EAT VERMONT THINK GROW

VERMONT
t h e u n i ver s i t y o f
Q U A R T E R LY
EAT
THINK
1
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
GROW
VQ
SUMMER | 2013
V E R M O N T q u a rter l y
VQ
THE GREEN
Wynton Marsalis heralds the Class of 2013;
Kidder Faculty Award: Professor Richard Foote;
3 Questions on advancing climate change
policy; and more.
catamount sports
A photographic look back at UVM athletes
in action.
LIVE & LEARN With a fresh class of undergraduates
moving onto campus each fall, residential
learning is an ever-evolving experiment
with a deep history at UVM.
4
Faculty and alumni are helping develop
food systems that are healthy for local
economies, the land, and ourselves.
30
BY Jon Reidel G’06
14
16
LESSONS OF A LONG, LONG DRIVE
32
By Jay M. Taylor ’10
Alumni Connection
20
A young alumnus navigates coast-to-coast
highways and post-grad life decisions with
a little help from his student government friends.
Dr. Ivers Rifkin ’49 supports scholarship to
“help deserving students get their degrees
with a little less worry.”
By thomas weaver
20 WAYS TO GROW, THINK ABOUT,
AND EAT FOOD UVM PEOPLE
Howard Averill ’85 has ridden his love
of numbers and knowledge of operations
to top executive posts in media.
class notes
extra credit
Eric Schwarz ’85: Everyday Hero
37
41
64
#
Burlington’s Intervale, acres of farmland and
community supported agricultural ventures,
is just a few blocks from campus.
Cover and contents photographs by Sally McCay
SUMMER 2008
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
by JOSHUA BROWN, megan camp ’84,
LEE ANN COX, JON REIDEL ’06,
AMANDA WAITE ’02 G’04, JEFF WAKEFIELD,
THOMAS WEAVER, david zuckerman ’95
#
P R E S I D E N T’ S
2
a new writing and informational
literacy requirement. Beginning in the fall of 2014, all firstyear, first-time students will be
required to take a three-credit
foundational writing and informational literacy course that
will provide our students with
the necessary writing and research skills to enhance
their progress in their courses across the curriculum.
We have also implemented some new career counseling
services to further ensure the success of our graduates.
They include the creation of the Career Services Office
on the lower level of the Davis Center, the expansion of
industry-specific internships, and the addition of advisors to help students develop their career plans, build
skills, and connect their academic interests to professional networks.
Finally, our fourth strategic goal is to instill an institutional commitment to efficiency and effectiveness that
optimizes the use of facilities, technology, assets, and
shared services. To this end, we have begun a substantial
reorganization of our central administrative offices including the appointment of a new provost, a new dean of
the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences,
an interim dean of the Graduate College, and an interim
Vice President for Research. We plan to increase our
academic offerings and to move to a three-semester curriculum in order to make year-round use of our facilities.
We will expand our web-based education to supplement
the curriculum. Further, we plan to offer more professional and terminal masters degrees. For example, we
now offer a Master’s Degree in Food Systems, a cutting
edge field in which UVM is a national leader, and a dual
Master’s in Environmental Law and Science in Natural
Resources, offered jointly by UVM’s Rubenstein School
and Vermont Law School. These new graduate degrees
will enhance our research capabilities in interdisciplinary fields that we have identified as key strengths and
advantages of the University.
I am inspired by the high aspirations of the UVM
community and pleased by the excellent progress we
have made in such a brief time. I extend my thanks to everyone in the UVM family who made this a spectacular
first year for Leslie and me. —Tom Sullivan
sally mccay
editor
Thomas Weaver
art director
Elise Whittemore-Hill
class notes editor
Kathleen Laramee ’00
contributing writers
Carla Beecher, Joshua Brown, Lee Ann Cox,
Jay Goyette, Megan Camp ’84, Jon Reidel G’06,
Jay M. Taylor ’10, Amanda Waite’02, G’04,
Jeff Wakefield, David Zuckerman ’95
photography
Joshua Brown, Rajan Chawla, Andy Duback,
Alex Edelman, Alfred Goldberg ’50, Sabin
Gratz ’98, Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist, Brian
Jenkins, Sally McCay, Paul Mobley, Mario
Morgado, Kevin Remington, Jay M. Taylor ’10
JULY 2013
VQEXTRAuvm.edu/vq
Beyond the print content in this issue, you’ll also find more articles
and multimedia pieces at uvm.edu/vq. Several of the stories below
were included in the May edition of VQExtra. If you aren’t currently
receiving an email when this online edition is posted between our
print issues and would like to be alerted, let us know and we’ll add
you to the list. Also, write us a note if you’d prefer to no longer receive
the print edition and instead get an email notice when each issue is
available online. [email protected]
Fine food in the frat
With top-flight Italian chef Antonino Di Ruocco
in the kitchen, life is very good at Alpha
Gamma Rho.
illustration
Rosemary Mosco G’10
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]
Following the melody
Jay Nash ’98 has a new recording out and is
touring the country, the latest steps in his
career as a singer/songwriter.
Fulbright to Film
Alumna Nilima Abrams’ film project
documents family-based Indian school.
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. 66, July 2013
Vermont Quarterly
The University of Vermont
86 South Williams Street
Burlington, VT 05401
vermont quarterly online
uvm.edu/vq
vermont quarterly BLOG
vermontquarterly.wordpress.com
@uvmvermont
www.facebook.com/universityofvermont
www.youtube.com/universityofvermont
pop star
Timothy Stewart ’09 and his business partners
are leaders of San Francisco’s Pop Nation, a
popsicle venture that couples innovative
flavors with nostalgia on a stick.
world of work
Helping lead President Obama and Secretary of
State Clinton’s landmark visits to Burma are the
latest achievements in alumnus Patrick Murphy’s
distinguished diplomatic career.
FA L L 2 0 1 1
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
A
s I enter my second year as president, I
am pleased to report that the University of Vermont continues to thrive.
Our Commencement festivities on
May 19th demonstrated the academic excellence and vibrancy of our institution. The Class of 2013 boasted several
Fulbright finalists and Truman and Goldwater Scholars and included many exemplary students
who completed capstone projects, wrote senior theses,
studied abroad, and participated in service learning and
community service. One of the world’s most renowned
musicians, Wynton Marsalis, who received an honorary
degree during the ceremony, concluded his heartfelt remarks with an exhilarating rendition of “When the Saints
Go Marching In.”
This past year, we have made significant progress toward our four strategic action goals. Our first strategic
goal is to promote affordability and financial access to
our students, which we accomplished by means of a
historically low tuition increase. Several weeks ago, the
Board of Trustees approved a 2.9 percent increase in
tuition, the lowest since 1977. In addition, we will use
all of this year’s $1.2 million increase in state appropriations to create grants and financial aid for in-state
students, fully offsetting the rise in their tuition. This
measure will further decrease the cost of tuition for Vermonters and encourage more of the top students in the
state to choose UVM.
Our second strategic goal is to promote a culture of
advancing academic excellence and cultivating talent.
This goal was furthered by the hiring of seventy-five new
faculty members representing the best and the brightest scholars from across the country. Many have been
drawn to our campus because of our interdisciplinary
priorities. To cite one example, James Bagrow, a computational social scientist and previously a visiting researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard
University, left his position at Northwestern University
to come to UVM to join our Complex Systems initiative. We are fortunate to have garnered so many talented
new faculty members.
Our third strategic goal is to identify necessary investments to ensure a bright future. As part of the new
general education core requirements, we have approved
VQ
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
PERSPECTIVE
GREEN
THE
sally mccay
left: bob handelman; right: sally mccay
g a t h er i ng ne w s & v i e w s
o f l i f e a t t h e u n i v er s i t y
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
Alumni honor Foote
with Kidder Award
4
T
he word beautiful is
as likely to come up
in conversation with
a mathematician as
with a painter, poet,
or musician. For professor of
mathematics Richard Foote,
finding and sharing beauty
is at the core of a philosophy
that makes him one of the
university’s finest teachers
and this year’s recipient of the
UVM Alumni Association’s
Kidder Faculty Award.
Sitting in his office, Foote
describes the grounding of
his approach to every class,
whether it’s pre-calculus or
the highest-level graduate
seminar. “I look at the stuff,
and I say, ‘There’s something
here which is really beauti-
ful that you can get excited
about.’ You look at the
quadratic formula”—Foote
hops out of his chair and
erases space on a blackboard scrawled to the edges.
Chalk rapping on the board
as he writes out the classic
equation (which stirs some
Mariana Trench-deep recess
in the mind of an English
major), Foote says, “You
can go in and say, ‘Well, it’s a
formula; it does the job.’ Or
another likens to Yoda.
Hy Ginsberg G’07 ’10, a
professor at Worcester State
University, vividly recalls
Foote’s words after describing
a daunting research problem:
“But these are the kinds of
problems that great minds
like yours cut their teeth on.”
Ginsberg says, “We are
all geniuses in his eyes, or at
least made to feel so, and after
speaking with Richard Foote
I always felt that no mathematical feat was beyond my
abilities.”
VQ: BLOG ON
FOUND LITERATURE
April 17, 2013 by uvmeditor | Edit
I find Jacques Paul Marton, Davis Center custodian, on his lunch break in the
wide-open space of the building’s atrium.
It’s a bustling campus crossroad lined
with tables offering bake sales and plant
sales; music plays as salsa dance club
members show off their moves to recruit
JP Marton talks with
alumnus author
Douglas Smith ’85
as he signs a copy
of his latest work,
Former People: The
Final Days of the
Russian Aristocracy,
for The Book Nook
collection.
new students from the ranks walking past.
Though JP, as he’s known to most, has a
prime comfy chair and people-watching spot, he’s someplace
entirely different—in the Caucasus Mountains of Russia,
imagination immersed in a second-hand copy of Leo Tolstoy’s
The Cossacks.
Marton, a sturdy guy wearing clear sport-shield glasses, is
a lover of reading. More specifically, he’s a lover of books, the
printed word. Better yet, a well-worn book with a few miles
[ENGLISH]
Guggenheim honors
UVM poet, professor
M
ajor Jackson, poet and
Richard Dennis Green
and Gold Professor
of English, has been
selected for a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship.
The prestigious fellowship
supports Jackson’s proposal to
pursue the intriguing story of
Edmonia Lewis, an AfricanAmerican woman who studied
at Oberlin College before the
Civil War, stood trial for the
on it. But he doesn’t mind being interrupted from his Tolstoy.
He’s thrilled, actually, to leave comrades Lukasha and Olenin,
even the enchanting peasant girl Marishka, behind and jump
up out of his chair to talk about another of his book-related
passions—sharing them.
Marton, who joined the Davis Center staff in 2007, is the
man behind “The Book Nook,” a quiet corner of Brennan’s Pub
on the DC’s first floor. About three years ago a small set of
shelves appeared near the pub’s stage. Seeing them empty
day after day, Marton took it upon himself to start filling the
lonely shelves up with books from his own home library.
Read more about The Book Nook and how you can
contribute your own volume to the growing collection.
vermontquarterly.wordpress.com (April 17 post)
s ummer 2 0 1 3
you can go in and say, ‘This is
really pretty. It says something about the behavior of
conic sections. It is the top of
this enormous iceberg that
says for these kinds of equations there’s this fundamental
symmetry.’”
Foote brings that same
passion to his pursuits as a
scholar, which have made him
one of UVM’s most distinguished faculty members,
recognized internationally
for contributions to his field.
Foote’s work was considered
critical to “the classification
of the finite simple groups,”
widely regarded as one of the
foremost achievements of
twentieth-century mathematics. Abstract Algebra, which
Foote co-authored with close
UVM colleague and friend
Professor David Dummit, is
a text that mathematicians
speak of with reverence, even
deep affection.
Not all scholars immersed
in pushing their fields forward also have the
skills to gracefully
share that knowledge
from the front of the
classroom. The Kidder Award celebrates
the ability to do just
that—to teach and
advise in a way that
not only educates
but inspires, influencing alumni far
beyond their years
on campus.
Catherine Bliss
G’00, a current UVM
doctoral candidate who
returned to the university
after nine years of teaching,
led the charge to nominate
Foote for the Kidder. She
notes the particular influence
he had on her as a female
striving to find her place in
the often male-centric world
of mathematics. That sense of
support and helping to instill
belief in themselves is something many former students
emphasize about the professor that one colleague calls
“an ethical touchstone” and
5
THEGREEN
STUDENT FOCUS
W
alking through Dewey Hall one day, Tracie
competitive and have the intention of earning a
Ebalu ’13 passed by Karen Fondacaro’s
doctoral degree.)
open door and glimpsed a clock on the
wall in the shape of Africa. Ebalu, born in the
the only thing that makes people effusive. “Her
United States of Nigerian parents and raised in
mind is constantly going but really and truly,”
both Africa and New York City, stopped short and
says Candace Taylor, coordinator of programming
had a closer look. Fondacaro, clinical professor of
and leadership development at the university’s
psychology and director of the Behavior Therapy
Women’s Center, “what I connect most with Tracie
and Psychotherapy Center (BTPC), invited her in.
is this guiding moral compass, this heart... She is
“She started looking around,” Fondacaro recalls,
I think it really is the lens through which she walks
do?’ And we just had this immediate connection
this world.”
Part of that giving back has included spear-
Fondacaro explained that the clock and other
hundred coats and other winter wear for the local
ing Connecting Cultures through BTPC, a program
refugee community this year. Staff members like
providing mental health services to refugees.
Taylor and Beverly Colston, director of the ALANA
Ebalu was in from that moment, pouring herself
Center, have joined with Fondacaro in being key
into projects in the New American community
guiding influences for Ebalu during her UVM
through academics and personal service, all the
years.
Named a McNair research fellow in 2012, Ebalu,
is,” Colston says, “she just soaked up those experi-
relationship between post-migration stressors
ences and used them to get wise and go to the
such as unemployment, lack of social support,
next level.”
on mental health outcomes in refugee popula-
6
what guitar hero
can teach us
F
or her most recent
book, Fayneese Miller,
dean of the College of
Education and Social
Services, called on a number
of members of her faculty to
tackle a wide range of critical
rajan chawla
In the not-too-distant future, that next level will
likely be pursuing graduate degrees.
“I tell my mom I’m really certain I’m going to
first-generation, limited-income and/or underrep-
get a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and one day my
resented undergraduates who are academically
name is going to be Dr. Tracie Ebalu.”
issues facing education. The
book’s overarching question: What is needed within
systems of education to
prepare the next generation
of leaders for a competitive
global environment?
Miller, who wrote the
introduction and served as
editor of the book, reached
out to eighteen experts,
including ten from UVM,
to contribute chapters. The
answers that lie within the
pages of Transforming Learning Environments: Strategies
to Shape the Next Generation
(Emerald Books, 2013)
focus on online learning,
technology, leadership,
curriculum innovation, and
English language learners to
show the challenges facing
traditional educational practices and the ways learning
environments are respond-
ing to the new reality of
globalization.
“The chapters are a spectrum of what is going on in
the world of higher education at this critical juncture
in our history,” Miller says.
“If those in higher education are not amenable to
change, as imposed by the
outside world, they could
be rendering themselves
obsolete. As John Dewey
s ummer 2 0 1 3
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
tions. (The McNair program supports work by
[ e d u c at i o n ]
been a bit beyond her at the time. “But the truth
under Fondacaro’s guidance, has studied the
language and education barriers and their impact
been awarded a Guggenheim.
It is fortifying and affirming.”
According to Colston, Ebalu has always sought
out leadership roles, even ones that may have
goals in clinical psychology.
to a contemporary audience.
Jackson is the author of
three collections of poetry:
Holding Company, Hoops and
Leaving Saturn, which was
awarded the Cave Canem
Poetry Prize and was a finalist
for the National Book Critics
Circle Award in Poetry. As for
the Guggenheim honor, Jackson says: “It is good to follow
in the long tradition of poets
I’ve admired who have also
heading a coat drive that collected some five
African influences were related to her work direct-
while solidifying a focus for her long-term career
boundaries between races,”
Jackson says, and she was
kidnapped, brutally beaten
and left in a field after she was
accused. Her lawyer, John
Mercer Langston—great
uncle of the poet Langston
Hughes—provides the
primary source for her story.
Jackson’s ambition is to write
a verse play about her trial,
placed within history yet using
modern techniques to appeal
constantly thinking about how she can give back,
“and she said, ’I feel like I’m home, what do you
to each other. That was it.”
alleged poisoning of her roommates, was acquitted, and went
on to become an internationally acclaimed sculptor, living
most of her life in Rome. It’s
a story with many twists and
unknowns, of a woman who,
in many ways, transcended her
race given the time in which
she lived, and in others, even
in a progressive place like
Oberlin, could not.
“She didn’t respect the
Despite Ebalu’s intellectual strength, it’s not
states, ‘knowledge and habits
have to be modified to meet
the new conditions,’ so do
the authors of the chapters in
this volume.”
A chapter by Laurie Gelles,
director of technology and
communication in CESS,
titled “From Pong to PS3:
How Video Games Enhance
Our Capacity to Learn and
Build Community,” offers an
interesting perspective on
this brave new world. Gelles
focuses on ways technology
can help build capacity for
learning, in both traditional
and non-traditional settings.
She teaches about this concept in a UVM course titled
“Video Games and Learning
Theory” that focuses on conducting new research related
to multisensory learning
environments.
“There has been a huge
push to integrate technology
into learning environments
in order to replicate the way
that people most regularly
experience and interact with
information,” Gelles says.
“The real trick is figuring
out why we are so drawn to
interactive technologies in
the first place.”
Her most recent study
made use of the video game
Guitar Hero II in an attempt
to measure the effects of
multisensory learning.
Following John Dewey’s
ideas around rich learning
environments and making
meaning through experience,
Gelles explains that technology allows for the simulation
of real-life experience and
7
THEGREEN
COMMENCEMENT 2013
VQ
EXTRA
Messages to Maude
A brown binder full of
century-old postcards,
intriguing in their humbleness, are among the
treasures of UVM Special
Collections. The cards
are the work of Lauren
Pomeroy, who began his
studies at UVM in 1908,
and faithfully mailed the
postcards to his girlfriend
and future wife, Maude,
back home in Enosburg,
Vermont.
Watch a slideshow
featuring this collection,
which was donated to
the library by Brooks
Buxton ’56.
8
[ s t u d en t li f e ]
pioneering
chinese students
graduate
I
n the summer of 2010,
twenty-eight Chinese
students came to UVM
to pursue bachelor’s
degrees through a newly
adopted U.S. Sino‐Pathway
Program (USPP). When
they came, the university
enrolled just one Chinese
national undergraduate, and
she had attended high school
in the United States. The
USPP students prepared for
UVM over just nine months
Sherry (Si Wei) Zhao ’13
at private education centers
in China, concentrating on
English speaking and writing
skills, American history and
culture. Few had traveled
outside of Asia and nearly
all were single children at
the center of families from
cities with populations of
ten million plus. When they
came to Burlington, they
gave up proximity to doting
parents, favorite festivals
and foods, familiar currency
and language—even their
given names—to immerse in
American university life. Ten of these USPP pioneers graduated in May as
members of the UVM Class
of 2013 with degrees in engineering, business, and film
and television studies.
Sherry (Si Wei) Zhao, the
lone liberal arts major among
the USPP graduates, is clear
about her reasons for coming
to Vermont. “It is so beautiful. And there were very few
Chinese students at UVM,
so I knew my English would
improve,” Zhao says. “Also,
I’m not strong in math or
physics or chemistry, so the
Chinese education system is
not as good for me. Coming
to the U.S. gave me more
choice to follow my interests.”
For Zhao that is television
and film studies. She has also
been a photographer for the
Vermont Cynic and a member of the Lawrence Debate
Union. After graduation, she
returned to Shanghai. “I miss
my mom and home a lot,”
she says. “And working in
the media industry is tough.
I need to go where I have connections.” Zhao will knock on
doors at companies like International Channel Shanghai,
where she had an internship
last summer.
Looking back, Zhao is quick
to say, “This is the most valuable three years that have happened in my last twenty years.
And there are many things I
am going to miss, like Ben &
Jerry’s ice cream and definitely
When the grads go marching in
Wynton Marsalis addresses Class of 2013
Heralding the passage of a college graduation, it’s a happy circumstance to have
one of the world’s foremost trumpeters in the house. A crowd of approximately ten
thousand gathered on the UVM Green May 19 to celebrate the achievements of
more than three thousand UVM students receiving diplomas and passing from the
ranks of students to alumni.
Musician Wynton Marsalis helped them mark the moment, delivering the
University of Vermont 2013 commencement address with a heartfelt talk that was
wise, wry, musical, and throughout—appropriately enough for the father of Simeon
Marsalis, UVM Class of 2013—fatherly. Then the New Orleans native picked up his
trumpet and played “When the Saints Go Marching In,” the crowd clapping time.
As Marsalis directly addressed his son Simeon and, on behalf of all of the
parents in the crowd, all of the graduates, his voice wavered with emotion. “From
every changed diaper to every sickness to every shoulder ride…” Marsalis said
and paused to gather himself as the crowd applauded. “And every bedtime story,
every fight with a curfew, over home, over habits. It’s hard, all of the triumphs and
the failures rolled up into one. All of us, we thank you. All of you give meaning and
depth to our lives and so many good times. We are so proud of you all and we fear
for you. We fear because part of us is not ready to accept that you are grown. But
you are. Still, to us, you will always be our baby. You will always be our child.”
continued on page 10
sally mccay
sally mccay
s ummer 2 0 1 3
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
uvm.edu/vq
provides people with
ways to mimic sensory
environments that
would otherwise be
unavailable.
“Video game designers have figured out
how to create sensoryrich environments that
don’t overload our
cognitive abilities,” she
says. “Cognitive load
theory talks about the
importance of balancing the way that we process
information. Taxing one area
with too much information
can slow the learning process. Our next steps should
be applying these types of
‘gamification’ strategies to
our curriculum design and
learning environments. By
doing this, we can enhance
both our capacity to reach
our students, and perhaps
their capacity to learn.”
9
THEGREEN
‘‘ ’’
[ Q UOT E U N Q UOT E ]
The challenge of the short story
is that it invites perfection, and the challenge
of the novel is that it can never be perfect.
Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize winning writer in a campus talk. For more on Diaz’s
UVM appearance, see the April 23 blog post at vermontquarterly.wordpress.com.
[ DEP’t. OF CORRECTIONS ]
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
A couple of readers called us
to task for using the misleading colloquial name “fisher cat”
rather than the proper “fisher”
in the spring issue’s “Catamount
Chronology” cartoon. We asked
Rosemary Mosco G’10 to help us
set the record straight.
10
my American friends.”
Other USPP graduates
echo Zhao’s feelings about
UVM and about going home.
However, return to China
will not be as immediate
or direct for them. Daniel
(Xie-Cheng) Yuan, a business
major also from Shanghai,
accepted a stockbroker position with Scottrade in the
United States. Yuan interned
with the company, a twentyhour per week commitment,
while taking a full course load
during the past year.
“I’ll definitely go home to
China at some point, when
I want to settle down,” Yuan
says. “Right now the U.S.
corporate culture is appealing because of the diversity
I’ll get. I’m young,” he adds.
“I still want to explore—see
other parts of the country.
There is too much stuff I
don’t want to miss.”
In total, there are 185 fulltime international undergraduate students currently
enrolled at UVM. Eighty-five
are USPP students; twentythree more will arrive on
campus this summer. In
addition, there are forty-four
international undergraduate
exchange students.
[ P O L I T I CA L S C I E N C E ]
DOCUMENTING
LEADERSHIP IN
TROUBLED TIMES
G
eorge Marshall was
U.S. secretary of state
during the volatile late
1940s. The United
States and its Soviet ally split
and the Cold War began, triggering the European Recov-
ery Program (Marshall Plan)
and other key foreign policy
initiatives—the Truman
Doctrine, the Containment
policy, the creation of West
Germany, and the formation
of NATO. Also on Marshall’s
watch: Chinese and Greek
civil wars; the partition of and
wars in Palestine and India,
leading to the creation of
Israel, India, and Pakistan; the
creation of such other states
as Indonesia out of former
European colonies; and a
redefinition of U.S. relations
with Latin America.
It would be difficult to find
a more apt title for the latest volume of George Catlett
Marshall’s papers than The
Whole World Hangs in the Balance. And it might be just as
challenging to find a scholar
better qualified to edit the latest volume than Mark Stoler,
professor emeritus of political
science.
just 3 questions
ASIM ZIA
International efforts to deal with climate change have been—many
experts argue—a spectacular failure. United Nations treaties, including the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that the United States chose not to ratify,
form a very leaky bucket for catching greenhouse gases. A new book,
Post-Kyoto Climate Governance (Routledge), by Asim Zia, assistant
professor in Community Development and Applied Economics and
fellow in the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, ranges across
several disciplines, looking for the causes of failure in international
climate policy and searching for solutions. These may require dramatic new approaches, like global taxes, new forms of organized confrontation, and a willingness to reconsider reflexive attachments, he
argues, like a belief in the benefits of free trade.
Q. Free trade is the quasi-religion of
countries around the world. How does
advocating for limits on free trade fit into
real politics?
A. That’s really the problem here. I call
it, in my book, the politics of ideology.
There’s a free-market, free-trade ideology that is dominating the discourse
in an institutional setting. Or take the
carbon tax. In the EU, the carbon tax
has been aligned with certain green parties or some left-wing parties, so there is
a radicalization of the discourse.
But if you look at it rationally, if you
look at all the analysis, these coupled
human/natural system computer
simulation models will tell you that the
carbon tax and trade tax have low transaction costs, and they would stimulate
local markets.
This approach could revitalize local
communities that are losing their vitality
to grow, for example, local organic food.
And this kind of food production is an
important piece in this picture for reducing methane emissions and reducing
carbon emissions from agro-industrial
systems. Then there are energy implications. Decentralized energy systems
could be promoted, like solar and wind
and community-based energy systems,
through taxes and institutional reforms.
But that is not being talked about.
Whenever somebody mentions
international carbon taxes someone else
says, “Oh, that’s not politically feasible.”
Well, why is that? It’s not really feasible
because those lobbies have been able to
hijack the discourse.
Q. What is it going to take for governments to change and adopt new
approaches to climate?
A. This is a democracy. So there are
always checks and balances, and that is
one of the challenges in climate change.
Historically, policy changes are incremental unless you look at revolutions
like the Stalinistic revolution or the Iranian revolution. And the climate change
challenge is that we need fast change,
radical change, within existing institutions. A carbon tax, an international
trade tax: these are radical changes.
Q. What are your personal hopes and
fears about climate change?
A. I, myself, come from a developing
country. Pakistan is very vulnerable.
Both Pakistan and India are very vul-
nerable to climate change—and they
have done the least to cause it, but they
would suffer the most in the first fifty
years or so.
I have been working there in setting
up early warning systems, dealing with
climate-refugee problems. The massive
flooding in 2010 was part of the trend
of more and more flooding during the
monsoon season. If you look at the
last sixty years of data, you can see
that this is caused by climate change.
So we are trying to understand the
planning regime in Pakistan so that we
don’t have more development in those
regions which would be affected by
floods or droughts.
That is very personal to me. I have
been in the refugee camps. I have seen
people who have been displaced for
years. After the 2010 floods, twenty
million people were displaced and two
million are still displaced today, after
three years. I was there two months ago
and visited a couple of camps. It’s very
personal to me, because those are the
people seeing climate change up front.
See uvm.edu/vq for an extended version
of this interview.
continued on page 12
rosemary mosco g’10
joshua brown
11
Buzzard heads and feather beds
O
Arts & Sciences
ne winter night in Maine, about fifteen years ago, the temperature dropped to seventeen degrees below zero. Thor
Hanson g’00, then a master’s student in UVM’s Field
Naturalist Program, accidentally dropped a can of Budweiser
in the snow. The beer froze solid before it could all drain from
the can. But Hanson, a rather slender fellow, clambered into his
tent, got into his sleeping bag, and felt warm.
HQ named for
Lattie Coor
One of UVM’s most successful and longest-serving
presidents was honored in
May when the administrative headquarters for the
College of Arts and Sciences,
438 College Street, was
newly named Lattie F. Coor
House.
Coor, who served as UVM
president from 1976 to 1989,
spurred advances on many
fronts at the university, work
that helped earn inclusion
in Richard Moll’s influential
1985 book, The Public Ivys. “I deeply appreciate this
honor,” said Coor. “It
affirms my very strong bond
with UVM. I look back at
my time as UVM president
with great pride. Working
together as a team, we
were able to advance the
quality and reputation of
this extraordinary academic
community, enhancing its
long and illustrious tradition
as we did so.” After leaving UVM, Coor
served as president of
Arizona State University,
in his home state, until his
retirement in 2002. That year
he co-founded a think tank,
the Center for the Future
12
its chairman and CEO. He
is currently Professor and
Ernest W. McFarland Chair in
Leadership and Public Policy
at Arizona State’s School of
Public Affairs.
years,” says Stoler.
Recent U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, no
stranger to navigating a turbulent world scene, is an admirer of Marshall’s leadership.
During a visit in April 2012
to Virginia Military Institute
to deliver a speech, Stoler accompanied Clinton on a tour
of the museum and library.
He also inscribed a copy of his
Marshall biography for Clinton after Marshall Foundation
President Brian Shaw recommended the book to her.
