VERMONT lives Speaking about

VERMONT
t h e u n i ver s i t y o f
Q U A R T E R LY
Speaking
about
lives
1
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
In the classroom and on the page
with poet-professor Major Jackson
also in this issue: Gail Sheehy ’58 • Orange upset revisited • Tyler Wilkinson-Ray ’12 & Vasu Sojitra ’13
VQ
VQ
SPRING | 2015
president’s perspective
THE GREEN
2
4
Musician/professor Patricia Julien puts Caligula’s life in song,
really; University celebrates legacy of the long-forgotten
Andrew Harris, Class of 1838; Engineering faculty and
students develop innovative bamboo windmill; and more.
new knowledge
A wide-ranging research effort headed by Professor
Stephen Higgins uses incentive-based measures to
counter addiction and improve human health.
16
ALUMNI VOICE Vasu Sojitra’s story as a skilled and determined onelegged backcountry skier begged to be told. His friend
filmmaker Tyler Wilkinson-Ray was just the guy to do it.
18
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
“I wasn’t supposed to be a writer,” poet Major Jackson
says of his North Philadelphia upbringing. Yet he has
earned a place among the nation’s leading poets and
UVM’s most inspiring teachers.
Cover photo by Andy Duback
BY GARRET KEIZER G’78
BY ANDY GARDINER G’75
UVM PEOPLE
Celebrated author Gail Sheehy ’58 looks back on
a life and career of Daring in her new memoir.
32
Thriving in the Bronx and taking root in other cities,
innovative urban partnership programs create
opportunities for deserving students and a more
diverse UVM.
34
20
Alumni Connection
class notes
22
39
New job shadow program connects students with
alumni to provide valuable career insight. Join the effort!
extra credit
WRUV’s legendary vinyl collection is alive and well
and still spinning.
43
64
LANDS Field Semester students Michelle Deslauriers and Nick Brown take
note of landscape features while designing a trail system at UVM’s new Carse
Natural Area in Hinesburg. Photo by Courtney Crowley ’15
SUMMER 2008
2
26
BY RICK GREEN ’82
BY THOMAS WEAVER
major
Yes, it really has been a decade since the Catamounts
toppled Syracuse in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
And, all these years later, the win still resonates.
BRIDGE TO BURLINGTON
BY WILLIAM G. SCHELLER G’75
‘I JUST DO WHAT I DO’
BY THOMAS WEAVER
BY joshua brown
Drive the coast of Italy? Write about it? And get paid?
Sign me up. Tales from a travel writers’s life on the road.
THE UPSET
1
[PRESIDENT’SPERSPECTIVE
2
second annual Summit
for the Vermont Legislature, a commitment to
partnering with the state in presenting a summit focusing
on a single pressing topic and a big idea. This fall’s topic
was “actionable science and research” centered on climate
change research.
Early in the discussion it became clear that multiple
disciplines and their research components needed to be
understood before one could fully begin to appreciate
the climate challenges and change that are present. These
summits provided the opportunity and ability to build
and forge new understandings among our faculty and our
public leaders about new scholarship and research. As
Vermont’s flagship research and land-grant institution of
higher education, the university is well positioned to assist the legislature in its understanding of important topics as it carries out its public responsibility to advance the
economic and societal well-being of the state.
At UVM, we have deep and strong scholarship and
research expertise in many areas, including biomedical
research and health care; complex systems and big data
analysis; agriculture, life sciences, and food systems;
sustainability and the environment; and how our brains
interact with our environment in determining behavior.
Hundreds of research projects go on every day at the
university that are supported, in part, by nearly $130 million dollars, on average, of outside research grants, largely
funded by the national agencies.
Our researchers are well known for studies on the impacts of climate change on lake and watershed dynamics,
food systems adaptation to climate change, impacts of
climate change on transportation infrastructure, as well
as climate change policies and governance, forest and carbon sequestration, and importantly for Vermont, knowledge on smart grids and renewable energy. One of the key
conclusions drawn from this fall’s summit is the need to
invest in education and research that leads to new knowledge and understanding that allow us to tackle challenges,
seize opportunities, and solve problems that will make
our societies even better places to live and thrive.
While these research projects, mentioned above,
start as ideas in the mind of our faculty and researchers,
continued on page 60
* Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), -Main Science and Technology Indicators
(vol. 2013, no.2, Paris OECD Publishing, 2014), cited in American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Restoring the Foundation p. 1, 13 (2014).
** American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Restoring the Foundation p. 6 (2014) citing: https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/nsf50/vbush1945.htm
VQ
editor
Thomas Weaver
art director
Elise Whittemore
class notes editor
Kathleen Laramee ’00
contributing writers
Joshua Brown, Andy Gardiner G’75,
Rick Green ’82, Jay Goyette, Garret Keizer G’78,
Meredith Woodward King G’03,
Kathleen Laramee ’00, Jon Reidel G’06,
William G. Scheller G’75, Carolyn Shapiro,
Amanda Waite’02 G’04, Jeff Wakefield, Basil Waugh
BEAUTY
VERMONT
HISTORY
BURLINGTON
SPIRIT
UVM
photography
Joshua Brown, Courtney Crowley ’15, Andy Duback,
Brian Jenkins, Will Kirk, Sally McCay, William
McDowell, Mario Morgado, Erin Patrice O’Brien,
Gasper Tringale, Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
advertising sales
Theresa Miller
Vermont Quarterly
86 South Williams Street
Burlington, VT 05401
(802) 656-1100, [email protected]
address changes
UVM Foundation
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
(802) 656-9662, [email protected]
class notes
Sarah S. Wasilko G’11
(802) 656-2010, [email protected]
correspondence
Editor, Vermont Quarterly
86 South Williams Street
Burlington, VT 05401
(802) 656-2005, [email protected]
Vermont Quarterly
publishes March 1,
July 1, November 1.
printed in vermont
Issue No. 71, March 2015
Vermont Quarterly
The University of Vermont
86 South Williams Street
Burlington, VT 05401
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.
vermont quarterly online
uvm.edu/vq
vermont quarterly BLOG
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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
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
W
e live in a knowledge-based society. As the
Economist recently noted: “Intellectual capital drives the knowledge economy.” Universities, particularly research universities, that focus on scholarship and research are key drivers
of change in society by the contributions made through
discovery, knowledge creation, and the translation of that
knowledge to practical application.
Scholarship and research produced by higher education institutions advance new understanding in a civilized society, based upon reason and rationality rather
than personal beliefs or emotions. As we know from economic history, a driver of gross domestic product (GDP)
is research discovery, which has a direct relationship between job growth and GDP. Unfortunately, the United
States has dropped in overall research and development
as a percentage of GDP as its investment in research has
declined, at the same time that other countries have increased substantially their research productivity.*
Given the close relationship between scholarship and
research and economic development and job growth,
it is clear that the United States as a society and each of
our states cannot enjoy the benefits of the research, unless we make appropriate investments. In many respects,
our country has turned from an investment society that
values and respects basic and applied scholarship and research to a consumption society. This is all the more lamentable when we consider that in a recent Pew Survey, 79
percent of the public surveyed said that science has made
their lives easier.
It is not an overstatement today to say that the United
States needs a new strategy centered on job growth. In
many ways, we are at a point of reflection in this country where “new frontiers of the mind are before us,” as
President Franklin Roosevelt wrote in 1944: “if they are
pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and the drive
with which we have waged this war we can create a fuller
and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more
fruitful life.”** The quickest way to accomplish this objective is to appreciate the public good associated with the
scholarship and research that comes from our leading institutions of higher education as they spur breakthrough
discoveries that can lead to new intellectual property,
economic development, and job creation.
This past fall the University of Vermont hosted its
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
Research and scholarship as a public good
3
GREEN
THE
gather i ng ne w s & v i e w s o f l i fe at the u n i v er s i t y
Caligula in Song
B
4
ailey/Howe Library’s
circulation staff may
have noticed a run on
Broadway musicals,
both DVDs and
printed scores, this summer.
Patricia Julien—composer,
jazz flutist, and professor of
music—is the face behind
that perhaps unexpected data
spike. Fiddler on the Roof, Chicago, The Music Man, Wicked,
South Park: Bigger, Longer, &
Uncut, some fifty shows in
all, went home with Julien as
she immersed herself in the
genre while writing her own
original score this year.
O, Caligula! by Saints &
Poets Production Company,
will premiere in April at Burlington’s Off Center for the
Dramatic Arts. If the title of
the musical makes you laugh,
or maybe squirm a bit in your
seat, that’s understandable
and OK. The project is the
brainchild of Saints & Poets’
Kevin Christopher, who
wrote the book and the lyrics.
Christopher is a very funny
man, also known for his work
locally with the Stealing from
Work skit comedy company.
“In a way it’s an unexpected project for me,” Julien
says. “It’s very irreverent;
it’s historical; it’s racy; it’s
brutal at times. But it also has
some tender moments, some
moments of familiarity. It’s
a really interesting combination, and we hope it will land
as a comedy.” One begins to
understand why South Park
would be a helpful influence
to explore.
As a jazz musician, Julien
suggests the feel of her score
leans toward the show tunes
she knows best—songs
originally written for musicals
that through the years grew
to be jazz standards, works by
greats such as Irving Berlin,
Cole Porter, and George
Gershwin.
Much of a composer/musician’s life is solitary—hours
behind a closed door writing
music or practicing. Julien
says that fact is among the
reasons she’s deeply enjoying
the process of creating the O,
andy duback
[uvm history]
HONORING A
FORGOTTEN HERO
A
ndrew Harris died just
three years after becoming the first African
American to graduate from the University of
Vermont. Short on longevity,
but long on impact—Harris helped kindle the fire of
public outrage that would
eventually lead to ridding the
United States of slavery.
One of twenty-four stu-
dents to graduate in 1838,
Harris wasted little time establishing himself as a powerful voice of the abolitionist
movement. In May 1839 he
delivered a stirring speech to
a crowd of 5,000 at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society at
the Broadway Tabernacle in
New York City. His influence
continued to grow after becoming a Presbyterian minister and serving as pastor
of Philadelphia’s St. Mary’s
Street Church, commanding
respect from black and white
clergymen alike.
Formal recognition from
his alma mater has been a
long time coming for this
distinguished alumnus. The
revelation that Harris might
replace George Washington
Henderson, class of 1877, as
UVM’s first African American
graduate came after UVM archivist Jeff Marshall acted on
research and insight from then
Middlebury College archivist
Bob Buckeye, who made the
discovery while researching
Martin Freeman, Middlebury’s second African American alumnus.
Marshall conducted research that resulted in an
article for the Special Collections newsletter Liber in 1998.
A 2004 Vermont Quarterly article shared the history with a
wider audience. Kevin Thornton, a lecturer on the UVM
History faculty, would spend
years digging deeper into the
story of Harris, producing
an in-depth scholarly paper
in 2014, and advocating for
celebrating Harris’s place in
UVM’s heritage.
Last October, the UVM
community rallied around
the late Andrew Harris with
a plaque, a chair in Waterman’s Memorial Lounge, an
ALANA student award, and
a scholarship unveiled as lasting ways to recognize what he
meant to the university and
the nation.
“I am an alumna of this
university. As a woman and
person of color, I have unfortunately experienced societal
oppression,” Wanda Heading
Grant ’87 G’03, vice president
of Human Resources, Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, said at the ceremony. “It
fills me with pride and joy to
know that our institution, my
institution, is working hard to
turn our bittersweet history
regarding diversity and inclusion around.”
[environment]
STUDENTS TAKE
TO THE LAND
F
ifteen undergrads
worked full-time during
the fall on field-based
alternatives to traditional classes, serving as consultants to numerous towns
and conservation organizations across Vermont. They
were the pilot class in UVM’s
new LANDS Field Semester,
the only program of its kind
in the United States.
A partnership between
UVM and the Student
Conservation Association,
“the purpose of LANDS is to
promote better land stewardship,” says Flore Costume ’16, a member of the
LANDS team and a student
in the Rubenstein School of
Environment and Natural
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
[music]
Caligula!’ score. “Composing for live theatre is always
collaborative. The writer has
a vision. The director has a
vision. I have some ideas,”
she says. Though Julien has
collaborated with Christopher before, this project is the
most complex to date. She
praises his insight and ability
to communicate subtleties
such as “I want the music to
be sinister, but not evil at this
point.’”
In turn, Christopher
notes Julien’s skill in taking
his “musically uneducated
description,” quickly translating it into sound, then exploring multiple variations along
the path to a finished score. “I
think anytime anyone creates
anything, there’s a bit of ego
involved and the potential
to be overly protective or
defensive,” Christopher says.
“Patricia and I have found a
good balance between being
protective of what we bring to
the table and respecting each
other enough so that we’re
comfortable in talking about
what’s not working.”
5
[THEGREEN
“I’m proud of the success
our alumni and students are
having and of the role UVM
is playing in changing perceptions of the engineering
field,” says Luis Garcia, dean
of UVM’s College of Engineering and Mathematical
Sciences. “We work hard to
make the college an accepting
and supportive environment
for women. There’s more
work to do, but signals like
this one show progress is
being made.”
Carlson, a senior project
manager in the Structures
Section of the Vermont
Agency of Transportation,
earned her award for her
active work in the Vermont
At work in UVM’s new Carse Natural Area in Hinesburg,
LANDS Field Semester students measure slope
and soil characteristics while designing a trail system.
Commencement
2015 Approaches
Parents and families of
UVM’s Class of 2015, we
hope you’ve got your
travel plans set to be
in Burlington for the
graduation ceremonies on Sunday, May
17. President Sullivan
announced in January
that the address at the
full university ceremony on the Green will
be delivered by Nina
Totenberg, National
Public Radio’s senior
6
spondent. Totenberg’s
insight and voice are
familiar to many from
All Things Considered,
Morning Edition, and
Weekend Edition.
vation commissions—including Northfield, Bristol, and
Johnson—as well as organizations like the Green Mountain
Club and the Winooski Valley
Park District.
“There are many field-based
semester programs, but this
is the only university-based
program that offers a fullsemester, intensive, cohortbased program entirely
focused on service-learning
and land conservation,” says
Emily Brodsky, the LANDS
program coordinator and
graduate of UVM’s Ecological
Planning master’s program.
The field semester, which is
an expansion of the summer
LANDS internship program
that was begun with leadership from UVM Professor
Deane Wang in 2007, will be
offered again next fall.
Read the students’ perspective: landsuvm.blogspot.com.
“UVM engineering is
a really great place,” says
Emanuelson. “I loved the
size of our program. You can
always sit down with your
professors. They’re happy to
help.”
Women faculty members
like environmental engineering professor Donna Rizzo
were also important to her,
Emanuelson adds. “She was
a huge role model for me. It
was so inspirational to see
her be such a good teacher
but also have all these other
research achievements.”
Under an arc of bamboo—a wind turbine blade made from not much
more than grass and glue—professor of engineering Ting Tan and
graduate student Brian Ribbans ’13 study the inner workings of an
energy harvester they and a team of undergraduates built.
VERMONT WOMEN
ENGINEERS LEAD WAY
UVM’s winter
sports teams were in the
thick of their seasons
as this issue went to
press. Get the latest at
uvmathletics.com.
Highlights of 2014/15
have included the ski team,
which ran their EISA Carnival
winning streak to eighteen
with victories in the Bates,
UVM, and St. Michael’s
carnivals. The NCAA Championships are March 11-14,
hosted by St. Lawrence in
Lake Placid.
The men’s hockey team
rose to a top ten national
ranking in early January. A
competition slowed Coach
Kevin Sneddon’s squad
T
“
courtney crowley ’15
catamounts
tough stretch in Hockey East
[engineering]
he ability to attract
young women is a significant challenge faced by
the engineering community,” the National Academy
of Engineering wrote in an
influential 1999 editorial in
its publication, The Bridge.
By granting three of the
most competitive engineering
awards in the state to women in
2014, all University of Vermont
alumni, UVM and the State of
Vermont are doing their part to
demonstrate that women can
find success and have rewarding careers in the field.
Carolyn Carlson ’85 was
named Vermont Engineer of
the Year for 2014; Jennifer
Fitch ’02 was Young Engineer
of the Year; and Karin Emanuelson ’14 was named Vermont
Student Engineer of the Year.
track the
somewhat, but they were still
in the hunt for a place in the
NCAA Tournament.
The women’s hockey team
notched a season highlight
and program milestone with
a first-ever victory at Boston
University, ranked #6 in the
nation at the time.
The men’s basketball team
has kept the excitement going at Patrick Gym this year,
vying with rival Albany for
leadership of America East
through much of the season.
Society of Engineers and
for the management she
provided the design/build
team responsible for widening the Checkered House
Truss Bridge in Richmond,
the first large truss bridge
in the United States to be
widened.
joshua Brown
mile detour.
Emanuelson, hired after
graduation as a consultant in
the water division in the Boston-area office of ARCADIS,
a global engineering consulting firm, was honored for her
academic achievement and
extra-curricular involvement.
[engineering]
THINK LIKE BAMBOO
K
nown to grow at a clip of
a meter a day, bamboo
is a grass that can, in a
few months, tower as
tall as a tree. And, as it shoots
upward on, say, a mountainside in China or Chile, it gets
In early February, hopes were
high the Cats could fight
their way into the postseason. Either way, the freshman/sophomore-laden team
has shown great promise for
the future.
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
legal affairs corre-
Resources. “A lot of the things
we were doing involved going
outside and putting what we
learned conceptually into
practice.”
For example, the students
gained skills in plant identification and then applied
that for the Vermont River
Conservancy. They took an
inventory of species along
a stretch of Vermont’s most
wild river, the Nulhegan, and
then wrote a report to help
the land trust manage one of
its properties.
The students earned a full
semester of academic credit
while exploring landscapes
throughout Vermont—
whether mapping urban tree
cover in the town of Vergennes
or hiking to a field site on the
Long Trail. They developed
professional conservation
skills and applied their learning to help many local conser-
Fitch, a project manager in
the Accelerated Bridge Program of the Structures Section of the same agency, was
selected for her community
service and for leadership
on two projects: rebuilding the Sand Hill Bridge in
Middlebury, which required
extensive community outreach, and replacing four
bridges in Rochester, two
of which were damaged by
Tropical Storm Irene, during
a highly compressed bridge
closure period, minimizing
the need for a thirty-seven-
7
[THEGREEN
STUDENT FOCUS
N
ot long ago, Ashley Deeb ’13 wore a black
graduation gown to mark a major transition in her life at the University of Vermont.
About a year later, a white coat was the apt cer-
her perspective with classes in the humanities.
emonial garb as the first-year medical student
She counts a Shakespeare course with Angeline
stepped to the stage in Ira Allen Chapel for the
Chiu, associate professor in classics, as a favorite,
College of Medicine’s annual White Coat Cer-
and she still gets together with Chiu for coffee
emony.
and talk.
Formally donning the doctor’s white coat is
That open and welcoming atmosphere has
a rite of passage for new med students, recog-
been much the same in med school, she notes,
nizing the journey they are embarking upon as
with the faculty and her class beginning to form
physicians-in-training and all of the work, care,
a strong sense of unity.
and responsibility their careers will demand.
At the White Coat Ceremony that circle of
That white coat, it seems, has been on the
community traced a little wider thanks to a new
horizon for Deeb back to childhood when her
wrinkle added to the tradition this year. Indi-
mother, a doctor of obstetrics and gynecology
vidual notes of advice and encouragement writ-
in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, would occasional-
ten by UVM med alumni were slipped into the
ly take her along on rounds. Her mother’s work,
pocket of each new student’s coat.
the world of nurses and physicians and patients,
all fascinated her.
Deeb drew Laura Piper MD ’12, a pediatrician
from Los Angeles, whose paragraph of counsel
Having the University of Vermont Medical
opened with “Always remember that your pa-
Center right on campus was a key reason Deeb,
tients are someone’s loved one and someone’s
who majored in psychology, chose UVM for her
greatest treasure…”
undergrad years. She dove into research oppor-
After sharing Piper’s message nearly verba-
tunities across science disciplines—Seasonal
tim from memory, Deeb admits “it can be easy to
Affective Disorder in psych to tropical spiders
be a little bit removed when we’re in the middle
in biology—and gained experience and direct
of anatomy classes with the focus on structures
mentorship from physicians through the univer-
and mechanisms.”
The Honors College student also broadened
Dr. Piper’s words, she adds, were timely and
taken to heart.
left: sally mccay; right: mario morgado
We wanted to design this as a
stand-alone, small-scale system. In portions of Africa and
the developing world there
are places that have no infrastructure, but they want to use
electricity.”
Much of the work on the
new turbine was completed
last spring by a team of undergraduate students in the Student Experience in Engineering Design (SEED) program
in the College of Engineering
and Mathematical Sciences:
class of 2014 graduates Hunter
O’Folan, Justin Dao, Karl Johanson, and Zachary Basch.
With funding from UVM’s
Clean Energy Fund, the team
tested the turbine on the
roof of the Votey Building
last year. After applying for a
preliminary patent, the team
moves into the next, more
rigorous testing phase this
year: running the new turbine through detailed tests in
a world-class wind tunnel in
Williston, Vermont, operated
by SOH Wind Engineering.
Tan credits his inspiration
for the new device to participation in the UVM Sustainability
Fellows Program. “I came up
with this idea in those discussions with faculty from all over
UVM. As I attended the program, I was thinking ‘because
we’re engineers we want to
help people, and we can help
people in a beautiful way.’”
[medicine]
MUSIC AND THE MIND
C
hildren who play
the violin or study
piano could be learning more than just
Mozart. A UVM College of
Medicine child psychiatry
team has found that musical training might also help
kids focus their attention,
control their emotions, and
diminish their anxiety. Their
research is published in the
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry.
Dr. James Hudziak, professor of psychiatry and direc-
SPRING 2015
sity’s Premedical Enhancement Program.
hammered by the wind. But
it doesn’t break. It flexes and
resists, using the power of the
sun to grow up and the power
of the wind to grow strong.
The wind makes the bamboo grow in different directions,” says UVM professor of
engineering Ting Tan, “which
means that the plant’s microstructure is adapted to wind.”
“Inspired by the bamboo, we
decided to adapt it,” Tan says.
Using bamboo as their primary
building material, Tan and his
colleague, professor of electrical engineering, Tian Xia, and
a group of students, have built
a hybrid energy harvester: it
combines a small-scale wind
turbine—built out of bamboo—with a solar panel. The
whole device is about the size
of a trashcan. “We capture the
wind and the sun at the same
time, just like the bamboo
does,” Tan says, “and put the
energy into a battery.”
Tan and his team see the
device as a prototype for a
kind of energy collection that
could be useful in parts of the
developing world that have few
resources and limited or no access to the traditional electrical
grid. With its blades and supports made from bamboo, key
parts of the turbine should be
able to be harvested from local land in many parts of the
world, comparatively easy to
repair, and renewable.
“Most wind turbines now
are huge,” says Tian Xia. “We
want to make this convenient
for a family or a small community that could not afford
an industrial wind turbine.
9
[THEGREEN
Alumna lauded
for work in Africa
Forbes magazine recently
named thirty people under
the age of thirty who are
“leveraging business tools
to solve the world’s most
pressing problems.” And UVM
alumna Sasha Fisher ’10 is
included on the list of leading
social entrepreneurs.
As a UVM undergrad,
Fisher earned her bachelor’s
degree with a double major
in studio art and a selfdesigned course of study:
human security. Following
graduation, she launched
Spark Microgrants, a nonprofit organization that
supports communities in
East African nations as they
design, implement, and
manage their own development projects. To date,
Spark has provided grants
ranging from $2,000 to
$10,000 to dozens of communities, funding projects
10
education, sanitation, and
clean water. In all, the organization’s work has impacted
more than 75,000 lives.
Sparkmicrogrants.org
Ever-evolving, UVM’s
“Hort Farm” in South
Burlington now includes
the new Catamount
Educational Farm.
should increase education
across the board,” Maynard
says. “If we can get information about return-to-play into
the heads of pediatricians and
other healthcare providers
who make these decisions,
that’s a win.”
The senator and the professor proved to be a powerful
team in crafting the legislation and making it law. “Alan’s
role was critical,” Sears says.
“I don’t know if it would have
passed without him.”
LONDON CALLING
UVM students Alison Bell
and Ruby LabruscianoCarris planned to spend this
year immersed in all things
BBC—studying everything
from “Doctor Who” to news
coverage—but they couldn’t
have predicted their own
[honors college]
Exploring the
‘Texture of Memory’
I
ziak’s hypothesis that a violin
might help a child battle psychological disorders better
than a bottle of pills. And it’s in
tune with The Vermont Family
Based Approach, a model Hudziak created to establish that
the entirety of a young person’s
environment—parents, teachers, friends, pets, extracurricular activities—contributes to
his or her psychological health.
“Music is a critical component
in my model,” says Hudziak,
who at age fifty-six recently
took up the viola.
[health]
Protecting Vermont’s
young athletes
V
ermont Senator Richard
Sears ’69 remembers
what it was like to “get
his bell rung” as a foot-
ball player at the University
of Vermont in the late 1960s.
Back then players dealt with
what is regarded today as a
concussion by “shaking it off ”
or taking a brief trip to the
sidelines for some smelling
salts. “You just kept playing
because you didn’t want to
look weak, but I’m sure most
players back then had at least
two or three concussions,”
says Sears, who still coaches
high school football.
As the debilitating effects of concussions became
more widely recognized with
former NFL players being
diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Sears
became concerned with the
safety of high school football players in Vermont. After
seeing young athletes remain
in games despite sustaining
concussions, he decided it
was time to address the issue
legislatively. “I could see that
they had a concussion, but
there were no athletic trainers
at some games, so I began to
put together legislation that
included certain protocols
and safety measures.”
Sears contacted a handful
of concussion experts including Alan Maynard, clinical
associate professor of Rehabilitation and Movement Science, who brought a rare mix
of expertise to the process as
director of UVM’s Athletic
Training Program and president of the Vermont Association of Athletic Trainers. He’s
also a practicing clinician as
athletic trainer at Bellows Free
Academy in Fairfax. Maynard
brian jenkins
provided key testimony to legislators and helped craft what
would become one of the
most comprehensive concussion laws in the nation.
The majority of the new
law, Senate Bill S.4, went into
effect in July 2013 with a key
provision requiring all schools
in the state that sponsor collision sports (football, hockey,
lacrosse, and wrestling) to
have a healthcare professional
trained in concussion management at every home game
to become law in July 2015.
Another aspect of the new
law helps facilitate getting
family practice providers and
pediatricians the latest returnto-play guidelines distributed
by The University of Vermont
Medical Center. “We’re not
there yet, but the new law
n Remembrance of Things
Past, Marcel Proust writes
about a memory that
“is hidden somewhere
outside the realm, beyond the
reach of intellect.” Only petites
madeleines, dipped in tea, can
prompt his narrator’s recollection of his childhood in the
fictional village of Combray.
As twenty sophomores in
an Honors College seminar
learned last spring, Proust was
describing a relationship that
neuroscientists would uncover decades later. Smell, the
most primitive of senses, can
evoke memories buried deep
inside the brain. Both longand short-term memories are
stored and encoded via synaptic activity that forms neural patterns. Bound together,
neurons can be reactivated
and retrieved as memory.
In light of recent neuroscience research, Proust’s pas-
voices would be broadcast
by the esteemed British
institution.
On January 3 the BBC
radio program “Over to You”
featured Bell and Labrusciano-Carris, directors of the
student-led BBC House, a
residential learning program
housed in UVM’s Living/
Learning Center.
“I’m speaking to you from
the BBC’s broadcasting
house in London,” began
program host Rajan Datar,
“but it’s come to my attention, thousands of miles
away on the east coast of
the United States, there’s
another BBC House, of sorts.”
What followed was a fiveminute segment in which
UVM students discussed
how their program has
created a space where the
ten students who live there
can both enjoy BBC shows
like “Sherlock” and engage
in in-depth discussions
about world news and their
relation to the world as
continued on page 14
Americans.
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
that improve access to food,
tor of the Vermont Center for
Children, Youth and Families,
and colleagues including Matthew Albaugh and graduate
student research assistant Eileen Crehan, call their study
“the largest investigation of the
association between playing a
musical instrument and brain
development.”
