Winter 2012 - University of Massachusetts Lowell

UMassLowell 

M A G A Z I N E F O R A L U M N I A N D F R I E N D S 

WINTER 2011-2012 

Roots and Responsibility 

The Generosity of Rob and Donna Manning 

Page 28 

Rob ’84 and 

Donna ’85, ’91 

Manning 

Page 22 

From Logan 

to LAX 

Page 34 

Andre Dubus III: 

Haverhill to 

Hollywood 

Page 38 

Killing Fields Survivors 

Tell Their Stories 

Page 40 

Introducing the Circle 

of Distinction 

Page 57 

Donor Report 

of Gifts 2011

Winter 2011-2012 

The UMass Lowell Alumni 

Magazine is published by: 

Office of Public Affairs 

University of Massachusetts Lowell 

One University Avenue 

Lowell, MA 01854 

978-934-3223 

Marylou_Hubbell@uml.edu 

Chancellor 

Martin T. Meehan 

Vice Chancellor of 

University Relations 

Patti McCafferty 

Vice Chancellor for Advancement 

Edward Chiu 

Director of Publications 

and Publisher 

Mary Lou Hubbell 

Special Assistant to the 

Vice Chancellor of Advancement 

Diane Earl 

Executive Director of 

Alumni Relations 

Lily Mendez-Morgan 

Associate Director 

of Alumni Relations 

Heather Makrez 

Communications Manager 

Nichole Carter 

Editor 

Sarah McAdams 

Staff Writers 

Edwin Aguirre 

Karen Angelo 

Geoffrey Douglas 

Bob Ellis 

Sheila Eppolito 

Jill Gambon 

Julia Gavin 

Christine Gillette 

Elizabeth James 

Jack McDonough 

Dave Perry 

Sandra Seitz 

Please send address changes to: 

University of Massachusetts Lowell 

Office of University Advancement 

Southwick 250, One University Ave., 

Lowell, MA 01854-2882 

alumni_office@uml.edu 

978-934-2223 

UMass Lowell is an Equal 

Opportunity/ Affirmative Action, 

Title IX, H/V, ADA 1990 Employer. 

A Message From 

Chancellor Martin T. Meehan ’78 

The college experience can be daunting to a student who is often living away 

from home for the first time, sometimes the first member of his or her family 

with a chance to pursue a degree. 

Financial assistance—which often represents a vote of confidence to a student, 

along with a connection to an alumnus or a friend of the University—can 

prove to be life-altering for scholarship recipients. 

In this issue of the UMass Lowell Magazine, you’ll learn about some of the people who give so much 

to our students, helping to provide the best education possible. We are deeply grateful to them— 

whether the gift is large or small. It all makes a difference. 

The generosity of our alumni and friends takes many forms: it may help fund a scholarship, purchase 

equipment for a lab, support an academic, research or outreach program or endow a teaching chair. 

Every day at the University, we are keenly focused on our students, preparing them to be work ready, 

life ready and world ready. But we simply cannot do it alone. We need you—alumni and friends of 

the University. 

The magazine also helps keep you up-to-date with the latest campus and alumni activities—and they 

are many. Browse these pages. Check out www.uml.edu. Or better yet, drop by the campus and 

see all the activity for yourself. 

CALENDAR OF EVENTS 

Jan. 6: 

Jan. 28: 

Jan. 28: 

Civil War Book Club 

UMass Lowell Alumni Ice Skate @ Fenway Park 

Marty Meehan ’78 

Chancellor 

Delta Kappa Phi Reunion @ River Hawks vs. UMass Amherst hockey game, 

Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell 

Sigma Phi Omicron Reunion @ River Hawks vs. UMass Amherst hockey game, 


Feb. 4-5: UMass Lowell in India 

Feb. 10: Third Annual Residence Life, Orientation Leader and SGA Reunion @ River Hawks vs. 

Merrimack hockey game, Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell 

Feb. 19: 10th Annual Wine Dinner @ Ricardo’s in Lowell 

Feb. 25: Engineering Alumni night @ River Hawks vs. Merrimack College, 


Apr. 3: 

May 25: 

May 26: 

Plastics Engineering Alumni and Friends dinner @ ANTEC Conference, Florida 

Commencement Eve Celebration, UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center 

40th & 50th Reunions, UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center 

Alumni are invited to participate in “Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War” 

—a five-part discussion series led by History Prof. Michael Pierson on Jan. 24, Feb. 21, March 20, April 3 

and April 24. Registration: http://libguides.uml.edu/LTAI. Materials: Sara_marks@uml.edu. 

Learning with Purpose

W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 - 2 0 1 2 

UMassLowell 

M A G A Z I N E F O R A L U M N I A N D F R I E N D S 

V O L U M E 1 4 N U M B E R 3 

C A M P U S L I F E 

A L U M N I L I F E 

3 OUR WORLD 

44 ALUMNI EVENTS 

F E AT U R E S 

47 CLASS NOTES 

11 STUDENT SCENE 

14 LAB NOTES 

17 SPORTS UPDATE 

From Logan to LAX, From Safety to Security: 22 

Reflections of Operations Chief Steve Martin ’78 

‘We Could Create Huge Changes’ 26 

Brewing Coffee, Saving Forests, Bettering Lives 

Roots and Responsibility 28 


Killing Fields Survivors Tell Their Stories 38 

University Teams up With Cambodian Students 

From Haverhill to Hollywood 34 

‘A Happy Accident’ for Author and Professor Andre Dubus III 

Face of Philanthropy 36 

Bob ’71 and Gail Ward: Saving Lives and Growing Grapes 

Circle of Distinction 40 

The Few, Whose Generosity Lights the Way 

Donor Report of Gifts 2011 57 

55 IN MEMORIAM 

Editor’s Note 

Please send comments to 

Editor Sarah McAdams at 

Sarah_McAdams@uml.edu. 

Submit class notes to: Class 

Notes Editor, Southwick 250, 

1 University Ave., Lowell, MA 

01854 or www.uml.edu/advancement/classnotes. 

LOWELL TEXTILE SCHOOL • MASSACHUSETTS STATE NORMAL SCHOOL • STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE AT LOWELL • LOWELL TEXTILE INSTITUTE 

LOWELL TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE • MASSACHUSETTS STATE COLLEGE AT LOWELL • LOWELL STATE COLLEGE • UNIVERSITY OF LOWELL 

W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 - 2 0 1 2 UMASS LOWELL MAGAZINE 1

Campus Life 

3 

Inside... 

OUR WORLD 

11 STUDENT SCENE 

14 LAB NOTES 

17 SPORTS UPDATE 

Music studies major Miles 

Collins-Wooley lets loose during 

a master class featuring West 

African drumming and dance 

with Joh Camard. 

2 UMASS LOWELL MAGAZINE W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 - 2 0 1 2

Ourworld 

C A M P U S N E W S 

Students Help Shape U.S. Senate Debate 

UMass Lowell students participated 

in democracy in action at 

an Oct. 4 U.S. Senate Democratic 

primary debate on campus. 

Dozens of students played 

a role in the event—helping 

to shape the debate’s format, 

firing off questions as panelists, 

serving as timekeepers and 

ushers, participating in a 

Boston Herald focus group 

and suggesting questions via 

Facebook and Twitter. 

The debate, the first among 

Democratic Senate candidates, 

attracted a capacity crowd of 

nearly 1,000. Co-sponsored by 

the newly launched UMass 

Lowell Center for Public Opinion, 

the UMass Lowell Political 

Science Club and the Boston 

Herald, the event attracted 

scores of local and national 

media outlets and thousands 

of followers online. 

Participating candidates 

were Tom Conroy, Marisa 

DeFranco, Alan Khazei, Bob 

Massie, Herb Robinson, Elizabeth 

Warren and Setti Warren. 

Four students served as panelists, 

asking questions of the 

candidates who hope to challenge 

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown 

next year. Their questions 

probed both policy positions 

such as the withdrawal of U.S. 

troops from Afghanistan and 

more personal topics like how 

the candidates paid for college. 

The level of student involvement 

and the heavy use 

of social media will set a new 

standard for political debates, 

predicted Ryan Bounsy, a senior 

political science major who 

participated in the Herald’s 

focus group of six UMass Lowell 

students and three faculty 

members. During the debate, 

focus group members shared 

their reactions with a Herald 

reporter and formulated a question, 

which was then posed to 

the candidates. 

“This is a perfect example 

of how an activity like a 

political debate can be a real 

learning experience for students 

that they cannot get in 

a classroom. As a result, this 

enriches their education at 

UMass Lowell and engages 

them in the community,” said 

Prof. Frank Talty, director of 

the Center for Public Opinion. 

UMass Lowell students participated in the Senate 

debate in many ways — as panelists, focus group 

members and as timekeepers (above). 


Ourworld 

Ground has broken on South Campus for 

a new academic building that will be home 

to health and social sciences programs. 

Prof. Regina Panasuk 

Major Projects Give 

UMass Lowell Campus 

an Exciting New Look 

The hammers were swinging all summer as two major projects—the 

construction of the Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center 

(ETIC) on North Campus and the Health and Social Sciences 

Building (HSSB) on South—as well as myriad major renovations 

took shape. 

The ETIC will bring together world-renowned and next-generation 

research leaders to develop solutions to complex scientific challenges 

facing society today—energy, health, environment, communications 

and security. The building will open in fall 2012. The Health and 

Social Sciences Building will provide much needed additional instructional 

space and faculty offices. The four-story atrium lobby, 

with skylights and multiple gathering areas, will promote student and 

faculty interactions. The building will open in spring 2013. 

Robert ’71 and Gail Ward tour the future Robert 

& Gail Ward Biomedical Materials Development 

Laboratory in the Emerging Technologies and 

Innovation Center, currently under construction. 

Read more about the Wards on page 36. 

Meanwhile, O’Leary Library on South Campus is being retooled as the O’Leary Library Learning Commons. 

The first floor will offer students a beautiful new resource: a Library Learning Commons with comfortable, 

relaxed learning spaces, the latest technology and software and access to the information and assistance they 

need to study, collaborate, conduct research and write papers. Starbucks, already open on the first floor, is a great 

new plus for students, faculty, staff and visitors. 

A University Crossing Steering Committee is considering options for renovations and uses of that facility at 

the corner of Pawtucket and Merrimack streets. The plan is that it will serve as a unifying hub with studentfocused 

activities and services. 

Other projects completed or nearly so include upgraded classrooms, residence spaces, faculty offices, labs and 

infrastructure improvements. 

REGINA PANASUK 

NAMED UNIVERSITY 

PROFESSOR 

Prof. Regina M. Panasuk 

of the Graduate School of 

Education, acclaimed by 

fellow faculty members 

and students alike for her 

outstanding service to 

UMass Lowell for nearly two 

decades, has been awarded 

the distinguished title of 

University Professor. 

Panasuk is “an exceptional 

professor … who works 

harder than could be reasonably 

expected of any individual 

because she loves her 

career and is dedicated to 

improving the quality of 

mathematics education for 

all,” says Anita Greenwood, 

interim dean of the Graduate 

School of Education. 

The appointment carries 

with it a stipend of $10,000, 

release from teaching one 

class each semester and the 

commitment to deliver a 

University Professor lecture, 

which, in this case, will take 

place during the spring 2012 

semester. The three-year 

appointment, which runs 

through August of 2014, 

is the highest distinction 

bestowed on a UMass Lowell 

faculty member. 



Kay Ryan, a former U.S. poet 

Laureate and winner of the 2011 

Pulitzer Prize for poetry, visited 

campus recently. 

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING POET VISITS CAMPUS 

Poet Kay Ryan drew a crowd of 

approximately 200 for a reading 

recently and then kept them 

laughing. Ryan, a former U.S. 

poet Laureate and winner of the 

2011 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, read 

from her latest book, “The Best 

of It: New and Selected Poems.” 

“Kay is highly decorated but 

her poems are not,” said English 

Department faculty member 

Maggie Dietz in her introduction 

of the poet. She noted that Ryan’s 

poems have been compared to 

Fabergé eggs or Joseph Cornell 

boxes, “which is to say it’s a delight 

to open them and discover 

what’s inside.” Ryan took the 

podium declaring that after such 

a fine introduction 

she felt inspired to go write some 

more poems immediately. 

English Department Chair 

Tony Szczesiul said Ryan’s visit 

marked an important day for 

the department, which has 

grown significantly over the past 

two years and recently added a 

concentration in creative writing. 

The Poster Child 

Legal Studies Professor Michael E. Jones—who has not only a J.D. from 

Miami University, but also an MBA from the Wharton School at the 

University of Pennsylvania—is also an accomplished author, district court 

judge, globally ranked triathlete and painter. 

The last talent has brought his latest honor. Jones was selected to create 

the image that will serve as the official triathlon poster for the 2012 Olympics 

in London. His original painting will be made into posters and sold throughout 

the Olympic venue and at the USA Olympic Trials and national championship 

triathlon race. 

“It’s a pretty cool honor,” says Jones, who also had paintings selected for 

Olympic posters at the 2004 and 2008 games. 

The Pelham, N.H., native’s connection 

to the Olympics is deep. A teammate of 

Mark Spitz on the U.S. national swim 

team in the 1970s, Jones made it to the 

Olympic Trials in 1972. 

“Not all first dreams come true,” he 

says. “I’m completely happy with who I 

am and how things turned out. So many 

athletes live in the past. I respect and 

honor the past—but I don’t want to live 

in it. After all, I made the Olympic games, 

just in a different way.” 

The 2012 Olympics triathlon poster 

will be based on this painting by Prof. 

Michael E. Jones. 

Weasels Have Problems, Too 

“The Weasel Problem” multimedia installation by Provincetown artists 

Zehra Kahn and Tim Winn was on exhibit in the University Gallery in October. 

Coordinated by the Art Department and sponsored by the College of Fine Arts, 

Humanities, and Social Sciences, the non-profit University Gallery exhibits the 

work of regionally and nationally recognized professional artists. 


Ourworld 

UMass Lowell 

Named a Tree 

Campus USA 

UMass Lowell is New England’s 

first college to be designated an 

official Tree Campus USA by the 

Nebraska-based Arbor Day Foundation. 

Superintendent of Grounds 

Ryan McCaughey says the University 

meets five standards for tree care 

and community engagement: 

a campus tree advisory committee, 

a campus tree-care plan, an annual 

budget for tree care, involvement 

in observing Arbor Day and a 

service-learning project aimed 

at engaging the student body. 

FACULTY TOPS 500 

This fall, UMass Lowell reached a 

new milestone, as the semester 

began with 503 faculty members, 

a record for the campus. Overall 

enrollments have increased by more 

than 30 percent in the past three 

years due to improved retention 

rates and an increased number of 

incoming students. The campus 

now has more than 14,000 students, 

including undergraduate, graduate 

and continuing studies levels. New 

faculty members have been recruited 

across disciplines to respond to 

these enrollment increases. 

UMASS LOWELL 

ONLINE BREAKS RECORD 

UMass Lowell saw a record-breaking 

18,558 online enrollments in 

the last academic year, up more 

than 10 percent over a year ago. 

Programs include fully online bachelor’s 

degrees in fields like liberal 

arts, psychology and information 

technology. Online graduate study 

options include 10 master’s degrees 

in areas like business administration 

and education, and a variety of 

certificates. Highly specialized 

programs created in response to 

demand from employers and 

students are another hallmark of 

UMass Lowell’s online offerings and 

include new certificates in fields 

like network security, victim studies 

and sleep disorder treatment. 

MBA PROGRAM AMONG 

BEST IN COUNTRY 

For the fifth year in a row, 

UMass Lowell’s Manning School 

of Business has been named one 

of the best business schools in the 

country by the Princeton Review. 

In its newly published book, “The 

Best 294 Business Schools: 2012 

Edition,” the education services 

company recommends UMass 

Lowell as one of the top universities 

for earning a master’s of 

business administration. Enrollment 

in the University’s MBA 

program is up 17 percent this year, 

according to Prof. Gary Mucica, 

director of graduate programs at 

the Manning School. Contributing 

to that increase is the new 

full-time MBA program, which 

was introduced this semester, and 

the popularity of online courses. 

CHECK OUT THE NEW UML.EDU! 

After months of research, design iterations and rewriting, the new 

UMass Lowell website was launched this fall. Geared toward students, 

the color scheme is meant to convey the excitement and momentum 

of the campus. The overall design is much wider, providing more space 

to display content. It incorporates best practices for higher education 

websites, as well as recommendations from a web consultant. 

