Alumni News

By Alexandra Renslo ’97

I recently met a 112-year-old woman. Actually, Catherine Hagel of New Hope, Minnesota, is just days away from turning 113. It’s hard to get your mind around a life that spans three centuries, isn’t it? It was for me.

As a news reporter, I meet and interview different people every day. During the ten years since graduating from the UW, I’ve met hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds, and each one had a unique story to tell. But never before had I met someone like Hagel. After all, when you’re the ninth-oldest living person in the world, you’re bound to have a compelling life story.

When I listened to Hagel and her family describe a life that began in 1894, I found myself thinking how different our lives are today. As a thirty-two-year-old single woman living in Minneapolis and pursuing a professional career, I was curious to find out what Hagel’s life was like at my age. I learned that she and I share the same birthday — November 28 — although she was born in 1894 and I came into the world on that day in 1974. What a difference eighty years can make.

Hagel spent almost her entire life in the same place, a farm in rural Rogers, Minnesota. She married in 1916, at the age of twenty-two, and she and her husband went on to have eleven children, including two sets of identical twins. Imagine the challenge of running a farm and raising a large family with no electricity, no running water, and no automobile. Their mode of transportation was a horse-drawn wagon.

In 1927, when Hagel was my age, she was already the mother of seven children. Her oldest daughter, Cecilia Gulczinski, now eighty-nine, remembers long days spent helping her mother wash clothes, prepare meals fresh from the garden, and care for the younger children. “We worked hard,” she says. “Mom always kept busy.”

Even after automobiles entered the picture, Hagel’s life was rooted at home. Family outings consisted of Sunday morning church and Sunday afternoon visits to see relatives and neighbors, all of whom lived within a mile or two.

“There wasn’t that much stuff to go to, just family gatherings,” recalls Gulczinski. In fact, during all of her life, Hagel took only one trip, when she was well past sixty and one of her sons drove her across the state line to Wisconsin to visit a friend. In today’s highly mobile society, it’s hard to fathom an entire life spent in one county. Since graduating from college ten years ago, I’ve made my home in three states and four cities. Most of my friends also have had at least that many different zip codes.

As someone who came of age in the early 1990s, I often think how lucky my generation is to be living in a time of such prosperity. The whole world beckons, and we are doing things never dreamed possible by the generations before us. Last year, I bought my own home. This year, I’m planning a trip to visit friends in China. And yet, as I listened to Hagel and her family, a part of me envied what she had: an entire life devoted to family; a time when things moved at a slower pace, when neighbors and friends stopped by on Sunday afternoons just to visit; and a lifestyle that meant no running around from event to event.

“We spent so much time together,” recalls Gulczinski.

What a contrast to our contemporary times. We now lead supersized lives, each day moving at a breakneck pace. We’re overscheduled, overindulged, and overtired. We have too many choices. We have more ways than ever to keep in touch, yet we’re becoming more and more disconnected. E-mails substitute for conversations. Text messages replace phone calls. Our jobs take us away from home for longer periods of time. Our extended families no longer live down the street — they are, in many cases, not even in the same area code or time zone.

It’s all a far cry from the life Catherine Hagel knew. Hers was grounded in hard work, and she focused on family, friends, and faith. Perhaps that’s her secret.

Alexandra Renslo is a television news reporter and anchor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

---

Our apologies to John Buesseler ’41, MD’44 of Lubbock, Texas, who was inaccurately described in the Summer 2007 issue. He’s a retired Special Forces (Green Beret) colonel of the U.S. Army’s Medical Corps.

From Bellevue, Washington, Jerome Baer ’47 writes that he’s received two awards as a top human-services volunteer for his math tutoring — one from the local Eastside Association of Agencies, and the other from the National Football League.

Gerald Gruen ’47 of Port Washington, Wisconsin, is back in the winners’ circle: his poem “2007 Sonnet” took a first-place award at the eighteenth annual Writers’ Institute conference in Madison in April. He also took home a first in 2004.

University of Illinois (UI) professor emeritus Tim Nugent MS’48 has been called a disabilities pioneer for his tireless efforts to improve the lives of students with disabilities during his thirty-seven-year career at UI, and the Chancellor’s Medallion that he received at the May commencement honored those efforts. Longtime colleague Robert Espeseth ’52, MS’56 shared this news and added, “He’s a special guy!”

An honorary doctorate went to Leslie Hicks MA’52, PhD’54 at UW-Madison’s May commencement. As one of the first African-Americans to receive a PhD in behavioral neuroscience, he went on to become a scientist, educator, mentor, and administrator at Howard University in Washington, D.C., for more than fifty years. In 1968, Hicks also founded the first accredited doctoral program in clinical psychology at a historically black institution. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Once dubbed the “international Emily Post” by the New Yorker, former UW System regent Roger Axtell ’53 has received the 2007 Outstanding Achievement Award from the International Association of Protocol Consultants. He’s the author of ten books on international business, etiquette, and protocol — knowledge gained through three decades with the Parker Pen Company, based in his home community of Janesville, Wisconsin.

Congratulations are in order for Lothar (Bud) Hoeft ’53, MS’54 of Albuquerque, New Mexico: he’s received the Stoddard Award from the Electromagnetic Compatibility Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It’s the society’s top award, recognizing Hoeft’s quarter-century of contributions to the field of electromagnetic shielding, especially in developing “hardness surveillance” methods for military missiles and aircraft, including Air Force One.

In a Pickle: A Family Farm Story (University of Wisconsin Press) makes well over twenty books that have come from the mind and memory of UW emeritus professor Jerry Apps ’55, MS’57, PhD’67 of Madison. The latest, set in 1955, is the fictional story of a young farmer who must make life-altering decisions during a conflict between family farmers and a big pickle corporation.

Rachel Kapen, the spouse of Sheldon “Shelly” Kapen ’55, wrote to share a poem she’d written in honor of his Phi Epsilon Pi reunion, held this fall in Madison. She added that he’s now Dr. Kapen — chief of the neurology service at Detroit’s V.A. Medical Center, director of its Sleep-Wake Disorders Center, and an associate professor of neurology at Wayne State University.

From Ponderay, Idaho, we heard from James Ramsey ’55 about his new book, The Buried Dot (PublishAmerica). It’s his tale of joining other young men in 1956 to fly the U.S. Air Force’s new jet planes — and fill the gap until missiles took over — as the last line of defense for American cities fearing Cold War atomic attack. A former newspaper journalist, Ramsey is now a contributing editor for Avionics Magazine.

After more than a quarter-century of students urging him to write his autobiography — and another ten to complete it — UW Law School professor emeritus James Jones, Jr. LLB’56 of Madison has created the 864-page Hattie’s Boy: The Life & Times of a Transitional Negro (UW Law School) — what Jones calls the final “homework” that his students assigned to him. All author royalties go into a student-created fund that will eventually establish a professorship in Jones’s name.

In May, the Madison Committee on Foreign Relations welcomed Nidra Poller ’56 as its speaker on the topic of “French Presidential Elections: All Is Not Won.” She’s a novelist-turned-journalist, and the Paris-based editor of the Web site Pajamas Media, for which she writes about current events in Europe and the Middle East.

Delta Kappa Gamma’s Society for Women Educators selected Kay Kuester Doran ’57 to give the keynote at the group’s May conference in San Jose, Costa Rica. Her speech, presented in Spanish, was titled, “Humor, Dance, Art, and Movement in the Classroom.” Doran is a retired teacher of Spanish and English who lives in Antigo, Wisconsin.

John Warren Stewig ’58, MS’62, PhD’67 has published his eleventh picture book, The Animals Watched (Holiday House) — a retelling of the Noah’s ark story. He’s director of the Center for Children’s Literature at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and part of the Association for Library Service to Children committee that will select the best information book of the year.

President Bush nominated him; the U.S. Senate confirmed him; and now Stephen Porter ’60, LLB’66 is a new member of the National Endowment for the Arts. He’s also senior counsel at the Arnold & Porter law firm in Washington, D.C.

Franklin Cheng PhD’66, one of the world’s foremost experts on applying structural dynamics and optimization to the design of structures, has received the American Society of Civil Engineers’ highest award for his contributions to earthquake structural engineering: he’s received honorary membership in the society. Cheng began teaching at the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1966 and is now an emeritus professor of civil engineering.

In May, the Nuclear Energy Institute bestowed its Lee Award for Leadership on Donald Hintz ’66, and in June, he became president of the American Nuclear Society, which had honored him with its Future Vision Award in 2004. Hintz, of Punta Gorda, Florida, retired in 2004 as president of the nuclear-power company Entergy Corporation.

In addition to his urban-development and marketing-consulting practice, Madisonian John Gann, Jr. MA’67 has written two specialty how-to manuals. One assists classic-car hobbyists who are having trouble with local regulations; the other discusses the “seldom-treated subject of increasing the value of income real estate through zoning changes.”

Changes to the Selective Service Act diverted Lawrence Johnson ’67 from grad school to basic training in 1967, but he eventually earned a PhD from Johns Hopkins; a post in the University of Texas-El Paso’s English department, which he still holds; and a forty-year career in the army — “relinquishing command of the 70th Regional Readiness Command in Seattle,” he notes, “and retiring as a major general in May. Surprisingly, it all fits together.” News coverage of Johnson’s retirement dinner cited his jokes, reverence, eloquence, and fashion choice: dress whites with Birkenstocks.

Though Jim Hirsch ’69 lives and works in Los Angeles as a screenwriter and producer, he and his spouse, Judy, return to Madison often — Jim also teaches screenwriting at the UW as an adjunct professor. Observing that some UW entities are better known around the country than they are on campus, they’ve created the Hirsch Family Award to fund creative projects that “shine a positive light” on UW-Madison and create “connective tissue” among diverse undertakings. The first $5,000 award will be announced in spring 2008.

Avid hiker, conservationist, author, founder of the Wolf Recovery Foundation, and co-founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition all describe Ralph Maughan MA’69, PhD’71 of Pocatello, Idaho — who also retired this summer after teaching political science at Idaho State University since 1971.

The Wisconsin Football Coaches’ Hall of Fame added a new star in March: Madisonian Gary “Kope” Kolpin ’70, MS’74. For thirty-one years, he served as assistant coach, and then as head coach at Madison’s Memorial High School, leading the team to two WIAA state-playoff appearances. We thank Kolpin’s daughter, Carmen Kolpin McDonnell ’94, for letting us know.

Gregory Barnes PhD’71 has written A Biography of Lillian and George Willoughby: Twentieth-Century Quaker Peace Activists (Edwin Mellen Press) about “two fellow Big Ten alumni who’ve been at the center of the American peace movement for the past two-thirds of a century.” Barnes spent many years at Drexel University in Philadelphia, where he directed the English Language Center. He lives in Haverford, Pennsylvania.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection has a new commissioner in Laurie Burt ’71, who’s been a senior partner at the Boston law firm of Foley Hoag and founded its environmental law practice. She says she hopes to “set a new standard for both environmental protection and regulatory efficiency.”

The children’s picture book How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Sylvan Dell) has earned a 2007 Children’s Choices Award and a 2006 Book Sense Pick for Janet Heller ’71, MA’73, who teaches English and women’s studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. The book’s themes include self-esteem, friendship, and recovery from bullying.

Ticiang (Patricia) Diangson MS’72 is a longtime advocate for environmental justice — work she’s continuing as the director of Seattle Public Utilities’ Environmental Justice and Service Equity division. Diangson, who’s been acting director since April 2006, says, “This is a dream job, combining my passion for environmental justice and ratepayer equity with the ability to do something about it.”

The May 20 Washington Post Arts section ran a full-page story on Ellen Reiben ’72 and her twenty-three-year-old Jewelers’ Werk Galerie in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighhborhood. Reiben is a pioneering leader in “radical jewelry” — works that are more conceptual art than pieces to be worn — and explains, “It energizes me to show work that’s scary.” Her fall show, which “stretched the idea of wearability,” was fittingly titled Unwearable.

“I’m eighty-seven and completed four years at UW-Madison back in the dark ages (1938–42),” writes Betty Garton Ulrich ’72, who completed her degree when three of her five children were in college. That drive has propelled Ulrich all along — as she traveled for the Lutheran Church Student Service Department, married a Lutheran pastor, taught school, published three books, and co-founded what’s since become the Writers’ Journal, for which she’s still a columnist. Ulrich spends time in Stone Lake, Wisconsin, and Mesa, Arizona.

Mary Cullinan MA’73, PhD’78 has been a professor of English — and president — of Southern Oregon University since 2006. She was previously provost and VP for academic affairs at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and held various posts in the California State University system. Cullinan concludes, “That degree in English opens many wonderful doors!”

Donna Cutler-Landsman ’73, MS’82 is spreading the word about velo cardio facial syndrome (VCFS), a genetic-deletion syndrome whose relatively recent identification leads to underdiagnosis. She’s working to change that through international speaking engagements, educational consulting, and writing Educating Children with Velo Cardio Facial Syndrome (Plural Publishing). Cutler-Landsman is an educator at Elm Lawn Elementary School in Middleton, Wisconsin.

From assistant corporate treasurer at Rockwell Automation in Milwaukee to assistant treasurer at Perrigo Company in Allegan, Michigan: that’s the path that Mike Kelly ’73, MBA’74 took this summer. He now heads North American treasury operations for Perrigo, a manufacturer of over-the-counter pharmaceutical and nutritional products for the store-brand market.

Hearty congratulations to Joanne Goldberg Yatvin PhD’74, who’s served as the 2006–07 president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Having recently retired from a long career in public education, she also teaches at Portland [Oregon] State University’s grad school and has published English-Only Teachers in Mixed-Language Classrooms: A Survival Guide (Heinemann).

Veteran trial attorney John Markson ’75, JD’78 has emerged as the top choice of Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle ’67 to take the Dane County Circuit Court bench, replacing retired Judge Robert DeChambeau LLB’65. Markson is a partner with the Madison law firm of Bell Gierhart and Moore.

Aviation History (Jeppesen) has earned award upon award for Anne Millbrooke MA’75, who’s now updated her chronicle of aviation worldwide since the first balloon flights in 1783. A pilot and historian, she’s directed the Archive and Historical Resource Center at United Technologies Corporation; taught history at several universities; earned Mellon, Smithsonian, National Science Foundation, and NASA fellowships; and is now a freelance writer in Bozeman, Montana.

Max Rothschild MS’75 was already a professor of agriculture and director of the Center for Integrated Animal Genomics at Iowa State University in Ames when he became its new Ensminger International Chair, charged with developing many collaborative international projects. As the first U.S. researcher to establish collaboration with the European pig-gene-mapping community, Rothschild is also the U.S. Pig Genome Project coordinator.

Larry Arbeiter ’76, who’s been hailed by a colleague as “one of the most thoughtful and insightful communicators in the country,” has become the new associate VP for communications at the University of Rochester [New York]. He joins the school after twenty-eight years at the University of Chicago. Arbeiter also co-executive-produced the PBS biography The Power of Choice, about economist Milton Friedman.

The first book by Jon Bartels ’76, ’82, called Saratoga Stories: Gangsters, Gamblers & Racing Legends (Eclipse Press), captures the essence of the glamour, wealth, horses, scandals, and scoundrels who have swirled around horseracing’s first one hundred years at Saratoga, New York. Bartels is a freelance writer and editor in Verona, Wisconsin.

John DeDakis ’77 writes that the paperback edition of his mystery/suspense novel Fast Track (ArcheBooks Publishing) is now out, and adds that it appears in the new “book zine” format. What’s just as cool is that he’s a senior copy editor for The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer at CNN in Washington, D.C. DeDakis’ spouse, Cynthia Brown DeDakis MMusic’77, is the national president of the Royal School of Church Music.