As children age, the cortex—the outer layer of the
brain—changes in thickness. In
previous analysis of MRI data
from the National Institutes
of Health, Hudziak and his
team discovered that cortical
thickening or thinning in specific areas of the brain reflected
the occurrence of anxiety and
depression, attention problems, aggression, and behavior
control issues even in healthy
kids—those without a diagnosis of a disorder or mental
illness. With this study, Hudziak wanted to see whether a
positive activity, such as music
training, would influence those
indicators in the cortex.
The authors found evidence they expected—that
music playing altered the motor areas of the brain, because
the activity requires control
and coordination of movement. Even more important to
Hudziak were changes in the
behavior-regulating areas of
the brain. For example, music
practice influenced thickness
in the part of the cortex that relates to “executive functioning,
including working memory,
attentional control, as well as
organization and planning for
the future,” the authors write.
The findings bolster Hud-
11
[THEGREEN
HOLE IN TIME
“I found that there were
so many of them that
were intriguing images because they were
simultaneously representational and abstract,” Bill
McDowell, photographer
and professor of art, says.
“This black hole created
an abstraction and a really
palpable tension.”
The images that
absorbed McDowell are
Depression-era Farm
Security Administration
photographs that were
invalidated, or “killed,” by
a hole punch through the
negative. Exploring and
giving new life to these
images has been a recent
focus of McDowell’s work.
Read about the project
and view a slideshow of
the images: uvm.edu/vq
Mr. Tronson,
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
farmer near Wheelock,
12
North Dakota
1937
Russell Lee
[THEGREEN
JUSTRELEASED]
[ BRIEFs ]
Novelist Eric Rickstad’s latest is The Silent
Professors Helga Schreckenberger
and Rae Nishi
sage begs for an interdisciplinary study of memory. UVM’s
“Texture of Memory” does just
that, and dissects other works
of literature and film accordingly. The course’s co-teachers
span colleges and disciplines:
Rae Nishi, professor of neuroscience in the College of
Medicine, and Helga Schreckenberger, chair and professor
of German and Russian in the
College of Arts and Sciences.
[ Q UOTE UN Q UOTE ]
enberger responded immediately. A decade ago, she taught
a course focused on Holocaust memory, prompted by
her research on contemporary
Austrian literature.
“To teach a course with
a scientist was a real opportunity, and I learned a lot,”
Schreckenberger says. “I have
a better understanding of the
complexity of memory.”
In Nishi’s explanations of
’’
To push the boundaries outwards, you actually have to go to the boundaries
and push. Frontiers, as we know, are dangerous places. And also, there are
plenty of people, powerful people in the world, who don’t want the universe
opened up a little more, who in fact would rather prefer it to be shut down.
Salman Rushdie The author, who lived under a death fatwa after publication of his novel The Satanic Verses,
spoke at UVM’s Ira Allen Chapel in January, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris.
14
andy duback
Yes, a book on economics
that’s funny
Girls, a detective story/mystery set in
n 1934, Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to the
Birds became famous for a reason: little arrows.
These marks on his stylized paintings of warblers,
ducks, and other hard-to-identify feathered critters
help bewildered birdwatchers know what to look for. In
other words, instead of giving you every detail, the book
highlights what’s important.
stark, poetic writing make for a novel as
I
The modern field guide was born, and
now amateur naturalists and professional
conservationists alike are familiar with
pocket-sized guides that quickly help
them make sense of what they’re seeing,
whether it’s birds, butterflies, tropical
fish, or economics. Wait, economics?
Taylor Ricketts points to a bookshelf
behind his desk. “I have twenty-five field
guides and none of them are about economics,” says the UVM conservation
biologist who directs the university’s
Gund Institute for Ecological Economics. “Economics is just as important to
conservation as knowing warblers from
finches.” But many conservationists treat
economics like a tiger with rabies.
Which is why Ricketts joined forces
with Brendan Fisher, economist in the
Rubenstein School, and conservation
scientist Robin Naidoo to write A Field
Guide to Economics for Conservationists.
At 208 pages and 5x7 inches it will fit
easily in a backpack, and sends a different market signal, so to speak, than the
traditional economics textbook.
“The forces that have caused conservation problems are economic ones—
and it’s going to be economic forces that
get us out,” Ricketts says. “But most conservationists do not have a firm grasp of
economic principles that matter.”
In truth, much of the Dismal Science
is dismally obscure. “So this book targets
what conservationists need to know—
and not what they don’t need to know,”
Ricketts says. Chapters draw on the
direct experience of conservation practitioners—from the coast of Ghana to
Canadian wilderness parks—to explain
bedrock aspects of traditional microeconomics: opportunity costs, supply and
demand, markets and market failures,
price incentives, ecosystem services,
institutions and regulations—and how
these can interact in complex landscapes
with multiple goals.
It’s also a funny book—not the usual
argot of economists. Sure, you’ll find
sentences that might terrify anyone who
doesn’t have a PhD in economics, like
“the early theoretical foundation for
CBA comes from the economic concept of Pareto efficiency.” But the next
sentence makes you reconsider your
decision to stuff the book into the woodstove: “This idea is named after Vilfredo
Pareto, probably the most famous economist with a rhyming name, and who like
other famous economists (think Marx)
had a great beard.”
“We care deeply about conservation
outcomes on the ground and we hope the
book helps people get there,” Fisher says.
“It’s not just about getting better at tracking endangered tigers, for instance; it’s
about understanding what is driving the
fragility of the landscape in the first place.”
a landscape the Class of 1994 alumnus
knows well. “Finely drawn characters, a
narrative that beguiles and surprises, and
dark and brooding as its rural Vermont setting,” writes one reviewer. Kristin
Gallas earned her bachelor’s in secondary
education/history at UVM in 1996. She put
that background to use co-editing, with
James DeWolf, the new volume Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites.
Singer/songwriter Jay Nash ’98 has teamed
with friend and fellow musician Josh Day to
form The Contenders. The duo has been on
the road performing and recently released
an EP. Look for it online. Also on the music
front, Rubblebucket has been touring in
support of their recent album, Survival
Sounds. The band, led by alums Kalmia
Traver ’06 and Alex Toth ’06 landed a guest
appearance on National Public Radio’s Tiny
Desk Concert Series. In Praise of Usefulness,
a new volume of poetry by expatriate Irish
poet Angela Patten ’86, explores thoughts
of Ireland and America. With irony and
self-deprecating humor, Patten, a UVM
lecturer in English, finds much to praise in
everyday life—from the ritual of morning
coffee to the privilege of a hot shower.
Pete Morin ’77 is the author of Full Irish, a
murder mystery: “Against the backdrop of
the windswept west coast of Ireland and
the watering holes of Dublin and Boston,
Full Irish exposes a rivalry that goes to the
very heart of politics.” Penelope Standish
Easton ’44 recently published Learning to
Like Muktuk: An Unlikely Explorer in Territorial Alaska. The Oregon State University
Press book describes her work as a dietary
consultant in the far north during the late
1940s. Alumni at home in The District and
fans of urban wild spaces should keep an
eye out for A Year in Rock Creek Park: The
Wild, Wooded Heart of Washington, D.C. by
Melanie Choukas-Bradley ’74.
SPRING 2015
‘‘
“I’m always trying to find
a way to connect the colleges
together, especially to connect
the sciences with the humanities and the arts,” says Nishi,
who directs the Neuroscience
Graduate Program and also
the Neuroscience, Behavior
and Health Transdisciplinary
Research Initiative.
When Nishi sent out an
email looking for a co-teacher
from the humanities, Schreck-
brain anatomy and neurological function, she aimed for the
“big picture” to make science
approachable. The students examined “flashbulb” memories
of individual and collective experiences. They discussed the
groundbreaking neurological
research on H.M., the epilepsy
patient who lost his short-term
memory after removal of his
hippocampi. And they debated the accuracy of memory,
whether false, manipulated, or
forgotten.
In focusing on the “texture”
of memory, Schreckenberger
explains, “You think about
the different layers, and that’s
what we were trying to show
the students. You have those
individual neurological processes, which lead to personal
memory and also get played
out in societal processes.”
Last year’s course drew
equal numbers of science and
humanities students, and it’s
running again this spring.
15
[NEWKNOWLEDGE
Change Agents
by Joshua Brown
On a hazy June afternoon, Carrie Dyer sits at a picnic
table near the playground in Battery Park in Burlington. With
one arm she’s holding her three-month-old baby, and with the
other she’s sipping water from a bottle. Dyer turns to encourage her seven-year-old daughter who is working her way
across the monkey bars. Then she takes another sip of water,
16
“I started smoking when I was eight years old,” she says,
“I was at my dad’s girlfriend’s house and she had older
daughters and they were trying to push me into smoking.
And I didn’t want to. And I went into the house and told
my dad and I was told, ‘Do whatever they want. You’re
getting in my way.’ So that’s how that one happened. And
the smoking just stuck.”
Now Dyer is trying to get unstuck. “When I used to
work traffic control I was up to four packs a day,” she says.
But on January 5, 2014, well into her second trimester of
pregnancy, at age thirty-eight, she quit. Her baby—her
fourth child—was born in March.
“Well, I’ve pretty much quit,” she says with an
unguarded smile. “I’ve slipped up a few times here and
there, but I’ve passed all my UAs since I started.”
The “UAs” are urinalysis tests for nicotine. And what
she started was participating in a clinical research study
at the College of Medicine’s Vermont Center on Behavior
and Health, directed by professor and vice-chair of psychiatry Stephen T. Higgins.
“You can think of behavior as a biological system, like
respiration or circulation,” Higgins says. “How well could
you practice medicine if you ignored circulation? In medicine in the past, and to some extent today, we have left out
one whole system—behavior—which needs to be studied as a key part of keeping people well, to understand the
source of illnesses, and where you need to intervene.”
Higgins is particularly interested in one kind of behavioral intervention: incentives. For her healthy behavior—not smoking—Carrie Dyer gets paid. A clean urine
test means a very tangible reward—cash or vouchers for
merchandise.
While the UVM Center on Behavior and Health is
relatively new—with $34.7 million in funding awarded
in September 2013 from the FDA and the NIH—Steve
Higgins’s work on how to improve health through behavior change is not. Three decades ago, the crack cocaine
epidemic was raging in many US cities. In the late-1980s
and early-1990s, Higgins led studies on cocaine abuse
and dependence that are now landmarks in the field of
addiction treatment. Many other experimental treatments, including a raft of different medications and group
therapies, were, “failing miserably,” Higgins says, “but our
trials showed that financial incentives work.”
To this day, there are no FDA-approved medications
to treat cocaine addiction, but Higgins and colleagues’
success with retail vouchers as a fundamental part of
treatment for cocaine addicts led them to explore how
this approach could work with other types of addiction.
The Center on Behavior and Health will expand on several decades of research by a large team of UVM scientists
that includes fundamental discoveries on the treatment
of opiate and tobacco addictions—and how to help especially vulnerable or difficult-to-treat groups like pregnant
andy duback
TAKEN TO HEART
Most people who survive a heart attack could benefit from rehabilitation. A program of education and exercise increases quality of life
and decreases chances of dying from heart disease—but less than
35 percent of eligible patients participate in rehab programs. And
a vanishingly small number of cardiac patients from marginalized
parts of society—low-income or homeless or with substance abuse
histories—even start.
Psychologist Diann Gaalema and Dr. Philip Ades, a cardiologist, are
working to reach these particularly vulnerable populations through
a cardiac rehabilitation study built upon the same incentive-based
techniques that Professor Stephen Higgins and colleagues have
used to treat addiction.
“The reality is that if you’ve had a heart attack you are going to
have to change the way you live, and that change will need to be
life long,” Gaalema says. She points out that even the four months
of a cardiac rehab program can be a long and difficult time for patients to maintain their new behavior. “The idea behind incentives is
that it breaks down these difficult behaviors into small, achievable
chunks. Putting the focus on what they can do and achieve today
helps people take these intermediary steps toward the longer goals
they’ll need to meet. It really is a form of treatment and much more
subtle than just paying people to do healthy things,” she says.
After thirty-six rehab sessions—the maximum covered by Medicaid insurance—successful participants will have earned about
$1,200, “which is not trivial,” Ades says. But it’s pocket change compared to the cost of another heart attack. “Preventing one cardiac rehospitalization is saving $10,000 to $30,000,” Ades says, “and cardiac
rehab is known to decrease cardiac rehospitalization by 30 percent
in the first year.”
The new study looks promising. “We’re seeing more minorities
and many other people we’ve never seen in rehab before—unemployed people, drug addicts, homeless,” Ades says. Often invisible to
the medical system, until they hit the emergency room with very expensive problems, they tend to be “higher risk than the other cardiac
patients we see: they have worse cardiac behaviors, exercise less,
smoke more, tend to be more overweight,” Ades says. “They are the
people we need to reach.”
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
brings her baby into a close embrace, and continues talking.
women, low-income people, and those with co-occuring
mental illness.
Higgins, the professor who leads this multi-disciplinary effort, grew up in a tough working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia. He’s the first in his family to have
gone to college. He saw heroin epidemics sweep through
his community, killing people he knew. He saw the Vietnam vets coming home hooked to painkillers. It’s tempting for a journalist to spin a tidy story of origin about how
Higgins chose a career studying behavioral psychology
with an aim to treat addictions and other health problems
in poor communities—helping people in need.
But he doesn’t exactly see it that way. “We have all kinds
of stories about why we do what we do and who knows
how accurate they are,” he says. “I grew up around a lot of
drug abuse. I know what that looks like,” he says. “But I’m
not sure that the issues that I’m interested in now, in terms
of health disparities and the influence of socioeconomic
status, are driven by that history.”
“I think that we use language in a way that makes us
think we’re in charge of things that are really being driven
by forces that are external to us,” he says. He understands
the trajectory of individual human lives not so much
as freely chosen narratives, but as patterns of behavior,
driven by our deep evolutionary past. “We are foraging
most of the time! I think we are trying to do the best we
can as signals come in saying: go here; go there. And our
evolution has made us exquisitely sensitive to certain signals, looking for food, mates, avoiding danger.”
There is overwhelming scientific evidence that while
reinforcement evolved to aid survival, it now plays a key
role in many behaviors that threaten people’s health. “The
substances that people abuse and the fatty and salty foods
that are so often over-consumed,” Higgins and three colleagues wrote in a 2012 paper in the journal Preventive
Medicine, “share a common effect of directly stimulating
the dopamine-based mesolimbic brain reward centers,
which directly increases the likelihood that these same
activities will be repeated in the future.”
And it’s that same part of the brain that responds
chemically to cash or a voucher, rewards that can make
a small difference in an individual’s standard of living—
helping to pay the electric bill or buy a tank of gas—but,
much more importantly, could help save a life through
healthier behavior.
17
[ALUMNIVOICE
The Mediterranean
to Hudson Bay
A travel writer’s life
by William G. Scheller G’75
The Washington Post editor called a couple of weeks
after Christmas. Back in 1990, the Post’s Sunday magazine
was a special travel issue twice a year, built around a theme,
and I’d been a contributor over the preceding ten years. “For
spring, we’re doing automobile trips,” the editor said. “Are you
18
“How much of the Italian coast?”
“All of it. France to Yugoslavia. We’d need the story by
the middle of February.”
How do you say no to an assignment like that? A few
days later the Post sent me a ticket to Nice, with return
from Venice, and lined up my car rental at an Italian
agency near the French border. The rest was up to me:
get the car, backtrack to the border, and stick as close
to the coast as possible. Over the course of eighteen
days and three million lire worth of gas, hotels, trattorie, espresso and grappa, I had my story. I’d also commenced a working love affair with Italy that has taken
me on assignments to Venice, Sardinia, Elba, and, with
my mom, near the end of her life, to her ancestral village
in the hills east of Naples.
The travel writer’s glib answer to envious comments
about his career is, “Well, somebody’s gotta do it.” But
each of us somebodies had to start somewhere, and it’s
seldom on the French-Italian border on orders from The
Washington Post. For me, the start was right here in New
England, a year or so after I finished working on my master’s degree in English at UVM. Following a stint at the
University Extension Service press and radio department,
I had moved to Boston in pursuit of publishing jobs that
I soon learned didn’t exist. One idle day I was flipping
through the Massachusetts section of a travel guide, part
of a well-known series then in a mid-1970s rut so deep
that it spelled Worcester “Wooster,” and decided to write
the publisher in New York and ask if I could take the section over. It turned out that the “Wooster” contributor
had just resigned, and the job was mine.
Around the same time, I had an idea for a Vermont
travel story, and pitched it to Yankee magazine. “Go see
the editor of our Guide to New England, they wrote back.
“She’s at our office in Boston.” The next day I strolled
down Newbury Street and into the first of more than a
dozen articles for the guide, then a separate publication,
and a forty-year relationship with Yankee.
Oddly enough, the piece that sent me out of New
England on international assignments wasn’t a travel
article at all, but a piece I did in the spring of 1984 for
the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s magazine Sanctuary about a long dark night in a scrub pine forest with
a Harvard entomologist who was collecting rare moths.
I liked that little article and sent it along with a proposal—I forget what I was proposing, but it had nothing to do with moths—to the editor of a new magazine
called National Geographic Traveler. The proposal was
rejected, but the editor phoned one July afternoon a
couple of weeks later, saying that her reader had enjoyed
the moth piece and passed it on to her. She thought
enough of it to pitch me a proposal: “Would you want to
go up to Churchill, Manitoba in September to cover the
polar bear migration?”
It took me about as long to think about that as it later
did to decide whether I wanted to hit the roads along the
Italian coast. I spent two weeks in that improbable port on
the southern shores of Hudson Bay, looking for bears on
the tundra, watching a mother and her cubs lumber about
on the edge of town, and, after a successful shellfish hunt
on the littoral of that cold gray bay, teaching locals how
to make mussels fra diavolo—a story I used to entertain
Alex Trebek during my 2004 appearance on Jeopardy.
The years that followed offered nothing if not variety.
I retraced Columbus’s 1492 route through the Bahamas
as part of my research for a companion volume to a PBS
thomas weaver
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
free to drive the Italian coast, starting, say, in a week or two?”
series and garnered material for another Washington Post
Magazine travel piece along the way. I drove the One
Lap of America transcontinental road rally twice, once
for The Christian Science Monitor and once for The Robb
Report. As a contributing editor with Islands magazine,
I coaxed a jeep across the roof of the Caribbean on the
worst road in the Dominican Republic, walked village
to village on the ancient footpaths of Derbyshire, and
explored the French outposts of St. Pierre and Miquelon in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And for my old client,
the Post, I bicycled the length of Prince Edward Island,
wrestled a snowmobile through a 700-mile circuit of
Québec’s Gaspé peninsula, and visited—or at least
saw—every lighthouse that shines along a 1,000-mile
loop around the Chesapeake Bay.
Has all this amounted to an odd way to use that master’s in English? Not a bit. If there was one thing I learned
at UVM, it was to always stay curious, and to venture as
far as possible down any avenue of research that might
lead to a better understanding of the subject at hand, for
my readers as well as myself. Just what route did Columbus follow through the Bahamas, and who begs to differ
with the conventional interpretation of his log? Where
do polar bears go in the summer? Just what laws and
traditions keep Britain’s medieval footpaths sacrosanct?
Traveling and writing without ferreting out the answers
to questions like these is a mere skimming of the surface,
a surface I was more easily able to penetrate using the
skills I learned at UVM.
My friend, Professor (now emeritus) Harry Orth,
once told our Principles of Literary Research class that
a Ph.D. was a beginning and not a conclusion. I never
went on for my doctorate, but I did take a sort of Ph.D.
in travel, a calling which I made my career. And it’s never
been an end, but a perpetual beginning.
There have even been a few quite tangible links to
what I was up to during those days in Old Mill. On one
trip, I paid homage to the subject of my master’s thesis
when I cast a fly into the Big Two-Hearted River on
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But I couldn’t bring myself
to write about that. Ernest Hemingway had already
done the job, better than I could.
19
H
‘I just do
what I do’
20
Photograph by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
without punching through the snow, yes,
some mechanical engineering comes into
play. But it’s deeper than that. “My whole
life I’ve been always trying to solve little
every day obstacles, to find different ways
of doing tasks,” he says.
Out on a Limb was an ideal project for
fledgling T-Bar Films, founded by brothers
Tyler and Elliot Wilkinson-Ray ’11. While
the majority of ski films boast mega-budgets that fund helicopter shots of skiers on
terrain most will never experience, the Vermont filmmakers sought to capture a different world. “I got into it because I really like
the storytelling,” Tyler Wilkinson-Ray says,
“and I like finding those stories that might
go against people’s current understanding
of the sport.”
YouTube: Search “Out on a Limb Vasu”
Web: T-barfilms.com vasusojitra.com
Tyler currently balances his filmmaking
with a full-time job working for The Necrason Group, a progressive public affairs and
government lobbying firm based in Montpelier. His brother Elliot moved to California last year, where he produces media for
Kitsbow, a bike-wear start-up.
And Vasu Sojitra is living the dream of
many an outdoors-loving UVM alumnus,
a young man gone west to Bozeman, Montana. Mechanical engineering will have to
wait as Sojitra tackles other important work
with Eagle Mount, a non-profit that helps
people with disabilities enjoy the outdoors
through activities such as skiing and horseback riding.
“I’m not trying to be inspiring,” Sojitra
says. “I just do what I do. This advocacy
role sort of fell into my lap. But if I can help
someone else do something that pushes
their limits, why not help spread the word
about that?”
VQ
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
Young alumni team up on inspiring film
igh in
Quebec’s
rugged Chic
Choc Mountains
last winter, Vasu Sojitra ’13
knew he’d better ski the line below him
flawlessly. It had been a six-mile hike in and
a steep trudge up thousands of feet—tough
for anyone but another level of challenge
for a skier with one leg. On a distant ridge,
Sojitra’s friend, filmmaker Tyler WilkinsonRay ’12, waited with his camera, a long lens,
and a radio to cue the action.
His awareness that Wilkinson-Ray was
“freezing his ass off” in the sub-zero temperatures added motivation to get it on the
first take, Sojitra says, laughing. He nailed it.
Footage of the run creates a transcendent
moment in Out on a Limb, T-Bar Films’
recent short documentary about Sojitra’s
skill and ingenuity as a skier who carves
turns in backcountry powder better on one
leg than most can on two.
The film was well received as a finalist
at Banff Mountain Film Festival last fall.
Audiences applauded mid-film. Sojitra and
Wilkinson-Ray couldn’t walk around town
without being stopped for pictures and
thanked for the inspiration.
Wilkinson-Ray, who earned his degree
in Global Studies with a mix of anthropology and geography courses, and Sojitra, a
mechanical engineering major, first met
playing pick-up soccer with UVM Outing
Club friends. “He’s pretty good with those
crutches,” Wilkinson-Ray says. “Vasu’s got
a wide wingspan, so it’s hard to get around
him.” He adds that Sojitra’s candor and
humor immediately defuse any tension
with new friends: “He’s the first to make a
one-legged joke.”
Sojitra is matter of fact about how he
approaches life. His right leg was amputated when he was nine months old due
to a blood infection; basically, he’s known
no other way of being. Figuring out a way
to jerry-rig snowshoe extenders on his outriggers to climb in the Bolton backcountry
By Thomas Weaver
21
Meeting UVM’s professorpoet in the classroom
and on the page
22
Ma
o
jr
publish UVM professor Major Jackson’s
fourth book of poetry, Roll Deep. Like its
three well-received predecessors—Leaving Saturn (2002), Hoops (2006), and
Holding Company (2010)—Roll Deep
makes its first playful move with the title.
As Jackson pointed out when I met
with him this past fall, Roll Deep is a subtle evocation of a line from “The Negro
Speaks of Rivers” by the poet Langston
Hughes (after whom Jackson named his elder
son, now a UVM business major): “My soul has
grown deep like the rivers.”
But the title is also “appropriating speech that
I learned on the streets of North Philadelphia,”
where Jackson grew up and where “I was not
supposed to be part of that [literary] conversation. I wasn’t supposed to be a writer”—though
for a time he had aspired to be a rapper. “‘Roll
deep’ in the street sense is about having a crew,”
he explained. “‘We roll deep’ means we hang
tight, we’ve got each other’s backs. I’m trying to
extend that to art . . . to the poets, writers, and
musicians I’ve constantly been in conversation
with from the very beginning.”
In addition to Hughes, Jackson’s crew
includes Gwendolyn Brooks (to whom he
writes a long verse-letter in Hoops); W. H.
Auden (after whose “Letter to Lord Byron”
Jackson’s epistolary poem is modeled); the jazz
composer Sun Ra (who claimed to be a visitor
from the planet Saturn and figures prominently
in the title and contents of Jackson’s first collection); the painter Man Ray (an exhibition of
whose work instilled a heady sense of artistic
possibility in the young Jackson); Countee Cullen (recently acknowledged with a Library of
America volume edited by Jackson); and a score
of others from William Wordsworth to Sonia
Sanchez. At the close of our first day together
I will hear him tell a class of students that his
by
Garret Keizer
Photograph by Erin Patrice O’Brien
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
This August, W. W. Norton will
23
first reading of “Nothing Gold Can Stay” amounted to
a “conversion moment.” So he rolls deep with Robert
Frost too—and with his late grandfather and namesake, Major Gooch, who first acquainted him with the
rich heritage of the blues and whose pride as a master
bricklayer is perhaps discernible in the more formalist
examples of Jackson’s work.
“Your rootedness,” Jackson told me, “is the greatest
thing you can be given, whether you resist it, whether
you use it, whether you celebrate it.” Jackson does all
three, and the movements of this lyrical “shadowboxing” (his term) give his work much of its vitality.
If the blues is our dig
At the existential press, the praise poem’s
Our loudest handclap to survival
he writes to the late Gwendolyn Brooks, praising their
common roots, even as he complains
Somehow, art must transcend ‘I’m blacker
Than you’
and wryly observes that
24
“The University of Vermont is my home, and I’m
happy here,” Jackson says of the institution where he has
been on the faculty since 2002. He doesn’t lack for points
of comparison, having taught at Xavier University, NYU,
and Columbia, among others. Nor does his happiness
preclude the need for frequent travel. His wife resides in
Florida, waiting for his stepson to finish high school, and
Jackson has yet to find a black barber in Burlington. If
he wants “a deep haircut, something that feels closer to
home,” he drives to a West Indian barbershop in Montreal, where “I can get jerk chicken and a haircut at the
same time.”
Jackson first saw Vermont in 1996 when he attended
the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference as a promising young
poet who three years earlier had been featured in an Atlantic story about “Black Nationalism on Campus.” The Vermont landscape “hit me hard,” he says. “Looking up at
the Pleiades, I said, ‘I want to live here someday.’” He’d
already told the Atlantic writer that he planned to teach.
By the time he reached UVM, he had rambled and
written his way across the continent and back again,
driving through Death Valley in an old VW Jetta, head-
I pledged
my life right then . . .
to anointing streets I love with all my
mind’s wit.
It seems the Green Mountains are destined for the same
anointing. “This state has given me so much in terms of
my interiority,” Jackson says.
He’s speaking about more than landscape, and by no
means as an introvert. Jackson claims to “thrive in community.” His vita reveals no hermetical attraction for
what he refers to in Roll Deep as “the world’s high-rise
loneliness.” A veteran of the renowned Painted Bride
Arts Center and the Dark Room Collective, he faithfully
attends meetings of his local writers’ group, keeps “unofficial office hours” at a downtown café (his students
know when and where), and joins the audience at concerts and plays where the youngest of his three children
goes to middle school.
In one of his early poems, he writes:
Half of what I knew
Of living I discovered in a disco:
. . . something so basic
As keeping in step with your fellow man.
I didn’t ask if he goes dancing still, and if he does, where
in the Queen City he likes to go. I suspect he might have
resorted to metaphor and named a building on the UVM
campus. His first remarks in our first conversation are not
a waltz around his poetic preoccupations but a repertoire
of topics he and his students are discussing in class.
Jackson’s senior seminar, “Debates and Conversations in Twentieth-Century Poetry,” meets in Water-
man on Tuesday afternoons from 4:00 to 6:45. At a
break in class he calls me aside and tells me that he will
understand if I want to leave early in order to get started
on my long drive home. If it’s all the same to him, I say,
I’ll stick around.
