Art

Berman Museum expansion on target during 20th anniversary year

devoted alumnus Henry W. Pfeiffer 1948 and his late wife, June.

Donors include The Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, Los Angeles, Calif., the Pew Charitable Trusts, The Lenfest Foundation, The Alden Trust, Henry W. and June Pfeiffer, for whom the new museum wing will be named, and several others. Ursinus College is also the recipient of a State of Pennsylvania grant for expansion in the arts, used partly for the museum expansion.

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URSINUS MAGAZINE

WINTER 2009-2010

Henry “Hank” Pfeiffer signs a beam in the wing that bear his name, and the name of his late wife, June.

Last May 18, Ursinus College embarked on a $5 million, 10-month expansion of its art museum, The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art. The unique aspect is that the open storage system, unusual for a college museum, has as its goal, fostering interaction between community and the permanent collection of the museum. It also has inherent challenges, including security, climate control and light regulation.

into the public eye. The addition will showcase more than 3,000 paintings, drawings, sculpture and cultural artifacts from the permanent collection, most of which are inaccessible now due to space constraints.

Construction started the Monday after our May 16 commencement. We are on target to complete the museum addition by commencement 2010. It was longplanned and the financing was in hand for the LEED-certified building.

The rooftop of the addition will hold an Outdoor Sculpture Garden featuring bronzes of Bucks County, Pa. sculptor George Anthonisen, who donated his works, and the works of British sculptor Lynn Chadwick, whose pieces dot the Collegeville campus. In addition, artist Janet Sullivan Turner has donated a striking steel and copper monolith sculpture, “series #127,” for the new rooftop garden.

The glass addition will allow the museum’s permanent collection to move out of basement vaults and

The 4,200-square foot addition designed by Towers & Miller of Philadelphia will be named for a

Edward Burtynsky: Min(d)ing the Landscape January 22 – April 11, 2010 Main Gallery Opening Reception Jan. 28, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Award-winning, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is recognized as one of the most significant environmental photographers working today, with imagery exploring the link between industry and nature.

Combining the raw elements of mining, quarrying, manufacturing, shipping, oil production and recycling into visions that find beauty and humanity in the most unlikely of places, Burtynsky challenges us to reflect on the material manifestations of often devastating human interventions in the natural landscape, even as he presents us with powerfully beautiful and alluring images.

The Berman Museum of Art will host several public programs in conjunction with this exhibition. Penn State geography professor Petra Tschakert

The Gateway BY THE NUMBERs

BY THE NUMBERS

The Entering Class of 2009 includes students who have traveled to or lived in the following countries: Ecuador, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, Cuba, France, Ireland, Italy, Germany, England, Poland, Tanzania, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Kuwait, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Spain, Nicaragua, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Kenya, Nepal, Iran, Turkey, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Ghana.

The Ursinus Entering Class of 2009 also includes:

Edward Burtynksy, photographer: Nickel Tailings No. 34 Sudbury, Ontario 1996

and artist and Millersville University art professor Christina Miller (founding member of the artists’ collective Ethical Metalsmiths) will both lend their expertise in public lectures.

Drawing the Curtain February 9 – April 18, 2010 Upper Gallery In “Drawing the Curtain,” student and faculty co-curators will seek to understand the nuances of censorship within the context of a museum exhibition that poses questions about the rights of viewers to see and make autonomous choices about the images and objects at which they choose to look, and about the implicitly transactional nature of such choices.

Associate Director of the Berman Museum and Assistant Professor of Art History Susan Shifrin, and Assistant Professor of Art History Deborah Barkun will co-curate this exhibition with six Ursinus students following a special course in Fall 2009 devoted to the topic. “Drawing the Curtain” will take place in conjunction with a symposium on related issues that will be free and open to the public; a student symposium will give Ursinus students from across the curriculum an opportunity to present completed work and work-in-progress relating to issues of censorship.

197 82 59 30 23 19 17 10 11 7 2 1 1 1 1

National Honor Society Members Sports Captains Band Participants Newspaper Staff Participants Class Presidents and Vice Presidents Eagle Scouts National Spanish Honor Society Members National French Honor Society Members Editors-in-Chiefs Students Volunteered on a Habitat for Humanity Trip Members of the National Fencing Association Member of the North American Young Rider Champ Team (US, Canada, Mexico, Central America)

Ballroom Dance Instructor

Intern at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange

Writer and publisher of a children’s book

The Gateway CAMPUS NEWS 2009

CAMPUS NEWS

NASA and the Heritage Hubble Team, see Professor Melds Science and Art

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URSINUS MAGAZINE

WINTER 2009-2010

Alumni Critical in Ursinus Admissions Effort Ursinus Admissions has made a focused effort to expand beyond its regional prospective student areas, and participation from alumni has been essential in this effort.

The National Schools Committee, as the program is called, has been building successfully for five years, with alumni playing an invaluable role at receptions from Boston to Washington D.C. Alumni hosts, several of whom are Trustees, are asked to connect with people in the community who might know high school students, and invite them to the receptions as well as talk about their own college experience with parents and prospective students who attend. Recent alumni also attend.

The number of students who now enroll at Ursinus from Massachusetts, Westchester County, N.Y., Long Island,

northern New Jersey and the Maryland—D.C.—Virginia corridor has increased from 10 percent to 20 percent of the freshman class, in just three years. The current freshman class of 515 has 35 students from Massachusetts, and 24 from Connecticut, much higher than in past years.

Project Delphi Takes CIE One Step Further For the first time in the decade that Ursinus has required all first-year students to take the Common Intellectual Experience (CIE) course, the College has advanced the effort by an innovative new measure: Thirty-two students are experiencing a more intensive living and learning community, called Project Delphi. They live in the same hall, their roommate/s are in their class section and they are together for additional related evening programming. They have

Urinsus Gets Greener; New Initiatives Ursinus students this fall enjoyed some new space in Wismer, thanks to a project to add 60 more seats. There is also a deli station and salad bar with a selection of fresh, locally grown organic produce, some from the Ursinus Organic Garden.

Dining Services is now composting to recycle food waste, in collaboration with a local composting facility. The project also provides research opportunities for our students, and reduces carbon output. Kyle Rush, who is on our coaching staff is the new Ursinus Sustainability Coordinator.

The Bike Share Program, started by enthusiastic students, has added several bicycles to the original 10, including a grocery bike with appropriate basket.

Dr. Susannah Throop in History, with a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, a former academic editor who most recently taught at the University of New Hampshire; Dr. Phillipa Townsend in Religion, with a Ph.D. from Princeton, who taught in Princeton’s writing programs, and brings an expertise in Greco-Roman religion and philosophy, among other topics; Jonathan Clark, who returns to teach in Anthropology and Sociology, holds a law degree from Washington and Lee, is obtaining his doctorate from Penn State, and has research expertise in the agriculture of the Pennsylvania portion of the Chesapeake Bay; and Chisu Ko in Modern Languages, who studied at Seoul University and Columbia, taught at Columbia and has research interests in Latin American literature and culture, especially Argentinian theater and films.

Professor Melds Science and Art Art and science intersect in the work of Elizabeth Kessler, Visiting Assistant Professor in Art and Liberal Studies at Ursinus College, whose research likens the images from the Hubble Space Telescope to Romantic paintings and photographs of the American West.

Dr. Dale Cameron in Biology, who received his doctorate from the University of South Wales and is the recipient of several fellowships;

Her perspective on what notion of the cosmos these images convey and the responses they evoke, is part of The Hubble Legacy Symposium in Washington, D.C. this past fall at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, where she was invited to be a panelist in the session, “Hubble’s Legacy, What Has HST Revealed about Our Universe and Ourselves?” The symposium celebrates the museum’s installation of instruments that were aboard the telescope, including the camera that took the digital images. Other participants include several astronomers, NASA administrators who helped plan Hubble’s development and others who have worked extensively with its data, as well as an astronaut.