What we hear about Diana Dyer MS’77 of Ann Arbor, Michigan, is that her “life passion is getting nutrition counsel to cancer patients.” Dyer, a clinical dietitian and three-time cancer survivor, has authored A Dietitian’s Cancer Story: Information & Inspiration for Recovery & Healing, the proceeds of which go to her endowment at the American Institute for Cancer Research.

Who’s a 2007 Woman of Influence in Springfield, Illinois? You’re right if you said Joan Balch Freitag ’77, who’s been active in — and honored by — professional and charitable organizations in the community for more than twenty years. Freitag is a vice president and the director of marketing at Hanson Professional Services, an architectural and engineering services firm.

Johnny Russo MMusic’77 has done it again — but this time, even more so! According to the Syracuse Post-Standard, the “singer-trumpeter jazz man” has “put every ounce of fifty years’ experience” into I Have Dreamed, a new CD that Russo says is “the best stuff we’ve ever done.” He heads up the East Hill Classic Jazz Group in Ithaca, New York.

Patrick Carrick ’78 kicked off 2007 with a new position as director of the Physics and Electronics Directorate for the U.S. Air Force’s Office of Scientific Research in Arlington, Virginia. He’s responsible for multimillion-dollar basic research portfolios, and notes that his program managers fund multiple efforts at the UW.

The third annual George Washington Book Prize — with its medal, $50,000 award, and black-tie festivities at Mount Vernon — has gone to Charles Rappleye ’78. His work, about the brothers who founded Brown University, is Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, The Slave Trade, and The American Revolution (Simon and Schuster), and it was fêted as the most important new book about America’s founding era. Rappleye is a Los Angeles-based journalist, editor, and independent scholar.

There are three newly elected principals in the Milwaukee office of the Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer and Associates consulting-engineering firm: Timothy Robinson ’78, William Gruetzmacher ’83, and Brent Pitcher ’94. In addition, three newly elected associates in the firm include Mark Youngquist ’96 in the Chicago office, Uriah Wolfe ’97 in the Milwaukee office, and Bryant Stempski MS’05 in the Fort Myers, Florida, office.

Kiplinger’s chose America’s Bubble Economy: Profit When It Pops (Wiley), a book co-authored by brothers (John) David Wiedemer MS’78, PhD’89 and Robert Wiedemer MS’88, as one of the best business books of 2007 for its executive book summary series. That’s the good news. The bad news, predicts the book, is that the U.S. economy is headed for a “bubblequake” — the collision and bursting of multiple economic bubbles. David Wiedemer is an evolutionary economist and the manager of valuation support at the Business Valuation Center (BVC) in Reston, Virginia. Robert Wiedemer is a BVC managing partner.

Fans of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS may have caught the July interview with poet, essayist, editor, and translator Martín Espada ’81, who spoke about his love of language and the human need for poetry. He also read from his latest book, The Republic of Poetry, which was shortlisted for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Willie Karidis ’81 has been living in Denali Park, Alaska, for more than twenty years, but says, “I love Madison and the Badgers, and my memories of State Street and the richness of my Madison life will forever be etched in my mind.” Karidis is the executive director of the Denali Education Center, and this summer, he invited Chip (John) Duncan ’77 — a Milwaukee filmmaker, TV producer, and the founder of Duncan Entertainment — to be the keynote speaker at the center’s first annual One World Film and Culture Festival.

Talk about the Wisconsin Idea! Teri (Teresa) Venker MA’82 of Madison is now the executive director of university relations for the UW System’s thirteen two-year UW Colleges and the UW-Extension, which, she says, “extend the resources and research of the university to all seventy-two Wisconsin counties.”

In his new book, The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality (University of California Press), Michael Berkowitz MA’83, PhD’89 investigates the association of Jews with criminality — which he says is a rarely considered, but crucial element of the anti-Semitism that advanced the Holocaust. Berkowitz is a professor of modern Jewish history at University College London.

Cynthia Gorny (Cukla) Kukla MFA’83 was pleased to report that her painting My Ostraka: History IV:v was on display this fall at the Alexandria [Louisiana] Museum of Art, and that she traveled to Tallinn, Estonia, in October to present a paper at an international conference on printmaking and allied areas of art. Kukla has been a professor of art at Illinois State University in Normal since 1993, but spent 2006–07 on sabbatical in Greece as a visiting professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Toni Sikes MS’83 is a success story in Madison — and well beyond — as the founder and CEO of The Guild, an online retailer of original art and fine craft items. She can now add author to her list of accomplishments as well, having penned The Artful Home: Using Art & Craft to Create Living Spaces You’ll Love (Lark Books). Sikes splits her time between Madison and New York City, where The Guild just launched its first public retail event: the Artful Home Show.

The next time you’re in Guildford, Surrey — near London — think of Brian Walters ’83. He transferred there in 2004 with J.D. Power and Associates, a marketing-information firm that conducts consumer surveys, and has now been promoted to vice president of European, Middle Eastern, and African operations.

Steve Busalacchi ’84 has spotlighted many Wisconsin physicians, most of whom have a UW connection, in his new oral history called White Coat Wisdom: Extraordinary Doctors Talk about What They Do, How They Got There, and Why Medicine Is So Much More Than a Job (Apollo’s Voice). The author runs his own Madison-based health care communications firm, but has also worked for the Wisconsin Medical Society and Wisconsin Public Radio.

Apex Companies, a Maryland-based environmental and engineering consulting firm, has welcomed David Fell ’84 as vice president and its first general counsel. He works in Apex’s Arlington Heights, Illinois, office.

From Dallas, Paul Schenian ’84, MBA’88 writes that he’s been promoted from chief financial officer to managing director of worldwide pre-owned aircraft sales for the business aircraft division of Bombardier, a Montréal-based leader in, as Schenian says, “planes and trains.”

Author Roger Bass PhD’85 says that his new book, Amy’s Game: The Concealed Structure of Education (BookSurge Publishing), is an attempt to blend his “thirty-plus years in education with an unblinking look at the data on school effectiveness.” Bass is an associate professor of education at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Meg (Marguerite) McMullen ’86 is president of New England Research & Management, an investment-management firm that provides expertise to wealthy individuals and families. She’s recently moved its headquarters from Boston to Chicago, and says that she’s very glad to be back in the Midwest.

ImageWorks has acquired the first full-length feature film directed and co-produced by (James) Alex Melli ’88: a psychological thriller called Things You Don’t Tell … that was represented at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Melli also runs Suktion Production in Laguna Beach, California, and this fall directed another feature, Buried Past, for Dynamite Pictures.

When you’re a kid, you thrill to see your name in a book, and that’s the kind of excitement that Sarah Foreman Rivera ’88 is working to create. She’s co-founded Custom Made for Kids in Hinsdale, Illinois, to offer The First Adventures of Incredible You — a rhyme-based picture book that she’s co-written, into which customers insert personal facts to customize it for their children. The book has earned a 2007 Outstanding Products Award from iParenting Media.

Ed (Pavlick) Pavlic II ’89, MA’92 has strayed from his economics major, but it’s all right: he’s just published his second book of poems, Labors Lost Left Unfinished (Sheep Meadow Press). His next works are but here are small, clear refractions (Kwani Books) and Winners Have Yet to Be Announced (University of Georgia Press). Pavlic directs the MFA/PhD creative-writing program at the University of Georgia in Athens, and will be part of the American delegation to the 2008 Calcutta Book Fair.

Commander Amanda Sellers Simsiman ’89, MD’93 recently spent four months on a humanitarian, health care mission to Latin America aboard the USNS Comfort. She specializes in pelvic reconstructive surgery and was able to improve the lives of many patients as part of the joint U.S. Navy/Project Hope effort.

Being the head of alcohol policy for one of the world’s largest brewers sounds a bit daunting, but attorney Kristin Kaplan Wolfe ’89 is doing it. She’s spent the past sixteen years with Miller Brewing in Milwaukee, most recently as assistant general counsel, and now directs SABMiller’s group strategy and policy on responsible alcohol consumption from the U.K. She lives near London.