Much of the class is taken up with a lively discussion of Rita Dove’s controversial selections for the
2011 Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American
Poetry. Dove drew fire from the critic Helen Vendler for
omitting certain familiar works in order to make room
for twenty-six relatively unknown writers of color. A
related conversation has to do with whether the term
“women’s poetry” has outlived its usefulness, as some
women writers have suggested. By way of focusing the
latter issue, Jackson throws up a slide of Lucille Clifton’s
poem “Wishes for Sons,” which includes the wish that
her sons be able to experience a menstrual cramp. He
asks the class if such a poem could have been written by
a man, and if its meaning would change if it were. He
seems to regards these as open questions.
Ditto for the editorial judgments of Rita Dove. I gather
that the students assume, as I also assume, that Jackson
favors a more expansive understanding of what ought to
be regarded as “canonical.” And in large part we’re right.
But his moves in the classroom are no more predictable
than they are in his poetry—or were likely to be in that
North Philly disco of his youth. He confesses a longstanding respect for Vendler as a critic, as someone who’s “definitely earned her right to speak,” even as he asserts that
“Critics are often limited in their breadth.” In response
to a student who makes the impeccably postmodern
observation that there is no such thing as an “essentially
human” experience, he ventures the suggestion that all
human beings are probably acquainted with loss.
Earlier in the day he had told me, “I have to be the
representative of a race, and that’s fine, but at some point
there is this project called America.” Something bigger
than any of us, in other words, but for that very reason
something that makes the fullest diversity of human
expression a political necessity.
“I truly believe that in a democracy we need people
speaking about their life in a multiplicity of ways. . . .
If I can read poems and sense a light behind them, not
one that’s given to broad generalist terms about what it
means to love but really gives us a textured sense of what
it means to love, then I know I’ve encountered someone
who’s living an individuated life. And that happens in
the classroom. And it’s a beautiful thing when it happens too.”
Just as mid-year exams begin, I follow my visit
to Jackson’s class with a scheduled appointment in his
Old Mill office. I want him to help me understand some
of the knottier poems in his 2010 collection Holding
Company, written at a time of turmoil—of loss and new
love—in Jackson’s life. He readily admits that it’s his
least accessible work. I’m amused but not surprised that
he doesn’t keep a flasher’s copy handy in his office. He
steps out to borrow one from the hallway display case
featuring books by UVM English professors.
Since our last visit I’ve learned that he has won a
much-coveted grant from the National Endowment for
the Arts. I didn’t learn the news from him. He will use
the NEA support to write a verse drama based on the
life of the nineteenth-century African American sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis, who lived as an expatriate in
Italy after being accused, and acquitted, of poisoning
two of her Oberlin College classmates. It may prove to
be his most ambitious project to date and perhaps the
most artistically liberating. Freedom, Jackson says in
Roll Deep,
I keep falling in
is a crater
and the poems we discuss from Holding Company
describe a deep crater.
I’ve trashed the movie stubs
of my past,
he declares at one point in the volume, and at another,
This is the year I’ll contemplate the
fire-fangled sky.
Jackson doesn’t quote his own lines when summarizing
what he’s tried to convey. Instead he quotes Derek Walcott on “elemental awe.”
The Walcott reference comes naturally. During the
winter break Jackson would go with his wife to the island
of St Lucia to help the Nobel Laureate celebrate his birthday. It was time for Walcott to turn eighty-five; time, too,
for Major Jackson to be at the party.
VQ
Garret Keizer G’78 is the author of eight books, the most
recent of which are Getting Schooled and Privacy. He is a
contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine and a past Guggenheim Fellow.
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
A Pulitzer can put you at
Odds with your skin.
ing north through the California Redwoods, evading
a posse of skinheads in Oregon. “I think every young
person should make a trip cross country and survive
on their wiles.” More recently he has visited the Dadaab
Refugee Camp in Kenya, the oldest UN camp still operating in the world and the setting for his most searing
poems in Roll Deep.
The forthcoming volume also contains poems entitled “Ode to Mount Philo” and “Enchanters of Addison
County.” One of Jackson’s plans as he pushes fifty is to
write more poems about his adoptive home. Possibly they
will form a new installment of “Urban Renewal,” a long
poem-in-progress that began in Leaving Saturn, where
Jackson writes:
25
play-in game against Lamar in 2012.
Becker was Lonergan’s top assistant for
five years before becoming head coach.
The Syracuse upset was a key recruiting
tool for them at the beginning. While that
hook has loosened a bit (current recruits
were nine and ten years old in 2005),
UVM’s victory still counts.
“It’s really hard at the mid-major level
to be good consistently—it tends to be
cyclical,” Becker says. “But we have a program that has maintained a high level and
it all really started with Syracuse. That success has helped us sustain something players want to be a part of.”
Here is a look back at the weekend in
Worcester, Massachusetts, that will stand
as the benchmark of Vermont basketball
for ages:
The Back Story
The high expectations for 2004-05 were
jolted in early November when Brennan
announced his plans to retire at season’s
end. Vermont was coming off back-to-back
NCAA tournament appearances but how
would the senior-laden Catamounts react
to this unsettling news?
It was never an issue. UVM began by
giving preseason No. 1-ranked Kansas all it
could handle in a 68-61 loss to the Jayhawks
in Lawrence. The Catamounts also lost at
eventual national champion North Carolina,
but cruised through America East play with
a 16-2 record before sweeping three games
in the conference tournament. An 80-57
beat down of Northeastern in the finals sent
Vermont to the NCAAs for a third consecutive year with an overall mark of 25-7.
These Catamounts were a lovable
bunch, led by swashbuckling point guard
T.J. Sorrentine and native son Taylor Coppenrath, from Barnet, in the low post. They
formed the top-scoring tandem in Division
I, teaming to average forty-four points a
game.
Canadian David Hehn at off-guard and
Germain Mopa Njila, an athletic small forward from Cameroon, gave Vermont two
more veterans. The four seniors came into
the Syracuse showdown with more than
400 career starts. Sophomore forward Martin Klimes from the Czech Republic, who
played in thirty games as a freshman, completed the starting five.
Becker is far from alone in recalling
with crystal clarity the defining moment
in UVM men’s basketball history. That victory—as unexpected as it was exhilarating
—resonates a decade later throughout the
state. It not only marked the end of an era,
but also established the program as more
than a one-hit wonder. In the ten years
since, Vermont has used the exposure
and momentum created by that historymaking win as the foundation for one of
the most successful mid-level programs in
the country.
“That game meant so much to so
many people and that’s something I am
reminded of every day,” says Tom Brennan, the man who led the Catamounts to
tournament glory in the final season of his
UVM coaching career. “But the thing is,
do you think for a minute that if we hadn’t
stayed good after I left, people would still
be talking about Syracuse?”
Brennan led Vermont for nineteen years,
the first three of which produced a cumulative record of 14-68. But beginning with
the freshman class of 2000-01 that became
seniors in 2004-05, Vermont went 89-26,
winning at least twenty-one games each season and reaching the NCAA tournament
for the first two times in school history.
Over the last nine years, first under
Mike Lonergan and since 2011 under
Becker, UVM has won at least twenty-one
games seven times. The Cats have made
two more NCAA appearances and won a
By Andy Gardiner G’75
Ten years down the road,
UVM’s takedown of
Syracuse is a gift that
keeps on giving
ohn Becker remembers exactly
where he was when Vermont
stunned national powerhouse
Syracuse in overtime in the
opening days of the 2005 NCAA
men’s basketball tournament.
The current UVM coach was an
assistant at Division III Catholic
University in Washington, D.C., and like
many others, had taken that Friday off to
monitor the early rounds.
“I had been home watching games all
day and was standing in front of my television, rooting for Vermont,” Becker says. “I
think most of the country was doing the
same thing because Vermont was such a
neat story. I had no idea I would be the
head coach there one day.”
J
the
Upset
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
SPRING 2015
26
27
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
The Game
The good news for Vermont was it was sent to Worcester, Massachusetts, for the opening weekend after being
banished to Salt Lake City and Buffalo in its first two
NCAA appearances. The bad news was the Cats drew
fourth seed Syracuse, a perennial top ten program just
two years removed from a national championship. The
Orange were led by All-Americans Gerry McNamara
and Hakim Warrick and came in on a roll after winning
the Big East Conference tournament.
But the Catamounts proved to themselves they could
compete with the Orange. In the second half, a dogged
man-to-man defense that produced twenty-four turnovers, and a work-the-clock offense enabled UVM to take
a five-point lead with just under six minutes remaining.
“We were having a hard time getting shots, but our
kids were playing so hard defensively and we just kept
hanging around,” Brennan says. “Syracuse pressed us and
we coughed it up a few times, but then they went back in
the zone and we were able to get our legs under us again.”
Leading 56-55 with just over a minute remaining,
Sorrentine had the ball across midcourt as Brennan
yelled to his captain to run “Red,” an end-of-the-shotclock play where Sorrentine tries to find Coppenrath in
the lane. Sorrentine motioned to his coach that he had
things under control.
Sorrentine shouted “run the play” with no intention
of running anything.
“In that situation, I thought if we could just get it
to four points, we could win,” Sorrentine says. “But if I
in the top thirty) to vault it as high as an eleventh seed.
But Vermont was placed thirteenth, a result that led
author and veteran Washington Post sports columnist
John Feinstein to label the Catamounts as the most
under-seeded team in the entire field.
“I had seen Vermont play a couple of times that year
and quite a bit over a three-year period,” says Feinstein.
“They had the numbers and they passed the eye test. But
the team that really got screwed was Syracuse because
they wound up playing a team that was much better than
a number thirteen seed.”
“People thought they could be a Final Four team
and they played that 2-3 zone that gave everybody
trouble,” Brennan says. “But after we found out the
seeds I got a call from Tark (former UNLV Coach Jerry
Tarkanian), and I’d talked to him maybe once in ten
years. He said don’t get flummoxed, you can beat that
zone. It looks better than it is.”
With a crowd of more than 13,000 filling the DCU
Center, Vermont staggered to a 23-19 halftime deficit
after shooting 27 percent from the field and hitting
only one of nine three-point attempts.
Tied at 51-51, Vermont appeared to have won in
regulation when Mopa Njila, who scored a career-best
twenty points on 9-of-10 shooting, hit a baseline drive
with three seconds left. But official Timothy Cofer
ruled Mopa Njila had stepped on the baseline and the
game headed to overtime.
passed the ball I wasn’t sure I was going to get it back. I
thought, ‘I’m going to shoot this ball.’”
As Syracuse defenders McNamara and Josh Pace
moved higher on the perimeter, Sorrentine backed up
and launched a twenty-six-foot bomb from the top of
the key that swished cleanly through the net. Coppenrath still calls it “the shot from the parking lot.” To that
point, Sorrentine had shot 4-for-19 for the game.
“That’s a shot every kid dreams of making, but it’s not
one you practice,” he says. “I tried it again the next day at
practice and air-balled it.”
The Shot
It remains one of the signature moments in NCAA
tournament history; one replayed every year when
March Madness begins its annual dance.
SPRING 2015
28
“We had a lot of things going for us,” says Hehn. “For
the seniors, whether it was stars like T.J. and Taylor, or
guys like me and Germain, we all knew our roles and we
were really prepared.”
The Cats had talent. They had the maturity that comes
with starting four seniors. And their tournament experience would not leave them awestruck by the NCAA stage.
As fans waited for the awarding of seeds for 2005,
there was buzz that UVM’s resume was strong enough
(its rating percentage index used to evaluate teams was
29
“Talking with Tom before the game, he said
they were done with this ‘it’s great to be here stuff,’ ”
says John Feinstein, who was courtside that night.
“They were there to win. And I was lucky enough
30
Brennan loves to mention that it wasn’t the only time
Sorrentine hadn’t paid attention to his coach.
“That shot changed our lives,” Brennan says. “You
wouldn’t coach that shot; it was a terrible shot. But T.J.
certainly had earned the right to take it, and he always
believed the next one was going in.”
Sorrentine’s dagger was the fatal strike in what
became UVM’s 60-57 victory. In a game in which neither side led by more than six points, the Green Mountain boys toppled the Syracuse giant.
“Talking with Tom before the game, he said they were
done with this ‘it’s great to be here stuff,’ ” says Feinstein,
who was courtside that night. “They were there to win.
And I was lucky enough to be in the building to see it.”
Vermont’s magic carpet ride ended two days later
when a No. 5 seed Michigan State team that would reach
the Final Four methodically ground down the Catamounts, 72-61. That loss did nothing to diminish what
the Catamounts had accomplished.
“The magic of that weekend has never gone away and
I am as shocked about that as anything,” Brennan says.
“It happened, and it was great, but it’s not the only good
thing that has happened to Vermont basketball.”
Perhaps, but nothing has approached that night in
Worcester. Brennan and the seniors on that team have
remained close, being in each other’s weddings and
gathering together whenever possible.
“We don’t talk about basketball much, but we know
we achieved this big goal together,” says Mopa Njila. “It
amazes me how people still remember that game and
it reminds me that I was part of something bigger than
basketball.”
the 2004-05 season, Brennan worked for ESPN as a college basketball commentator for four years. He currently
has a weekly college basketball radio show on Sirius-XM
radio and lives in Colchester with his wife, Lynn.
Taylor Coppenrath ’05: After earning his bachelor’s degree in secondary education math, Coppenrath
played for the Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers summer league teams. But his professional career has been
in Europe, beginning in Greece, continuing to Italy, and
then Spain, where he has played since 2007. Coppenrath has won four consecutive championships there. He
and his wife are expecting their first child in April.
T.J. Sorrentine ’05: Following graduation with a
degree in sociology, Sorrentine had summer league
stints with the Miami Heat and Milwaukee Bucks and
had a brief run in the NBA developmental league. He
played professionally in Slovenia, Portugal, and Italy
before becoming an assistant coach at Brown in 2008.
He was named associate head coach in 2011. He lives
with his wife, Emily Miles Sorrentine ’07, and daughter
in Providence.
Germain Mopa Njila ’05: He has worked as a software
engineer at GE Healthcare since earning his bachelor’s
degree in computer science and information systems.
Mopa Njila lives in Burlington with his wife and daughter.
David Hehn ’05: After earning his degree in business
administration, Hehn worked in several areas before
returning to his native Canada to oversee his father’s
security guard business in Ontario. He now lives in Burlington, Ontario, and is engaged to marry a former high
school classmate in September.
Martin Klimes ’07: Klimes earned his degree in business administration. After playing professionally for two
years in Spain and then for two years in his native Czech
Republic, he is head of the financial accounting department of Wustenrot, a German banking and insurance
firm in Prague. He and his wife are expecting their first
child in May.
VQ
Andy Gardiner was on hand for the 2005 UVMSyracuse game, covering the tournament for USA Today.
Retired as a full-time sports reporter, but still writing, Gardiner now lives in Vermont, his home during years at the
Burlington Free Press.
Together, we can do great things.
K
ane Tobin ’15 began his college
years as a veteran of the U.S. Army,
following deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq as a helicopter crew chief
and door gunner. After serving his country, Tobin moved on to his dream of
attending college—and the University of
Vermont is where he most wanted to be.
While the business major has excelled
in the classroom, he has also taken a
leadership role in the community. Working through the Boys & Girls Club of Burlington, Tobin mentored a teenager who
came to Vermont as a refugee after life
in a Tanzanian camp. For this volunteer
work—sharing his own deep experience
with courage in the face of conflict—
Tobin was among the recipients of the
New England Patriots Charitable Foundation’s 2014 Myra Kraft Community MVP
Awards.
A similar sense of sharing has been
vital to Kane Tobin’s realizing his dreams
at UVM. Thanks to scholarship support
from alumnus John Frank ’79 and a Yellow Ribbon Scholarship awarded by the
university and matched by the U.S. Veterans Administration, Tobin will be nearly
debt free when he graduates in May.
Scholarship support for deserving students continues to be a top priority for
UVM and the UVM Foundation. Please
consider making a gift today at uvmfoundation.org/giving/online.
UVM
FUND
2015
Make a gift today at
uvmfoundation.org/giving/online.
UVM FOUNDATION
Grasse Mount
411 Main Street
Burlington VT 05401
802-656-2010
888-458-8691 (toll free)
www.uvmfoundation.org
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
to be in the building to see it.”
The Coach & Starters Today
Tom Brennan: After retiring from coaching following
31
UVM PEOPLE
By Thomas Weaver
Gail Sheehy ’58
PIONEER
Author Gail Sheehy’s 1976 book, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, was
named one of the ten most influential books of our time by the Library of Congress. (Many credit that book for coining the now ubiquitous term “Aha moment.”)
She has profiled world figures such as Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, and
Hillary Clinton, and is counted among the pioneers of the “New Journalism” of the
sixties and seventies.
FIRST PERSON
Sheehy looks inward in her seventeenth book. Published last fall, Daring: My Passages is a memoir, and she says writing it was a challenge beyond any of her past
work. “To actually delve into your own motives and thoughts and fears and try to
be honest with yourself, it’s like pulling apart your ribs and doing an excavation
underneath there. You find some jewels, and you find some bitter stones, and you
find some expanses that are almost inexplicable.”
MOMENT OF TRUTH
Sheehy says she found the process of writing her memoir “cleansing” and encourages others to document their own stories, “to give a blessing to the life that we’ve
lived.” She notes that self-honesty becomes increasingly important as people
move into their sixties and beyond. “Taking an inventory of your life, what you’ve
accomplished and what’s missing. So being honest with yourself—changing what
you can and accepting what you can’t—is a very important part of this afternoon
of life. You can’t afford to have a ‘false-self ’ anymore. This is it. This is, you know,
the sub-totaling time.”
32
When she’s asked what advice she’d want to share with today’s generation of young
women at UVM, Sheehy says, “I’d want to tell them to dare. That’s what I found,
when I came to the end of my memoir, has been the theme of my own life. I think
it is very important to encourage young women, in particular, to be daring. Take
chances. Travel to some really far off or unfamiliar place when you’re in your college years to find out how you survive. Expose yourself to other parts of the world;
look back at your own country and see its strengths and its flaws.” Sheehy invites
her fellow UVM women to share their own stories at sheehydaringproject.com,
#DoYouDare.
VQ
Read an interview with Gail Sheehy at uvm.edu/vq.
Gasper Tringale
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
DARE
33
by Rick Green ’82
I
Bridge
34
Zee Santiago, director
of college counseling at
the Collegiate Institute
for Math and Science in
the Bronx, NYC, speaks
with David Bonny, a
senior at the school.
Bonny has been admitted to UVM, but is yet to
make his college choice.
to
Burlington
Over the years, UVM has successfully brought scores of students
from the Bronx to campus in an initiative that begins grooming future
Catamounts soon after they start high school. Prospective students get an
intensive dose of UVM over four years of high school, including annual
visits. Admitted students benefit from scholarships aimed at making the
university more diverse.
“It was the size of it. I thought I would fit in,’’ explains Michael Ricks, a
senior who is among the crowd breezing in and out of guidance counselor
Zee Santiago’s office, where college pennants decorate the walls. Ricks
and others are there to double-check common apps, financial aid forms,
and to just talk college on a busy December morning.
“Over a four-year period, all you hear about is UVM,” Ricks says. “It
helps to hear about it before you go.”
Mario Morgado, left; sally mccay, right
FAITH VELEZ ’18
If there’s an experience that sums
up Faith Velez’s first weeks on campus during the fall of 2014, it was
the young woman sitting next to
her in class who dropped her guard
and started a conversation.
“This girl in calculus, she just
started talking to me out of
nowhere,’’ says Velez, a first-year
student who attended Pelham Prep
in the Bronx and visited UVM all
four years of high school. “You don’t
do that where I am from.”
Velez passed up going to the
University of Pennsylvania for the
UVM opportunity. During a recent
chat in the Davis Center at the end
of her first semester, she says she
hasn’t looked back.
“I’m just thinking of all the experiences I’ve had,” says Velez, who
spent her life in the Bronx before
arriving in Burlington. “I came on
campus and I fell in love with the
place. It’s not a city and it’s not
too country. This school feels like
everyone cares about you and you
are not alone … I love that it is so
different here.”
One semester into her Vermont
experience, Velez sees the Urban
Partnership Program as setting her
on a path. “It’s the way I am now. I
am more independent. It just prepares you for life.”
That girl in calculus class? “Oh, we
became really close friends.”
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
Urban partnerships enrich campus culture
n the hallways of a high school hundreds of miles from Burlington, “UVM” and “Vermont” ricochet through conversations, as if
the most obvious thing in the world is for a hardworking city kid to head
north to Burlington.
“That’s what I want,’’ Abass Braimah says, pausing outside a classroom at
the Collegiate Institute for Math and Science (CIMS), one of five smaller
high schools that make up the block-sized building tucked deep in the borough of the Bronx in New York City. “I’ve been in the Bronx my entire life. I
never thought I lived in a bubble ’til I got up to Burlington.”
Four high schools in New York, along with newer additions in Chicago
and Philadelphia, make up the Urban Partnership Program, a
fifteen-year-old UVM effort that has steadily polished the Vermont brand, attracting talented students who very likely would
not have given the school a second look.
35
At CIMS, among students at its sister It begins in ninth grade, when students are
36
Jaydeen Santos knows what it’s like
to hit the wall.
A member of the first class of
Urban Partnership Program students who arrived from Christopher
Columbus High School in the Bronx,
Santos was out of gas halfway
through that first semester.
“I wanted to leave. I was failing
my classes,’’ Santos says. “Then I
got help. By my last semester I got
straight A’s and I was on the dean’s
list.’’
She hasn’t forgotten the importance of a helping hand and
a friendly ear. A decade after her
graduation, Santos, now thirty-one,
is a confirmed Vermonter, married
and settled in the Burlington area,
and working as the student services
advisor with the ALANA Center on
the UVM campus.
“They come thinking it’s going
to be this perfect experience,’’ she
says. “But sometimes there’s too
much to process at once. I have
to remind myself how it felt when
I first came. They arrive on a bus.
They try to navigate on their own.
They feel like they are imposing if
they ask for help.”
At the ALANA Student Center,
Santos helps provide some of the
glue that binds the partnership and
nurtures a home away from home.
Students can enjoy a meal, watch
TV, hang out on the couches—or
learn about how to become more
connected to UVM.
Once, Santos says, she “knew all
the students of color” on campus.
“Now, when I walk around campus
there are so many faces I don’t
recognize everyone.”
introduced to admissions counselors from
a far-off sounding place called UVM. For
most students at CIMS, Pelham Prep, and
Astor Collegiate Academy—housed in the
old Christopher Columbus High School—
there is little tradition of higher education,
let alone a college fund or the college tour
with the parents that many prospective students take for granted.
A long-standing commitment from
JetBlue Airways that began soon after the
urban partnership started provides ticket
vouchers for dozens of high school students to visit UVM easily. Students drop in
on classes, stay in residence halls, tour the
campus—and, most important of all, get an
opportunity to picture themselves at UVM.
“There’s something here that grabs my
attention,” Emmanuel Duran says during a
break in a workshop about college majors.
He was visiting UVM last November from
the fourth New York partnership school, the
High School for Environmental Studies in
Manhattan. “It’s a liberal arts school but not
as small as I expected. People keep telling
me they don’t get bored here.”
Teachers and admissions counselors say
the benefit from the JetBlue tickets cannot be overestimated: instead of subjecting
them to a Power Point about the university,
they put teenagers on airplanes, often for the
first time, and let them see Vermont, Burlington, and UVM for themselves.
“There is a need to bridge the gap in
education specifically for underserved communities,’’ says Irma Arizmendi, manager of
corporate social responsibility for JetBlue.
“We try to give them access to things that
they typically wouldn’t have access to. We
think it is important to connect communities with appropriate partners that can help
our mission.”
Abrahanna Hamilton, now a senior at
CIMS, still remembers that first plane trip
and visit four years ago. “I loved how it was
big and—what should I say?—rural. One
person I met there I still talk to,’’ says Hamilton, who hopes to join the class of 2019. “At
sally mccay
first I was like, ‘oh, all these white people.’
But I know I’m going to find people I like
there. I want to go to UVM.”
When she meets with students who are
trying to figure out where they fit into UVM,
Briana Martin might start with herself. She
came to UVM from the Bronx, furthered
her education with a graduate degree from
Michigan State, and then returned to campus as a Student Support Services mentor
and coordinator.
“I was just one of these students who
took advantage of everything,’’ says Martin.
“Being here helped me excel in an environment different from home. I don’t think I
would ever have gone out of New York City
without this. It’s an opportunity.”
Still, there are daily challenges that white
students don’t face, such as being the only
brown face in a class or just finding the comfort food you grew up with.
“I tell them you can’t compare where you
came from to here. You have all these opportunities you can tap into,” Martin says during
a recent conversation in her Living/Learning Center office. “Do something you’ve
never done before. Winter sports. I love
Burlington now.”
To be sure, problems come up. At a fall
visit for potential applicants, Jaydeen Santos
’05, a counselor with the ALANA Student
Center, told visiting high school students at
an afternoon workshop that the difference is
having programs in place that allow students
a chance to talk, to get involved, and to feel
like they are part of an inclusive campus that
responds when issues arise.
“UVM is like any other place in the
world—stuff happens,’’ Santos says. “It’s
how do we deal with it.” For example,
UVM’s expanding Bias Response Program,
which includes a fast-acting “Bias Response
Team,” provides for a rapid investigation,
counseling, and other services when incidents arise.
Many program students and graduates
say that arriving on campus can be a challenge that first semester. Helping students
will kirk
tap into leadership development programs
and other activities through the ALANA
Student Center, which offers everything
from counseling to access to student organizations to a friendly couch and a warm
kitchen, can make that transition easier.
UVM junior Luis Rodriguez recalls arriving as a shy kid who didn’t understand the
importance of reaching out and joining organizations. “ALANA opened a lot of doors
for me,” the economics major says. “I started
socializing. I realized it’s important to have
each other. We are all here for the same goal.”
Among the hundreds of partnership grad-
uates, there are common themes. They don’t
say it was easy, but they talk about discovering something within themselves at UVM.
Not surprisingly, a number of them have
gone into college counseling and admissions
as a result.
DaVaughn Vincent-Bryan ’08 remembers the crisp blue-sky Vermont day in the
fall of 2003 when he stepped off a JetBlue
flight and onto the UVM campus for a visit:
“My immediate thought was there is no way
I am going to get into this school.”
Years of trips to Burlington during high
school changed that. “The campus felt like
mine before I moved in, I had visited so
often.’’ When he arrived, what he found was
a world ready to be discovered—if he was
willing to put in the effort.
Vincent-Bryan would become an orientation leader and a student government vice
president. He worked for event services.
Along the way, he realized that working with
students and helping them discover their
potential in college was his calling.
“What I remember is so many individuals
projecting so much interest in the potential
of me coming to UVM,’’ says Vincent-Bryan,
who now works as an assistant director for
residential education at Clark University in
Worcester, Massachusetts. Because of that, “I
am in a very different place now.”
“UVM chose us,’’ he says, speaking for
himself and his peers, “but we also chose
UVM.’’
VQ
JOSEPH THOMAS ’08
What made UVM work for Joseph
Thomas was pretty simple: he could
be himself.
He arrived through UVM’s Urban
Partnership Program, via the Bronx
and Puerto Rico, and unsure of just
about everything. “The only thing
I knew about UVM was that it was
in Vermont,’’ says Thomas, who
recalled what gradually came over
him that first semester in the fall of
2004.
“It’s a predominately white
institution. But it didn’t mean that I
had to lose that part of my identity.
They want people to be able to
express their identity. UVM allowed
me to actually do that for the first
time—to be comfortable and
express myself. It was understanding what it means to be in a diverse
environment. It’s something that
has carried over for me since then,’’
he says.
Thomas had an interest in
government, which grew as he immersed himself in activities outside
of the classroom. He became a
residential advisor and an orientation leader. He had an internship
with Sen. Patrick Leahy’s office. He
became president of Alianza Latina,
a student group.
After graduation, Thomas moved
from UVM to work for Sen. Leahy in
Washington, D.C. as an aide on the
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
He is now in law school in Seattle.
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
JAYDEEN SANTOS ’05
school Pelham Preparatory Academy in
the same building, and at another partnership high school in Manhattan, the story
has been how a university that started with
relatively low diversity became a soughtafter opportunity. The urban partnership
also offers a larger lesson in how UVM can
successfully compete in the increasingly
competitive world of higher education.