Visitors will notice streamlined navigation, including horizontal topic 

areas and pull down menus, flash landing pages with bigger pictures 

and video, and seamless incorporation of social media. Future improvements 

will include a mobile site, multiple languages and personalization. 

Let us know what you think at www.uml.edu/feedback/. 



Luring Tourists Underground 

SUBWAY CAMPAIGN FEATURES PROFESSOR MINKKINEN’S PHOTOS 

His photographs are displayed in galleries 

around the world—including New York’s 

Museum of Modern Art, Boston’s Museum 

of Fine Arts and Musée d'Élysée in Lausanne, 

Switzerland. But for Art Prof. Arno 

Minkkinen, displaying work in the Paris 

underground—on billboards throughout 

the city’s Metro stations—is a first. 

“The Finnish Tourist Board contacted 

me to ask if I would let them use my work 

in their efforts to boost tourism from 

France,” Minkkinen says. “This has been, 

by far, the most wonderful and unusual 

display of my work—to be able to promote 

my homeland in one of my favorite cities 

…wow! Magnifique!” 

The images—displayed in high-traffic 

metro stations and on billboards throughout 

the city—share the beauty of Finland with 

minimal supporting text, letting the photographs 

tell the story. 

Closer to home, Minkkinen was recently 

selected as the University’s third recipient 

of the Nancy Donahue Endowed Professorship 

in the Arts, created by patrons 

Richard and Nancy Donahue to support 

the University’s music, art and theater 

programs by strengthening ties to local 

music, arts and theater communities. 

Minkkinen says he’s honored to be 

among previous Donahue scholars, Music 

Prof. Kay George Roberts and English 

Prof. Andre Dubus. “I am indeed honored, 

especially considering the first two Donahue 

scholars,” he says, adding that he’s using 

the position to create exciting community 

service applications. 

UMASS LOWELL 

SCHOLAR WINS 

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 

Peace activist and UMass 

Lowell Greeley Scholar 

Leymah Gbowee was awarded 

the Nobel Peace Prize 

in October. 

“As UMass Lowell’s 2011 

Greeley Peace Scholar, 

Gbowee contributed to our 

understanding of how deep 

and lasting conflicts can be 

resolved through peaceful 

means,” says Chancellor 

Marty Meehan. “During her 

participation earlier this year 

in the University’s International 

Women Leaders 

Summit, Gbowee inspired 

us with her courage and her 

unflagging commitment 

to peace and equality. As 

Nobel Peace Laureate, she 

will continue to mobilize 

and unite people.” 

Get on the Bus! 

Arno Minkkinen’s work is shown in a Paris Metro 

station—one of many installations throughout the city. 

What better way to get high school students excited 

about the nursing profession than to give them 

hands-on experience? UMass Lowell nursing faculty 

is taking this idea on the road in the form of a 34- 

foot bus that is home to two realistic mannequins— 

birthing mother “Noelle” and newborn “Hal.” By 

simulating functions of the human body such as 

breathing, crying, talking and assuming medical 

conditions, the high-tech mannequins offer students 

a fun and intriguing way to find out if the nursing 

profession is for them. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 

awarded the UMass Lowell Nursing Department 

a $298,990 grant for the “On the Move for Nursing’s 

Future” mobile simulation laboratory to reach out 

to diverse and underserved populations in the Merrimack 

Valley. 

“Despite the current down economy, the shortage 

of nurses is still expected to be significant as the 

population ages,” says nursing Prof. Jacqueline 

Dowling, the project’s lead manager. “With this 

mobile laboratory, we’re able to bring the technology 

into the community and have the students 

interact with the patient simulators in a way that 

will engage them.” 


Ourworld 

From Millworkers 

to Microchips: 

Lowell’s Journey 

to Geekhood 

By David Perry 

Feeling geeky? Raise your geek flag high. You are not alone. Lowell, 

thanks in large part to UMass Lowell, is transcending its history of hard 

labor and blue-collar struggle. Brawn is being swapped for brains. 

In its annual Science and Engineering Indicators report, the U.S. 

National Science Foundation has dubbed greater Lowell the sixth 

“geekiest” city in the nation on a Top 20 list. The Mill City is lodged 

smack between Durham, N.C., and Washington, D.C. San Jose, Calif., 

in the Silicon Valley, tops the list. 

The study measures the percentage of a city’s workforce in occupations 

that require at least some technical knowledge or training, including 

at least a bachelor’s degree. The report, recently released in Forbes 

magazine, says 14.1 percent of the area’s workforce—16,580 workers— 

are employed at such technology companies as Kronos Inc., Jabil Circuit 

and Juniper Networks. The report includes Billerica and Chelmsford in 

the “Lowell area.” 

“I find it particularly interesting because Lowell has been traditionally 

viewed as a place filled with mills and industrial history,” says Robert 

Malloy, UMass Lowell professor and department chair of Plastics 

Engineering. “It’s a real indication of how much things have changed. 

We’ve gone from an untrained labor force to a work force that is much 

more innovative.” 

Long before it was known as UMass Lowell, the University was 

producing engineers and other brainy grads. 

Rich Miner, a partner in Google Ventures and co-founder of Android, 

earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 1986 and his master’s 

in 1989 from then-University of Lowell and his Ph.D. in 1997 from 

UMass Lowell. Even in the shadow of some of the best-known engineering 

and science schools, UMass Lowell was doing its part to produce workready 

geeks. 

“It’s been around for a while,” said Miner by phone from his Cambridge 

office. “It’s not new. You had technical companies like Mercury Computer 

Systems, Allied, Wang. What this sounds like is the recognition that 

there’s a super-bright, well-trained and very skilled student body and 

everybody should be recruiting them.” 

UMass Lowell is becoming even more deeply woven into the fabric 

of the city. It is considered a main feeder to the city’s workforce. With 

the University’s dedication to preparing work-ready graduates for life in 

the real world, it could get a lot geekier. 

“Having the University as a major player in the city’s development 

and energy certainly go hand in hand with the creative economy,” says 

Lowell City Manager Bernie Lynch. “I think of geeks as being creative 

people, big thinkers, people who embrace social media, new technologies. 

Geeky is good. Steve Jobs, Barack Obama and Bill Gates are the sort of 

names that come to mind. They are considered geeks, or were at one 

time. Which says some good things about geeks.” 

UMass Lowell’s part in meeting the future head-on is invested deeply 

in “nanotechnology, cutting-edge plastics, biodegradables and the like,” 

adds Lynch. “They’re forward-thinking things they are putting into the 

pipeline, and it is attracting people to the city.” 

Like the $70 million Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center 

rising on North Campus? 

“That’s the idea,” says Malloy. “But you know, I don’t think of our 

students as ‘geeks’ in the least. There are some schools known as centers 

for such things that might fit the geek tag. I guess the term implies hightech. 

I think of our students as scientists and engineers, people capable 

of understanding things and having an interest in things that not a lot of 

people understand. Our students may be smart, but they’re also ready to 

work in the mainstream, to work hard, to connect well with people.” 



The End 

of an Era 

for NASA 

Staffer Covers 

Last Shuttle Mission 

Edwin Aguirre, the science and 

technology writer in UMass Lowell’s 

Public Affairs Office, was in 

Cape Canaveral, Fla., when the 

space shuttle Atlantis embarked 

on its final 13-day mission with a 

picture-perfect launch this summer. 

Witnessed by hundreds of thousands 

of people gathered at NASA’s 

Kennedy Space Center, as well as 

millions more glued to live TV and 

web broadcasts around 

the world, the launch marked the 

beginning of the end for America’s 

storied three-decades long space 

shuttle program. 

Atlantis’s primary objective was 

to deliver the shuttle payload to 

the crew of the orbiting International 

Space Station (ISS). The cargo 

includes a multi-purpose logistics 

module filled with spare parts and 

nearly five tons of supplies for the 

space station, as well as a pair of 

Android smartphones that UMass 

Lowell alumnus Mark Micire ’10 

helped develop. The smartphones 

are designed to control a trio 

of miniature free-flying robots 

residing in the ISS. 

Forty seconds after it left the 

launch pad for the final time, 

Atlantis was gone, but people 

could still hear the shuttle’s rattling 

sound and follow the dark, curving 

shadow cast by its smoke trail on 

the cloud tops. “Squinting our eyes 

and craning our necks, we tried to 

catch one last glimpse of Atlantis 

in flight,” Aguirre says. “Soon 

afterward, people cheered, 

hugged, shook hands and highfived. 

Everyone had a big smile— 

Atlantis had just put on the most 

spectacular fireworks of the year, 

and we had a ringside seat to it!” 

Photo: Edwin Aguirre/Imelda Joson 

LONGTIME LIBRARY 

DIRECTOR RETIRES 

UMass Lowell librarian 

Pat Noreau says that 

although much in her industry 

changed during her four 

decades at the University, 

one thing remains the same: 

“I’ve always felt that the 

most important thing for a 

reference librarian is to be 

good at customer service,” 

she says. 

Noreau would know. 

She joined the University in 

April 1970, when it was the 

Lowell Technological Institute. 

After the merger of 

Lowell State and Lowell 

Tech, she became the head 

of the unified serials department 

and subsequently was 

appointed head of technical 

services. She retired, as 

director, this summer. 

For all of her years here, 

Noreau focused on addressing 

the needs of her customers: 

students. But how 

she and her co-workers addressed 

those needs changed 

drastically over the years. 

For the first half of her 

tenure, the emphasis was on 

“how large your physical collection 

is—how many books 

and journals you have,” she 

Newly retired Director of 

Libraries Pat Noreau enjoys 

a coffee at Starbucks, which 

recently opened in the space 

previously occupied by her 

office at O’Leary Library. 

says. That changed, however, 

with the advent of the 

digital world. 

Over the next decade, 

the library staff began building 

an online collection, 

with, for instance, the buying 

of robust, sophisticated 

databases. 

“Under Pat’s direction, 

the library developed one 

of the nation’s first online 

digital collections with the 

journal collection growing 

from 2,000 paper titles to 

more than 40,000 online 

titles,” says Interim Director 

Rosanna Kowalewski. 

Prof. Emeritus Bodo Reinisch 

PROFESSOR WINS 

PRESTIGIOUS 

PHYSICS PRIZE 

“It was like winning the 

equivalent of the Nobel 

Prize for the field of radio 

science!” 

That’s how Prof. Emeritus 

Bodo Reinisch of the 

Environmental, Earth and 

Atmospheric Sciences 

Department described the 

news that the International 

Union of Radio Science 

has chosen him to receive 

the prestigious Appleton 

Prize for “outstanding 

contributions to studies in 

ionospheric physics.” 

Reinisch, former director 

of UMass Lowell’s Center 

for Atmospheric Research, 

was cited for “revolutionizing 

radio sounding from 

ground and space.” 


Ourworld 

Lynda Barry Wows 

as Artist-in-Residence 

Renowned artist and writer Lynda 

Barry left her creative mark on 

campus as the fall 2011 Artist-in- 

Residence for the UMass Lowell 

Center for Arts & Ideas. For the last 

several decades, Barry has shared 

her passion for art, writing and life 

through “Ernie Pook’s Comeek”—a 

cornerstone of the alternative 

comic world—and numerous 

graphic novels, books and, most 

recently, creativity workshops. 

“I’ve absolutely loved my time 

here at UMass Lowell and I’m 

jealous of everyone who gets to 

come here,” she says. “I would 

study here in a second, I would 

teach here in a second, it’s just an 

excellent place to be.” 

Barry’s stay at the University 

included teaching several master 

classes, one-on-one meetings with 

students and professors, a standing-room-only 

lecture and a workshop 

for students and professors. 

A self-portrait by Lynda Barry 


Studentscene 


Heather Jaffe practices her TV 

weather-forecasting skills in 

front of the “green screen” at 

the New England Cable News 

Network studio. 

STUDENT, ALUM 

KEEP TABS ON NEW 

ENGLAND WEATHER 

On the afternoon of June 1, 

an outbreak of tornadoes 

with winds exceeding 135 

miles per hour struck western 

Massachusetts. Residents 

in Springfield only 

had about 10 minutes’ warning 

that a powerful twister 

was approaching their city. 

The tornadoes—the 

strongest to hit New England 

since the 1953 twister 

in Worcester—killed four 

people and left hundreds 

more injured or homeless. 

Kristina Oakland, a 21- 

year-old student in UMass 

Lowell’s Environmental, 

Earth and Atmospheric 

Sciences Department, was 

on her first day as a meteorology 

intern at the New 

England Cable News 

(NECN) studio in Newton 

when the tornadoes struck. 

“It was absolutely crazy!” 

she says. “I rushed the alerts 

from the National Weather 

Service to NECN meteorologist 

Matt Noyes for his 

live TV broadcast. I also 

answered the phone and 

took down information the 

viewers were sending in. 

Watching the formation of 

the storms on the Doppler 

radar was amazing, but at the 

same time it was frightening 

to see the power of these 

tornadoes. I was one of the 

first to see pictures and 

videos from Springfield and 

neighboring towns before 

they were aired and I was 

speechless. It was a scary, 

exciting first day.” 

Also interning at NECN 

is Heather Jaffe, who graduated 

from UMass Lowell 

in May with a degree in 

atmospheric sciences. 

“I was in the studio two 

days after the tornadoes 

struck,” says Jaffe. “The 

aftermath was very devastating. 

Still, we are very fortunate 

we had such good 

coverage of these storms, 

giving people at least 10 

minutes to take cover in 

their basements before the 

twisters touched down. 

This was my first experience 

dealing with tornadoes, and 

hopefully my last until I 

decide to go to the midwest 

to storm-chase!” 

STUDENTS NAMED 

TRIPATHY FELLOWS 

Two Ph.D. candidates— 

Abhishek Kumar in physics 

and Jisun Im in chemistry— 

were each awarded the 2011 

Tripathy Memorial Endowed 

Graduate Fellowship in 

recognition of their academic 

accomplishments and 

multidisciplinary research 

in the areas of materials 

science and polymer 

science. Each received a 

$6,500 research stipend 

for the summer. 

Kumar received his master’s 

degree from the Indian 

Institute of Technology in 

Kanpur, India, in 2005. 

His current investigation 

deals with the development 

of a highly sensitive optical 

sensor that uses organic 

fluorescent materials to 

detect trace amounts of 

explosives in the air. 

Im received her master’s 

degree from Pusan National 

University in South Korea 

in 2005. She is now working 

on developing the “Mini 

Mutt,” a chemical sensor 

designed to detect organic 

vapors and explosives using 

gold nanoparticles and 

conducting polymers. 

MODEL U.N. TEAM 

WINS BIG IN TURKEY 

Preparation and commitment 

paid off for UMass 

Lowell students who competed 

in the Model United 

Nations competition held in 

Antalya, Turkey, recently. 

The team members, drawn 

from the Dean Bergeron 

International Relations 

Club, won six awards— 

taking honors in more than 

half the committees they 

served on, and winning 

more awards and honorable 

mentions than any other 

school at the conference. 

“Being the only U.S. 

school was tough,” says the 

club’s faculty adviser, Jason 

Carter, adjunct professor 

of political science. “Our 

students had to work a bit 

harder to overcome the 

negative stereotypes others 

had. More than one student 

was asked, ‘Are you a typical 

American? You’re the first 

one I’ve ever met.’ So they 

found themselves explaining 

the diversity of American 

culture.” 

The UMass Lowell 

students faced 300 delegates 

from 20 other colleges 

and universities. 

UMass Lowell grad student Molly Clay, center, conducts diffraction experiments in a physics class 

at Lowell High School. 

Students Make Waves in 

Lowell and Lawrence Schools 

Eileen Montbleau says she loves watching science come alive for her ninth grade 

students at Lowell High School—thanks to graduate students from UMass Lowell. “It’s 

great to see my students have the opportunity to be engaged in different lab activities 

that I don’t have the resources or expertise to provide,” says the science teacher, 

referring to the Vibes and Waves program. 

Since 2009, the program—which is funded by a five-year $2.4 million grant from 

the National Science Foundation—has connected UMass Lowell graduate students in 

science, math, education and engineering with high school teachers and students in 

the Lowell and Lawrence school districts. 

Vibes and Waves helps the grad students learn how to effectively communicate the 

nature and significance of their research to a diverse lay audience, and the high school 

students get a chance to hear about exciting university-level research they otherwise 

wouldn’t be exposed to. 