The new provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at UW-Stevens Point is Mark Nook PhD’90 — an astronomy and astrophysics specialist who was previously dean of undergraduate studies at St. Cloud [Minnesota] State University.

“Badgers of the world, unite!” writes (James) Evan Smestad ’91, MBA’04, encouraging progress through collaboration. In June, he hosted the grand opening of a fifty-two-plot, ADA-accessible community garden in downtown Sacramento, California, that required the collaboration of the state, its Environmental Protection Agency, the city, and many dedicated volunteers.

In The Unaffordable Nation: Searching for a Decent Life in America (Prometheus Books), Jeffrey Jones ’92, MA’96, PhD’00 transcends politics and sets forth a public philosophy of reward for labor that he calls the Covenant on Affordability. Jones is an assistant professor of law at Lewis & Clark Law School and an employment lawyer at Barran Liebman in Portland, Oregon.

The Chicago office of the William Blair & Company investment-banking firm has hired Geoff Richards ’92 as its co-head of special situations and restructuring. He was most recently a managing director with Giuliani Capital Advisors, and he’s been an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s School of Law since 2001.

Kirsten Christensen Theisen ’92 met Pam Colburn Miller ’92 and Gary Quick ’92 in a tropical ecology course, and they became fast friends. After Quick lost his second battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2000, Theisen and Miller talked about how to honor him. They chose the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Hike for Discovery program, in which participants raise funds while they train for an endurance hike. In October, Theisen, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Miller, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, hiked the NaPali coast of Kauai wearing Quick’s photo.

The suspense thriller Net Loss (Nightengale Press) is the first novel by Tim Hein ’93 — a feat that he credits to a writing workshop taught by Laurel Yourke MA’73, PhD’79 and Christine DeSmet ’76, MA’87 of the UW’s Writers’ Institute. Hein, of Waukesha, Wisconsin, says they helped him to “break through the dreaded doldrums,” complete his work, and get it published.

Dana Dillon MA’94 has called upon his experiences in the U.S. Army, as an Asian foreign-area officer, and as a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation to write The China Challenge: Standing Strong against the Military, Economic, and Political Threats that Imperil America (Rowman & Littlefield). The Fairfax, Virginia, author is currently a senior strategic analyst at BCP International and a frequent television news commentator.

“Who’s fortunate enough to get the opportunity to start a school from scratch?” began Keith Gillette ’95 when he wrote that he; his spouse, Beth (Elizabeth) Black MA’77; and several other UW grads helped to launch the Conserve School — a co-ed, college-prep boarding high school in northern Wisconsin — in 2002. Gillette is now director of information technology at Lake Forest [Illinois] Country Day School, while Black is director of development at Chiaravalle Montessori School in Evanston, Illinois.

Rachel Stohl ’95 has compiled an impressive record since leaving Madison. She earned a master’s, worked at the United Nations and the Monterey Institute for International Studies, and is currently a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C. She’s also blended her knowledge into The Small Arms Trade (Oneworld), about the global impact of the small-arms trade, as well as the strategies that could potentially combat it.

Who’s news in the legal world? Robert Adelman ’96 recently became a partner at Levin, Riback Law Groupin Chicago; Joshua Hasko ’97 has moved to Messerli & Kramer in Minneapolis; and Matthew Hallingstad JD’05 has joined the Louisville, Kentucky, office of Dinsmore & Shohl.

In May, Bradley Podliska ’96 defended his dissertation, “Acting Alone: U.S. Unilateral Uses of Force, Military Revolutions, and Hegemonic Stability Theory,” and in August, he received his PhD in political science from Texas A&M University. He’s currently working overseas for the U.S. government, and writes, “P.S. And yes, I miss Madison!”

Blending Madison settings with his years of sports journalism, Chris Earl ’97 has crafted The Interim (Gate 8 Publishing) — a fictional story of tragedy, power plays, and corruption inside high-stakes college basketball. Earl, a news anchor at WEAU-TV in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, has also written
Gotcha Down (Jones Books).

Margaret Hogan MA’97 is managing editor of the Adams papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society — a perfect position from which to co-edit My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams (Harvard University Press). Written between 1762 and 1801 — from courtship to post presidency — the letters bridged the couple’s frequent separations.

It’s a significant accomplishment to earn one’s living as a full-time artist, and Jon Rappleye MFA’98 is doing it in New York City. Represented by the Jeff Bailey Gallery, he enjoyed his recent solo exhibit at the Jersey City [New Jersey] Museum and looks forward to other shows opening around the country in the near future.

Scott Tappa ’98 has taken the reins of five Web properties at F+W Publications: Collect.com, a portal to F+W’s collectibles publications; NumisMaster.com, a real-time coin-pricing database; OldCarsWeekly.com; AntiqueTrader.com; and NumismaticNews.net. Tappa lives in Scandinavia, Wisconsin.

This summer, Tassos (Anastasios) Coulaloglou ’01 was one of thirty-one “peace fellows” sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based Advocacy Project, which promotes human rights worldwide. You can read about his work in Nepal with the Collective Campaign for Peace at www.advocacynet.org/blogs. Coulaloglou has also been a freelance journalist in eastern Europe and is now working on a master’s in international relations and diplomacy through a joint university program based in the Netherlands.

Adversity has led to great caring for Tony (Anthony) Hernandez ’01 of San Francisco, who writes that while he was in Kentucky for a fellow Badger’s wedding during summer 2006, “somebody launched a ten-pound rock from a bridge, and it slammed into my chest while I was in the passenger side of a car going seventy-five miles per hour.” Hernandez has parlayed the experience into founding MyPoli.org a diverse group of “international citizens united to pursue world peace and a better future.” He says, “I feel as if I have been given a new set of eyes for our world and future.”

Matthew Fernandez Konigsberg ’02 has made several strides of late: he graduated from the Rutgers School of Law, received the Hispanic Bar Association of New Jersey’s scholarship award, began work as an assistant corporation counsel for the City of New York, and is pleased to be an uncle to his new nephew, Evan.

Hillary Schaefer ’02,a clinical psychology student in the doctoral program at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, has received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She’s studying the brain structures that cause emotional facial expressions with the $90,000 stipend.

Madison-area foodies can enjoy wonderful eats and support local growers through a new program called Buy Fresh, Buy Local Southern Wisconsin. Its coordinator at the Madison-based nonprofit REAP Food Group is Rachel Armstrong ’03, who explains that REAP partners with local food producers and then guides the public to venues that offer their products.

Courtney Brown ’03 was up against about a thousand competitors in her bid to become an intern at National Public Radio (NPR) this summer — but she made it and worked in the audience corporate research department at NPR’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. Brown is now a grad student and research assistant at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

Are you a lover of the “strange but true”? If so, consider a new book by Madisonian Erika Janik MA’04, MA’06 called Odd Wisconsin: Amusing, Perplexing, and Unlikely Stories from Wisconsin’s Past (Wisconsin Historical Society Press) — a great collection of curiosities that didn’t make it into conventional Badger histories. The author also writes for the Wisconsin Historical Society’s online collections.

If your credit card doesn’t have a “skin,” Anthony David Adams MS’05 can fix that. He’s founded CreditCovers, a Madison-based manufacturer of designs that consumers can stick on their cards to transform them from “mere financial tools to emblems of identity,” according to a May New York Times Magazine article.

With the 2008 presidential election well upon us, Stephanie Kundert ’05 is keeping busy as a research assistant with Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling, consulting, and public-affairs firm in Alexandria, Virginia. She’s also worked as a staff assistant to Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) in Washington, D.C.

(Thaddeus) John Szarkowski ’48 — one of the most influential photography curators and critics of the twentieth century — died in July in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. During his nearly three decades as director of photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), starting in 1962, he almost single-handedly elevated photography’s status from a mainly utilitarian medium to a fine art, making his case in seminal writings and landmark exhibitions. A national touring retrospective of Szarkowski’s own photographic work took place in 2005–06, and two of his books remain syllabus staples in art-history programs.

---