“This is one of the very few programs
that is organic between a college and a
high school,’’ says Santiago, who advises
nearly 170 seniors. “It’s getting direct
access from the college to the high school
student. For a college counselor, it is
unprecedented.”
There are many reasons why UVM
has become more diverse, growing from
about 4 percent students of color in 2000
to more than 11 percent in 2015. Supporters of UVM’s partnership program say the
fifty or so new students who arrive each
fall via this avenue stand out as a model of
what is possible through commitment and
philanthropy.
Josh Javer, a guidance counselor with
Pelham Prep, says that “there is nothing
even close” to the UVM program for his
students. “In three years I’ve had twentyone students enroll at UVM. Only one isn’t
still there.”
The Urban Partnership Program has
flourished by helping highly qualified students take advantage of a campus that combines quality academics with a long menu
of leadership development opportunities
for students of all backgrounds.
“Vermont has gained a reputation as a
place that is open and accepting,’’ says Beth
Wiser, UVM’s director of admissions, who
hopes the program will continue to grow
with more students from the new partnership schools in Chicago and Philadelphia.
“We are a place that will take care of students and we will support them,’’ she says.
“We continue to bring students here whose
lives have changed through their UVM
experience.”
37
ALUMNI
CONNECTION
It’s all happening here.
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
Alumni to students
Career insights shared via job shadows
by
Kathleen Laramee ’00
Come home to Vermont.
Be a part of this action-packed weekend featuring sporting events, class
celebrations, faculty lectures, campus tours, and Vermont’s fall foliage in
living color.
Reunion years: ‘35, ‘40, ‘45, ‘50, ‘55, ‘60, ‘65, ‘70, ‘75, ‘80, ‘85, ‘90, ‘95, ‘00, ‘05, ‘10
alumni association
sally mccay
A new initiative launched by the UVM Career Center allows stu-
dents to get up close and personal with alumni in a variety of professions. In its
inaugural year, the job shadow program recently paired fifty-five eager students
with alumni willing to open their office doors in the name of career exploration.
“I think of it as something of a ‘first step’ in career development,” says
Amanda Chase, internship coordinator for the Career Center. “It allows students to learn more about a company and industry, make connections, and
evaluate whether this kind of job could be a fit for them. It also gives them a
chance to build their confidence in a professional environment and learn about
workplace culture.”
Job sites ranged geographically from Burlington to New York, Boston, D.C.,
and even San Diego. Participating companies included Facebook, the NYC
Department of Transportation, Dealer.com, Fidelity, Burton, Eaton Vance, and
many more.
continued on page 40
SPRING 2015
Registration details, lodging information and a list of who’s coming at: alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
Jesse Bridges, director
of parks and rec in
Burlington, leads a
tour of the city’s Urban
Reserve along the
waterfront. Student
Margot Halpin, right,
learned from a daylong job shadow
with Bridges.
39
[ALUMNICONNECTION
p rofiles in giving
ALUMNI CALENDAR
March
Catamount
Couple
Chittenden-Buckham-Wills, CBW, “The Shoe-
THE SHOEBOXES:
Thanks for the memories
boxes” will empty of students for the final
time with the close of spring semester and
be demolished soon after for an expansion
of the UVM Medical Center and new student
residences on central campus in the near
future.
To mark the passing of the 68-year-old
continued from page 39
be collecting memories—and selling bricks
Natural resources planning major Margot Halpin ’16 says,
“I think there is a disconnect for many students, including
myself, about how to transition from a learning environment
to jumping into the workforce putting your knowledge to
work. This job shadow experience is one way to close that
gap.”
Halpin was paired with Jesse Bridges ’02, director and harbormaster for Burlington Parks, Recreation and Waterfront.
Over the course of the day, she was impressed by the variety
of people Bridges met with—a park designer, an engineering
consulting firm, a soil specialist, and a stormwater specialist—in the context of planning a new design for Burlington’s
beloved waterfront bike path. “Understanding how all of
these players work together was very cool,” Halpin says.
Alumni participants from coast to coast spoke just as
glowingly about the experience. Suzanne McGillicuddy ’89,
who works in enrollment management and student services
at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, hosted
Gisselle Francis ’16. “I went home feeling so connected to
my alma mater and really impressed with the students who
are there now—especially Gisselle,” says McGillicuddy.
The job shadow program is scheduled to recur annually
during winter break. Recruitment for the next installment
begins in summer 2015. Find out how to get involved and
read more info at uvm.edu/career.
salvaged from the demolition.
Last fall, Vermont Quarterly shared the news
of CBW’s demise and other pending construction projects at the university. The article
drew this note from James W. Francis, Jr. ’52:
“It is hard to believe that it has been sixty-six
years since this awed freshman arrived on
campus and, complete with mandatory green
beanie on my head, sought to find this new
home called Wills Hall.’’
As a CBW alum of one of ‘The Shoeboxes,’
and with much nostalgia and a little sadness, I
hereby grant UVM my permission to demolish
our beloved Wills Hall, but certainly not my
untold fond memories!”
Mr. Francis certainly isn’t alone. We figure
there must be many untold memories out
there, and now’s the time to tell them. To share
a story or a photograph about life in The
Shoeboxes or to sign up to buy an authentic
brick, please go online to alumni.uvm.edu/
shoeboxes or write to: Neil Jensen, Grasse
Mount, 411 Main St., Burlington, VT, 05401.
411 Main St.
Burlington, VT 05401-3411
E-mail: [email protected]
40
sally mccay
April
Burlington, April 2
Ira Allen Lecture and Reception
Fairfield, Connecticut, April 7
Admitted Student Reception
Burlington, April 8
Career Networking Night
Chicago, April 8
Admitted Student Reception
Armonk, New York, April 8
Admitted Student Reception
Washington, D.C., April 19
Nationals Baseball Game
Burlington, April 20
Celebrating Scholarship Dinner
May
Burlington, May 15
Alumni Association Wine
and Cheese
Burlington, May 17
Commencement
Portland Maine, May 23
Sea Dogs Baseball game
June
San Francisco, June 14
Giants game and tailgate
For details &
registration
alumni.
uvm.edu
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
residence halls, the UVM Foundation will
T
heir number is legion—couples whose journey through life together began
with a UVM connection.
Maybe none, though, is as well known to so many of the extended UVM
family as Anne Trask Forcier ’79 and her husband Larry Forcier, who for
nearly four decades have played central roles in the life of the University of Vermont
community.
A native of Montpelier, Vermont, Anne graduated from UVM in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in social work. She left Vermont for graduate school followed by seven years
working in student affairs at Texas Christian University. She returned in 1988 to work in
UVM Alumni Relations, beginning a long career leading to her current role as executive
director of board relations for the University of Vermont Foundation.
Larry Forcier’s ties to UVM date to 1977, when he was recruited to be the assistant director of the four-year-old School of Natural Resources at UVM. Over the next
thirty-seven years he helped to lead, guide, and build the school into a national leader
in environmental research and education—today’s Rubenstein School of Environment
and Natural Resources. As assistant director, associate director, director, and finally as
the school’s first dean from 1985 to 1998, he supported the growing importance and
visibility of the School of Natural Resources in Vermont and nationwide. Additionally,
he served as dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, director of the UVM
Extension, and senior advisor to the president for Vermont relations. Above all, his commitment to students as a teacher and advisor came first.
The Lawrence and Anne Forcier Scholarship Fund was established to honor their
dedication to the university and its students. The endowed scholarship provides financial assistance to students enrolled in the
Rubenstein School for Environment and
For information on including the
University of Vermont in your
Natural Resources with special consideration
estate plan, contact —
for students from Vermont.
Following Anne’s 25th reunion year and
Donna Burke
Larry’s retirement in 2014, the couple furOffice of Gift Planning
thered their legacy of support with a substanThe University of Vermont Foundation
tial estate commitment to be added to the
Phone: 802-656-3402
Forcier Scholarship Fund.
Fax: 802-656-8678
Boston, March 10
Ira Allen Lecture and Reception
with Professor Peter Dodds
New York, March 12
Ira Allen Lecture and Reception
with Professor Donna Rizzo
Washington, D.C., March 19
Ira Allen Lecture and Reception
with Professor Aimee Shen
Burlington, March 22
“Dinner with the Boss”
Etiquette Dinner
Atlanta, March 22
Admitted Student Reception
Minneapolis, March 24
Admitted Student Reception
San Francisco, March 25
Admitted Student Reception
San Francisco, March 26
Ira Allen Lecture and Reception
with Professor Josh Bongard
Burlington, March 29
2015 Graduating Women’s
Celebration Dinner
Burlington, March 30
Admitted Student Reception
41
CLASSNOTES
[ALUMNICONNECTION
LIFE BEYOND GRADUATION
Tech and Teachers
‘‘
Tarrant Foundation boosts Vermont middle schools
A
nationally recognized UVM program bringing
innovative, technology-rich teaching practices to
Vermont middle school students will expand dramatically across the state thanks to a $5 million
gift from the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation.
The gift is the second $5 million pledge the foundation
has made to the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education, housed in UVM’s College of Education and Social
Services. The earlier gift launched the institute in 2009.
“Educators can’t talk enough about how
it’s changed their classrooms and schools.
42
The foundation also funded a pilot version of the program
from 2006 to 2009.
The Tarrant Institute currently works in thirteen
schools with sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders, a potentially vulnerable age group. The new funding will allow it
to more than triple the number of schools and reach new
areas of the state.
The program the Tarrant Institute launched five years
ago gave schools the funds to acquire technology and engage teachers in an intensive professional development
program to help them integrate it with teaching practices
known to engage middle school students.
With netbooks, tablets, interactive white boards, and
other technologies so common in Vermont schools today,
the institute now focuses largely on providing comprehensive, multi-year professional development. Institute
33-64
green & gold
reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
33
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
34
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
35
80th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
’’
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
39
Send your news to—
Mary Shakespeare Minckler
100 Wake Robin Drive
Shelburne, VT 05482
36
40
37
41
Ruth Barron celebrated her
100th birthday on January
3 and 4. Because of the bad
weather it required two days. One
was a birthday cake at Ethan Allen
Residence where she lives and the
other was a birthday dinner with
family members at a local restaurant.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
38
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
75th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
Maywood Kenney, age 94,
of Andover, Massachusetts,
died peacefully on October
13, 2014. She was the wife of the late
Robert P. Kenney to whom she was
married for 51 years. After graduating from Waterbury High School in
Vermont, she matriculated at UVM,
beginning a lifetime of devotion to
that institution. While at UVM she
— Class of ’05
was chosen as the first female editor of the university newspaper, the
Cynic, and remained class scribe
for her class until the time of her
death. Maywood was a wonderful
class secretary and worked hard to
gather and share news of her classmates over the years. She will be
missed! Joanne Seltzer the daughter
of the deceased Leo Maurice Seltzer, writes, “As 2014 commemorated
the 70th anniversary of the D-Day
invasions of Normandy, it is timely to
note that during WWII Dr. Seltzer as
a member of the 93rd Medical Gas
Treatment Battalion of the United
States Army, landed on Utah Beach
July 16, 1944, a month after the
allied soldiers. He recorded his year
in Europe with photographs and a
manuscript that bitterly described
destruction of the physical environment and human casualties of German barbarism.”
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
Kids have told us they can’t wait to get to school.”
staff work with teachers during the summer and throughout the school year, helping schools develop an infrastructure that supports effective middle school teaching
practices and a culture that sustains innovation.
Rich Tarrant says the Tarrant Foundation made a second large gift to the institute because the program has had
dramatic success, and there was a clear need to expand it.
“It’s been a home run, beyond even our most optimistic hopes,” he says. “Walk into one of the partner
schools, and students are engaged and motivated. Educators can’t talk enough about how it’s changed their
classrooms and schools. Kids have told us they can’t wait
to get to school.”
“The results are clear,” says Deb Tarrant. “Both students and teachers are excited about adding this new dimension to their curriculum. We wanted more schools in
the state to benefit.”
The Tarrant Institute links the new technologies with
effective teaching strategies designed to engage middleschoolers, such as bringing real-world problems into the
classroom and students into the community; encouraging students to work in teams; and integrating student
voices into the curriculum and the overall functioning of
the team.
Reaching students during middle school years is critical. “Student struggles during those years are a powerful
predictor of later academic trouble, including the likelihood of dropout,” says Penny Bishop, professor in the
College of Education and Social Services and Tarrant
Institute director. “Middle school is often educators’ last
best chance to reach kids.”
Kelsey Cornelius Prescott and her husband, Brian, welcomed their first baby,
Maple Theodora, on June 3. The baby’s Fairy Godmother is Liz Abrams
and she has Professor John Shane ’88 to blame for her mother’s love of the
Acer species and subsequently her first name.
43
[CLASSNOTES
42
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
44
44
Penelope Standish Easton’s
book Learning to Like Muktuk,
An Unlikely Explorer in Territorial Alaska was published by Oregon
State University Press on November
1, 2014. The book describes her work
as a dietary consultant in that vast
land suffering from the epidemics
of tuberculosis and measles (194850). Her detailed field reports and
other papers give an understanding of that time that can be found
nowhere else. Her adventures provide color and humor as well. She
tells how important her Vermont
roots were in her work. Penelope is
an independent resident at the Forest at Duke Continuing Care Retirement Community in Durham, North
Carolina. She has two daughters, five
grandchildren and two great-granddaughters, and is trying to master
her smart phone.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
45
70th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Ruth Willard Redhead
writes, “Now that I have celebrated
my 90th birthday, I hope to hear
that some of my classmates are
in good health, too, and are planning to attend the next Reunion at
UVM. I was in Burlington for Christmas and caught the Vermont Transit bus at the Royall Tyler Theater to
ride to Manchester for Christmas day.
I am continuing to go to Paris twice
a year, no longer to take students or
to do research but rather to enjoy
the cultural activities with my French
friends.”
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
46
Betty Johnson Bahrenberg left us in July. She is
greatly missed by so many
of us. Alberta Read Reed’s husband,
Wendell, also passed away recently.
Peggy Miller Logan is still keeping
up with her many activities in Maine.
Son Rob lives close by, and daughter Heather from Utah was there for
the holidays. Nancy McNamara Harris and husband Cliff, are enjoying
their recent move to an assisted living facility. I had a great tourist trip
to northern California in June. I was
the oldest traveler but I managed
to keep up, but no hiking in Yosemite for me. Barbara Francis Morgan
Adams, 89, passed away on November 29, 2014 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was born in Pownal,
Vermont on July 23, 1925, where her
ancestors included some of the earliest settlers of that town and the
State of Vermont. After graduating from Bennington High School,
her strong academic skills and interest in teaching were rewarded with
a scholarship to the University of
Vermont. Barbara married Kirt A.
Adams of Bennington in 1947. The
couple initially lived in Vermont, but
spent most of their years together in
Pennsylvania. In addition to being
a homemaker and mother, Barbara
taught French, English, and worked
as a librarian. Barbara is survived
by her husband of 67 years, Kirt A.
Adams, and three children.
Send your news to—
Mrs. Harriet Bristol Saville
468 Church Road, #118
Colchester, VT 05446
[email protected]
47
Send your news to—
Louise Jordan Harper
15 Ward Avenue
South Deerfield, MA 01373
[email protected]
48
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
49
Carl H. Jacobson shared that
his wife, Joan Meyn Jacobson, passed away. Irene
Cadoret Wills shares, “I was congratulated at the November meeting of
the Long Beach Division of the California Retired Teachers Association
for having been nominated for the
Ed Ely Communications Award for
my 20 years of writing articles for the
Retired Teachers in the Long Beach
Press Telegram.”
Send your news to—
Gladys Clark Severance
2179 Roosevelt Highway
Colchester, VT 05446
[email protected]
50
65th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Thelma Rowe Loring wrote
that she moved from her hometown
on the Cape to Concord, California, to
be nearer her children following the
death of her husband. Her daughter is in Oakland and her son is in San
Diego, closer than the more than
3,000 miles that used to separate
them. She writes that this is a new
adventure in her old age as she now
explores the countryside of northern
California. Arthur Langer wrote that
he and his wife, Polly, will probably
attend our next Reunion, depending
on their health at that time. He also
wrote that reunions are for old friends
to catch up with each other and he
looks forward to having that opportunity. Lt. Col. Leo E. Ells, retired, of
Essex Junction, Vermont, was the
brother of Helen Ells Higgins ’42, and
brother of Alice Ells Splaine ’53. Leo
died in Charlotte, North Carolina, on
November 14, 2014. He leaves behind
his wife, Cecile; children, Sandra, Helena, and David; and five grandchildren. Bob Perkins wrote, “Thelma
Perkins’ slowly developing dementia
progressed to the point that she had
to move into a memory care facility in Helena, Montana. In July our
four children and I, and two of our
grandsons were able to gather in Helena to celebrate our 65th wedding
anniversary. I had a bout with pneumonia in 2013 but I feel completely
cured now. I do two miles every day
on the high school track (jog a lap,
walk a lap, jog a lap, etc.) unless the
snow is too deep. In that case I walk
about three miles on the streets of
Rutland. My current plan is to stay in
our house in Rutland as long as possible. I’m learning to cook and do all
the bachelor things. I retired as editor
of the Smoke and Blazes newsletter a
couple of years ago and I have passed
on to others the primary responsibility for our Lifelong Learning lecture
series, although I attend regularly and
help out with the contracts for our
speakers. I’m still membership secretary for the Rutland Historical Society.
I’m easing back into my favorite activity, hiking, which was in abeyance for
the last couple of years. This summer
will be Reunion time. I’m looking forward to my 70th with Rutland High
School and my 65th with the University of Vermont. All in all, I think I’m
doing pretty well in spite of my four
score and seven years.” Doris Jones
Fafunwa writes, “Warm greetings
from Lagos, Nigeria, to all my 1950
classmates!”
Send your news to—
Hedi Stoehr Ballantyne
20 Kent Street
Montpelier, VT 05602
[email protected]
51
John Tampas, Betty Kerin
Bouchard, and I met at an
emeritus luncheon recently,
where I volunteered to write our class
column again. Now that we have a
classmate doing it, please let me hear
from you. Three of Betty’s six children
graduated from UVM, and all of her
ten grandchildren will have graduated from college by this next spring.
Quite a record! Alma Warrell Briggs
lives in Air Force Village West in Riverside, Califonia. She traveled to Florida this summer to pin a second star
on her son Jack’s uniform to indicate
he is now a Major General in the U.S.
Air Force. Mary Ellen Fuller Fitzgerald has moved to a condo in South
Burlington from the large home she
lived in for many years in Winooski.
One of her grand-daughters is living
in that home now. It seems as if many
of us are downsizing these days.
Betty Lawrence Gadue also sold her
large home near campus recently and
moved to a smaller place in the same
neighborhood.
Send your news to—
Valerie Meyer Chamberlain
52 Crabapple Drive
Shelburne, VT 05482
[email protected]
52
Budd Propp passed away on
September 19 in Durham,
Pennsylvania, aged eightyfour. Born in Brooklyn, New York,
Budd played on the varsity tennis and
basketball teams at UVM. He worked
in sales and marketing for several
companies in New York and later as
a consultant to a number of national
firms. He is survived by his wife, Patricia Lally, of Durham, two sons, and
five grandsons.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
53
Lynn Arthur Davis writes, “I
moved to this great town in
Florida, The Villages, in February of 2014. One of my roommates in
school also lives here, Dr. Mark Margiotta and his wife, Pam. Playing a lot
of golf. We have over 40 golf courses
in town. Feeling OK for a person of
my age. I’ve had some spare parts put
in the last few years and they seem to
be working. Life is good in sunny Flor-
ida.” While those of you in the northeastern part of the country have been
suffering under tons of snow and low
temperatures, we in California are
experiencing the worst drought on
record! Water, water everywhere, and
why just enough to drink here? High
tech is becoming a real challenge
nowadays, too. My AOL account is
gone, and Gmail is not functioning
properly, either. What happened to
user-friendly? Probably our communications will be better in 2015 with a
new iMac computer; after all, Cupertino is the home of Apple Computers,
and our little town is rapidly becoming a city of note internationally.
Meanwhile, please send your 1953
class news to me via snail mail. That
old system still works!
Send your news to—
Nancy Hoyt Burnett
729 Stendhal Lane
Cupertino, CA 95014
54
Elizabeth Pratt Spevok writes,
I am saddened to report the
death of my mother, Audrey
Smith Pratt, on August 21, 2014, after
Green Living
At Wake Robin, residents have designed and built three miles
of walking trails. Each spring, we make maple syrup in the
community sugarhouse and each fall, we harvest honey from
our beehives. We compost, plant gardens, and work with staff
to follow earth-friendly practices, conserve energy and use
locally grown foods.
Live the life you choose—in a vibrant community that
practices “green” ideals. 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
200 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
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
43
One of my greatest joys these
days is when I hear from a
former classmate. Last week,
on a dreary October day, I received
an email from Daan Zwick. He wrote
“just to keep in touch.” Daan has
been busy taking several courses
under the auspices of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He
has also been interested in creative
writing for many years and sent me
a recent short story he had written. Also, Dann had a dream many
years ago which may come to fruition before the end of the year and
this really excited me. Daan set his
dream in motion by making a financial contribution for the construction
of the Winooski River footbridge on
the Long Trail. It has taken ten years
for this project to be near completion, finally with financial help from
the State of Vermont. On December 12, 2014 Daan led a group of
interested people across the bridge
with a big smile on his face and a
video cameraman following closely
behind. I could hear the trumpets
blaring all the way down here in Rutland. Daan was very impressed with
the bridge which is more than two
people wide and stretches across
more than 200 feet. There is still
some work to be done and there will
be a larger celebration sometime
this summer. Daan will be there. I
heard from Betty and Harry Twitchell at Christmas. Harry’s big adventure in 2014 was a cruise up the
west coast of Norway which, unfortunately, Betty missed because of a
herniated disc. You might say her big
adventure was a successful back surgery. Harry bemoans the state of the
world, as we all do. I am delighted
to report that I have a second greatgrandson. The proud parents are Erin
and Zak Cassady-Dorion ’03 of Niskayuna, New York. Jane Drees Blanod shared that her mother, Frances Ann Merritt Drees, passed away
in November. She attended UVM for
three years, and was a descendant of
Royall Tyler.
Send your news to—
June Hoffman Dorion
Maples, Apt.114
3 General Wing Road
Rutland, VT 05701
[email protected]
45
46
a brief illness. She was 81 years old.
She was born in 1933 in Queens, New
York, the daughter of Russell Avery
Smith and Cecile Thomas Smith, and
graduated with a bachelor’s in home
economics. It was there that she met
Robert L. Pratt, MD’55. They wed the
same year and lived in Alburg, Vermont, eventually moving to Saratoga
Springs, New York, in 1968. Audrey
was an active member of the Yaddo
Garden Association, and was an avid
gardener herself. She enjoyed many
creative activities including needlepoint, knitting, weaving, and photography. She also enjoyed traveling and
nature and made many cross-country
trips with her family over her lifetime.
Audrey is survived by her devoted
husband of 60 years, Robert; by her
three loving children, five grandchildren, her sister, and her nephew.
Phyllis Cameron Bricker shares, “This
past summer I met some nice people
from the East Coast while traveling to
the northern lakes of Italy. Highlights
included the Dolomites (the Italian
Alps) and Lake Carezza plus the view
from the Gornergrat at 3,089 meters
above Zermatt, Switzerland. Here the
mighty Matterhorn is among a collection of alpine peaks, surrounded
by multiple glaciers, amid deep,
deep virgin snow. I lingered here a
long time. It’s another world. Travel
is an education; an adventure, providing life-long memories. Why stay
home?” Mary Ann Clowse Jenkins
sends news from Idaho “Congrats to
the Pi Phis. What a great contribution to the UVM magazine, Alpha Chis
get with it! Write! I am not a Westerner. I live in an assisted living facility in Bellevue, Idaho, where I own a
home also. Even though I miss skiing and tennis, I’m grateful to get
around with my walker. I was saddened when my cousin in Woodstock
wrote of Kathryn Dimick Wendling’s
death. We were classmates in Richmond High School as well as UVMers.”
Ruth Blodgett Hayes shares, “UVM
has always been a ‘family tradition’
with my mother, Grace Frisbie ’29,
my father, Robert Blodgett ’27, my
stepfather, Frank Stiles ’23, and my
husband, Charles Hayes ’53. Of my
six children, Patty Hayes Wartinger
’75 and Charles Steven Hayes ‘98
are UVM grads. Of my 15 grandchildren, #14-Mattie Hayes is finishing
her junior year...and I finally received
a UVM mug! Life is good!”
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
55
60th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Elliott Ross-Bryant tells us,
“As of September 24, 2014 we have
consolidated our residences permanently in Steamboat Springs. Lynn
and I are both now retired from the
Religious Studies faculty at the University of Colorado in Boulder where
we had lived since 1987. Skiing (with
Billy Kidd and a number of other Vermonters) continues to be a passion
(it’s the champagne powder!), hiking, mountain climbing (36 14’ers
was all I managed), and music are still
my thing, but I must admit I miss the
teaching and being taught that was
the center of my life. I am very grateful to UVM and the University of Chicago for instilling the learning bug
in me.” Richard Caldwell ’55, MD’60
writes, “My professional career as a
general surgeon in private practice in
the Chicago area lasted for 31 years.
I practiced initially at Rush University Medical Center and later moved
to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, until ’97.
During the 30+ years spent at ALGH,
before and after retirement from surgical practice, I was involved with
Risk Management, Quality Assurance, and was director of Medical Student Education in Surgery. In addition, I functioned as a governor of the
American College of Surgeons and a
board member of an off-shore medical malpractice insurance company.
In ’63 Carol Ratjen and I married. We
have three children and three grandchildren, the oldest of which is 10
and the youngest is 5, the light and
love of our lives and all, fortunately
for us, currently live in the Chicago
area. Look forward to our 55th Medical School Reunion in early summer
of 2015. If past reunions are any indication of the upcoming reunion, this
one will also be a blast. My phone
number is 847-337-4513 and email
[email protected].” Dick, also in his
note to me (Jane) included a warm
message in appreciation of the con-
tributions to our class notes for so
many uninterrupted years. He has
just located an old buddy, Richard
Hooker, via class notes recently, wonderful stuff! Sandra Bonney Perry
Lovell is now in a retirement community. Widowed twice. Her oldest daughter Carolyn Holahan Bick
’81, her other daughter Linda Holahan Sandor Welleslly is in north Destin, Florida. Son John Holahan from
Northeastern works at NorthWestern
Business. She has many fond memories. Gerard (Jerry) Mullen took a run
at the Vermont House of Representatives this year. “Running against an
incumbent of a major party, even one
who has co-sponsored laws that violate the Constitution, is a long shot in
any case. With three people helping
me on a part-time basis, I managed to
take 1,173 votes in a gerrymandered
district, but got beaten by about 300
votes. Interesting experience. If anybody plans to do something silly like
this, I have lots of advice.” Hal Greenfader welcomed Barry Stone ‘56
and wife Carol, who flew west with
the UVM basketball team to attend
the year-end games at University
of Southern California and University of California, Santa Barbara. Joining them were David Greenfader
and Christa Greenfader (UVM/USC
hybrids) at the pre-game reception at
the Jonathan Club in Downtown Los
Angeles. On New Year’s Day they had
lunch with Mark Rosenblatt. Perhaps
the unusual cold weather has slowed
you down in sending on news for our
class. In any case, so looking forward
to our 60th come October! Make your
plans! See you then!
Send your news to—
Jane Morrison Battles
Apt. 125A
500 East Lancaster Avenue
Wayne, PA 19087
[email protected]
Hal Lee Greenfader
Apt. 1
805 South Le Doux Road
Los Angeles, CA 90035
[email protected]
56
Michael Morse passed away
on October 28, 2013 at home
in La Jolla with his family around him. He fought the good
fight with cancer right up to the
end. Stan “Pal” Borofsky and Donna
Davison Borofsky ’57 say, “We are
still both having a great time. Pal
still works and Donna still donates
her time. We have three grandchildren, all enrolled at UVM. One graduates this year. Brad, our younger son,
runs the business and Scot, our older
son, is still working at art. We spend
three months January, February, and
March in Lakewood Ranch, Florida,
and see Rhoda Rosenberg Beningson ’57 and Herb, as well as Eddie
(Etta) Sachs Mehl ’58 and Froman
Mehl ’59 every year. Always look forward to old friends visiting in Brattleboro; stop at our store, Sam’s, anytime
when we are in Brattleboro. We will
visit the new Alumni House at this
graduation. Hope to see old friends
there. Love to all!”