“Being in the classroom and working with high-school students is very fulfilling,” 

says Molly Clay, a chemical engineering graduate student. “And being a role model for 

them and opening up their eyes to new ideas and research is wonderful.” 

W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 - 2 0 1 2 UMASS LOWELL MAGAZINE 1 1

Studentscene 

STUDENTS HELP SHARPEN SKATERS‘ SKILLS 

Team Massachusetts’ solar home finished fourth in the 

Affordability category, second in Energy Balance and 

fourth in Market Appeal in the U.S. Department of 

Energy’s biennial Solar Decathlon. 

Students’ Solar Home 

Places Ninth in National Contest 

Team Massachusetts—made up of energy engineering students from UMass Lowell 

and architecture students from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design—won 

ninth place in the U.S. Department of Energy’s biennial Solar Decathlon competition 

held in late September in Washington, D.C. The team beat 10 other collegiate teams 

from the United States, Canada, Belgium and China. 

“This is the best showing ever by any Massachusetts team, public or private, in the 

history of the Solar Decathlon,” says Engineering Dean John Ting. “I think we had 

one of the most livable, energy-efficient, thoughtfully designed and executed homes. 

As proof, I believe we were the first home to be sold to a private owner, with the 

proceeds going to help defray the institutional costs of this project.” 

A number of donors, sponsors and volunteers contributed materials and services to 

the project, including Epoch Homes, which fabricated the house at the company’s 

factory in Pembroke, N.H., and Saint-Gobain North America, a global company with 

more than 190,000 employees in 64 countries, which donated about 30 different 

products used in the construction of the team’s home. Other donors included Nordic 

Engineered Wood, Solectria Renewables, Sundrum Solar, Boott Hydropower and Enel 

Green Power North America. 

The team’s entry—designed to house a family of three and to be completely 

powered by the sun—finished fourth in the Affordability category, second in Energy 

Balance and fourth in Market Appeal (three of the 10 individual contests that formed 

the overall “decathlon”). Overall, the University of Maryland won first place, followed 

by Purdue University and Victoria University in New Zealand. 

“It was a dream project for us,” says Apurav Jain, who is pursuing a master’s degree 

in solar engineering and plans to set up his own solar energy company in India after 

graduation. “We received a lot of practical experience and knowledge on how to go 

about installing photovoltaic panels and designing our system to comply with the 

national electrical code, among other things. It helped us better understand the 

concepts we learned in the classroom.” 

Other members of the 2011 UMass Lowell team included Christopher Bradley, 

John Connor, Milo DiPaola, Erik Jordan, Srilakshmi Kurmana, Tim Lee, Abdelwahed 

Nabat, Kemmeng Peng, Raam Perumal, Matthew Polese, Julianne Rhoads,Walter 

Thomas and Anant Wadalkar. Their faculty adviser was Prof. Robert Parkin of 

mechanical engineering. 

(Credit: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy) 

By assessing the strength 

and power of 40 figure 

skaters at the Reggie Lewis 

Track Athletic Center in 

Boston, physical therapy 

and exercise physiology 

students applied classroom 

learning to the real world. 

“It allowed them to use 

the skills they learned in 

the classroom in a real work 

setting,” says Assoc. Prof. 

Cynthia Ferrara of exercise 

physiology, who serves on 

the Sports Medicine and 

Sports Science Committee 

for U.S. Figure Skating. 

Second-year doctor of 

physical therapy students 

Celine DeMaggio, Connor 

Ryan and Heather Jones and 

senior exercise physiology 

students Molly Nowill and 

Greg Titus, along with 

Ferrara, tested each of 

the skater’s abilities using 

the standards set by U.S. 

Skating. 

“Screening skaters 

helped me put to use some 

of the tests that we performed 

in our exercise 

physiology labs,” says Nowill. 

“It was a positive experience 

that really helped me 

apply my knowledge of 

exercise physiology in a 

setting outside of classes.” 

Standing, from left, second-year doctor of physical therapy students 

Celine DeMaggio, Connor Ryan, Heather Jones and senior exercise 

physiology students Molly Nowill and Greg Titus. 

STUDENTS DEVELOP SMARTPHONE APPS 

Imagine a smartphone app that helps drivers find parking 

spots on the UMass Lowell campus. Or one that lets you look 

up the location of the University’s shuttle bus in real time. 

These are just some of the cool, user-friendly programs 

developed recently by students in a computer science graduate 

course taught by Assoc. Prof. Benyuan Liu. The “UML 

Parking Finder” was created by Peng Xia and Shan Lu while 

the “UML Shuttle Tracker” was developed by Jason Chan, 

I-Hsuan Lin and Xiawei Liu. 

The students worked with 

the dozen smartphones that 

Microsoft had awarded to 

Prof. Liu for his teaching 

and research. The award was 

made possible through the 

company’s international 

educational partnership 

program. 



Washington Internships 

Give Capital Gains 

Recent UMass Lowell graduate 

Jeanna McCarthy likens 

her summer internship in 

Washington, D.C., to a stint 

on the reality TV show 

“The Apprentice.” 

Quick-turnaround group 

projects and high-pressure 

presentations, complete with 

last-minute curveballs, gave 

McCarthy a taste of the 

real-world demands of the 

professional workplace, 

all crammed into a 10-week 

internship program. 

“I learned so much 

more than I ever thought 

I could in 10 weeks,” says 

McCarthy, who interned in 

the District of Columbia’s 

Office of Contracting and 

Procurement. “It was really 

rewarding.” 

McCarthy, an economics 

major, was participating in a 

program offered through the 

The Washington Center for 

Internships and Academic 

Seminars (TWC), the 

largest program of its kind in 

the country. For more than 

10 years, dozens of UMass 

Lowell students have taken 

part in TWC’s programs, 

earning up to 12 credits 

while working for government 

agencies, media 

outlets, nonprofits, law 

firms, lobbyists and private 

companies in and around 

the nation’s capital. 

In addition to doing 

internships at places like the 

White House, the Department 

of Homeland Security, 

the Washington Post and 

the U.S. Chamber of 

Commerce, students take 

a class and participate in a 

leadership forum, which 

features guest lectures, tours 

and panel discussions with 

government, military and 

business leaders. They also 

complete a community engagement 

project and prepare 

a final portfolio of all 

their work. 

Nicholas Bernardo, a 

senior English major, spent 

last spring semester writing 

scripts, editing videos, 

crafting press releases and 

sharpening his social media 

know-how at a TWC internship 

with RedEye, a 

boutique video production 

company in Alexandria, Va. 

He had previously done a 

communications internship 

at the Merrimack Valley 

Repertory Theatre, but 

wanted more experience to 

help him stand out in the 

job market. “I needed to 

give myself a competitive 

edge,” he says. “I thought, 

Nicholas Bernardo, third from 

left, with his brother, Patrick, 

a UMass Lowell freshman, his 

mother Cathleen Bernardo and 

grandfather, David Pelley, on 

the steps of the U.S. Capitol. 

if I can thrive in the 

nation’s capital, I can 

thrive anywhere.” 

Bernardo took a class 

called Power, Politics and 

Prose, during which he 

studied documents such as 

the Declaration of Independence 

and the Gettysburg 

Address and then 

visited related historic sites. 

Looking back, Bernardo says 

he gained confidence in his 

abilities during the fivemonth 

experience. “I was 

challenged to constantly 

think outside the box,” he 

says. “When I started, I 

hated public speaking. Now 

I can get up in front of a 

group of people. I feel like 

a different person.” 

FIRST STUDENT VETERANS SERVICES 

OFFICE OPENS ON CAMPUS 

For the first time, veterans 

studying at UMass Lowell 

will have a space on campus 

to go to for assistance and to 

call their own. The Student 

Veterans Services Office in 

McGauvran Hall has study 

space, a kitchenette and 

private areas for conversation. 

On one wall hangs 

a map of the world with 

pins showing where the 

veterans served. 

AIR FORCE ROTC NAMED BEST 

DETACHMENT IN REGION 

It’s a place for student 

veterans to meet and get 

help with college life. Janine 

Wert, newly appointed director 

of Veterans Services, 

says that the veterans on 

campus and in classes—more 

than 600—can offer UMass 

Lowell unique insight. 

“These are students with different 

needs, but they have 

experiences that other students 

don’t have,” she says. 

UMass Lowell ROTC founding colonel Walter Kelly, 

right, paid a visit to Lt. Col. Matthew McSwain on 

campus recently. 

The Air Force ROTC on campus, Detachment #345— 

which celebrated its 60th birthday in 2011—has 

been named the best small detachment in the 

Northeast. The award is for a two-year record of 

achievement in several categories, including cadet 

activities, university relations and education. “I am 

so proud of this team and our cadets, and all that 

these extraordinary young people are doing on 

campus and around Lowell,” says Lt. Col. Matthew 

McSwain, Det. #345 commander, noting that enrollment 

is the highest in 12 years, with a jump of 59 

percent in the past two years. 

A solemn Flag Retreat ceremony marked the 

60th anniversary of Air Force ROTC Detachment 345 

on campus, as alumni, cadets and guests gathered 

in memory and celebration. Among them was Col. 

Walter Kelly, founder of the University’s ROTC 

detachment 60 years ago. 


Labnotes 

Submillimeter-Wave Lab 

Awarded $23 Million 

In one of the largest single awards ever received by the University, UMass Lowell’s 

Submillimeter-Wave Technology Laboratory (STL) received a grant worth $23 million 

over five years from the U.S. Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center. 

“This grant is a continuation of our program to assist the government in acquiring 

and analyzing surveillance radar imagery,” says Physics Prof. Robert Giles, who directs 

the STL. “Our research is focused on using terahertz frequency sources and receivers to 

scale the Army’s millimeter-wave and microwave airborne radar systems.” 

For the past 30 years, the STL has been at the forefront of developing and applying 

technologies to help in military surveillance, homeland security, medical diagnostics 

and scientific and academic research. 

In 1979, then-STL director (now science adviser) Prof. Jerry Waldman recognized 

that emerging terahertz source/receiver technologies could be used to simulate the 

military’s sophisticated microwave radar systems in the laboratory. These simulations 

could then be used to obtain characteristic radar fingerprints of aircraft, ships, tanks, 

trucks and other tactical vehicles 

at low cost and very high accuracy. 

Such radar fingerprints are useful 

for quickly identifying whether an 

incoming object in the battlefield 

is a friend or foe. 

Since then, the STL has used 

its unique capabilities to fulfill radar 

measurement requests from Department 

of Defense agencies as well 

as defense-related laboratories and 

companies, including MIT Lincoln 

Lab, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and 

Raytheon. STL’s efforts have also 

successfully spun-off to medical applications, 

especially in detecting 

non-melanoma skin cancer. 

One of the Lab’s many carbon dioxide 

submillimeter-wave laser systems 

STL Engineering Director Michael Coulombe works on 

a solid-state, high-resolution Terahertz radar system. 

MEDICAL DEVICE 

STARTUPS FILLING 

M2D2 INCUBATOR 

The Massachusetts Medical 

Device Development Center 

(M2D2), a business incubator 

at UMass Lowell, has 

eight medical device startups 

already in residence in its 

laboratory and office space. 

The incubator is the result 

of a $4 million renovation 

that has transformed 14,000 

square feet of a former mill 

building into a state-ofthe-art 

facility for emerging 

companies. 

The University supports 

those companies with its expertise 

in engineering, business 

management, medical 

procedures, prototyping and 

clinical trials. M2D2 is a 

joint initiative of UMass 

Lowell and UMass Medical 

School in Worcester to help 

companies bridge the large 

gap between invention 

and production of new 

medical devices. 

Over the past decade, 

Massachusetts’ medical device 

exports have grown at 

more than twice the rate of 

the state’s overall exports. 

The industry employs nearly 

25,000 workers in the Commonwealth 

and is responsible 

for creating more than 

80,000 jobs in related industries, 

according to a recent 

study by the business consulting 

company Deloitte 

Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. 

Gov. Deval Patrick’s 

administration provided 

funding for the renovation 

project, which was managed 

by the UMass Building 

Authority. 

“This facility provides 

new opportunities for medical 

device startup companies,” 

says UMass Lowell 

Prof. Stephen McCarthy, 

co-director of M2D2. 

“The wet labs, together 

with expertise offered by engineering 

faculty, can help 

entrepreneurs design 

cutting-edge products that 

doctors and clinicians will 

want to use.” 

RESEARCHERS HELP 

STUDENTS BECOME 

‘DATA SCIENTISTS’ 

The National Science Foundation 

(NSF) awarded a 

grant totaling $1.3 million 

to UMass Lowell and its 

partners to introduce young 

students to cyberlearning in 

the classroom and help prepare 

them for the deluge of 

data produced by modern 

science. 

“We’ll focus on training 

middle school and high 

school students to become 

‘data scientists’ engaged in 

collecting, sharing and visualizing 

scientific data over 

the Internet,” says computer 

science Assoc. Prof. Fred 

Martin, the project’s principal 

investigator. 

The project’s core technology 

is an interactive web 

platform called the Internet 

System for Networked Sensor 

Experimentation, or 

iSENSE—which provides 

a shared repository of usercontributed 

classroom activities, 

such as tabletop science 

experiments, environmental 

analyses, engineering 

projects and surveys, together 

with the data generated 

by these activities. 

Asst. Prof. Michelle 

Scribner-MacLean of the 

Graduate School of Education 

is co-principal investigator 

for the project. 



Researchers to 

Develop Intelligent 

Humanlike Robots 

A team of researchers from UMass Lowell, the University 

of Michigan and Tufts University recently received a 

two-year grant of nearly $1.5 million from the National 

Science Foundation to create intelligent robot systems 

that will navigate more like humans. 

For its part, UMass Lowell will receive nearly $409,000 

for the project, with Computer Science Prof. Holly 

Yanco as principal investigator. 

“Our research will develop and evaluate an intelligent 

robot capable of being genuinely useful to a human and 

capable of natural dialog with a person about their 

shared navigation task,” says Yanco. “In particular, the 

robots will be able to ask for directions and clarifications 

to those directions.” 

The team’s work will be tested in two areas: robot 

wheelchairs and telepresence robots. Robotic wheelchairs 

help people move to their desired destinations while 

telepresence robots serve as virtual eyes and ears for a 

remote human operator as the robots navigate within 

an environment. 

Yanco says this research 

will create technologies 

for mobility assistance 

for people with 

disabilities in 

perception 

(blindness or 

low vision), 

cognition 

(developmental 

delay or dementia) 

or general 

frailty (old age). 

Hugo, an augmented VGo 

Communications’ VGo 

telepresence robot, is driven 

remotely by a human operator 

(visible on Hugo's 

screen). A light-up LED 

necktie indicates the robot's 

current status. 

$4.5 MILLION GRANT WILL IMPROVE EMPLOYEE HEALTH 

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has committed 

$4.5 million to renew funding of the Center for the Promotion of Health in the 

New England Workplace at UMass Lowell and the University of Connecticut. 

Originally funded in 2006 with a $5 million grant, the center is a collaborative 

research-to-practice program led by Prof. Laura Punnett of Work Environment 

at UMass Lowell. 

“Our work has made a substantial difference to the health of workers in nursing 

homes, correctional facilities and other businesses across New England,” says 

Punnett. “We’re very excited that NIOSH has awarded this funding so that we 

can expand our research to uncover the root causes of how the workplace may 

be influencing negative health behaviors.” 

For instance, the center is evaluating a program in a chain of more than 200 

nursing homes that uses lift devices for residents to prevent back injuries and 

musculoskeletal disorders among aides and other caregivers. The team is measuring 

overall physical and mental health, employee retention, program costs and 

workers’ compensation claims. 

TRACKING FLU EPIDEMICS VIA TWITTER 

Fever. Cough. Sore throat. 

Runny nose. Body aches and 

headache. Fatigue. These are 

some of the classic symptoms 

of the flu, a highly contagious 

respiratory illness 

caused by influenza viruses. 

Seasonal flu epidemics result 

in about 3 to 5 million cases 

of severe illness and about 

250,000 to 500,000 deaths 

worldwide each year. 

A team of researchers 

from UMass Lowell’s 

Computer Science Department, 

the Harvard Medical 

School’s Department of 

Population Medicine and 

Scientific Systems Co. is 

now using online social networks 

such as Twitter and 

Facebook to help improve 

the prediction of influenza 

levels within a population 

and keep track of its spread. 