In her speech that day,
Clinton emphasized the importance of the three D’s:
diplomacy, defense and development—all hallmarks of
Marshall’s tenure. “No one
lived by those words more
than Marshall, and Clinton
has clearly conducted foreign policy with those ideals
in mind,” says Stoler. “I was
deeply impressed with Secretary Clinton. She’s incredibly
intelligent, intellectually curi-
As U.S. secretaries of state, both
Hillary Clinton and George C.
Marshall shaped foreign policy
in a turbulent world. Professor
Emeritus Mark Stoler, a foremost
Marshall scholar, discussed
Marshall’s life with Clinton during
her visit to the Virginia Military
Institute.
ous, and very knowledgeable.”
Stoler, who has continued
teaching in a visiting professor role at Williams College
since his UVM retirement,
remains engaged with the life
of George Marshall. Volume
six of The Papers of George
Catlett Marshall: The Whole
World Hangs in the Balance
( Johns Hopkins University
Press) was published in January. The seventh and final volume is scheduled for 2015,
picking up Marshall’s life in
1949 when he served as head
of the Red Cross, through his
appointment as secretary of
defense a year later, and up to
his death in 1959.
kevin remington
sally mccay
the narrative in Feathers caroms back and
forth over what Hanson describes as “the
imaginary but very significant boundary
we put between the natural world and the
human world.” We can’t make feathers,
which may be why we love them, collect
them.
“Every culture and every home has feathers in it somewhere,” says Hanson, “and we
use these for so many purposes. You start
asking: why? And then you realize that the
answers are the very same answers for why
these things are so successful in nature,”—
like supreme aerodynamics, unbeatable
insulation, glittering beauty, perfect camouflage, the freedom of flight.
For this book, Hanson reports from a
dusty plain in Kenya where he watches
vultures, with their featherless heads,
dipping into the rotting carcass of a zebra;
from sober shrines to natural history,
including Yale’s Peabody Museum—but
also from Las Vegas, where he tours the
supply house of showgirls: the Rainbow
Feather Company.
Flying dinosaurs, quill pens, outrageous
ostrich-plume hats, the myth of Icarus
(who donned feathers and flew too close
to the sun), the feather money of Santa
Cruz Island, pillows at the Pacific Coast
Feather Company, and electron microscope
images of water droplets on the barbs of a
pigeon—Hanson’s book travels gleefully on
a headlong pursuit of the origin, meaning
and uses of feathers for birds and people. It
even tells why flamingos are pink.
Nope, we’re not going to tell you. You’ll
have to read it to find out.
—Joshua Brown
Slate calls alumna Sidney Wade’s
imagination “as powerful as any
American poet’s since Wallace Stevens.” Her sixth collection, Straits &
Narrows, offers a series of “luminous”
poems, many set lakeside, that with
an economy of words manage to
simultaneously contemplate wild
raspberries, longing and regret, for
example. A past Fulbright Fellow at
Istanbul University, Wade has also
published translations of poems by
Melih Cevdet Anday, Yahya Kemal,
and other Turkish poets. Professor of
English at the University of Florida,
her poetry and translations have
appeared in The New Yorker, The
Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere.
sidneywade.com
The Jew Named Jesus:
Discover the Man and His Message
Abingdon Press
Rebekah Simon-Peter ’83
Rev. Rebekah Simon-Peter’s new
book contributes to interfaith dialogue between Jews and Christians.
“Jesus was Jewish—through and
through,” Simon-Peter says. “Why
is that important? I believe how
we see, name, and claim Jesus has
everything to do with how we see,
name, and claim each other.” An
ordained United Methodist pastor,
the UVM alumna with a degree
in environmental studies came to
the ministry only after work as an
acid rain researcher and volunteer
naturalist. The Jew Named Jesus is
her third book, following two other
publications that make a case for
the urgent need to practice faithbased environmental stewardship.
Learn more about her work:
bridgeworkspresents.org.
ONLINE
EXTRA
uvm.edu/vq
for more book reviews
s ummer 2 0 1 3
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
of Arizona, and serves as
Being asked to work on the
definitive text chronicling the
papers of Marshall, U.S. secretary of state from 1947-49, was
a true honor for Stoler. Ever
modest, he admits his first
thought was that more qualified people must be available.
But the highly distinguished
military and diplomatic historian—and author of the acclaimed biography George C.
Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of
the American Century—was a
clear fit for the job.
His hire as editor of the
Marshall Papers in 2008
by the George C. Marshall
Foundation was also fitting
considering Stoler would be
advancing the work his graduate school classmate Larry
Bland had completed as editor of the first five volumes
and part of the sixth when he
died in 2007. “It’s been a lot of
work, but incredibly gratifying, especially being able to
carry on what my friend Larry
had done so well for so many
It was the down—tiny
goose feathers—in his sleeping bag that
prevented him from suffering a fate similar
to the beer. Amazing feathers.
On that cold night (one of many in
Bernd Heinrich’s famed winter ecology
course), Thor Hanson wondered about
another feathered creature also sleeping
nearby: the golden-crowned kinglet. This
bird weighs five grams, “about the same
as a nickel or teaspoon of salt,” Hanson
writes in his book, Feathers: The Evolution
of a Natural Miracle.
High over his head, in the crook of a fir
branch, the kinglet kept its body about 120
degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the surrounding air. Without the uncanny microstructure of feathers—the most insulating
material in the world—the bird would have
died in a few breaths. Amazing feathers.
This is just one of dozens of featherfascinated, perspective-altering stories
that led Hanson’s book to be selected as
this year’s winner of the John Burroughs
Medal. Given in the past to such luminaries as Rachel Carson and Barry Lopez, it is
considered the highest award for American nature writing.
Hanson credits UVM’s Field Naturalist
Program, and teachers like Heinrich, for
helping to shape this book. “This could
have easily been a narrow ornithological
textbook,” Hanson says, “and yet it’s the
broad perspective that is encouraged in
the FN program that allows this book to
be something that touches on everything
from fashion to golf history.”
Glued together intellectually by a fascination with the intricacies of evolution,
[ BRIEFs ]
Straits & Narrows
Persea Books
Sidney Wade ‘74 M.Ed. ‘78
books & media
JUSTRELEASED
THEGREEN
13
SPORTS
CATAMOUNT
ONLINE
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T H E G R E E N & G O L D : W I N , L O S E , O R dr a w
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V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
14
photography by alex edelman and brian jenkins
SUMMER 3013
s the academic year and
athletic seasons quiet for
the summer, we offer a look
at some of the best images of the
Catamounts competing on court or
field or track, ice or snow or water.
The starting line-up: Kate Ryley,
skiing; Brittany Zuback, women’s
hockey; Marcie Marino, women’s
lacrosse; Zach Paul, men’s soccer;
Andie Blaser, swimming; Thomas
O’Leary, Devin Motivala, Andy Stillman, Dylan Souder, cross-country;
Mimi Eckenstein, women’s soccer;
Katie Craig, diving; Colby Cunningham, track and field; Luke Apfeld,
men’s basketball; Sally Snickenberger, field hockey; Jake Fallon
and Yvan Pattyn, men’s hockey; and
Niki Taylor, women’s basketball.
15
T
o explore the roots of residential learning at UVM,
we could begin one of two places. With an inchthick report, tattered and yellowed, titled “University of Vermont: Project 73 Living/Learning
Center: Request for Design/Build Proposals.” Anyone?
Anyone? Or with Professor Richard Sugarman—affable, rumpled raconteur, learned, spiritual man with a
memory that easily conjures the title of a campus lecture
from forty-one years ago.
Live&
Learn
by Thomas Weaver
16
Agreed, let’s start with the professor.
First, step back a year to before the professor was a
professor, but was a cabbie driving a taxi in Boston—
“very unsuccessfully,” he explains. “Every time I went
somewhere, I ended up on Storrow Drive.” Sugarman
put Boston’s street-maze behind him when a friend
called with a part-time job offer teaching in a new UVM
residential learning venture called the Experimental
Program. Created in 1968 as the brainchild of the late
Professor Bill Daniels, the program was very much a
product of the era. “People would always ask us, ‘Well,
what’s the nature of the experiment?’” Sugarman recalls.
“I would say, ‘Every day.’”
Left: Alyssa Urban ’04,
Clay Studio, Living/
Learning. Above: Tiesha Adams and Theresa
Givens-Mauldin, Caribbean House, Living/
Learning. Above right:
Dewey House for Civic
Engagement, Harris
Hall. Right: Maggie
Love, Jessica Okrant,
Amy Terkelson, Dewey
House, Harris Hall. Ned
Liggett, Integrated
Humanities Program,
Living/Learning.
Relatively free-form in terms of curriculum and
grades, the Experimental Program seemingly ran with
that freedom and a group of highly motivated, liberalminded students who were more than happy to take the
path wherever higher education done differently might
lead.
One example: The Dawn Seminar. As Sugarman
describes it, we envision a land long ago and far away,
a place where the students in Coolidge Hall awoke at
dawn to the cry of a rooster named Kelvin; then, blearyeyed, assembled for a lecture. “Six o’clock in the morning, we would have a presenter come in and speak about
a subject, which would be discussed for the next several
days in all classes, at all times, carrying over into the dining halls,” Sugarman says. “I think it was incredibly effective. A colleague from St. John’s College came and gave
a talk ‘Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer’…
absolutely brilliant talk. Most everybody got a great deal
out of it.”
While the Dawn Seminar, Kelvin Rooster, and the
Experimental Program would prove, to varying degrees,
to be short-lived, they blazed a trail, suggesting that
UVM students’ academic lives and residential lives
didn’t necessarily need to be separate lives at all.
Which brings us back around to that musty document mentioned before, “Project 73: Living/Learning
Center.” While there are mundane matters of square
footage, preferred snack bar foods (pizza, hamburgers,
hot dogs), budget ($6.5 million) and capacity (six hundred students, and ten faculty), there is also a glimpse
of the big picture—why the place was being built in the
first place. And that rationale spun off the educational
wild west pioneered by Sugarman and colleagues.
“This Experimental Program,” the report says “confronted the following three problems of university
education:
fractionation of knowledge
lack of relevance
loss of a sense of intellectual community.”
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
photography by Sally McCay
17
In essence, the Experimental Program was just the
first trial in an experiment that has continued across
decades at UVM and continues today in a variety of residential learning communities that find their own ways
to confront those issues defined in the late sixties.
Cornelia Clay and
Felipe Hoyos,
GreenHouse,
University Heights
South. Wood
workshop and
study areas in
GreenHouse.
LIVING/LEARNING CENTER
18
connection to the place. Sama became a leader in the
Emergency Medicine suite and later a resident assistant
during his student days. Just months after graduation
he returned to L/L for a “one-year” post that, well, has
morphed and grown and is still growing strong. Today,
in addition to his Living/Learning duties, Sama oversees the five other residential learning communities at
the university.
As Living/Learning marks its fortieth birthday in
August, Sama says the labyrinthian block of three-story
brick buildings are still serving students well, particu-
larly thanks to renovations across the past
decade. Programming is also flourishing, with forty
programmed suites this year and more student ideas
proposed annually than the complex can accommodate.
It’s that continual renewal, both in residents and in
programming, that keeps Living/Learning fresh, Sama
says. “We’ve always wanted to be sure we maintained
the opportunity for students to create programs because
that gives us a lot of richness. It would be very easy for
the university to say we can’t afford to have this luxury of
having students come up with random ideas. But I think
it’s that randomness that makes us interesting.”
Asked for an example of this randomness, Sama ponders a moment, then recalls a proposal for “Exploring
Culture Through Tea.” He admits to fully anticipating
an, uh, “BS” presentation. But, instead, listened to students present a thoughtful, thorough pitch that delved
into history, culture, ritual and and would prove to be
an engaged suite that brought an inclusive, international
flavor to all of Living/Learning.
“For years I was pretty defensive about people thinking we were the ‘crunchy granola’ place,” Sama admits.
“But I finally embraced it.” (Footnote: L/L’s computer
server was once named “Granola.”) Embracing that
identity, Sama says, meshes with Living/Learning’s
enduring reputation as a place that celebrates diversity—whether that’s racial/ethnic/sexual identity or
the “outsiderness” of a suite of kids passionate about
their science fiction.
“I think that’s one of the most important things about
Living/Learning,” Sama says. “Lots of people find a
place here.”
next generation
Just as the opening of the Living/Learning Center
in 1973 introduced a new era in residential learning at UVM, so it was with the opening of University
Heights in 2005. Many generations of UVM alumni
will remember University Heights as an incongruous
neighborhood of humble ranch houses plopped down
in the middle of campus. Razing the houses and creating some eight hundred new beds of student housing in
the two adjacent complexes, University Heights North
and South, was a key element in the campus transformation that took place during Daniel Mark Fogel’s years as
UVM president.
Inside or out—private bathrooms, air-conditioning,
green roofs—these were not your dad’s cinderblock
dorm. Beyond the amenities, the new buildings would
be about community and were built with a mind to
that—seminar rooms, lounge space with fireplaces,
kitchens, faculty/staff offices, and faculty apartments.
UHeights North, as it’s known in campus shorthand,
is home to the university’s Honors College. Abu Rizvi,
dean of the college and professor of economics, offers a
historical perspective on the rationale for a residential
learning community such as the HC. “There is a long
Anglo-American tradition—the residential colleges at
Oxford and Cambridge, the houses at Harvard and Yale.
Cotton Mather said that in the United States there is a
distinctly ‘collegiate’ way of living.
“Students were not anonymous. They didn’t interact primarily with other seventeen to twenty year olds.
There wasn’t this huge division between what happened
in the classroom and what happened for you the rest of
the day,” Rizvi says. “Those were much more tightly integrated in the past and in many places—and that was one
thing we wanted to recreate.”
He adds that he, founding dean of the Honors College Bob Taylor, and colleagues were motivated by current research as much as centuries-old tradition. Literature on student learning in higher education, Rizvi
notes, indicates that as much as half of the learning that
goes on in colleges takes place outside of the classroom.
Core to the Honors College experience is a common
course that students take in fall of their first year. The
first-year students also all take part in a lecture series
on the theme of diversity and weekly plenary lectures.
And there are less formal events—such as a chili night in
January hosted by resident faculty Guillermo Rodriguez
and Steve Budington with their spouses—that knit the
community together.
continued on page 61
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
Had John Sama ’84 taken the counsel of his campus
tour guide during a prospective student visit to UVM
more than thirty years ago, the development of residential learning initiatives at the university might have
taken a very different course. The director of Living/
Learning is sitting in his homey, comfortably cluttered
office as he recalls this advice he eventually chose to
ignore.
“He said that L and L wasn’t a good place for firstyear students to meet other first-year students,” Sama
says. Nevertheless, Sama was tempted by the fact that
Living/Learning was a fresh, six-year-old facility, and
discovering a suite, Emergency Medicine, that aligned
with his personal interests impelled him to sign on.
Some thirty-six years later, it would be difficult to
find anyone at the university with a deeper history and
19
T
he study and practice of food systems threads through academic disciplines,
across political boundaries, and into the lives of every individual on the planet. As
complex as these questions are, they might be boiled down to this—creating positive approaches to food for the wellbeing of the environment, farmers, and ourselves.
Extension Dean Doug Lantagne ’77 directs UVM’s Transdisciplinary Research Initiative on Food Systems, a focus particularly well-suited to Vermont. On a visit to the state
several years ago, author Michael Pollan, a leading voice in the food movement, was struck by
the passion, expertise, and innovation he found in Vermont and at the state’s university. Read
on for a glimpse of some of this work being done by UVM faculty, students, and alumni.
Agriculture & Aesthetics
A social geographer’s view
“F
20
ood systems, to me,” says Cheryl Morse, assistant professor of
geography, “is not just about food choice. It’s about the landscape that provides the food.” Here in Vermont, the look of that
landscape—the idyllic pastoral scene, the “sweeping view with
a mountain in the background and a maple tree in the foreground”—
cuts right to the soul of the state for most people. The irony, Morse
says, is that classic mix of farm buildings, open land and forest was a
nineteenth century creation of the state to lure back people who had
fled after the Civil War, whether as tourists or to live. “They crafted
a narrative about the rural ideal and the agrarian landscape of Vermont,” she says. Leave the land alone, and it wants to be trees.
ways to grow,
think about,
and EAT food
by Joshua Brown | Megan Camp ’84 | Lee Ann Cox | Jon Reidel G’06 |
photographs by andy duback. clockwise from top left: fat toad farm;
montpelier, vERMONt farmer’s market; STAFFORD ORGANIC CREAMERY; crawford family farm cheese
20
summer 2013
Amanda Waite ’02 G’04 | Jeff Wakefield | Thomas Weaver | Dave Zuckerman ’95
According to Morse, it’s not just agriculture that’s keeping spaces open but private
landowners who see scrubby boundaries
creeping in and bring out the brush hog. “It
makes people really sad,” she says. “It makes
them think people aren’t taking care of the
land. So it’s not so much an ecological perspective they’re coming from, it’s more from
a cultural historical legacy.”
But Morse also sees the agricultural census data showing an increase in the number
of very large farms and a proliferation of very
small, very active farms making little money.
Middle-size farms, she says, are reducing in
number. There’s both landscape and livelihood to keep alive in the state.
Her overarching research question is, in
towns that have very large dairy operations
versus towns that don’t, has the landscape
changed and how, and how have people’s
lives changed? “I’m interested in what is happening to the land cover but more in why
it’s happening and what choices farmers are
making and under what conditions. What
are the factors that drive them to enter or exit
farming and what drives a landowner to keep
a field open? To understand the whole food
system we have to understand the economic
and political environment that farmers are
operating in and we also have to understand
the social relations between farmers and consumers. Ultimately this will become a policy
question. There’s got to be an acknowledgement that different types of farming are going
to produce different kinds of outcomes.”
21
Mastering Food Systems
In 2012, UVM launched a graduate
degree program in food systems, giving
students an in-depth view into collaborative problem solving of contemporary
issues with thirty teacher-scholars from
disciplines across the university: anthropologists to nutritionists, plant and soil
scientists to experts in community development and applied economics. The twoyear program concentrates on applied
skills and research, allowing students to
find their focus in a very wide field.
We asked a few members of the first
cohort three questions:
1. What were your undergraduate
studies?
2. Why study food systems?
3. What are your future goals?
Cecile Reuge
1. Anthropology, UVM
2. Growing up in a food-oriented family—her parents are longtime restaurant
owners—and working on a farm herself
as a teen, Reuge was excited to discover
an academic track in food. “I see this as
an emergent field so I feel good being
part of that.”
3. Working as a researcher for a foodbased union or other community
organization.
Andrea Suozzo
22
Suozzo liked writing about food policy
and agriculture, but also realized how
little she knew. Covering the farm bill,
she felt the reporting was focused on
economic and policy implications in
Washington rather than the impact on
farmers. “I realized there was a real lack
of journalism in that area so I started
looking for a program that could help
me fill that role.”
3. Food and agriculture journalism.
continued on page 23
Monument Farms
MONUMENT FARMS: ANDY DUBACK; HAMBURGER: SALLY MCCAY
THE ETHICS OF EATING
continued
“There’s an attitude about food which is something like: ‘To each his own,’” Tyler Doggett, assistant
professor of philosophy, explains. “That’s the right attitude to have about hairstyles, glasses, or
clothes. But with food, there’s no way to avoid eating things that were at some point living.” 1. Biology and chemistry, Saint Michael’s
Killing kale or bugs for food might
be OK. “But god forbid you eat a
dolphin. Or a human being. No one
would think, if you were having a
human sandwich, ‘to each his own.’
environmental science, Achilich was
increasingly finding resources based in
agriculture and food. That and a lifelong
interest in nutrition drew her to augment her molecular-focused education.
“This program seemed like a perfect
fit—learning and making my own
meaning through research and applied
experience.”
3. Long term, a doctorate in food
systems or community nutrition; short
term, curriculum consulting and applied
work in the farm-to-school arena.
And I remember thinking, ‘that’s kind of weird. Maybe it’s wrong to eat certain things; maybe
it’s not.’ I’d at least like to think about that.”
Across the past five years, Doggett has thought, taught, and published a great deal on just that.
His “Ethics of Eating” course is a provocative seminar and a strong draw for students. His publications include both the first textbook for undergraduates and the first handbook for graduate
students on the ethics of eating, both of which he is co-authoring.
Don’t ethicists like Doggett unnecessarily complicate things that are challenging enough
already—like the dinner menu?
“It’s not like I’m complicating things,” the professor says. “I think what I’m pointing out is that
things are more complicated than we thought.”
The Vermont Highland
Grass-Fed Burger
Served up at Brennan’s, where more
than 50 percent of fare—from
buttermilk pancakes to the tofu
taco—meets the Real Food Campus
Commitment guidelines.
In March 2012, UVM was the fifth
school in the U.S. to sign on to the
commitment, pledging to increase
sustainable fare at campus eateries
to 20 percent by 2020. To count as
“real food,” offerings must be fairly
traded, of low environmental impact,
local, and/or humanely produced.
Thanks to a focused effort, more than
28 percent of meat is now sourced
locally. At current count, about 14
percent of the food University Dining
Services provides is “real.”
Kristyn Achilich
College
2. As a high school teacher delving into
Rachel DiStefano
1. Psychology, Bates College
2. In addition to her work in the social
sciences, DiStefano had completed premed requirements, but she wasn’t ready
to pigeonhole herself in any field. “This
allows me to use food as a way to get at
health in a preventative way and look at
social relationships with food.”
3. Long term, a doctorate in psychology with a food focus, food systems, or
public health; short term, policy work for
the Department of Agriculture or Health
or a nonprofit research position.
Kristina Sweet
1. Anthropology, Columbia University
2. Sweet views the program as a logical
result of her previous work, both cooking professionally and focusing on food
through the academic lens of anthropology. “I’m learning things that I wouldn’t
have been able to articulate a year ago in
terms of research skills and how I understand the complexities of the food system.”
3. Working for a nonprofit focusing on
food or a Ph.D. program in geography
with a food systems focus.
summer 2013
V ERM O N T Q U A R T ER L Y
1. English, Middlebury College
2. Working for the Addison Independent,
I
n 1931, when Richard and Marjory James started milking their
small herd of Jersey cows in
Weybridge, Vermont, it’s a good
bet they weren’t considering an
abstract concept like “food systems.”
Within a couple of years, they took
another step, deciding that bottling and
selling milk themselves would increase
the promise of their operation. And
as Monument Farms Dairy, now in its
third generation of family management,
has steadily grown it’s remained true to
guiding principles that are both bedrock Vermont virtues and twenty-first
century food system gospel.
“It’s what we’ve done and believed all along,” says Monument Farms’ Jon Rooney ’80.
“It’s very important to think about where your food comes from, and it’s very important
that you try to buy locally when you can. It is at the core of everything. We could just be
making milk and shipping it to Boston, but we’d much rather be feeding people around
here. Certainly from a business point of view,” he adds with a quiet laugh, “we’d much
rather that people buy our products because of that and because of the quality.”
Rooney works together with his cousins Bob and Pete James to run Monument
Farms—along the same section of James Road, a few miles north of Middlebury,
where their grandparents started out on twenty-eight acres. They milk about five
hundred cows; crop some 1,800 of their 2,300 acres; employ thirty-five on the farm,
in the plant, and making deliveries; and process 75,000 pounds of milk four days a
week.
It’s a progressive operation with best farming practices such as the recent addition of an anaerobic digester that processes manure and produces electricity from the
methane. On the business side, the dairy has partnered with Burlington’s City Market,
Hunger Mountain Co-op, and Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op, to sell their product
under a Vermont Co-op Milk/Monument Farms label. Such initiatives helped Rooney
earn the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Outstanding Alumni Award in 2010.
Rooney, who studied dairy science at UVM, runs the processing plant at Monument Farms and the cousins trade off duties as president every two years. Though he
served with the Peace Corps in Guatemala and worked for Hood Dairy in Massachusetts for several years, Rooney says he always knew he’d return to Vermont and the
family farm, which he did twenty-eight years ago. The roots are deep, and a tour of
the dairy includes a stop by the business office to meet his mother, Millicent Rooney
’49, still working as treasurer at age eighty-four. Her late husband, James Rooney ’50,
is also part of the family’s legacy at the farm.
When Monument Farms marked its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2006, three thousand people showed up for the celebration, testimony to what the dairy means to the
community. “We take a lot of pride in that most people in this area also take pride in
what we do,” Jon Rooney says. “And we don’t take it for granted.”
Mastering Food Systems
23
“
You sell cheese to France now.
UVM Food Feed
Urban agriculture in Burlington.
Public policy on taxing sugar-laden
beverages. Insights on the current
state of U.S. farm labor. A recipe for a
mean French Canadian pork pie. Since
April 2012, a number of members
of the UVM faculty and others with
expertise and interest in food systems
have taken on diverse topics, posting
away on UVM Food Feed, a blog
focused on sustainable food systems
and the University of Vermont.
Cynthia Belliveau, dean of UVM Continuing Education and a key player
in food systems work at UVM and in
the state, initiated UVM Food Feed.
“We want to bring together people
who are passionate about re-creating
our food system to make it more
sustainable in its practice and more
equitable in its access,” she writes.
learn.uvm.edu/foodsystemsblog
Posted in Economic, Environmental,
Health, Social | Leave a comment
Chuck Ross’ 78, state secretary of agriculture, speaking at a recent Northeast Organic Farming Association meeting held at UVM.
Call to [r]Evolution
The Food Systems Summit
A
bold idea from former Interim President John Bramley in the fall of 2011—that
UVM host a large, intellectually vibrant, international institute surrounding
the multilayered issue of sustainable food—was realized by summer 2012 with
more than three hundred people converging on campus—including attendees
from Mexico, Canada and as far away as the UK. Through a diverse group of speakers
and workshops the summit delved into the broad question of how to create regional
food systems that are viable alternatives to the status quo—a global, ecologically, and
economically unsustainable means of feeding the world.
This summer’s theme will narrow to focus on scale, looking at rural versus urban food
systems and considering what local means within these different contexts, recognizing
the need to customize approaches for different regions. Food activists from New York
City will be speaking from their own experiences, balancing their perspectives with that
of Vermont’s “living laboratory” for creating new models of success in sustainability.
“What we really want,” says Cynthia Belliveau, dean of Continuing Education and a
summit organizer, “is a convergence of ideas as issues of food security, production and
distribution become increasingly critical. There are a lot of questions but there haven’t
been as many answers in the form of actionable solutions. The key here is to combine
UVM’s expertise with experts from around the world, to be honest about the issues, and
learn from what we’ve all experienced in our different environments.”
Seventeen talks from last year’s conference can be viewed here:
learn.uvm.edu/sustainability/food-summit/food-systems-conference/ 2012-conference-videos/
Video of this year’s conference will be posted in July.
Green Mountain rice paddies?
rice seeds and island pond store: joshua brown; chuck ross: IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST
FOOD DESERTS
THE PROBLEM Food deserts, regions the U.S. Department
of Agriculture describes as places with largely low-income populations and few or no places to buy affordable, healthy food.
THE PLACE Island Pond, population 1,260, in Vermont’s
Northeast Kingdom.
THE RESEARCH Linda Berlin, professor in the Department
of Nutrition and Food Sciences and director of UVM’s Center for
Sustainable Agriculture, leads the Vermont component of a multistate study. Working with colleagues and students, Berlin is
gathering information regarding consumers’ buying habits, local
stores’ inventories, and exploring the supply chain through which
food travels to the Kingdom.
THE GOAL
The researchers want to link what have often been
seen as separate problems. On the one hand, 12 percent of the
population in the Northeast, more than seven million people,
are food insecure, according to the USDA. This means they face
a challenge getting healthy, affordable food—and all the health
problems, like obesity, hunger, and diabetes that are associated
with this challenge.
On the other hand, regional farmers are struggling to stay in
business, the land base for agriculture in the Northeast continues to decline, and a large percentage of fruits and vegetables
eaten here—that can be grown in the Delaware-to-Maine corridor—are transported from farms in the Midwest, California,
Mexico, and other parts of the world.
The researchers want to show that both problems can—and
maybe need to be—addressed together. The plan: build a powerful model of how the whole system works. The hope: enhance the
supply and availability of foods grown in the Northeast region.
The Big Picture
N
ine billion by 2050. When Chuck Ross ’78, Vermont’s secretary of agriculture, discusses farming’s future he puts it in the
stark numbers of the world’s projected population growth
and the challenge that will be faced in feeding all of those people.
An eighth-generation Vermonter who lives in Hinesburg on the
same farm where he grew up, Ross has witnessed firsthand the
intersection of population growth, agriculture, and land use.
He recalls countless car rides from Hinesburg to Gutterson for
youth hockey practices and how he saw that landscape change year
by year. While the ice time would help him develop into a future
Catamount player, the rapidly developing farmland he watched roll
by out the car window sparked his interest in ecology and economics and subsequent work in government and public policy.
Ross sees reason for optimism in Vermont’s approach to agriculture. He counts the state as a leader on many fronts—building
community supported agriculture, farm to school programs, use
of bio-digesters, artisanal cheese, the maple industry, and finding
innovative ways to conserve farmland, among others.