Send your news to—
Jane K. Stickney
32 Hickory Hill Road
Williston, VT 05495
[email protected]
57
Ada Pratt Polianos shares,
“My husband passed away
October 16, 2014 due to complications after surgery. I am trying
to adjust to life without him. I still
participate in my church and in the
DAR when able to. I have degenerative arthritis in my spine and knees
limiting my mobility.” Jacob (Jay)
Zwynenburg writes, “Both Joan and I
continue to work full time at our business, Jay’s Art Shop & Frame Gallery
in downtown Bennington, Vermont.
We are both in very good health and
we attribute that to keeping moving and working. We still enjoy what
we do and the daily social interaction with customers and friends that
come in our store. We have embraced
the high-tech age with our website
jaysartshop.com which includes our
Facebook page with frequent posts.
Looking forward to our next class
Reunion. P.S. I still ski weekly.” Jessica
Schildhaus Fischer ‘57 writes, “Every
time I receive a copy of the Quarterly,
it’s like a short visit for this Burlington-born grad. I remember going to
the Fleming Museum to see exhibits
when I was still in grade school and
what stays with me is the diorama
of the Grand Canyon and the changing lights! Ken and I both enjoyed the
article by Thomas Weaver “Yellow Ribbon” because all of our seven grandchildren had completed their army
service before their university studies. One who graduated from the Sor-
bonne noted the distance and outlook of the other students who lacked
the experience that he had! My
father, uncles, aunts, sisters, brother,
and cousins by the dozens all graduated from UVM; I am amazed at the
growth and changes over the years. I
had a wonderful visitor some months
ago, Deborah Lichtenfeld ’95 from
Hillel on campus, and I am in contact with my childhood friend and
class alum, Miriam Samuelson to this
day. Keep the Quarterly coming. Have
been in Israel since 1969.”
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
58
Eileen Mowle Albert shares,
“I have been retired a number of years and now enjoy
my six grandchildren. I am so fortunate as they all live in the Dallas area.
I also spend a lot of time traveling.
Just returned from six weeks in Australia and New Zealand, a real learning experience. I return to Vermont
each winter to cross country ski and
have a winter fix. When at home I volunteer at my church, listen to first
graders read at my neighbor school,
drive local crime watch, and feed the
homeless lunch. I bike on pretty days.
I do keep busy!” Carol Conner Frei
writes, “We have a grandson who is
a freshman at UVM this year. Finally
after four children and four other eligible grandchildren, we have one
that applied and he loves it! Also, I
have a fellow classmate living here
at our Continuing Care Retirement
Village in South Florida! It is a small
world.”
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
59
Lois Annable Rupert from
Fairfield Glade, Tennessee,
writes that she just returned
from a seven-day Alaska Cruise with
her daughter and family. “It was the
first time for all of us and what beautiful country! Great sailing and gorgeous viewing of the Alaska country,
from mountains to glaciers! Sorry
to miss our class reunion but this
year has been full of numerous trips:
Seattle, Michigan for tax preparation
and grandson’s high school graduation, South Carolina to take care
of a 91-year-old sister-in-law, Myrtle Beach vacation, etc. I have been
a consultant with Cookie Lee Jewelry for over 12 years and have fun
showing the fashionable and affordable jewelry. This week they just
changed the business name to ViVi,
and individual titles to personal stylist. My website is www.BeVivi.com/
loisrupert. Facebook business page
is still ‘under construction.’” Eleanor
Wilson Tessier shares that Leon P.
Tessier, passed away on March 17,
2014. K. Millen Olver, Colonel, USAF
Ret. writes, “I had the good fortune
to begin my two year mandatory
active duty service at Ethan Allen
AFB (Winooski) in November, 1954.
During that duty, I began a master’s
program at UVM in 1956 or ‘57, commuting from the base to meet my
classes. There were two other graduate history students that year. John
Shy was an exceptional full-time student who the last I knew was teaching history at Princeton. The other
was a part timer like me, John Barr.
By the time I was reassigned in 1958
(having elected to remain in the Air
Force) I lacked only a thesis. At my
next duty station I struggled to find
a topic of interest either to UVM
or me, not to mention access to
research (much more difficult before
the internet became available).
Then I learned that (1) the Air Force
would allow me to return to college
for one semester of courses to complete a degree, and (2) UVM had a
degree program that would allow
me to substitute six hours of education courses for the thesis. So I was
able to complete a Master of Arts in
teaching degree at UVM at summer
term, 1959. Several years later I sent
a routine postcard to UVM requesting a transcript. Imagine my surprise when I also got a handwritten
note from Dean Kent of the Graduate School. He remembered me and
hoped that I, my wife and boys, were
doing well. Wow! It exemplified my
whole UVM experience of caring
individuals. Although I’ve attended
six other universities and taught at
two others, I truly believe my learning experiences at UVM were the
richest I had. I remain very grateful.”
Please see VQ online for the full text
of Col. Olver’s message. Our class celebrated our 55th Reunion in style
with a catered luncheon at Shelburne Farms Coach Barn, and a gorgeous, seated dinner at the Sheraton
Hotel. Those present were Barbara
Evans Skroback, Springfield, Massachusetts; Joanna Henderson,
New London, New Hampshire; Jerry
Heller, Wayland, Massachusetts; Ned
Kopald, Highland Falls, New York;
Priscilla Carpenter, Burlington, Vermont; Bob Gallagher, Indian Harbor Beach, Florida; Lloyd Perry and
wife Emily Williams Perry, Berwyn,
Pennsylvania; and me, Henry Shaw,
Columbia, South Carolina. Small
group, but fiercely loyal as already
we’ve made plans for the 60th! We
really need more bodies. Class of
’59 contributed $66,451 last year to
the UVM Foundation. Up 13 percent
from the year before, with 21percent
class participation. Now’s the time,
this fall, for the Class of ’59 to rev up
and make this year’s contributions to
the Foundation. Don’t worry... you’ll
get a call. They need the money.
And we need the recognition. Go
Cats! While travelling in New Mexico, my wife Judy, and I had dinner
with Rube Lamarque and his wife,
Joan Schmouth Lamarque ’60, on
October 31 at the Hacienda Hotel in
Santa Fe. I still plays some tennis, but
Rube continues to play every day
but Sunday, and sometimes twice in
a day. Amazing! Great to meet with
old friends.
Send your news to­—
Henry Shaw, Jr.
112 Pebble Creek Road
Columbia, SC 29223
[email protected]
60
55th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Robert Denmead reports,
“My wife Pat Denmead ’58, and I live
in Venice, Florida which is located
about 25 miles south of Sarasota on
the west coast. We would welcome a
call from any “old” friends at 941-4937462.” Jean Weaver writes, “Charlie
and I celebrated out 50th anniversary last year and are enjoying being
at our camp in Maine in the summer
and in Florida for rest of year. We are
very active in Florida! I love my time
at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium
where Winter from “Dolphin Tale” is.
With our travels, I finally had to retire
from dental hygiene four years ago.
It was a great profession! We have
four kids and seven grandchildren 14
years to 21. We are blessed!”
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
61
John Simonds says: “Having
moved several times since
graduation in 1961, I have jettisoned or replaced about every book
I owned except a two volume set of
Major British Writers and an original,
dog-eared, copy of Mastering the Art
of French Cooking by the irrepressible
Julia Childs. Now that I have finally
found my way into retirement, I have
been indulging my secret passion for
cooking some of Julia’s classic recipes like her Boeuf Bourguignon and
her Cassoulet, both of which provide excellent fortification against the
weather here in Chicago. The other
fortification against Chicago winters is to get out of Dodge City and
go to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, which is precisely what we did
again this year. I left Julia at home,
thank you.” Tom Hackett emailed,
“After 53 years I have retired. It has
been great with all of the many
folks I have had the pleasure of serving, some back over 50 years. I now
look forward to what is ahead. I will
play more golf, do more fly fishing,
do some wood carving and spend
more time with my grandchildren. I
am truly blessed.” Tom lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. Muriel Wills Witham
reported, “Right now, my new husband of three years and I are cruising
down the Rhine River in Germany. I
moved from the East Coast in ‘95 and
retired from nursing seven years ago.
I loved it while I was working, but
miss it not in the least with my new
life. We enjoy church activities, volunteering, and keeping up with our 18
grandchildren. I keep in touch with
Joan Meyerhoff Feist and husband,
Steven, who are the best godparents
that one could want to my oldest
daughter. When Ralph and I married,
I moved to Laguna Woods, a retirement community where he lived in
Southern California. I kind of miss the
season changes, but can’t complain
about the marvelous weather that
allows one to garden in late Novem-
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
[CLASSNOTES
47
48
ber.” Susie Sells Hodgson says, “For
my 75th birthday Dick and I took a
wonderful tour of Vermont and New
Hampshire...ohhh the memories!”
Jim Rogers emailed, “I’ve been keeping busy being a marshal at both the
AT&T and First Tee golf tournaments
at Pebble Beach. In between times
going to spring training in Phoenix and being a docent at Gilroy Gardens. Last spring Connie Anderson
Rogers ’63 and I took a great trip to
Italy with John Dick MD’67 and his
wife, Katherine Brush Dick ’67. We
look forward to touching our roots
every July at our time-share condo
in Stowe. We’ve also enjoyed playing in the UVM Alumni golf tournament while we’re there.” Fran Berlin
Grossman reports, “I am retired and
living on the banks of North Carolina.
Come one, come all to my island paradise. I am involved in several community activities, such as Friends of
the Library, Community Foundation,
and JCOB. Life is good.” Paul Murphy
reports, “Last summer I called an old
friend, Pete Weiss ’64, in Florida and
was very surprised to find out that he
summers in Kennebunkport, Maine,
where we have a family cottage. The
Weisses and the Murphys had several
great evenings dining, wining, and
driving along the Maine coast. We
introduced Marnie Weiss to the Arundel Flea market where it`s easy to find
something you can`t live without. We
look forward to seeing the Weisses,
and his brother, Bob Weiss, Bob and
Ann Goldman, and Bill Mooza when
they visit Maine. We’re even hoping to see Pete and Cynthia Nelson if they can be pried off the Cape.”
Roy Kelly reports: “In May 2015, I’ll
step down as founder/director of the
Charles River Chorale in Millis, Massachusetts, after 30 years. I am still
artistic director of the Snug Harbor
Community Chorus in Duxbury, Massachusetts in my 14th year and am
entering my 20th year as organist/
choirmaster with St. John the Evangelist Church in Duxbury. And, just to
keep on playing, I’ve joined ‘The Olde
Kids on the Block’ as keyboard player,
a 16-piece Big Band a la the Glenn
Miller era. The music just keeps going
round and round!” Your class scribe
dropped by UVM on Homecoming
Weekend in October to attend the
Delta Psi annual meeting as well as
the groundbreaking for the addition
to the Delta Psi house as it becomes
the new Alumni House. I was pleased
to run into Ralph Guiduli and several other Delts from years just ahead
and just behind us, such as Fred Halterman ’60, Byrne Callahan ’64, and
Lloyd Perry ’59. At the groundbreaking, UVM had recruited past Alumni
Association presidents to participate.
The class of ’61 was well represented
by three former presidents: Rolly
Allen, Kathe Allen, and Tom Amidon.
Finally, I’m sorry to report the death
of our classmate, Kay Coburn Dyer
from post-surgical complications on
October 2, 2014 at a Florida hospital
in Tampa. Kay worked as a public and
private school teacher, early childhood development specialist, sales
representative, and as her last and
best calling, a geriatric care manager
and owner of Dyer Solutions in Apollo
Beach, Florida. She was a member
of the Sun City Center Rotary Club
and Sun City Center Area Chamber
of Commerce. Kay, originally from
St. Johnsbury, came to many of our
reunions, including our 50th and
always added a spark to the group.
Donald Sargent and Lucille Sargent
celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on January 2. They have two
daughters and seven grandchildren.
Both of them are retired from IBM.
Joe Buley reports, “I recently completed my tenure as a contributing
and supporting editor for the publication of the book American Society
of Civil Engineers, Los Angeles Section
– 100 years of Civil Engineering Excellence, 1913-2013. The book was published by AuthorHouse and is available from the normal outlets such as
Amazon.com. Of historical note is the
link between the Los Angeles Section and the University of Vermont.
On page 65 you will find that one Wilbur C. Sawyer was instrumental in the
founding of the Los Angeles Section
on March 22, 1913. Mr. Sawyer was a
civil engineer and a former civil-engineering lecturer at the University of
Vermont. On a more personal note,
my granddaughter was accepted into
the school of Nursing & Health Sciences for the fall semester at UVM. I
now have two granddaughters at the
school.”
Send your news to—
Steve Berry
8 Oakmount Circle
Lexington, MA 02420
[email protected]
62
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 at Middlebury High School, usually for history class, but he also
does wood-working, Latin, science,
English, math, etc. He is having a
“blast” at his age, he says. After reading about the old freshmen dorms
being demolished, he thought about
starting college in ‘58, remembering 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 [email protected]. Patricia E. Gitt wrote a book, ASAP –As
Soon As Possible is now available in
paperback. Search Patricia E. Gitt on
Amazon to find reviews. Linda Leffel
Landow shares, “In December, our
family of 13 went to Israel to celebrate the Bar and Bat Mitzvah of our
two youngest grandchildren. While
there, we spent time with Vic Hoffman. All six of our grandchildren celebrated their B’nai Mitvahs in Israel
and this trip was another memorable experience.” Phyllis Padrusch
Cordover and Howard Cordover ’58
spent time with Sheila Frakt and
Gerald Fischer. She writes, “We visited them in Sarasota, Florida, where
they were vacationing from New Jersey. We drove over from Boynton
Beach, Florida, where we moved a
year ago. The Cordovers would love
to hear from any classmates residing
in Florida or visiting. Their address
is 7005 Springville Cove, Boynton
Beach, FL 33437. Home phone 561450-5600, Phyllis’ cell 205-907-6669,
and email address is [email protected]
Send your news to—
Patricia Hoskiewicz Allen
14 Stony Brook Drive
Rexford, NY 12148
[email protected]
63
Lee Cauley Bordas writes,
“Two more grandchildren!
Chloe Simoes Bordas born in
New Bedford to John and Clara; Samuel Bordas Vargo, joining Rosie in California with Hanna and Eric. Better
late than never!”
Send your news to—
Toni Citarella Mullins
210 Conover Lane
Red Bank, NJ 07701
[email protected]
64
Linda Cummings Deliduka
writes, “I am a retired teacher.
I am busy with 10 grandchildren and many statewide organizations. I am also traveling with friends.”
Our big 50th reunion is now a memory and a super one at that. For those
of you who did not join in the celebration, you were missed and you
missed out on a wonderful weekend.
The reunion began with a cocktail
party at President Sullivan’s house.
A great party where we could meet
and greet as well as figure out who
we all were. Time does make a few
changes in appearances! We learned
many facts about our University of
Vermont. Last year there were 24,000
applications for 2,400 slots. UVM is a
nationally-recognized university and
one of the top ten up and coming
universities mentioned by USA Today
and Forbes Magazine. It is considered
a “Public Ivy.” The facts went on and
on to further reinforce why we are
happy to be graduates and continue
to be proud of our university. The
Class of 1964 also was the winner of
the McCullough Cup which is given to
the class with the highest percentage
of returning alumni. Saturday morning there was a trolley tour of the Burlington area which was enjoyed by
many of our classmates. Because it is
also Homecoming and Parents’ Weekend, there were vendors and activities on the campus behind the old
gym. Lots of good eats and fun things
to do. Saturday night found us at the
Burlington Country Club for our class
dinner, which was a big success. We
danced to oldies thanks to Jim Rosenberg who saved our list from the 40th
Reunion. There was lots of dancing
going on. Sunday was the Green and
Gold brunch at Davis Center, which
is to honor the class of 1964 as the
incoming group. All classes 50 years
out and above are invited to attend.
I hope you will consider the 55th if
you missed the 50th. Our campus has
undergone many changes all for the
betterment of UVM. On a sad note,
I received a note from Elissa Cohen
’90, informing me of the death of her
dad Robert Cohen from GBM brain
cancer. He had kept in touch with and
had get-togethers with his TEP brothers through the years, and was surrounded by friends and family during his illness. Also twins Bob and Bill
Davidson died within a year of each
other after a long battle with Parkinson’s and ALS. Martha Reed Mockler
and Richard are enjoying retirement
in Palm Coast, Florida. She writes, “We
enjoy the small city, coastal environment with lots of walks on the beach
and biking and hiking trails, as well
as the amazing birds and wildlife.”
Linda Herzenberg Sparks says, “Hello
Classmates! 110 alumni and spouses
attended our 50th Reunion. I want to
thank the Reunion committee and
classmates who returned for helping to make it a special weekend. It
was great to reconnect. For those of
you who returned for the first time,
please return again to see longtime
friends and classmates. Bravo to our
class for the best attendance and the
largest contributions.” Roger Brown
reports, “After graduating with my
bachelor’s, I got a master’s majoring
in physiology and biophysics. After
five years in technology and research,
I earned a Master of Divinity degree
from Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, in 1975. I was ordained
as a minister in the United Church of
Christ (Congregational), October 31,
1976. In 1979, I was divorced, after a
two year marriage. We had no children. After returning to Vermont in
1979, I spent most of my career in
parish ministry, until my retirement in
2010, I served as the permanent pastor of four churches, and the interim
minister of 11 churches in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and
Wyoming. Presently, I offer Christian
and inter-faith spiritual direction. I’ve
traveled internationally, and in June
2013 I made my dream trip to China.
Recently, I spent some of the winter
in Florida. I continue to be active in
interfaith concerns, peacebuilding,
environmental concerns, and enjoy
my life-long hobby of photography.
I’d love to connect with UVM alumni;
my email is [email protected].”
Send your news to—
Susan Griesenbeck Barber
1 Oak Hill Road
P.O. Box 63
Harvard, MA 01451
[email protected]
65
50th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Dorothy “Dodie” Githens
Carvalho tells us, “I split my time
between Bellows Falls, Vermont, and
Rockport, Massachusetts. I’m happily
retired from teaching, and enjoy winter skiing and summer scuba diving.
In the rest of the year I love gardening
and traveling, as well as diving and
skiing in other areas as much as possible. Life is good!” Nash Lamb writes,
“I look forward to seeing the class of
’65 at the October Reunion, especially
ski team members and SAE brothers.”
Mark Ira Berson writes, “All is well
and life is good. Peace be with you.”
Send your news to—
Colleen Denny Hertel
14 Graystone Circle
Winchester, MA 01890
[email protected]
66
Robert C. Levis is retired after
35 years in education in Vermont schools and lives in Colchester with wife, Jill Hallett Levis. Jill
is a retired adjunct professor/voice
teacher at UVM. Retirement activities include: director of UVM Pep
Band (ret.); member of Vermont Symphony Orchestra Percussion Ensemble “Drumshtick”; member of Oriana
Singers; and participation in several other musical and community
events. Tom and Adrienne Donohue,
John and Debbie Howe, and Doug
and Klair Cozzi Martin ’65 visited
David and Nancy Macdonald at their
home in Sunapee, New Hampshire
in August. A boat ride around Lake
Sunapee highlighted the visit, and
future meetings are promised. Maybe
a winter ski trip to Mt. Sunapee,
which is only one mile away. My husband, Ken McGuckin, and I enjoyed
a visit from Nancy Castellanos Miller
and her husband, Chris, in September. They are residents of Saratoga,
California, and spend time at their
Lake George, New York, home during the late summer/fall seasons. We
also hosted Marcia Ely Bechtold and
her husband, Chip Bechtold ‘64, for
several days in October, and toured
them around old St. Augustine, Florida, where we now live in retirement
(if it really is considered retirement!)
All of us discussed our 50th UVM
Reunion and what might be ideas for
our gathering in 2016. Please put on
your thinking cap—we need your
input. I was recently notified of the
death of Sheila Coleman Eddy on
June 18 in Burlington. Her daughter, Sheryl Eddy ’88, wrote that her
mother was first and foremost a Vermonter who fondly recalled her time
at UVM. The stories she told of her
antics with roommate Gwen Connors
were for the legend books. Den Linnehan shares, “In February of 2015,
I will self-publish my fifth hard cover
photography book: Yellowstone and
Grand Teton Splendor. 176 pages, 9 x
12 landscape format. My wife Elaine
and I celebrated 42 years of marriage
on December 27, 2014. We have two
daughters, both married with four
grandkids in total. The youngest will
be two in February.”
Send your news to—
Kathleen Nunan McGuckin
416 San Nicolas Way
St Augustine, FL 32080
[email protected]
67
Bill Leete tells us, “I retired
from the University of New
Haven in 2012 after having
spent 43 years in higher education
(12 at Hofstra University, 31 at New
Haven). My wife Cathie Leete ’69
passed away in 2006. I remarried in
2011 to Gerry Longo in the Bahamas.
Gerry lost her husband Sam Longo
‘69 in 2004, and we were friends
for over 40 years. I now live on Martha’s Vineyard and spend time traveling and seeing our six grandchildren often.”
Send your news to—
Jane Kleinberg Carroll
44 Halsey Street, Apt. 3
Providence, RI 02906
[email protected]
68
Congratulations to Jack
Rosenberg on two first place
awards in the 2014 PSA MidAtlantic National Cups Competition.
Jack’s award-winning images were
selected from over 1,700 entries.
Sarah Dopp was a co-recipient of the
Hildene Award in July of 2014, along
with Paul Bruhn. The award is for contributions to historic preservation and
land conservation in Vermont. The
award of $10,000 is given by historic
Hildene, the Manchester, Vermont,
home of Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln. The recipient(s) in
turn gifts the monetary award to a
non-profit in Vermont, for whom it
would make a real difference. She
writes, “We chose the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor, Vermont, a
project being encouraged by Paul’s
Preservation Trust of Vermont. I keep
busy with many interesting projects, including organizing my 50th
high school Reunion last summer,
being president of the South Burlington Land Trust and the Chittenden
County Historical Society. I just completed 22 years on the board of the
Vermont Historical Society.”
Send your news to—
Diane Duley Glew
23 Franklin Street
2 Wheeler Farm
Westerly, RI 02891
[email protected]
69
Our 45th Reunion was a great
success and now we begin
prepping for the big one.
Would love to hear stories from those
attending. Did anyone run into the
Paul Simpson entourage this fall in
his amazing tailgate-mobile? He has
built into his van a storage cabinet
and a roll-out kitchen, plus a UVM
flagpole, which twists up to about
15 feet. Last sighting was when Paul
and Rick Farnham (who had retired
as UVM athletic director) hosted a 3-4
hour tailgate with Art Brown, Paul
Malone ’68, and Jeff Kuhman ’68 at
a Patriots game where UVMers saw
the flag and joined the party. John
and Sally Hynes had a spectacular
family trip to San Sebastián, Spain
last year where they stayed with their
exchange student from 22 years ago
in his family’s beach home. They said
“A grand time was had by all 10 of
us.” Ed Barnard retired in 2011 from
a 35-year career in forestry research
and public service with the International Paper Company and the Florida Department of Agricultural and
Consumer Services, Division of Forestry. He and wife Elna Rawson ’71
spend winters in Gainesville, Florida, and summers in Meadows of
Dan, Virginia. Ed recently finished a
“50-year dream” of publishing a history of his high school in Shoreham,
Vermont, which was built as a private boarding academy in 1811. On
the Common: A History and Memoir
of Newton Academy is now available
on amazon.com. Ed and Elna have
four grandsons and one granddaugh-
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
[CLASSNOTES
49
[CLASSNOTES
ter. Valerie Audette Hall received a
Doctor of Philosophy in Marine Science and Technology from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
last May. Since leaving UVM, Valerie
has taught middle and high school
science for 35 years, first in Vermont
and then in Nantucket, Massachusetts, where she lived. She received
her master’s degree in marine biology
from Boston University in 1984, and,
subsequently, instituted a marine
program for high school freshmen
when she returned to teaching in
Nantucket. She retired from teaching in 2004 to pursue her doctorate.
While continuing her doctoral bay
scallop research, she also volunteers
as a caregiver at a local animal shelter and in her church, and sings in the
church women’s choir. Husband Robert Hall ’66 retired from teaching in
2001. They have two children, Emily
(age 28) and Julia (age 26), and one
granddaughter, Avia (age 4). Michael
T. Alexander retired a few years ago
as an analytical research chemist
for five big corporations. He hopes
other classmates share his concern
for the plight of children living and
dying in poverty, and wants to share
this thought: “Charity is greater than
love…love is something you give to
family and friends….Charity is your
gift to humanity.” On that note—stay
heathy and active, and contact me
with any news that’s fit to print!
Send your news to—
Mary Moninger-Elia
1 Templeton Street
West Haven, CT 06516
[email protected]
50
hadn’t seen in 40 years, Argie Economou and his wife who have a winter home about a mile from us in
Naples. Then I heard from, and played
golf with Ted Ebling and his wife,
Gail. F. Graham Luckenbill and his
wife, Julie, joined us for drinks at the
Ebling’s Naples home after. It’s like
UVM South down here and fun seeing so many people from the past.
So, fellow classmates—call if you are
down this way. Write to me so your
UVM friends know what you are up to
in these transitional years of our lives.
As previously promised, if I receive
no letters, in my next Class Notes, I
will detail a shot for shot report of
my most recent round of golf….
including what I should have done,
what distractions affected my swing,
why the rough was unfair and how
the grain of some greens ran in the
wrong direction. I can hear the sound
of emails coming this way already.
Send your news to—
Douglas Arnold
11608 Quail Village Way
Naples, FL 34119
[email protected]
71
In the World Masters Swimming Championships held in
Montreal last July, John Radimer won a total of seven medals
including a Gold while competing in
the 200M mixed Free Relay against
39 other teams. His highest individual
finish was a fourth in the 50M butterfly (the second American) against
53 other competitors from around
the world. He also broke a total of
four all-time New England age group
records. David Pilachowski writes,
“After eight years of planning and
construction, the new library at Williams College was opened and dedicated in September. As the director of
libraries, I worked closely with architects from Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
(Apple Stores, Pixar headquarters) on
the project.”
Send your news to—
Sarah Wilbur Sprayregen
145 Cliff Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
72
Malcolm Henry Pope has
retired from his positions of
Liberty Professor of Occupational Aberdeen. Recently, he has
become a Fellow of the Royal Society
of Arts, the Royal Society of Medicine
and the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has been given the Freedom
of the City of London. He has been
made the Baron of Winchburgh, Edinburgh by order of the Lyon Court
and now resides in Fetteresso Castle. He is married to Kathryn Pope.
Debbie and Larry Kull are happy to
announce the birth of Henry Eli Kull
on August 6, 2014 to parents Michelle
and David Kull. Their granddaughter, Charlotte Eva Galemba, was welcomed into their family on September 3, 2013. They are thrilled that
their family is growing! Chuck Suss
attended a wedding in India recently,
traveling on the Queen Mary from
India via the U.K. He certainly stays
active living off the grid on 45 acres,
miles away from anything. His time is
filled with lots of chores, a position in
town government, airport committee, Civil Air Patrol, a coin business,
and entertaining. As an alum, parent, employee, and your class secretary, I am constantly impressed by
UVM, a beautiful and inspiring place.
As our class approaches retirement,
think about sending in your story of
how your UVM education prepared
you for your career or influenced your
life path. Bill Dunnington shares that
he is empty-nested, not quite retired,
delighted to be back in the family
home. Still writing, consulting, building businesses for work, and furniture for fun...and finding old friends.
Jim Jennings writes, “Hi kids, now in
California—never back to UVM. Life
after UVM...National Park Service—
Acadia, Peace Corps in El Salvador for
three years, Bureau of Land Management...constructed 80 miles of Pacific
Crest Trail...then Bishop, California for
the Wilderness and Recreation Program and Movie productions: Ironman, Transformers, etc. Now retired...
still get back to Maine. I own a funky
cottage on the coast. Anybody from
our class end up in California? Peace
and good wishes to everyone!” David
Holton organized a trip to British
Columbia for a wonderful week of
helicopter skiing. A wide circle of
UVM alumni spanning generations
were on the trip, too. They included:
Barry Stone ’56, Sage Goldsmith
Tremaine ’00, Clint Carrick ’13, Chris
Cain ’70, Rick Carrick ’70, John Macy
’00, Courtney Goldsmith Broadwater ’03, Bill Thompson ’81, Lindsay
Holton ’04, David Holton ’72, and
Bill Davis ’71. See the Alumni Gallery
online for a photo of the group.