Dr. Stephanie Mackler in Education, who comes to us via Mount Holyoke and Columbia University, where she

As an art historian, Kessler considers the place of the Hubble images within the history of artistic and scientific

Students are also excited about the UCARE Office, Ursinus Center for Advocacy, Responsibility and Engagement (UCARE), which will make it easier to connect with community service and civic engagement opportunities. Senior Elizabeth Cannon got the office off the ground through her Summer Fellows project, “The Legacy of Pericles.”

Ursinus Welcomed the Following Faculty this Fall:

continued on page 18

WINTER 2009-2010

This past June, incoming freshmen were asked to apply to Project Delphi. Forty-four students applied for 32 slots by writing essays.

Dr. Amanda Reig in Chemistry, whose Ph.D. is from the University of Wisconsin, and is another research and fellowship award winner;

URSINUS MAGAZINE

CIE is a required first year course in which all students read the same books and discuss the readings in small sections, in the context of grappling with life’s “big questions:” What does it mean to be human? How should we live our lives? What is the universe and what is our place in it? The Common Intellectual Experience has been cited in national media and in a Harvard curricular review, and recently by the Middle States visiting accreditation team.

received her Ph.D., and whose research is on liberal arts for the global era;

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also taken steps to self-govern (within parameters). “The goal of CIE has always been to take discussion out of the classroom,” says Paul Stern, Professor of Politics, who shares the teaching responsibilities with Robert Dawley, Professor of Biology.

The Gateway Middle East Expert and Best Selling Author Lectures at Lenfest

Middle East Expert and Best Selling Author Lectures at Lenfest Ursinus hosted several impressive speakers this past fall.

Robert Lacey

Celebrated Middle East historian Robert Lacey addressed students and guests in the Lenfest Auditorium in October. The historian and author of the respected The Kingdom: Arabia & The House of Sa’ud delivered The Wright Lecture on Middle Eastern Affairs.

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Lacey’s new book, a follow up to his 1981 study of Saudi Arabia, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (Viking), was released the day after his Ursinus talk. In “Inside the Kingdom,” Lacey traces the history of U.S.-Saudi relations, from the partnership formed during the Persian Gulf War to its deterioration in the wake of 9/11.

The British journalist and bestselling author has become one of the most sought-after resources on Saudi Arabia. He is the author of the bestselling books Majesty and Ford: The Men and the Machine, among others. In 1979, he moved with his family to Saudi Arabia for 18 months to research his new book, which was banned by the Saudis.

In his talk, Lacey detailed the shifting winds of U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, he says Saudi Arabia is taking steps to quell the rise of terrorism in its homeland.

The Walter Livingston Wright III Lectureship was established in 2006 by Walter Livingston Wright III, Class of 1954, to provide enhanced opportunities for student and faculty enrichment in Middle Eastern affairs, past and present.

Scholar Holds Davis Chair Also this fall, Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor Emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, offered the first of three lectures for the Davis Visiting Professorship at Ursinus.

Schorsch, Class of 1957, was also inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, as there was no chapter on the Ursinus campus during the time he was a student.

Since retiring in 2006 from the Seminary, Schorsch, who holds the title, Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Professor of Jewish History, is at work on a biography of Moritz Steinschneider and more generally on the interdisciplinary nature of Oriental studies in the 19th century.

His book, Canon Without Closure (March 2007, Aviv Press), is a wide-ranging collection of Torah commentaries written during his tenure as Chancellor. In 2004, he published a twovolume collection of the articles and essays he wrote while Chancellor, Polarities in Balance, and in 1995, he published The Sacred Cluster: The Core Values of Conservative Judaism.

Schorsch was ordained by JTSA in 1962 and holds master’s degrees from JTSA and Columbia University. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Jewish history by Columbia in 1969.

He has received honorary degrees, among them, from the Russian State University – the first time in that country’s history that such an honor was given to a Jewish scholar.

The next Davis lectures will be February 25 and April 12.

The Davis Chair of Judeo-Christian Values was established by Nancy Davis in honor of her late husband Thomas, Class of 1952, a former Trustee.

The Gateway URSINUS WELCOMES JILL LEAUBER MARSTELLER

URSINUS WELCOMES JILL LEAUBER MARSTELLER 1978 AS SR. VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADVANCEMENT

Ursinus College is pleased to welcome new Senior Vice President for Advancement Jill Leauber Marsteller, who has more than 20 years of successful fundraising experience for major educational institutions in Pennsylvania.

Marsteller, a 1978 alumna of Ursinus College, joins the selective liberal arts college administration after serving as Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, where she oversaw the successful completion of a $100 million fundraising effort and led several new and effective marketing and communications initiatives.

Marsteller also served as Vice President for University Advancement at Lehigh University, and in various positions at Lehigh from 1995 to 2000, and has been a consultant to various organizations. She returns to Ursinus, where she began her advancement career in the Ursinus Development Office in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During that same period she served as an adjunct lecturer in the Ursinus English department.

Marsteller received her bachelor’s degree from Ursinus in 1978, graduating cum laude with honors in English. She received her master’s degree in English from Villanova University in 1980.

URSINUS MAGAZINE

As leader and chief strategist of Haverford’s most ambitious campaign in the college’s history, she led an effort that doubled annual giving, while significantly increasing alumni participation, and through philanthropy enabled the creation of three new integrated academic centers, and was responsible for developing new faculty initiatives, overseeing a branding initiative which enhanced visibility, energizing and increasing alumni activity and events and establishing the first comprehensive Parents’ Program at the College.

Jill Leauber Marsteller

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Her achievements in higher education include serving in 2007 as President of Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pa., and as Vice President of Institutional Advancement for eight years at Haverford College. At Haverford, Marsteller contributed to the most dynamic period of programmatic growth in Haverford’s history, leading a successful $200 million capital campaign, revamping many philanthropic programs and initiating the first comprehensive international efforts of the college.

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“I was delighted to see an Ursinus alumna become one of the half-dozen most accomplished collegiate fundraisers and managers in the country,” said President John Strassburger.

“She knows us well and in finishing a consultancy here already is accelerating our forward progress. Equally important, her passion for our approach to liberal education—her enthusiasm for our unvarnished focus on fostering student achievement —means she will be another powerful voice on our behalf with constituencies all around the country.”

The Gateway FACULTY Expertise

FACULTY EXPERTISE

PATRICK HURLEY Weaving art and the environment: Exploring an Important African American Land-Use Tradition.

North American environments by slaves and that helped fuel the early economic growth of Charleston, S.C. and its rural surroundings. By the early 2000’s, despite the disappearance of rice production more than 100 years earlier, baskets made of sweetgrass, bulrush, long-leaf pine needles, and threads of palmetto fronds hanging in hand-built stands had become a regular site along U.S. Highway 17 in the Mount Pleasant area and on the Charleston peninsula. Today, basket sales are still an important part of the household economy of many African Americans living in the formerly rural settlements inside and adjacent to the Town of Mount Pleasant. Popular wisdom has it that the art form is threatened by rampant residential and commercial development associated with suburbanization.

Your research focuses on the relationship between people and land and the ways resources are integrated into cultures. If sweetgrass isn’t, in fact, disappearing then why are you concerned about recording and maintaining this cultural art form?

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URSINUS MAGAZINE

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Patrick Hurley, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

What is cultural and historical significance of the Sweetgrass basket?

Sweetgrass baskets are a particular form of coiled basketry practiced by African Americans in the greater Mount Pleasant area of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Coiled baskets are one of the most widely recognized artifacts of Gullah culture, a unique African American culture with strong ties to the land that developed in the coastal areas of southeastern North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida.

Using materials gathered from local woodlands and marshes, enslaved Africans and their descendants have been sewing baskets since the time of South Carolina’s rice economy.

These baskets were one of several technologies adapted to

To some extent, sweetgrass is disappearing. New housing construction in the greater Mount Pleasant area has contributed to a decline in key resources. Some gatherers travel to nearby states to procure sufficient sweetgrass for the baskets. At the same time, the story is more complex and therein lie some potential lessons for thinking about sustainability. While there are many places where the species still grows, basket-makers have lost access to these places through a number of social processes, such as changes in land ownership and management. Sweetgrass, along with palmetto trees, are also proliferating in area landscaping, given these plants’ showy appearance and the ways they help reinforce a distinctive sense of place. While the palmetto is the state tree and adorns the state’s flag, the native sweetgrass provides a distinctive groundcover alternative to more widely known non-natives, such as pampas grass. Some newer housing communities in the area have even begun to organize harvesting events and some individual landowners, who are also basket collectors, grow sweetgrass to support the artform. In this sense, suburban places have also become sites of natural resource production.

As the South Carolina lowcountry becomes more developed how are the basket weavers impacted?

How did you first get involved in the study of sweetgrass baskets? Are you working on any other similar types of research?

Access to the resources to make baskets likely will remain an issue. But there is a potentially bigger problem. In recent years, the distinctive communities that are home to sweetgrass basket-makers are increasingly threatened by the forces of gentrification, as lands around their communities are developed, sometimes for multi-million dollar homes. The outcome has been increased property values and associated concerns about rising property taxes. In the process, important components of the distinctive Gullah cultural landscape—not just sweetgrass—may be lost forever. And basket-makers may be forced to leave their communities in search of affordable housing elsewhere.

I noticed the sweetgrass baskets and their makers during my first trip to South Carolina in 2005. After settling in at the College of Charleston, I began hearing and learning about the challenges faced by basket-makers. Given my interest in the social-ecological change, land-use planning, and conservation, I was eager to apply my research skills to the issue in a way that would document the situation and that could inform planning and land-use decision-making processes.

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Storytelling is an important part of much research in the social sciences. But the key is for the story to effectively convey the reality of the data that we collect. In my research I use a combination of ethnography and air photo interpretation, among other techniques. In the sweetgrass work, my collaborator Cari Goetcheus (Clemson University) and I have access to historic air photos extending back to 1949 and a number of time periods since. By examining the changes we see in landscape patterns, such as the distribution of agricultural fields and forests, within the context of information on community boundaries provided by long-time residents in these communities, we are piecing together a powerful story about landscape change and the African American experience in greater Mount Pleasant. Taken together, this information tells us a lot about the way African Americans in this area related to and interacted with surrounding environments. But it also has shed new light on the African American suburban experience during the Jim Crow era.

We have had a number of meetings to share our findings with planners for both the Town of Mount Pleasant and Charleston County. The town is currently updating its comprehensive plan and our research helps to document the historical distinctiveness of the rural African American settlements in the area. This information is also of great interest to and will help inform policy development by the Gullah-Gechee National Heritage Corridor.

URSINUS MAGAZINE

Has your research played a part in the future planning for the areas of the city where many of the weavers now live?

Baskets highlight the diversity in artistic use of sweetgrass, bulrush, longleaf pine, and palmetto.

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What’s the role of storytelling in your research?

Since my arrival at Ursinus in the fall of 2008, I have expanded my interest in the role that suburban and urban forests play in providing non-timber resources to local people. I am part of a group of researchers, including researchers from the U.S. Forest Service and the Institute for Culture and Ecology who are exploring gathering in and around U.S. cities. This effort includes examination of the Philadelphia suburbs with Ursinus student Laura Brody. I also am currently working with Dr. Yilmaz Ari at Balikesir University in western Turkey to examine the role that urbanization plays in shaping ecological change and natural resource use in the Bay of Edremit region.

FEATURES DAIRY QUEEN:ANNE MENDELSON’S FRESH PERSPECTIVE ON MILK By Kathryn Campbell

DAIRY QUEEN ANNE MENDELSON’S FRESH PERSPECTIVE ON MILK

By Kathryn Campbell

Does it really do a body good? Anne Mendelson’s important new book on milk (yes, milk) examines not just recipes, but the relevance of this seemingly indispensable food. Or is it a drink? Either way, milk long has been touted as a healthy, even essential, part of the American diet. But most of today’s milk is a watered-down travesty of what was once available, argues Mendelson, Class of 1963. She researched recipes from across the world in a book that celebrates the more robust qualities of milk, yogurt, cheese and cream. The result is equal parts history lesson and savory travel log. It’s very possible you will never think of milk in the same way again.

When it comes to her knowledge of food, she dazzles.

Her agile and informed writing make her a storyteller first, a cook second. In Milk, she writes about the evolution of the dairy industry, defines the differences between raw and pasteurized, organic and conventional milk. And then gently holds your hand through each step of a moru kozhambu,

“I wanted to write an exposé on the dairy farm industry and gave up the project years ago,” says Mendelson.

“Then after a long interval I came back to the milk idea, but with a cookbook focus because that’s what I knew I was qualified to do.”

Mendelson, who has her silver hair cut in a bob and wears horned-rimmed glasses, was born in Norristown and grew up in Lower Salford Township, Pa. The pastoral backdrop and working farms of her childhood now are mostly

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She began finding her way around the kitchen as a teenager.

By her mid-twenties, Mendelson had begun to amass cookbooks and experiment with recipes. Though her doctoral dissertation was on Chaucer, she soon switched careers from medieval studies to freelance writing. “I married a freelance photographer with a lot of food-minded friends,” says Mendelson. “One of them was named New York editor of Bon Appétit magazine during the mid-1970s, and hired me to write cookbook reviews. After that, one thing led to another.” She was instrumental in founding the Culinary Historians of New York and recently contributed to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.

URSINUS MAGAZINE

“The first time I tried to cook Dulce de Leche 30 years ago I burned the pot, there was no way it could be saved,” says Mendelson, author of Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages (Knopf, 2008) and Stand Facing the Stove (Henry Holt, 1997). She’s a highly regarded voice in the food writing field. An author of several cookbooks, she was contributing editor for Gourmet Magazine, staff editor at Cuisine, and an occasional contributor to the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. In person, though, Mendelson is petite, modest and genuine.

a South Indian buttermilk soup or lamb kofte in Yogurt Sauce. Who is this woman?

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Wyncote, Pa.—All that was missing was the familiar measured click of the gas stove she was used to in her own apartment. But Anne Mendelson was game to prepare the Mexican caramel sauce on an electric burner. Outside the autumn wind stirred leaves in downward swirls, but in her nephew, Jorj Bauer’s house, the kitchen was a haven of sweet smells and warmth.

FEATURES DAIRY QUEEN:ANNE MENDELSON’S FRESH PERSPECTIVE ON MILK By Kathryn Campbell

memories. “It was another landscape – another existence – altogether,” says Mendelson. “I remember farmers putting out the milk cans.”

Mendelson’s Milk includes 120 recipes and a thorough examination of this chameleon ingredient’s role in the history of food. She writes lines like, “One reason for cream’s fall from grace was, of course, the general move away from full-fat dairy products…It’s a sad development, because when real creaminess is what you want, there’s nothing like fresh cream.” Chapter sub headings include Brave New Milk, Clotted Cream and Milk and Motherhood, or Lactation in a Nutshell. She explains, “to most American cooks, the idea of milk or cream as a vehicle of vivid or concentrated flavors comes as a surprise…no one expects them to be anything but bland.”

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It’s unclear if people are moving away from or toward real dairy products, she says. The constant and conflicting gush of information about alleged health benefits of foods is disorienting.

“Today’s mix of societal and supposedly scientific attitudes toward food makes “Jabberwocky” look rational,” she says. “This is good for you, -- oh, sorry, pardon delay in deleting last week’s official opinion; we meant to say BAD for you. Imitation milk based on soybean milk or other vegetable sources has a huge buyership among people who have some vague notion of immense health benefits and never pause to read the lists of ingredients in most of this stuff, or to think about the huge amount of technological processing necessary to make it look even remotely like milk. The main reason people buy these non-milk travesties is that they mistakenly think milk has to be a critical part of everyday diet. This is pure myth. Actually, anyone can live very happily and healthily without milk,” says Mendelson.

As it happens, the book’s arrival comes at a dire period for American dairy farmers. With milk prices plummeting, farmers can’t recoup production costs. Some have opted to sell for slaughter most or all of their herds. And much of the public remain deliriously uninformed on how poorly dairy cows are treated. Mastitis is common in large farms.

The cows are riddled with hoof infections because of their high grain diet, she says. And though she favors the idea of small farms where the animals can graze on pastures, they are expensive to run and hard to find. “It’s very lucrative to handle milk in mass producing way,” she says.

The dairy farmers are anything but greedy plutocrats, says Mendelson. “The space-age technology like computerized rations, or robotic milking machines, is such a Faustian bargain,” she says. “The farmers are forced to rely on it more and more, and it just ends up adding to the problem of chronic surpluses.”

According to Mendelson, most of the world’s peoples scarcely touch milk except in the form of fresh fermented products yogurt, cultured sour milk or a few simple fresh cheeses. “We, on the other hand, place a weird emphasis on the one form of milk -- unfermented, fluid, and fresh in the sense of nonsour -- that’s the least interesting from a flavor standpoint and the least digestible by most human beings past the age of weaning,” she says. “It happens that the British and northwestern Europeans who colonized North America belong to one of these odd groups.

Even stranger,” she says, “we’ve invented nondairy imitations of fresh drinkable milk and persuaded ourselves that they fill some true medical need.”

Views differ on the necessity of milk in human diet, or its general healthfulness. Yes, milk provides nutrients, including calcium and vitamin D, which are important to bone health, says Martin Donohoe, MD, FACP Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Community Health Portland State University. But it is not a necessary part of a diet, as calcium and vitamin D can be obtained through other foods or in supplement form, he says. “Organic milk is produced without antibiotics, pesticides, or artificial hormones, including recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH). Pesticides and rBGH harm cows and are linked with higher rates of human breast, prostate, and gastrointestinal cancers,” says Donohoe, who is Chief Science Advisor, Campaign for Safe Foods and Member and a member of the Board of Advisors for Oregon Physicians

For premium dairy-based food, says Mendelson, look at cuisines where fresh milk for drinking is unimportant. “The most fascinating discoveries I made came from ‘research’ conducted by eating in cheap New Jersey (sometimes Brooklyn or Queens) ethnic restaurants, pointing to what people were having at the next table, and ordering some.

In 2007, she was awarded the Sophie Coe Prize in Food History at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.

The prize-winning essay, on the pre-European food of the

WINTER 2009-2010 URSINUS MAGAZINE

The organic label, Mendelson says, is wrought with inconsistencies. “The only reason for drinking milk is an appreciation of the taste,” she says. “Unfortunately most of what we get has no taste.”

This is what opened up the world of yogurt to me. By ‘yogurt’ I mean only plain, unflavored whole-milk yogurt, not the different kinds of sweet glop that masquerade under the name in American supermarkets. I could have written a book on nothing but the amazing ways in which Turkish, Middle Eastern and Indian cooks turn yogurt into sauces, marinades, and drinks. I honestly don’t know why anyone would drink milk in preference to eating it as yogurt or sour cream.”

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for Social Responsibility Senior Physician, Internal Medicine, Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center.

FEATURES DAIRY QUEEN:ANNE MENDELSON’S FRESH PERSPECTIVE ON MILK By Kathryn Campbell

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Mendelson’s nephew, Jorj Bauer, samples the Mexican caramel sauce.

Lenape Indians, was published in Gastropolis, a collection of New York food-related essays, published by Columbia University Press in 2008.

Though her life is in many ways defined by food, Mendelson doesn’t cook every night. “The household is me and one cat, and I tend to alternate among making up a pot of something that will last a few days, shoving together impromptu salads, and heading out to the many great Turkish, Latin American, Korean, Chinese, restaurants in my New Jersey neighborhood,” she says. “I rarely cook from recipes, though I may consult them when

I’m wondering what to do with a stash of peaches, pork sausages or snow pea shoots.”

With such a glistening record of culinary research and literary accomplishments it’s comforting to learn what makes a favorite meal for Mendelson; “I could die happy with fish and chips and beer.”

The Gateway CAMPUS NEWS 2009 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8

CAMPUS NEWS representations, understanding the careful choices astronomers make when they translate raw data – black and white digital images with little definition – into vividly colored and dramatically composed images for public display.

The resulting pictures suggest, she says, “a sense of majesty and wonder about nature” as they also encourage further exploration of new frontiers. Kessler initially was interested in Romanticism and landscape paintings, and then looked at how digital images were produced and the ways in which they could be changed and adapted. The Hubble images brought those two interests together.

The minerals in question are used in electronic products worldwide. “After seeing how the conflict is directly related to us we felt that we could join several thousands of other students who have been working to pressure their Senators,” says Mithbaokar. “The conflict really is not as distant as it seems. The fact that our cell phones could inadvertently be supporting the conflict disturbed us a lot. We wanted to make it really relatable so the students could see the everyday connections.”

Kessler earned a Ph.D. from the Committee on the History of Culture at the University of Chicago. She has held fellowships at Stanford University and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. She contributed a chapter, “The Wonder of Outer Space,” to Hubble: Imaging Space and Time by David Devorkin and Robert W. Smith (National Geographic 2008), as well as an essay, “Pretty Sublime” to Beyond the Infinite: The Sublime in Art and Science, a collection edited by Ronald Hoffman and Iain Boyd Whyte (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Currently she is working on a book about the aesthetics of the Hubble Space Telescope images.

“We weren’t aware of the seriousness of the conflict until we went to a STAND National Conference in D.C. in early November,” says Mithbaokar, who is from Mumbai, India.

“We wanted to raise greater awareness of this crisis,” says Jessica DeVaul (2010).

Together more than 40 Ursinus students gathered to write to politicians this semester.

In a recently published strategy paper titled “Can You Hear Congo Now?” Prendergast wrote that widespread rape has becomes an instrument of communal terror in Congo.

Members of the Ursinus chapter of V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls, collaborated on the letter writing campaign. Both student groups hope to continue to raise awareness on the crisis in Congo and other human rights issues.

URSINUS MAGAZINE

When Serena Mithbaokar learned about the crisis in eastern Congo, she knew she wanted to make a stand. Hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in eastern Congo over the past decade as a result of an ongoing conflict ignited by the multi-million dollar mineral trade. Mithbaokar (2010) president of the Ursinus Chapter of STAND, the student-led division of the Genocide Intervention Network, worked with fellow Ursinus students Lindsay Hogan, Brianna Gaddy and Sarah Hood-Betts, to organize a letter writing campaign on behalf of women in Congo who are victims of sexual violence.

When Ursinus STAND members went to Washington they met with John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project and an expert on Africa. A human rights activist and author, Prendergast was director of African Affairs at the National Security Council and was recently featured on a segment of the television news program 60 Minutes about sexual violence in Congo. Ursinus students learned that armed groups control local mines in Congo and that the minerals from the mines are transported through neighboring countries.

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Determined to Make a Difference; Ursinus Students Raise Awareness for Conflict in Congo.

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Ursinus students campaign to end conflict in Congo

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WINTER 2009-2010

FEATURES Kim Guadagno: From Sheriff to First Lt. Governor By Ellen Labrecque 1995

Kim Guadagno, Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey

Kim Guadagno From Sheriff to First Lt. Governor of New Jersey

By Ellen Labrecque 1995

After months on the campaign trail, Guadagno, Class of 1980, was elected the first-ever Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey on November 3, 2009. She will help navigate a new role for the state with the improvement of small business success at the top of her agenda.