Drawing food producers and food consumers closer is a common theme in Vermont. Ross suggests the erosion of that connection in American society led to difficulty in getting a national
farm bill passed this year. “We don’t understand our food system,”
Ross says. “We do not understand what is involved in our agriculture system to put a sirloin steak on the table or understand that
a manure spreader going down the road is not an obstacle to getting to work but is actually recycling nutrients.”
Ross calls this need to build agriculture and food system literacy one of the biggest challenges ahead and, again, sees his home
state helping lead the way. “People want to know what they’re
buying—how it’s raised, organic, local, New England, Vermont.
And our farmers are meeting that demand. That is helping to educate a whole new population of people about the food system and
agriculture,” he says.
summer 2013
The laboratory is the kitchen of Faren Worthington’s student apartment in Burlington. Jon Kraus holds up
a small envelope. “Are we doing the Akitakomachi?” he asks. “We are,” says Worthington. Kraus and John
Butler tip out their envelopes, pouring seeds, like a tiny stream of amber jewels, into a bowl of water.
Butler skims seeds off the water’s surface. “The ones that float aren’t good,” he says.
The undergrad trio is germinating rice from Japan—to test at Erik Andrus’s farm in Ferrisburgh.
Their experimental equipment: bowl, strainer, canning jars—and, from a USDA seed bank, envelopes
labeled Matsumae, Hokkai 223, Hayayuki, Hokkai 116, and Akitakomachi.
As their senior capstone project, these three students in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment
and Natural Resources are helping Andrus start, transplant, and, at summer’s end, harvest this rice. Their
field trials aim to find which of these cold-hardy varieties perform best on Andrus’s patch of clay plain bottomland. He’s starting his third year of rice production and has an eye toward building a local seed supply.
Last year, Andrus sold 2,400 pounds, perhaps the first Northeast farm to sell rice in quantity. Now
there are at least five Vermont farms testing it. As the state grows warmer—with more intense rainfalls and a burgeoning market for local grains—Andrus and these students imagine Vermont’s wetter
farmlands dotted with rice paddies.
24
”
Think about that.
25
26
Amy Trubek, associate professor of nutrition and food
sciences, is a cultural anthropologist and expert on terroir,
the idea that food tastes of its unique locale and that
it’s influenced by the hands and hearts of its producers.
She has helped create the “Map of Maple,” a collaborative effort between UVM researchers and the State of
Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Foods & Markets, along
with sugarmakers and sensory panelists. The map demonstrates that terroir, while more commonly associated
with wine, affects the sensory qualities of maple syrup.
Used in workshops for sugarmakers, among other venues,
the map serves as a tool to help producers, retailers, and
consumers engage around the intrinsic complexity of
Vermont syrup in a fun and thoughtful way.
Gardens within farms
C
nthropologists note contradictions. Take
this one: On Vermont’s approximately
970 remaining dairy farms there are at
least 1,200 Spanish-speaking migrant workers,
mostly from Mexico. Many of these workers put
in seventy or more hours per week, producing
perhaps half the state’s milk. Many have years of
experience growing staple crops, like corn, back
in Chiapas or other parts of Central America.
And yet—here’s the contradiction—many of
them have a hard time getting food in Vermont.
Sometimes feeling trapped on farms, sending
large portions of their pay to family members
back home, often without access to transportation, and not finding familiar foods in grocery
stores, these workers contend with varying
degrees of food insecurity.
“People that are directly putting food on the
proverbial American Table are going hungry or
facing nutritional deficiencies—that is a very
striking issue,” says professor of anthropology
Teresa Mares. Her research aims to understand
the complex networks, both in local communities and the global economy, that make this
problem possible.
Mares wants to better understand the situation these people face—and she also wants to
help directly. Which is why last year she joined
forces with Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland, the
migrant health coordinator with UVM Extension’s Bridges to Health program. Since 2009,
Wolcott-MacCausland has helped lead a project
called Huertas, which in Spanish means “kitchen
garden.” And that is exactly what the project
provides.
On about twenty-five dairy farms in Franklin
County (where Wolcott-MacCausland herself
grew up on a dairy farm), and a handful in other
parts of the state, farm owners, Latino workers,
community volunteers, and UVM students
have joined together to build gardens. With
donated seedlings, the workers grow foods they
want, many that are part of traditional Mexican
cooking: jalapenos, epazote, tomatoes, cilantro,
onions, and habeneros.
It’s a harvest that plays a role in both feeding
the body and also bringing people together to
ease the pangs of isolation.
offee helps Ernesto Mendez think about Vermont farms. Sure, he
loves a hot cup. But it’s the entire coffee system—from Central
American smallholder farms to that $4.25 cup of Starbucks—that
really gives him insights.
Mendez, professor of agroecology and environmental studies,
has spent years with coffee farmers in his native El Salvador, as well as
Costa Rica, Panama, and elsewhere. “I was asking: how can these coffee
farms be more ecologically sound?” Mendez says. Then, in 1999, the bottom fell out of the market. “All of a sudden there is this global price crisis
that these farmers have no control over. They don’t even know where the
price gets set.”
For Mendez, this coffee crisis—that lasted until 2004, sending thousands of farmers off their land and into poverty—sparked deep reflection
about his chosen field: agroecology.
Agroecology is an especially barnacled academic term. It first appeared
in scientific journals in the 1930s, connecting ecological ideas to traditional crop planning. By the 1970s—paddling in the wake of the Green
Revolution and environmental movements—agroecology was expanding
its view to entire food systems, informed by ecological sciences.
But, as Mendez’s coffee studies make clear, many of the challenges of
making food systems ecologically sound extend far beyond ecological
science. They’re about politics and justice—a truth reflected in a recent
broadening of the field’s focus.
“In the more natural-science type of agroecology, it’s easy to say: I just
want to make dairy production more ecologically sound,” Mendez says.
Sounds good. But that approach “ignores the fact that there are all these
price issues and subsidy issues,” he says, that fundamentally determine
whether a farmer’s effort to, say, invest in soil fertility will have a chance
to succeed.
Mendez is blunt: “The global food system is really messed up and unfair,”
he says, which is “the main problem farmers are facing.” Building on his long
study of coffee, Mendez’s newer research
projects in Vermont, including one
exploring how farms might best
adapt to climate change, all
begin by listening deeply
to farmers and finding
out what research they
think might help them
remain on the land.
A
The question that focuses my research
Rocki-Lee Dewitt, professor of business, grew up working on her family’s New
York dairy farm. That personal experience grounds her academic pursuits
regarding family business and agriculture.
“
What role do family businesses
play in the emergence and evolution
of industries, specifically those that
are land-based?
“We tend to think of family businesses as stewards. Are they? Do they shape
what is considered the appropriate use of resources? Does their persistence
from generation to generation help explain why practices become institutionalized and help shape competitive expectations?
“Of course, there is a surprise in all of this. We tend to think of the ‘family
business’ as the iconic mother, father, and children working together. It pulls
at our emotions and desire to reward those who toil on our behalf. But, family
businesses, businesses that are owned and operated by related parties, come in
so many sizes and approaches that I frequently wonder how the selective use
of family imagery causes us to be less mindful of just what is going on in our
food systems.”
Epiphany in a tamale
Amy Trubek has long fought a cultural stigma to her research—the notion
that embracing the sensual experience of food is either unseemly or rings of elitism. But taking students on a study trip to Oaxaca, Mexico last spring, learning to
make a local specialty, tamales de chepil, from women in a small Zapotec village,
Trubek watched a scene play out that confirmed her deep-rooted beliefs about
those who take time and care with food. The family matriarch called away, a relative added what seemed to Trubek to be an excessive amount of salt. Later, when
everyone joined to share the meal, the matriarch was aghast tasting the tamales,
insisting on remaking them so the Americans could taste the dish as it should be.
Here, in a situation Trubek describes as one of poverty, was a cook invested in her
art. “Yes!” thought Trubek. “Confirmation that expertise creates sensory analysis
and sensory analysis means you understand the concept of the good.”
coffee cup: sabin gratz ’98; crawford family farm: andy duback
summer 2013
V ERM O N T Q U A R T ER L Y
Map of Maple
Beyond the beans
27
{
We’ve come a long way
from not so long ago when
farmers hesitated to label
their food ‘organic’ because
they worried people would
assume there were worms
in their broccoli.”
Enid Wonnacott G’92, director of Northeast Organic Farming
Association of Vermont, speaking at an April 9 panel
discussion on “UVM and the Future of Vermont’s Agriculture.”
Field Experience
28
Under the sun
I
by Megan Camp ’84
A
cross the past fifteen years, a quiet revolution
has taken place in Vermont as initiatives have
been launched to help schools build relationships with farmers in their communities, serve local
foods in their cafeterias, and integrate food, farming,
and nutrition education into their curricula. These
diverse efforts fall under the umbrella label “Farm to
School” and they are the work of thousands—farmers, parents, teachers, administrators, doctors, nurses,
food service staff, funders, businesses, nonprofits and
government, including our Vermont legislators and
congressional delegation.
Over the past decade, 60 percent of Vermont
schools have started a Farm to School program
and the adoption rate is accelerating. In 2007, the
first Farm to School legislation in the country was
passed and funded in Vermont, creating a small grant
program for schools. Programs as small as one school
and as large as a whole region have blossomed into a
statewide network.
What does that mean for Vermont? Farm to School
enables every child to have access to nutritious food
while building markets for local farmers. It offers
nutrition and agriculture education, school garden
development, composting programs, and farm
visits. Teachers, food service staff, students and their
families learn where their food comes from, who grew
their food, and how their food choices affect their
health, the environment, and their communities.
What could it mean for the nation? In 2010, a White
House Summit on Childhood Obesity identified Farm
to School as one of the top five strategies for improving student health and nutrition. Thanks to support
from Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vermont was the first Farm to
School program to receive funding from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention to evaluate best
practices. There’s reason to hope that ten years from
now the United States might look back on a national
Farm to School revolution and find its roots right here
in Vermont.
Megan Camp ’84 is vice president and program director of Shelburne Farms, a nonprofit education center
that offers programs for youth, families, and adults on
sustainable farming and food. This essay is excerpted
from a piece that appeared in the Burlington Free Press
in August 2010.
intervale: sally mccay
Market Day
by David Zuckerman ’95
F
armers markets, more than just a place to buy veggies, are
about a return to community. From the perspective of both
a farmer and state senator, I find that these markets provide
essential and vital opportunities for people in our state to
come together. For me, it’s a key place to connect—with customers, friends, constituents. And as I overhear countless conversations
among neighbors, it’s clear I’m not alone in that.
For twenty-six weeks each season, on Saturday mornings, City
Hall Park in Burlington comes alive. Starting around 6:30 in the
morning, we vendors of agricultural goods, prepared foods, and a
variety of handcrafted Vermont products come together to set up
our booths. As we all exchange our greetings, stories are shared
from the past week. We’re truly a community in our own right.
Soon enough, the people of Greater Burlington start to arrive—
retired bank officers, teachers, janitors, software developers, hair
cutters, government workers, pilots, dog owners, teenagers, folks
dressed to the nines as well as just about every other stripe from
the community. While they’re certainly in the park because of the
freshest vegetables and baked goods, what is really happening is far
more than commerce. Customers start inquiring about things on
the farm, discussing recent news, and connecting with friends from
throughout the community.
Between weighing vegetables and making sales, I see all of this
from my stand at the market. I revel in the spirit of what happens
in downtown Burlington on those Saturday mornings and know
that the same scene plays out in so many other towns and villages
throughout Vermont. It’s a joy to be there watching folks slow down
to appreciate what we have as a community.
David Zuckerman ’95, together with his wife, Rachel Nevitt, owns and
runs the organic Full Moon Farm in Hinesburg. He is also a Vermont
state senator representing Chittenden County.
dave zuckerman, high tunnel: joshua brown
ce crystals and dust blow up from the winter-gray fields of
Jericho Settlers Farm. It’s early April. A crowd of perhaps
twenty-five farmers stomp their boots and blow on their
mittens, waiting to get into a tunnel.
The owners of this farm, Christa Alexander and Mark Fasching, point to the tunnel’s entrance. There is nothing hobbitlike about it. Instead, a delicious warm breeze washes across
our faces as we go in and sunlight filters in from all sides.
This is a “high tunnel,” basically a metal-pipe-frame shed
covered in two layers of translucent plastic. It’s a low-cost
variant of the traditional glass greenhouse. The farmers are
here, on a tour sponsored by NOFA-VT and UVM Extension, to
learn how a high tunnel might extend their growing seasons.
Thousands of onion, tomato, and cilantro seedlings stretch in
a green lawn across metal tables.
For Professor Vern Grubinger, the vegetable and berry specialist at UVM Extension, these tunnels are one of dozens of
innovations he sees adding up to a quiet revolution in American agriculture that Vermont farmers are helping to lead.
He lists the ongoing rise of organic farming techniques,
artisan cheese, expanding farmers markets, wholesale “food
hubs,” direct sales from farms to schools, oilseed crops for onfarm fuel production, “deep zone” tillage, and many others—
including various flavors of tunnels and hoop-houses.
These range from unheated ones made from scrap lumber
to elegant giants that roll on metal rails with sophisticated
fan and heating systems—but one goal is the same: capture
winter as a profitable season for farming. Some hardy greens
can be extended past New Year’s and other plants can be held
dormant, ready for market in early spring.
“The main heat in here is propane?” asks Chris Callahan, an
agricultural engineer with UVM Extension who is helping to
lead this tour.
“And the sun,” says Mark Fasching.
summer 2013
V ERM O N T Q U A R T ER L Y
The UVM Farmer Training Program is an intensive, six-month program for
aspiring farmers and food system advocates that provides a hands-on
education in sustainable agriculture. The program offers participants the
opportunity to manage their own growing site, take classes with faculty
and expert farmers, and work and learn on diverse, successful farms in
the Burlington area. Participants earn a Certificate in Sustainable Farming, a deeper understanding of agricultural management and small-scale
farming, and the entrepreneurial skills to start their own operations.
The farmland in Burlington’s Intervale, just a mile from campus, is a key
resource for the program.
Farm 2 School
29
UVM PEOPLE
by Jon Reidel G’06
photo by Mario Morgado
Howard Averill ’85
The Spark Howard Averill ’85, chief financial officer of Time Inc., fully realized his love of numbers
during his semester in an accounting class with Professor Peter Battelle. But, years later, he would
make another important realization—that financial numbers felt hollow unless they were connected
to something meaningful. A self-professed newshound, Averill experienced this firsthand at NBC
Universal in chief financial officer roles at MSNBC, NBC News, and NBC Universal Television,
where he was part of the news planning process while handling the financial aspects of producing
“NBC News,” “The Today Show,” “Nightly News,” “Dateline,” and “Meet the Press.” “It’s not just widgets and numbers, it’s how you plan to cover one of the most expensive news events in history ten
thousand miles away in Iraq, or 9/11, or the 2000 presidential election,” says Averill. “CFO roles in
companies like this put you in the middle of everything.”
The Ladder An early job with Pepsi helped lay the groundwork for future success, Averill says. “I
learned about all these systems for how to plan and little quirky stuff you don’t really think about—
but turns out matters. A lot of people in my field who are way smarter than me never learned about
operations or how things work.” Averill, who would move on to ITT/Sheraton before advancing
to NBC Universal and Time, admits he’s sometimes questioned whether he was ready for the next
step. “I remember thinking after the MSNBC job, ‘I’ve finally reached a level beyond what I can
handle.’ I’d always call my oldest brother Jim ’80, and he’d say, ‘What are you nuts? You’ve got to go
for that.’ Fortunately, they’ve all worked out so far.”
Day to Day Averill catches the 5:30 morning train from his home in Westchester County to his
office on the thirty-fourth floor of the Time-Life Building in Rockefeller Center, where he oversees
the finances of the $4 billion international publishing company and its 120 magazines and fifty websites. Budgeting and forecasting, financial reports, audits, and taxes take up much of his time, but
no day is ever the same. Averill is currently focused on helping Time continue its development in
the digital age. “It’s a little tough lately because we’re in an industry that’s going through some major
changes, but we’re figuring it out, which is what makes it so exciting,” he says. “Trying to transform an
industry is really tricky, but I love being part of it.”
30
one of five boys in his family to graduate from UVM. He briefly considered being a doctor or a
dentist, like his brothers David ’80 and Paul ’83 who went to work for their father, Charlie, at his
practice on Pearl Street. But that epiphany in Peter Battelle’s class sharpened his focus on economics and accounting. “I loved UVM,” says Averill, who met his wife, Sharon, in Bailey-Howe Library.
“My friends said I spent too much time in the library, but I loved what I was doing and studying
that stuff. If you love it, you get better at it. And that has been the case throughout my career.” VQ
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
College Years Averill is a Burlington native who grew up just down the hill from Redstone,
31
the Lessons of a
long, long drive
In which a one-time SGA president
hits the road in search of his own kind
by Jay M. Taylor ’10
32
After graduating from UVM three years ago, I immediately
began the kind of first job out of college that makes one’s parents sufficiently happy. I was working at UVM for Sodexo, the
university’s foodservice partner: full-time, good benefits, and
it even kept me in the Burlington and UVM worlds.
There was only one problem. Well, two really. First, I probably should have taken some time to travel between graduation and finding that “real job.” Not doing so made me more
than a little stir crazy. The second issue was that at some point
near the end of my two-plus years with Sodexo, I came to the
realization that—long-term—it just wasn’t for me.
portrait by Andy Duback
travel photos by Jay M. Taylor ’10
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
This whole thing is probably Pat Brown’s fault.
So I gave notice that I was stepping down but had no plan for the immediate future
beyond “going driving for a few months.” Wise? Certainly not. Scary? Terrifying. Necessary? Definitely. I’d laugh, maybe a bit uncomfortably, as I talked of “going driving” when
people would invariably ask that dreaded “what’s next?” question.
Then I ran into Pat Brown. If you know Pat, as generations of UVM grads do, you
know that he has a rare wisdom born from his years growing up a surfer in Florida, followed by decades of gently guiding young people via UVM’s Department of Student
Life. I’d worked with Pat quite closely during my term as UVM’s student government
president. He knew me, knew my type, and didn’t miss a beat when I told him of my
ridiculous “plan.”
“You know, I have a list of every student government president since the organization started,” Pat told me. “You could probably make a road trip out of tracking some
of them down.”
Given how lost I felt in terms of my career and geographic desires, I immediately took
him up on the offer. It made sense. It was an opportunity to meet a wide cross-section of
UVM alumni with whom I shared this common student government experience and a
chance to see where their lives had taken them. It was also a chance for me to ask a bunch
33
Alex Wilcox ’94
Lyn Eimer Vreeland ’44
Bill Pickens III ’58
Bryant Jones ’05
Bill Tickner ’02
Sarah Poirier ’06
34
of people how they’d tackled that fun life phase
that begins shortly after graduation. An agreement with Vermont Quarterly’s editor that there
might be an article in this even allowed me to
rationalize it as work.
I bought a road atlas.
My route would grow from a combination
of where I had SGA presidents to interview,
where I had family or friends to stay with, and
places I felt I needed to check out. After all, the
ulterior motive for this trip was to find something I’d like to do for work and/or a fun place
in which to do it.
By the time all was said and done, the map
was a mess of oversized Post-It arrows that outlined where I intended to stop. The plan was to
go down the East Coast to the Florida Keys,
around the panhandle and through Texas to
Denver, over to LA by way of Vegas, up the
West Coast through San Francisco and Seattle,
then back to Denver. After Denver? I didn’t
know. First I’d fly to Virginia to have my wisdom teeth removed, then fly back to Denver so
I could figure it out.
When I charted it out in Google Maps, I
projected that I would drive a little more than
eight thousand miles. I felt pretty confident
that my little Honda Insight hybrid was up to
the task.
Projections and lines on a map are one
thing; the road is another.
You see a lot during that much time in the
driver’s seat. I saw the setting sun in Texas
play brand new tricks on my eyes. I saw parts
of the country that were probably uninhabitable before the advent of air conditioning.
I saw scenic vistas I’ve read poems about in
English classes. I can think of at least four specific instances in which my conscious decision
to avoid a driver who seemed like bad news
probably saved my life. And, as I descended
out of Arizona’s northwestern corner, I saw
the expanse of brilliant light that is Las Vegas.
Sadly, that was the best part of my trip through
Las Vegas.
While parked in my hotel’s parking garage,
thieves smashed one of my car’s passenger
windows and removed bags of stuff indiscriminately. Despite walking away from the casino
with $200, Vegas would end up being more
expensive than the entire rest of the trip. They
even took my canvas UVM bag filled with
snacks and some of my finest UVM t-shirts. In
so many ways, that hurt.
THE BIG THREE
I took so much more from this trip—meeting
these people and hearing their stories—than
I could ever express within a few thousand
words. But I’m going to try. Here are the three
most important things I learned from my talks
with UVM student government leaders past.
1
The history of the student
government at UVM is very
much connected to the history of civil rights in America.
While I doubt the three founders of the student government—Joseph “Joe” Corbett ’43,
Julia Fletcher Peet ’44 and Lyn Eimer Vreeland ’44—realized it at the time, it is almost
poetic that they created a student advocacy
organization while our nation and its allies
were defending democracy around the world.
And in a male-dominated world, it is not insignificant that two of the three founders of the
student government were women. “In that
time, many of the men were off fighting. So the
women filled many roles traditionally held by
men,” Lyn explained.
As Lyn described it to me, the idea for the
student government “was in Joe’s head, he
was the big instigator. He wanted people to
have a voice in things.” And even then, well
before UVM became a bastion for inclusivity,
the SGA was focused on being inclusive of all
UVM students, regardless of background.
I had a chance to meet William “Bill” Pickens III ’58, the first SGA president of color, as
well as Elliot Brown ’59, the first Jewish SGA
president. Both knew that there were racist and
anti-Semitic undertones in the country but
both also generally regarded UVM and Burlington as significantly more accepting than
elsewhere. And both also reflect on their roles
in this history fondly and are proud that their
alma mater seems to have been significantly
ahead of the rest of the country.
Bill Tickner ’02 arrived at UVM knowing he
was gay but having decided that his life would
be easier if he lived it as a straight man. During the 1999-2000 debate in Vermont over civil
unions, the SGA lobbied and protested in support of full-marriage equality rather than civil
union. Bill was one of the most vocal supporters, as was Andrea Minkow ’00, SGA president
at the time. The whole experience made Bill
realize that he could, in fact, find community
and be happy living as an openly gay man. His
story of coming out to his family, his friends,
the SGA officers, and his fraternity really
touched me. It’s the closest I’ve come to feeling
what that experience must be like for the many
who have lived it.
Bill took a leave of absence to travel the
country and present to other university student
governments about how they, too, could advocate for gay rights. When he returned to UVM,
he became the first openly gay SGA president.
Sarah Poirier ’06 and her running mate became
the first female president/vice-president team.
Kesha Ram ’08 and her running mate became
the first president/vice-president team of color.
Reflecting on all of this makes me proud
to have appointed and worked with the first
openly transgender SGA officer, Vice President
Elliot Kennedy ’09.
2
Career progressions
aren’t always linear.
In fact, they rarely are.
For the Class of 2013, here’s your lesson:
With the possible exception of Elliot Brown—
whose deep love and appreciation for political
science led him into teaching, legislative affairs,
and later to the Department of Justice—no
one I interviewed followed a linear career progression. And since I regard each of them as
successful in his/her own right, it’s a lesson I
encourage you to take to heart. The fact is, the
job you take out of college doesn’t have to be
the last job you ever take.
Exhibit A) Alex Wilcox ’94 grew up in
Vermont’s Champlain Islands with a love of
airplanes. He was even fired from a restau-
rant job during college because he kept leaving early to attend flying lessons. After graduation, he moved to the Midwest where he
was the manager for a rock band called “The
Naildrivers” that had a following in Indiana
and Kansas. After a year or so traveling these
two states in a motor home, the band moved
to Florida and subsequently broke up. There,
Alex worked at fast-food chain Johnny Rockets
until he got a job at Miami airport. Before long,
he had climbed the ranks and left to become
the third employee of JetBlue. (We have Alex
to thank for leather seats and live TV in coach
as well as UVM’s partnership with JetBlue that
helps fund recruiting efforts in inner-city high
schools.) Eventually, Alex left JetBlue to start
an airline in India and, after successfully getting
the company off the ground, he moved back
to the United States and started a private jet
company he calls “the populist private jet company”—JetSuite—where he is the CEO.
Exhibit B) Rob Rosen graduated UVM
“full of confidence and with zero plan.” He
took a job in NYC the summer after graduation, saved his money, then traveled Europe
with a friend. When he returned to the United
States he moved to Colorado to ski and enjoy
the mountains. “I’m glad I had that experience,” he says. “But I knew it was time to get
serious.” Before starting law school he worked
for Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign.
After landing an enviable job at a prestigious
law firm in Boston and realizing it wasn’t for
him, he said “Yes” when his former boss at the
Clinton campaign invited him to take a job at
the White House. There he worked as part of
the core staff, often joining the First Family
on vacations. He also worked as the political
director for Sen. Ted Kennedy. Today he works
for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where
he has climbed the ranks to be the foundation’s
director of the executive office and philanthropic partnerships.
In their winding success stories, Alex and
Rob certainly aren’t alone among the group
of UVM alumni kind enough to share their
stories with me. Taken together, they make a
strong case for the belief that if you’re smart
and follow your heart, good things can happen.
Seattle’s Pike Place,
The White House,
Rocky Mountains,
Dry Tortugas
National Park,
Los Angeles
35
3
ONLINE
EXTRA
Brief profiles/updates
on past UVM student
government leaders.
Lyn Vreeland, ’44
Bill Pickens ’58
Frank Cioffi ’77
Seth Bowden ’07
Kesha Ram ’08
Andrea Minkow ’00
Dale Rocheleau ’80
Rob Miller ’89
Geoff Liggett ’78
Bryant Jones ’05
Elliot Brown ’59
Shelley Scipione ’93
Alex Wilcox ’94
Bill Tickner ’02
Sarah Poirier ’06
Robert Rosen ’90
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
uvm.edu/vq
36
If your goal is to be happy,
the “fun” thing to do is
probably the right thing to do.
I can’t tell you how many of these individuals told me to have fun and follow my
heart. “Easy for you to say,” I would think as
they—gainfully employed—bestowed this
wisdom upon me. There is this pressure to
figure out exactly what it is you’re supposed
to do and go do it as hard as you possibly
can.
That’s why my interview with Geoff
Liggett ’78 interrupted my sleep more than
any of the other conversations. I interviewed Geoff for a little over an hour near
the beginning of this long journey. At the
end of that time he said, “OK, turn off that
recorder.” Thinking he was about to tell me
wild stories about UVM in the late seventies, I eagerly hit the pause button. Then he
said, “Now let’s talk about you.”
Geoff started his career as a college career
counselor. He said, “One of the things I like
to do with students is have them make a list
of things they like to do. Then we circle the
things that go together and see if there’s a
job in there. So, what do you like?”
I started with “investments” and followed up with “marketing” and then he
stopped me.
“No, I mean, what do you like?!”
I laughed awkwardly, thought for a second, panicked, realized I had no idea, then
admitted defeat. As I sat alone in my car for
the four hours it takes to drive from Choate
Rosemary Hall—where Geoff is the director of development—back to Burlington,
the idea that I didn’t really know what I
enjoy doing slowly sunk in.
At first it felt pathetic. Then I came to
terms with the fact that many people probably couldn’t genuinely answer that question.
How could I know what kind of job to go
after if I didn’t know what I liked? I decided
to make that question a primary personal
focus for the rest of the trip.
RIDING INTO THE SUNSET
When all was said and done, I drove 11,322.2 miles @ 42.2
miles-per-gallon from Vermont to Florida, California to
Seattle, and back to Burlington, February 5 to April 14. I
interviewed seventeen people: fifteen former SGA presidents, one Pat Brown, and one Lyn Vreeland. I visited or
ran into dozens of UVMers, a few childhood friends, and
even connected with several distant family members.
It hit me as I was pulling out of the parking garage
of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s office in Seattle that my interview with Rob Rosen ’90 marked the
beginning of the end of my journey. All that was left was
a lot of writing and a lot more driving.
As I drove away from Seattle and through America’s
wide-open spaces, I played out in my head how the
article would come together. I knew a couple of themes
I wanted to cover, but was really at a loss for how the
whole thing would work out. A magazine story can be
every bit the journey of a cross-country trip and, with
some gentle “nudging” from the editor, this piece has
morphed from a collection of SGA president profiles to
something more like a personal essay.
I was initially very resistant to the idea of making this
article more about me than about the people I interviewed. They’re the ones who were interesting enough
to interview, I was just the one trying to figure out what
the heck I’m doing with my life. But Vermont Quarterly
thinks you’ll find that interesting, too. And—assuming
you’re still reading—maybe that’s true.
As for what’s next: Seattle to Denver, Denver to Burlington, I took the simple advice of Geoff Liggett and
thought hard about what I liked. My list was short but
workable: Food, mountains, animals, and being outside.
I had Rob Rosen’s advice fresh in my brain (“This is the
time to gain experience and take risk because it gets
harder and harder.”)