Send your news to—
Debbie Koslow Stern
198 Bluebird Drive
Colchester, VT 05446
[email protected]
73
Allison Ryysylainen Smith
has been happily retired on
beautiful Skidaway Island in
Savannah, Georgia, for seven years.
“Time flies when you’re having fun
and my husband, Bob, and I are having the time of our lives,” she writes.
“So much to do here and so many
wonderful friends. We feel truly
blessed. Plus three daughters, three
very young grandchildren, and lots
of travel round out the picture. Just
booked Australia and New Zealand
for late next year and can’t wait for
that adventure!” Ted Cohen is semiretired after working for more than
20 years as a reporter at the Portland
Press Herald in Maine. He recently
moved back to his hometown of Burlington, where coincidentally he lives
in the housing complex that used to
be the grade school he attended as a
child. Paul Gordon continues to practice medicine in Goshen, New York, in
private practice. His son, Levi Gordon
’13, is in his first year of Vet Medical
School in St. Kitts. Levi’s sister Kiowa
Gordon is in Mongolia for two-anda-half years doing Peace Corp volunteer work. Paul’s wife, Jeanne Gordon, is retired and they have two
great Yorkie dogs, Brodie and Hanna
Gordon. Catherine Mozden Lewis
shares, “A milestone is reached! Tom
and I will be retiring from full time
work at the end of Jan 2015. We are
moving but not far, just over the Virginia border into West Virginia, close
to both daughters and a major airport, all important retirement criteria. Let the next adventure begin!”
Charlotte “Charli” Cohen Sheer tells
us, although I retired from fulltime
teaching in June, 2012, I continue to
be very involved with the Holocaust
Stamps Project which I founded at
Foxborough Regional Charter School
(Foxboro, Massachusetts) during
the 2009-10 school year. The project is raising awareness of the gargantuan number of 11,000,000 victims of intolerance killed by the Nazis,
while also serving as a springboard to
teaching tolerance, acceptance, and
respect for diversity and differences
among individuals and groups. UVM
alumni from all classes are asked to
save cancelled postage stamps (or
donate unwanted stamp collections)
to help increase the current total of
4.8 million to 11 million, to honor
the memory of every man, woman,
and child (6 million Jews and 5 million others labeled as “enemies of the
State”). All are invited to visit the project website for the school’s address
and much more information, easily
accessed through Google or Bing at
Holocaust Stamps Project.”
Send your news to—
Deborah Layne Mesce
2227 Observatory Place N.W.
Washington, DC 20007
[email protected]
74
Jim Condos won re-election
to his third term as Vermont’s
Secretary of State with 75
percent of the vote. “I am humbled
and gratified by the strong support
I received from Vermonters,” he said.
Congratulations, Jim! D.C. author and
naturalist Melanie Choukas-Bradley
had a new book published in November 2014: A Year in Rock Creek Park: the
Wild, Wooded Heart of Washington,
D.C. She is author of several natural
history books, including City of Trees,
illustrated by UVM graduate Polly
Alexander ’76. She and her husband,
Jim Bradley, will celebrate their 40th
wedding anniversary in June 2015.
Nancy Altha Simerl says, “Hi all, Since
leaving Vermont in 1976, I’ve been a
dairy science graduate student (University of Florida), a staff scientist for
Proctor and Gamble Pharmaceuticals, and a massage therapist. Since
2004, I’ve been manager of a rural
public library. I reapply things originally learned in Vermont every single
day. Life is good, and there certainly
is no lack of work that still needs to
be done. Work hard and play harder.”
Steve Rice and his wife, Anna, have
settled into their new apartment in
Brunswick, New York. “We can see the
mountains to the east from our third
floor balcony, which always reminds
me of Vermont,” Steve wrote. Steve
and Anna attended his 40th class
Reunion last fall. “It was great to see
and visit with some of my former
classmates; of course, none of us have
changed how we look. Maybe next
Reunion, we can get together on a
boat cruise.” Steve and Anna have two
grandsons, and a third grandchild will
arrive in August. Steve and Anna will
have completed a three-week winter
trip to Costa Rica, when this column
appears. “Who knows? Maybe we will
find a place to settle in this beautiful
country,” Steve added. He looks forward to hearing from old classmates
at [email protected]. John Simpson obtained his CPA this year and
continues to provide accounting and
tax services to non-profit organizations. The documentary film Under
Four Trees that he is producing is in
post- production, with plans to have
it finished this year. Margo David
DiIeso and I had lunch with Cathy
Doane-Wilson and Laura Davies Tilley ’73 on New Year’s Eve day in Silver
Spring, Maryland. It was a wonderful reunion especially since we had
not seen Cathy and Laura in over fifteen years. We promised not to wait
so long for the next visit! You can see
our picture in the online Class Notes
Alumni Gallery.
Send your news to—
Emily Schnaper Manders
104 Walnut Street
Framingham, MA 01702
[email protected]
75
40th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Gerry Hunt writes, it was
a wonderful Royall Tyler Theater
reunion in October, working with Ed
Tracy ‘76 and Keith Gaylord ‘76 to
restore and produce a CD of the original Live UVM cast recording of all the
music from The Contrast recorded
when the theatre opened in March,
1974. We still have some copies of the
CD, so if anyone wants a piece of UVM
theatre history, contact Ed at [email protected]. Proceeds go to the
Royall Tyler Theatre restoration fund.
Bert Rouleau is uniting with Bruce
Schwartz in Alta, Utah, for annual ski
trip. He writes, “We originally drove
from UVM in 1974 with two other
Sig Ep brothers. Looking forward to
making turns with ‘Bruce-Man’ some
40 years later. Also, just had my son,
Aaron, come into my orthodontic
practice in Mountain View, California. Just a dream!” Hela Evans Knowlton shares, “The timing is perfect
for me to submit this note. I saw my
orthopedic surgeon today for one
year follow-up of my bilateral total
knee replacement. He feels my function is unusually good. Next week I
announce my retirement form the job
I have loved for more than 20 years.
We just learned that our second
grandchild is due in August. I look
forward to spending more time with
friends and family (and responding
to emails and requests on FaceBook.)
Life is good!”
Send your news to—
Dina Dwyer Child
1263 Spear Street
South Burlington, VT 05403
[email protected]
76
Cindy Barnet Loughran ’77 is
sorry to report that Mary Pat
White Scarpa passed away on
August 9 after a long, well fought battle with cancer. Editor’s note: Victoria
’17 is the daughter of Michael Diederich, not Richie Sobel as we incorrecty reported in our fall issue. Richie
informs us that his son, Jordan, is in
his second year of graduate school
at Florida State University’s Asolo
Conservatory for Acting. Hope Warshaw was recently named presidentelect of the 2015 Board of Directors
for the American Association of Diabetes Educators. Warshaw is a freelance writer, author, and consultant in
diabetes, obesity, and nutrition. She
is also the owner of Hope Warshaw,
Associates, LLC in Alexandria, Virginia.
She will ascend to president in 2016.
Judy Holmes reports she was elected
to the UVM Foundation Leadership
Council last fall. She is in the middle
of a huge uptick in her winter accessories business since being licensed
to make and sell logo wear for the
2015 FIS World Alpine Ski Championships in Beaver Creek in February. She
and her husband Jim have lived in
Beaver Creek for the past 28 winters.
The business, GuSStuff, is named after
her Saint Bernard, and she contracts
with home stitchers in New England
to make the softest reversible winter accessories on the market. www.
gusstuffusa.com. The items are also in
25 ski shops in New England. Marcia
Maynard, Cathy Chandler Block and
Sue Fowler-Finn all went to Peru this
past summer to meet up with Marita
Benevides who they had not seen in
38 years! Sue writes “What a time to
be had! Lima, the Inca Trail, her farm
in Icca, and so much more. It was like
we had never been apart. We hope to
get Marita up to New England soon.
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
70
45th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Brian W. LeClair writes, “I
started 2014 with a new volunteer
position, chairman of the town’s Conservation Commission. Shortly after
the Corinthian Yacht Club’s summer
cruise to Maine, I left for Colorado on
a two-week backpacking trip with
Marblehead’s Boy Scout Troop 11. We
hiked in Rocky Mountain National
Park, Great Sand Dunes National
Park and Mesa Verde National Park.
We returned with only a few bear
bites!” I recently heard from the lovely
Cathy Cronin Coleman who writes
that she moved from Connecticut to
the resort area of Seabrook Island,
South Carolina, where she bikes and
works on her golf game. Tragically,
Cathy recently lost her husband of
44 years, Andy. So she is adjusting to
life as a single lady. She works parttime on neighboring Kiawah Island
and is able to bike to work. She’d
love to hear from any of her old UVM
pals—especially if they find themselves near Charleston, South Carolina—close to Seabrook. Cathy also
made special mention of Lynne Bartholomew Kreiner who was her
roommate at UVM. William Ballard
recently completed 45 years as an
officer of administration at UVM. Currently serving as associate vice president for administration with responsibility for administrative support,
auxiliary, public safety, and facilitiesrelated services. Since the tragedy of
9/11/01, Bill has spent spare time in
becoming an expert in emergency
management and business continuity with several national certifications. Additionally, he has stayed in
touch with current students for the
last twenty years as faculty adviser to
UVM Rescue. His wife, Lynne Ballard
’79 ‘G87, an associate vice provost
at Champlain College, and Bill live
locally in Colchester, and are starting to plan for their retirement a few
years from now. He says, “Feel free to
stop by my office at 109 South Prospect Street when you are on campus.” Sandy Luckenbill writes, “Ted
Ebling and I invited Doug Arnold and
George Kreiner over to our course in
Naples for a round of golf late in the
fall. George didn’t show up because
he found out our ponds don’t freeze
and I beat the other two the way
Yeates beat Bowden. The highlight
was hanging out with Doug’s wife
that night and hearing her stories
about her husband being a cab driver
in Naples. Doug told us earlier he ran
a limo service...” On a personal note,
my wife and I have moved to Naples,
Florida, full-time, although I’m not
retired. More on that some other
time. Since being down here, we see
the Kreiners frequently, as well as
Peter and Jain Doremus and John
and Sally Hynes. We recently had
dinner with Jeff and Joanne Kuhman and the chairman of the UVM
Foundation, John Hilton ’68, and his
wife, Jody. Happily, I also heard from
a Sigma Nu fraternity brother who I
51
[CLASSNOTES
The memories will be in us forever.”
Andrea Kalisch Casey writes, “I am
in my 26th year of teaching elementary physical education and it is still
enjoyable. My husband retired two
years ago and my children are living in Mammoth Lakes, California,
and Honolulu. Being the event planner at Mammoth keeps Caroline very
busy and working on the final year
of receiving a doctorate in microbial
oceanography is John’s goal. Ed Tracy
wrote in about the Royall Reunion for
the Royall Tyler’s 40th Celebration.
Cast members from the 1974 opening production of The Contrast joined
theatre alumni from the ’70s and
early ’80s on October 10 at the home
of Beth and Keith Gaylord ’76 during
UVM’s 2014 Homecoming Weekend.
Over 60 alumni and guests attended
including Mrs. Edward (Mary) Feidner,
Mrs. William (Carrye) Schenk and
Gerard Moses, former theatre department faculty. A photo can be seen in
the alumni website photo gallery.
Send your news to—
Pete Beekman
2 Elm Street
Canton, NY 13617
[email protected]
52
78
PC Construction has promoted
Joe Picoraro to the position
of vice president in the general contracting, construction management, and design-build services
firm’s Portland, Maine office. The
36-year PC Construction veteran most
recently served as construction executive. Picoraro joined PC Construction as an estimator upon graduating from UVM with a civil engineering
degree. In the decades since, he has
held a number of leadership positions
throughout the company—starting in the water and wastewater division before focusing on buildings and
facilities construction—providing him
with an incredible depth and breadth
of industry knowledge. Picoraro was
instrumental in establishing PC Construction’s Portland office 15 years
ago and has since concentrated his
efforts on overseeing construction
operations, client relations and business development in Maine and New
Hampshire. Joe is also an active member of the American Society of Civil
Engineers and has been a dedicated
leader of Boy Scout Troop 23 since
1991.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]/classnotes
79
Richard Poecker retired last
fall after working 30 years
for the Oregon Department
of Transportation. Rick and his wife
recently moved to Bandon, on the
Oregon coast. Geri Reilly writes, “My
husband, Mike Simoneau ’73 and I,
just celebrated our 25th anniversary
in August. We feel very fortunate to
live and work in South Burlington. We
have two children both at UVM, class
of 2016 and 2017. We opened our
own real estate company in August of
2010, Geri Reilly Real Estate and have
been one of the top realtors around.
We are very happy to have the kids at
UVM and have enjoyed experiencing
UVM all over again!”
Send your news to—
Beth Gamache
58 Grey Meadow Drive
Burlington, VT 05401
bethgamache@burlington
telecom.net
80
35th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Robin Basch Flatow tells
us, “I enjoyed the annual tradition of
a long summer weekend with my Tri
Delta sisters at the cottage of Kathy
Kurtz Little ’79 at Keuka Lake in the
Finger Lakes of upstate New York.
This year, the group included Debbie
Agrillo Whitehead; Lynne Hollingsworth; Kyra Bannister; Jaye Rooney
Tani; Donna Nickles Poe; Kathy
Kurtz Little ’79; and Missy Demph
Rinaldo ’81. Linda Purdy Cooke ’79
also surprised us with an appearance.
We are spread out throughout North
America—Boston, New Hampshire,
Vermont, Virginia, New York, Colorado, and Toronto. We have diverse
careers and families, but when we
come together, we get along as if we
never skipped a beat. We reminisced
and would love to hear from others
from those years! I continue to live
in Toronto with my husband of 25
years, Rob, and our daughter, Jamie.
Jamie is 20 and is a junior at Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. I
still work in marketing, and Rob is in
sales. I would love to hear from my
classmates from UVM. I am on Facebook and LinkedIn, or you can contact me directly.” Thomas William
Campbell writes, I have fond memories of long days and nights writing for and editing the arts section
of The Cynic, blasting the Ramones
and Clash on vinyl from the comfy
WRUV radio station atop Pomeroy
Hall, life in the shoe boxes (do they
even still exist?) and learning to edit
film (I do mean celluloid) with Professors Kim Wordon and Walter Ungerer.
I moved to New York City after graduation and have an MFA from City College in documentary film production.
I’ve taught film and video production
and film history at a number of universities around New York City and
am currently the technical director of
the Communications Department of
Adelphi University. I am a member of
the National Board of Review, where I
get to see a lot of movies, write about
them, and talk to many filmmakers,
actors, and producers about the art
and craft of making films. Hope to see
the beautiful campus soon!” Betsy
Neustein Ross, a noted authority on
the stresses and strains confronted
by professional women, is offering
the fourth “Professional Development
Weekend for Women” April 24-26,
2015. This restorative weekend, at
the Norwich Inn & Spa, includes five
hands-on workshops, developed by
Ross on topics such as: building better boundaries, eliminating self-sabotage to increase success, keeping you
on your to-do list, and more. To learn
more, go to: betsyrosscoaching.com/
retreat. Her beautiful family misses
her when she is away facilitating
retreat weekends, but understands
professional women need lots of support and connection! Andrew Hill
Newman writes, “I had a wonderful
time visiting UVM this past October
and celebrating the 40th anniversary
of Royall Tyler Theatre. I was thrilled
to participate in a career panel discussion with other theatre alums. I am
about to begin work as a writer/producer on season two of ‘Nicky, Ricky,
Dicky, & Dawn’, a children’s sitcom on
Nickelodeon.” Sanne Kure-Jensen
writes, “I’ll be giving several workshops on the many rewards of backyard beekeeping at the NOFA/Mass
and NOFA-NY Winter Conferences in
January and the Rhode Island Spring
Flower & Garden Show in February.”
Barbara Smith Murphy shares, “I was
successful in my campaign to be the
state representative from Fairfax, Vermont, and am honored to have this
opportunity to serve in the 2015-16
biennial.”
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
81
Tim Fitzpatrick has been
hired as the packaging manager to work with infant formula powder lines at Perrigo’s Vermont facility. Tim brings to Perrigo 28
years of experience in roles such as
manufacturing operations manager
for a kidney dialysis medical device
and pharmaceutical manufacturing
company, and as a production manager for a Vermont-based food protein manufacturer. Tim earned his
bachelor’s in biology from UVM. He
is relocating from Port Orange, Florida, to Vermont for this new position.
Lisa Love passed away from cancer
on November 1, 2014. Tim Anderson
writes, “I have recently moved to San
Clemente, enjoying the year round
weather of Southern California. Working as a health & wellness consultant
with Guckenheimer, promoting to
corporations the value of establishing
sustainable good nutrition habits for
employees with a wellness ROI that’s
real. Kids all grown—one a doctor in
Denver, second a gaming programmer in Santa Monica, and third a
business major at USC. Two Golden’s
keep us busy. Life is good!” Sheldon
Smith reports, “I work for the College
of Health at the University of Utah. I
am very proud to announce that we
will be kicking off a Diabetes Prevention Program for the employees and
family members of the University of
Utah College and Hospital this January. As one of the larger employers in
the state, we are excited to be making a move to improve the health of
our employees. Tim Collins and Marilyn Collins ’G83 have taken up weekend beekeeping at the farm first settled by Tim’s great-great-great-great
grandfather in West Berkshire, Vermont. Lost by the family in the Great
Depression, the farm was re-acquired
by Tim and Marilyn in 2004. During
the week Tim continues to work as
a partner in the law firm of Collins,
Dobkin & Miller LLP in New York City
and teaches constitutional history at
Pace University. Marilyn keeps busy
overseeing nearly one hundred volunteer tutors as the education coordinator for Literacy Volunteers in
Stamford, Connecticut. Matt Dustin
writes, “Amanda, UNH graduate, and
wife of 11 great years, and I are loving the north country of New Hampshire with our two labs, one black,
one yellow, and an 11-week-old Bernese Mountain dog. I am five months
shy of completing paramedic school
and work for two ambulance companies as an AEMT, Gorham EMS and
the 45th Parallel EMS in Colebrook,
both in northern New Hampshire.
We both ride in the Pan Mass Challenge, however, we are taking a break
from the 194-mile cycling Jimmy
Fund/Dana Farber fundraiser to get
me through school and clinical time.
I also work part time as a tour guide
stage driver on the Mt. Washington Auto Road, so if you get up this
way, stop by for a tour of the North
Country.” Steve Ehrens writes, “I just
got back from a month of skiing in
Park City, Utah, where I have been
going for many years with my twin
22-year-old daughters and wife. Hard
to believe they are both graduating
from college this year. Seems like I
just graduated from UVM a couple of
years ago! Living in Easton, Connecticut, and working as a wealth advisor
in Fairfield. I have lots of time to ski
and to fish. I frequently think back to
all the fun I had at UVM. Visited a few
years ago when looking at colleges
and can’t believe all the changes to
the school.” Linda Whitmore writes,
“I’ve been living in Charlotte, North
Carolina, for the past 10 years and
currently work for Wells Fargo. I’m
looking for UVM alumni in the area.
There was one (and only one) alumni
event when I first moved here. Let’s
have another!” Janet Kwiecienski
Daughhetee is living in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area with husband, Bob,
and sons, John and Noah. “I am working at an ECF/SNF as senior staff physical therapist. Fellowship with The
Way International Biblical Research,
Teaching & Fellowship Ministry. Also
enjoy living/learning about holistic lifestyle. Hello to my old physical
therapy friends: Debbie Brannen,
Kathy Perry-Hall, Susan Hendry, Lisa
Spear, Ellen Rynick, and Anne Flemmings. Would love to hear from you
all.” Dianne Braves Sante writes, “It
was a great Homecoming reunion
with my sorority sisters! We all had
a blast and we are looking forward
to our rendezvous for the Stratton
Mountain Ski-Ride Alumni weekend! So much happened last year taking on a new role with Starbucks, an
absolutely amazing company to be
working with! Although my 10+ year
experience as a director with Polo
Ralph Lauren was the highlight of
my career, I believe Starbucks is right
up there too! We also hit a big milestone with our daughter not only
earning six national titles with her
track cycling in Los Angeles, but she
also had the opportunity to represent the U.S. at the World Championships held in South Korea. She trained
at the U.S. OTC in Colorado Springs
prior to Worlds for 10 days. If she’s not
seen cycling, then she is ski racing
with USSA. We hope to see you out
on the lake this year sailing, skiing, or
cycling? One of them!”
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]/classnotes
82
Jamie Fagan writes, “Katie
and I hosted a party at our
new home in Beacon Hill
for Professor Tim Bates who is raising money to endow a fund for the
Zwynenburg Professorship. Professor
Bates had at least 25 of his economics disciples there and everyone was,
as usual, in awe of his wisdom. Kudos
go to Rosilind Cross who is spearheading the effort to raise money
for this chair which is in honor of
Mark Zwynenburg ’81 who was a
star pupil at UVM and who was killed
on Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland.” Stuart Benway writes, “At the
start of 2015, I launched a new commercial finance business called SJB
Growth Capital. My goal is to find
capital for small and mid-size businesses in order to help them achieve
their growth goals or to meet shortterm liquidity needs. I offer a broad
variety of financial solutions that
many traditional lenders avoid. Companies or investors that do not have
perfect credit metrics can often benefit greatly from my services.” Audrey
Mello Hammer lives in Bedford, New
Hampshire with husband, David
Hammer ‘81, and sons Jared Hammer ’16, a junior at UVM, and Austin
Hammer, a freshman at Colorado College. She writes, “We would love to
hear from any of our UVM friends and
reconnect.” Randall Volkert shared
an extensive account of his years in
the military, other professional pursuits, and personal life. He closed his
note with this thought: “A sense of
membership in something greater
than oneself helps to weather disappointments and turmoil, and even
makes triumphs a little more satisfying.” Please see Class Notes online
for Randall’s full update. Tom Gates
says, “Hello to my old pals, especially
Coolidge 3rd, Delta Psi, Mass Communications majors, Theatre, and Lax
teammates. Hope you are all well. Life
in Pennington, New Jersey is great. I
have enjoyed originating mortgages
for 22 years. Am especially thankful
for my life with Tracey. Our daughter
is 22, our son is 25 and both are moving on nicely with their lives. I just
sold my 1975 Honda CB400F after
35 years! We are about to embark on
our 7th (or so) annual boys ski trip
to Okemo with Jon Rogers, Mike
Aubrey, Al Bates, Nick Bowen, Steve
Woodruff, and Tom Pynchon. Congrats to Pynch, who was recently
named director of advancement
at Saint Lawrence University. Best
wishes to all!”
Send your news to—
John Peter Scambos
[email protected]
83
I was recently contacted by
our classmate, Ilona Bessenyey, who lives in Alaska
and wanted to say hello. As for
myself, I am healthy and well after
my bout with multiple, bilateral pulmonary emboli and a DVT last year
and am thankful to be alive and with
my family. I am feeling healthier than
ever as I continue to teach knitting
and Pilates. I am in the midst of completing my training for my comprehensive certification and boards. I
also continue to serve as a St. Minister through our church, Augsburg
Lutheran. Jim is looking forward to
retiring in about five years and I can’t
wait! Our daughters are both well and
continuing in their education. Caryn
Alexis is in her first year of her Doctorate of Musical Arts at WVU and
Colleen Nicole is in her third year at
NCSU College of Veterinary Medicine and plans on becoming a swine
vet. She has had research presented
at the International Swine Veterinary
meeting and will be a presenter at
the ASV meeting this winter. Soon,
there will be three Doctor Croziers!
The American Association of Diabetes
Educators (AADE) announces Deborah Greenwood, as president of the
2015 AADE Board of Directors. Deborah is a diabetes clinical nurse specialist and AADE program coordinator with Sutter Health Integrated
Diabetes Education Network in Sacramento, California. Peter Sorensen
shares, “I recently retired from the
United States Navy Medical Corps
after 22 years. I spent the last 12 years
as the program director chairman
and Navy ENT specialty leader at the
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
Last year I opened a private practice, The Clinical ENT Center in Fairfax, Virginia, I am married to Margaret Kohl Sorensen ’84 and we have
four children, Beth at Salisbury University, Kate at Vanderbilt University,
and Peter and Anna at Clarksburg
High School in Clarksburg Maryland.
Peggy Smith Liversidge submitted
on behalf of Hollis Hunnewell ’83
that his wife, Mary Wellington Hun-
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
77
Tom Ketcham shares, “After
32 years working in the Pacific
Northwest, I returned to Vermont in 2011. I started out in 1979 as
a forester with the USDA Forest Service, working on several National Forests on the dry (eastern) side of the
Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington, and continue my career as a
forester here in Vermont on the Green
Mountain National Forest. It’s great
to be back in the northeastern hardwoods! I ran into forestry classmate,
Gary Hawley, at a seminar held at the
Davis Center this past December and
we got to catch up on fellow classmates. I lost track of most everyone
over the years but crossed paths with
Brian McGinley and Mark Lapine
on occasion while out west. I’d like to
take this opportunity to express my
gratitude to the professors and staff
of the School of Natural Resources—
the knowledge, skills, and academic
inquisitiveness developed while at
UVM has served me well in my career
as a forester. Keep up the great work!”
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
53
[CLASSNOTES
newell of Cohasset Massachusetts
passed away on October 17, 2015.
Send your news to—
Lisa Greenwood Crozier
[email protected]
54
Shelley Carpenter Spillane
[email protected]
85
30th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Amy Sieger Daniels writes,
“This was an incredible summer of
UVM reunions and fun! In July I backpacked the Haute Route from Chamonix, France, to the Matterhorn in
Zermatt, Switzerland—115 miles
over the Alps, with Craig Mabie. It
was a very demanding and inspiring life list journey for both of us and
we had a ball! In September, the two
of us joined our ‘gang’ for our regular reunion: Roddy Lewis, Ross Nayduch, and Josh Powers for a backpack down into the Grand Canyon,
right after a monsoon and during a
heat wave, which made it quite the
challenging trip! We were on unmaintained trails so we were alone for
most of the five days. Many thanks to
Roddy for guiding on this absolutely
remarkable trek! It was extraordinary, of course, as are all of our exciting adventures together! These guys
are my family and I am so lucky to
have them in my life! I can’t wait until
next time.” Carolyn Weaver ‘85, G’87
has joined KW Vermont, Keller Williams Realty in Colchester, Vermont,
as an independent realtor. She is serving as vice-president/president-elect
for the Northwestern Board or Realtors and has over 19 years of experience in Chittenden County. She and
her husband, Joe Weaver ‘84, own
Red Barn Gardens in Williston, a farm
stand and event venue with two
greenhouses and a rustic barn. They
recently renovated a colonial farmhouse owned by the Chittenden family. Susan Emerson tells us, “I just
received yet my third college degree
—a master’s degree in physician
assistant studies from Northeastern
University. The first was a bachelor’s
in health education from UVM. The
second a master’s in physical therapy
from Boston University. I can truthfully now say I am finished with seeking more college degrees! Feeling
proud and hopefully served as a good
role model for my 13-year-old daugh-
ter and 15-year-old son.” Deirdre
Anne O’Connor shares, “After eight
years living in Austin, we are back on
a coast…and I’m very happy! Texas
was not for me, but I gave it a shot!
I’m once again selling real estate and
my husband, Jacob George, is traveling the world selling radio-frequency
identification chips. Kind of mixed
up as I’m the one with the international MBA, but as you all know, that’s
life! We have two rascally girls: Kiran,
10 and Michaela, 8.” Elisabeth Alden
writes, “I recently completed six years
at University of Arizona Cooperative
Extension. I was involved with the
Federally Recognized Tribal Extension Program (FRTEP) on the Hualapai reservation in northern Arizona.
It is a rewarding position, but I still
have dreams that I will return to Vermont. I have a house in Windsor, and
hopefully will be able to report a relocation in a later update!” Melanie
Atsales Kelly tells us, “With my oldest daughter now a freshman at UVM,
I am enjoying the chance to spend
more time in Burlington again. I hope
to see classmates at our Reunion in
October!” Harriet Rust Brown Dickerson spent some quality time and
had a fun-filled weekend with fellow
friends and 1985 alums Robin Anderson Ritchie and Gina Ingrassia Forberg in November 2014. She writes,
“Saw Wicked, Ryan Adams and the
9/11 memorial. Long chats, lots of
laughs and great meals as well! Hoping our friends Kathy Hebner Campbell, Sue Morgenstern Garbutt, and
Liz Nixon can join us next time. Perhaps in Laguna Beach with Sue or on
the Cape with Kathy!”
Send your news to—
Barbara Roth
[email protected]
86
“We: Michel J. Messier ‘86,
Matthew ‘14, and Morgan
Champlain ‘14, and wife and
mother Melissa ‘87 were pleased to
recently discover our descendancy
from Jacques Cartier’s c. 1534 North
American explorer’s in-laws The Jean
and Jacques Guyon des Granches
Family and the Christophe de Barbancon seigneur de Champlain c. 1463
Family. Vive La Nouvelle (New) France
and the Champlain Valley.” A new
poetry collection by UVM Senior Lecturer of English Angela Patten has
been published. In Praise of Usefulness
finds the expatriate Irish poet once
again poised between thoughts of
Ireland, the country that engendered
her love of language and literature,
and America, the country that fostered her development as a woman
and a poet. Angela is author of two
previous poetry collections, Reliquaries and Still Listening, both published
by Salmon Poetry. She is also a recent
Kroepsch-Maurice Teaching Award
recipient. Hugh Barron writes, “I’m
living in Ross, California with wife
Sarah and two daughters, Sophia
and Lulu (16 and 13). I’ve been working in International Industrial Sales to
Latin America for the past 22 years,
how time flies! I still love skiing and
manage to get my share out here in
the Sierra Nevada. No one out here
believes me that I actually like the
colder weather!” Maria Heck Swanson shares, “with the three older children graduated from college and the
youngest a sophomore, I’ve been
able to travel more—stateside and
abroad—and work less. I am still
doing physical therapy (casual status) with children (mostly pre-school
age) with developmental disabilities.
My husband, Joel, and I have enjoyed
frequent trips to Ellicottville, New
York for skiing and hiking...though it
doesn’t compare to the Green Mountains!” Robin Blecker Dixon and Gordon Dixon are excited to have their
son Calvin Dixon ’18 attending UVM.
They have had a great time reconnecting with UVM and Burlington.
Send your news to—
Lawrence Gorkun
[email protected]
87
Cathy M. Coleman Acampora
was in the CALS animal science program, dairy club, and
Alpha Gamma Rho Rhomates. Her
daughter, Cheryl ’18, now attends
UVM. Cathy left UVM to become
head zookeeper at the Franklin Park
Zoo, then became a self-employed
muralist after life-changing medical event. She now works for University of Massachusetts Extension
4-H. The Addison County Economic
Development Corporation (ACEDC), a
regional business development organization serving 21 communities, is
pleased to announce the addition of
Diane Stockton-Breese G’87 as their
new marketing, communications,
and events coordinator. Diane brings
over 15 years of business development experience to this role. She has
an extensive background in municipal and regional economic development. Doreen DeNitto Burliss writes,
“My UVM story will rock on with my
daughter, Maddi! She got the highly
anticipated news of her UVM acceptance on her 18th birthday—her first
choice school, to my supreme delight.
(Everyone needs some Burlington,
Vermont, in their lives!) Though we’ve
visited campus just about every year
of her life while visiting Brenda Christensen ‘88 of Williston, she had the
official tour in July and was sold.
Maddi’s big brother, Cody, graduated
from University of New Hampshire
in 2014, and her little sister, Ryder,
a talented surfer, is a high school
freshman with her eyes on UCLA or
Stanford. My husband and I just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary on Nantucket where we spend a
nice chunk of time every summer. I’ve
had countless adventures and experiences over the years and am currently
a columnist for a local newspaper as
well as a freelance news/feature correspondent. A little side-note: Just
picked up a book at my favorite Newburyport bookstore entitled Winter
World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival by Bernd Heinrich, who happens
to be a retired UVM biology professor!
Loving it.” Kari Latvalla Miller reports
that Tri Deltas from the ’80s gathered
at UVM this past September to reconnect, reminisce, and enjoy all that
UVM and Burlington have to offer.
Sisters able to attend included Stephanie Zak Jerome ’84, Linda Hanna
Sinnott ’84, Debbie Okun ’84,
Sonja Shaver Fuller ’84, Pam Tanguay Simendinger ’85, Katrina Long
Ouelette ’85, Susan Marchand Higgins ’85, Susie Zak ’86, Kathy Camisa
’86, Gerri Brockwell Unger ’86, Julie
Green Haskell, Jackie Domingue
Estes, Lisa Zelinski Coyne, Jackie
Aldinger, Ellen Singer Shell, Kari Latvalla Miller, Donna Bakalor, Kathie
Grant, Sherry Pietroski Churchill,
Heidi Steidl Bean, Mary Sheppard
Valvano ’88, Cynthia Goldstein Banister Lynch ’88, Lisa Matlin Pratt ’88,
Kimberlee Chesarone Coleman ’88,
Karen Demma Howard ’88. To connect with these ’80s Tri Delts and others and to learn about upcoming Eta
Chapter Alumnae activities, please
send an email to: 80sDDDUVM@
gmail.com.
Send your news to—
Sarah Reynolds
[email protected]
88
Richard L. Wallace, an Ursinus college environmental
Studies professor, was named
Pennsylvania Professor of the Year.
The Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching and the
Council for Advancement and Support of Education recognized Richard for his interdisciplinary and integrative teaching which fosters critical
thinking, his community contributions, and his scholarship on marine
mammals. Richard is one of 31 professors recognized from more than
400 top professors in the nation.
Christine Hinz tells us, “After 25 years
of living life as a ‘die-hard’ New Yorker,
I recently moved to Abu Dhabi in
the United Arab Emirates with my
husband and our two cats to start a
new life adventure. Building on my
experience in the tourism sector, I’m
working as a freelance writer covering business events in the region for
several U.S. trade publications while
enjoying warm weather, a vibrant
new city and culture, and an experience of a lifetime!”
Send your news to—
Cathy Selinka Levison
[email protected]
89
Martha Hull married Ian
Clarke ’07 on the beach in
Lincoln City, Oregon. They
live and eat lots of cheese in Portland (yes, the Oregon one.) Martha
has written, illustrated, and self-published two cute, funny, deadly picture books since 2012 and is currently
developing an animated web series.
She would love you to come visit her
at her home in pixel-land, www.marthahull.com.
Send your news to—
Maureen Kelly Gonsalves
[email protected]
90
25th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. On September 3, 2014
Oswald Cousins joined Nixon Peabody LLP as a partner in the San Francisco labor and employment practice.
Oswald is an experienced trial lawyer who focuses his practice in the
areas of wrongful termination, dis-
crimination and harassment, wage
and hour, disability accommodation,
trade secrets, and contract disputes.
During his 20 years of practice, he has
served as lead and co-lead counsel
on numerous bench trials, jury trials
and arbitrations in federal and state
forums. Oswald joins Nixon Peabody
from Littler Mendelson’s San Francisco
office, prior to which he was a partner in the employment department
at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. A
graduate of UCLA School of Law, he is
a member of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the American
Bar Association and the California
Minority Counsel Program.
Send your news to—
Tessa Donohoe Fontaine
[email protected]
91
Jerry Appell Jr. started an
educational music project
with musicians and artists in
the Putney area several years ago.
These services include customized
songs for non-profit organizations as
well as an online song encyclopedia
where educators can search for songs
through a topic database. Rock In The
Classroom songs and music videos
represent an eclectic mix of pop styles
with the unifying theme of exploring educational topics through song.
Unlike most educational music that is
geared toward children, Rock In The
Classroom directs its songs towards
high school students, college students, and adult life-long learners.
Over the course of the past six years
Rock In the Classroom songs have
been used for a wide variety of educational applications. College and high
school curriculums have used Rock In
The Classroom music videos as part
of presentations on topics such as the
Manifest Destiny in U.S. History and
the role of women in American Literature. Rock In The Classroom music
videos can be accessed online at all
major video sharing websites. The
CDs and single downloads are available online at ITunes, Amazon, CD
Baby, and a variety of other online
retail outlets. For further information
go to www.rockintheclassroom.com
or contact Jerry at j_appell@yahoo.
com. Aimee Marti is the founder of
Starboard Collection. Starboard Collection Appetizer Set was nominated
for a 2014 Eco-Excellence Award™
by Natural Child World Magazine. The
Eco-Excellence Award Winners were
VQEXTRA
online
IAN JOUGHIN ’86 G’90
“If this happens in two
hundred years, that
would be five feet per
century. That’s six inches
per decade—a much
bigger problem. In our
lifetime, cities would
begin to be inundated.”
—Scientist Ian Joughin
on the impending collapse
of Antarctica’s Thwaites
Glacier and what it would
mean to the rise of global
sea levels. New research
by Joughin and colleagues
has received extensive
international media
attention in the past year.
read more at
uvm.edu/vq
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
84
The Retreat’s 6th Annual Juried Art Show to fight against
domestic violence was held
this year. The top 25 artists were featured in a group show online and inperson from November 29 to December 17 at the Richard J. Demato Fine
Arts Gallery in the heart of Sag Harbor, New York. Margot Carr was one
of the top 25 artists chosen. Kenneth
Pidgeon shares, “I’ve recently been
involved as a member of the Leadership Council for the proposed UVM
STEM Complex project. This very
exciting undertaking has very meaningful potential for both UVM and
Vermont.” Scott Cohen says, I am a
happy pediatrician living in Albany,
California, near Berkeley. I am married and have a four-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son. In 2003 I
started a non-profit Global Pediatric Alliance. We work with indigenous midwives and health promoters in Latin America. Our efforts are
geared towards improving maternal and infant survival and improved
quality of life. Please check us out at:
www.globalpediatricalliance.org.”
Carol Greenberger reports, “I love living in Asheville, North Carolina, with
my husband and 12-year-old daughter. I’m in private practice as a psychotherapist. And I am starting an artist’s
collective and artist residency program. If anyone is coming through
town, please say hello!” John Sama
writes, “It saddens me deeply to share
the news of the passing of Dr. Laurie
C. Dietzel of Hyattsville, Maryland, on
January 15, 2015. Laurie and I served
together as UVM Orientation Leaders in 1982. Laurie was a principal at
Dietzel Butler & Associates, which
provides testing and consultation
services for children. Laurie leaves
behind her husband, Claude Allen,
and their daughter, Emma. The family
is planning to hold a memorial gathering in Vermont in the spring. Contact John Sama ([email protected]) if
you’d like to be notified when those
arrangements have been made.”
Send your news to—
Abby Goldberg Kelley
[email protected]
Kelly McDonald
[email protected]
55
[CLASSNOTES
featured in print and digital edition
of the magazine’s winter Issue. Geoff
Schuppert has had an exciting year.
He appeared in the Cinemax Drama
“The Knick” and MTV’s “Eye Candy.” He
has a supporting role in Woody Allen’s
upcoming film with Joaquin Phoenix
and Emma Stone, and another supporting role in “Fan Girl” starring Meg
Ryan and Kiernan Shipka. “I would
love to catch up with any of my classmates and fellow alums visiting the
Big Apple,” he writes.
Send news to—
Karen Heller Lightman
[email protected]
56
94
A very happy update for Erika
Keith Stevens: “After nearly
eight years of waiting, we
(myself and my husband, Kevin) flew
to China in June and adopted an
18-month-old girl! A game changer
after 17 years of marriage and at age
42. We met Audrey Erin Stevens on
Father’s Day (June 15 and her “gotcha day” (adoption day) is June 16.
Audrey turned two on November 23.”
I loved being back on campus for our
20th Reunion this October. Great to
see old friends, their families, as well
as so many other familiar faces. Cam-
pus looked great (I think I ran into half
of our class at the bookstore on Saturday afternoon!) and Burlington, while
different in many ways, still feels very
much the same. A special thanks to
all those who helped make it the
success it was. Jackie Levin reports,
“Nursing is my one true love (except
for my late wife, my current husband
and all my children and grandchildren, friends—well you get the picture). Back to nursing, I’m now the
proud owner/director of the online
holistic nursing education and selfcare www.LeadingEdgeNursing.com.
Started writing regular blog posts last
fall and offering my first online mindfulness-based stress reduction this
February. Check me out! Love to you
my dear nursing sisters and brothers.”
Send your news to—
Cynthia Bohlin Abbott
[email protected]
95
VQEXTRA
online
Michelle Richards Peters
[email protected]
JEFF SALISBURY ’91
20th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Our class has been very
busy as of late, and I know this
because we have all been very, very
quiet! Please send along news when
you have it, we would love to hear
from you! The biggest news is 2015 is
our twenty-year Reunion (insert the
“I feel so old” comments here) and it’s
time to make hotel reservations and
plan to head back to Burlington on
October 2-4, 2015. See you there!
Send your news to—
Valeri Susan Pappas
vpappas@davisand
ceriani.com
“We never really get
96
in the UVM Music
The Colorado Department of
Human Services has named
Mindy Gates as the new
director of the division of aging and
adult services in its Office of Community Access and Independence.
Gates most recently served as the
legislative performance audit supervisor in the Office of the State Auditor. She was also instrumental in
driving United Way family programs
in Vermont to develop and track
performance data to ensure viability of their grant programming.
Mindy earned her bachelor’s degree
in human development and family studies, and her Master of Pub-
lic Administration degree from UVM.
Grey Lee enters his third year as
executive director of the U.S. Green
Building Council for Massachusetts.
This year the organization continues to grow and Massachusetts is
on track to certify its 1000th LEED
building. Grey is in touch with fellow alumni Anu Yadav, Mike Crowley, Darien Crimmin, Neil Dalal
and Adam Hyde, in addition to the
Green Cats Alumni Affinity Group.
Anyone who wants more green
buildings, contact Grey!
Send your news to—
Jill Cohen Gent
[email protected]
away from that
connection to the
primitive beginnings
of drumming, but
there’s a lot more
subtlety to the
accompaniment than
just, like, sitting down
and being Animal
from The Muppets.”
Jeff Salisbury ’91—
musician, faculty member
Department, and author
of Melodic Motion Studies
for Drumset, recently
published by Hal Leonard.
97
Melissa Caron wed Hugh
Crean in Falmouth, Maine
on July 12. In attendance
from UVM were Heather Blake Cullen, Nancy Surdek Westbrook, Dave
Westbrook ‘96, Sarah Bosley Slimbaugh, Sara “V” Vartanioan Fritz,
and Kelly Clifford Watrous. Their
9-month-old son, Cole, served as the
ring bearer for the ceremony. Melissa
and Hugh reside in Boston and are
looking forward to ringing in their 40s
with the UVM crew. Stephen Wagner
writes that he “has written his second
book, This is How Much Oatmeal Loves
You: A Collection of Stories, and, amazingly, he still hasn’t died from cancer.” Check it out on Amazon. Andrew
Sansone began working with a first
grade class at Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School in September. “I will travel
with the class as their main teacher
until they graduate from eighth
grade,” he shares. Sarah Kathryn Eley
Libbrecht married Brad Libbrecht in
Burlington, Vermont, September 19,
2014. Brad graduated from Louisville
University. Sarah owns Real Fitness
Coaching and Brad manages HealthStyles Exercise Equipment. They
reside in Boulder, Colorado.
Send your news to—
Elizabeth Carstensen Genung
[email protected]
read more at
uvm.edu/vq
98
Amber Allen has been hired as
a project engineer at civil engineering firm Manhard Consulting in Westminster, Colorado. Brian
Solt and his wife, Kristen, welcomed
the birth of their first child Gracie Caro-
lyn Solt on July 17, 2014. Gary McAuslin and Monica Foley-McAuslin got
married on September 7, 2014 in York,
Maine. Together they own and run the
business they created, Second Spin
Vinyl Record Designs, in Maine..
Send news to—
Ben Stockman
[email protected]
99
Sarah Crawford Stewart and
her husband, Chris Stewart,
welcomed twin girls on September 29, 2014. Big brother Edward
(age 2) is thrilled to have Macy Louise
and Katharine as little sisters! Coalter Powers and family; wife Andrea,
kids Addyson (5) and William (2), officially moved back to the Boston area
in 2014 after a number of years in the
Midwest.
Send your news to—
Sarah Pitlak Tiber
[email protected]
00
15th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Stephen Miley and his
wife, Jennifer Connolly, celebrated
the birth of their daughter, Laurel Colleen Miley, on April 10, 2014 at South
Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Massachusetts. She weighed 11 pounds, 5
ounces and was 22 inches tall. Laurel
is on the move and brings her parents
much joy and happiness.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
[email protected]/classnotes
01
Sarah Nathan Sullivan, Sean
Sullivan and big brother
Charlie of Scituate, Massachusetts, are happy to announce
the birth of Molly Virginia in August.
Jared and Sarah Brennon Schuler
welcomed baby Evelyn in the late
spring. She is beautiful and being
well looked after by big brother, Kellan. I am still living in Paris, France,
but my assignment will end soon and
I will be back in Boston in April 2015,
so I hope to see some of you in Beantown. A few Catamounts have made
the journey over, most recently Carol
Talisse, Erica MacConnell and Sarah
Laidlaw Wilde for a fun-filled girl’s
weekend. Carol is still in Chicago and
Erica and Sarah are both in the Bur-
lington area. Hope we can bulk this
section up next issue! Colleen Henry
tells us, “I recently finished my doctorate at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley and after 10+ years on the
West Coast have moved east. I’m now
living in New York City and working
as an assistant professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter
College, City University of New York.
This move means I can spend more
time with fellow UVM alums including Vanessa Melamede Berman and
Emily Davis Marotto. Vanessa, now
has three children, including two
energetic and hilarious two year olds.
She lives in Burlington and works in
public health. Emily and her husband
Mike Marotto ’00 welcomed their
second child in May. They live in Duxbury, Vermont. Mike’s keeping us caffeinated at Green Mountain Coffee
and Emily teaches human anatomy
and physiology at Community College of Vermont.
Send your news to—
Erin Wilson
[email protected]
02
Dan Nardi writes, “I’m very
excited for the opportunity to
give back to UVM as the most
recent invitee to the Board of Advisors for the College of Engineering
& Math. I was also invited to join the
Board of Directors for JDRF Illinois in
2014 and continue to mentor numerous startup companies in the field of
Healthcare IT through the Chicago
Healthbox program.”
Send your news to—
Jennifer Khouri Godin
[email protected]
03
Lots of good news from our
friend Stephanie Waterman.
She was married in June 2013
to her long-time partner, Kendall
Smith, originally of Shelburne, Vermont. They married shortly after the
10th anniversary of their first date.
The ceremony was held at their home
in White River Junction, Vermont.
Classmates in attendance included
Westy Lemaitre and Jillian Senyi.
This July, Stephanie and her husband
opened a business, White River Grow-
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SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
92
Paul Afek writes, “I just moved
to Albuquerque, New Mexico,
joining the faculty of the University of New Mexico Department
of Family and Community Medicine.
Anyone else in the area?” Sayaka
Yamaki writes, “I bought a one bedroom condo in Canton, Massachusetts, in December 2012, and love it.
I can walk to the commuter rail, and
found some beautiful furniture on
Craigslist, and some new pieces as
well (Reuse helps landfills, and it’s
less expensive!) I still enjoy advising
undergraduate environmental majors
at Boston University, and have since
July 2000. I even graduated with an
Associate of Science in Culinary Arts
from Johnson & Wales University in
Providence, Rhode Island, in 2006.
However, instead of starting a personal chef business, I started a horse
apparel business called Exhale Saddle Pads (still on Facebook). I’ve sold
off a majority of my products, to give
me time to attend grad classes parttime in January 2015! I applied for the
education master’s here, with a focus
in higher education administration.
My sister and her family live in Watertown, Massachusetts, but the rest of
my family is in New York. I have two
nephews now, ages six and four. I’m
sorry I’ve been out of touch! Please
contact me through Facebook, or
E-mail me at [email protected].”
Jay Czelusniak owner of Czelusniak
Funeral Home purchased Pease and
Gay funeral home in September 2014
to become one of the largest funeral
homes in the Pioneer Valley.
Send your news to—
Lisa Kanter
[email protected]
93
Allison Blew Gurley became
a partner in the insurance
defense practice at Weston
Patrick, P.A. in Boston as of January 2014. Jessica Atkins Hernandez
gave birth to her second son, Spencer Nolan Hernandez, in July of 2014.
After almost three years in New York
City, Jessica and her husband Jose,
along with Spencer and big brother
Grant, will be returning in March to
their home in Bethesda, Maryland.
Jessica looks forward to getting back
in touch with any D.C.-area alums.
Cachematrix, a corporate banking
SaaS firm in Denver, has hired Mike
Hecklinger for business development. Julie Croman Fagan writes,
“I live and work in beautiful central
New Hampshire, between the Lakes
Region and the White Mountains,
with my husband and two sons. I
teach in the nursing program at Plymouth State University, and as lab coordinator I enjoy creating simulated
patient-care scenarios for students. It
is an honor to be on the other side of
nursing education. My oldest son is at
Norwich University majoring in CSIA,
and my youngest is a junior in high
school.” Robert Coffey completed a
doctorate in higher adult and lifelong
education at Michigan State University in December of 2014. He tells us,
“My dissertation topic investigated
the experiences of international students who used education agents to
help them apply to college or university in Canada. My bachelor’s degree
in Canadian Studies from UVM provided a solid foundation for the use
of Canada as a context for the study. I
currently live and work in Ann Arbor
with my partner Steven.”
Send your news to—
Gretchen Haffermehl Brainard
[email protected]
57
[CLASSNOTES
pro Hydroponics & Gardening Supply. “We are a retail store located in
downtown White River Junction, Vermont. We’re just so excited about the
new store and how it combines our
passion for gardening with a family
business that will be a life-long labor
of love. It also fills a niche in our community as the first local hydro store.
Kendall is there full time while I am
maintaining my position as marketing and public relations director at a
large physical therapy clinic in Lebanon, New Hampshire, where I’ve
been for the last five years. One of my
colleagues here is Rebecca Moran
Swope, we didn’t know each other
at UVM, but are having fun keeping
up on alumni doings together.” Next
on the docket for Stephanie is starting a family. Congratulations on all
the exciting news, Steph! Kaitlyn
Rhue has joined Hydroid, a Cape Codbased science and technology leader
in the field of advanced autonomous
underwater vehicles (AUVs), as the
company’s new marketing manager.
In her new role, Kaitlyn will help align
the company for future growth and
expand its presence in the Marine
Robotics market. Part of her focus will
be to increase customer communications and feedback to the business
facilitating the expansion of products and services to Hydroid customers. Kaitlyn has over 10 years of marketing experience with government,
defense and commercial entities.
Send your news to—
Korinne Moore
[email protected]
58
05
10th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Kelsey Cornelius Prescott
and her husband, Brian, welcomed
their first baby, Maple Theodora, on
June 3. The baby’s Fairy Godmother
is Liz Abrams and she has Professor John Shane ’88 to blame for her
mother’s love of the Acer species and
subsequently her first name. Sheila V.
Madrak travelled across the country
from San Diego to Boston in September 2014 to visit fellow UVM alums
Michele Peterson Hadfield, Andee
Farrington, Ruthie Dugas, and Brad
Shuker ‘06. A very pleasant time was
had by all. This mini-reunion was in
preparation of the Class of 2005’s
upcoming 10-year Reunion. Heather
Boepple Gaylord married Matthew
Noble Gaylord in October 2014.
Send your news to—
Kristin Dobbs
[email protected]
06
Emily Thompson Kueffner married Peter Bennett
MacIntyre on October 5 at
the Mountain Top Inn & Resort in
Chittenden, Vermont. They didn’t
know each other while at school,
but actually met at a UVM alumni
event in Boston! There were many
UVM alums in attendance including
bridesmaids Megan Twombly Stoner
’05 and Kate Hewett, and best man
John MacIntyre ’98. Also in attendance were Erica Prudente ’05, Bethany Dufresne ’05, Liz Fiala Lawes
’10, Nick Lawes, Hayley Borah ’07,
Andrew Jenkins, Joe Briggs, Carolyn Goodwin Kueffner, Claire Goodwin ’11, Kris Fitzgerald, Josef Sheehan ’02, Molly Sheehan Daly ’04 and
Matt Daly ’98, Tully Mackey ’04, Joy
Reynolds MacIntyre ’69, Pam Reynolds Mamourian ’85, Priscilla Reynolds Sheehan ’75, and Jan Reynolds
’78. The newlyweds reside in Mel-
rose, Massachusetts. Maxwell Seeland recently accepted a new position in higher education fundraising.
He writes, “I am now the associate
director of annual giving with a focus
on leadership gifts at William Paterson University of New Jersey. My
wife, son and I have settled down in
the beautiful town of Sparta, New
Jersey.” Congratulations to Andrew
LaMar and Catherine Hornish ’05
who welcomed their first child, William Martin LaMar, on July 15, 2014
in Edmond, Oklahoma. Lynn Mondani Pierce and Ryan Pierce (Champlain College, 2006) had a baby boy!
She shares, “We welcomed Craig
Anthony into our family on November 14, 2014.” Caroline Walsh Guzman shares, “The ladies of 38 South
Union Street have been busy adding to our growing family this year
with four new babies! Kelly Simon
McSweeney and Ross McSweeney
welcomed their daughter, Fiona, in
May; Caroline Walsh Guzman and
her husband welcomed their second child, Graham, in November and
Summer Egan Sachen and her husband welcomed their twin daughters,
Sydney and Roselie, in December! The
other 38 girls have had great years
as well with Molly Robinson Jackson and Kelly Wilson moving back to
New England and Annie Young Neviackas purchasing a new home with
her husband! Kelly Wilson has also
been quite busy running marathons
in 2014!
Send your news to—
Katherine Murphy
[email protected]
07
Gregory S. Paonessa graduated cum laude with a juris
doctor from New England
Law in Boston during the 103rd Commencement ceremonies at the Citi
Performing Arts Center Wang Theatre. While at New England Law, he
completed clerkships at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation with Administrative Law Judge
Stephen H. Clark and at the Massachusetts Superior Court of Middlesex County with Judge Dennis Curran. He was an executive comment
and note editor for the New England
Law Review, a Dean’s List student, and
a New England Scholar. He was the
recipient of a CALI Excellence for the
Future Award in Insurance Law. Chad
Dorman recently founded Leon-
ard Andrew Consulting. In developing student athletes, Chad’s team
evenly blends academics and athletics to find the best school, and the
best team, for players to showcase
their abilities. LAC develops an individualized action plan for each student athlete and proactively helps
players through the steps of the
recruiting process—guiding them
to an understanding of the NCAA’s
rules and regulations, reviewing the
various scholarship opportunities
that are available, as well as putting
them in contact with a vast network
of coaches and programs. Leonard
Andrew Consulting is considered the
first company to fully blend academics and athletics where students can
get both college prep and personal
sports training all in the same session.
Kaylan Livsey Zall and Joshua Zall
were married on August 31, 2014 in
Rye, New Hampshire.
Send your news to—
Elizabeth Bitterman
[email protected]
08
Daniel Hedges recently completed co-directing and producing a feature length documentary, Street Soccer: New York.
Twelve homeless soccer players compete for the Street Soccer USA Cup.
By moving from a life of isolation to a
life of community, the players achieve
success on the field and in their lives.
Powerful, uplifting and above all,
hopeful. The film is available to watch
on Amazon Prime, Hulu, Vimeo OnDemand and Cinecliq. www.ssnythemovie.com. Brian Smith, currently living in our nation’s capital,
got engaged to Amanda Munoz in
November. The two met while both
were working on the Hill for freshman members of the 112th Congress.
It becomes official in Santa Barbara,
California, in the spring of 2016.
Send your news to—
Elizabeth Bearese
[email protected]
Emma Grady
[email protected]
09
Emily Strongwater has
begun practicing clinical
defense law with her father,
Jay Strongwater. Connor Boals is
celebrating one year at CNN. “I’m
working as a producer in video
development and riding my bike as
much as possible. Miss the mountains of Vermont!”
Send your news to—
David Volain
[email protected]
10
5th reunion
October 2–4, 2015
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Lisa Harris is engaged to
Eric Himelman. The two are planning to get married in July 2015. Lisa
graduated from Monmouth University in January 2014 with a Master of
Science in Education degree in student affairs and college counseling.
She now works at Monmouth as an
administrator for the Department
of Psychological Counseling. Eric is
currently pursuing his Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences degree
at Rutgers University with a concentration in stem cell research. They
live in Red Bank, New Jersey. In the
summer of 2014, Henry Bryant studied model community-based efforts
to preserve Bornean species along
the Kinabatangan River in Sabah
(East Malaysia) on the island of Borneo. Henry, a fifth, sixth, and seventh-grade science teacher at Hillside
School in Marlborough, Massachusetts, took the graduate course in
pursuit of his master’s degree from
Miami University’s Global Field Program. Ted Dobbin writes, “Go Patriots!” Alex Brady recently accepted a
position as manager of alumni relations, western region at Johnson &
Wales University- Denver Campus.
Elizabeth (Liz) Crawford and David
Boyd have recently become engaged
after David proposed to Liz on the
University Green. They met sophomore year while studying studio art
and philosophy. They will marry in
Rhode Island after Liz completes her
master’s degree in Public Humanities at Brown University. Kyle Bombardier writes, “I graduated from the
University of Vermont in 2010 with a
degree in small business and entrepreneurship in the CDAE Department.
I wanted to say thank you to all of
the professors that helped guide me
www.LMSRE.com
through my degree program. Without your help, I would not have been
able to start my own business, Fantasy Football Draft Boards. This is an
online based business (http://fantasyfootballdraftboard.net ), which
allows me to serve customers here in
the Burlington, Vermont area, as well
as across the country. I also wanted
to commend UVM professor Kathleen
Liang for her guidance and assistance
in starting my business.”
Send your news to—
Daron Raleigh
[email protected]
11
In the summer of 2014, Brian
Mulcahey studied coral reef
ecology and the conservation
of marine systems along the Great
Barrier Reef. Brian, a science teacher
at Springfield Central High School in
Springfield, Massachusetts, took the
graduate course in pursuit of his master’s degree from Miami University’s Global Field Program. Katie Lane
recently accepted the position as the
assistant coach and recruitment coordinator for Fordham University’s row-
www.LionDavis.com
ing programs. Women’s rowing is
one of the 23 NCAA Division I sports
offered at Fordham. Recently, she
helped coach her women to defend
their title as the Women’s Club 4+
Champions at the 2014 Head of the
Charles Regatta, the largest international competition in the world. She
formerly served as the head coach
of the men’s rowing team at Wentworth Institute of Technology from
2011-2014 where she developed the
small club sport to a highly competitive varsity squad. Husch Blackwell
welcomes associate Seth Weiland
to its Denver office. He will focus his
practice primarily on real estate and
development matters. Seth received
his juris doctor, with honors, from
Emory University School of Law in
Atlanta. During law school, Seth
interned with paper manufacturer
Georgia-Pacific LLC, where he assisted
real estate counsel with real property
audits and filings, and was a summer
associate at Weissman, Nowack, Curry
& Wilco, a boutique real estate firm
in Atlanta. He also served as a judicial intern for the Honorable Geoffrey
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www.LMSRE.com
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
04
Hello friends! I hope you all
had a wonderful time at the
10-year Reunion! Thank you,
Erin O’Neil for all your hard work
organizing the Reunion events!
While I was not able to join in on the
festivities in Burlington I was able to
reunite with fellow UVMers in Portland, Oregon for Cailin Rarey and
Mathew Judges’ nuptials! Korinne
Moore ’03, Kara Egasti Dooley, Julia
Dreher Goodkind, Jessica Rosenfeld Vicente, and I had a blast at the
wedding! We also enjoyed exploring and eating our way through
PDX! Congratulations Cailin and
Matt! The American Association of
Law Libraries has selected Washington, D.C.-based library services manager Emily R. Florio as one of its two
new executive board members. Flo-
rio, manager of library services at
Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP in Washington,
D.C., is a graduate of Simmons College in Boston, where she received a
Master of Library Science.
Send your news to—
Kelly Kisiday
[email protected]
59
[CLASSNOTES
VQEXTRA
online
continued from page 2
Crawford of Chittenden County Superior Court in Burlington, Vermont.
Send your news to—
Troy McNamara
[email protected]
12
13
Send your news to—
Patrick Dowd
patrickdowd2012@
gmail.com
LAUREN DOBAY ’13
“You learn to do the
best with what you
have and you learn
how to do it with grace.”
—Lauren Dobay on
her senior-year study
abroad experience working
as a nurse in a hospital in
rural Kamuli, Uganda.
That life-changing
experience has inspired
her to help support a
program that opens study
abroad opportunities to
more students in the
College of Nursing and
60
read more at
uvm.edu/vq
Margo Adams from Rutland,
Vermont was hired as a manufacturing quality engineer
with GE Aviation. Andrew Dougherty
graduated from Arizona State University with his Master’s in Accountancy
and successfully passed all parts of
the CPA exam. He is now working
for Ernst &Young in San Jose, California. Rebeka April Foley writes, “After
moving to Paris following graduation, I opened my own video production services company where I organize shoots for foreign film crews
who come to France. As an American in Paris, I am fascinated by cultural exchange and have an affinity
for working in an international environment.”
Send your news to—
Katharine Hawes
katharine.hawes2@
gmail.com
Madelaine White
[email protected]
14
Kellee Jackson has joined the
staff of the Consortium for
Older Adult Wellness (COAW)
in the Lakewood, Colorado, office.
Kellee is a bilingual program coordinator for COAW and will oversee
programming for rural health centers and organizations in Colorado
as well as bilingual programs offered
in Spanish across the state. She has
a background in community health
outreach and previously worked with
a health self-management outreach
organization for migrant dairy farmers in Vermont and with an exercise
rehabilitation project with cancer
patients. Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
Alumni.uvm.edu/classnotes
ultimately they lead to many measurable successes at UVM,
including in the last three years 111 new invention disclosures,
52 new patent filings, 17 new patent licenses, and a total of 36
new start-ups, several resulting in 139 patent licenses in force.
The new knowledge and discoveries that flow from these
research projects drive creativity, innovation, and competition. In our globally-connected world, this gives the United
States a competitive advantage in economic development
and job growth. The externally funded research also supports Vermont’s economy directly through staff employment
and core land grant and entrepreneurial interactions.
We also know that there is a direct, inextricable link between the accomplishments of the faculty and staff in producing path-breaking scholarship and research and the size,
scope, and quality of graduate education at the university. It
is for this reason that a significant focus in the university’s
Strategic Action Plan is on the growth and quality of UVM’s
graduate programs. As we are successful in accomplishing
this goal, through a careful review of our present graduate
programs and identification of new programs that capitalize
on our strengths, we are optimistic that UVM’s scholarship
and research accomplishments will continue to advance and
be seen as an important part of advancing the public good.
In conclusion, often forgotten in society today is the value
of the scholarship and research coming out of higher education in the United States. In addition to the private good
that results, the public is greatly benefitted through new discoveries, new knowledge, new innovation, and applying that
knowledge to advance our civil society. The links between
these accomplishments and jobs creation and economic development are clear: as the economy benefits, so too does
society with increased opportunities for all. Knowledge creation and the sharing of that knowledge is an important role
that research universities play through their scholarly communications. Although it may seem that we live in a highly
charged digital and technological age, other scholarship and
research of a more qualitative nature play an equally important role in our universities, and at UVM. As Earl Lewis,
president of the Mellon Foundation, recently observed, “The
work of the arts and humanities in advancing knowledge,
discourse, and intercultural understanding [is] critical to
flourishing inclusive, and creative societies.” And as ever, the
offerings of science and technology also must be examined
through the lens of the humanities and society. At UVM,
we continue to build a culture that supports and integrates
impactful scholarship and research from all disciplines to
advance the public good. —Tom Sullivan
In the Fall 2014 issue of the Vermont Quarterly, available at uvm.edu/
vq, President Sullivan wrote “On The Value of a Liberal Education.”
Frances Hoag Baker ‘34, of Colchester,
Vermont, September 27, 2014.
Eleanor Barbour Dernier ‘36, of Westport,
Connecticut, December 10, 2014.
Charlotte Perkins Charbeneau ‘38,
of Woodstock, Vermont, October 27, 2014.
Theresa Rowley Cosgrove ‘38, of Silver Springs,
Maryland, December 31, 2014.
Ethel Pearl Schildhaus ‘38, of Burlington,
Vermont, May 22, 2014.
Winona Mayer Austin ‘40, of Waterford,
Connecticut, December 17, 2014.
Lois Murray Lantman ‘40, of Woodstock,
Vermont, October 31, 2014.
John P. Crispell G’41, of Williamsburg,
Virginia, September 13, 2014.
Geraldine Wilcox Hunt ‘41, G’68, of Newport,
Vermont, September 13, 2014.
Maywood Metcalf Kenney ‘41, of Andover,
Massachussetts, October 13, 2014.
Herbert L. Leach ‘41, of Melbourne, Florida,
August 25, 2014.
Agnes Isabel Munnett ‘41, of Ferrisburgh,
Vermont, May 29, 2013
Mary Fitzsimonds Rini ‘41, of Tallahassee, Florida,
November 01, 2014.
Robert N. Snider ‘41, of Needham,
Massachussetts, May 05, 2014.
Doris Goodell Blodgett ‘42, of Manchester,
New Hampshire, August 10, 2014.
Robert Wolfe ‘42, of Alexandria, Virginia,
December 10, 2014.
Frances Merritt Drees ‘43, of Utica, New York,
November 02, 2014.
Robert S. Stockwell ‘43, of Naples, Florida, June
26, 2014.
Marion Finn Bergin ‘44, of Melrose,
Massachussetts, March 27, 2014.
I. Patricia McCormack ‘44, of Middletown Springs,
Vermont, November 24, 2014.
Alma Gaylord Synakowski ‘44, of Utica, New York,
November 28, 2014.
Ruth Carlson Fifield ‘45, of St. Albans, Vermont,
December 10, 2014.
Florence Cudworth Holden ‘45 PT, of Concord,
New Hampshire, September 10, 2014.
Barbara Morgan Adams ‘46, of Lafayette Hill,
Pennsylvania, November 29, 2014.
Betty Johnson Bahrenburg ‘46, of South
Burlington, Vermont, August 09, 2014.
Mary-Jane Little Black ‘46, of Concord,
New Hampshire, August 27, 2014.
Jean Lanphere Hollar ‘46, G’70, of Bellows Falls,
Vermont, December 02, 2014.
Ruth Schoppe Propst ‘46, of Palos Verdes Estates,
California, August 09, 2014.
Bette Mansfield Rhodes, ‘46, of Chagrin Falls,
Ohio, November 4, 2013
Marion Patterson Cioppa ‘47, of Willsboro, New
York, June 09, 2014.
L. Richard Fisher ‘47, ‘49, of San Jose,
California, August 30, 2014.
MaryMargaret Auer Hamiwka ‘47, of Greensboro,
North Carolina, December 11, 2014.
W. Norman Vercoe ‘48, of Montpelier,
Vermont, November 13, 2014.
Neal Joseph Houston, Sr. ‘49, of Arlington,
Vermont, August 16, 2014.
Joan Meyn Jacobson ‘49, of Somers, New York,
May 19, 2014.
Leo E. Ells ‘50, of Melbourne, Florida, November
14, 2014.
Eric R. Graves, Jr. ‘50, of New Lebanon, New York,
August 22, 2014.
Jean Waite Longo ‘50, of East Hartford,
Connecticut, November 04, 2014.
Janice Larrabee Short ‘50, G’58, of Middlebury,
Vermont, December 02, 2014.
John Charles Anzalone ‘51, of Framingham,
Massachussetts, October 08, 2014.
Charles E. Gear ‘51, of South Burlington,
Vermont, December 24, 2014.
Robert L. Kinney ‘51, of Coralville, Iowa,
September 21, 2014.
Herbert F. Shipman ‘51, G’72, of Swanton,
Vermont, May 15, 2014.
Donald S. Thayer ‘51, of Ormond Beach, Florida,
October 04, 2014.
Robert B. Zile ‘51, of Avon, Connecticut, August
19, 2014.
Barbara Hamilton Fraser ‘52, of Millington,
New Jersey, December 03, 2014.
Phillip A. Griffith ‘52, of Lakeland, Florida,
August 22, 2014.
Allen M. Hitchcock ‘52, October 18, 2014.
Bernard W. Hurley ‘52, of Fort Collins, Colorado,
November 27, 2014.
Horace Warner Strong ‘52, of Craftsbury
Common, Vermont, June 03, 2014.
Donald H. Trahan ‘52, of Cloverdale, California,
August 29, 2014.
Elizabeth Clark Clewley, ‘53, MD’56, of
Burlington, Vermont, September 17, 2014.
Patricia Whitcomb Davis ‘53, of Springfield,
Vermont, September 03, 2014.
Roger Knight Gallic ‘53, of Tolland, Connecticut,
November 18, 2014.
Ray Evaniffin ‘53, of West Glover, Vermont,
December 21, 2014.
Elizabeth Shequin Mario ‘53, of South Burlington,
Vermont, April 24, 2014.
Clifton Ray Stearns ‘53, of South Burlington,
Vermont, September 19, 2014.
Carlisle Simons Whitehill ‘53, of Island Pond,
Vermont, January 02, 2015.
Susan Newton Heins ‘54, of Essex Junction,
Vermont, December 24, 2014.
Frederick O. MacManus ‘54, of San Diego,
California, September 17, 2014.
Robert D. Park, CPA ‘55, of South Dennis,
Massachussetts, September 03, 2014.
Max P. Petersen ‘55, of North Ferrisburgh,
Vermont, September 22, 2014.
Audrey Smith Pratt ‘55, of Saratoga Springs,
New York, August 21, 2014.
Stanley Walzer, MD’55, of Marshfield,
Massachussetts, December 18, 2014.
Ronald Preston Ward ‘55, of South Burlington,
Vermont, August 26, 2014.
Brent Beer ‘56, of Portage, Wisconsin,
September 26, 2014.
Ira Greifer, MD’56, of Palm Beach Gardens,
Florida, September 17, 2014.
Marilyn Taft Mock ‘56, of White River Junction,
Vermont, August 21, 2014.
Ann T. Monell ‘56, of Troy, New York, September
17, 2014.
John J. Whalen ‘56, of Bennington, Vermont,
October 15, 2014.
Helen Anna Wichowsky ‘56, of Scotts Valley,
California, August 25, 2014.
Lewis F. Bodman ‘57, of Kirkland, Washington,
December 18, 2014.
Caroline Casey Hayes ‘57, of Tinton Falls,
New Jersey, November 04, 2014.
William T. Higgins ‘57, of Plattsburgh, New York,
October 21, 2014.
Gerald J. Rice ‘57, of Windsor, Vermont,
September 28, 2014.
Ruth Mutchler Bridges ‘58, of Alexandria,
Virginia, November 08, 2014.
Deborah Flewelling Batease ‘59, of Indian Lake,
New York, December 22, 2014.
John Raymond Campbell, Jr. ‘59, of Milton,
Vermont, October 25, 2014.
David Goodsell Gale ‘59 PA, of Goshen, Vermont,
November 15, 2014.
Elizabeth Arnold Hunt ‘59, of Westfield,
New Jersey, October 05, 2014.
Louise McSweeney Scibelli ‘59, of Agawam,
Massachussetts, May 15, 2014.
Leon P. Tessier ‘59, of Springfield, Vermont,
March 17, 2014.
Robert S. Zysk ‘60, of Meriden, Connecticut,
September 08, 2014.
Katherine Coburn Dyer ‘61, of Sun City Center,
Florida, October 02, 2014.
M. Robert Ciardelli ‘62, of Colchester, Vermont,
September 28, 2014.
Rhoda Heald Comi ‘62, of Brunswick, Georgia,
December 20, 2014.
Lewis B. Harvey ‘62, of Rochester, Vermont,
December 23, 2014.
Elizabeth Dutton Hewitt ‘62, of Glover, Vermont,
October 15, 2014.
Thomas G. Siccama ‘62, G’64, G’68, of Shelburne,
Vermont, October 03, 2014.
J. Scott Astle ‘63, of San Francisco, California,
November 14, 2014.
Wayne Hart Erla ‘63, of Shelburne, Vermont,
December 06, 2014.
Mina Carter Jewett ‘63, of South Burlington,
Vermont, October 18, 2014.
Elaine Zak Dates ‘64, of South Burlington,
Vermont, November 01, 2014.
Porter F. Hulett ‘64, of Moneta, Virginia,
May 16, 2014.
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
Health Sciences.
INMEMORIAM]
PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE
61
62
Michael Edward Burke ‘65, of Burlington,
Vermont, January 05, 2015.
Reid M. Knight ‘65, G’67, of Montgomery Village,
Maryland, October 13, 2014.
Peter D. Baldwin ‘68, of Hinesburg, Vermont,
November 22, 2014.
Joan Patricia Clark ‘68, of Shorewood, Wisconsin,
October 18, 2014.
Raymond Andrew Hadeka ‘69, of Woodbridge,
Virginia, October 27, 2014.
James Alan Harrison ‘69, of Pagosa Springs,
Colorado, August 16, 2014.
Brock T. Ketcham, ‘69, MD’73, of Shaftsbury,
Vermont, October 24, 2014.
Georgeay Nelson ‘69, of Milton, Vermont,
December 19, 2014.
Francis A. DiCesare ‘70, of Essex, Vermont,
November 16, 2014.
Judith Ann Roy ‘70, of Panama City, Florida,
September 07, 2014.
Alf Torsten Rylander Jr. G’70, of Fallon,
Nevada, November 09, 2014.
Max R. Brinkman G’71, of Overland Park,
Kansas, August 31, 2014.
David T. Heindel ‘71, of Burlington, Vermont,
September 05, 2014.
Karen Ann Kerin ‘71, of South Royalton,
Vermont, January 25, 2014.
Mary K. Barker-Roby G’72, of Swanton,
Vermont, September 13, 2014.
Paul Joseph Bergeron ‘72, of Sterling,
Massachussetts, June 09, 2014.
Hayward B. Crewe G’72, of White River Junction,
Vermont, August 08, 2014.
Carolyn Storrs Edwards ‘72, of South Burlington,
Vermont, October 19, 2014.
Curtis H. Bevington, III G’73, of Barre, Vermont,
August 30, 2014.
Michael Jeffrey Cross ‘73, of Brattleboro,
Vermont, October 11, 2014.
Elmer Lyle Kimball ‘74, of Lincoln, Vermont,
September 06, 2014.
Linda Buttles O’Brien ‘74, of Whiting, Vermont,
December 20, 2014.
Roseann Pleviak Racht ‘74, of Essex Junction,
Vermont, October 26, 2014.
E. Stanley Corneille, Jr. G’75, of Williamstown,
Vermont, September 22, 2014.
Joan Ellen Deady ‘75, of San Francisco, California,
March 23, 2014.
Martha Kane Tortolano G’75, of Underhill,
Vermont, December 20, 2014.
Yvette Theresa Ouimet ‘76, of Swanton,
Vermont, December 19, 2014.
Linda C. Welch ‘76, of Boulder, Colorado,
November 29, 2014.
Scott Wayne Curtis ‘77, of West Roxbury,
Massachussetts, September 25, 2014.
UVM_4.5x4.45_PSC_HR.pdf
Paul Clovis Lavalley G’77, of Batavia, New York,
September 21, 2014.
Allyson Davis Ledoux G’77, of White River
Junction, Vermont, October 10, 2014.
Elizabeth Martin Foreman ‘78, of Greenville,
North Carolina, August 06, 2014.
Stuart Harris MacPherson ‘78, of Derry,
New Hampshire, November 07, 2014.
Mary Lynn Rupe G’78, of Fountain Hills, Arizona,
December 20, 2014.
Andrew Jay Samach MD’80, of Gansevoort,
New York, December 08, 2014.
Elizabeth Love Corroon ‘81, of Fairfield,
Connecticut, November 01, 2014.
Kathleen Ondis Eardensohn ‘81, of Plainfield,
Vermont, December 19, 2014.
Scott David Dalitzky ‘82, of Bethel, Maine,
September 01, 2014.
Brook Frances Hobson ‘82, of Saratoga Springs,
New York, December 02, 2014.
Mary Welling Hunnewell ‘82, of Cohasset,
Massachussetts, October 17, 2014.
Bonita Peeters Tuscany G’82, of Waterbury,
Vermont, November 14, 2014.
Nancy Hoole Simoes G’83, of Waterbury Center,
Vermont, November 27, 2014.
Laurie C. Dietzel ‘84, of Hyattsville, Maryland,
on January 15, 2015.
William Edward Simendinger ‘84, of South
Burlington, Vermont, July 14, 2014.
Sara Provin Gallipo ‘85, of Rutland, Vermont,
December 03, 2014.
Judith Kenyon G’85, of Williston, Vermont,
December 19, 2014.
Jessica Bates Lamphere ‘88, of Barre, Vermont,
August 21, 2014.
William Ambrose McGrath ‘88, G’97, of Park City,
Utah, October 21, 2014.
Howard Philip Medoff G’89, of Jenkintown,
Pennsylvania, October 15, 2014.
Judy M. Laraway G’79, ‘90, of Fairfax, Vermont,
October 18, 2014.
Patricia A. Stevens G’90, of Morrisville, Vermont,
August 31, 2014.
Amy Warburton Wise G’91, of Williston, Vermont,
November 11, 2014.
Bryce David Dion ‘98, of Santa Monica, California,
August 26, 2014.
Willis J. Racht G’98, of Essex Junction, Vermont,
May 11, 2014.
Lionel Joseph Palardy ‘99, of Winooski, Vermont,
December 16, 2014.
Ruth S. Beard G’00, of Montpelier, Vermont,
October 29, 2014.
Michael Eugene Scherer ‘03, of Beebe Plain,
Vermont, October 12, 2014.
Sarah E. Doubleday ‘09, of Hope, Maine,
September 02, 2014.
UVMCOMMUNITY
Paula Fives-Taylor, professor of
microbiology and molecular genetics emerita, passed away on January
28, 2015. A prolific scientist with a
national reputation as a preeminent
researcher in the field of microbiology, Fives-Taylor’s service to the scientific community began long before
her thirty-five-year tenure as a UVM
faculty member, when she was a Dominican nun named Dorothy Marie
teaching high school science in New
York City’s Harlem neighborhood.
During those years, she served on the
New York City Science Council and
was a science curriculum consultant
for New York City.
She began her UVM career as a
graduate student, earning her doctorate in 1974, developing a passion
for studying bacterial-host cell interactions and becoming an expert in
research on the link between dental
plaque and disease. A pioneer in this
field, her laboratory was the first to
demonstrate invasion of epithelial
cells by a periodontal organism.
Teaching continued to play as
large a part as research and service
throughout Fives-Taylor’s career,
earning her numerous awards, including UVM’s prestigious Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award for Teaching
Excellence in 1999 and being named
the first recipient of the UVM Vogelmann Award for Sustained Excellence
in Research and Scholarship in 2002.
1
1/16/15
12:09 PM
[CLASSIFIEDS
vacation rentals
GRAND ISLE, VT
Rustic elegance with a sunset view. 5BR year
round retreat on 520’ of private lakefront.
Call Becky Moore ‘74. 802-318-3164 or
[email protected].
HARWICHPORT, CAPE COD
2-4 person apt – $650/wk, June-Sept,
end-road-beach: DVD/WIFI, CC Bike Trail
nearby; National Seashore 15 miles:
[email protected]; 508-432-0713.
MARTHA’S VINEYARD, MA
Let me help you find the perfect vacation
home to buy or rent. Visit our website at
<www.lighthousemv.com>. Call Trish
Lyman ’89. 508-693-6626 or email
[email protected].
Myrtle Beach, SC
1 or 2 BR oceanfront condos in Myrtle
Beach, SC. Weekly rentals, monthly
winter rentals. [email protected]
SIESTA KEY, FL
Lovely condo on Gulf – pools/tennis, 2bdr,
sleeps 4+. Weekly or monthly. Photos at
<www.vrbo.com/609220> or 802-279-6748.
C
M
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CM
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K
Caring for Vermont seniors
for 30 years. One amazing
person at a time.
INDEPENDENT LIVING & ASSISTED CARE IN SIX LOCATIONS
802-863-7897 • pillsburyseniorcommunities.com
ST. MAARTEN
Private 4 bedroom alum family home,
stunning view of St. Barth’s. Gorgeous
beaches. “Culinary Capital of the Caribbean.”
UVM Discount. <www.villaplateau.com>.
FOR SALE
HUTCHINSON ISLAND, FL
Ocean Village, 2 bdrm, 2 bath, end unit
in Catamaran 2 section. Completely
remodeled 2007 w/tile floors, granite
countertops (kitchen), etc. 3rd. floor in bldg.
w/elevator. $169,000. Email dlstewart@
wellsfargoadvisors.com for further details.
Advertising deadlines
May 8, 2015
July 2015 issue
September 11, 2015 November 2015 issue
January 8, 2016
March 2016 issue
Contact Theresa Miller
(802) 656-1100
[email protected]
SPRING 2015
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
[INMEMORIAM
63
[EXTRACREDIT
Today, the health of everyone in our community
has taken a turn for the better.
WAXING NOSTALGIC
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
W
64
alk into WRUV’s Davis Center studio and
take a left. Wind your way through canyons of
compact discs to a back corner and you’ll find
a trove of records—you know, albums, LPs, vinyl.
Imagine decades past as ’RUV DJs slit open the
shrink wrap with a thumbnail; gently slid a pristine
black record of Miles Davis, Led Zeppelin, the Four
Tops, or countless others out of its sleeve; placed it on
a turntable and cued the needle. Through those years,
UVM’s college radio station built what’s said to be the
largest record collection in the state.
No secret that vinyl is making something of a quiet
comeback among audiophiles and hipsters, not to mention today’s WRUV DJs, some of whom dig into this
history for their on-air programs.
“It’s kind of weird,” says Derek Neal ’15. “With records, people of my generation have a nostalgia for
something we didn’t actually experience.” The UVM
senior is known as DJ Derelicte on his two-hour weekly
slot, “Furniture Music,” featuring house, techno, and
some R & B.
Neal says he appreciates the way vinyl allows him to
mix songs, both in his radio shows and when he plays
by Thomas Weaver
live gigs as a DJ. He elaborates on other reasons to love
the old technology. The richness of the sound. The sheer
physicality of the object. The way a full album of music,
as opposed to one song bought on iTunes, can connect
to a time and place in memory. (He fondly recalls a high
school field trip when Beck’s Guero was on replay in his
head.) And there’s the social dimension—sitting with
friends listening to a room filled with music rather than
burrowing into your headphones.
Deep in the ’RUV archive one day last fall, Neal flips
through the records for some of the hidden treasure he’s
found. He’s uncovered music that—brace yourselves—
can’t be found on the Internet. “There’s something nice
about that,” Neal says. Take Ballistic Mystic, for instance. Drawn by the band name, he gave it a spin on his
show without so much as a preview listen. “This could
be really good or really bad,” he thought.
It was really good. Amazing even. The record earned
replays on his next several shows, perhaps planting—
right here in Burlington, Vermont—the seeds for a Ballistic Mystic reunion tour.
Introducing The University of Vermont Health Network,
a unique partnership between three strong community hospitals and The University of
Vermont Medical Center (formerly Fletcher Allen). Our hospitals and caregivers are bringing
the best of community care and academic medicine together for every patient. By sharing
our resources and expertise we give you access to leading-edge technology, advanced
treatment options and a higher level of compassionate care. This is what we call the heart
and science of medicine. To learn more visit UVMHealth.org or call (844) UVM-HEALTH.
University of Vermont Medical Center
Central Vermont Medical Center
Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital
Elizabethtown Community Hospital
sally mccay
UVMHealth.org or (844) UVM-HEALTH
The heart and science of medicine.
Non-Profit Org
US Postage Paid
Burlington VT 05401
vermont quarterly
86 South Williams Street
Burlington VT 05401
Permit No. 143