“Chris asked me if I would like to be the first Lieutenant Governor of the state, assuming he is elected,” Guadagno explained. “I drove home to my husband and said ‘Good news, bad news. Good news, here is your coffee.

It was a crisp day in early October, and less than a month until Election Day. The campaign had entered crunch time, but Guadagno’s “day job” remained her top priority.

On the outside of the building in Freehold, New Jersey, a sign read Kim Guadagno: Sheriff of Monmouth County.

When Guadagno was sworn in as Sheriff in January, 2008, she was the first woman ever to be elected to the position.

She is in charge of 695 employees and

a $65 million budget. Her office also oversees a 1,328 bed maximum-security correctional facility, a youth detention center and police communications emergency dispatch center. It is a threeyear term, but, as the state’s first Lt. Governor—New Jersey approved the position in January, 2006—she’ll hand the sheriff’s reins over to someone new.

Guadagno has a genuine smile and a firm “I’m in charge” kind of handshake. There’s no gray button down shirt and black tie like a Sheriff from the movies, instead she wears a dark purple pants suit and “sensible” shoes. The afternoon would be spent campaigning door-to-door for Christie, so comfortable footwear was a must.

URSINUS MAGAZINE

The caller was Chris Christie, the Republican candidate for Governor of N.J., who was running against incumbent Governor Jon Corzine.

Bad news is, I am leaving for the next 105 days, and maybe the next four years.’ He said that’s fine, just don’t bring me coffee anymore.”

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Kim Guadagno’s cell phone rang at 9 on a Sunday morning in mid-July.

She was standing in line in a Dunkin’ Donuts near her home in Monmouth Beach, N.J., picking up coffee for herself and her husband, Superior Court Judge Michael Guadagno.

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When writer and alum, Ellen Labrecque, met up with Guadangno earlier this fall, the New Jersey sheriff was still campaigning and talked about what led her to swap prosecuting for politics. “It’s been a wild ride,” said Guadagno. She will resign as Sheriff on January 19th - the day she is sworn in as Lt. Governor. “It’s a solemn responsibility on two levels,” she said recently. “First, the state is in bad financial shape and second nobody has done the Lt. Governor job before so we are starting from scratch. Chris (Gov. Chris Christie) has asked me to learn how to make it easier for small businesses to stay in New Jersey. We will set up New Jersey Partnership for Action to make sure people who want to do business in New Jersey can do it.”

FEATURES Kim Guadagno: From Sheriff to First Lt. Governor By Ellen Labrecque 1995

“That is how you win elections,” she explained. “There is a direct correlation between talking directly to people and getting elected. When I ran for Sheriff, I knocked on 5,000 doors and won by 5,000 or more votes.”

It is easy to see why Christie chose Guadagno for his running mate. Along with her impressive background as a criminal prosecutor, she exudes competence, confidence, and the tough outer shell needed to survive as politician and a prosecutor.

“She’ll be in the room on anything she wants to be in the room on,” Christie has said repeatedly.

When she talks, it is hard to place her subtle accent. She doesn’t draw her vowels out like some people from New Jersey, where she has lived since 1991. Nor does she speak like a New Yorker, where she worked for eight years. Her background explains her hard-to-figure vernacular:

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Her father’s career meant the family moved constantly. Her dad, Charles A. McFadden, was in the television business. Every time he moved up in management, he moved his family to a place with a bigger market. The McFaddens lived in 25 different places before Guadagno went off to college.

“Ursinus was actually the longest I was anywhere before that time,” she said.

Born in Iowa, the McFadden family lived in Michigan, Ohio, Connecticut and New York. They were living in Ambler, Pa., when it was time to choose a college. She liked the small size of Ursinus and its reputation for tough academics. Guadagno was accepted early decision to the College. A day student her first two years, she moved onto campus as a junior. Guadagno is

the middle child of five children, and although she is the only one who pursued a career in politics, debates were a common part of dinner table banter.

“My mom would say black and my dad would say white and the debate would begin,” she said. “We debated social issues of the time. We grew up in the 70’s, so the debate back then was women’s issues, choice issues.”

She didn’t shy away from politics when she was at Ursinus either. She was head of the student government and a member of the Young Republicans Club. And, in 1977, she volunteered on the campaign of a friend and fellow Ursinus student, George Geist. Geist, who graduated in 1977 and is now a New Jersey State Judge for Workers Compensation in Gloucester County, ran for New Jersey General Assembly when Gaudagno was a sophomore.

Geist lost the election, but Gaudagno made a distinct impression on him.

“Even at Ursinus, I knew Kim would become a prominent participant in a new generation of public service leadership,” Judge Geist said. “Kim is an example of the best and the brightest.”

After graduating with a political science degree, Guadagno went on to American University for law school, where she graduated cum laude in 1983. Drawing upon her dinner table rhetoric, she worked as an associate in the Litigation Department of a New York City firm for four years, and then moved to the United States Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn.

It was there she began specializing as a trial lawyer investigating and prosecuting organized crime figures. She also met her husband, Michael Guadagno, who was Deputy Chief of the Organized

Crime and Racketeering Department.

When the couple became engaged, they decided to move to Monmouth County — where Michael was born and raised.

Twelve years Kim’s senior, Michael was, in her words, “immensely helpful” when they were trial lawyers together. But, now that she is involved with politics and he is a judge, political talk is strictly off limits in their home.

“We talk kids,” she said. “Who is going to get the kids from hockey, swimming, baseball, whatever. This is our shop talk now.”

Kim and Michael married in 1991 and had their first child, Kevin, now 16, in 1993. Two more boys followed — Michael, 13, and Anderson, 9. When the couple moved to New Jersey, they also both began working at the United States Attorney’s Office District in Newark.

“When I was hired, Mike Chertoff, who was U.S. Attorney for New Jersey at the time, asked me if there was anything else he should know about me. And, I said, ‘well, I am engaged to Mike Guadagno.”

During her days in Newark, Guadagno was the lead prosecutor in the corruption trial of Thomas D’Alessio, an Essex County executive convicted of federal extortion and corruption charges, including using campaign money for an Aruba vacation. Working on such a highprofile case, Guadagno became locally famous as a tough prosecutor capable of busting dirty politicians.

She also learned how to balance motherhood with a high-profile career — something she seemingly manages with aplomb. “My first son was born in February, 1993 and I picked the jury for the D’Alessio, case the following September,” she said. “I

She moved from the United States Attorney’s Office in Newark to the State of New Jersey Office of the Attorney General in Trenton in 1998. She worked there until the couple had their third child in 2001. Guadagno worked from home in a solo practice from 2001 to 2005 which allowed her more time with her children.

“As a woman, you have to make tough decisions as to what will work and what will not work with your family,” she said. “At that time, it seemed best for everybody for me to stay home a little while.”

“I can sit back and complain about what was happening in my community, or I could step up and do something about it. I feel the same way about my role as Lt. Governor; I see things in Jersey that I don’t like. And, I received the opportunity to do something about it — of course I have to try and do so.”

In 2007, Guadagno decided she was going to run for a New Jersey Assembly seat. But the current Sheriff of Monmouth County, Joseph Oxley was retiring, and the Republican Party called upon her to run for his position instead.

Her background as a hard-charging federal prosecutor seemed to make her a perfect candidate. The people of Monmouth County clearly agreed.

Roberta Van Anda, a fellow Ursinus

Then candidate Sherriff Guadagno at a debate in Monmouth County, N.J.

“Kim is everything you wish you could find in a politician,” Van Anda said.

“She has such high integrity and isn’t in politics for any other reason but to be of service to people. I think there is simply ingrained a wish to help.”

The role of the Lt. Governor is to take the governor’s place if necessary.

The other duties are intentionally not clearly defined by the legislature so the governor can define the duties himself.

But Christie made it clear Guadagno would work closely with him on every major decision.

Guadagno insists running for governor someday is not an option. But, watching her at an October debate at Monmouth University, it’s easy to envision her eventually running for the state’s top office. She was a natural on the center stage and argued with strength and clarity. One of her biggest fans is her oldest son, Kevin, who sits in the front row at many of her speeches with a pad and pencil in hand — offering her his critique later that night.

“Kids are the great equalizers,” said Guadagno, who still finds time in her weekly schedule to take on carpool duties. A state trooper security detail now travels with her for work. “No matter what happens that day, good or bad, your kids will always help you keep things in perspective. Wherever my career takes me, I know every day around 3, I’ll be checking in at home, and somebody will be asking me, ‘Mom, where is my baseball hat?

Mom, what is for dinner?’ My kids will always bring me back to the real world,” she concluded. “I cling to that.”

WINTER 2009-2010

“When I called the case ready for trial, I was nine and half months pregnant — so that presented its own challenges,” Guadagno said. “First, finding a suit that would fit, second, managing my home life at the same time.”

graduate who lives in Monmouth County and is a county committee woman, met Guadagno at a fundraiser when she was running for Sheriff.

URSINUS MAGAZINE

By the time she was pregnant with her second child, she was trying another high-profile case, United States vs.

Nicholas Bissell. Bissell was a former Somerset County Prosecutor convicted of tax evasion and blackmail.

Ironically, working from home also allowed Guadagno to become involved with politics again — the first time since her days at Ursinus. In 2005, she was concerned over the sizes of houses that were being built in her community.

In order to do something about it, she ran for, and won, a position on the Monmouth Beach Borough Commission. In some ways, this local election set forth both her political career and political philosophy:

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took the baby to my office seven days a week until the trial began.”

FEATURES JOURNEY OF THE HEART By Kathryn Campbell

Journey of the Heart

By Kathryn Campbell

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Cardiologist David Rosvold, class of 1980, first traveled to South America in 2001. As a volunteer with Healing the Children, he’s part of a medical team that serves people in rural and poor communities.

Dr. David Rosvold in his office at Penn Cardiac Care in Robbinsville, N.J.

Dave Rosvold was bushed after a 6-and- a- half- hour flight from New York City to Ecuador. But the trip was only half over. Climbing aboard an older model Hino bus with Latin music blaring, he braced for the ride. Noisy and dirty, the bus wound its way up the Andes, rumbling through the steep Southern Highlands of Ecuador. As a medical volunteer with Healing the Children, Rosvold is no novice when it comes to

roughing it. He’s paddled in a canoe on the Amazon. This time his destination was a clinic in the town of Azogues.

“You’re looking at some of the most beautiful mountains in the world,” says Rosvold, a cardiologist with Penn Cardiac Care at Mercer Bucks. But the breathtaking scenery was just a side note. Lines of families in need of healthcare trailed out

They were given the key to the city this summer. “The people in South America are very family oriented and so appreciative of what we’re doing,” says Rosvold, who grew up in Riverton, N.J. The work in South America, he says, is as much about building relationships as it is about providing healthcare.

His wife, Elizabeth (Parker) Rosvold 1981 also is an Ursinus graduate and a doctor. The two met in biology lab at Ursinus and married three weeks after Liz’s graduation. Their children are Mark, 26, and Melissa, 21.

“Dave uses his vacation time to go on these trips with Heal the Children and has done similar trips with a church group,” says Liz, who has been in private practice for ten years and specializes in hematology and medical oncology. She is also Co-Medical Director of the In-Patient Hospice Unit at St. Francis Hospital in Trenton.

“It’s refreshing to just practice medicine, without dealing with insurance and red tape,” says Rosvold.

“When we first started working down here there were no paper towels. Things have really improved as far as the facility.”

In Azogues, a city 250 miles south of Quito, the medical team was welcomed to town with a sit down dinner.

Dave’s father was a pharmacist and his mom was an X-ray technician at Hahnemann Hospital. His mom also volunteered in a free clinic at Burlington County Memorial Hospital. When he was 17, Rosvold told her he wanted to be a doctor.

“She dropped me off in front of the emergency clinic, told me to go in, volunteer and find out what it was really like,” he says. It made a lasting impact.

“Everybody should do something,” says Rosvold.

“You don’t have to go to South America. There’s always something that needs to be done. Try to give ten percent of your time and talent to others in need.”

WINTER 2009-2010

The patients he sees in South America and the Dominican Republic are almost all children with a wide range of medical needs, from cleft palates to infections and malnutrition. In one week’s time the volunteer doctors and nurses screen hundreds of patients, complete an average of 60 surgeries and teach the clinic staff.

Now that their children are older, the Rosvolds have more time for each other. They’ve traveled to Thailand and Italy for vacations and enjoy going to concerts and taking bike rides. Though they know how to enjoy their life, the needs of their patients at home and abroad are always at the forefront.

URSINUS MAGAZINE

Rosvold’s been a member of the New Jersey-New York chapter of nonprofit for eight years. In his private practice in the States, his adult patients face coronary artery disease, angina, high blood pressure and obesity. “It’s the American lifestyle that’s contributing to heart disease,” he says. “We have a sick care system in this country that we’re now trying to turn into a healthcare system.”

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the door of the small clinic when the doctors and nurses of Healing the Children arrived.

“I like the work very much,” says Liz Rosvold about the hospice care. “It’s rewarding because you are really taking care of the whole family.”

class notes SPOTLIGHT CLASS OF 1957

1955

1957

Richard Baltz reports he is busy enjoying time with his three grandsons — Matthew, Grant, and Erick.

Vonnie Gros

1956 Faith (Helmle) Stanley writes that she and her husband, John, drove to Loveland, Ohio to visit with son, Scott, his wife, Laura, and their daughter, Stella Marie for a week in May.

1957 George W. Browne is coaching throws and jumps for the boys and girls track team at Northville High School in Northville, Mich.

1958 Richard and Patricia Chern celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on Sept. 12, 2009.

Richard Goldberg, an artist, exhibited his oil paintings at a program created by Morgan Bockius Studios in Perkasie, Pa.

1960 Laverne Joseph is president and CEO of Retirement Housing Foundation, one of the nation’s largest non-profit organizations that develops, builds, and sponsors affordable housing for older adults, low-income families and persons with disabilities. Laverne received the 2008 Award of Honor from the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. The award is presented to an individual who has provided outstanding

By Beth Laskowski 1993

Vonnie Gros’ coaching and playing career is legendary — and even that description feels understated. As a student at Ursinus, she was named an All-American player in both field hockey and lacrosse. Following her college career, she played on the United States Field Hockey team for 13 years. She coached at West Chester University from 1964 to 1976 where her field hockey teams endured just seven losses in total (100–7–16). The Rams field is now named in her honor.

Vonnie was named head field hockey coach of the U.S. Olympic team that boycotted the 1980 Games and she also led the U.S. squad to a bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics. She joined the Ursinus staff in 1990 and compiled a 57-79-9 hockey record over seven seasons. Vonnie is a member of the U.S. Field Hockey Hall of Fame and the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame. This past November, she was inducted into the Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame.

Coach Gros encouraged many young women to become amazing players, coaches, and simply, amazing people. When speaking with her former players, they all reflect upon what kind of teacher, and above all else, the kind of person Vonnie is. Beth “Betsy” Laskowski, Class of 1993, a teacher and coach in Florida, is one former player who certainly feels this way. She writes: “I knew I was playing for a legend the moment I arrived on Ursinus’s campus.

Vonnie was legendary for the obvious reasons, such as her Olympic and national success. But, I soon learned, she would also become a legend to me because of the many lessons she taught us as a coach and a person.

Vonnie expected the very best from each of her players at every practice and every game, without exception, and we complied because she gave us everything she had. I remember Vonnie’s excitement when she returned from a trip to Australia brimming with ideas for new back pass techniques, drills and game plays; many of which she discovered by not only studying international women’s field hockey games, but also men’s soccer matches. This was Vonnie, never resting on her laurels, but forever searching for new ways to improve our team and the game of field hockey.

Another of Vonnie’s hallmarks was her endless enthusiasm. I think there were actual games where she got more exercise running up and down the sidelines than we did out on the field. Her arms flailed as she shouted words of encouragement, or the dreaded “Mary Kay” moniker aimed at the player who fearfully shied away from a tackle. Vonnie had a thoughtful, humorous style that made it easy for her to connect with her players. I cannot recall Vonnie ever losing perspective of the game, ever talking down to one of her players, or ever letting a frustrating moment dictate her behavior. This is probably the most valuable lesson Vonnie taught me, something I’ve carried over into my own coaching career. Yes, your players need to be conditioned, skilled, and dedicated, but most of all they need a coach who they can look up to, someone who can teach them more than the elements of the game. Vonnie was this coach to all of us.”

class notes SPOTLIGHT CLASS OF 1968 By Ellen Labrecque 1995

1969

1968

Frederick Jacob is a certified civil trial attorney practicing in Millville, N.J. He writes that he recently emerged victorious in a 10-year battle with the state of N.J. to secure thorough and efficient funding for 17 poor, rural school districts in South Jersey. His oldest son, Gregory, served as U.S. Solicitor of Labor during the last year and a half of the Bush Administration and prior to that as Deputy Policy Director for the Bush White House.

Herbert Smith

Andrew Larsen was awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Va. in May. Andrew is a retired insurance executive who was named one of the 100 Most Powerful People in the Insurance Industry by Insurance Distribution & Enrollment Magazine. During his career, he served as executive vice president of GE Financial Assurance (now Genworth) and chairman of First Colony Life Insurance Company and Colonial Penn Insurance Company. After retiring in 2003, he became Lynchburg College’s first executive-in-residence for the School of Business and Economics.

1970 Judith (Young) Link was sworn in as a new member of the N.J. State Pinelands Commission in July. She is currently the Hamilton Township Environmental Commissioner. She also owns an Atlantic County skating rink.

Cheryl (Beadle) Marple writes that she is Acting President of the Collegeville Economic Development Corporation.

By Ellen Labrecque 1995

Herbert Smith, a political science professor at McDaniel College in Maryland, was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award at McDaniel’s College Honor’s Convocation this past May. Smith has taught at McDaniel since 1973, yet he credits Ursinus for planting the seeds for his teaching career. In fact, he can remember the exact day he decided to become a professor: “It was in a comparative government class my sophomore year,” said Smith, who has a Ph.D. in political science from Johns Hopkins University. “The late Eugene Miller, who was teaching the class, would occasionally go off on digressions.

That morning, he described the life of a professor. It resonated with me. I marked my goal of becoming a college professor from that morning lecture.”

Even learning of a professor’s salary was not a deterrent. “Gene described the life as genteel poverty,” Smith said with a laugh.

Regardless of the pay, Smith was inspired by the way Miller described how a professor touches so many lives — especially at a liberal arts school.

So, upon graduating from Ursinus, Smith went right onto Johns Hopkins, than joined the McDaniel staff in 1973, where he has taught in the Political Science Department ever since.

Although Smith has worked in politics as well has written numerous articles in professional and government publications, his students remain his top priority. He helps them find internships with senators and delegates, and as exit pollsters for television news shows. Many of his former students play a part in government today. Frank Kratovil, a former student of Smiths, who is now a U.S. Congressman, can’t say enough about his professor.

“I can think of no other professor in my lifetime who has so consistently and unselfishly given of himself to his students, Kratovil said. “His commitment extends far beyond the classroom.”

Genteel poverty indeed.

class notes SPOTLIGHT CLASS OF 1986

1980 Steven and Susan (Hoffman) Schirk report their daughter, Kyra, graduated magna cum laude from Albright College in May. She is a first year dental student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine.

Daughter Dana is a sophomore at Ursinus, and son Alexander and third daughter Marrisa are a junior in high school and in eighth grade respectively.

Rick Millward reports his son, Christopher, received his Eagle Scout Award in November 2008 from Troop 273 in Myersville, Md., where Rick served as an assistant scoutmaster.

Christopher will be attending George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. this fall on a full scholarship while pursuing a degree in civil and infrastructure engineering. Rick is now the Deputy Chief of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Pilot Biproduction

Joseph M. DeSimone, polymer expert and “green” manufacturing pioneer, gave the Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia Nov. 19. The Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture emphasizes the positive role that chemistry and related sciences play in our lives. DeSimone has pioneered solutions in green manufacturing and promising applications in gene therapy, drug delivery, and medical devices. He is the Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the William R. Kenan Jr., Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina. He is also the co-principal investigator of the Carolina Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, funded by the National Cancer Institute.

DeSimone is the 2008 recipient of the Lemelson-MIT Prize for his groundbreaking ideas, including using polymers to develop technology for a stent which could eliminate the need for a permanent prosthetic. He is also working on linking “green” chemistry to new cancer therapies, imaging techniques and other endeavors. He has mentored countless students, and authored numerous articles.

DeSimone, an Ursinus Trustee, earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

Facility, which manufactures Phase I/ II vaccine candidates for a myriad of organizations and institutions under FDA-regulated Good Manufacturing Practice conditions.

July 2009 edition of Main Line Today Magazine, in Pennsylvania.

1985

Toni Chambers and her husband, Greg Esemplare, report that they have two children Paige, 3, and Adam, 1.

Charlene Milne-Vergilio writes she is keeping busy with three boys, ages 15, 12, and 9. Her husband, Cory, is in private practice in gastroenterology and she is working at the JFK Family Medicine Residency Program in Edison, N.J. as associate director.

1986 James J. Ruggiero Jr. was named a Top Lawyer in Trusts & Estates in the

1987 James Guille M.D., wrote an article for the Mercury (Pa.) Newspaper on the dangers of osteoporosis with aging. In the article, he discussed the importance of adopting a healthy lifestyle to prevent bone thinning. James is a member of the medical staff of Pottstown Memorial Medical Center in the department of surgery, orthopedics.

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Charles J. Stahl is in his third year of service as assistant city manager in Johnson City, Tenn. His daughter, Tori, has been accepted to the University of Tennessee and his son, Joey, 15, plays on the Elizabethton High School soccer team.

Joseph M. DeSimone

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Nina (Booz) Stryker has been selected for the inclusion in 2009 Pennsylvania’s Super Lawyers. She was also included as one of the Top 50 Women. Only five percent of the lawyers in the state are named by Super Lawyers. Nina is a member and Co-Chair of the Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell and Hippel Law Firm’s Trusts and Estates Department. Her practice is devoted exclusively to estate and trust law, with an emphasis on estate related litigation.

She also joined the Ursinus College Board of Trustees this fall.

class notes WINTER 2009-2010

class notes SPOTLIGHT CLASS OF 2002 By Ellen Labrecque 1995

1993

2002

Christian Sockel was named Interim Director of Advancement at The Hill School in Pottstown, Pa. He was formerly the Director of Capital Giving.

jennifer walton

1996 Heather (Klinger) Boyer, a biology teacher in Upper Dublin, Pa., was awarded the Upper Dublin Medal for Outstanding Educator this past May. She has been a teacher for 12 years and is also the school’s field hockey and softball coach. In 2008 the award was given to Barbara (Exline) Staller, a 1971 Ursinus graduate and assistant principal in Upper Dublin High School.

Michele (Hill) O’Brien was recently appointed to the Governor Mifflin School Board in Shillington, Pa. (See Marriages and Commitments).

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Clare (Zeberkiewicz) Reinhardt M.D., joined the staff of the FirstHealth Richmond Family Medicine in Rockingham, N.C. this past May. She is a board certified family physician.

Clare earned her medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and completed a family medicine residency in the Department of Family Medicine at Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Del.

1998 Patricia (Tucker) Brennan has accepted a position on the Board of Directors of the Equestrian Aid Foundation. The Foundation is a charitable institution that provides financial support for medical and basic needs for equestrianconnected individuals suffering illness, catastrophic accidents or injuries. Tricia

By Ellen Labrecque 1995

Jennifer Walton is in a hurry. She doesn’t let age get in the way of life’s decisions, or for that matter, accomplishments.

In fact, she’s always done things earlier, rather than later. She has played in a band most of her life, volunteered on political campaigns in high school, and has been a licensed real estate agent since she was 18 years old. This past fall, she ran to become the Mayor of Doylestown, against opponent Libby White, who won the election, 1,326 to 896.

“I grew up in Doylestown and I love it here,” said Jen, a math major with a creative writing minor at Ursinus. “And, when you become involved in politics, you can really make important changes in people’s lives. The most recent presidential election had so much energy, it inspired me to become more involved with politics as well.”

Although she has never served in public office, Jen is already heavily involved in the Doylestown Community. In addition to working as a realtor, her band, The Waltons, plays every first Friday at Bobby Simone’s, a bar and restaurant in town. Jen is the lead singer, keyboardist, and writes the songs along with her brother, Evan. Jen’s love for music was reflected in her campaign platform, which, in addition to the universally popular idea of keeping taxes low, emphasizes maintaining a strong arts presence in the community.

“Doylestown has great restaurants and great museums,” Jen’s campaign manager Ryan Manion, explained. “There is so much arts and culture here and Jen wants to get even more people out there to support the scene.”

Jen said she plans on staying involved politically in the future, as a supporter and a candidate. “Running was an amazing experience and I met so many wonderful people and learned a great deal,” she said. “The process was awesome. I am definitely being encouraged to run again, but have not decided which direction to go.”

Meanwhile, she will continue to advise the Bucks County Teenage Republican Club, and continue as a committee-woman.

With her real estate career and her band, Jen’s life is already action packed.

class notes WINTER 2009-2010

Erica J. Maurer writes that she is engaged to Joseph S. McColgan 2004.

An April 2010 wedding is planned.

2001 Ryan A Becker graduated as valedictorian of Temple University School of Dental Medicine in May. He will continue his education for two years at Temple as an orthodontic resident.

2002 Eileen M. Duffy reports that she is engaged to Ken Roberts, a photographer from Wilmington, Del.

2003 Mia Lindquist graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law in May, 2009.

2004 Amy E. Midgley graduated from Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine this past May and received her Doctor of Osteopathy degree.

Isa M. Muqattash is currently studying for his Ph.D. in applied mathematics at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y. His wife, Lauren (Melton) Muqattash works for the International Baccalaureate Organization in Manhattan (See Marriages and Commitments).

2006 Sarah Bollinger is attending Kutztown University for her Masters of Education in Student Affairs Higher Education — Administration.

Nate Dysard was appointed a member of the Schwenksville (Pa.) Borough Council. He is currently working on

Katherine Jones graduated with a master’s degree in global affairs from New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies in May, 2008. (See Marriages and Commitments).

Owen T. Weaver graduated magna cum laude from New England/Boston School of Law. While earning his law degree, Owen was technical editor for the New England Law Review. He received the CALI Awards for Excellence in Business Organizations, Insurance Law, and Tax.

2009 Thomas Russell III received a PNC Wealth Management Scholarship to attend Howard University Law School.

On page 47 in the publication, “Philanthropy at Ursinus College 2008-2009,” there are no deceased Class of 1958 Tower Society members.

cORRECTION:

class notes HALL OF FAME

Seven exceptional alumni were inducted into the 2009 Hall of Fame for Athletes Oct. 2, on Homecoming Weekend. They are Tom Branca 1970, football; Bobbie Sue Copley Groff 1988, basketball, lacrosse; Scott Keith 1996, baseball; Lori Lennon 1997 softball; Ben Maliken 1954, football; Dorothy O’Malley Maurer 1995, track and field, cross country; and Kim Thorne O’Brien 1980, The Blanche B. Schultz ’41 Award.

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Timothy P. Brennan partnered with a friend to start a law firm, Croslis & Brennan, located in Allentown, Pa. He has been published recently, and has also lectured at the Dickinson School of Law. Additionally, he teaches Politics 100 as an Adjunct Professor at Northampton Community College (See Marriages and Births).

Jared M. Good writes that he has taken up coaching a high school girls’ rugby team at Warwick High School in Lititz, Pa., where he was a founding member of the boys’ team in 2000. Jared writes that he finds himself yelling at players for doing the same things he used to do as a player!

his M.B.A. from Arcadia University and he also works in Lower Providence Township (Pa.), where he is a member of a management team.

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is the statewide coordinator for Self Determination and Self Directed Day Services for the state of New Jersey (See Marriages and Births).

class notes WINTER 2009-2010

PRESIDENT’S CIRCLE

DONORS ENJOY EVENING OF ART, MUSIC AND THEATER

Donors and students mingled in the Berman Museum of Art at the Nov. 7 event.

Andrey Bilko 2010, converses with alumni John Idler 1958, Gerry Malick 1958 and Sydney Malick 1958.

Ursinus Emissary Brian Thomas chats with Jenna Hope 2010, Don Parlee M.D. 1955 and Joan Parlee 1957. Guests chose to later attend a Meistersingers conert or theater production.

breaking news

Laura Moliken has been appointed Athletic Director. She has been serving as interim athletic director since July 1.

URSINUS MAGAZINE

A 1993 graduate of Old Dominion University, she also holds a master’s degree from Temple University in athletic administration. Moliken and her husband, Gabe, reside in Collegeville with their three sons, Ryan, Max and William.

Ursinus Magazine won an Honorable Mention in the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education District II publications awards program, competing against all fouryear college and university magazines in the Middle Atlantic states.

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Moliken just finished her 11th year at the helm of the Ursinus College field hockey team. In her 11 years, the team has posted a 162-68 record and has advanced to the NCAA Division III Field Hockey semifinals four times. The team won the Division III Championship in 2006. The Bears have won the Centennial Conference championship six straight times.

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“Laura exemplifies the college’s commitment to excellence in everything she does,” said President John Strassburger. “She cares deeply about every student athlete, and she is wholeheartedly dedicated to the college’s single-minded focus on fostering student achievement in all student endeavors.”

IT’S OKAY TO BE A LITTLE SELFISH WHEN GIVING. There are several ways to make a gift to Ursinus and receive an income for life or a term of years. Here are some of the benefits: • Fixed or variable income payments to you, your spouse, or up to two beneficiaries you name • An income tax deduction in the year you make your gift • Capital-gains tax savings if you donate appreciated assets • Tax-advantaged income (part ordinary, part capital gains, and part tax-free) • The satisfaction of making a significant gift that benefits you and your family now, and Ursinus later Contact us to find out more.

For more information, call James L. Baer, Esq. in the Development Office at 610.409.3028 or 610.409.3636 Toll Free: 877.448.3282 e-mail: jbaer@ursinus.edu

© Planned Giving Company

Visit us online at: www.ursinus.edu/giving

class notes PHOTOS

HOMECOMING

The Wilkes family

Scenes from Homecoming 2009

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Classmates reunite

Football won against Gettysburg, 55-50

WINTER 2009-2010

The combination of fabulous weather, seven organization reunions and five home athletic competitions encouraged a wonderful turnout for Homecoming, October 3. We estimate at least 800 people on campus, including children of alumni, possibly the highest Homecoming turnout in recent years!

Highlights included two 80th Anniversary brunches (Tau Sigma Gamma and Alpha Sigma Nu); a Meet the Coach event with Peter Gallagher, an Alumni/Student Music Reunion and an Escape Velocity dance performance. A total of 653 registered guests and over 100 students participated in brunches, reunions and musical rehearsals. In addition, the annual Alumni vs. Student Baseball Team game took place on Sunday, October 4. This year marked the first time the game was included as part of Homecoming weekend and more than 200 students, alumni and family members attended.