Then I thought back to the last time I had said:
“That’s what I want to do when I’m older!” So I looked
up a dude ranch in Wyoming where my family took me
as a kid, one of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever
seen. I applied and was hired to be a wrangler there for
the summer. I seriously doubt I’ll be waking up at four in
the morning to wrangle horses and/or tourists five years
from now. By then, I see myself in San Francisco, Seattle,
New York, Austin, or Denver, and I think the rest will
work itself out. But at the moment, wrangling is what I
want to do, and Wyoming is where I want to be.
I saddled up on May 15.
VQ
ALUMNI
CONNECTION
IN THIS ISSUE
Dr. Ivers Rifkin ’49 Eliza Goddard ’13 Calendar Paula Oppenheim
Cope ’75, G’83 Class Notes In Memoriam 38
39
39
40
41
62
Disco era do si do.
university photography
37
CONNECTION
Rifkin Scholarship offers
deserving students a leg up
Boston, July 18, 6-9:00 p.m.
Young Alumni Social at Tia’s
Washington, DC, July 25, 6-8:00 p.m.
Summer Social at the Iron Horse
new ways to connect
To offer alumni of shared interests and common
New York, NY, August 1, 6-8:00 p.m.
Summer Social at the Royal
bonds a way to connect on meaningful levels, the
UVM Alumni Association and the University of
Vermont Foundation recently launched the UVM
Alumni Affinity Program.
“Our research shows that UVM alumni have
gathered around special interests for many years
on an ad hoc and informal basis,” says Anuradha
Yadav ’96, chair of the UVM Alumni Affinity
Program Committee and a member of the UVM
Alumni Association Board of Directors.
“Often these gatherings were driven by key
milestones, such as anniversaries, or by special
events important to the community,” adds Alan
Ryea, associate vice president of alumni relations.
“The UVM Alumni Affinity Program is designed to
further cultivate and engage these communities
beyond a single event or activity.”
Some examples of affinity groups may include
• Student activity involvement
(Outing Club, student leaders, the Cynic,
WRUV)
• Professional/career affiliation (environmental,
legal, entrepreneurs, educators)
• Identity-based groups (ALANA, Greek, Hillel,
LGBT)
• Regional programs (Chicago, San Francisco,
Florida, Philadelphia, Minneapolis)
Where to Begin?
Check if a group exists by reviewing the current
list at alumni.uvm.edu/affinity. If no group exists,
alumni can
1. Contact the alumni office.
2. Submit an application form.
3. Obtain approval (applications are reviewed and
approved by the UVM Alumni Affinity Program
Committee in September, January and April).
4. Sign up for an orientation.
More info: alumni.uvm.edu/affinity
Alfred Goldberg ’50
Ira Allen Society Scholar
passionate about learning and life
A
San Francisco, CA
August 11, 1:05 p.m. (PST)
Giants Baseball Game
Burlington, August 23
Class of 2017 Student Move-In Day
Burlington, August 25
Convocation
n incredible journey began when Eliza Goddard ’13 stepped into a kayak
Flushing Meadows, NY, August 27
for the first time during TREK—an orientation program for incoming
UVM Night at the US Open
students. “That experience was the beginning of the best four years of
my life,” says the community-entrepreneurship major who graduated in May.
Burlington, October 4-6
Despite what her 3.71 GPA might suggest, Goddard’s studies have not kept
Reunion, Homecoming
and Family Weekend
her shuttered in Bailey/Howe. She has found time to volunteer, tutor felBoston, October 19
low students, study abroad, and be a campus leader in the Student Alumni
Community Service
Association.
New York, NY
This combination of superior academics and the drive to do good on
October 30, 6-8:00 p.m.
campus and in her community led to Goddard’s selection as the inauguUVM night at Sotheby’s
ral recipient of the Ira Allen Society Scholarship. Awarded annually, the
scholarship recognizes a student who has made outstanding volunteer
alumni.
for details & registration
contributions to the university or his or her community, while maintainuvm.edu
ing a meritorious academic record. Collectively, lifetime Ira Allen members
have donated more than $260 million to the university since
its inception. “The financial burden on my family has been
very difficult, with two children in college and the steep rise
in tuition for out-of-state students over the past seven years,”
notes Goddard. She describes the Ira Allen Society ScholarUVM alumni association
ship as an important cushion that allowed her to enjoy her
JOIN US TODAY
senior year to the fullest.
Part of her senior year has been devoted to spreading the
good word about UVM, helping to build support for future
generations of students. As the Ira Allen Society Scholar,
she was invited to several UVM Foundation events to speak
Become a charter lifetime member now and you will receive a
about the scholarship and her experience at UVM. During an
complimentary copy of a just-released publication, The University
event in October 2012, she met Charlie Zabriskie ’53, who
of Vermont, a coffee-table book that illuminates UVM present and
has since served as a mentor to Goddard, helping her navigate
past in text and beautiful color photography. Sustaining members
the real-world opportunities awaiting her after graduation.
of the UVM Alumni Association provide essential support to the
She hopes to find a client-account management position on
university and build the worldwide UVM community network
Fifth Avenue in NYC. Of her time at UVM and her upcoming
even stronger.
graduation, Goddard says, “UVM has taught me to embrace
Join today.
who I am. I will miss it all, but I also look forward to being an
alumni.uvm.edu/membership.
alum of a school that I am so proud of.”
sally mccay
SUMMER 2013
38
Washington, D.C., July 13
Bunny Business at Glen Echo Park
OCT
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
M
assachusetts dentist Dr. Ivers
Rifkin ’49 deeply appreciates
the education he received at
UVM. That experience has
inspired him to lend a helping hand to today’s
UVM undergrads and future generations with
a $100,000 gift to establish The Dr. Ivers Rifkin
’49 Scholarship.
“Student financial assistance is our top priority,” says Tom Sullivan, president of UVM.
“Dr. Rifkin’s gift creates a legacy that ensures
there will be Rifkin scholars, year after year,
for generations to come.”
Growing up in Brockton, Massachusetts,
with his family—his physician father, Abraham, his mother, Rose, his sister, Elaine, and
his brother, Ernest—Rifkin graduated from Brockton High School in 1943.
The young Rifkin then came to Burlington to begin college, but after his first
semester he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps.
Rifkin’s World War II service would be as a radio operator and gunner in
the Pacific Theatre, where he was stationed in the Mariana Islands. In the thick
of history, Rifkin was on Tinian, base for the Enola Gay, on August 6, 1945,
when President Truman announced that the United States had dropped the
atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Proud of his service and with that historic day forever in his memory,
Rifkin returned to life stateside and resumed his studies at UVM. After earning a bachelor’s degree, Rifkin was accepted to Tufts University’s dental
school where he received a DMD in 1952.
Rifkin opened a practice in Bridgewater, where he has been a solo
practitioner ever since, serving several generations of families. At the age
of eighty-seven, he continues to work three days a week. His longtime
employee, Elaine Phaneuf, a dental hygienist and his office manager for
thirty-six years, says, “Dr. Rifkin is very caring, understanding, and softhearted. He is proud of his UVM degree, and I’m not surprised that he
made such a generous gift to a place that has been so instrumental to his
career and so important in his life.”
Rifkin makes clear his fondness for the university and concern for its students. “I feel grateful to UVM for giving me the good background that got me
into Tufts dental school,” he says. “And not having any children, I wanted to
do something for posterity with my money. I know how expensive it is to get
a good university education these days and wanted to help deserving students
get their degree with a little less worry about how they were paying for it.”
C A L E N DA R
JULY AUG
u v m f o u ndat i o n
ALUMNI
39
gift planning
ALUMNI
CONNECTION
A grateful alumna tells her story
INSPIRE OTHERS
Planned gifts make an impact at UVM
From scholarship funding to stateof-the-art facilities, we rely on you to
help us keep our programs competitive. Together, we are working toward
a strong future for the University of
Vermont and our students. When you
extend your support by naming UVM as
a beneficiary of your IRA or estate plan,
your special relationship with students
will continue as a part of your legacy for
years to come.
In addition to the satisfaction of
making a difference, your gift could
also earn you:
•Membership in UVM’s Wilbur Society.
• Tax incentives and other financial
benefits.
• Increased financial security.
Visit alumni.uvm.edu/giftplanning to
start planning your gift. To learn more
about structuring your gift to maximize
its benefits, contact Becky Arnold ’77,
director of gift planning, at 802-6569535 or toll-free at 888-458-8691.
www.alumni.uvm.edu/giftplanning
W
hen Paula Oppenheim Cope
’75, G’83 took to
the podium to accept the 2012 Alumni Association
Distinguished Service Award last
October, she shared what she said
was “my story.”
It wasn’t the story most who
knew her well were familiar with—
that of a successful consultant, facilitator, and training specialist who is
president of Cope & Associates, Inc.,
a management consulting and training
firm based in Burlington; of the volunteer who has worked tirelessly on
behalf of UVM and its Alumni Association for years; and of the published
author and healthcare expert who has
spoken widely on the economics of
child care, total quality management,
and volunteerism.
She focused her story instead on a
16-year-old girl who arrived on campus
in the early 1970s penniless, without
parents or guardians to help and advise
her, and uncertain about to whom she
could turn. She followed her instincts,
though, and soon found herself in the
Financial Aid Office, where she met a
man named Rodger Summers. “He was
an incredible mentor for me,” she says.
In what Cope remembers as a remarkable display of courage and problem solving, “Rodger made it possible
for me to remain at UVM.” Summers
arranged for her to stay on campus
over break periods, helped her secure
legal status as an emancipated minor
and in-state resident, and connected
UVM
ALUMNI
DIR EC TORY
A new alumni directory
will be published in
January 2014 that will
help you connect with
friends and fellow alumni
around the world. Watch
for a letter, email, or call
from PCI to update your
information.
LIFE BEYOND GRADUATION
alumni.uvm.edu/
alumnidirectory
her to a network of people who helped
her find part-time jobs. “When I graduated from UVM four years later, it was
Rodger Summers who was there at my
graduation with a dozen roses,” she
says with obvious emotion. Summers
would later become UVM’s associate
dean of students.
During her time at UVM, Cope was
a self-driven student leader, active in
founding both Women in ROTC and
UVM Rescue, which recently celebrated
its 40th anniversary. Cope also was active
on campus in the Hillel organization. It
was gratitude for that UVM experience
that led Cope and her husband, Timothy, to make an estate gift establishing
the Cope Family Fund. The fund honors
Rodger Summers and can be used to
help students, like Cope, “who enter the
University under unusual circumstances, when counselors are at a loss and no
rules apply.” Eligible students must be
enrolled in an undergraduate program
and demonstrate financial need, with
preference given to UVM Rescue or
UVM Hillel participants, not to exclude
other qualified candidates.
“UVM was a safe place for me to
grow up,” Cope says today.
Sally mccay
‘‘
Toby Cohen Sacks and her husband, Michael, are enjoying the empty nest,
ice cream for dinner, and trips that don’t involve school vacations.
33
80th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
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
[email protected]
34
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
35
36
Send your news to—
Ray W. Collins, Jr., M.D.
15 South Street
Middlebury, VT 05753
Loraine Spaulding Dwyer,
an alumna of the engineering school, authored several
books on local history and worked for
various Vermont newspapers. After
living in Underhill, Vermont, for fifty
— Class of ’73
years, she now lives at the Converse
Home in Burlington, where she continues to read books, papers, and
magazines daily. Loraine will celebrate her 100th birthday in October.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
37
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
38
75th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
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
[email protected]
39
40
’’
Send your news to—
Mary Shakespeare Minckler
100 Wake Robin Drive
Shelburne, VT 05482
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
41
Henry McGinty reports from
Abilene, Texas, that “At ninetyfour years of age, I am healthy,
wealthy, and very happy in my lifestyle. Helen Keedy ’40, my wife for
fifty-four years, whom we all loved,
has been gone for seventeen years. A
couple of years ago when our daughter Ruth’s husband died, I invited her
to move back into the room where
she grew up, which she did. Now
she and her sister, Helen, who has
retired from teaching first grade after
forty-seven years, do women’s club,
church, service club, and grandchildren together. I now have three great
grandchildren spread from Virginia to
Arizona. Love, happiness, and good
things fill our lives.”
Send your news to—
Maywood Metcalf Kenney
44 Birch Road
Andover, MA 01810
[email protected]
42
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
43
70th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. I apologize for not submitting a column for the winter issue.
I was in the middle of a move from
my home in Fair Haven, Vermont,
to a retired-senior community, The
Maples, in Rutland, Vermont. I am
happy to report that I am very contented in my new abode, although
I must admit it wasn’t easy getting from there to here. I survived it
through the Christmas festivities and
lots of snow. God is good! During the
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
You may also visit alumni.uvm.edu/
estateplanning to access free brochures
on popular planned-giving and estateplanning topics. Topics include:
• How to Prepare to Meet With
Your Attorney
• Who Should Inherit Your IRA?
(How Family Members Lose Out)
• Strengthen Your Future With a
Charitable Gift Annuity
40
CLASS
NOTES
pr o fi l es i n g i vi ng
new
41
CLASS NOTES
holiday season I heard from Ziggie
Wysolmerski, who lives in his home
in Rutland during the winter and at
Lake St. Catherine during the summer months; Patty Pike Hallock, also
living in Rutland; Dick Swift’s widow,
Carol, who lives in Florida, and appreciates receiving the Quarterly; and
Lucille Clark Myron ’42, who resides
in California with her husband of
sixty-six years. All are well. Harry
Twitchell and his bride, Betty, have
very much enjoyed their first year of
married life, except for Tropical Storm
Sandy.
Send your news to—
June Hoffman Dorion
Unit 114, 3 General Wing Road
Rutland, VT 05701
[email protected]
44
Ione Lacy Keenan passed
away on on February 12,
2013. Ione was a member of
Sigma Gamma Sorority, Omicron Nu,
and Phi Beta Kappa. It was also her
pleasure to be a member of the allgirl band after the ROTC band was
called up for active duty. In addition
to working as a medical assistant in
her husband’s medical practice for
forty years, Ione enjoyed a life-long
career in volunteering. For one year,
she also taught dietetics to student
nurses in the Department of Home
Economics at UVM.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
45
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
42
47
Mary Kinerson Quimby
passed away on October 23,
2012. Cynthia Quimby Young
’68, Mary’s daughter, wrote that her
mother loved UVM and the time
she spent there and was proud of
the fact that Cynthia followed her to
UVM. Mary was a strong advocate for
social justice and was active in civic
affairs and the Democratic Party. She
served the State of Vermont in many
capacities and later had her own real
estate business. The Quimbys retired
to North Carolina and then to Tennessee. As for myself, I’m not doing
much, but I did thoroughly enjoy our
snowy winter, even though I’m not
skiing any more.
Send your news to—
Louise Jordan Harper
15 Ward Avenue
South Deerfield, MA 01373
[email protected]
48
65th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Carleton Whittemore
Sprague, who lives in Port Isabel,
Texas, reports that his wife of fiftyeight plus years passed away in
March 2012. He is still enjoys playing golf and has eleven hole-in-one
attested certificates. Email alumni@
uvm.edu if you are interested in serving as class secretary.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
49
Doris Galloway Cassiday was
awarded an honorary Doctor
of Humane Letters by Charter Oak State College in June 2012.
In 2013, she was named a Distinguished Nominee for Administrative
Award by the Connecticut American Council on Education Women’s
Network. Harold Raymond Garinger passed away on October 30,
2012. With a strong interest in airplanes, Harold entered a Cadet Train-
50
Robert and Barbara ’52
(Hayden) Dufresne were
saddened by the unexpected
death of their only daughter, Susan,
on September 12, 2012. Although
Susan lived near her parents in Florida, her love always remained in
Vermont, where she is now buried. Winston Arthur Way of North
Hero, Vermont, passed away January
26, 2013. After completing a master’s program in agronomy at UVM,
Win stayed on at the university and
became the extension agronomist
for Vermont, a position he enjoyed
for thirty-two years. He became well
known locally for his television programs on WCAX’s “Across The Fence,”
as well as the numerous articles he
wrote and lectures he presented in
small towns throughout Vermont.
Win, who loved his work and educating people, described himself
as leading a “charmed and charming life.” Hedi Ballantyne, class secretary, has been reluctant to submit personal news, but reports that
three years ago her husband had a
heart valve replacement operation
and last June suffered a stroke that
affected his speech and swallowing.
“After a few set-backs in the summer, he is now home in my care and
making improvements. He enjoyed
celebrating his 90th birthday in
Stowe with a family gathering at the
Stoweflake Resort during the UVM
Alumni gathering there. We were
easily the oldest people at that event
and got our pictures taken.”
Send your news to—
Hedi Ballantyne
20 Kent Street
Montpelier, VT 05602
[email protected]
51
Harry and Beth Lohr McCarthy, who spend their winters
in Fort Myers, Florida, recently
had dinner with Ray Vescovi and his
wife, Sue, also in Florida for the winter. They hear regularly from Lee
and Gloria MacDonald ’52, who are
retired in Colorado. Harry and Beth
returned to Quechee, Vermont, in
early May for the summer. Barbara
Jones Coussement reports that she
has been a patron of the Lyric Opera
of Chicago since moving to Wheaton, Illinois, in 1971. Barbara was
selected Volunteer of the Year for her
Chapter of the Lyric organization in
2012, for which she was recognized
by the Lyric Board of Directors at a
formal dinner at Chicago’s Four Seasons Hotel . “Go LYRIC and Go CATS!”
she cheers. Email [email protected] if
you are interested in serving as class
secretary.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
52
Bobbi (Leenhouts) and Neil
Towne had all their plans
made for attending the 60th
anniversary of their graduation from
UVM last fall, but Bobbi’s recovery from a torn rotator cuff made
it impossible. They had planned to
drive from California, where they
live, cross-country once more before
they have to surrender their drivers’ licenses. They had been in touch
with Walter Barnes and his wife
over the years, until Walt’s death
in 2011, and are still in touch with
Mimi Beauvais Lyons. Mary Jane
Borah Healy of North Hero, Vermont, has published her second
book, Deeds and Misdeeds, based on
the errors and omissions revealed
by her research into 200-year-old
land deeds of North Hero, Vermont.
Her first book, Rebel’s Reward, is the
result of years of research to determine the locations of the 100 orig-
inal rights on North Hero Island
granted to Ethan Allen’s Green
Mountain Boys by the Vermont
Assembly. The original map is presumed to have been destroyed by
fire many years ago, and Mary Jane’s
work has determined the approximate locations of the rights. Email
[email protected] if you are interested in serving as class secretary.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
53
60th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. To prepare for our sixtieth reunion, do send some news
about your life for our next issue so
that classmates will be prepared to
include you in happy chats in October. Please include “UVM” in the subject area so that I won’t mistakenly
delete your message.
Send your news to—
Nancy Hoyt Burnett
729 Stendhal Lane
Cupertino, CA 95014
[email protected]
54
Robert W. Foster writes that
he is, “Still providing dispute
resolution services in engineering and surveying. Still writing. Still traveling—to Beirut to visit
eldest son and family and to near/
distant points. Still moving at threequarter speed with reconstructed
knee.” Harriet (Nicki) Nicholson Suo
moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2004,
after her husband’s death. Her son
and his family live there, and Nicki
reports that “. . . it’s a wonderfully
unique city. I also love being here to
enjoy my two granddaughters who
are six and almost four. I work out
with a personal trainer twice a week
and I highly recommend it for staying young!” Kathryn Wendling, class
secretary, hopes to get updates from
classmates. “I am happy and doing
well in Vermont,” she says, “and look
forward to hearing from you!”
Send your news to—
Kathryn Dimick Wendling
Apt. 1, 34 Pleasant Street
Woodstock, VT 05091
55
Dick Lewis reports that he
recently had lunch with Brad
Gordon in Scottsdale, Arizona. Doctor Brad has retired and
spends his time between Arizona and
Newport Beach, California. Dick says
he keeps plugging along in plumbing supply. Edward Richard McElwee passed away on September 2,
2012. He was an Owl of the Lambda
Iota Fraternity.
Send your news to—
Jane Morrison Battles
Apt. 125A
500 East Lancaster Avenue
Wayne, PA 19087
[email protected]
Hal Greenfader
805 South LeDoux Road
Los Angeles, CA 90035
[email protected]
56
Lee Hitchcock is still living
in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where he keeps busy
with his church choir, the fire department, Masonic Lodge, Shrine, and the
Grand Strand Fire Inspectors Associa-
Green Living
At Wake Robin, residents have designed and built three
miles of walking trails. Each Spring, we make maple syrup
in the community sugar house and each Fall, we harvest
honey from our bee hives. 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 our vibrant community that
shares your “green” ideals. We’re happy to tell you more.
Visit our website or give us a call today to schedule a tour.
Celebrating 20 Years of Building Community
802.264.5100 / wakerobin.com
2 0 0 WA K E R O B I N D R I V E , S H E L B U R N E, VER MO N T 05482
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
46
I’m not receiving much news
from the class of ’46. I’m sure
you are all doing something
exciting, even if it is moving to someplace smaller, which I expect to do
soon. I was at a senior (old folks)
dance in Burlington recently, where I
was happy to find Virginia Campbell
Downs whirling around the dance
floor. She is enjoying life at Shelburne
Bay in South Burlington, a senior
independent-living facility.
Send your news to—
Harriet Bristol Saville
203 Deer Lane, #4
[email protected]
ing Program and was flying to Europe
in early September 1945, when the
war ended—so he turned the plane
around and landed in Nova Scotia.
He and another pilot worked their
way south and ended up walking
the campus of UVM, wearing their
Army uniforms. Seeing them on campus, the university president thanked
them for their service to the country and asked when they wanted to
enroll. Harold was proud when his
grandson Jeffrey entered UVM as a
freshman in the fall of 2012. Nancy
Toby Shisler writes that she and her
husband, Joseph, moved from Zepherhills to Winter Garden, Florida, to be
closer to their children. As a fifteenyear volunteer at the hospital and a
member of a barbershop chorus and
Christian aerobics class, she hopes to
find similar groups in their new location. William Elgood, also known as
‘the Deacon’ by his Sigma Phi brothers, died January 21 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After three years
in the U.S. Maritime in World War II,
he received a B.A. degree from University of Vermont and then an M.A.
degree in speech and library science
from University of Michigan, where
he later taught and coached debate.
Bill went on to become director of
General Motors Institute’s Library for
over twenty years. Another classmate,
William Towle, D.M.D. died in Venice, Florida, January 30. He served in
the Army Air Corps in World War II in
North Africa and Italy. After receiving a B.A. degree from UVM, where
he was a member of Sigma Nu, he
graduated from Tufts Dental School
in 1952 and served with the U.S.
Army Dental Corps Reserve. Bill practiced general dentistry in Richford for
thirty-five years, served as a hospital volunteer, and was active in many
civic organizations. As this went to
the Alumni office at the end of March,
your class secretary and Al Callahan
were enjoying being “snowbirds” in
New Smyrna Beach.
Send your news to—
Arline (Pat) Brush Hunt
236 Coche Brook Crossing
West Charleston, VT 05872
[email protected]
43
CLASS NOTES
tion. If you are down that way, give
him a call. Audrey Rubin Stein finds
retirement another remarkably exciting time of life, with more time to
continue to travel to remote parts of
the world and share this passion with
her grandchildren . . . one at a time.
She returned to Nepal in April, where
she had been twice in the the late
1980s, this time going to the Kingdom of Mustang. Visit her website at
www.passionate-traveler.com
Send your news to—
Jane Stickney
32 Hickory Hill Road
Williston, VT 05495
[email protected]
57
44
58
55th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Judy Rosenblum Cohen
and her husband, Richard, traveled to
Antarctica in January. They now have
bragging rights, as they have been to
all seven continents, above the Arctic
59
Frank Smith wrote from Colorado with an update and
to lay claim to a rare distinction—he has two former Vermont
governors in his family. During his
UVM days Frank helped coach the
women’s ski team. He was an active
member of the USMC Special Infantry
Unit, serving as a platoon leader and
retiring as a major. As for that gubernatorial connection, Frank’s greatgreat grandfathers were John Gregory Smith, governor in the 1800s, and
Edward Curtis Smith, governor in the
early 1900s. When he visited Vermont
for his thirty-fifth class reunion, Frank
stopped by the statehouse in Montpelier for a look at his distinguished
ancestors’ portraits. Nancy Hoppen
Lawrence is still in Palm Beach Gardens and selling real estate in Florida with her own company, Lawrence
Associates. She sees George Rossi
every so often, most recently in May
at his granddaughter’s wedding. Karl
Herbert Raab tells us that he has no
time for retirement. He is busy promoting the music of Richard Stoehr
(1874–1967), who was a St. Michael’s
College professor and composer;
has produced a CD for ORF (Austrian
National Radio) and concerts in Austria, Canada, and several U.S. states,
including an upcoming Vermont Philharmonic performance in 2014; and
is also general manager of Lord Byng
Symphony Orchestra (lbso.ca) in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he
lives. He winters in Berlin with his
wife, Eveline, who works for the German Foreign Office. Janet Dauchy
Celuzza is living in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and would love to hear
from any med tech classmates. She is
on Facebook.
Send your news to—
Henry Shaw, Jr.
112 Pebble Creek Road
Columbia, SC 29223
[email protected]
60
Paul R. Salvage has been
honored as a New England
“Super Lawyer,” a distinction
achieved by only five percent of New
England lawyers, based on experi-
ence, professional achievement, and
peer recognition. Paul is the co-chairman of the insolvency department at
the Springfield-based firm of Bacon
Wilson, P.C. He has also served on the
First Circuit Court of Appeals Bankruptcy Judge Merit Selection Panel
and is a frequent lecturer before various bar association groups on the
areas of reorganization and creditor/
debtor rights. Fred Kolstrom reports
that he and his wife, Yvette ’73, have
achieved several of the world travel
objectives awarded by International
Travel News magazine (ITN), a list that
required nearly fifty years to complete. It includes the ITN 100 Nations
Award, given to those who travel to
100 or more nations, and the Phileas
Fogg Award for travel to all the countries mentioned in Around the World
in Eighty Days, among many others. Email [email protected] if you
are interested in serving as class secretary.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
61
John Wesley Shannon, who
lives in New Hartford, New
York, retired from General
Electric Company in April 1993 after
twenty-six years of service as an
accountant and unit manager. He was
also an adjunct instructor at Mohawk
Valley Community College, teaching
accounting in the evenings while his
children were in college. For the past
fifteen years, John has been involved
with AARP Tax Aides. His son is an
executive at BAE Systems, a British
firm; his younger daughter is a doctor
of optometry; and his other daughter is an office manager at a printing company. John has five wonderful grandchildren, three in college
and two in high school. Joe Buley
had his book, In the Shadows—The
Memoir of a Professional Civil Engineer,
released during Engineer’s Week in
February. Comments from the inside
cover trailer note that, “In this unusual
memoir, Mr. Buley recounts his successful fifty-year career as a professional civil engineer, taking the reader
into his personal and business life to
show the interaction of family, social,
and political events that shaped his
technical career.” Graham Phelps
retired from the Veterans Adminis-
tration in 1996 and is now living in
a seniors’ retirement high rise in Salt
Lake City. This spring he went on a
tour in Europe (Spain, Portugal, and
Morocco), before traveling to Japan
in early May to visit his old stomping grounds. Adele Kahwajy reports,
“I am still retired and enjoying it. I
have become a ‘movie buff’ and now
have about 400 DVDs. Movie theaters in San Antonio, Texas, have very
loud sound systems, and most of the
time, I can’t stand it. So, I started collecting the DVDs. It has been delightful, especially when I come across an
oldie from my pre-teen days. Visitors
to San Antonio can find me in the
phone book by remembering how to
spell my last name with an “h” as the
third letter: Kahwajy.” Judy Enright
Daly is going to Ireland in July with
son David, his wife, Holly, and their
three young sons, Finn, Michael, and
Cashel. Bob Hobbie emailed “The
highlight of 2012 for us was celebrating Joyce’s and my fiftieth anniversary. We spent a month trying to
be Italian in a lovely farm house in
Tuscany. Our children and grandchildren came for two weeks. We
enjoyed day trips to the surrounding cities—Radda, Pienza, Siena, San
Gimignano, and Florence, to name
a few. Susan and Jan Mashman, our
great friends and UVM classmate,
spent a week with us when our family was not there. It was a memorable experience.” Roger Zimmerman reports that after two years in
India, his daughter Heather has been
home since Thanksgiving. It’s great.
In January, he and Lynne ran another
very successful trip to Yellowstone,
where he’s been a backcountry ski
guide for twenty-seven years. Anybody interested in that trip for next
year can give him a buzz or email
[email protected]. Since then
he has been guiding skiing in Maine,
continuing to work in his other profession, and studying to become a
Master Maine Naturalist. Louise and
Steve Berry have been travelling. In
February, they both skied in Courchevel, France, and Steve continued on
for a second week in Zermatt. Upon
returning home, Steve spent a week
skiing in Utah. In May, the Berrys
spent two weeks traveling through
Turkey.
Send your news to—
Steve Berry
8 Oakmont Circle
THANKS
Chatty Cats, the Annual Giving office’s student phonathon callers,
received more than $1 million in gift commitments from you—our
very generous alumni and friends—during the last academic year. Of that, more than $33,000
was matched by commitments from donors’ employers. Your generosity ensures affordability,
enhances academics, and enriches campus life—all of which improve UVM’s reputation.
Your generosity makes a tremendous difference in UVM students’ lives. Thank you.
Lexington, MA 02420
[email protected]
62
Forrest “Woody” Manning has been working on
his family tree after learning
that some of his family emigrated
from England and others came from
France. He has met on-line many relatives from around the world. “A lot
of work, but extremely interesting,”
he says. Woody also does substitute
teaching in local schools. Patricia Gitt
has written a new novel, asap—as
soon as possible, which was selected
as Angie’s Diary Book of the Week
for the week of February 3. Barbara
Rifkin Levy reports that life in Arizona is wonderful (despite the politics!). She is currently serving as the
chair of the board of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and enjoying the
challenge. Her consulting practice
is being whittled down . . . no more
fundraising campaigns, just work
with board and staff to help with
planning and fundraising education. She and her husband, Marty, are
fast approaching their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Their two sons continue to work 24/7 in their respective restaurants: Doug is chef/owner
of Feast in Tucson, and Mitch is chef/
owner of Cuvée in Basalt, Colorado.
Both are married, and Mitch has provided three grandchildren for Barbara
and Marty to enjoy. Charles Wesley
Stevens credits his Vermont education with propelling and preparing
him to obtain a job on Wall Street.
After thirty-nine years and increasing
responsibilities at the same firm, he is
retired and living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Geri, whom
he met in New York City, are enjoying a good life. They have one son,
an attorney, who, with another attorney, owns two law firms in Pennsylvania. Their two grandsons are not yet
old enough to decide what they wish
to do in life. Jay McGowan sends
a big “thank you” to everyone who
had anything to do with reunion. He
and his wife, Pat ’61, agreed it was
the best UVM reunion they’ve ever
attended. In their news, he and Pat
left New Jersey three days before
Storm Sandy hit. Their 28-day, 5,000mile road trip took them from New
Jersey to South Florida, up the west
coast, then to Mississippi, Arkansas,
Tennessee, and North Carolina, visiting friends and family along the way
before heading home. “Life is good
and we are having a blast,” says Jay.
Sandra Schindlinger Honig-Haftel reports that the Haftels recently
sailed to South America and the Antarctic—an awesome journey around
the Antarctic Peninsula to the Falklands and Tierra del Fuego, following Magellan’s and Darwin’s journeys. They also enjoyed their 50th
reunion last year and keep in contact
with Marion (Gang) Banks, Marge
(Coleman) Berg, Roanne (Bockar)
Katcher. Dr. Jeff Steckler practices
near Venice, Florida, where Sandy
lives, so they are in touch sometimes.
She and her husband also have a
home in East Hampton, Connecticut, travel quite a bit, and are generally enjoying their retirement years
as snowbirds, parents, and grandparents. Sandy would love to hear
from any and all old friends. Deanne
Siemer has been a trial lawyer and
for many years has taught trial advocacy courses for the National Institute
for Trial Advocacy and for private client (usually corporate) law offices.
In 2011, along with two long-time
teaching colleagues, she turned to
video delivered via a website, which
can reach a much wider audience.
She practices law for six months a
year, in the winter, and is an active
farmer during the summer. The farm,
a little more than 200 acres in rural
western New York, is prospering
despite quite a few things that intellectually seemed promising, but “on
the ground,” so to speak, did not work
out so well.
Send your news to—
Patricia Hoskiewicz Allen
14 Stony Brook Drive
Rexford, NY 12148
[email protected]
63
50th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Raymond Johnson has
been named president of the American Academy of Health Physics. He
has served as the dean of administration for a health physics society
professional development school on
lessons learned from Fukushima, conducted several workshops, and written more than a dozen articles and
papers on radiation safety. Last September, he was named man of the
year by the Oakdale Emory United
Methodist Church and welcomed
grandchild number fourteen. Jeffrey Falk, class president, looks forward to seeing members of the Class
of ’63 in October. Contact him if you
would like to participate in reunion
planning. Jeff will be in Burlington on
Thursday, October 3; if you’re there
and want to meet, please email him.
Kae Gleason Dakin cheers, “One, two,
three, yeah for ’63! Can you believe
it’s our 50th? Hope to see many many
of us ’63ers in Burlington in October.
It will be a great weekend, especially
if lots of us come. See you there.”
Toni Mullins, class secretary, also has
reunion on her mind. Reunion is only
a couple of months away, she writes,
and by now I hope that you have
made your plans for October 4 to 6.
The weekend will start with a cocktail reception on Friday evening in
Waterman Manor. Saturday will offer
music, entertainment, and local vendors all day as well as tours and historic walks. That evening we will have
a 50th Reunion class celebration
dinner at Burlington Country Club.
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
Hollis Seavey Howard
passed away on February 11,
2013, in Dallas, Texas. Ann
Barton Manciagli married Giacomo
(Jim) Manciagli fifty-four years ago
in Connecticut. They have four children and seven grandchildren. Jim
was employed by Amoco Oil Company, and they lived abroad for
twenty-five years. Upon his retirement, they moved to Williamsburg,
Virginia, where they have happily
resided for the past twenty years.
Bob Wolfe writes, “The head lights
from our 55th class reunion can
now be seen in our rear view mirror. Before you know it we shall start
planning our 60th in 2017. For those
who attended, a good time was
had and the rest can only wonder
what they missed. To those of you
who made the telephone calls and
sent emails to boost the event to
our classmates, many thanks.” Email
[email protected] if you are interested in serving as class secretary.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
Circle, and below the Antarctic Circle.
They even did the polar plunge, taking a short (very short) swim in the
Antarctic waters. Marcella “Chellie”
Webbe Elliot is living with her daughter and her family in Monroe, North
Carolina, where they moved last
June. She reports that it is lovely and
very friendly there, and she is finding
plenty to do. Alan Young is a retired
mechanical engineer living in Northern California. He notes that, “I worked
for IBM in 1961, and at that time we
had some powered iron in water we
painted on the data recording tape
so we could see the memory bits.
Now they are just a few atoms wide.”
He and his wife have seven kids and
ten grandchildren. Fellow alums can
email Alan at alanmyoung@hotmail.
com. Andy Skroback reminds classmates that the 55th reunion will take
place October 4 to 6, 2013—a funfilled weekend to get reacquainted.
Please plan to attend. Andy and his
wife, Barbara Evans ’59, recently met
with Dick and Ann Lee White to start
the ball rolling on weekend plans, and
Alan Fields says if there is enough
interest in the “musical show” depicting the class of ’58’s days at UVM,
he will fly in from Arizona. Please
email [email protected]
if you would like to participate. Andy
is also looking for volunteers willing to call classmates and encourage their attendance; he will provide updated information (telephone
and email addresses) for classmates
in your sorority, fraternity, or field of
study if you would like to re-connect
with them. In a personal update, Andy
reports that after twenty years in the
trust industry with Bank of Boston, he
opened his own investment advisor
firm, Skroback and Associates. He and
Barbara have always felt it necessary
to give back to the community they
live in, and some of Andy’s rewarding community experiences included
serving as past president and honorary trustee for life of the Springfield
Symphony Orchestra. He has also
served on a multitude of boards. He
and Barbara have four children, three
who graduated from UVM, and nine
grandchildren, one who graduated
this past year from UVM. The Whites
and Skrobacks look forward to seeing
you at the 55th. Email alumni@uvm.
edu if you are interested in serving as
class secretary.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
45
46
Finally, on Sunday morning the Class
of 1963 will be recognized as the
newest member of the Green & Gold
club at the Green & Gold Brunch. We
designated the Doubletree Inn on
Williston Road for our class housing. If
you have not already done so, please
make your reservations as soon as
possible—802-658-0250. Of course,
you are welcome to stay elsewhere,
at venues such as the Sheraton, Hilton, or Courtyard Marriott, where
UVM has blocked a number of rooms
at a discounted price for reunion. We
class secretaries don’t often write
about ourselves; yet I was asked by an
UVM associate how I came to be the
class secretary. I don’t really remember how that happened! I do remember one reunion when Sara Moreau
Gear, Allen Gear, Frank Bolden, Jeff
Falk, and I were lounging on the campus lawn and the subject came up
about continuing as secretary and
as president for Jeff. There was an
informal vote at that night’s banquet and here we are still at it for fifty
years. Begin thinking about memories and photos that you would like
to share in the 50th Reunion Memory Book. Linda Hicks Deftos is looking forward to reunion. Since graduation from UVM, she received an M.A.
in speech language pathology from
Columbia Teachers College. She lived
for a brief time in Needham, Massachusetts, then moved with her three
children to Del Mar, California, where
she worked full time as a speech language pathologist in the San Diego
Unified School District. Her three children graduated from University of
California Santa Cruz, University of
California San Diego, and University
of California Berkeley. She has two
surviving children: a son, who works
as a pathologist for the Santa Clara
County Hospital in San Jose, and a
daughter, who works in a Montessori preschool. Linda retired in 2009
and travels extensively. She has three
grandchildren, and thoroughly enjoys
her retirement with them, as well as
sewing, reading, making beaded jewelry, cooking, and traveling.
Send your news to—
Toni Citarella Mullins
210 Conover Lane
Red Bank, NJ 07701
[email protected]
64
Linda Deliduka is enjoying
retirement and has taken two
great river cruises with classmate and friend Frances Lillyman.
They have been from Saint Petersburg to Moscow, from Istanbul to
Athens and through the Greek Isles,
and are in the process of deciding
where to go this year. Betsy Stern
Becker, Ellen Stark Gold, Barbara
Leff Kauke, and Ilene Hofbinder
Rosenthal celebrated their joint 70th
birthdays by spending a lovely weekend together in Philadelphia sightseeing, eating, and catching up. “We
had so much fun that we decided
not to wait another seventy years to
do it again,” reported Betsy. Hugh J.
Harley III is still skiing at Stowe—
almost as much as when he was at
UVM. He is also active with the UVM
Alumni Association and the Vermont Regional Board. Abbott Brayton reports the publication of his
second book, Outpost Scotland, a historical novel set in Scotland’s Western
Highlands during the early stages of
World War II. His third book, a sequel,
is nearing completion and may be
out in early 2014 if all goes well. Fully
retired from three professions, writing is more of a retirement hobby.
Abbott and his wife, Esta, split their
time between Vermont and Knoxville,
Tennessee.
Send your news to—
Susan Barber
1 Oak Hill Road
P.O. Box 63
Harvard, MA 01451
[email protected]
65
Jerolyn “Jerry” Kudola Allen
tells us “After twenty years in
the South, we still love it. No
snow and beautiful springs with azalea and native dogwoods. I have been
for many years and continue to be
very active as a volunteer guardian
ad litem, advocating for abused and
neglected children—a very rewarding endeavor, but a far cry from my
math degree. My husband and I find
time to travel overseas several times
a year. The highlight this year will be
visiting Greenland. A hint to finding West Union, South Carolina, on
the map—it is not near Union, and
is a very small town!” Barbara Hoffman Mow just spent three and half
months in a lovely beach house at
la Jolla Shores, California. It was a
great choice for such a snowy winter.
Her last three-month sabbatical was
in Hong Kong on Victoria Peak and
next year will be in Miami Beach. She
and her husband, Van, still continue
their travels to Europe and Asia, as
Van is invited to do seminars and lectures. They hike, fish, play tennis, and
so forth, but have been missing skiing. Not bad for not yet being retired.
“We miss Vermont and the Northeast,” commented Barbara. “There is
no place like home, but our grandkids are in California and Hong Kong.”
John Westcott writes from Catharpin, Virginia, that he is completing
ten years as business development
director at the Boeing Company. He
and his wife, Pamela, completed a
long trip to Maui and the West Coast
last fall and recently returned from a
business trip to London. They enjoy
spending time with their five grandchildren and their two labradoodles.
John will always be glad to hear from
old friends.
Send your news to—
Colleen Denny Hertel
14 Graystone Circle
Winchester, MA 01890
[email protected]
66
Edward Varney married Betty
Haines (Mary Fletcher School
of Nursing) following his graduation from UVM, and they were sent
to Heidelberg, Germany, where he
was CO of the 519th Car Company in
the U.S. Army. Upon returning to the
States, he worked in New York City in
fashion packaging before moving to
Meredith, New Hampshire, where he
became an account rep for Batesville
Casket Company. He traveled Vermont and New Hampshire for thirtysix years, which allowed him to see
the growth of UVM over the years.
Ed and his wife have two children:
their son, Adam, works for USAA, and
their daughter, Sarah, is a senior staff
writer for Kaiser Health News. In 2010
they retired to sunny Anthem, Arizona. John Rie is enjoying retirement.
He and his wife, Deb, spent the six
cold months last year sailing to the
Bahamas and back. This year they’re
skiing once again, and enjoying the
two of their four grandchildren who
live about five minutes away from
them. They are active in their local
community of Westbrook, Connecticut. This summer will be devoted to
fishing and sailing. Skip Meacham
retired twenty years ago, following
a successful career in the corporate
world, to pursue a second career as
a mason, repairing concrete swimming pools. After ten years of punishing his body in that line of work (no
gym required), he is now enjoying full
retirement—golf, skiing, riding his
Harley, and the Atlantic City casinos
and beach. Skip would like to hear
from other classmates, particularly
Jeff Hider and Joe Furgal ’64. Class
secretary Kathleen Nunan McGuckin
reports that Susan Quick has retired
from the Animal Health Diagnostic Center at Cornell and is enjoying
her free time and no schedule. Sue
sold her Clydesdales in 2011 and also
one mare she bred that is supreme
over all other draft breeds for 2012 in
the Canadian Maritimes, which was
a thrill for Sue. She keeps busy with
hand spinning, knitting, and planning her garden, and hopes that our
classmates are well and enjoying
their retirements, too. Milton Jepson
worked for Pratt & Whitney for thirtyfive years, beginning in East Hartford, Connecticut, and ending in West
Palm Beach, Florida, where he now
resides. He is retired and working
part-time as an elementary school
teacher in Palm Beach County. Milt
and his wife, Phyllis, have three children, two of whom are also teachers.
Anne Appleton Weller has moved
to Cumming, Georgia, to be closer to
family, after many years of living and
working in Missouri. In February, she
visited my husband, Ken McGuckin,
and me in St. Augustine, where we
have been spending our winters. Yes,
retirement is good!
Send your news to—
Kathleen Nunan McGuckin
P. O. Box 2100
Montpelier, VT 05601
[email protected]
67
William Meezan was awarded
an honorary degree at the
University of Vermont’s 211th
commencement in May. Bill has
devoted his distinguished career as a
scholar, educator, and expert consultant to improving the lives of America’s most vulnerable children. He is
a distinguished visiting professor at
Fordham University Graduate School
of Social Service, holding the Mary
Ann Quaranta Chair in Social Justice
for Children. Previously, he served as
director of policy and research at Children’s Rights, a national advocacy
group working to protect abused
and neglected children. He has been
a Congressional Science Fellow and
a Senior Fulbright Scholar in the Baltic States, helping launch the first
social work programs in the former
Soviet Union. Class secretary Jane
Kleinberg Carroll writes, “It was my
pleasure to have dinner with Bill and
his husband, Mike Brittenback, after
attending “Juvenile in Justice,” Richard Ross’s exhibit at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York. For the past
five years, Richard has photographed
and interviewed inmates ranging in
age from ten to their early twenties
at more than 200 juvenile detention
facilities in thirty-one states.” The New
York Times: “Conceptually, the show
is a sobering trip down the dead-end
street that is America’s prison system. Visually, it’s as gripping as any
art around.” For more about Richard’s
work, see www. juvenile-in-justice.
com. Vicki Norton Remsen recently
co-authored a book called In This
Moment . . . the little book of emotions.
The pocket-sized book is intended as
a resource to provide a way to simply and easily acknowledge emotions
that arise in our everyday lives, give
them a voice, and release them. For
more information visit www. inthismomentbook. com or www. lonelotus.com. George Fortier and his wife
are now living in Meridian, Idaho, to
be nearer to their daughter and family. He retired from dentistry in Windsor, Vermont, almost nine years ago.
Send your news to—
Jane Kleinberg Carroll
44 Halsey Street, Apt. 3
Providence, RI 02906
[email protected]
68
45th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Roberts Cameron Smith,
who retired from active parish ministry in the Episcopal church in 2009,
wrote and self-published a book,
God Did Not Curse The Serpent: She
Is Love. In April of 2012, he began a
new ministry as chaplain to inmates
in the Indio County Jail, eighty miles
from his home in Riverside, California.
He works two ten-and-a-half- hour
days per week, which is sometimes
desperately tiring, but wonderfully
rewarding. As the nun who has been
the GED tester at the jail said, “Being
put in jail can be such a teachable
moment!” Barbara Sadler Swinton
has been living in the Rochester, New
York, area since arriving there after
graduation. Upon retirement from
the world of quality assurance and
regulatory affairs for medical devices
in 2007, she followed a passion
for jewelry design and opened an
online store in 2009: www. touchofsilver.etsy.com. She also sells her
creations to a local store and in the
museum shop of Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery. When not in her studio, Barbara spends lots of time with
the three of her five grandchildren
who live nearby. Life is good. Cynthia Quimby Young let us know that
her mother, Mary Kinerson Quimby,
Class of 1947, passed away on October 23, 2012. Diane Glew, class secretary, reports that Herm Hoops serves
as a whitewater river guide in Utah.
He has devoted almost fifty years to
running and preserving the rivers of
the Colorado Plateau. He retired from
the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service and
National Park Service in 1996. For the
past decade, Herm has documented
and continues to document the history of the inflatable craft. Reunion
is coming! Forty-five years . . . go figure. Please come share in the myriad
activities.
Send your news to—
Diane Duley Glew
64 Woodland Park Drive
Haverhill, MA 01830
[email protected]
69
Save the date—The Class of
1968 will be inviting you to
attend their 45th Reunion in
October 2013. Irvin Paradis retired
at the end of May—forty years of
practicing pulmonary medicine was
enough. For the last forty years, he
also has been happily married to
Cindy Fox, a Class of 1973 nursing
alumna. Their three sons and two
grandchildren all live out west and
want them to move there, but New
England holds Irvin and Cindy fast.
Send your news to—
Mary Moninger-Elia
1 Templeton Street
West Haven, CT 06516
[email protected]
70
Save the date—The Class of
1968 will be inviting you to
attend their 45th Reunion
in October 2013. Gregory McHugo
received a Ph.D. in psychology in
1979 and has been on the faculty at
Dartmouth College ever since. He currently works at the Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center, conducting
mental health services research. He
has been married twice and has two
sons, a daughter, and a granddaughter. Greg spends as much time as possible outdoors at home in Strafford,
Vermont, and at his camp in Greensboro.
Send your news to—
Doug Arnold
11608 Quail Village Drive, #3
Naples, FL 34119
[email protected]
71
David Pierce is finishing his
fortieth year of teaching physics at Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts. His wife, Connie, teaches French at Tabor. This fall
he was awarded the David H. Byron
Award for Outstanding Service to Science Education by the Massachusetts Association of Science Teachers. Lynne Saxton Smith loves living
in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, and
spending summers at Bantam Lake,
Connecticut. Her three daughters are
spread out across the U.S.: Kristen
resides with her husband in Frederick,
Maryland; Cindy lives in Hawaii with
her husband; and Lauren, who will be
getting married in March, lives in St.
Petersburg, Florida. She and her family are very excited to be traveling to
Hawaii for the first time to visit Cindy
this spring. Lynne would love to hear
from any of her sorority sisters; contact her at [email protected].
Christine Mosher Labone is living in
Trigg, Western Australia, and working
at Fremantle Hospital Biochemistry
Department as a senior shift scientist.
While enjoying the West Australian
lifestlye, she misses the snow and
mountains of Vermont. Class secretary Sarah Sprayregen sends greetings from campus. I want to lead my
class notes with the welcome news
that I have found Jason Robards. He
called me recently and we had a terrific chat. He’s living in St. Paul, Minnesota, where his daughter, Laura,
grew up. Jason is totally enjoying his
time as Mr. Mom to his eleven-yearold son, Greg, noting bowling nights
VQEXTRA
online
Martha Gavin ’70
“It’s an amazing example of the military
complex, corporate
America, and the
whole art and design
world working handin-glove for a common purpose. They
developed road maps
for creative, outsidethe-box thinking, and
problem solving that
we should be using
today.”
—Martha Gavin on a
secret U.S. military unit
during World War II that
created faux military
installations to deceive
enemy forces, the subject
of a new documentary,
Ghost Army, that she has
helped produce.
read more at
uvm.edu/vq
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
CLASS NOTES
47
CLASS NOTES
and pizza parties and citing this as
the most important work he’s done
so far. Laura is a member of the Anonymous Choir, using her talents with
this nationally known group. I spoke
to Hans Froelicher when I was in
DC recently. We tried to connect in
Annapolis, but time didn’t permit. He
reports that he retired from his job
as general counsel of the DC Housing Authority about a year ago and
then grew bored, so he now has a
part-time position with Maryland’s
Office of the Attorney General. I also
ran into Nancy Blasberg and Mags
Caney Conant at a wonderful midwinter gathering at Nancy’s fabulous new place. Nancy has re-settled
in the Burlington area and loves it.
We just had lunch with a new friend
after Nancy returned from Costa Rica,
where she visited her son, Matt. I met
up with classmates, Michael Lash,
Nancy Heckman Blasberg, and Walt
Blasberg at the Lake Champlain
Regional Chamber of Commerce 21st
Annual Ambassadors’ Silent Auction
on March 28. We reminisced a bit,
and the North Hero House Inn offered
great samples of their dinner specialties. It was a fun evening, especially
seeing classmates who are so tied to
local community efforts.
Send your news to—
Sarah Wibur Sprayregen
154 Cliff Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
48
73
dinner, and trips that don’t involve
school vacations. Connie Sargent
can’t believe it’s been forty years
since her UVM days. Since then, she’s
married, divorced, and worked all her
life, first as a classroom teacher, then
a community educator, and now a
mental health counselor. When she
couldn’t get a job in Vermont, Connie
moved to New York state, and, twenty
years ago, went back to school and
earned a graduate degree. Life has
not been what she expected, but
her path has forced her to grow and
change, and she intends to continue
that trajectory.
Send your news to—
Deborah Mesce
2227 Observatory Place NW
Washington, DC 20007
[email protected]
74
Class secretary Emily Manders
writes that Barbara A. Moore
was the recipient of the Outstanding Alumni Award from the
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the CALS annual alumni and
friends dinner in May 2012. Barbara,
the owner of The Good Table in Rye,
New York, is known for her guiding
principle of utilizing fresh, local produce for her five catering businesses
throughout New York and Connecticut in what she calls “restaurant-supported agriculture.” Jim Condos was
re-elected as Vermont’s Secretary of
State on November 6 with eighty-six
percent of the vote. Diane Batt Smith
and I attended the Title IX brunch at
Reunion last fall. It was great fun to
see my coach and teammates from
my (long ago) years of playing tennis
for UVM. And I was honored to finally
get my varsity letter. We also went
to the annual dessert open house
at Tri-Delta sorority, where we had
more fun visiting with sorority sisters we had not seen in years. Finding old UVM friends and going to
cool events is why it’s worth going to
Reunion, even if it’s not your reunion
year. Steve Rice G ’77, still resides in
East Nassau, New York, with his wife
of thirty-three years, Anna. They have
two grown children and one grandchild. Steve has a wine-tasting business, as well as a nutrition/wellness
venture. He has traveled to Costa Rica
frequently, where he hopes to retire,
and still gets to Vermont in the spring
and summer, where he spends time
sunbathing at Harriman Reservoir in
Wilmington. Steve would love to hear
from fellow classmates (swinner123@
aol. com) and looks forward to the
class reunion in October. “Let’s boogie
the night away,” he writes.
Send your news to—
Emily Schnaper Manders
104 Walnut Street
Framingham, MA 01702
[email protected]
75
Mitchell Goldstein writes that
his daughter Mikela was chosen to represent the USA last
July in the Maccabia Games in Israel,
where she competed in the open
women’s foil competition. The family went to Israel to cheer her on.
Petter Kongsli, Bekkestua, Norway,
reports that since graduating from
UVM and earning a master’s degree
in architecture from the University of
Idaho in 1978, he has been a practicing architect, designing and building homes in and arround Oslo. He
and his wife, who is also an architect, have five (almost) grown kids,
each working or studying in different
fields (acting, architecture, foreign
relations, marketing, high school).
Cross-country skiing is a high priority for them, and they participate in
marathon events (54-, 70-, and 90-km
distances). Petter misses and thinks
of the many fine people he met in
his years at UVM and hopes to meet
some of them again at reunion 2015.
Candace Whittemore Lovely continues painting and teaching in Hilton
Head, South Carolina. She is a Copley
Master, whose American Impressionism paintings are well known. Candace’s most recent show, God Bless
America, received rave reviews. She
urges any UVMers to come see her
in Hilton Head or visit her website to
see her beautiful art work and learn
about upcoming shows: candacelovely.artspan.com. Bruce Ellison has
been working in Portland, Oregon, for
FLIR Systems Inc. for the last twentyfour years; his UVM mechanical engineering degree has stood him in
good stead. He encourages his fellow
engineering alums to donate to UVM.
He and his wife, Cindy, raised two
boys—one is a video game designer
in Montreal and the other is a Ph.D.
geotechnical engineer in San Francisco, working on the Transbay Center; they also have one grandchild.
Bruce and fellow ski team member
John Geller have been racing in the
PACRAT league (“ski racing for has
beens”) on Mount Hood. Bruce enjoys
following the goings on at UVM in
the Vermont Quarterly. I recently
caught up with Wendy Gould Weiler. She and Bob continue to live in
Camden, Maine. They are looking forward to daughter Whitney’s wedding
in Maine at the end of the summer.
Dina Child, class secretary, notes that
this is a “big” year for most of us who
were born in 1953. Happy birthday to
all and welcome to the sixties.
Send your news to—
Dina Dwyer Child
1263 Spear Street
South Burlington, VT 05403
[email protected]
76
Andrea Mastrocinque Martone has relocated to Sarasota, Florida (“Paradise” she
calls it), where she continues her
work as a national public relations/
marketing consultant. She left the
chaos of commuting to NYC PR firms
and finds tranquility in the life that
the west coast of Florida has to offer.
Her UVM ties remain strong, and she
is actively involved with thirty-five
fellow alumni—some of whom meet
in Vermont for yearly mini reunions.
Loretta Knauer Davis, who lives in
Tuxedo Park, New York, invites fellow
alums to visit when in New York. She
is still a judge, but through a grant
will be working as a moderator/advocate for Sandy storm victims in Long
Island. “We all give back in various
ways,” she writes. Pamela Sargent
is still living in South Florida (Lighthouse Point) and loving it. She has
three more years to work as an audiologist for the Broward County School
System before retiring. Her husband
continues to battle heart-related
health issues. Their older son, Sam,
a graduate of the Wharton School of
the University of Pennsylvania, lives
in Boston, where he works as a consultant for Oliver Wyman. Younger
son, Ben, attends FSU, where he is
majoring in business/sports management. Pamela hopes to travel more to
see old UVM friends in her retirement.
Matthew ‘Matt’ David Kaye is in the
middle of his twenty-seventh year
reporting news from Capitol Hill, the
Supreme Court, and the White House
for U.S. and overseas radio and TV stations. It’s been a great run since1974,
when he first started broadcasting
at WUVM AM and FM, then landed
in Washington after a dozen years at
numerous radio outlets in New England, New York, and Maryland. Matt
has been married for twenty-eight
years to Tamara Kaye; they have a
twenty-five-year-old son in the U.S.
Naval Academy and an eight-yearold daughter in elementary school.
It’s been ten years since Mark Johnson submitted a class note. Mark has
written that he is still working in the
space industry, doing the electronics
for an upgrade to the radiation detector that’s headed for the International
Space Station. Over the last few years,
he has been designing the electronics for several missions: Keplar is now
looking for Earth-like planets, JUNO’s
soon to be looking at Jupiter, and
MSS that will be looking at our magnetosphere soon . . . others as well. If
you would like to know more about
these missions, just Google NASA
with the name of the mission to find
out more.
Send your news to—
Pete Beekman
2 Elm Street
Canton, NY 13617
[email protected]
77
Peter Sherwin writes from
Weston Park in Bath, England, “I’m planning on meeting up with my old friend John
Evans to do some long-distance
cross-country skiing in April in Norway where the sun doesn’t go down
until 9 p.m. These days it seems like
all I do is work so I’m looking forward to it. Should bring back memories of being a wastrel at UVM.” Patricia Maier thumbs her nose at all of us
(not really) from St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, where she’s been living and working in public education
for a while. In response to my email
prompts, she says, “I loved Williston
Quarry to swim, but I loved Huntington Gorge for the beauty, not safety.
Remember Ben and Jerry’s out in the
garage? Remember the five beers
for $1 at Hannibals? Remember the
yards of beer at Black Cat and chugging them? Remember happy hour
parties at Sigma Nu?” Chuck Sheketoff writes from Silverton, Oregon,
“I have the honor of being one of the
‘experts’ giving context to the stories
of eight families struggling with the
impacts of the Great Recession in the
HBO documentary “American Winter.”
There have been a number of films
about what led to the Great Recession; this film by Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Joe and Harry Gantz
is the first to look at what happened
to ordinary people.” David Goodman,
from Etna, New Hampshire, reports,
“I have been at Dartmouth Medical
School for almost twenty-five years.
Although I still see some patients, I
spend most of my days conducting
health-care research and leading the
Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. I also
am the chair of the Council on Graduate Medical Education. My wife, Patty
’73, is now a full-time potter, but
joins me on my international travel
as much as possible. We, along with
our son, Andrew, still love hiking the
Green Mountains.” Susan Nostrand
Boston proudly proclaims, “I finally
moved to Vermont a few years ago,
after talking about it for years. My
husband, David, and I (married thirtysix years June 2013) built a house in
Woodstock and love the small town
atmosphere after living in the Boston suburbs for years. Our daughter, Sarah Andriano, had the itch to
get to Vermont and is now director of
admissions at Champlain College. Our
son, Peter Boston, is assistant director
for major giving at Boston College.”
Ellen Thompson claims the prize for
closest to Burlington. She and her
husband, Jim, recently bought a 1797
farmhouse in Grand Isle. They have
turned it into a fabulous gallery—
Grand Isle Art Works with Zach’s Café
at the Gallery. There is art work in the
gallery made by more than sixty-five
Vermont artists. Ellen is also the director of instruction and information services for the Essex Town School District. She completed her third UVM
degree in 2007 in the Educational
Leadership and Policy Studies doctoral program. Polly Whitmore submits an account of this superb adventure: “March was a memorable month
for visiting with Wilks dormmates.
First stop was Mammoth Lakes, California, to catch Mary Pryor Heller
between completing clinical duties as
an FNP at a local hospital and making
perfect turns with weekly ski group
at 10,000 feet. Coming from Boston
and sea level, I was toast after hiking a two-mile x-country trail loop
around the nearby lakes! Fast forward one week to western Massachusetts, where former Wilks roommate Hollis Burbank Hammarlund
and fellow dormmates Jackie Tear
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
72
Sam Simmons reports that
after forty-one years as a
teacher, coach, and administrator, he will be taking a sabbatical from his position at Salisbury
School in Connecticut to spend the
year researching best practices at
boys’ schools around the world under
the aegis of the International Boys’
Schools Coalition. While he plans to
spend the bulk of his time working
with schools in North America, he
also intends to visit boys’ schools in
South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. “With all four of the kids grown
and out of the house and being alone
since Mick died in October of 2009,”
he says, “this sabbatical opportunity
could not have come at a better time.”
Nancy Tabke Ooms presented a session on making health education relevant to high school students at the
National Convention of the American
Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance in Charlotte, North Carolina. Nancy is team
leader, teaching health at Livingston High School, Livingston, New Jersey. Leon Martell lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches history by day
and playwriting at UCLA Extension at
night and writes for the Youth Concert Series for the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Disney Concert Hall.
Bill Dunnington is very pleased to
be back in Burlington after twentyfive years in Charlottesville, Virginia.
He is now empty-nested, selectively
consulting on energy and economic
development, and connecting with
old and new friends. Susan C. Morse,
a nationally known tracker and expert
on wildlife habitat, has received Unity
College’s 2013 Environmental Leader
Award for her accomplishments in
wildlife monitoring and conservation and raising public awareness of
the need for habitat protection. Sue
has spent nearly forty years researching wildlife and habitats throughout
North America, with a special focus
on bobcat, black bear, cougar, and
Canada lynx. In 1994, she founded
Keeping Track (www.keepingtrack.
org), a non-profit organization based
in Huntington, Vermont, that trains
professional biologists and citizen scientists in wildlife monitoring skills.
In closing, a note from your class
secretary, Debbie Stern. My husband, Mitch G’79, and I have recently
returned from a fabulous trip to
Japan, where we toured Tokyo, Osaka,
Kyoto, Hiroshima, Nara, and Nagoya,
to name just a few places. It was an
amazing experience, a total immersion in a different culture. We enjoyed
the beautiful cherry blossom season,
visited many historic temples, stayed
in traditional Japanese inns (ryokans),
rode the bullet trains, visited the
mountains, and sampled some wonderful foods.
Send your news to—
Debbie Koslow Stern
198 Bluebird Drive
Colchester, VT 05446
[email protected]
40th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
Wadi Sawabini announced that he
and Mary ’75 became grandparents
in October. Sutton Grae Sawabini
will be, they hope, the third generation of Sawabinis to attend UVM.
Wadi hopes to see many ’73ers at
the 40th reunion in October. Linda
Rubin sold her veterinary practice in
2008, and currently works part time
at the Orlando (Florida) Humane
Society. A student of French and
frequent traveler to France, Linda
also writes poetry, swims, and runs.
She would love to hear from members of the class of ’73. Charlotte
(Charli) Cohen Sheer has retired from
teaching for good this time, having returned to the classroom after
time away for raising a family and trying various other work venues. Free
time is filled with grandchildren, bicycling, RV travel, and bluegrass concerts with her husband. Watercolor
painting is her newest passion, along
with her volunteer work for the Holocaust Stamps Project, which she
founded four years ago at Foxborough Regional Charter School. This
education initiative is teaching students important lessons about discrimination, prejudice, intolerance,
and bullying. Charlotte invites individuals, clubs, and business groups to
collect and send their ready-to-discard cancelled postage stamps to the
project, which has a goal of collecting one stamp for each of the 11 million who died in the Holocaust. For
more information, see the website—
www.foxboroughrcs.org/studentsfamilies/frcs-holocaust-stamp-project. Albert Gardner Thayer continues
to represent UVM at college fairs in
Texas. Toby Cohen Sacks always
looks for news from ‘kids’ from the
Class of 1973, but never felt newsworthy enough to contribute herself—until now. After forty years her
time has come. Daughter Jenna ’12
followed in her mother’s footsteps,
English major and all, and thoroughly
enjoyed her years at UVM; she has
now escaped to St. Petersburg, Florida, so she never has to wear a NorthFace coat again. Son Josh took the
UMass/Amherst route and will soon
enter the world of high finance. Toby
and her husband, Michael, are enjoying the empty nest, ice cream for
49
CLASS NOTES
and Kim Royar Blodgett ’76 all met
up for a fun lunch in Greenfield.” Barbara J. Powers passed away on April
7, 2013. Barbara worked for more
than twenty-eight years for Comdex,
retiring as vice president of operations. After her retirement she was
very active with the Brain Science
Foundation of Wellesley, organizing
golf tournaments and other fundraising events. Barbara herself was
an avid golfer and Boston sports fan,
who enjoyed spending time with her
many friends. Christine Plunkett was
inaugurated as the fifth president
of Burlington College on Saturday,
April 27, 2013. Andrea Howard Bonnar is refreshing her home economics
child development knowledge and
skills in caring for her toddler twin
grandsons—and having much fun
doing so.
Send your news to—
Pete Morin
41 Border Street
Scituate, MA 02066
[email protected]
www.facebook.com/pete.morin2
50
79
Roy Sokolowski reports that
his new firm, WestView Investment Advisors, is owned by
three UVM Alumni: Roy himself, Pat
Sokolowski, and Ben Nostrand ’86.
Mark Dowhan sends greetings from
Cocoa Beach, Florida. He is working
as director of operations for United
Launch Alliance, putting satellites in
orbit aboard Atlas and Delta rockets from Cape Canaveral. “I guess that
‘funnelator’ experience on the front
lawn of Sig Ep paid off after all,” he
quips.
Send your news to—
Beth Gamache
58 Grey Meadow Drive
Burlington, VT 05401
bethgamache@burlington
telecom.net
80
Kurt Kaffenberger and Martha Seagrave were delighted
to celebrate the graduation
of their son, Sam Seagrave Kaffenberger, UVM Class of 2013. Ines Rulis
Barlerin can’t believe how time flies.
She moved back to the Washington,
DC metropolitan area after graduation for work and family reasons,
which led to joining the foreign service. She and her husband, Peter Bar-
81
Tom Horan is a professor and
dean at Claremont Graduate University. Last summer
and fall he had the honor of working
with the White House on their Data.
Gov initiative. Jean Dunbar Knapp
reports that her daughter, Erin, graduated from UVM in May 2012, and
after working in sales and marketing for the NE Patriots for the season, just moved back to Burlington
to join Select Design as an account
manager. Her son is a sophomore at
UVM, studying mechanical engineering. Jean is at Tufts Health Plan as the
AVP of budgeting and financial planning. The family’s favorite times are
spent boating on Lake Winnipesaukee, snowmobiling, hunting, travelling to Nicaragua, and hanging out
with their five dogs. Wendy Laramee
Wilton tells us that her daughter,
Georgianne ’14, is an RA at Hamilton 3 on Redstone this year and loving her UVM experience. She will miss
Vermont when she travels to China
this summer and to Tokyo this fall for
her studies abroad. Her son, Henry, a
Castleton State College grad, is teaching ornithology as an adjunct at his
alma mater. Wendy is celebrating the
start of a fourth elected term as Rutland City’s treasurer, with the second clean audit opinion for the city’s
financials in more than thirty years.
Diane Lachtrupp sold her ballroom
dance studio in NYC in 2006, moved
to Saratoga Springs with her husband
and two boys, and is now celebrating the one-year anniversary of her
new studio, Tango Fusion Dance Studio, in Saratoga Springs. Diane, who
has taught and performed throughout the U.S., South America, and
Europe, is happy to bring her dancing back home to the Albany Capital
District and New England area. Email
[email protected] if you are interested in serving as class secretary.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
82
Chris Tobin resides in Bellbrook, Ohio, and works for
the Department of Defense.
“Looking forward to the government
furlough—not!” he writes. His oldest
daughter graduates from high school
this spring. Where does the time go,
he wonders. Alexander “Lex” Crosett III was appointed to the executive team of Conservation Services
Group. As executive vice president of
software and services, Crosett oversees the company’s software development, information systems, and
network operations. Lisa Brunini
Harvey is proud to be in her thirtieth year of teaching art at Moretown
Elementary School in Vermont’s Mad
River Valley. Over the course of her
career, she has also taught at three
other valley schools and in the Art
Education Department at UVM. She
and her husband of seventeen years,
John, a Middlebury alum, share a love
of skiing at Mad River Glen, where
they are also coop shareholders. In
the summer, she is busy in her perennial and vegetable gardens. She also
paints and sells her work at a local village shop. Life is good in the beautiful Mad River Valley. Carol Delaney is
a farmer grant specialist with Northeast SARE, a USDA grant program
hosted at UVM, as well as a volunteer overseas. Last summer she went
to Mali for two weeks with Winrock
International to train women and
men in basic sheep and goat production and management skills. The
Malians she met were a nonaggressive culture, very open to other ways
of life, and Carol never felt in danger.
In April 2013, she went to El Salvador
to work with burgeoning dairy-goat
farmers—a busy but rewarding way
to spend vacation. Back home in the
U.S., Carol maintains a small-ruminant consulting business. (Both the
ruminants—goats and sheep—and
the business are small.) Mark Gregory fills his days seeing patients in
a primary care setting and teaching
med students and residents at Washington University School of Medicine
in St. Louis. He is also medical officer
for IL ANG, USAF at Scott AFB. “It is an
honor to be a physician and a privi-
lege to serve our country—and I get
to do both (and fly a little too!),” he
reports. Douglas Blondin brought
his career of more than thirty years
to an end when, taking advantage
of an incentive program, he retired
from AT&T Bell Labs/Lucent/Avaya in
mid-February. After a month of vacationing in Las Vegas and Maui, Doug
started work at NexGen Storage in
March.
Send your news to—
John Scambos
20 Canitoe street
Katonah, NY 10536
[email protected]
83
30th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Linda Sell Steil, Heidelberg,
Germany, works for the Warrior Transition Battalion Europe (U.S. Army)
as the adaptive sports and reconditioning site coordinator for Europe.
The program works with the Warrior Transition Command in Washington, DC, and takes care of U.S. soldiers
injured in war zones and Europe.
Carol Bergeron just released her first
book, People Succession: Lessons from
Forward Thinking Executives in Middle-Market Companies. This succinct
read is intended for executives, board
members, and people managers in
middle-market and aspiring middlemarket companies. See Carol’s website to learn more: bergeronassociates.com/people-succession-book.
Melissa Cooper Steidl and her husband, Karl Steidl, are proud to report
that their son, Kurt Steidl, will join
the UVM Class of 2017 and the men’s
varsity basketball team. After sorting through a dozen or so recruiting
offers, he chose UVM because of the
great team chemistry, terrific coaching staff, and excellent academics.
Kurt has been admitted to the School
of Business and is planning on a concentration in marketing and accounting. Susan B. Elliot tells us that her
son Nathan will graduate from UVM
this year, thirty years after she did. He
has had a wonderful college experience and was a member of the
snowboard team. Her younger son,
Connor, also a college student, completed a Semester at Sea last summer
through the University of Virginia.
Susan is still working in the Burling-
www.LMSRE.com
ton, Vermont, office of Congressman Peter Welch, in health care and
human services. Lisa H. Conti G’86
has been appointed to the founding faculty of the Frank H. Netter MD
School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University. As an assistant professor of
medical sciences, she will be responsible for teaching neuroscience and
biostatistics courses at Connecticut’s
newest medical school, which will
offer its first classes in August 2013.
Prior to joining the faculty at Quinnipiac, Lisa was an assistant professor
in the Department of Psychiatry and
Neuroscience Program at the University of Connecticut. She was also an
assistant project scientist and assistant adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego and has
taught in the psychology departments at Middlebury College, Trinity
College of Vermont, and the University of Vermont. Amy Reyelt Stevens and her husband, Scott, continue to live in Simsbury, Connecticut,
and work at the Westminster School,
where they have been since 1985.
They have had occasion to return to
Burlington several times, especially
in the last four year as their daughter, Abby ’13, graduated from UVM
www.LionDavis.com
in May. Abby had a wonderful experience, and Amy and Scott have loved
revisiting many of their old haunts
with her. Lauren Schaechter Lieberman is thankful to UVM for preparing
her to be a special education teacher
and very proud of her daughter,
also studying to be a special education teacher, who will graduate from
UVM in 2014. “We share some wonderful memories!” notes Lauren. She
still stays in touch with Alison Buttolph Kutchma and Johanna Gardner Mahdavi. Sharon Morrissey
Young has resigned as class secretary
after more than ten years of service.
Please send her a big thank you for
her service to our class as she communicated with us and compiled our
class notes. Thank you, Sharon, for a
job well done. In closing, an update
from your new secretary, Lisa Crozier.
I am busier then ever despite both
of our girls being out of the home
and in grad schools. Our older, Caryn
Alexis, graduated this May with her
Master of Music in vocal performance
and will be off into the world of auditions and operas. Our younger, Colleen Nicole, graduated summa cum
laude from North Carolina State University in May 2012 with degrees in
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SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
78
45th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Diane Riley Pouliot is very
pleased to announce that she will
be the new president of the Equinox
Curling Club in Manchester, Vermont.
The Equinox is one of the youngest
curling clubs in Vermont and ready
to take the “fastest growing indoor
Winter Olympic sport” to the public.
With the 2014 Winter Olympics coming soon, curling will gain some public awareness, and Diane hopes you
will join her in Manchester at Riley
Rink, New England’s largest indoor ice
arena. Audrey Ziss Bath will be coming to reunion all the way from Boise,
Idaho, her first time back to UVM in
thirty-five years. She will be joined by
Andrea DeAngelis, Pen Starke, and
Rick Kohn and can’t wait. “For any of
you sitting on the bubble, undecided
about whether or not to return to
Burlington for this reunion,” she says,
“well, if I can get there from Idaho,
you can get there, too. Hope to see
many classmates there!” Evan Preston Reed is still playing soccer. Are
any other women our age out there
still playing? She and others are hoping to get a fifty-five-plus and sixtyplus division in a tournament in Florida in January. If you qualify and are
interested, contact Evan at elitereed@
windstream.net. India Howell has
been living and working in Tanzania since 1998. In 2003, she founded
the Tanzanian Children’s Fund.
(www. tanzanianchildrensfund.org)
Since then, the fund has built a Children’s Village in northern Tanzania
and developed a range of programs
to address the needs of marginalized children in the area. Currently it
serves a population of about 8,000
people in the areas of education,
health care, and micro finance, and
eighty-eight orphaned children live at
the Children’s Village. Email alumni@
uvm.edu if you are interested in serving as class secretary.
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
lerin, a Middlebury College graduate, raised three children, mostly
abroad. Peter, continues to work at
the Department of State, and Ines
pursues a full-time career in painting.
Check out her work at www.studioepartners.com.
Send your news to—
MaryBeth Pinard-Brace
P.O. Box 655
Shelburne, VT 05482
marybethpinard_brace@alumni.
uvm.edu
51
CLASS NOTES
zoology and poultry science. She is
about to very successfully complete
her first year of vet school at NCSU
CVM. I travelled to Norway in April
with my mom to visit my sister Marit
and her family at their sheep farm on
Ombo, an island near Stavanger, Norway. Last year I became a certified
Stott Pilates® essential and intermediate mat instructor, and I continue to
teach knitting at all levels at my local
yarn shop. Jim and I are looking forward to a trip to San Francisco this
summer. I look forward to reconnecting at Reunion, especially with Lynn
Larson Rhoads, Janna Jacobson,
Laurel Baker Walker, Megan Brendel, Debbie Noyes Swartz, Karen
Lamson McKenny, and so many
more with whom I have lost contact.
Send your news to—
Lisa Greenwood Crozier
3370 Sally Kirk Road
Winston-Salem, NC 27106
[email protected]
52
Abby Goldberg Kelley
303 Oakhill Road
Shelburne, VT 05482
[email protected]
Kelly McDonald
10 Lapointe Street
Winooski, VT 05404
[email protected]
Shelley Carpenter Spillane
336 Tamarack Shores
Shelburne, VT 05482
[email protected]
85
Paul Klockenbrink, a partner
in Gentry Locke’s Labor and
Employment Law group, was
named a “Legal Eagle” for employment law, management and litigation, and labor and employment
in 2012 by Virginia Living Magazine. Cathy Irish Tremblay recently
joined the Vermont Regional Board
of the UVM Alumni Association and
also serves on its athletic sub-committee. Her youngest daughter is a
UVM sophomore, majoring in education. Lynne Halpin Costen toured
the UVM campus to prep for volunteering at a UVM table for a college fair in Connecticut last fall. “UVM
looked great!” she reports. Lynne officiates soccer and girls lacrosse high
school games, which gets her runing on a field with the kids—a great
change of pace from another job she
loves, chief administrator/owner of
ASR Engineering in Milford. Caroline
Tassey, who has been a family nurse
practitioner for many years, opened a
practice in child and adolescent psychiatry after obtaining her psychiat-
VQEXTRA
online
86
Lee Diamond is a lab safety
coordinator for the Department of Risk Management &
Safety at UVM. She has worked at the
university since 1997. In her spare
time, she is getting her yoga teacher
training certificate and organizing a
free annual community-sponsored
yoga benefit on the Church Street
Marketplace (Aug. 11, 2013). Donations at the event will go to Prevent
Child Abuse Vermont.
Send your news to—
Lawrence Gorkun
141 Brigham Road
St. Albans, VT 05478
[email protected]
87
Jane Isaacs Schoenholtz
writes, “I was sorry to miss
our 25th reunion in October.
I miss UVM, Burlington, and fellow
classmates! Glad to hear it was such
a success. Fortunately I still see Carey
Hoffman Pippert, Trish Wheeler
Ellsworth, Stephanie Croke, Laurie Oelbaum Sommer, and Carolyn
Williams Hazen as much as possible, and we talk even more.” Jane and
her husband, Mark, are still living in
New Canaan, Connecticut. Their older
daughter, Katelyn, is a sophomore at
Taft; Megan, their fourteen-year-old
daughter, just heard that she, too,
got into Taft and will likely be going
next year as well; and Teddy, who is
ten years old, will be entering sixth
grade. Jane hopes to bring the family back to Burlington soon. Marianne
Spear Apfelbaum wants all UVM
alumni who are business owners to
know about her company’s new venture: Williston Area Business Association (WABA). Visit www. willistonaba.
com for information. She is also looking for great freelance writers for her
newest publication, My Finance Magazine, which premiered in June. Contact Marianne if you are interested.
Dara Levine Hillis writes, “Dear Class
of 1987, many of us are celebrating
our thirtieth high school reunion. It is
hard to believe. I remember leaving
my very close-knit group of Rye High
School friends and thinking I could
patrick
murphy ’85
“It was very
compelling to see
the Burmese people
aspire to something
very different, and
now seeing them
get that opportunity
has been quite an
incredible process
to be part of.”
—Patrick Murphy on
his work with the U.S.
Foreign Service in Burma,
where he was the senior
government official in
charge of historic visits by
Secretary of State Clinton
and President Obama.
Patrick Murphy is pictured with Aung San Suu
Kyi, Burmese politician
and Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate.
read more at
uvm.edu/vq
never find friends so supportive and
fun, but I did! Thank you to all who
have shaped such wonderful memories and have kept in touch. I do keep
in touch with Jeannette Beer-Becker,
Eileen LaRochell-Ramer, and Petra
Gerstberger-Rowland.” Valerie Welsch Hale comments that Class Notes
seems empty and wonders if everyone is on social media. She is living
the hectic juggling act of raising two
teenagers while still an active scientist and teacher. As close to Vermont
as she could get is Amherst, Massachusetts, where she has worked at
Amherst College sine 1997. Wayne
Davis sends greetings to all UVM
alumni, and invites you to look him
up if you have the occasion to be
in the Dayton/Cincinnati Ohio area.
According to Wayne, there are a few
Catamounts out that way. Sara Prineas Wurzer lives in New Jersey and
practices pediatrics in Hamilton, New
Jersey. She had daughter, Jane Beatrice, on October 5, 2012, who joins
sisters Grace and Claire and brothers James, John, and Mark. Class secretary Sarah Reynolds reports that
Mary (Giambruno) Fuge and Jennifer (Mongeon) Eisenlau had their
own UVM mini-reunion recently.
Unable to travel to Burlington, they
met in Cincinnati for a Bengals-Giants
football game and tailgating with
their children (Mary has six kids; Jennifer has one boy). When not tailgating or being mothers, Mary and
Jennifer are deep into their respective careers. Their UVM degrees have
come in handy: Mary is the director
of the St. Rita Hospice in Lima, Ohio;
Jennifer is a professor at Front Range
Community College in Boulder, Colorado. They wish they could have been
joined by their UVM roommate of
four years, Deb (Wilson) Kelly, also of
Boulder, Colorado. Maybe next year.
Send your news to—
Sarah Reynolds
2 Edgewood Lane
Bronxville, NY 10708
[email protected]
88
25th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Joyce M. Letourneaut
Cabrera and her husband are very
proud that our eldest daughter, Cas-
sidy, followed in Joyce’s footsteps
and chose UVM and Burlington as
the ideal place to further her education. She studied hard and managed
dean’s list and is already preparing for
her first summer at Groovy UV. Karla
Galfetti Smith reports that after raising kids (ages 10 and 13) and volunteering at non-profits for a number
of years, she is back to (paid!) work
at a computer hardware company in
Westborough, Massachusetts.
Send your news to—
Cathy Selinka Levison
18 Kean Road
Short Hills, NJ 07078
[email protected]
89
Nathan Graham and his
spouse, Heidi Kenison Graham, both School of Business
Administration graduates, have lived
in Maine for twenty-four years. They
have two children, ages seventeen
and fourteen. Their seventeen-yearold daughter is a high school junior
and is looking at colleges throughout New England. Maybe UVM is
in her future? Katherine B. Swindell reports that all is well in Portland,
Oregon. She had a great time seeing Mike Reardon on a work trip and
loves running into Ann Taggart ’90
at various neighborhood spots. She
looks forward to getting together
with the Groovy Girls (Kate Fallon
Croteau, Robyn Fried Boyd, Moe
Kelly Gonsalves, Kim Slomin McGarvey, Emily Katz Moskowitz, Pecka
Sue Mooney Noonan, and Stefanie
Conroy Wallach), and will miss Diane
Peligal O’Halloran madly. Robert Shire, who practices chiropractic in midtown Manhattan, has added
health coaching to the practice and is
expanding all over the country, helping people lose weight and achieve
optimal health. Ilana (14) is a freshman at Scarsdale High School, and
Evan (10) is in the fifth grade at Edgewood School. His wife, Nancy, keeps
the Shire engine running smoothly as
CFO (Chief Family Operator).
Send your news to—
Maureen Kelly Gonsalves
[email protected]
90
Samantha Carleton married
Matthew Blischak in Boston’s
Trinity Church on November
10, 2012. In attendence were alums
Trish Huie, Brian ’88 and Carol Kane,
Jon Hill, and Donna Brooks ’88.
Samantha and Matthew have moved
to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and
would love to hear from any of Sam’s
classmates. Kelly McBride joined TD
Bank as store manager in New Britain, Connecticut. An assistant vice
president, she is responsible for new
business development, consumer
and business lending, managing personnel, and overseeing the day-today operations at the store. Kelly has
twenty-four years of retail banking
experience. Mitchell Gould and Julie
Brecher Gould proudly celebrated
their son Jake’s bar mitzvah on March
9, 2013. Their younger son, Maxwell,
helped celebrate. Amy Mendel and
Lee Rosenthal graduated together
in 1990, but it took seventeen-plus
years to find each other before marrying in 2010. They are living in Port
Washington, New York, and having
a great time with their two-year-old
son, Sammy.
Send your news to—
Tessa Donohoe Fontaine
108 Pickering Lane
Nottingham, PA 19362
[email protected]
91
Scott Drake married his partner, Jeremy Davis, on August
18, 2012, at the Barn at Boyden Farm in Cambridge, Vermont.
Friends and family were able to enjoy
all the Lamoille River Valley had to
offer. Scott is currently the store
manager at Under Armour in Lake
George, New York. Shaunda Kennedy Wenger had her book, Reality
Bites, Tales of a Half-Vampire, selected
as a finalist for juvenile fiction in the
2012 Book of the Year Award by ForeWord Reviews. Chris Ostrowski and
family moved from the mountains of
Park City, Utah, to the beach of Sayulita, Mexico almost two years ago,
wanting to experience the world in
a different way than they could in
the States. “Lots of people talk about
doing something like this, but we
were able to make it happen,” says
Chris. His wife continues to work for
the airlines; their kids, aged 6 and 8,
attend a Spanish-speaking Montessori school; and Chris moved his decorative concrete business there. Sayulita is home now. Follow their latest
adventures at www. ozzyandashleyadventures. blogspot.com
Send your news to—
Karen Heller Lightman
2796 Fernwald Road
Pittsburgh, PA 15217
[email protected]
92
Matt St. John became the
executive officer of the North
Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, a regulatory agency
in northern California in May 2012.
Charged with preserving and protecting surface and ground water quality,
Matt finds the position challenging,
but always interesting and diverse.
His daughter, Anastazia (12), is an
avid reader and loves theater. His son,
Aidan (10), enjoys playing lacrosse.
They keep him young at heart. Matt
would love to hear from UVM classmates. Gene Barfield and Tim LaCroix, after thirty years of loving happiness, were married March 15. The
ceremony took place at the government headquarters complex of the
Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa
Indians, a federally recognized tribe
of Native American people, of which
Tim is a tribal citizen. The newly married couple expressed their most sincere thanks and great respect for
the people of the Little Traverse Bay
Bands of Odawa Indians and to their
government, for acting in support of
the equality of all people. They will
host a celebration of their marriage at
a later date.
Send your news to—
Lisa Kanter
10116 Colebrook Avenue
Potomac, MD 20854
[email protected]
93
20th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Dan Brister’s new book, In
The Presence of Buffalo, was published
in July by Graphic Arts Books. This
nonfiction essay collection weaves
personal reflections and stories of the
present-day slaughter of America’s
last wild bison with information gathered through historical, cultural, and
scientific research. The book traces
Dan’s journey from his days at UVM
as a student of English and environmental studies to his grassroots work
on the Yellowstone boundary as executive director of Buffalo Field Campaign. Jonathan Tofel and his wife,
Anne, welcomed their second daughter, Ellery Kane, who was happily
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
84
Megan Camp received an
honorary Doctor of Letters
degree from Middlebury College at the commencement ceremony in May. Megan is vice president
and program director at Shelburne
Farms, a 1,400-acre working farm,
nonprofit education center, and
National Historic Landmark located
in Vermont’s Champlain Valley. Providing leadership for organizational
and educational program development, she has focused on building
public-private partnerships to conduct research, influence policy, and
build networks to strengthen sustainability-education efforts in Vermont
and around the world. Carol Greenberger loves living in the mountains
of Asheville, North Carolina, with her
husband and ten-year-old daughter.
She is in private practice doing psychotherapy at The Relationship Center. Come by and say hello if you’re
in the area. Kristin Ann Manazir was
very excited to get a surprise visit last
Memorial Day weekend from Ginger
Ross Kosobucki and Sally Neidecker
Morris in honor of their birthdays.
They walked all around UVM campus
and laughed (of course) just about
the entire time. “Thank you to both
of my very dear friends, whom I’ve
had since freshman year, for giving
me that wonderful gift of a reunion!”
writes Kristin. Sam Sparhawk is
a managing director in securities
finance at The Bank of New York Mellon. Barbara Clark Sparhawk works
for J Crew Corporation. Two of their
kids opted for Penn State over UVM,
despite recruIting efforts by mom
and dad. Sam and Barb keep in touch
with Phil Davis and Jeff Ng, and are
planning a mini reunion soon. Jeff
has kept UVM tradition alive with his
older daughter enrolling in the Class
of 2016.
Send your news to—
Laurie Olander Angle
12 Weidel Drive
Pennington, NJ 08534
ric mental health nurse practitioner
license.
Send your news to—
Barbara Roth
140 West 58th Street, #2B
New York, NY 10019
[email protected]
53
54
greeted at home by big sister Aria.
Jonathan also just launched his second new products innovation consultancy and is curious if any other
UVMers are also involved in the CPG
(consumer packaged goods) world;
if so, he would like to connect on
LinkedIn. Deb Desjardins was voted
in as vice president of the board of
Sojourner House. A nondenominational faith-based agency, Sojourner
House provides residential treatment and other services to addicted
women and their children to break
the intergenerational cycle. Lt. Col.
Shannon O’Boyle will retire from the
Air Force in July 2013, after twenty
years of dedicated service. Here’s a
shout out to all the AFROTC Det 865
alumni! Laura Beth Scott was named
vice president of supplier operations
at Wayfair.com, a large online retailer
of home products and furnishings.
Jessica Atkins Hernandez moved
back to Manhattan with her husband, two-year-old son, and dog last
June, after four years in the D.C. area.
She works for the law firm of Morrison Foerster as the attorney development manager for the East Coast and
Europe. Her husband, a Commander
in the U. S. Navy, is stationed at the
Military Entrance Processing Center in
Brooklyn. They will be in NYC until the
summer of 2014, and Jessica would
love to connect with any UVM people in the area. Jonathan Decker and
his wife, Brittany, welcomed twins
to the world on November 30, 2012.
Their daughter, Ally, and son, Bailey,
are doing great. Mom and dad are
exhausted but thrilled. Thanks to his
four-year roommate, Korey Fuellhart,
for the UVM kids clothing. Jon loves
to support his Cats every day with his
two Pennsylvania license plates: UVM
93 and CATAMNT. Andrea HathawayMiglorie and Jerry “Jake” Miglorie had their first baby, Jerry “Jake”
Miglorie, Jr., in September 2012. The
couple works at Jake’s family’s business, Jerry’s Nissan, in Rutland, Vermont. Andrea continues to train and
compete with her horses and for the
past four years has been district commissioner of the Rutland County Pony
Club. This year marks her twentieth
year as a 4-H leader. She also enjoys
playing golf and RV-ing with her husband and can’t wait to RV with their
little son this summer. Andrea tries to
frequent UVM as much as she can.
Send your news to—
Gretchen (Haffermehl) Brainard
[email protected]
94
Mary Martialay “got hitched,”
as she put it, although, “I suppose the proper way to say it
would be ‘Mary Martialay, ’94, married Andrew Casabonne, a graduate of that SUNY school on the other
side Lake Champlain.” The couple
exchanged vows on September 9,
2012, aboard the Adirondac on Lake
George. UVM was well represented
with Karl and Andrea (Weed) Aeder,
Laura (Dobrowalski) Quirk, Gwyn
(Roberts) Croll, Ken and Kristen ’94
(Cronin) Ferrara, and Sam Charron
’95 in attendance. On a day of high
winds and tornado warnings, the
boat docked without incident after
the ceremony, and “Sweet Caroline”
rounded out the playlist at the reception. Holly Johnson Machanic and
fellow UVM grad and husband, Corey
Machanic, have recently launched
FlavorPlate.com, a website design
and content management system for
the restaurant industry. Flavor Plate is
a user-friendly and mobile-optimized
website solution, providing restaurants all the necessary tools to manage their own content, connect with
social media, and take reservations
online. Flavor Plate offers discounts
to businesses that are members of
local food networks and support
local food producers. Corey and Holly
live in South Burlington with their
two daughters and dog, Coco Bear.
Adam Pratt and Megan Cotter Pratt
’93 enjoyed a little time away from
their children, Caroline, James, and
Andrew, at the UVM alumni ski weekend, topped off by great day of skiing
with Sean McVeigh.
Send your news to—
Cynthia Bohlin Abbott
141 Belcher Drive
Sudbury, MA 01776
[email protected]
95
Vaughn T. Collins G’95 has
been named executive director of the Vermont State Dental Society. Vaughn’s career is deeply
rooted in Vermont: He was executive director of the Vermont Council
on Rural Development for four years,
president of the Vermont Commu-
nity Development Association, and
a board member of Vermont Energy
Investment Corporation from 1992
to 1995. He is also a graduate of the
Vermont Leadership Institute at the
Snelling Center for Government. Erica
Ludlow Bowman had a surprise visit
from her old friend Caleb Marriot ’94,
his wife, Caroline, and their daughter,
Esme. Together with Erica’s daughter, Juniper, they all went sledding
down a bobsled-type run through
the woods—making Erica long for
the old days of hiking and sledding
down Mount Philo. Erica is still working as a landscape architect and living in Jamaica, Vermont, with her
husband, Rob. They have been working hard to create a homestead on
the mountainous property they call
Evernest. In the summer they often
grow enough produce and cut flowers to sell at the local farmers’ market.
They hope to transform their place
into a large teaching garden where
people will come and learn about
gardening with perennials and vegetables. Erica also hopes to catch
up with old friends JJ Jacobs, Erika
Mark, Susie Powers, Nell Ryan, and
Jennifer Hughes over the summer.
On March 23, Ryan Wildes ’96 celebrated his fortieth birthday in Burlington with fellow grads Dave Sird
’96, Kate Clark Brennan, Andi Lemmon, John Gorman, Sarah Strouse
Curry G’07, Daniel Curry ’92, Tara
Nemeth Pacy ’88, and Ben Pacy ’86.
Holly Andrews says that after being
fortunate enough to stay at home
when her kids (Emily, 12, and Ryan, 9)
were young, she decided to go back
to school. Holly graduated from the
Occupational Therapy Assistant Program at North Shore Community College in Danvers, Massachusetts, in
2011. She is currently a full-time certified, licensed OTA working at a shortterm rehab facility in Beverly, Massachusetts. She is so glad to make a
difference in the lives of her patients.
Her husband, Jon Andrews, also
works close to home in Essex, and
they are able to keep up with the kids’
busy schedules thanks to their easy
commutes.
Send your news to—
Valeri Pappas
8495 East 28th Avenue
Denver, CO 80238
[email protected]
96
Jayme Rivas Robertson and
John Pappas welcomed their
second daughter, Sophie
Marina Pappas, in October. Big sister Olivia is revelling in her new role.
Jayme continues as lead teacher of
the Early Childhood Center at The
Learning Center for the Deaf. Stuart
Sweetser is happily living in the San
Francisco Bay Area and is currently
consulting with the California State
Compensation Insurance Fund. Israel
and ToniAnn Sacco Maynard have
recently relocated their family to Beijing, China.
Send your news to—
Jill Cohen Gent
31760 Creekside Drive
Pepper Pike, OH 44124
[email protected]
Michelle Richards Peters
332 Northwest 74th Street
Seattle, WA 98117
[email protected]
97
Leandra Manos accepted
a position in August as the
head swimming and diving
coach/aquatic director of the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford, Connecticut. She had a successful first year, coaching one swimmer
to five new school records. Bethany
Ann McDonald Shepherd was married in Labastide-en-Val, France to
Tristan Shepherd in September 2012.
She resides in London, UK, with her
husband and spends her time directing plays, painting theatrical scenery, and fundraising for the arts. Since
2005, she has lived in London, where
she obtained a postgraduate diploma
in directing from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and
an M.A. in arts policy and management from Birkbeck College, University of London. She works as head of
trusts and foundations at The Royal
Central School of Speech and Drama
and is trustee for the outreach charity DreamArts. Andrew Rosenzweig,
M.D. is now associate chief and fellowship director of the Division of
Geriatrics, Department of Medicine,
at Albert Einstein Medical Center in
Philadelphia, Pennnsylvania. Erika
Meisel Schwartz was disappointed to
miss the reunion in October, but had
a great day in Burlington and visiting the campus in August while on a
family trip to the area. It was move-in
day for students so it was pretty busy,
but amazing to see all the changes
on campus, especially the bookstore.
Her kids were excited to buy some
UVM gear. Rob Slocum writes that
he and his wife recently welcomed
their third child, Henry Robert Slocum. Rob is living in Pleasantville,
New York, and working at Creative
Artists Agency. Paul Mollomo G’97 is
publishing a journal about Linux networking and Boolean theory: www.
paul-mollomo.us. He welcomes UVM
alumni to join the conversation. John
Emery and his wife, Heather Devlin
Emery MD’07, relocated last year to
Bedford, New Hampshire, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they
met. They are very excited to be back
in New England, closer to friends and
family. Deborah Finkelstein Lenchus
and her husband, Dr. Joshua Lenchus, welcomed twins to their family.
Samuel Judah (5 lbs., 14 oz.) and Hannah Leah (6 lbs., 1 oz.) were born on
February 16, 2013. Big brothers Isaac
(6) and Aaron (2) are very excited.
Everyone is doing well. Deborah and
Joshua are living in Davie, Florida.
Send your news to—
Elizabeth Carstensen Genung
362 Upper Hollow Hill Road
Stowe, VT 05672
[email protected]
98
15th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Glenna McMahon landed
in San Diego, California, shortly after
graduation and an exciting threeweek trek across the country with
Sara Welsford Ozuna ‘97. She lives
just north of the city now and is managing soil and groundwater remediation projects for an outstanding environmental consulting firm. Angie
Holbrook sends greetings to the
Class of 1998 and hopes everyone is
planning to make it back to reunion
in the fall. Last year was a milestone
year for her—she came back to Shelburne, Vermont, in June to get married, ringing in the day with some of
her favorite UVMers: Heidi (Gagnon)
Davies, Marisa (Santo Domingo)
Shields, and Meghan Haley. She and
her husband, Jason Hammel, now
live in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.
“I’m grateful for the lasting friendships and miss all the good times we
had in Burlington!” she says. Adam
Gurry has been living in Brookline,
Massachusetts, for the past couple of
years with his wife, Laura, and fifteenmonth-old daughter, Lila. They regularly see Todd Kathan and his wife,
Becca, and daughter, Parker, as well as
Todd Gochman’s family and UVMers
Jim Downes, Webb Thompson, and
Mark Rosen. Adam works for Genzyme, a Cambridge-based biotech
company. Over the past six years,
he’s worked in a variety of commercially focused roles. In the summer
his family spends a lot of time down
on the Cape, and during the winter they make their way up to Sugarbush every now and then to ski and
see his sister, who lives in Waitsfield,
Vermont. As co-chair of the Reunion
committee he’s excited to help plan
our fifteenth reunion and hopes folks
can make it back. David Tepper and
Leslie Pippin-Tepper ’99 welcomed
their first child, Dylan Joseph Tepper, into the world on November 29,
2012. They moved back to Vermont
over four years ago from Massachusetts (to avoid raising Red Sox fans)
and have been loving living back in
Vermont. David works at Dealer.com
and Leslie works at Green Mountain Coffee. David is a volunteer ski
patroller at Jay Peak on the weekends. Mark Rosen lives in Wayland,
Massachusetts, with his wife, Jennifer,
and two kids, Jack (6) and Isabella (3).
Mark is a CPA and CFP specializing in
the dental industry and is a partner
at Rosen & Associates, LLP and MORR
Dental Solutions, LLC. He’s looking
forward to seeing friends and having a sandwich from Red Onion at the
reunion in the fall. Ok folks, make sure
you visit our web or Facebook page
for details on the reunion. Catch you
in the fall in Vermont!”
Send your news to—
Ben Stockman
Apartment 3
512 Washington Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238
[email protected]
99
Christopher R. Noyes was
promoted to partner at WilmerHale. Lionel (L. J.) Joseph
Palardy has retired, but volunteers in many capacities: at WRUV
for the twenty-second consecutive
year, doing music presentations for
the English Department, as artistic
adviser for Burlington Discover Jazz
Festival for the last ten years, helping
out at UVM’s Speech & Debate program and at the Flynn Center for the
Performing Arts. L.J. recently completed a one-year cooking gig (Saturday nights) at Vermont Respite House
in Williston. Amanda Barnes married
Geoffrey Zampiello Trinity ’98 at the
Roger Sherman Inn in New Canaan,
Connecticut, on February 22, 2013.
The couple resides in Norwalk, Connecticut. They also spend time skiing at Bromley. Livy Beecher Riddiford and her family have left the Gulf
Coast. Livy and her husband, Dave,
and their son, James, have moved to
Boulder, Colorado, where Livy is currently working as an account manager for the jewelry company Nina
Nguyen. They are looking forward
to enjoying seasons once again. I’m
so excited to announce the birth of
John Conathan Creney II. Lyssa Sher
Creney and Joe Creney ’98 welcomed their crazy adorable son on
August, 12, 2012. Lyssa and Joe are
thrilled with their bundle of joy. Right
around the corner from the Creneys,
Chris Frier and his lovely wife, Sara,
welcomed their son, Colby Robert Frier, on October 26, 2012. Colby
weighed 7 pounds, 9 ounces and
was 19 inches long. Dad, mom, and
son are doing great. Up by our old
stomping grounds, Leslie PippinTepper and David Tepper ’98 welcomed the newest addition to their
family, Dylan Joseph Tepper, born on
November 29 at Fletcher Allen hospital. Congrats to you both. Christian
Craig and his wife, Lizzy Allen Craig
G’09, welcomed Addison Jane Craig
on November 10, 2012, in Springfield,
Vermont. Addison weighed 6 pounds,
15 ounces and is getting settled in
with mom and dad at their home in
Weathersfield, Vermont.
Send your news to—
Sarah Pitlak Tiber
42 Lacy Street
North Andover, MA 01845
[email protected]
00
Caroline Evans was named
the 2012 Vermont Outstanding Clinician of the Year by
Bi-State Primary Care Association,
an award given every year to the clinician whose work has made a significant impact on the health of an
underserved population. Caroline’s
work as sole manager of the ongoing care for the total patient panel
VQEXTRA
online
JAY NASH’ 98
“The melody would
start to reveal what
story the song was
trying to tell. That
was a big departure,
a reverse from how
I’d approached all
my other records.
At the end of the
day, I would just put
that song to rest.
I’d close it and start
with a new one the
next day.”
—Jay Nash on the
creative process at
the root of his new
recording, “Letters From
the Lost.”
read more at
uvm.edu/vq
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
CLASS NOTES
55
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
CLASS NOTES
in a rural East Corinth Vermont clinic
for an entire year made her nomination stand out from the crowd. She
was honored at the annual Bi-State
Primary Care Conference on May 15,
2013. Kiki Cannon is living in Denver and working for Coldwell Banker
Residential Real Estate. She enjoys
cycling, skiing, and yoga. Ed Coleman spent 2012 working on President Obama’s historic reelection campaign, where he oversaw the data
and technology program in twentytwo states, including the four big battleground states of Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. When not
working or traveling, he got to take in
the many sights of Chicago, America’s
second city, and highly recommends
visiting if you’ve never been there. It
was a thrill and privilege to be part of
the president’s history-making campaign, and Ed is looking forward to
new adventures in 2013. Steve Ball
and his wife, Courtney, welcomed
their first child, Eleanor, in December.
Everyone is doing well, and Eleanor
is keeping mom and dad very busy.
Steve is a patent attorney at SSJR, an
intellectual property firm based in
Connecticut. The firm handles cases
across the country and has a number of green-tech clients developing
incredible technology. Timothy Peter
Loy, who lives in Sarasota, reports
that “Florida is a long way from Vermont, but just as beautiful (in many
different ways). Wish all fellow alums
the best of everything and if anyone
needs a contact in Florida, I’d be glad
to help. Go Cats Go! Tupper 4.” Alison
Jarmy married Thomas Stoll on September 22, 2012, at their house in
Clifton Park, New York. Alison’s sister,
Kristin Jarmy (also class of 2000) was
in attendance. Alison and Thomas
honeymooned in the Dominican
Republic. Sara Fritsch, class secretary, will be retiring from that role.
Sara writes: “Thank you so much for
your contributions and support, it
has been an honor to edit our column. I trust that one of you will pick
it up and put your heart into the role.
If you are interested please contact
Sarah Wasilko at [email protected].
After seven years of living in Portland,
Oregon, and loving it, my family is
heading to Amsterdam.”
Send your news to—
UVM Alumni Association
411 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
[email protected]
01
Jarret Cassaniti currently is
the training manager of the
K4Health/Nigeria web-based
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Program for medical laboratory scientists in Nigeria, based
at Johns Hopkins University Center
for Communication Programs. His
prior experience includes designing
e-learning modules for CME credits
for physicians, PAs, NPs, and nurses
in the U.S. Jarret was a Peace Corps
volunteer in Zambia and earned his
M.P.H. in global health from Emory
University. David Breslin has relocated from New York to San Francisco to become the associate director of Merrill Lynch’s Private Banking
& Investment Group for the Pacific
Northwest. He is very excited for the
change of scenery and to be going
into his twelfth year at ML in a new
role. Chloe Ifergan accepted a job as
real estate broker with @properties in
Chicago, the number one real estate
company in Chicago. Scott Goodwin
and his wife, Meagan G’11, moved
to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for work
last year; welcomed a son, Seamus,
in August; and Scott recently began
a new job as an IT project manager
for Management Science Associates
of Pittsburgh. He is currently working
toward an M.B.A., and he and Meagan hope to find their way back to
their South Burlington home in the
next few years. Amanda Rigterink
and Jacob Ricker Gilbert ’02 welcomed their first child, Ian Henry, on
November 13, 2012. Michael Flynn
was awarded an Alumni Achievement (Early Career) Award from Pratt
Institute, where he received a master’s degree in city planning in 2006
and currently serves as a visiting professor and faculty adviser. At his day
job at the New York City Department
of Transportation, he works to make
the city’s streets safer and greener as
director of capital planning. He and
his wife, Emily (a Vermonter although
not a UVMer), live in Brooklyn with
their fifteen-month-old daughter—
but they are strongly tempted to
move back to Burlington to put down
roots. Class secretary Erin Wilson
reports that Ian Hopper and his wife,
Lori Heuring, had a baby boy, Hudson Joseph Hopper, on December 12,
2012. And how crazy that Eric Fenton
had a baby that same day. Congrats
to both of you! Beyond being a busy
new dad, Ian and his brother, Justin
’04, are also in the process of building a restaurant, Hutchinson Grill, on
Restaurant Row in Los Angeles. The
restaurant is set to open this summer,
so if anyone is in LA, stop by and support it. I go out to LA often for work
and can’t wait to check it out. Mary
Hochstin Schneider also wrote in
that she and her husband, Scott, welcomed their third child—son Noah
William—on March 28, adding to
their family of two daughters, Evelyn
(5) and Anna (3).
Send your news to—
Erin Wilson
10 Worcester Square, #1
Boston, MA 02118
[email protected]
02
Susan Vaughn Grooters took
a position with the Center for
Science in the Public Interest in December as a food safety and
policy associate in Washington, DC.
She is also pursuing a doctoral degree
at George Washington University in
the Environmental and Occupational
Health Department within the School
of Public Health and Health Services.
Justine Rogan Novak and her husband, Steve, joyfully announced the
birth of their son, Charles Paul, on
December 1, 2012. Charles joins big
brother Steven. They currently reside
in Milton, Massachusetts. Michelle
Lovell Devane is happy to announce
that she and her husband, Ryan,
married in September of 2010, welcomed their first daughter in 2013.
“It has been such an amazing time
in our lives and we feel so incredibly
blessed to finally be able to hold our
little girl,” wrote Michelle. Gretchen
Nareff is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at
the University of West Virginia, studying songbirds and their responses to
silviculture. Jenny Farber Sandler is
living in Denver, Colorado, with her
husband/best friend from growing
up, Matt; their one-and-a-half- yearold son, Leo; and two dogs, Blake and
Tali. Since leaving Vermont she was in
Americorps and has done some traveling in places such as Thailand and
Israel and road tripping down the
West Coast. She also received a master’s in social work and worked as a
therapist until becoming a mama.
Jenny loves Colorado for the great
tele turns, music scene, rock climbing,
and vibe. She sends love and light.
Corinn McCarthy Bergeron wrote in
to let us know that after working for
Constellation Brands for two years
and one week in their Canandaigua,
New York, headquarters she was promoted to the position of sales operations manager for DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Indiana. In December she
and her husband, Raymond, relocated to the suburbs of Washington,
DC, for her new job. They love the
area and are very excited for this next
step in their lives.
Send your news to—
Jennifer Khouri Godin
[email protected]
03
10th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. Archie Olson and his wife,
Meghan, welcomed their first child,
a baby boy, into their little family
in August. Kelly Goodell Melasky
married Rob Melasky ’06 at Stowehof in August 2012. Hillary Dana,
Laura Morissette Gallup, Brandon
Morrocco ’05, and Sandra Brooks
Moulton ’01 represented UVM in
the wedding party. Zack Kaufman
married Abby Jordan of Hanover,
Vermont, on September 15, 2012,
in Quechee. UVMers Dan Bahrenberg, Manny Vetti, and Sarah Raeburn ’02 were in attendance. Zack
and Abby honeymooned in Tanzania and live in Wayland, Massachusetts, with their dogs, Rudy and Izzy.
Abby works for Patch.com, and Zack
sells spine implants for Globus Medical. Bonnie Cardillo has spent the
last year opening and managing the
Newbury Street Boston location of
Scoop NYC, a high-end luxury boutique selling men’s and women’s merchandise. Bonnie also reports that
Krissy Harwin moved to Boston and
just received her Ph.D. in psychology.
I have a lot of baby news to report
this quarter. It seems that admission
for the UVM class of 2034 is already
quite competitive! Kate Cooper and
Jon Cooper welcomed a son, Miles
Dale Cooper, on July 19, 2012. Kate
writes, “We continue to enjoy a great
life here in Tahoe City, California.
Come home this fall.
REMINISCE
RECONNECT
REDISCOVER
REUNION WEEKEND IS OCTOBER 4-6, 2013. We invite all members of the
University community to celebrate the UVM Alumni Association’s signature weekend.
Interact and connect with current students, rekindle memories with classmates, and
join us on campus for an unforgettable weekend. Celebrate your reunion with us!
REUNION YEARS: ’33, ’38, ’43, ’48, ’53, ’58, ’63, ’68, ’73, ’78, ’83, ’88, ’93, ’98, ’03, ’08
TRAVEL & LODGING: During the fall foliage season, we recommend you book your
accommodations early. Special lodging discounts and details are available at alumni.
uvm.edu/reunion. Visit the reunion website to inform us you are coming, view your
class yearbook, and volunteer for your reunion committee!
alumni.uvm.edu
56
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
58
Our daughter, Lily, is now three and
attending preschool. She is an amazing big sister to Miles. Jon continues to enjoy his work at Lake Tahoe
School as the PE teacher and athletic director, most recently coaching the girls’ and boys’ basketball
teams. I am enjoying my leave from
work, but will return in early winter to Truckee Surgery Center, where
I am the director and also an operating room nurse.” Molly Betzhold
Kusek and her husband, Chris, welcomed a daughter, Savannah Hassana Kusek, on November 11, 2012.
Molly reports that all three of them
are doing great. Liz Moran Hamel
and her husband, Shane, welcomed
a baby boy this summer. Holden
James arrived on August 11, 2012. Liz
writes, ‘He was 7 pounds, 12 ounces
and is doing great. Big brother Cooper is also doing very well in his new
role.’ Caitlin Hadley Unger and Jeremy Unger ’02 had a second baby
girl, Madeline, born in Boston in April
2012. Their older daughter, Sophia, is
two and a half and seems to love her
new job as a big sister. Tiffany Hayes
Romaniello and her husband, Jerry,
added a second girl to their family.
Piper Mair Romaniello was born on
September 9, 2012 at 1:39 p.m. Tiffany shares, “We are overjoyed with
love.” Our former class secretary Cara
Murphy Linehan shares that she and
husband, Tom, welcomed a baby
boy into the world this past summer. Emerson Gates Esch was born
on August 27, 2012. Elena McSherry
has been busy attending veterinary
school at Purdue University in Indiana; she looks forward to graduating
in spring 2016. Brad Ross and Karen
Chicoine Ross ’02 welcomed son
Jackson Owen on January 25, 2013, at
Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. He’s growing and healthy and
his hair is ridiculous. Congratulations
to Molly Betzhold Kusek and her
husband, Chris, on the birth of their
daughter, Savannah, in November
2012. Christopher Pepe reported that
he and his wife welcomed a son, Forest Alexander, on March 8, 2013. They
are living in the Pacific Northwest.
His company, Praecipio Consulting,
based in Austin, Texas, is a fast-growing IT company focused on process optimization. In addition, they
opened in.gredients, a package-free,
zero-waste grocery store this year.
On the baby-news wagon, Jill Russo
Ruane let me know that she and her
husband, Jay, are expecting baby
number three in September. I know
that siblings Julianna and Robert will
love the new addition to the Ruane
family. Aron Stephens Goffin wrote
in with lots of news. She married Josh
Goffin in August 2012, and of course
Aron made sure to bring a touch of
Vermont to the wedding. They had
small maple leaf glass bottles filled
with Vermont maple syrup as favors.
She has been in southeast Portland,
Oregon, for ten years and is a student
rotation coordinator at Multnomah
County Health Department. She is
also an active member of her neighborhood association. And very exciting, Aron and Josh are expecting their
first child in October. Congratulations!
Finally, I want to thank Cara Linehan
Esch for keeping us all up-to-date on
the latest and greatest from the class
of 2003 over the last few years. Good
luck with adorable Gates and your
growing business, Cara. I look forward
to catching up with you all in October
at reunion.
Send your news to—
Korinne Moore
[email protected]
04
Sarah Glawe Casanovas
reports that “This past year
was a great one for me. I married my love, Joe Casanovas, in September outside of Chicago, Illinois.
UVMers Marisa Muldowney ’02
and Claire Benjamin were in attendance. I also was promoted to product manager for Contigo beverage
ware’s international and kid’s product
lines.” Anya Gushchin, an MMG and
chemistry major at UVM, received
an M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009 and will finish an ophthalmology residency at UPMC this
year before moving to the West Coast
to start an oculoplastics and orbital
fellowship at Stanford University in
July. Since going to Cuba as part of a
UVM course, Anya has been involved
in several other medical missions
abroad. She spent time providing
eye care in Nepal, India, and Honduras and recently returned to Honduras where a team saw two hundred
patients and provided sixty surgeries free of cost in five days. In the
future, she plans to continue working in international ophthalmology
by doing skills transfer missions in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America. She
is actively involved in work with the
Himalayan Cataract Project (www.
cureblindness.org) and Eye Missions
for Developing Countries and www.
yotogo.org. It’s certainly been a busy
year for a couple of roommates who
have remained best friends. Emily
(King) Carr and Jaime (Rubin) Cahill
are living in Boston, just a few blocks
from each other. Emily married Jared
Carr in Charleston in April, with many
UVMers in attendance. Jaime was
married in southern Vermont this
summer to Kyle Cahill and also had
many UVMers there for the celebration. Lauren Giese lives in the Philadelphia area and earned her CPA
license this year. Brierley (Wright)
Horton lives in South Burlington and
welcomed a baby girl, Holland Horton, this summer. She gets a lot of
love from her UVM aunts.
Send your news to—
Kelly Kisiday
39 Shepherd Street, #22
Brighton, MA 02135
[email protected]
05
Jaclynne Parsons Rush married Phillip Rush on September 22, 2012, on Long Beach
Island in Beach Haven, New Jersey.
A fun and unforgettable evening
was enjoyed by all. In attendance
were Amy (Hughes) Creaven, Brian
Anderson, and Gary Paul ’04, as
well as many of the founding members of the UVM Hit Paws a cappella
group, who reunited for a performance of “Higher and Higher” during
the reception.
Send your news to—
Kristin Dobbs
Apt. 333
5415 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20015
[email protected]
VQEXTRA
online
nilimia abrams ’06
“It was hard to believe
that these happy and
healthy kids had picked
rags, begged to prevent
beatings, or collected
hair to sell for wigs. I had
visited many schools and
orphanages, but never
seen such a contrast between the kids’ previous
and current realities and
personalities.”
—Nilima Abrams on the
students at the Children’s
Project Trust School in India.
Abrams is currently at work
on a documentary film about
the school’s family-based
educational approach.
06
Graham Ollard is an agronomist with a Yakima, Washington, agricultural consulting company that works in a large
variety of crops, including hops. The
Yakima Valley produces nearly eighty
percent of the U.S. crop, and when
the company was contacted by UVM
extension agent Heather Darby for
information on growing hops, one
thing led to another and Graham
read more at
uvm.edu/vq
was invited to speak at the Winter
Hop Conference in Vermont. “See
you in February, Vermont,” he writes.
Andrew Waters and Francesca
Andreani were officially engaged
on October 27, the proposal taking
place in the Billings Center on the
UVM campus. Andrew and Francesca
reside in New York City, where Francesca works for Food & Wine magazine
and Andrew works for the Financial
Industry Regulatory Authority. Lauren Koenig Giannullo sends greetings to classmates. In May 2012 she
graduated from The Bloustein School
at Rutgers University with a master’s
in city and regional planning, concentrating in historic preservation.
She now works for the New Jersey
Historic Trust as a historic preservation specialist. Her husband, Mark
Giannullo ’05, is working at Princeton
University in the Office of Information
Technology as lead support specialist. They celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary in September 2012
at Lake Bomoseen, Vermont, where
they were married. Amanda Sawicki
Broder started a new children’s picture book publishing company, Ripple Grove Press, focusing on picturedriven stories for children aged two
to six. She is always looking for new
writers and illustrators to submit their
work. See the website for details:
www. RippleGrovePress.com. Maxwell Seeland and his wife, Jill, who
will celebrate their third anniversary
in October, are expecting their first
child in early June and are leaving the
gender a surprise until then. Since
moving back to Vermont in August
of 2011, Maxwell has been working
as the associate director of development and alumni relations for Green
Mountain College. Jennifer Moulton
graduated from Georgetown University’s Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing Program in May and
is engaged to be married to Evan Carr
from DuBois, Pennsylvania. Jennifer writes that she and Evan are currently residing in Arlington, Virginia.
Congratulations are also in order for
Colleen (Geraghty) Johnson and
Corey Johnson, who welcomed a
son, Parker, in February. Laura Molito
and John McGill are very happy to
announce their marriage on September 22, 2012, in Bedford, New
York. The couple currently resides
in New York City. Congratulations
to Guy Mitrano, who married Juli-
anne Passeri last October. Many UVM
alumni were in attendance. Caroline
Walsh completed a master’s in education in May 2012 from GWU and
has been teaching high school history for the George Washington University Online High School since then.
In mid-August she was married and
became Mrs. Jonathan Guzman. The
couple recently settled in Palm Beach
Gardens, Florida. Summer (Egan)
Sachen wrote to tell us that Kelly
Simon was married to Ross McSweeney in May. Our former roommate
Molly (Robinson) Jackson was married last year and gave birth to her
first child, a daughter, in November.
Our other roommate, Annie Youngs,
was engaged this year and is getting married next summer. Becky
(Finifter) Goldstein was married last
November in Baltimore, Maryland.
Congratulations to Jen Tighe who
married Ryan Brannan this past September in an intimate wedding in
Beaver Creek, Colorado. The couple
celebrated with family and friends at
a reception in Austin, Texas, where
the couple currently resides. Congratulations to Kelly Robson who married Caylan Myronowicz this past
September in Palos Verdes Estates,
California. The couple currently
resides in Los Angeles, California.
Sara Schultz and Seth Peichert were
engaged this past October and are
planning a Vermont wedding. Congratulations to Cassandra (Jacobs)
Love and her husband, Jerry, who
welcomed their first child, daughter
Abigail, in April. My husband, Brian
Murphy ’04, and I recently relocated
to Irvington, New York, and welcomed our second child, Addison,
in August. A reminder—if you are
not receiving the print version of the
quarterly or emails with updates and
invitations to regional events, please
log on to the UVM alumni association website and update your contact
information: alumni.uvm.edu/updateinfo. I look forward to sharing more
of your wonderful news in the next
issue. Please note my new contact
information below.
Send your news to —
Katherine Murphy
32 Riverview Road
Irvington, NY 10533
[email protected]
07
JP Ishaq published his first
novel, In Spite of All, in paperback and on Amazon Kindle in December 2012. The first in a
series, the novel introduces readers
to a richly developed science fiction
world filled with compelling characters. For more information and
updates, please visit www. jpishaq.
com. Denny Madigan has been promoted as manager of the Waterbury,
Vermont location by TD Bank. An
assistant vice president, he is responsible for new business development,
consumer and business lending, personnel management, and day-to-day
operations oversight. Devon Brynn
is engaged to Ross Mroczek, a graduate of the University of Dayton in
Dayton, Ohio. Ross is an engineer
with General Electric in Lynn, Massachusetts. Devon is currently working
at the Massachusetts General Hospital within the Orthopedic Trauma
Division. The wedding is planned
for September 28, 2013, in Burlington. The bridal party will include Callie Brynn ’09 and Mindy Pariser ’05.
Ashley Hogan and Joseph Cardarelli
were married on April 19, 2013, in
Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. The couple
resides in Brooklyn, New York. Ashley is the director of strategic partnerships at Everyday Health. Joseph
is the director of accountability and
compliance at Williamsburg Charter High School. Several Class of 2007
alums were in attendance for the big
day. Following a five-day celebration
with close friends and family, Joe and
Ashley embarked on a white-water
rafting excursion. Jessica Suzanne
Seymour and Jonathan Peter McIver
were engaged on July 27, 2012, in
San Francisco, California, where they
have lived for the last two years. Jessica works at the Financial Times as a
senior account manager, and Jonathan works at KPMG as a senior associate in their Major Projects Advisory
Group. The future bride and groom
will be married at the Pilgrim Congregational Church in Harwichport
on October 12, 2013. A reception at
the Wychmere Beach Club will follow the ceremony. Immediately following the celebration, they will honeymoon in the Maldive Islands in the
Indian ocean.
Send your news to—
Elizabeth Bitterman
[email protected]
08
5th reunion
October 4–6, 2013
alumni.uvm.edu/reunion
If you are interested in planning your
upcoming reunion, email alumni@
uvm.edu. William Infante is the top
UN resident coordinator in Serbia.
In an op-ed recently published by
Reuters TrustLaw he wrote, “When
I was first posted to Serbia in 2001
with the US Agency for International
Development (USAID), the country and its people were still shaken
and scarred by years of conflict.
Returning in 2009 to lead the United
Nations presence here, I was deeply
impressed by the swift and substantive progress that was so tangibly
under way. . . . Serbia is writing a new
narrative of its own, reinventing itself
as a guarantor of regional security,
an advocate for integrity and rule of
law, and a protector of human rights.
Its membership in the European
Union is a goal within reach.” Katelyn Homeyer and Jonathan Ellermann were engaged in August 2012
and look forward to moving back
to Vermont this summer with their
dog, Loomis. Kate graduated from
BU Law and Jon finished his M.B.A. at
BU in May. “We look forward to connecting with UVM friends new and
old at our fifth reunion in October, or
before,” they wrote. Shara Rudman
and Nicholas Kohart ’05 tied the
knot in Woodstock, Vermont, on Saturday, March 16. Many UVMers joined
the celebration. Matthew McLaughlin is working as the managing director of Acres, a creative multimedia
agency based in New York City that
he founded this year. Penny Nolte,
Ed.D. is the new Central Vermont TIPS
(Training Interns and Partnering for
Success) program coordinator. This
position is co-sponsored by Linking
Learning to Life, the Workforce Development Board in Montpelier, the U.S.
Department of Labor, and Vermont
Vocational Rehabilitation. The TIPS
curriculum inspires teens to learn
pre-employment skills, participate in
a goals-based internship with a local
business, earn high school credit,
and potentially gain paid employment at completion. Andy Harris
returned from two years of volunteering for the Peace Corps in Jordan
and now works at Health Advances,
a biotech medical research company
in Boston. Kurt Weiss has been work-
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
CLASS NOTES
59
CLASS NOTES
ing as the finance director for Denny
Heck for Congress since July of 2011;
on November 6, 2012, Denny Heck
was elected as the first Congressman to Washington State’s brand new
10th Congressional District. Dominic Narayan Foti has earned a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Johnson State College
in Vermont. Dominic is a 500-hour
Sivananda Yoga Acharya, as well as
a master-level martial artist. He submits the following about his journey:
“I do not consider myself a teacher of
yoga so much as a channel for sharing experiences of what is, was, and
always will be love. In the quest for
inner rhythm, I cannot tell others
what to see or feel or do, but I will try
to guide them to knowing where to
look and how to inspire themselves
to unite with their intuition and compassionately remove barriers that
divide them from seeing the oneness in all things.” Last, but definitely
not least, a committee is working on
a spectacular fifth year reunion—yes,
it has been five years already! Slated
for October 4 to 6, the reunion weekend in Burlington perfectly coincides with prime leaf-peeping season.
Please email Liz Bearese (ebearese@
gmail.com) or Emma Grady (emma@
emmagrady.com) with any questions
or comments.
Send your news to—
Elizabeth Bearese
[email protected]
Emma Grady
[email protected]
60
10
Steven Bassett, was unsure
of what was next after graduation. Luckily, he found
something he enjoyed—music—
and began interning at the freshly
launched Top-40 radio station, Planet
96.7 FM. Now after almost three years
of hard work and dedication, Planet
has made a significant impact on the
Burlington/Plattsburgh radio market.
Catch Steve on air weekdays between
3 and 7 p.m., during “The Afternoon
Drive with Stevie Beats.”“UVM helped
shape who I am today and for that
I’m forever grateful. Go Cats Go!” he
says. Sally Wiebe is living in Georgetown, Washington DC, and working
for a family-owned tote bag company called SCOUT. She sends a special thank you and hello to classmates
and friends of Doug Millar ’80, who
attended what was a fantastic sendoff to a life well-lived. Doug, Sally’s
uncle, died in January of this year.
Max Bookman graduated in May
with a Juris Doctor from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New
York City. He has been hired to work
as a civil litigator at the law firm of
Smith Mazure Director Wilkins Young
& Yagerman in Manhattan.
Send your news to—
Daron Raleigh
58 Madison Avenue, P.O. Box 660
Hartford, VT 05047
[email protected]
11
Sarah Wilson, a singer/songwriter whose stage name is
Sarah Miles, will be releasing
her first full-length pop record under
the New York City label Rock Ridge
Music this summer. To stay updated
on Sarah’s music career visit www. sarahmilesmusic.com or follow her on
Facebook at www.facebook.com/sar-
ahmilesmusic. Melissa Goraj received
an M.B.A. from Brandeis University in
May and will be starting work at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the fall. Gisele
Nelson has been working for the Burlington-based business Front Porch
Forum for almost two years now. “It
was a dream job come true upon
graduating,” she writes. “Thanks to the
CDAE department for helping me get
here.” Following graduation, Grace
O’Leary Weaver spent five months
traveling in southern India, much of
the time in an artist residency at the
DakshinaChitra Museum in Chennai.
She will begin an MFA degree program
in painting, and also work as a teaching assistant in art history, at Virginia
Commonwealth University in the fall.
Send your news to—
Troy McNamara
545 Main Street
Middlefield, CT 06455
[email protected]
12
Erika Reilley went to Vail, Colorado, for a ski season after
graduation. She writes, “UVM
was such a great mix of working
hard and playing hard, and I’ve met
so many other UVM alumni, spanning many classes, and it still shows
in all of us. Skiing out west was something I wouldn’t have done without
all the opportunities to ski in the east,
thanks to UVM SSC.” Colin Arisman
began a 2,650 mile hike from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail
on April 19. He will be on the trail for
five months and will be creating a
documentary film about his experience. You can find information on the
hike and his creative plans on Kickstarter—kck.st/ZgGISO. He will also
be posting weekly updates and photos from the trail at his blog, www.
dropprophet.com. Ross Tenaglia
has been working at Vermont Systems since right after graduating and
is thankful for getting a job so fast in
these tough times. “Keep your head
up!” he says. Emma Murray accepted
a year-long teaching position in Ubon
Ratchathani, Thailand, where she is
teaching all subjects to kindergarteners at Assumption College. Follow
some of her adventures at emmalivesnow802.blogspot.com.
Send your news to—
Patrick Dowd
P.O. Box 58
Lyme, NH 03768
[email protected]
VQEXTRA
online
tim stewart ’09
“Way too many. I
consider it R & D so I
justify it in that sense.
I’m not going to put a
product out there on
the marketplace that I
haven’t tasted myself
time and time again.”
—Tim Stewart, one of
the founders of San
It would be easy to pigeonhole the Honors College’s next
door neighbor to the south, GreenHouse, as being tailored to
an archetypal UVM student. Yes, Birkenstocks, might be a part
of that picture and that sort of familiarity is not necessarily a
bad thing.
“I think really the hope for these programs is that students
come into an atmosphere that is welcoming for them and that
they form a community on some level,” Walter Poleman, GreenHouse program director and lecturer in environmental studies
says. “That goes against the idea that in college as you bump up
against difference all the time, you’re expanded in your thinking.
I agree that happens, but I think some of these first-year communities are about being in a like-minded place.”
That said, Poleman is quick to stress a fundamental shift in
his own thinking and in how the program has come to be defined during his years leading GreenHouse.
“I was interested in getting students out canoeing, climbing
mountains… but the environmental field has an earned reputation of not being inclusive of everybody’s background. Coming
to terms with that was a watershed moment for me,” Poleman
says. “While the environmental element is still essential to who
we are at GreenHouse, we’ve made a real move to thinking
about social justice and environmental justice.”
Success at the GreenHouse, and other residential learning
communities, means first-year students come in full of ideas
and open to experience; sophomores sign on for another year
in the same hall and become peer mentors helping to guide
programming; and juniors and seniors return as aspects of their
academic lives mesh with the RLC’s focus.
While students in the Honors College and GreenHouse
form the majority of the residents in the University Heights
complexes, it’s a different approach with Dewey House for
Civic Engagement, where thirty members of the community
live in first-floor rooms in Harris Hall. As is the case with all
of the RLC’s, the intention is that the programs aren’t just a
positive force in the experience of the students in the programs
but ripple out to influence other undergrads down the hall and
throughout the campus.
The focus at Dewey is getting out into the local community.
As program director Kailee Brickner rattles off students’ volunteer work and places they’re making a difference—from Fletcher
Allen Hospital to the Committee on Temporary Shelter to King
Street Center—it’s clear the program is doing well by the man it’s
named after.
“We don’t use his language—‘education for democratic
purposes’—specifically,” Brickner says with a smile when asked
about the influence John Dewey, UVM Class of 1836, swings on
the first floor of Harris these days. “I don’t think that would appeal as much to students. We talk, instead, about ‘how do I make
a positive social change.’” No matter the words, his influence is
evident in the students’ actions.
For his part, Professor Richard Sugarman sees John Dewey’s
legacy laced through all of UVM’s residential learning communities. “Most people have come to think of John Dewey as this
harmless old groggin,” Sugarman says. “But he was an influential
force, a pretty radical guy in education, and I think, in part, our
programs were inspired by his sense of experimentalism.”
VQ
Francisco’s Pop Nation,
purveyors of gourmet
popsicles, on how many
of his own frozen treats
he eats daily.
IN MEMORIAM
[ F A CU L t Y ]
George Butterick MacCollom, professor emeritus of
read more at
uvm.edu/vq
entomology, died on March 30, 2013, in St. Petersburg, Florida. A veteran of World War II, Professor MacCollom joined
the UVM faculty in 1954 after earning his doctorate at Cornell
University. He served as both professor and chair in entomology and taught, researched, and worked with the U.S. Extension Service advising fruit growers in the Champlain Valley.
In 1988, Professor MacCollom and his wife, Thelma, moved
to Monkton, realizing George’s life-long dream of becoming
a gentleman farmer. He developed the Monkton Valley Orchard, a nonorganic orchard, growing a variety of apples and
blueberries. He retired from the university in 1996.
Dharam Pal Yadav, associate professor of psychology,
passed away after a courageous battle with cancer. In 1970,
Professor Yadav joined the UVM faculty, where he would
serve as a professor of communications and psychology. His
focus was on teaching and research of the cognitive sciences,
media communications, cross-cultural and media psychology.
Dr. Yadav also served as chair of the Department of Communications, on the Faculty Senate and conducted research for
the National Institute of Mental Health. Professor Yadav was a
kind and gentle soul who was known for his always thoughtful,
wise, and encouraging advice. A commitment and passion for
lifelong education and learning, service and hard work were
values that Professor Yadav constantly conveyed to his family and the thousands of students and advisees that he worked
with over a forty-two-year teaching career at UVM. Private
messages of condolence to the Yadav family are welcome at
[email protected].
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
09
Janelle Dawson Aimi and
Steven Aimi ’08 were married
at Ira Allen Chapel on September 2, 2012. Janelle was in TriDelta
and Steven was in AGR. Benjamin
Noah Porter reported that February
was a productive month: he started a
new job as a criminal investigator for
the Colorado State Public Defender, a
role he’s greatly enjoying; he also was
accepted to perform stand-up comedy in Denver’s Laugh Track Comedy
Festival this summer; and he released
his first comedy short “Cataract,”
which you can find on his You Tube
channel. Dexter Locke is finishing a
master’s in environmental science at
the Yale School of Forestry and will
start a doctoral program in geogra-
phy at Clark University in the fall, after
spending the summer as a research
fellow for the USDA Forest Service
in Washington, DC. Nathan Pickrell
married childhood friend and former
UVM roommate Maria Cochrane ’08
on September 8, 2012, at the Basin
Harbor Club in Vergennes, Vermont.
Attendants included Brent Clanin,
Jessie Peters, and Emma (Danciu)
Decarreau.
Send your news to—
David Volain
[email protected]
live and learn, continued from page 19
61
IN MEMORIAM
Harold F. Aseltine ’50, of Saratoga
Springs, New York, January 31, 2013.
William R. Elgood ’50, of Dunedin,
Florida, January 21, 2013.
Floyd C. Merriman ’50,
of Hendersonville, North Carolina,
January 16, 2013.
William Patrick Ryan, Jr. ’50,
of Colorado Springs, Colorado,
February 8, 2013.
John P. Cunavelis ’51, of South Burlington, Vermont, December 23, 2012.
Marcus Allen McCorison G’51,
of Worcester, Massachusetts,
February 3, 2013.
Win A. Way G’51, of North Hero,
Vermont, January 26, 2013.
Charmaine Beauvais Lyons ’52,
of San Francisco, California,
March 25, 2013.
Malcolm I. Penn ’52, of Bozrah,
Connecticut, January 10, 2013.
Marie Boardman Maccini ’53, of
Ashburn, Virginia, January 15, 2013.
John H. Matheson ’53, of Helendale,
California, February 15, 2013
Ruth Eleanor Aseltine ’54,
of South Burlington, Vermont,
February 10, 2013.
Dean A. Burns ’54, of East Palatka,
Florida, December 22, 2012.
Joseph Nick Manganaro G’54,
of Berwick, Pennsylvania,
January 9, 2013.
Ronald East Apman ’55, of Cooperstown, New York, March 3, 2013
Sidney E. Barnard ’55, G’57,
of State College, Pennsylvania,
January 12, 2013.
Fratia Dunn Marsh ’55, of North
Troy, Vermont, January 14, 2013.
Irwin W. Pollack MD’56, of Oro
Valley, Arizona, January 6, 2013.
Daniel J. Hanson MD’58,
of Barrington, Rhode Island,
March 25, 2013.
Virginia Lee Ault MD’59, of Cockeysville, Maryland, January 9, 2013.
John F. Kennedy ’59, of Sunapee,
New Hampshire, February 27, 2013.
Robert P. Rollins ’60, of Morrisville,
Vermont, December 28, 2012
Doris Hosmer Steele G’60, of Burlington, Vermont, January 8, 2013.
Nancy Ann Paquin ’61, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, December 29, 2012.
Peter D. Upton G’61, MD’63, of Wallingford, Vermont, March 4, 2013.
Kendall Reid Lawson ’62, of Montpelier, Vermont, January 10, 2013.
Lynda Stevens White ’62,
of North Dartmouth, Massachusetts,
December 29, 2012.
Carl Leslie Anderson ’64, of Swanton, Vermont, January 16, 2013.
Susan Milman Marcus ’64, of Rye
Brook, New York, February 12, 2013.
Gary N. Phelps ’66, of Essex
Junction, Vermont, January 9, 2013.
David C. Cook ’68, of Williston,
Vermont, February 1, 2013.
Juanita Whitney Cook G’68,
of Pownal, Vermont, March 2, 2013.
Bryant D. Jones ’68, of South Burlington, Vermont, January 12, 2013.
Emily Peno Cross ’71, of South Burlington, Vermont, January 13, 2013.
Scott W. Donaldson ’71, of Sarasota,
Florida, January 21, 2013.
Dwight A. Leedy G’72, of
Chillicothe, Ohio, February 23, 2013.
Sheralyn Christine Riggs ’73,
of Edgewood, New Mexico,
January 11, 2013.
Margaret Gaffran Campbell ’77, of
St. Albans, Vermont, January 8, 2013.
Esther Ellsworth Miller ’77, of Shelburne, Vermont, January 15, 2013.
Barbara Jane Powers ’77,
of Southborough, Massachusetts,
April 7, 2013.
Dianne Alyce Berry G’78, of St.
Albans, Vermont, January 2, 2013.
Marcia Jean LaFountain ’79, G’96,
of Waterbury, Vermont, April 4, 2013.
Regina Sweeney Roussin G’79, of
Milton, Vermont, January 15, 2013.
Douglas Tucker Millar ’80, of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, January 3, 2013.
Robert A. LaClair ’81, of South Burlington, Vermont, March 20, 2013.
Andre W. Brosseau ’82, of St. Albans,
Vermont, February 1, 2013.
Marcia Ann Strassburg ’84, of Essex
Junction, Vermont, January 15, 2013.
Joan Marie Mulhern ’85, of Washington, DC, December 18, 2012.
Susan Elizabeth Danforth G’87,
of South Portland, Maine,
January 27, 2013.
Nancy Lynn McMillan ’87, of Jaffrey,
New Hampshire, January 28, 2013.
Lorraine Sweet Bouchard ’91,
of North Ferrisburg, Vermont,
December 17, 2012.
Joshua Marc Davis ’98, of Haverhill,
Massachusetts, March 20, 2013.
Michael Thomas Giunta ’01,
of Rockland, Massachusetts,
March 28, 2013.
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Cozy 2 bedroom, 1 bath house overlooking
stream on mountain road just minutes from lifts.
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vacation rentals
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Rustic elegance with a sunset view. 5BR year
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deadlines:
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November 2013 issue
HARWICHPORT, CAPE COD
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end-road-beach: DVD/WIFI, CC Bike Trail
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May 16, 2014 for
July 2014 issue
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Let me help you find the perfect vacation
home to buy or rent. Visit our website at
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12:07 PM
Page 1
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COME JOIN US, LIVE, WORK THE DREAM!
IN THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN GREEN MOUNTIANS
NEAR FOUR MAJOR SKI RESORTS / SUMMER RECREATION
WITH HIGH TRAFFIC COUNTS ALL YEAR ROUND
Prime Retail and Office Space
N EW B USINESS • E XPANSION INTO NEW M ARKET
B RANCH O FFICE • P ROFESSIONAL S ERVICES
JOIN 12 SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSES
SOLID ANCHOR STORE • GREAT LOCATION
Intersection
ROUTE 100 • ROUTE 11
Bobby Waite
802.824.1014
e: [email protected]
802.434.3500 www.landshapes.net
SUMMER 2013
62
Southern New Mexico
House on 10 acres. 1/12 share of 25,000 acre
ranch with flowing creek, large cottonwoods,
numerous wells for irrigating fields, watering
cattle, also archeological sites. Abuts
protected State, Federal, and private lands.
Custom designed house, 2 FP and 2 stoves.
Studio out-building. $550,000.
Write [email protected]
Mtn Market VTQurt 1-3 color :13
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
Helen Lillian Fine ’35, of West Hartford, Connecticut, January 10, 2013.
Constance Calkins Kimball ’35,
of Montpelier, Vermont,
January 11, 2013.
Dorothy Akers Cole ’38,
of South Burlington, Vermont,
February 20, 2013.
Silas H. Jewett ’38, of Morrisville,
Vermont, December 31, 2012
Edward S. Irwin ’40, G’42, MD’55,
of Burlington, Vermont, February 7,
2013.
Mary Nelson Tanner ’40, of Chestertown, Maryland, March 7, 2013.
Allan J. Caldwell ’41, of Brunswick,
Maine, January 12, 2013.
Marshall G. London ’41, MD’55,
of Burlington, Vermont,
December 12, 2012.
Ruth Orr Burgess ’42, of Underhill
Center, Vermont, January 7, 2013.
Wilfred J. Benoit, Sr. ’43,
of Waterford, Connecticut,
December 20, 2012.
Celia Cioffi Paquin ’43, of Swanton,
Vermont, February 23, 2013.
Harriet Nelson Scarborough ’43,
of Scottsdale, Arizona, December
20, 2012
Natalie Spear Wheeler ’43, of St.
Albans, Vermont, January 4, 2013.
Stanley Carter Fell ’44, of Montego
Bay, Jamaica , January 7, 2013.
Ione Lacy Keenan ’44, of Burlington,
Vermont, February 12, 2013.
Francis X. Prior ’44, of Solomons,
Maryland, February 13, 2013
Janette Nelson Forrest ’45,
of Concord, New Hampshire,
January 13, 2013.
Helen Kirby Kinney ’45, of South
Hero, Vermont, February 27, 2013.
W. Stuart Evans ’47, of Skaneateles,
New York, March 3, 2013.
Lawrence Findley Killick ’47, of
Rockledge, Florida, January 31, 2013.
Wilfred G. Hill ’48, of Tequesta,
Florida, February 12, 2013.
George H. Collins ’49, MD’53,
of Skaneateles, New York,
February 23, 2013.
CLASSIFIEDS
63
63
EXTRACREDIT
Join us.
Lifetime Member
The UVM Alumni Association invites all alumni to strengthen
their ties to UVM and one another by becoming a sustaining
member of the UVM Alumni Association.
Lifetime and annual members will receive
U V M A lU M n i
A ss o c iAt io n
• Discounts on Alumni Association events, including
Reunion & Homecoming Weekend, along with rental
discounts on the fabulous new Alumni House (opening fall 2015)
• Discounts for car insurance, area restaurants, the Lane Series,
the Fleming Museum, and the UVM Bookstore
• Discounts on hotels and travel through the Go Vermont
Vacation Card
• Complimentary tickets to selected UVM athletic games and access to post-season events
• 20 percent off the UVM Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) membership fee
Your UVM Alumni Association supports the University of Vermont and enriches the lives of students
and alumni worldwide. It reconnects you to your alma mater, offers networking opportunities
through UVM Career Connection, and helps develop the next generation of alumni leaders.
SuStaining MeMberShip CoStS
annual
lifetiMe
Everyday Hero
More on the book:
Everyday Heroes is published
by Welcome Books.
welcomebooks.com/everydayheroes
More on Citizen Schools:
64
Heroes: 50 Americans Changing the World, One Nonprofit at a Time, by Katrina Fried,
with photographs by Paul Mobley. In 1995, Schwarz co-founded Citizen Schools in
Boston together with college roommate Ned Rimer ’83. The venture would prove very
successful as “an unconventional educational program that extends the middle-school
day with hands-on teaching and personal tutoring,” Fried writes. “A combination of
community volunteers and trained AmeriCorps Fellows make up this ‘second shift’ of
citizen teachers, who engage students in a variety of creative learning opportunities,
including apprenticeships taught by accomplished professionals—such as chefs, jewelers, engineers, architects, writers, and doctors—who share their expertise and real-life
experiences with students an afternoon a week.”
In an essay about Citizen Schools’ work, Schwarz writes: “It’s very difficult for people to think of valuable learning taking place outside of school, and of kids being taught
by anyone other than teachers. So, our model is counterintuitive, a disruptive innovation. We’re letting kids learn by doing and by producing things for the community. We
also give kids practice on the academic basics, building their proficiency in math and
English. The good news is, we’re delivering great outcomes. We’ve got a couple external
multiyear studies that show huge results in erasing and reversing achievement gaps.
We’re helping kid go on to four-year colleges and to careers in science and engineering.”
Become a lifetime or annual member today. Benefits begin July 1.
To learn more and join, visit alumni.uvm.edu/membership
SUMMER 2013
V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
citizenschools.org
Eric Schwarz is among the individuals featured in the recent book Everyday
$40 annual member / $60 joint annual member
$750 lifetime member / $1,000 joint lifetime member
$400 lifetime member / $600 joint lifetime member (50th reunion-plus)
65
photograph by Paul Mobley
alumni association
Non-Profit Org
US Postage Paid
Burlington VT 05401
Permit No. 143
vermont quarterly
86 South Williams Street
Burlington VT 05401
No Home Work
Welcome to The Lodge at Shelburne Bay and
The Lodge at Otter Creek Adult Living Communities
ake yourself a new home at
M
provide our residents with luxury,
The Lodge at Shelburne Bay in
amenities and elegance. Choose from
Shelburne, Vermont or The Lodge at
spacious Cottages, Independent Living,
Otter Creek in Middlebury, Vermont.
Assisted Living and our Meadows
Together The Lodges have established
and Haven Memory Care Programs.
a core philosophy designed to cater to
There’s a deep and vibrant sense
your every need. A world surrounded
of community spirit that welcomes new
by beauty, security and spirit. A world
residents, families and friends in every
you’ll explore, experience and cherish.
conceivable way. Enjoy your new home
185 Pine Haven Shores Road
Shelburne, VT 05482
802-985-9847• shelburnebay.com
There’s something special here and
without any of the hassles and just leave
The Lodge at Otter Creek
it’s all just waiting for you.
the home work to us. Welcome home.
350 Lodge Road
Middlebury, VT 05753
802-388-1220 • lodgeatottercreek.com
At The Lodges we offer a range
of rental and financial options that
Welcome to The Lodge at Shelburne
Bay and The Lodge at Otter Creek.
The Lodge at Shelburne Bay
THE LODGES
The next generation in adult living
Owned and operated by Bullrock Corporation.
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