“Studies have shown 

that preventive measures 

can be taken to contain the 

outbreak, provided early 

detection can be made,” 

says computer science Assoc. 

Prof. Benyuan Liu, a member 

of the team. 

Called the Social Network-Enabled 

Flu Trends, 

or SNEFT, the system uses a 

continuous data-collection 

framework that monitors 

all flu-related tweets. The 

team’s research is supported 

in part with a $200,000 

grant from the National 

Institutes of Health. 

“We consider Twitter 

users within the United 

States as ‘sensors’ and the 

collective message exchanges 

they post describing 

their flu symptoms as 

early indicators and robust 

predictors of flu activities,” 

says Liu. 


Labnotes 

NSF Grant Funds 

$1.3 Million Microscope 

A brand-new, state-of-the art microscope is further separating 

UMass Lowell from its peers. The Auriga focused 

ion-beam scanning electron microscope (FIB-SEM), 

manufactured by German optics leader Carl Zeiss, will 

greatly enhance the University’s research capabilities in 

the areas of nano materials and biological sciences. 

“This Zeiss FIB-SEM system can resolve details 

as tiny as one nanometer, or a billionth of a meter, and 

magnify views up to a million times,” says Earl Ada, 

Ph.D., who manages the Campus Materials Characterization 

Laboratory, where the microscope is located. 

“It offers the highest 

resolution in scanning 

electron microscopy today,” 

he says. “UMass 

Lowell is one of only a 

handful of educational 

institutions in the 

Northeast that has this 

advanced capability.” 

The purchase of the 

$1.3 million microscope 

was made possible by a 

$1.15 million grant from 

the National Science 

Foundation (NSF). The 

University shouldered 

the rest of the cost. 

UMass Lowell’s brand-new Auriga focused ion-beam 

scanning electron microscope made by Carl Zeiss is 

located in the Materials Characterization Laboratory 

on North Campus. 

The Healthy Homes Program is reducing asthmatic 

episodes in children, allowing them to become more active. 

PROJECT FIGHTS ASTHMA 

UMass Lowell researchers 

and community health 

workers have won a round 

in the fight against childhood 

asthma, thanks to 

The Healthy Homes 

Program. Funded with grants 

from the U.S. Department 

of Housing and Urban 

Development, the team 

recently released test results 

from its first two years of 

work to identify and eliminate 

asthma triggers in 

the home. 

The findings? The team’s 

efforts prompted a significant 

drop in the number of 

times a child experienced 

wheezing, had an asthma 

attack or trouble breathing, 

or visited a doctor’s office 

or clinic for asthma 

problems. 

“I was pleasantly 

surprised by the positive 

results and measurable 

improvements,” says David 

Turcotte, the research 

professor who directs the 

Healthy Homes Program. 

“These were significant 

changes.” 

Turcotte attributes the 

project’s success to its intensive, 

multivisit approach. 

Two-person teams—a community 

outreach worker and 

UMass Lowell researcher— 

visited each household to 

explain the study and conduct 

an environmental assessment. 

The team then 

arranged for necessary interventions, 

from instituting 

pest management to arranging 

for repairs, industrial 

cleaning or installation of 

hardwood floors in place of 

carpeting. Four or five home 

visits over a one-year period 

helped families maintain 

their efforts. 

More than 75 staff 

members of partner organizations 

have been trained on 

how to incorporate Healthy 

Homes knowledge and intervention 

during their own 

visits. In-home day care 

providers also received training. 

Partners include the 

Lowell Community Health 

Center, the Coalition for a 

Better Acre, Community 

Teamwork Inc., the Lowell 

Housing Authority and the 

Merrimack Valley Housing 

Partnership. 

AWARDS & GRANTS 

History Prof. Robert Forrant and Economics 

Prof. Carol McDonough: $10,000 from the 

Verizon Foundation to continue a UMass 

Lowell partnership grant to expand access to 

high-speed Internet access for underserved 

populations. 

Biology Asst. Prof. Jessica Garb: $294,656 

from the U.S. National Institutes of Health 

to research how the venom of black widow 

spiders became so powerful. 

Asst. Prof. Nancy Goodyear of Clinical Laboratories 

and Nutritional Sciences: $20,000 from 

the Toxics Use Reduction Institute to evaluate 

disinfection in homes and hospitals, with 

a goal of limiting worker exposures to 

toxic commercial disinfection formulations. 

Biology Asst. Prof. Rick Hochberg: $598,976 

from the National Science Foundation to 

study the biodiversity of the Cayman Islands, 

which has led to identification of a new 

species of worm. 

Physics Prof. Silas Laycock: $56,707 grant by 

the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory 

to study X-ray binary star systems in IC 10, a 

dwarf irregular galaxy 2.2 million light-years 

away in the constellation Cassiopeia. 

Asst. Prof. Ramaswamy Nagarajan of Plastics 

Engineering: $20,000 from the Toxics Use 

Reduction Institute to test safer surfactants 

for laundry detergents. 

Physics Assoc. Prof. Viktor Podolskiy: $261,265 

from the National Science Foundation to 

develop a new approach to camera imaging 

and focusing of light to improve resolution 

and eliminate the need for components like 

lenses and mirrors. 

Assoc. Prof. Daniel Schmidt of Plastics 

Engineering: $20,000 from the Toxics Use 

Reduction Institute to develop and test a safer 

formulation for adhesives based on plant oils 

and other nonhazardous ingredients. 

Chemical Engineering Asst. Prof. Seongkyu 

Yoon: $150,000 from the UMass President’s 

Office Science and Technology Initiatives Fund 

to create a biopharmaceutical process and 

quality consortium. 


Sportsupdate 


‘We’re Just Getting 

Warmed Up’ 

By Geoffrey Douglas 

Women’s Coach Makes Rowers of Middle-Schoolers, Wins Races Along the Way 

“I 

feel like I’ve spent my whole life 

preparing for this,” says Veronika 

Platzer. This from a woman who already, 

at 48, has prepared for, faced 

and surmounted more challenges than 

most of us will ever consider. 

Three-time NCAA discus champion. NCAA 

Female Track and Field Athlete of the Decade. 

World Cup rower. Coach of the U.S. Junior National 

rowing team. Coach of the NCAA National 

Champion University of Virginia Women’s 

Four rowers. Gold medalist—with UMass Lowell 

alumna Ginny LaFreniere ’81—in the 2010 

FISA World Rowing Masters Regatta. And, for 

the past four years, head coach of the UMass 

Lowell Women’s Rowing Program. 

Still, it is something else altogether for which, 

she says, she has spent her life preparing. 

Last summer, if you ever happened to be out 

on the Merrimack River on a weekday morning, 

you might have seen an oversize, ungainly but 

nearly untippable, flat-bottom boat—they call 

it the Barge—packed with a crowd of 12- and 

13-year-olds, laboring over their oars. This was 

Platzer’s brainchild: Year One of the UMass 

Lowell youth rowing program, designed to bring 

the basics of what Coach Platzer says too many 

still see as an “elitist sport” into the lives—and 

hearts—of the city’s middle-schoolers. 

“It’s a hard sport to support,” she concedes. “It’s 

expensive, for one thing. And the communitymembers 

have every right to ask, ‘Just what is 

this doing for me?’ Well, I’m trying to create a 

community rowing center—both to teach the 

sport and to make it accessible—not just for 

NCAA athletes, but for everyone who wants to 

learn, for citizens of the world.” 

And so, working with Cheryl Saba, athletic 

director at the Ste. Jeanne d’Arc School, Platzer 

launched the new program at the end of the 

school year in June, drawing roughly 100 kids 

by summer’s end. The cost for the four-day program 

was $50 per student; David Cormier, president 

of the UMass Lowell men’s crew, served as 

coach. At the end of every week’s program, he 

told a reporter in July, he’d have several kids approach 

him to ask “if there was some highschool 

team or club they could join. Some of 

them even said they [wanted to] come back and 

row for UMass Lowell someday.” 

“Giving our athletes [like Cormier] responsibility 

for coaching is an important piece of the 

program,” says Platzer. “It instills in them a real 

love, and respect, for the sport. It teaches the 

importance of doing things with purpose. 

“I’ll tell you, I’m as proud of this program as 

I am of anything I’ve done with women’s crew.” 

That’s saying something—there’s a lot to be 

proud of when it comes to women’s crew. 

A program that didn’t have enough rowers to 

fill an eight-woman boat when Platzer arrived 

four years ago (following a $1 million-dollar infusion 

of state funding for renovations to Bellegarde 

Boathouse in 2007, women’s crew last 

year made the move to varsity status), now 

boasts a Varsity Eight as well as a Varsity Four— 

fulfilling the NCAA standard—with a Novice 

Four to serve as a feeder for the future. At this 

fall’s 32nd annual Textile River Regatta—with 

650 boats, the largest one-day rowing event in 

the United States—the Varsity Eight placed 

third, just 16 seconds behind the winning boat; 

in the women’s novice sculling division, firstyear 

student Erinn McLaughlin captured the 

program’s first-ever gold medal. 

The next challenge, as of press-time for this 

magazine, was to be the Head of the Charles regatta 

in Cambridge—with 56 events and more 

than 1,700 boats, among the largest and most 

prestigious in the world—to which UMass Lowell 

had been invited. 

“I don’t expect us to win anything this year,” 

Platzer conceded two weeks before Race Day. 

“We’re still in a building mode. But in two or 

three more years? Look for us to have a very real 

chance. 

“Stay tuned. We’re just getting warmed up.” 


Sportsupdate 

A 

E 

B 

C 

D 



‘Soaring With Pride’ 


E F F O R T L I F T S A W A R E N E S S 

Meticulously curated and stretching along the 

long front lobby of Costello Athletic Center, 

the display of individual prowess is staggering. 

An Olympic silver medalist, a four-time Stanley 

Cup winner, All-Americans, record holders, 

outstanding student-athletes, even a father and 

son known for different sports in different eras.* 

The father, a baseball pitcher and batting champ 

from 1955 to 1959 named Leo A. Parent, put up numbers 

that still make UMass Lowell Athletic Director Dana 

Skinner smile. 

“Guy pitches 225 innings and strikes out 392.” He 

pauses. “Imagine that.” 

The son, Leo J. Parent, played basketball here from 

1986 to 89, and was named Most Outstanding Player of 

the 1988 NCAA Division II Final Four. 

Skinner wants everyone to digest all of the individual 

accomplishments in the context of pride—they all 

happened at the place now called UMass Lowell. The 

“Soaring With Pride” display is intended to mend what 

Skinner calls “a disconnect,” thanks in part to the name 

changes over the years. From Lowell Technological 

Institute, to Lowell State College, the University of 

Lowell and UMass Lowell, each era is represented as a 

way of creating one brand. 

“We’ve come to understand that who we are 

is who we were,” says Skinner, quoting John Quincy 

Adams, from his U.S. Supreme Court argument in the 

“Amistad” case. 

And we have been good. Fairly amazing, in some 

cases. Consider the coaches. 

Hockey coach Bill Reilly took the team from frozen 

folly to three Division II national championships over 

the course of 22 seasons (1969-91). Logging 363 wins, he 

also oversaw the team’s transition to Division I and 

Hockey East. 

Meanwhile, Jim Stone’s tenure as baseball coach from 

1966 to 2003 wasn’t just a matter of longevity. Stone also 

amassed an 801-393-7 record. 

Similarly, George Davis coached the University’s cross 

country/track and field team from 1970 to 2002. He led 

the 1991 men’s cross country team to a national title and 

during his tenure 78 All-Americans and 34 New England 

champions emerged from the ranks of Lowell’s teams. 

Shannon Hlebichuk wasn’t just an outstanding field 

hockey player from 1994 to 1998, she was the University’s 

first-ever NCAA Massachusetts Woman of the Year 

in 1997-98. After coming back to coach, she led the 

River Hawks field hockey squad to national titles in 2005 

and 2010. 

And sometimes it was the movers and shakers who 

broke through barriers. 

Denise Legault and Claire Chamberlain began and 

nurtured women’s sports at UMass Lowell (then Lowell 

State College), beginning in 1972 with volleyball, followed 

by basketball, tennis and softball. 

But with all of the accomplishment, there was also a 

question of identity. 

“I’ve been here 25 years now, and I’ve heard so many 

people talking about Lowell Tech, Lowell State, U of 

Lowell,” says Skinner. “And there was a disconnect 

between people from different eras. Our goal here in 

everything we do is to make the University a better place 

to be, and a better place to be from.” 

Four years ago, five alumni approached Skinner. Bob 

Boehm, Gary and Jim Hunt, Hank Brown and Skip Roper 

asked him to support a fund-raising campaign for a trophy 

case named for Jim Ciszek and Rusty Yarnall. Legends of 

Lowell sports, the pair were each longtime coaches at 

various incarnations of the University, as well as UMass 

Lowell Hall of Fame members. The trophy case was the 

seed from which grew the Soaring With Pride campaign. 

In addition to Costello, there are displays in the 

Tsongas Center and throughout other athletic buildings. 

It’s been a year since the displays were hung, and Skinner 

says he’s heard great feedback. 

“Sometimes, at sporting events, I see people standing 

in the corridor, looking at the photos and reading the 

captions—captivated by reading about the past,” he says. 

*So who are these folks? They are among the best to emerge from 

the University’s locker rooms. The Olympic silver medalist is 

Shelagh Donohue, who rowed here from 1984 to 1988, and 

earned the silver at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. The fourtime 

Stanley Cup winner is Craig MacTavish, who played hockey 

at Lowell from 1977 to 1979 before beginning a long pro career 

with the Boston Bruins. All-Americans are numerous, but they 

include Ruben Sanca, who ran cross country and track and 

field from 2005 to 2008. In addition to being a four-time All- 

American, Sanca was a three-time New England champion. 

“OUR GOAL 

HERE IN EVERY- 

THING WE DO 

IS TO MAKE THE 

UNIVERSITY A 

BETTER PLACE 

TO BE, AND A 

BETTER PLACE 

TO BE FROM.” 

— Dana Skinner 

Photos on Page 18 

A. Elad Inbar ’04 

B. Leo Parent Jr. ’89 

C. Nicole Plante ’07 

D. Leo Parent Sr. ’59 

E. Joanna DaLuze ’06 


Sportsupdate 

Sammy Macy Is 

Sticking Around 


Field Hockey Standout Remains With UMass Lowell 

Sole Man 

Runners Collect Shoes for Third-World Countries 

When UMass Lowell junior Steve Fitzsimmons cleaned out his closet earlier this 

summer, he was overwhelmed by the number of old running sneakers he found. 

He counted 26 pair from high school and his first two years of college. 

Fitzsimmons didn’t want to just throw them away. By a distance runner’s 

standards, they were tired, flat. But surely someone somewhere could use them. 

So he did a search online for donating used running shoes, and found a website 

called www.soles4souls.org. He was moved by the videos and photos. 

“There was one child who was wearing his mother’s shoes because those were 

the only shoes they had for the whole family,” Fitzsimmons says. 

The images stuck. The biology major thought about it more and did some 

math. He runs 85-90 miles in a typical week. The longevity of a pair running 

shoes is about 500 miles, so he figures anywhere between six to eight weeks, he 

needs a new pair. 

“And I’m just one of 20 to 30 athletes on the men’s [cross country] team,” 

Fitzsimmons says. 

The Methuen native factored in the 11 other women’s and men’s teams at 

UMass Lowell. The potential was overwhelming. 

Over the summer, Fitzsimmons brought the idea to Joan Lehoullier, UMass 

Lowell’s senior associate director of athletics who oversees the Athletic Department’s 

fundraising and community service efforts. Usually, Lehoullier is the one pitching 

the community service ideas to UMass Lowell’s athletes. 

“I’m always excited when a student-athlete comes to us with an idea for 

community service,” Lehoullier says, adding that she immediately registered the 

University as a drop location via the Soles4Souls website. Soon after, the 

collection boxes arrived. 

At the 2011 annual River Hawk Games on Sept. 11, Lehoullier introduced the 

effort to UMass Lowell’s 250-plus student-athletes: “A lot of kids came up to us 

right away and said it was a great idea,” she says. “Once you get them started, 

they’re on board. They’re all looking for a way to help.” 

Four days later, the on-campus boxes were overflowing with everything from 

Tevas to Bostonians to Nikes. Lehoullier and Fitzsimmons will pack them up and 

send them to one of the 10 Soles4Souls warehouses nationwide where they are 

cleaned and reconditioned. 

“It is something that is relatively easy and does a lot of good,” Fitzsimmons 

says. “These shoes are going to people in third-world countries, in crisis relief 

situations, people who have never owned a pair of shoes in their lives.” 

Photo: Bob Ellis 

By Chris O’Donnell 

Sitting in a downtown Lowell 

caffeine emporium, Sammy 

Macy pushes her sunglasses up 

onto her long brown hair and 

takes a sip of her iced coffee. 

Though the 22-year-old is a 

new graduate of UMass 

Lowell, she says she’s doesn’t 

plan to stray far. 

Macy, recently named the 

nation’s top collegiate Division 

II female athlete, isn’t 

leaving the University or its 

field hockey team despite 

graduating with a 3.12 GPA 

in criminal justice last spring. 

The three-time first team 

All-American worked with 

the River Hawks as an assistant 

coach this past fall, after 

a summer of slinging ice cream 

at Dandelions in her native 

Tewksbury. 

Macy is the first-ever New 

England recipient of the DII 

female athlete award, “which 

makes it even more special,” 

says Athletic Director Dana 

Skinner. He credits Macy’s 

“exhilarating play during the 

team’s record-breaking 2011 

season” with a large part in the 

River Hawks’ 24-0 record, but 

also believes the “level of excellence 

she sustained over 

four years” was hard-won, 

the result of great dedication. 

In February, she will begin 

a six-month stay in Australia 

to play field hockey with a 

team in Queensland. 

Macy says her rifle-like 

field hockey shot—one of 

collegiate field hockey’s most 

feared trajectories—was the 

result of years of playing softball 

and hockey. Her sharp, 

quick swing came from softball, 

while her stick-handling 

skill sprung from ice hockey. 

She sometimes played on 

three teams simultaneously, 

rendering her father a virtual 

taxi service. 

Macy discovered field 

hockey as a high school 

freshman, shortly after she 

tired of soccer. Field hockey 

was, she says, “new and fun,” 

and allowed her to put to 

good use her strong sense of 

competition. At 5’9”, speed 

and reach are among her 

offensive weapons. 

The 2005 Tewksbury High 

School graduate nearly didn’t 

become a River Hawk. She 

was set to follow her older 

brother, Brian, to Northeastern, 

where she would play field 

hockey with scholarship money, 

but she opted for UMass 

Lowell the March before 

classes began. She sensed she 

would want “more balance” in 

her collegiate life than she’d 

get at Northeastern. Her high 

school coach suggested she 

talk to Shannon Hlebichuk, 

who was all too happy to make 

Macy a River Hawk. 

“She’d come to some 

clinics I’d run, so I knew her 

a little bit,” says Hlebichuk. 

“Sammy is such a hard worker, 

but she also wanted a balance 

between her work, social 

and academic lives. We could 

offer that.” 

“I found the perfect 

balance here,” says Macy. 

“I am so glad I came.” 


Features 

Inside... 

22 FROM LOGAN TO LAX 

28 COVER STORY 

34 ANDRE DUBUS III 

36 FACE OF PHILANTHROPHY 

38 KILLING FIELDS SURVIVORS 

40 CIRCLE OF DISTINCTION 

Accounting major Georgios Liakakis ’14 

enjoys the unseasonably warm weather 

on North Campus this past fall. 


Featurestory 

From Logan to LAX, 

From Safety to Security 


Chief Operating Officer Steve Martin ’78 Reflects on a Changing World 

On the evening of Jan. 23, 1982, World Airways Flight 30, a DC-10-30 on its 

way from Newark to Boston’s Logan Airport, skidded on an icy runway, 

broke apart and slid into the waters of Boston Harbor. Two passengers in the 

plane’s front row were thrown into the water. Their bodies were never recovered. 

“Our yearly budget, for security and 

safety, is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, 

probably greater than for any other single 

airport in the U.S. It’s just a massive job.” 

— Steve Martin ’78 


F E A T U R E S T O R Y 

World Airways Flight 30 in Boston Harbor 

Steve Martin ’78, 

working at the time 

for the Massachusetts 

Port Authority, was at 

Logan as part of the 

team that investigated 

the crash. The memory 

has stayed with him— 

and informed him— 

ever since: 

“It’s been like this 

little tape in my mind: ‘Did we do all that we 

could to prevent it?’ ‘What could we have 

done differently?’,” says Martin, today the 

chief operating officer at Los Angeles World 

Airports (LAWA), in charge of LAX and three 

other facilities. “The issue in those days was 

safety; in today’s world, it’s more geared to security. 

But the mindset stays with you: ‘Did 

we do this?’ ‘Did we do that?’ Have we done 

everything we can reasonably do?’” 

Martin, who’s been COO at LAWA since 

early 2008, is responsible for oversight of all 

the airports’ activities: security, administration, 

IT, budget, operations, maintenance, commercial 

development and more. LAX alone, he 

says (the world’s sixth-busiest airport, serving 

59 million passengers a year) accounts for 

roughly 80 percent of his time. Of this, only 

15 percent or so is devoted to issues of security. 

But it’s an incalculably critical 15 percent. 

“There’s a high cognizance of this airport 

as a high-profile potential target,” he says by 

phone from his office at LAX. “All the federal 

agencies have a footprint here—the TSA, the 

FBI, all those—plus the LAPD, the airport 

police and private security. More people get 

arrested here than you’d ever imagine. Our 

yearly budget, for security and safety, is in the 

hundreds of millions of dollars, probably greater 

than for any other single airport in the U.S. 

It’s just a massive job.” 

Before 9/11, Martin says, airport security 

was the provenance of airline contractors, and 

began and ended in one spot. No more. 

“Now the TSA is in charge, the airlines 

are participants, not leaders, in the security 

business, and the goal is a layered, continuous 

surveillance,” he says, adding that this is especially 

the case at major airports like LAX. 

The layers begin with checkpoints outside 

the airport, then continue inside with bombsniffing 

dogs, patrolling police and TSA agents, 

and finally the shoes-off, pockets-empty pregate 

security checks—all augmented by the 

watch-lists and intelligence gathering that go 

on out of sight, and the exhaustive, neverending 

background checks of everyone from 

pilots to baggage handlers and maintenance 

employees. 

“It’s an endless, daunting, expensive process,” 

Martin says. “The passengers, or most of them, 

are barely even aware of a lot of it.” 

Still, for all the sniffing shepherds, patrolling 

uniforms and sophisticated technology, in the 

end much of the job comes down to simple 

judgment calls, he says: “A passenger has a 

gun in his bag, or illegal drugs—is he a terrorist, 

a criminal or just a dumb kid? Is he truly a 

threat, or just a distraction? That’s a decision 

someone has to make.” 

One day several years ago, Martin recalls, 

airport security officers observed a passenger 

with a backpack acting oddly. They approached 

him. “I have a bomb in here,” he told them, 

and dropped the bag on the ground. 

“So what do you do then?” Martin asks. 

“Do you close the terminal? Do you close all 

nine terminals? Do you shut the whole airport 

down? Or is this guy just a distraction? That’s 

the call that trained people have to make.” 

In the end, Martin says, there was no bomb 

in the backpack, and the crisis was defused. 

But it might have gone a different way: “A lot 

of people, including a lot of law-enforcement 

people, get their adrenaline-rush from reacting 

to that sort of thing. You can’t be swayed by 

that. You’ve got to go with the skilled people, 

the ones with training, who stick with protocol—which 

[in that case] was to bring in a 

bomb-sniffing dog, then, if necessary, to get a 

robot-device to dispose of the thing.” 

For Martin, who brings to his job more 

than 25 years of airport and aviation leadership 

in both the public and private sectors, it isn’t 

so much the prospect of another 9/11, as the 

countless small things that go into preventing 

one, that keep him awake at night. 

“In the end, I guess what I worry about 

most is that,” he says, “if something were 

to happen, would I be able to look in the 

mirror and say I’d done everything I could 

have done, everything within reason, to keep 

those people safe?” 

“You can’t do it all—you can never do it 

all. You just aim to get better every day.” 


Featurestory 

Campus Gathers a Decade After 9/11 

Memorial Honors Those Lost, Focuses on Unity 


“UNITY ASKS 

US TO REBUILD 

AND REPAIR — 

REBUILD TRUST 

AND REPAIR 

RELATIONSHIPS 

ACROSS 

COMMUNITIES.” 

— Campus Minister 

Imogene Stulken 

Adecade after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks 

on America claimed nearly 3,000 lives, UMass 

Lowell gathered to remember its own family members 

lost that day. 

In the first of a few events planned to mark the 

anniversary, Chancellor Marty Meehan and 120 students, 

family members and community officials rededicated 

Unity, the 9/11 memorial designed by a trio of UMass 

Lowell students. 

Set along the Riverwalk near Leitch Hall on East 

Campus and originally dedicated May 14, 2004, the 

circular stone sculpture was designed by UMass Lowell 

art students Gail Milligan and Rebekah Hermans of 

Lowell and Janet Wittlinger of Auburn, N.H. 

The disc-shaped Unity overlooks the Merrimack River 

and carries the names of seven UMass Lowell alumni 

and friends lost in the attacks in New York and Washington 

D.C.: Douglas Gowell ’71, of Methuen; Robert J. Hayes 

’87, of Amesbury; Brian K. Kinney ’95, of Lowell; John 

Ogonowski ’72, of Dracut; Patrick Quigley, husband of 

Patricia Quigley ’86, of Wellesley; former student Jessica 

Sachs of Billerica, daughter of Stephen R. and Karen D. 

Sachs, both ’69; and Christopher Zarba of Hopkinton, 

who studied here in the 1970s. 

Christian Elwood, a senior finance student and resident 

of the Student Veterans Association, said the events of 

9/11 convinced him to join the Marine Corps. During 

the ceremony, he read the biography of Ogonowski, a 

Vietnam veteran and the captain of American Airline 

Flight 11, the first of the airliners to be plunged into the 

World Trade Center towers by terrorist hijackers. 

The day of the attacks was “many things to many people,” 

Meehan told the assembled. It was “a tragic day 

where Americans were brutally murdered, a call to arms 

and a turning point in American and world history. But 

above all, it will always be about the more than 3,000 

Americans who were killed and the 30 families in the 

Merrimack Valley who lost a loved one that tragic day.” 

However, the Sept. 8 ceremony also served as a rededication 

to moving forward and mending fractured relationships. 

“How can we best honor their memory?” asked Imogene 

Stulken of the UMass Lowell Campus Ministry. “How 

might each of us commemorate this day with service? 

Unity asks us to rebuild and repair—rebuild trust and 

repair relationships across communities. Say to yourself 

when you visit, ‘to bring more peace to the world, 

I will…’ ” 


Want to Stay in Touch? 

4 Simple Ways! 

1. 

Alumni Network 

This simple social networking site on UMass Lowell’s website helps connect 

alumni to each other. 

How to: Visit www.uml.edu/alumni. 

2. 

Facebook 

Find long-lost friends, learn about events on campus and discover how to 

become an active part of UMass Lowell’s growing River Hawks community. 

How to: Go to www.facebook.com/umasslowellalumni. 

3. 

4. 

Twitter 

Get updates about the University and alumni events — in 140 characters or fewer! 

How to: Visit www.uml.edu/twitter. 

LinkedIn 

Connect with other UMass Lowell alumni and expand your network, 

post discussions, learn about events and advertise job opportunities. 

How to: Go to www.linkedin.com and enter 

“UMass Lowell Alumni” in the search field. Click “join.” 


Featurestory 

Raul Raudales sniffs arabica coffee 

beans as he and Richard Trubey 

(center) meet with Red Barn Coffee 

Roasters President Mark Verrochi 

to discuss the coffee drying process. 

‘We Could Create 

Huge Changes’ 

Brewing Coffee, Saving Forests, Bettering Lives 


For Raul Raudales and Richard Trubey, an engineer 

and a technical writer who met at UMass Lowell as students 

more than 20 years ago, world change begins with the 

modest coffee bean. 



Their story, like the story of the coffee they produce 

and the men and women who help to produce it, 

is a story in many parts: of innovation, technology, 

travel, teaching, research grants, and years and 

years of work. But it’s as simple in its essence as 

that little bean at the heart of your morning cup. 

It begins with a problem: throughout the countries of 

Central America, where much of the world’s best coffee 

is produced, roughly 6,500 hectares—16,000 acres—of 

forest are cut each year to supply firewood for the drying 

of coffee beans. 

“About three square centimeters,” as Richard Trubey 

is fond of translating it, “for every cup we drink.” It has 

been this way, he says, for at least a century. 

So might there be a more efficient way? This was the 

question that Trubey ’86 and Raudales, MS ’93 began to 

consider together as students—and have been working 

on answering for most of the last 17 years. 

Not long after they began, realizing they would need 

an entity through which to funnel their efforts, the pair 

created a non-profit, the Mesoamerican Development 

Institute, centered at UMass Lowell, to research new 

ways to dry the beans—and in the process, to create a 

more sustainable system. There were a lot experiments, 

and a lot of false starts. 

“We were in the talking stage,” concedes Trubey, “for 

quite a long while.” 

THE WORLD’S FIRST SOLAR COFFEE 

What they came up with, once the talking was done, was 

a hybrid dryer that converts discarded coffee bean-husks 

into fuel pellets; these in turn were burned with heat 

from solar panels to dry the beans just picked from trees. 

Then came the hard part: taking the new system to 

the source. 

The first piece of funding came from Sandia National 

Laboratories in New Mexico. Since then, support has 

come from myriad sources: the Inter-American Foundation, 

the World Bank, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the Humanist 

Institute for Development Cooperation, and—most 

recently—the National Science Foundation. 

MDI’s new processing facility in Subirana, Yoro, Honduras. 

This will be the world’s first coffee processing center to be powered 

entirely with renewable energy. 

At this point, there is a dryer in place in a village in 

Honduras, where a cooperative of 150 farmers are sharing 

the coffee-production work. Once fully operational, there 

will no longer be a need to send the beans to remote locations—as 

far as 200 kilometers away in some cases, says 

Trubey—to dry in processing centers. The differences 

this makes can be measured on a lot of scales: better 

coffee, fewer trees lost, lower costs to the farmer. 

“We could create huge changes,” Trubey says. 

The changes are happening on a second front as well. 

A five-member consortium of university partners—UMass 

Lowell, UMass Amherst and universities in Honduras, 

Costa Rica and Nicaragua—is enabling an exchange program 

of students and faculty, bringing the principles of 

sustainable development onto campuses on two continents. 

Already, says Trubey, half a dozen engineering students 

and nearly as many faculty members have made the trip 

south, where they do their part in bringing the theories 

of solar energy come to life outside of the classroom. 

Meanwhile, the product that results—Café Solar—is 

coming north: Roasted at Red Barn Coffee Roasters in 

Upton, it is now brewed and sold in UMass Lowell dining 

halls, the only coffee brand on the market, as far as 

anyone knows, produced using industrial solar dryers. 

“This is a remarkable, incredibly rare opportunity,” 

says UMass Lowell Professor Emeritus William Moeller, 

an environmental engineer who has been working with 

Trubey and Raudales for more than 10 years. “To be able 

to do all this, at the same time as you advance educational 

research and expand the prestige of the University— 

from an educator’s point of view, that’s about as good as it 

gets.” 

For Richard Trubey and his Mesoamerican Development 

Institute partners, it’s barely the beginning: 

“We want to create a model, and to keep it growing, 

until the big companies, the big coffee-makers out there, 

come around to adopting the process. That’s the dream 

we’re working toward.” 

MDI’s high-efficiency drying 

chamber in Costa Rica. MDI 

co-founder Raul Raudales is 

at left. 

“TO BE 

ABLE TO DO 

ALL THIS, AT 

THE SAME 

TIME AS YOU 

ADVANCE 

EDUCATIONAL 

RESEARCH 

AND EXPAND 

THE PRESTIGE 

OF THE UNIVER- 

SITY—FROM AN 

EDUCATOR’S 

POINT OF VIEW, 

THAT’S ABOUT 

AS GOOD AS 

IT GETS.” 

— William Moeller 


Coverstory 

Roots and Responsibility 



C O V E R S T O R Y 

Robert Manning looked out over his audience 

at the Tsongas Center. It was a sea of black, 

swathed in mortarboards and gowns. As the 

crowd fanned out, there were parents, siblings 

and other relatives, friends and mentors. 

Manning dressed like the grads. He was one 

of them. 

He was different, too, of course. At 47, he’d 

just committed to a donation of more than 

$5 million toward the newly named Manning School of 

Business and toward construction of a new school of 

business building. He hopes to inspire others. 

Harvard has a long line of folks writing checks, he’ll 

tell you, but Manning fears too many others believe that 

“state schools” are taken care of by the state. “Far from 

it,” he says. 

The lifelong UMass Lowell booster and former chairman 

of the UMass Board of Trustees would like to spark a “pay 

it forward”-style trend benefitting state universities. He 

is an ardent fan of the energy and dedication Chancellor 

Marty Meehan has brought to UMass Lowell. 

And he married the former Donna Brown, who seemed 

destined to partner with Manning from the moment they 

met at Methuen High School. Growing up on a small 

farm in Methuen, Donna saw philanthropy before she 

knew it had a name. 

In his May 28 commencement speech to the largest 

class ever to graduate from UMass Lowell, Manning spoke 

as one of them. Manning ’84, knew exactly how they felt. 

He drove to Lowell from Methuen in 1981 in a car his 

parents had bought for him, not sure what to expect but 

ready to buckle down. He forged a steely determination 

to get everything he could from the college’s finance 

classes, earning a degree in business administration. Just 

for good measure, he added a minor in computer science. 

He did it all in three years. 

After graduating, he got a job analyzing speculative 

grade debt at MFS Investment Management in Boston. 

The company was noted for establishing the first mutual 

fund. It turned out to be a good match for Manning. 

Now, as CEO and chairman of the global money management 

firm, he oversees $224 billion in assets and 1,650 

employees. 

Manning is among the most accomplished of the University’s 

graduates. Still, he wanted the Class of 2011 to 

know he had once been in their shoes. He assured them 

their accomplishments lay ahead, thanks to the preparation 

they got at UMass Lowell. They’re ready for life, he told 

them, for work, for the world. 

Preparation trumps luck, he told the Class of 2011 in 

a 14-minute commencement address: “You don’t need 

good luck. The people you are going to compete against 

need it.” 

PAYING IT FORWARD 

At home in Swampscott, Rob and Donna Manning and 

their black Labs, Rose and Willie, survey a very different 

scenario. From the dining room, the Atlantic Ocean is a 

reminder of how tides change, the water lapping at a 

seawall on the edge of the stunning property. Days earlier, 

Hurricane Irene tossed sea spray hard against the windows. 

“An amazing show,” says Manning of Irene’s bluster. 

“You couldn’t even see out there.” He waves a hand at 

the windows showcasing a widescreen view of his vast 

watery backyard neighbor. This morning, a lobster boat 

bobs in the sunshine along the jagged coast. 

Manning’s life in finance has made him no stranger to 

shaping order from chaos and calm from tension, though 

the seaside Swampscott house is for “getting away from” 

stress, he says. 

The well-equipped gym downstairs, the state-of-theart 

sound system and the movie area are designed as 

refuge for the couple. They’re up at 4:30 a.m. to exercise 

and usually in bed by 9:30. There’s little time or yearning 

for TV. To really get away, there’s a house in Bretton 

Woods, N.H., where Mt. Washington looms in the 

distance and ski trails beckon the Mannings, who are 

avid skiers and love to snowshoe. 

Donna Manning ’85, ’91 also received an honorary 

degree at commencement. Donna, who earned nursing 

and master’s of business administration degrees from 

UMass Lowell, has been an oncology nurse at Boston 

Medical Center for the past 27 years. She donates her 

salary to the hospital. 

The Mannings previously endowed scholarships for 

business and nursing students, but this runs deeper. Donna 

says they usually don’t like the fuss that surrounds philanthropy, 

but the notion that this donation might inspire 

others convinced them to shed anonymity. 

Married 25 years, the Mannings are bookends, a pair. 

Soulmates. It’s been that way since they went to high 

school together in Methuen. They’d seen each other in 

Continued 


HARVARD HAS 

A LONG LINE OF 

FOLKS WRITING 

CHECKS, BUT 

ROB MANNING 

FEARS TOO 

MANY OTHERS 

BELIEVE “STATE 

SCHOOLS” 

ARE FUNDED 

BY THE STATE. 

FAR FROM IT, 

HE SAYS. 

Donna ’85,’91 and 

Rob ’84 Manning each 

received honorary degrees 

at the University’s 

2011 Commencement. 

W I N TS EU R M M2 0E 1R 1 - 2 0 112 UMASS LOWELL MAGAZINE 2 9

Coverstory 

Rob Manning spends his 

days at 500 Boylston Street 

in Boston, home to MFS 

Investment Management. 

“MY PARENTS 

DIDN’T GO TO 

COLLEGE, BUT 

IT CLEARLY MEANT 

A LOT TO THEM 

THAT WE COULD 

GO, AND WE 

DECIDED AT 

THIS POINT IN 

LIFE TO PAY IT 

FORWARD.” 

— Donna Manning 

passing, and in a class or two, but didn’t begin dating 

until they were seniors. That was 31 years ago. They’ve 

just never stopped. 

They are childless “by design,” he says. “Our lives are 

so intense, that to do the few things we do outside of 

work, we need time with each other. And we knew it 

would be this way.” 

Rob credits Donna with nudging him toward philanthropy. 

“She’d give away everything I have if I let her,” he 

says, smiling. 

Growing up, Donna only associated philanthropy with 

rich people. But she was part of it when she was 12, after 

the barn at the farm next to her parents’ farm burned to 

the ground. She and her dad loaded their pick-up truck 

with bales of hay. They drove them next door so the surviving 

animals could eat. She spent the better part of 

that summer bailing that hay with her dad. 

“I was surprised how easily he gave it away,” Donna 

says, since we would probably run out ourselves.” 

She remembers many such kind exchanges with neighbors. 

“It almost never involved money,” recalls Donna. 

“Apparently, I was rich back then.” 

Rob recalls one day a few years ago when he felt 

everything was good personally and professionally yet ... 

something was missing. 

“Rob’s parents and my parents made a lot of sacrifices 

to send us to school,” says Donna. “We appreciate that, 

and try to pass it on to help those who need it. My 

parents didn’t go to college, but it clearly meant a lot to 

them that we could go, and we decided at this point in 

life to pay it forward.” 

UMass Lowell offered quality of education at an 

affordable price, says Donna. 

“Financially, I was able to work and pay for college, 

semester to semester,” she says. 

Rob says he joined MFS with folks with pricey, 

prestigious sheepskins under their arms. His UMass Lowell 

education served him well. He ascended “not because I 

was smarter or worked harder, but because I was better 

educated than they were.” 

When the Mannings decided to give to UMass Lowell, 

it was in part because of how comfortable they were with 

Meehan’s leadership. 

‘WE HAVEN’T SEEN THE BEST OF ROB YET’ 

“I’ll tell you one thing,” says Kevin Perry, an adjunct professor 

of finance on and off from 1978 to 83. “There is no 

lacking for IQ points in that home.” 

Rob Manning walked into Perry’s class “genuinely interested 

in the material, to the point where he wanted 

not just to learn it, but to dominate it,” says Perry, who returned 

to Boston-based Loomis Sayles Co. L.P. as a money 

manager in 1983. 

“Listen,” he says, “Lowell is a place where working 

kids bust their asses trying to make something of themselves. 

I was pretty intolerant of people who were not there to 

learn. But Rob was exactly 

the kind of student you’d 

hope you’d have. It’s hard 

to look at someone and 

say, ‘He’s going to be CEO 

of a major financial company.’ 

But with Rob, you 

could think. ‘This is the 

kind of person with the 

ability to excel.’ He is still 

not arrogant in any way, 

but you could tell he was 

going to do something 

significant.” 

As with other former 

Rob Manning received a Circle of 

students, Perry stayed in 

Distinction award from Chancellor 

touch with Manning, at 

Marty Meehan, left, in October. 

one point living up the 

See related story on page 40. 

street in Swampscott. He 

got Manning the job interview at MFS. 

Perry imagines Manning will be active with his business 

school investment: 

“I think Rob is committed to what is going on in the 

classroom. Some major institutions treat their undergraduates 

atrociously. That is not acceptable to Rob. He 

looks at Lowell and sees enormous opportunity. He values 

people who are smart and can hit the ground running, 

and a faculty that is committed to active partnerships in 

the business world.” 

He pauses. 

“I think that, quite frankly, we haven’t seen the best 

of Rob yet.” 

FROM FOOTBALL TO FINANCE 

Until he arrived in Lowell, academics hadn’t been a centerpiece 

of Rob Manning’s life, as they had Donna’s. He’d 

been a high school jock, captain of the Methuen High 



Rob Manning ’84 delivered the commencemnt address in 2011—the largest class ever to graduate from UMass Lowell. 

Rangers football team, playing middle linebacker and 

guard. 

He was popular and “didn’t have any interest in grades 

or where they could get me,” he says. 

“I had a lot of fun playing sports,” he explains. “But 

Donna was a good example for me.” 

Manning says he initially chose UMass Lowell “because 

I had a lot of friends here and it was close to home.” 

He had long been drawn to the world of finance, and 

quickly honed a focus on college academics. He was so 

driven he took eight to 10 classes a semester. 

The couple point to a foundation built from “extraordinary” 

role models. Rob’s parents, Dick and Dolores, 

worked hard, especially to make certain he made it to 

college. His father worked for 38 years at Raytheon Corp., 

earning his engineering degree at age 45, from Fitchburg 

State. Part of his career was spent working on the Patriot 

Missile project. 

Donna and her sisters were also first to attend college 

in their family. Her father, Frank, was a machinist. 

“They gave us values, including working for everything 

you had,” says Rob. “They taught us that work gives you 

a sense of pride, a feeling of being accomplished at something. 

And they taught us honesty and integrity. And 

they gave me the greatest gift in the world, an education. 

That’s what drives us toward UMass Lowell with philanthropy. 

We both lived at home, and we couldn’t afford to 

go just anywhere. It was up the street and it turned out to 

be an excellent school. 

“Most private universities are research-driven. The 

professors have to publish articles, and that’s what they’re 

worried about. At UMass Lowell, it’s always about the 

students. I had phenomenal professors who were handson. 

Every one of them truly cared about the students. 

They put their energy and passion into their teaching. It 

was amazing. And there was a lot of opportunity to meet 

with your professors one-on-one. It wasn’t a case of, well, 

I guess I could ... they were there every time. They brought 

so much real-world experience into the classroom. There 

was just a culture of caring about students and being 

around when you needed them. I hope that still exists.” 

‘ONE OF LIFE’S GREATEST GIFTS’ 

Manning’s soulmate helped him see what was missing. 

She always has. 

“Donna always puts everyone else’s needs before her 

own,” he says. “Part of what has driven our philosophy is 

her belief that helping others is something you do. I’ve 

been lucky enough to make good money. Some folks are 

born with a bad hand of cards and we have a responsibility 

to help. 

“Listen, I saw what UMass Lowell did for me. Affordability 

and accessibility are two of the greatest gifts 

students can have in an education, and an education is 

one of life’s greatest gifts. So I figured it was time to give 

back money to other people. I have all I need with 

Donna and we have all we need and more.” 

When word broke of the Mannings’ donation, the reaction 

was satisfying. 

“The outpouring of people, you just would not believe,” 

says Manning. “Not just people from UMass Lowell but 

from around the state. Emails, handwritten notes, conversations 

with people. It’s a case of trying to get individuals 

and groups to give back. That’s our challenge.” 

Rob Manning wanted to tell the graduates what they 

really got from UMass Lowell. 

“Not only did you learn the subject matter and pass 

the tests,” he told the Class of 2011, “you learned how to 

be great human beings.” 

Maybe they didn’t know it yet. Maybe he was the first 

to tell some of them that. But it’s clear Rob Manning believed 

in them. He was, at least that day, one of them. 

“I SAW WHAT 

UMASS LOWELL 

DID FOR ME. 

AFFORDABILITY 

AND ACCESSIBIL- 

ITY ARE TWO OF 

THE GREATEST 

GIFTS STUDENTS 

CAN HAVE IN 

AN EDUCATION, 

AND AN 

EDUCATION IS 

ONE OF LIFE’S 

GREATEST GIFTS. 

SO I FIGURED 

IT WAS TIME 

TO GIVE BACK 

MONEY TO 

OTHER PEOPLE.” 

— Rob Manning 


C O V E R S T O R Y S I D E B A R 

New Building for the Manning School: 

‘The Critical Catalyst’ 

Roughly 15 months from now, in the 

spring of 2013, ground will be broken 

on North Campus for what will be the 

third jewel in the University’s evolving 

crown of new construction: a new building 

to house the newly named Manning School of 

Business. The school will take its place adjacent 

to the also-new Emerging Technology and Innovation 

Center (ETIC), on the site of the 

present Eames Hall. 

The planned site, says Manning School of 

Business Dean Kathryn Carter, will enable business 

students and faculty—already located on 

North Campus—to continue working closely 

with those in science and engineering programs. 

The new building for the Manning School 

of Business will complement the ETIC and the 

new, $40 million Health and Social Sciences 

Building on South Campus, both of which 

broke ground in 2011—the first new academic 

buildings to arrive on campus in more than 

three decades. At 65,000 square feet, with a 

bold, tiered façade rising four stories overlooking 

University Avenue, its cost is estimated at $30 

million, roughly a third of which will be raised 

from private sources, according to Steven Rogers, 

senior major gifts officer in the University’s 

Advancement Office. The single largest endowment, 

$5 million, is the result of a endowment 

from Robert and Donna Manning, both UMass 

Lowell graduates (see accompanying story), 

whose name the School will carry. 

Other major donors to the new building’s 

construction include Richard Grande ’72, senior 

vice president at Morgan Stanley; Kathleen 

Allen ’77, formerly vice president of Millipore 

Corp. and James Regan ’88, CEO of Digital 

Credit Union. As of mid-September, more than 

$1 million of private funding had been raised— 

in addition to the $5 million from the Mannings—with 

another $10-12 million being 

sought from the School’s alumni and friends. 

While the business school will carry the Manning 

name in recognition of the couple’s gift, the 

building itself—and very likely some of its features—will 

be named to recognize one or more 

other donors. 

“Its coming is long overdue,” says Morgan 

Stanley’s Grande, “and couldn’t possibly be 

more welcome. Along with other things, it’s 

likely to attract additional strong faculty, which 

in turn will attract better students. The result 

of this, over time, I think will be predictable— 

a marked upgrade in the visibility, quality and 

culture of the business school, and of the University 

in general.” 

The Manning School’s dean is another 

who believes, like Grande, that the building 

will play an inestimable role in ushering in a 

new era: 

“The construction of an appropriate and 

competitive professional business school as a 

home to our activities is the catalyst that will 

visibly advance us,” says Carter. “We’ve been 

at a tipping point for a few years now—actively 

improving our faculty and student profile, 

developing new, relevant academic programs, 

expanding and deepening our corporate partnerships 

and adding experiential learning opportunities 

for our students. ” 

Even before the announcement of the Mannings’ 

gift, says Carter, the college—which has 

graduated more than 13,000 students in its 53 

years and carries an annual enrollment of roughly 

2,200—was already well into the process of a 

strategic realignment. At the undergraduate 

level, the School has increased its honors opportunities, 

expanded its study-abroad opportunities 

and added research scholarships—at 

the same time expanding and formalizing its 

students’ options for experiential learning. Undergraduate 

enrollment, as a whole, will remain 

stable; the freshman class will be slightly smaller 

and more selective. 

At the graduate level, a planned shift in student 

population—to be achieved through the 

addition of the master’s program in Innovation 

and Technological Entrepreneurship, the launch 

of the full-time, day MBA program and the fall 

2012 kick-off of a master’s program in accounting—will 

result in a significant expansion of 

master’s level enrollment. 

Also, and most importantly, says Dean Carter: 

“We expect final approval of our Ph.D. in 

business administration, with concentrations 

in technology management, international business, 

finance, MIS and leadership. This program 

should launch within the next two years, with 

an entering class of nine full-time and nine 

part-time students.” 

This improved enrollment profile, the dean 

says, with its larger graduate enrollment and 

better-quality undergraduate population, “will 

Donna and Rob Manning visit with Kathryn Carter, 

center, dean of the Manning School of Business. 

support our ongoing efforts to recruit highquality 

faculty and students and strengthen our 

research capabilities.” 

The new building will provide the features 

and spaces required for a competitive business 

school today. On its ground floor alone: a fully 

active trading room, enabling students and 

faculty to conduct real-time research on global 

companies, industries, economies and currencies; 

a business development center, located very 

visibly nearby, to serve as a hub for interactions 

and active group learning; as well as a home for 

a limited number of incubator companies. And 

anchoring it all, a coffee shop/meeting space, 

located within sight of both the trading room 

and the business center—allowing for collaboration, 

networking and socialization. 

“I believe the first floor of the new building 

will be an energetic destination space for many 

students and faculty on North Campus, perhaps 

the most vibrant space North Campus has ever 

seen,” says Carter. 

The upper floors will be no less impressive: 

office space for faculty, staff and graduate 

students; work space for undergraduates, classrooms 

and meeting spaces for faculty and 

students—as well as dedicated space for various 

student initiatives, such as the honors and 

study-abroad programs. 

“The new building,” says Carter, “will reflect 

and support our priorities for high-quality 

education and research, student and faculty 

interaction and interdisciplinary, experiential 

learning. I see it as the critical catalyst to propel 

us to excellence.” 


Featurestory 

The Kindness of Strangers 

Surprise Donor Gives Haitian Student the Opportunity of a Lifetime 


By Sheila Eppolito 

Pouchon Jean Amazan isn’t a gambler—he is, 

instead, a logical man of science. But even Amazan 

has to admit that the chance encounter 30,000 

feet up in the air that changed the course of his 

life was an astounding stroke of luck. 

Amazan—the son of Haitian farmers—showed promise 

in math and science early on, catching the notice of 

private school instructors and one compassionate scientist 

—Prof. Bob Giles—from the United States. Giles joined 

his daughter as a chaperone on her youth group’s trip to 

Haiti in 2003, and was forever changed by what he saw. 

“Haiti is the poorest and most densely populated 

country in our part of the hemisphere,” says Giles, 

chairman of the Physics Department. “Aggravated by 

soil erosion, drought and famine, the country has been 

identified with fourth world status by the International 

Banking System.” 

Haitian student Pouchon Jean Amazan, third from left, meets his 

benefactors Cumberland Farms Director George Haseotes, second 

from left, and Kristen Williams, right, who learned about Amazan 

during a plane ride with Prof. Bob Giles, far left. 

Despite the brutal conditions, Giles saw possibility in 

the faces of the Haitian people, and set his mind to doing 

something to help. 

Amazan is but one of dozens of students Giles has supported—educationally 

and financially—since his life 

changing trip. Giles met Amazan through a network of 

American colleagues, travel companions and advisors in 

Haiti. He provided mentoring—and personal investment 

—for Amazan for five years before encouraging him to 

apply to the University to pursue a degree in physics. 

Amazan was accepted, but fell $8,000 short of the 

funds he’d need to attend. 

Enter Kristen Williams. 

Fresh from a cruise with her children with several 

stops in countries that struggle to meet basic needs, 

Williams, who was “disgusted by the contradictory overall 

excess and waste of food on board ship,” struck up a conversation 

with the man in the airplane seat next to her. 

“We got to talking, and I realized I was sitting with a 

prestigious educator who was committed to training 

young people to change the world,” says Williams, who, 

along with husband George Haseotes, runs a charitable 

foundation committed to improving education. 

“My husband’s Greek immigrant family founded Cumberland 

Farms, and through generations of hard work 

and dedication, the company has enjoyed financial 

success,” says Williams. Cumberland Farms’ family founders 

are quintessential believers in and examples of, the power 

of hard work and education in realizing success. 

Out comes the checkbook. 

Williams was so moved by Giles’ story—and Amazan’s 

potential – that she wrote a check on the spot. Not for 

the praise the gift might earn—in fact, she is downright 

reticent when her generosity is touted. 

“My interest in philanthropy is in helping people who 

can affect real change in the world,” says Williams. 

“When Prof. Giles described the work he does, and the 

kind of improvements in basic human needs a man like 

Pouchon can make, it was a no-brainer for us to support 

the cause.” 

Amazan has settled in nicely at the University, and is 

excited about his future. He also was delighted to see 

snow for the first time, sharing the moment with his 

mother during one of the calls Giles encourages him to 

make on Gile’s phone. 

For Giles, helping dozens of students isn’t enough— 

he’s working on developing a University research program 

to further expand student and faculty involvement in 

Haiti. As for Williams, she continues her quiet, dogged 

pursuit of investing in causes and people like Pouchon 

who can use their minds to improve the world. 

“There’s something very exciting about helping 

students get excited about turning problems into solutions,” 

she says. 

Children in Haiti 

“MY INTEREST IN 

PHILANTHROPY 

IS IN HELPING 

PEOPLE WHO 

CAN AFFECT 

REAL CHANGE 

IN THE WORLD.” 

—Kristen Williams 


Featurestory 

From Haverhill 

to Hollywood: 

‘A Happy Accident’ 




Despite Best-sellers and Film Deals, Andre Dubus III 

Is Staying Put at UMass Lowell 

In his youth, author and UMass Lowell 

English professor Andre Dubus III built 

his body into a fortress of muscle, blood 

and tissue. Relentlessly pumping weights 

and adhering to a strict diet, he carefully 

cultivated musculature to better proffer 

violence in the bars of Haverhill and 

Newburyport. He refined his technique in the 

boxing ring. 

The physical walls he erected hid a scared, 

bullied and abandoned young man, whose tale 

is spread across the pages of Dubus’ acclaimed 

memoir, “Townie.” 

It was in the world of letters that Dubus 

found his soul, his profession and his obsession. 

Now 52, still fit and looking much younger, 

Dubus has built words into a string of bestselling 

books. 

He calls his career a “happy accident.” In 

2001, he became the University’s first Kerouac 

Writer-in-Residence. For the past seven years, 

he has shared his wisdom with classes of UMass 

Lowell students, last semester teaching a pair 

of Creative Writing classes that meet Tuesdays 

and Wednesdays. 

“I really love being around young people, 

and I love the Lowell scene,” Dubus says. “All 

kinds of students, 

including the kind 

of people I grew up 

with. I feel attuned 

here.” 

Despite a growing 

fame, a demanding 

schedule 

and overtures from 

other colleges and 

universities, he isn’t 

going anywhere 

soon. 

BUILDING A LIFE 

While gradually building a literary career, Dubus 

also built a home. Literally. Not just any home, 

but a 6,700-square foot beauty, near which 

much of “Townie” took place. A mix of art and 

athleticism, the home he built with his own 

hands has proven roomy and sturdy enough to 

withstand games of football catch from the 

kitchen into the family room. Its dimensions 

may be palatial, but the huge living room with 

the dramatic stone fireplace is built for comfort. 

Downstairs is where he writes, in a room 

five feet wide, six feet from floor to ceiling, 11 

feet long and sound-proof. 

“The prison,” he says, chuckling. “It’s like a 

jail cell.” 

He sentences himself to write there, six days 

a week, “until my concentration starts to fade.” 

He is a proud Luddite, who writes in longhand. 

He answers emails from time to time, but laughs 

at the notion of riding the “digital train”: “Facebook? 

Twitter? Ha!” 

As Dubus—son of the celebrated short story 

writer Andre Dubus—has cultivated his career 

in the classrooms of UMass Lowell, fame and 

critical and popular acclaim have followed the 

release of each new book. 

“I REALLY LOVE BEING AROUND 

YOUNG PEOPLE, AND I LOVE 

THE LOWELL SCENE. ALL KINDS 

OF STUDENTS, INCLUDING 

THE KIND OF PEOPLE 

I GREW UP WITH. 

I FEEL ATTUNED THERE.” 

And when Oprah Winfrey named Dubus’ 

“House of Sand and Fog” a selection of her 

book club, he became even more popular. 

He has been serenaded by other colleges 

and universities near and far to teach their 

prospective writers. The previous week, he says, 

stretching out his legs to prop the heel of a 

pointy boot on a coffee table, a Lone Star State 

university called waving a Texas-sized offer. 

Dubus is flattered but says he isn’t going 

anywhere: “I love it where I am now. UMass 

Lowell has been great to me.” 

He still can’t believe he made a career of 

this. He wasn’t trying, he says. 

His kids attend private school. The house is 

big, though hardly one that announces itself to 

the world. His name is big. But a fan of junkyard 

piano poet Tom Waits, Dubus treats writing 

like workaday labor. He strives to hang on to 

his blue-collar roots. 

DEATH THREATS AND MOVIE DEALS 

In Haverhill, where Dubus grew up, “Townie” 

is known as “the book.” It is a naked recollection 

that the writer struggled to get right. He even 

called old friends and family members to crosscheck 

details. 

When he did a book signing there, 600 

people showed up. The author says “Townie” 

has spawned three basic reactions: “I can’t 

believe how perfectly you nailed this place!” is 

the most pleasant. 

“Then there’s ‘I don’t know what Haverhill 

you’re writing about,’ ” he says. “And the third: 

threats on my life.” 

The Haverhill Dubus writes about is one 

he’ll never forget. His roots are there, he 

explains, and they are excavated in “Townie,” 

which recounts in painstaking detail Dubus’ 

hardscrabble youth in 1970s Haverhill and 

Newburyport. 

A lot has changed since those days. 

When Dubus received Chancellor Marty 

Meehan’s Medal of Recognition during last 

May’s Commencement ceremony, he told 

students not to worry so much about “success.” 

He told them to find something unique about 

themselves and cultivate it—and then success 

will follow. 

It’s a formula that’s worked for him. 

“Townie” has been optioned for the silver 

screen by Gina Amoroso, co-producer of 2008’s 

“Revolutionary Road.” Amoroso also helped 

bring “Being John Malkovich” to the big screen 

in 1999. 

Dubus will write the script with a veteran 

English scriptwriter. 

“There’s just too much at stake for me not 

to be involved,” he says. “This is me, my family, 

my friends.” 

Son Austin is in his first semester at Miami 

University in Ohio, having left Dubus and his 

wife of 22 years, Fontaine, with Ariadne, 16, 

and Elias, 14. 

Fontaine is owner and director of The Dance 

Place, a studio in Newburyport where Ariadne 

dances. The boys are dedicated “and pretty 

damn good” baseball players, according to their 

father. 

In a room off the kitchen, Dubus has stacked 

hundreds of his father’s books in vertical piles, 

as if there are ghosts in the room. 

“I finally took them out of storage,” he says. 

“I thought I could give them away, but ...” He 

couldn’t. He will soon build shelves. 


Face of Philanthropy 


Saving Lives and Growing Grapes 

Forty Years After Graduation, This Chemical Engineer is Still not Slowing Down 

His dad was a truck salesman, his mother 

a psychiatric social worker. It was the 

late ’60s; there were three children in 

the house, and not much extra to go 

around. So when the time came to think 

about colleges, Bob Ward remembers, the 

decision pretty much made itself. 

“I think the tuition [at Lowell Tech] was 

something like $200 a semester,” he says. “Whatever 

it was, it was a bargain—which was the 

number-one factor in my mind.” 

He had a job on weekends, another in the 

summers. And the family lived in Reading, 

which made for a long commute. So between 

classes, studies, job-time and drive-time, there 

weren’t a lot of hours left in the week. “To be 

honest,” he says, “it was a drag sometimes.” 

Somehow, though, he found time to pursue 

two of his passions: the bass guitar (“when I 

probably should have been studying instead”) 

and a young Merrimack College student named 

Gail, who was studying to be a microbiologist. 

He graduated in the spring of 1971 with a 

degree in chemical engineering. He and Gail 

were married three weeks later. Only weeks 

after that, he began his first real-world job: at 

the Avco-Everett Research Laboratory in Everett, 

a division of the Avco Corp. It was the start of 

an extraordinary career, in a field—biomaterials—that 

was itself only then getting its start. 

He stayed until 1978. By the time he left, as 

director of research in Avco’s Medical Products 

Division, he had helped oversee the commercial 

development of a pioneer product: the intraaortic 

balloon pump, the world’s first, commercially 

available cardiac assistance device. Still 

in use today, it has been used worldwide on 

3 million people, saving countless lives. 

Bob Ward had found his niche—and his 

next employer: Thoratec Laboratories in Berkeley, 

Calif., a start-up that designed, manufactured 

and sold products for heart-failure patients— 

and that had just completed financing for yet 

another pioneer product: the first commercial 

Ventricular Assistance Device (VAD), a mechanical 

invention used to replace the circulatory 

functioning of a failing heart. 

By the time he left Thoratec 10 years later—as 

president of its Biomaterials Division— 

the VAD was in full-scale commercial development, 

well on its way to becoming the world’s 

most popular cardiac-assistance device. Today, 

Thoratec is a publicly traded, global corporation, 

with 1,100 employees and yearly revenues of 

more than $300 million. 

MATTERS OF THE HEART 

Ward’s next career step was his boldest. In 

1989, he founded Polymer Technology Group 

(PTG). For the next 19 years, as founder and 

CEO, Ward oversaw the Berkeley, Calif.-based 

company’s growth, guiding the application of 

PTG polymers and specialty chemicals for use 

across myriad specialties: in pacemakers, orthopedic 

implants, catheters, stents, implantable 

sensors and artificial hearts. Its early work in 

the development of contact lenses made from a 

mix of silicone-hydrogel polymers set the standard 

for such lenses worldwide—and made a fortune 

for the company. 

The world, of course, had taken notice. In 

the spring of 2008, PTG was acquired by the 

Dutch giant Royal DSM, a global life-sciences 

company with 22,000 employees and more than 

$6 billion in sales. Ward was asked to stay on as 

president and CEO of the newly formed DSM 

PTG. 

Yet another major move came at the start of 

2011: the chairmanship of the PTG spin-off 

Emergence, founded in 2007 to provide inventors 

and entrepreneurs with both technical expertise 

and initial seed money to bring new medical 

products to market. It wasn’t long before the 

venture was proclaiming an early success. 

ExThera Medical Corp., a company within 

the Emergence incubator, announced early this 

summer the development of a new product, 

Seraph, for the treatment of sepsis (or blood 

poisoning). While other medical treatments for 

sepsis rely on antibiotics and are only partially 

successful, Seraph—based on a blood-cleansing 

process known as apheresis—aims to empower 

the body’s immune system to fight the disease. 

Early laboratory studies, Ward said when news 

of the breakthrough was first announced in 

June, “strongly suggest the likelihood that [Seraph] 

may become an effective treatment.” 

And so it is that, 40 years after earning his 

diploma as a bass-playing LTI commuter student, 

Ward has built a name for himself at the very 

top of his no-longer-new profession: 

“Bob Ward is without peer in manufacturing 

polymeric biomaterials for application in the 

hostile environment of the human body,” wrote 

James M. Anderson, a Case Western professor 

and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biomedical 

Materials Research. 

But his contributions aren’t confined to the 

biomaterials field. The Wards recently committed 

nearly $1 million in support of University initiatives. 

When $2 million was gifted last year 

to UMass Lowell to create professorships in science 

and engineering—part of a $14 million 

anonymous gift to the UMass system from the 

sale of land on Nantucket—Bob was one of 

five alumni to put up the funds to match it, creating 

the $600,000 Robert and Gail Ward Endowed 

Professorship in Biomedical Materials 

Development. Gail was born on Nantucket, he 

says, “so that gives this gift special meaning.” 

He has also given $250,000 toward funding for 

the new Emerging Technologies and Innovation 

Center, creating the Robert and Gail Ward 

Biomedical Materials Laboratory, and another 

$100,000 to create an endowed scholarship 

fund for engineering students. 

“Support for public education is such an important 

priority,” he says. “Public universities 

are a critical antidote to the concentration of 

wealth in the hands of a very few, something, I 

think, that’s getting worse as time passes. It’s 

really so important that anyone from anywhere 

who wants it has access to an education.” 

Meanwhile, as active as he is, Ward still 

finds time for the guitar, now as part of a group 

near his home. But his real passion these days— 

outside of scouting the life-science companies 

of tomorrow—is something else entirely: the 

growing of grapes for Syrah (or Shiraz) wine. 

“We bought a house and small vineyard, 

two years ago, in Orinda [Calif.], where we 

have about 70 vines,” he says. “Gail’s even 

more involved than I am—she’s taking courses 

in viticulture at Napa Valley State College. 

She good at it, being the microbiologist she is. 

For me, it’s kind of an extension of the beermaking 

I used to do as a kid. Just more involved, 

and a lot more expensive. 

“It’s fun, though. And this year looks like it’s 

going to be a great yield.” 



“Public universities are 

a critical antidote to the 

concentration of wealth in 

the hands of a very few, 

something, I think, that’s 

getting worse and worse as 

time passes. It’s really so 

important that anyone from 

anywhere who wants it has 

access to an education. 

So whatever I’m able to do 

toward that goal, I’m happy 

to try to do.” 

— Bob Ward ’71 

Bob ’71 and Gail Ward 


Featurestory 

KILLING FIELDS SURVIVORS 

TELL THEIR STORIES 

By Sarah McAdams 

38 UMASS LOWELL MAGAZINE W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 - 2 0 1 2 

Raymond Kong, left, and Sidney Tang helped paint 

a mural depicting Cambodian history at the 

Bartlett Middle School in Lowell.

UMass Lowell Educators Team Up With Cambodian Students 

and Their Families for StoryCorps Project 

George Tang was 5-years-old when 

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot launched 

his brutal “cleansing campaign” in 

Cambodia in the 1970s. 

For the next five years, the young 

Tang watched as the world around 

him crumbled—as death camps, starvation, 

executions and mass graves became 

everyday sights. In that time, an estimated 2 

million Cambodian people died, about a quarter 

of the country’s population; among them many 

members of Tang’s own family. 

Now a 43-year-old accountant living in Lowell, 

Tang says the painful memories will never 

leave him: 

“I saw people lying down and get shot. You 

could see people get hacked in the head with 

an axe. You could see dead bodies—and they 

smell terrible. You’d see people being whaled, 

maybe 20 or 100. I saw people killed—I saw it 

with my own eyes.” 

Tang’s teenage son, Sidney—who was named 

after a character in the film “The Killing 

Fields”—heard about this for the first time 

while sitting in a room on UMass Lowell’s 

South Campus. 

He nervously asked his father more questions 

about the Khmer Rouge, about where he grew 

up, about family members he never met. 

As the elder Tang recounted the gripping 

stories from his past, understanding dawned in 

his son’s eyes. This is why you are the way you 

are, he seemed to think. 

And it’s why, more than anything, George 

wants Sidney to understand this about the 

United States: 

“This is heaven for you. You’re lucky to be 

born here. Be a productive citizen.” 

The Tangs were invited to campus by 

Pat Fontaine, an assistant professor of history 

education in the University’s Graduate School 

of Education. 

Fontaine was talking to a friend one day 

when the latter, a literary specialist at the 

Bartlett Middle School in Lowell, mentioned 

that she was worried about a particular group of 

Cambodian students. 

“She said, ‘This is really bothering me … It 

looks like these eighth-graders are joining gangs,’ 

recalls Fontaine. “She said that after talking to 

them, it was clear that the main reason was 

that they lacked a certain identity. 

“They were born here, and their parents 

and grandparents haven’t told them anything 

about their heritage— 

especially the time during 

Pol Pot’s reign.” 

Thus, the kids were 

turning to gangs for a 

sense of belonging and 

shared heritage, she says. 

A light bulb went 

off in Fontaine’s head— 

and a short while later 

she applied for a UMass 

Lowell service-learning 

grant to work with 

Cambodian children 

in the Bartlett School, 

helping them understand 

their history. 

During the resulting after-school program, 

Fontaine asked the middle-school students if 

any of their relatives had experienced the 

horrors of that time (“the majority said ‘yes,’ ” 

the professor says) —and whether they would 

be willing to share their stories with the class. 

Three of the Bartlett students’ parents agreed 

to do so; Tang was one of them. 

It occurred to Fontaine that interviews with 

these survivors might make great additions to 

StoryCorps, one of the largest oral history 

projects in the world. The stories—which 

millions of people listen to every week on NPR’s 

Morning Edition—are archived in the American 

Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in 

Washington, D.C. 

And so earlier this year, Fontaine and a 

team of her graduate students spent a Sunday 

morning on campus, recording interviews with 

three men who had lived through the killing 

fields in Cambodia. Bartlett students each helped 

interview his or her own father. 

The recordings are now archived in 

Washington, D.C. 

“I plan to follow three 

of the Cambodian students 

through high school, 

mentoring them and helping 

them script their lives.” 

— Pat Fontaine 

MIDDLE SCHOOL AND GRAD 

STUDENTS TEACH ONE ANOTHER 

The after-school program that bore the 

StoryCorps interviews began when 12 Bartlett 

students in grades five through eight volunteered 

to participate because, Fontaine says, “they just 

wanted to learn about their country.” 

The professor, along with a handful of her 

graduate students who were hoping to teach 

secondary history upon graduation, met with 

the students in 10 afternoon sessions to teach 

them about Cambodia—its geography, historical 

sites, cultural customs and political history. 


The group had the students read 

the memoir “First They Killed my 

Father: A Daughter of Cambodia 

Remembers” by Loung Ung, and view 

portions of films like “New Year Baby,” 

“Monkey Dance” and “The Killing 

Fields.” 

“My students, for the most part, 

didn’t know anything about Cambodia—and 

for many of them, this was 

their first time teaching,” says Fontaine. 

“So they learned just as much as the 

Bartlett students.” 

Julie Mangan, who graduated in 

May and is now teaching in Chelmsford, 

says the experience taught her a 

lot about considering the cultural 

perspective of one’s students. 

“This was the first time I realized it’s important 

to consider the students’ personal history,” she 

says. “When you keep that in mind, you can 

see them become more interested.” 

Following the 10-week program, the entire 

group of 12 students, with the help of a Bartlett 

School art teacher, created a mural of remembrance 

depicting Cambodian history and heritage. 

That mural hangs in the middle school’s entrance 

hall today. 

The program is over, but Fontaine says her 

connection the young students is not. 

“I plan to follow three of the Cambodian 

students through high school,” she says, “mentoring 

them and helping them script their lives.” 

Each of the students is close to people in 

gangs, Fontaine says—whether a family member 

or good friend—and she wants to help ensure 

they don’t follow suit. 

“I see enormous potential—they’re so funny 

and so bright,” she says. “They each touched 

my heart.” 

Her biggest hope is that they each eventually 

attend college—ideally UMass Lowell, and she 

plans to give each a scholarship if and when 

that day comes. 

The prospect sounds good to her young 

friend Raymond Kong. 

“Going to a great college—that was always 

my dream,” says Kong, now a freshman at 

Lowell High School. “My future is yet to be 

discovered … the world holds a lot of opportunities.” 

 


Featurestory 

Circle of Distinction award recipients, top row from left: Gururaj “Desh” and Jaishree Deshpande, Charles Hoff ’66, John Kennedy ’70, George Leahey (accepting on behalf 

of his mother, Mary Jo Leahey ’37), Mark Saab ’81, Gail and Robert ’71 Ward; bottom row, from left: Vice Chancellor of Advancement Edward Chiu, Chancellor Marty 

Meehan ’78, Executive Vice Chancellor Jacqueline Moloney ’75, Robert Manning ’84, Deb and James Dandeneau ’80. Not present: Josephine Hoff, Donna Manning ’85, 

’91, David Pernick ’41, Elisia Saab and Roy Zuckerberg ’58. 

Circleof Distinction 

The Few, Whose Generosity Lights the Way 

It is a rare thing, in this era of trilliondollar 

deficits, default threats and mortgage 

foreclosures, to hear talk of new economic 

frontiers. Which makes the news 

celebrated here in October that much 

more remarkable. 

Today, four years into the chancellorship of 

Marty Meehan—and thanks in good part to his 

efforts—there are nearly a dozen high-level benefactors. 

In fact, fundraising has grown by 84 percent—gifts 

and pledges have grown by $7 million 

since 2007, from $8.2 million to $15.2 million. 

Ten of the men and women responsible for 

much of that growth were honored on Oct. 27 

at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. 

During the Chancellor’s inaugural Leadership 

Society reception, all 10—whose collective 

support of the University exceeds $35 million— 

were formally welcomed into the University’s 

newly minted Circle of Distinction, a society of 

top benefactors who have made generous contributions 

over their lifetimes. 

The support of these 10 donors, much of it 

recent, has resulted in the creation of many 

hundreds of scholarships, endowments, professorships 

and infrastructure improvements—which 

in turn have directly touched the lives of UMass 

Lowell students, and will continue to do so for 

decades to come. 

“The generosity of these few men and women 

has literally transformed the University,” says 

UMass Lowell Vice Chancellor for Advancement 

Edward Chiu. “On the strength of their gifts, we 

are able to achieve goals that will take us to the 

next level. Their impact on our students, through 

the scholarships, facilities, professorships and 

faculty chairs they have endowed, is almost 

beyond measure.” 

Perhaps the most recent arrivals to the group 

have been Robert and Donna Manning, whose 

gift toward the creation of a new home for the 

University’s business school is outlined in the 

cover story of this issue. Other outstanding examples 

of support, some of them nearly as recent, 

have likewise added to the University skyline. 

These include gifts by alumni John Kennedy 

’70, Bob Ward ’71 and Mark Saab ’81 and his 

wife Elisia, earlier this year, to finance parts of 

the University’s new, $70 million Emerging Technologies 

and Innovation Center (ETIC), slated 

to open in the fall of 2012. The Saabs are responsible 

also for the creation of an endowed 

professorship in green plastics, gifted to the University 

in 2008. A second gift, received the same 

year from James Dandeneau ’80—another of the 

10—likewise endows a green-plastics professorship. 

Ward, in addition to his support for the ETIC 

construction, was also the source of a gift in 

2010 to create a professorship in biochemistry. 

(He, like the Mannings, is the subject of a 

separate story in this issue.) 

The gifts from other members of the 10, 

though less visible from the air or roadside, are 

every bit as critical to the University’s long-term 

future—and to the future of the larger world. 

The contributions, for instance, of David Pernick 

’41, endow a Plastics professorship; provide scholarships 

to students in both management and 



1 

2 3 

1 Vice Chancellor of University Advancement Edward Chiu presents David Pernick ’41 with a Circle of Distinction Award. 2 Students thank donors during the Chancellor’s 

Leadership Society Reception, during which benefactors who have made generous contributions over their lifetimes were inducted into the Circle of Distinction. 3 Chancellor 

Marty Meehan ’78 presents Roy Zuckerberg ’58 with a Circle of Distinction Award. 

4 

5 

4 Members of the Circle of Distinction who are graduates the Francis College of Engineering: Robert ’71 and Gail Ward, Mark Saab ’81, and Deborah and James ’80 

Dandeneau. 5 Robert Manning ’84, Professor Emeritus and Founder of the School of Management Stuart Mandell ’11, Charles Hoff ’66, John Pulichino ’67, and 

Dean of the Manning School of Business Kathryn Carter ’78. 

6 7 8 

6 Chancellor Marty Meehan ’78 presents Jaishree and Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande with the Circle of Distinction Award. 7 Kennedy Family Merit Scholarship recipients 

Courtney James (l) and Michael Staub (r) with John Kennedy ’70. 8 A Circle of Distinction ice scuplture, surrounded by honorees’ awards, served as a centerpiece. 

plastics; and fund the continuing exchange of 

doctoral students and faculty, between UMass 

Lowell and the plastics program of an Israeli 

university. 

Roy Zuckerberg ’58 has helped fund the recruitment 

of exceptional out-of-state students; 

endowed the Zuckerberg Chair in Leadership, 

rewarding faculty and staff for outstanding leadership 

in their departments; and supported the 

Assistive Technology Program within the Department 

of Electrical Engineering. 

The name Charlie Hoff ’66 might be familiar 

to more students at the University than that of 

any other of the 10. Hoff, over the past 20-plus 

years, has been responsible for scholarship funds 

for at least 551 UMass Lowell students—many 

he and members of his family have met with 

personally—as well as aid to other UMass campuses. 

The numbers continue to grow. 

Gururaj (“Desh”) Deshpande, the only one 

of the 10 not an alumnus, is unique as a benefactor 

in other ways as well. A native of India, he has 

donated to support the advancement of business 

and technology in his country, including a large 

gift to help UMass Lowell to advance collaboration 

between United States and Indian engineering 

students, and support grants to promote entrepreneurship 

in the Merrimack Valley. 

Mary Jo Leahey* ’37, the only one among the 

10 who could compete with Charlie Hoff for 

name recognition among current students, was a 

legend among those with a longer history here. 

She has supported scholarships for local high 

school student-musicians at a yearly, week-long 

residential summer band camp on the UMass 

Lowell campus. The camp, headed by Deb Huber, 

associate director of University bands, has been 

a summer highpoint for many hundreds of area 

youngsters since its founding 16 years ago. 

*Note: As the magazine went to press, the University received the sad news that Mary Jo Leahey ’37 

died at her home in Florida. Look for a profile on Mary Jo in the next issue. 



Legacy of Giving Luncheon 

First-ever Event Brought Together Students and Their Benefactors 

1 

2 

1 Dean of the Francis College of Engineering John Ting, Thomas ’64 and Josephine Hughes, Aruna Vedula, Tonita McKone, Professor and Dean Emeritus Krishna Vedula 

and Francis McKone ’56. 2 Director of the MBA Program Gary Mucica ’71 (middle) with Gary and Sally Mucica Endowed Scholarship recipients Vanessa Kent (l) 

and Brianna Mahoney (r). 

3 

4 5 

3 Carole Barrett, Sarah Treacy, recipient of the Margaret Holland Barrett Teaching Scholarship, and Edward “Ned” Barrett ’58. 4 Recipient of the PL ’80 Plastics Engineering 

Endowed Scholarship Ezequiel Ortiz with James Dandeneau ’80. 5 John Pulichino ’67, with Alyssa Brooks, recipient of the John V. Pulichino Scholarship. 

6 

7 

6 Arakelian Endowed Scholarship recipient Jacqueline Bradley, with Bruce Arakelian ’82 and Dean of the School of Health & Environment Shortie McKinney. 

7 Charles Hoff ‘66, with student recipients of the Charles J. Hoff Scholarship. 


Alumni Life 

44 

Inside... 

ALUMNI EVENTS 

47 CLASS NOTES 

55 IN MEMORIAM 

The Unpretentious 

Playwright 

Jack Neary ’73—who’s published 34 

plays—works on his newest script at 

the Starbucks on South Campus. 

Read more about Neary on Page 48. 


Alumnievents 

Fall Festival 2011 

Alumni Reconnect During Weekend Celebration 

1 2 

1 Alpha Sigma Tau alumnae at Fall Festival’s Fraternity and Sorority Reunion. 2 Chatting at the Fraternity and Sorority Reunion are, from left, Richard Lockhart '67 

and Mary and Walter '59 Dawson. 

3 4 

3 Racers meet at the Jennifer's Run starting line. 4 Track team athletes Craig Bennett and Evan White with Chancellor Marty Meehan after Jennifer’s 5k Run. 

5 Kappa Delta Phi alumnae at the Fraternity and Sorority Reunion. 6 Omicron Pi alumni at the Fraternity and Sorority Reunion. 

5 

6 

7 

8 

7 Meeting up at the Student Leadership Reunion at Fall Festival are, from left, Monica Leureat, Jemica Cropperpam, Sade Jean-Jacques, Marck Clerveau, Marie Aka, 

Ike Iloputaise, Foffi Selom Egbeto, Ariane Egbeto and Amy Liss. 8 Delta Kappa Phi alumni, from left, John Tardelli '64, '70, George Dixon '69, Yena and Bernie '56 Shapiro. 


A L U M N I E V E N T S 

1 

2 

1 The 50th Reunion alumni of classes of 1961 from Lowell Tech and Lowell State march in commencement, from left: Leonard Bennett, LTI; William Moylan, LTI; 

Hubert Bonfili, LTI; Sandra Harvey, LTI; JoAnne Connolly, LSC; Charles Mitsakos, LSC; Sally Trice, LSC and Barbara Kinnaird, LSC. 

2 A team of Plastics Engineering Alumni, faculty and current undergraduate students participated in the annual New Hampshire “Reach the Beach” relay race, with help 

from sponsor Synventure Molding Solutions of Peabody. Top row, from left: Asst. Prof. Meg Sobkowicz-Kline; Jonathan Wilk ’03; Rob Duncan, student; Jim Biggins ’03; 

Stephanie Dubay ’05; Prof. Robert Malloy ’79; Prof. David Kazmer; Brian Beaudoin, senior. Bottom row, from left: Melissa Siopes ’03; Melissa Egan ’03; 

Bill Siopes ’03; Cristina King ’03. 

3 4 

3 Children's Hospital Boston Director of Radiation Safety William (Rusty) