Campus News - Alumni News

Best wishes go out to Millicent Coombs Freed ’30, ’33 of Madison. Her one-hundredth birthday falls on October 5.

A new elementary school on Madison’s far west side will bear the name of the late Paul Olson ’31, MS’52, a beloved science teacher, principal, environmentalist, and out-doorsperson. He was instrumental in purchasing and developing the Madison School Forest, not far from the new school, which opened this fall. It’s one of the state’s first LEED-certified (“green”) elementary schools. Olson died in 1993.

After sixty-two years of arbitration and mediation work, Arthur Jacobs ’34, MA’35 of Rye, New York, has retired at age ninety-six. The occasion brought many accolades, including being named the National Academy of Arbitrators’ 2008 honoree. Jacobs’ spouse, Marcia Fox Jacobs ’38, retired in 1982 as the head of social services for New York state’s largest retirement home.

Gene Hallstrand ’40 sent a photo taken at his ninetieth-birthday open house in December. He was a ski jumper and instructor, served in the navy during World War II, and made a career in sales. Hallstrand lives in Sequim, Washington.

Don Smithana ’50 of San Diego, California, is an engineering graduate, but he’s been drawn to languages as well. He’s written one book in Japanese and two in English: Decoding America’s Ancient Indian Languages and America … Land of the Rising Sun: Was the Culture of Japan “Made in U.S.A.”? (Anasazi Publishing).

When Wilmington [Ohio] College held its commencement in May, emeritus professor of history Larry Gara PhD’53 received an honorary doctorate for his four decades of teaching. But Gara is more than an educator: he’s also a peace activist and social-justice champion who’s never been afraid to act on his convictions.

A leading award for animal conservation, the Indianapolis Prize, has gone this year to field biologist George Schaller MS’57, PhD’62. His relentless work since 1952 to save endangered species was honored at a September gala with the Lilly Medal and $100,000, which he’ll use to fund grants for young biologists. He’s vice president of science and exploration for the Wildlife Conservation Society, whose CEO said, “George Schaller has literally defined the endeavor of wildlife biology in the service of conservation.”

Joseph Brenner PhD’58 earned his doctorate in organic chemistry; spent most of his career with Du Pont de Nemours International in Geneva, Switzerland, working primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and eastern Europe; and now has written his first book — but not about chemistry. It’s an “interdisciplinary extension of logic to real phenomena” called Logic in Reality (Springer Dordrecht).

“My memories of the courses I began on September 22 fifty years ago … remain fresh today with me here in Sydney, Australia,” writes John Brien MS’59 in his essay “Fifty-Year Madison Memories … from 15,000 Miles Away.” It chronicles his arrival from Australia in 1958 to study agricultural journalism, as well as his career in academia, consultancies, research, and eventually international communication. In additional to two doctoral degrees, Brien has earned the 2008 Award of Excellence in Research from the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, Life and Human Sciences.

The Heart Moves in a Circular Direction: A Story of Healing (iUniverse) is a new work by Madisonian Ingeborg Gillman Casey ’59, MS’61, PhD’67 that blends experiences with her schizophrenic mother with wisdom gained through her career as a psychologist. “As a story about struggle and perseverance, facing fears, and taking risks,” Casey writes, “the book offers insights to people facing various challenges of their own.”

Chalk up seven for Susan Schuckit Naimon Winebrenner ’60 of San Marcos, California: she’s just published her seventh book, The Cluster Grouping Handbook: How to Challenge Gifted Students and Improve Achievement for All (Free Spirit Publishing).

The Duncan, Oklahoma, home of Patrick Homrig ’61 is a local landmark that’s made it into P.J. Lassek’s Oklahoma Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities, and Other Offbeat Stuff (Globe Pequot Press). Homrig’s 1906 home contains fine arts, antiquities, and collections from his world travels, and his yard holds statuary, wrought iron, and seven hundred plant species. He’s also an art teacher, cat lover, and appraiser and art expert.

Phillip Baker MS’62, PhD’65 of Kensington, Maryland has retired after forty-three years with the National Institutes of Health. He’s best known for his research on regulatory T cells and their influence on antibody responses to bacterial pathogens.

The ACLU of Wisconsin Foundation gave state representative Frederick Kessler ’62, LLB’66 (D-Milwaukee) its Edgar Lifetime Achievement Award in February. On his twenty-first birthday, he became the youngest person, up to that time, to join the state legislature, and his career has included service as a county and circuit court judge, labor arbitrator, redistricting consultant, and community supporter.

The UCLA Medical School recently honored Robert Kotler x’64 of Beverly Hills, California, for thirty years of voluntary teaching in its head and neck surgery division. He’s also founded Ernest Mitchell Publishers — named after the “iconic cook at the Pi Lambda Phi house in the early sixties” — to produce his two books on cosmetic surgery.

Jon Nelson ’64, MS’67, PhD’70 retired in 2004 after thirty-five years on the Penn State economics faculty, but he’s hardly been resting. Nelson has maintained an active research program that included presentations at five international conferences last year.

The Franklin Institute has given Virginia Tech electrical engineering professor emeritus Arun Phadke PhD’64 its 2008 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering for his collaboration with Virginia Tech colleague James Thorp on reducing and recovering from power-grid blackouts.

After forty-five years of pioneering work in investment management and twenty-two years of appearances on the PBS television program Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser, Louis Holland ’65 has certainly made a name for himself. The Glen Ellyn, Illinois, resident retired this spring as CEO of Holland Capital Management and as president of the Lou Holland Trust.

This spring the UC-Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement went to comparative literature professor Brenda Deen Schildgen ’65 — a scholar of medieval European literature and Biblical studies who works with writings in six languages and is an expert on Dante, Chaucer, and the gospel of Mark. The $40,000 prize is believed to be the largest of its kind in the nation.

The commitment to occupational health and safety that Madisonian Terry Likover Moen ’66, MS’77, JD’96 has shown over twenty-seven years has earned her a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Safety Council. She supervises the occupational health portion of WisCon — the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene’s onsite safety- and health-consultation program for businesses.

(Doris) Sorrel Hays MMusic’68 had a thrill in May: the New York City Opera performed Our Giraffe — for which she composed the music — during its VOX 2008: Showcasing American Composers series. Hays’s “eclectic, hybrid musical writing” has also earned her eight commissions from the German public-broadcasting institution Westdeutscher Rundfunk. She lives in Buchanan, Georgia.

The note from Leon Jacoby ’68, MS’71 of Cedar Grove, Wisconsin, was brief, but impressive: he’s “marked thirty-five years with plumbingware giant Kohler Company.”

Longtime WAA Chicago chapter leader and die-hard Badger fan Denny Schackter ’70 has made tennis his avocation and his vocation: this spring, he received the Chicago Tennis Patrons’ 2007 Billie Jean King Award — its honor for lifetime achievement — and retired from a sales career with Wilson Racquet Sports.

All Souls (Harcourt) is a recent fiction work by New Yorker Christine Costigan Schutt ’71, MA’72 that gives readers a look at the “small cosmos” of an elite Upper East Side girls’ school. Her other books include the National Book Award finalist Florida, as well as two collections of short stories: Nightwork and A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer.

The late Paul Brandt MS’72 spent his career protecting the lower Wisconsin River, so it’s fitting that the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) dedicated part of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway in his honor in May. Brandt, a lifelong DNR employee, surprised the conservation community when he left more than $600,000 to the Lower Wisconsin Riverway Fund upon his death in 2006.

Is the modern-day workplace a complex place? You bet, says Marjorie Sunde DeVault ’72, MS’76. She’s edited People at Work: Life, Power, and Social Inclusion in the New Economy (New York University Press), in which each essay is a case study of a different aspect of the working world. DeVault is a professor of sociology at Syracuse [New York] University.

Gary Goshgarian PhD’72, writing as Gary Braver, has written his seventh novel: a psychological medical thriller centering on cosmetic surgery called Skin Deep (Forge). In it, a homicide detective must find out who is killing the beauties of Boston by strangling them with black stockings. Goshgarian teaches English at Boston’s Northeastern University.

Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy honored Harriet Ivey ’72 with a Spirit of Philanthropy award in April for her work since 1998 as the founding president and CEO of the Indianapolis- and Phoenix-based Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. It supports more than 150 nonprofits annually, and has enabled dozens of nontraditional students to obtain college educations.

Okay, who remembers “Loose Bruce” — Bruce Kerr JD’72 — performing in the Rathskeller? Well, after earning his law degree, Kerr (loosebrucekerr.libsyn.com) “took twenty years off to write and perform songs, then returned to law.” Now he has news about both fields: he’s been promoted to assistant general counsel at Sun Microsystems in Santa Clara, California, and syndicated radio host Dr. Demento is including Kerr’s song parody “The Day the Data Died” on his latest compilation CD.

The new executive director of Milwaukee’s Charles Allis Art Museum and Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum is Elly (Ellen) Pick ’72. She was most recently the director of development and marketing for the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend.

The Materials Research Society has lauded William Weber MS’72, PhD’77 as its inaugural fellow for his contributions to the fields of glasses and ceramics. A laboratory fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, he leads research on defects and ion-solid interactions in ceramics.

Three graduates have been named distinguished professors at their universities: Maureen Carr PhD’73 is a professor of music at Penn State who also received a UW School of Music Distinguished Alumna award in 1998. Jerrold Brandell MS’77 is a practicing psychoanalyst and social worker psychotherapist at Wayne State University in Detroit. And Carl Lund PhD’81 is a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Buffalo [New York].

Noting that many UW grads in medical, therapeutic, and psychological fields have trained at Madison’s Mendota Mental Health Institute, local author Tom Doherty MS’73 suspects that some have
wondered about its history. He brings much of it to life in The Best Specimen of a Tyrant: The Ambitious Dr. Abraham Van Norstrand and the Wisconsin Insane Hospital (Spenser-Hoyt), the story of one of Mendota’s early superintendents.

We can add three names to the list of Badgers who are leading institutions of higher learning: Robert Holub MA’73, MA’76, PhD’79 is the new chancellor of the University of Massachusetts’ flagship campus in Amherst. He was most recently provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Tennessee. In March, John Schwenn MS’73, PhD’76 became president of Dalton [Georgia] State College, while Nick Zeppos ’76, JD’79 was being named the eighth chancellor of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He’s its first chancellor in seventy years to be promoted from within.

Oregon State University in Corvallis has welcomed Franklin Sherkow ’74 as its new director of civil-engineering outreach, and he’ll also teach three senior courses. Sherkow has spent the last thirty years in the practice of engineering, primarily in southern California.

Is winning a Pulitzer Prize getting to be old hat for UW alumni? Nah, keep ’em coming. Walt Bogdanich ’75 of the New York Times has earned his third Pulitzer for his investigative reporting on toxic ingredients in medicine and other products imported from China, while the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s David Umhoefer ’83 earned his Pulitzer for local reporting — an investigation into pension deals for Milwaukee County workers that violated county and IRS rules.

At New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, Charles Jones ’76 is the new head of the library — a position that follows three years leading the Blegen Library at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece.

Patient Listening: A Doctor’s Guide (University of Iowa Press) is a new book by Loreen Herwaldt MD’77 that uses the illness narratives of two dozen writer-patients to teach listening skills to health care professionals. The author holds appointments in the departments of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa’s medical school.

We’d lost track of John Myles PhD’77, but he brought us up-to-date: he’s been teaching sociology at the University of Toronto since 2001, chairs the political sociology section of the American Sociology Association, and was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2004.

“The spring of 2008 marks a thirty-year anniversary,” writes Pattie Hunn Skannes ’77, who moved to an Alaskan island thirty years ago and began her career as a salmon biologist. She now helps to manage the commercial troll salmon fishery for the state’s Department of Fish and Game.

Retired U.S. Army General Montgomery Meigs MA’78, PhD’82 has joined the board of trustees of MITRE — a not-for-profit firm that provides systems engineering, R&D, and IT support to the federal government. Currently a visiting professor of strategy and military operations at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, Meigs has had a highly decorated, thirty-five-year military career, serving as commander in Europe and of the NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, among many other posts.

The positive and negative implications of our digital innovations, now and in the future, are the subject of Media in the Digital Age (Columbia University Press) by John Pavlik ’78. The author is a professor and chair of the journalism and media studies department at Rutgers University.

The Network Journal has included Sheryl Adkins-Green ’79 and Felicia Norwood MA’82 in its annual list of “25 Influential Black Women in Business.” Adkins-Green is the general manager and VP of multicultural beauty at the Alberto Culver Company in Melrose Park, Illinois, but she’s particularly proud of A Better Chance — an educational initiative that she co-founded. Norwood is the president and chief operating officer of ActiveHealth Management in New York City, and an advocate for minority youth. She’s served on the boards of visitors of the UW’s political science department and the La Follette School of Public Affairs.

The International Reading Association has a new board vice president in Patricia Edwards PhD’79. She’s a distinguished professor of teacher education at Michigan State University in East Lansing and was president of the 2006–07 National Reading Conference.

To recognize his commitment as the longest-serving member of the Random Lake, Wisconsin, board of education, John Hawley ’79, JD’82 now has a library and a scholarship named after him. The scholarship benefits local students who attend UW-Madison.

Cool Things Happen When You Speak a Foreign Language (Willowgate Press) is both a true statement and the title of a new book co-authored by Christopher Gallagher ’80 — his eighth, in fact. Gallagher has also done some stand-up comedy, but by day he’s a cardiac anesthesiologist at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York.

Eric Lui ’80, an associate professor and chair of the civil and environmental engineering department at Syracuse [New York] University, is one of two educators there to receive a Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence award. Lui proposes to use the funds from the three-year honor to create a course that will study the elements of a sustainable environment holistically.

John Matel MA’80 has been a career foreign-service officer since 1984, serving in Brazil, Norway, Poland, and Washington, D.C. Now he knows plenty about Iraq as well — he’s recently been a provisional reconstruction team leader at Al Asad Western Anbar. Matel planned to return to Washington in September to direct the U.S. State Department’s International Information Programs policy office.

Speaking of foreign service, Daniel Speckhard ’80, MA’82, MS’83 has gone on to another ambassadorship — this time in Greece. A career diplomat, Speckhard’s last posting was as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, following a year directing the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office there.

Barbara Cox JD’82 has recently been named the Foltz Professor of Law at California Western School of Law in San Diego. An expert on gender issues, she served on the 1980s Madison Equal Opportunities Commission that drafted one of the country’s earliest domestic-partnership ordinances. Cox’s work was honored in April by the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center.

The new work by Steven Meyers PhD’82 won’t be a must-read for the general public, but its publisher says that MRI of Bone and Soft Tissue Tumors and Tumorlike Lesions: Differential Diagnosis and Atlas (Thieme Medical Publishers) is “practical, in-depth, invaluable.” Meyers teaches radiology, imaging sciences, and neurosurgery at the University of Rochester [New York].

Amy Vedder MS’82, PhD’89 has long admired the Washington, D.C.-based Wilderness Society’s focus on “good ecological, economic, and policy information,” and now she’s directing its ecology and economics research department. The society was co-founded in 1935 by the late UW professor Aldo Leopold. Vedder is known for her pioneering studies of Rwandan mountain gorillas and for co-founding the Mountain Gorilla Project.

Performance psychologist Rob Smith ’83 of Waltham, Massachusetts, has published Black Belt for Life: A Memoir of Personal Development and the Martial Arts (Xlibris). He says he views it “more as an extended letter to his son, whom he tries to teach the principles inherent in the martial arts.”

What’s Steve Burrows ’84 been up to lately? He’s been shooting comedic commercials in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, and Thailand, and finds that “humor is indeed universal.” He also works in TV, short films, and feature films, and this spring, he joined the directorial roster of Great Guns USA, a production company in L.A. See burrowsofhollywood.com “for all the silliness.”

Most people probably wouldn’t mind being paid to think about cookies all day, which is what Greg Hundt ’84 does. He’s the VP of supply chain for the HoneyBaked Ham Company in Atlanta, but he’s also the new president of Heidi’s Heavenly Cookies, a recent HoneyBaked acquisition. Yum.

Depression strikes one in five people, and research shows that writing can help. That’s why Hayward, California-based science journalist and editor Elizabeth Maynard Schaefer ’84 has provided therapeutic techniques in Writing through the Darkness: Easing Your Depression with Paper and Pen (Ten Speed Press). A bipolar-depression sufferer herself, Schaefer has also taught a creative-writing course for people with mood disorders through Stanford University since 1988.

Jay Sorensen ’84 says that “ancillary revenue” in the airline industry — revenue beyond ticket sales — is both the industry’s best way to cope with fuel costs and the subject of his new book, Ancillary Revenue Guide: The First-Ever Resource for Airlines Seeking Ancillary Revenue Nirvana (AirlineInformation.org). Sorensen is the president of IdeaWorks, his own brand-marketing firm in Shorewood, Wisconsin.

Jeffrey Toretsky ’84 was one of only thirteen physician-scientists this spring to receive a 2008 Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund — a $750,000 award, given over five years. Toretsky is a pediatric oncology physician and researcher at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Christopher Struck ’85 writes that he’s worked in Denmark, became director of engineering for Dolby Laboratories, and then was VP of engineering for Tymphany Corporation. Now he’s founded CJS Labs in San Francisco, a consulting firm specializing in acoustics and engineering for audio and telecommunications. Struck also reports that John Radanovich ’85 is a music journalist living in Delaware; Milwaukee attorney Tomislav Kuzmanovic ’85, JD’88 spent time this spring trying his second case at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague; and Mark Giaimo ’86 is a mural artist, cartoonist, and musician in Washington, D.C.

The Great Lakes Water Wars (Island Press) is a comprehensive account of the people, stories, and issues behind the battles over the earth’s largest collection of fresh surface water — and a timely offering by Madisonian Peter Annin ’86 that’s now in its fifth printing. The author is a former Newsweek reporter.

With a recently completed MBA from DePaul University under his belt, Kenneth Blazer ’86 of Aurora, Illinois, has been promoted to director of global accounts at APL Logistics — part of the Singapore-based NOL Group.

You’d have to try hard to keep up with Helen Klebesadel ’86, MFA’89 (klebesadel.com) — the Madison-based artist, educator, and activist has led many watercolor and creativity workshops this summer and fall throughout Wisconsin and in Kansas City.

When publishers of Detroit’s major ethnic and minority newspapers gathered for a roundtable conference this spring, their host was Hayg Oshagen MA’86, PhD’90, a professor at Wayne State University and the director of its Project Ethnic Media. The event was part of New Michigan Media, a networking initiative that Oshagen founded in 2006.

The top 1 percent: that’s where Washingtonian magazine ranked Mark Behrens ’87 among Washington, D.C., attorneys. He’s a partner in the public-policy group of Shook, Hardy & Bacon. Thanks to Mark’s father, Edwin Behrens ’60, MS’61 of Great Falls, Virginia, for letting us know.

Duke (Victor) Fisher III ’87 has a long history of success as an activist, mediator, special professor of law at Hofstra Law School, and as the co-founder, CEO, and lead trainer of Learning Laboratories — a Bainbridge, New York-based training and facilitation organization. Fisher’s work was honored in 2007 with the Cooke Peace Innovator Award from the New York State Dispute Resolution Association.

Since 2006, (Barbara) Erin Gallagher ’87 has been working in The Hague as a war-crimes investigator for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, focusing on the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre in Bosnia. Gallagher earned California’s 2005 Investigator of the Year award for her work in her previous post as a criminal investigator for the San Francisco district attorney’s office.

Gloria Materre ’88 is just one of several Badger attorneys who’s been on the move recently. She’s a specialist in corporate, real estate, and entertainment law who’s joined Chicago’s Handler, Thayer & Duggan as senior counsel. Solheim Billing & Grimmer in Madison has welcomed Lauren Lofton ’96 as an associate; Amanda Prutzman ’02, JD’07 and Jillian Walker ’02 have joined the collections group of Messerli & Kramer in Minneapolis; and Michael Strand ’02 is a new associate in the real estate and land-use groups at Denver’s Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. Lastly, patent attorney Bryan Clark ’04 is a new associate with the Webb Law Firm in Pittsburgh.

A Markwardt Award has gone to Robert White PhD’88 from ASTM International, one of the world’s largest international standards-development and delivery systems. The honor recognizes White’s contributions in developing standards for the fire performance of wood in building construction. He’s been with the USDA’s Forest Products Laboratory in Madison since 1975.

The Orlando, Florida-based design firm of MSCW has promoted Keith Becker ’90 from senior landscape designer to project manager. He was previously a landscape architectural designer and construction manager for Walt Disney World.

Jodi Dinkes Hurwitz ’90 has won an Emmy Award! At the September 2007 ceremony for the primetime television awards, she was honored in the Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Special category for her work as the producer of NBC’s “Tony Bennett: An American Classic.” She lives in Scarsdale, New York, with her spouse, Mark Hurwitz ’90.

Navy Commander Joseph Olson ’91 has become the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Green Bay — “an exciting honor for a Wisconsin native and big Green Bay Packers fan!” writes his father, Dick Olson ’59 of Madison. The new vessel is an amphibious transport dock ship that’s scheduled to be commissioned in January.

Kevin Rau ’92, MFA’04 has won a Gold Award from Graphis, The International Journal of Visual Communication for a poster that he designed celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Helvetica typeface. It will also appear in the Graphis Poster Annual ’08/’09. Rau is a UW-Oshkosh adjunct faculty member and the proprietor of rauhaus design in Oshkosh.

One a day for one year: that’s the commitment that Madisonian Angela Richardson ’93 (a.k.a. Olive Talique) made on January 22, when she began carrying her camera everywhere and posting one photo every day on flickr.com/photos/olive_talique/sets/72157603781128699, along with her commentary and feedback. In May, Richardson was part of a local exhibit marking her one-hundredth day.

Lynne Snifka ’93 writes that she “recently shocked herself and many of her loved ones” by moving to Fairbanks, Alaska, to become an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alaska.

Kudos to Amanda Veith ’93, the executive producer of a short comedy film called The Job (TheJobTheShort.com) that received the Grand Prix in May at the tenth Festival International des Très Courts, which highlights the world’s best short films — and that’s just a recent accolade among the many it’s earned. Veith worked with Screaming Frog Productions in L.A. to create the film.

Teacher magazine has called the Milken Educator Awards the “Oscars of teaching,” and Anne Clark MA’94 received one during a gala event in March. She was among seventy-five educators to receive an award check of $25,000 through the country’s largest teacher-recognition program. Clark is an instructor and a curriculum and special-education coordinator at the Boston Arts Academy.

Nick Glass MA’94 founded TeachingBooks in Madison, but he’s also initiated a fun and unusual collection: hundreds of delightful audio clips of children’s book authors pronouncing their names and sharing brief stories about those names (TeachingBooks.net). What’s more? Glass is thrilled to be on the Newbery Medal committee this year.

With degrees in economics, international management, and marketing, Michael Wandschneider ’94 seems well equipped for his recent promotion at Kohler Company in Kohler, Wisconsin. He’s moved up from senior product manager of performance showering to marketing manager of bathing products.

It would be quite a commute from The Dalles, Oregon, to Madison, so Erica Bode Jacobsen ’95 — who was recently promoted to editor of the Journal of Chemical Education’s secondary-school chemistry section — works long distance. The publication’s editorial offices reside at the UW, where Professor John Moore of the chemistry department serves as editor-in-chief.

Yorel Lashley ’95, MA’98 is a professional musician and band leader (meleemovement.com) who’s making a difference in New York City through Drum Power (mydrumpower.com), a youth leadership program that he founded in 2000. Lashley is also a recent parent, along with his spouse, Erica Nelson ’98. She danced professionally in New York before earning a law degree and joining the Center for Family Representation as a staff attorney.

Wisconsin Woman magazine called Fabiola Lazo Steckler Hamdan ’96, MS’97 a “force of nature in Madison’s Latino community,” and the Business Forum, a professional women’s organization, honored her with the 2007 Dane County ATHENA Award. Why? After she arrived from Bolivia, Hamdan overcame many challenges and has given so much as a social worker for the Dane County Department of Human Services and a founder of many social-service organizations.

After Lubna Qureshi ’96 completed her doctorate in history at UC-Berkeley in 2006, her dissertation earned a book contract from Lexington Books. Look for it this fall: Nixon, Kissinger, and Allende: U.S. Involvement in the 1973 Coup in Chile.

Steve Vanderheiden MA’96, PhD’01 has written Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change (Oxford University Press). He’s an assistant professor of political science and environmental studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Poetry lovers, keep your eyes on Erin Hanusa ’99 of Madison. She’s been hailed as one of the nation’s most promising young poets and has garnered lavish praise for her debut collection, The House of Marriage (Louisiana State University Press), whose “passionate, candid verse reconciles longing with understanding.”

This spring the Tampa Tribune profiled Monica Sanghavi Patel ’99 as one of its “Rising Stars” — a young professional who’s definitely going places. Patel works for the Florida chapter of the March of Dimes; she’s the organization’s state director of the March for Babies, its major fund raiser.

Aurora Health Care’s corporate affairs department has a new VP of government affairs in Rachel Roller ’99. She joined the Milwaukee-based not-for-profit health care provider last year.

There was a nice Badger collaboration on Along Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail (University of Wisconsin Press): Eric Sherman ’99 and Andrew Hanson III ’89 co-edited the book, and U.S. Representative David Obey ’60, MA’68 (D-Wisconsin) wrote the foreword. The Ice Age National Scenic Trail is a thousand-mile footpath that lies entirely within the state.

Neal Vermillion MA’99 spent some vacation time in Wisconsin this summer while transitioning between his last post as consul at the U.S. embassy in Antananarivo, Madagascar, to his next post as consul at the U.S. consulate general in Perth, Australia.

Getting exercise can be tough when you’re traveling, but Giselle Schmitz ’00 is trying to help. As president of Rox Fitness in Mountain View, California, she’s developed a novel online trainer: a comprehensive video workout program that’s goal oriented, includes a circle of support, adapts as the user becomes more fit, and is viewable on any device that can capture and play MP4 videos.

Two UW zoology grads are going to the dogs — literally. Erika Thomas ’04 and Katie Raschka ’04 met their freshman year and were roommates throughout college. Then, after a few years in animal-related work, Raschka bought a Central Bark Dog Day Care franchise in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and asked Thomas to manage it. They celebrated their first year in business in July.

We rarely receive such humbling Alumni News submissions as this one from Ann Klosterman ’06: she bicycled across the country — from San Diego to St. Augustine, Florida — in seven weeks to raise money for the developmentally disabled adults with whom she works at Community Entry Services in Jackson, Wyoming.

A 2008 Gates Cambridge Scholarship has gone to Rishi Wadhera ’06, a medical student at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. He’ll use it to complete an MPh in public health at Cambridge University in England. Wadhera is the first Badger to receive this scholarship, created in 2000 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Compiled by Paula Wagner Apfelbach ’83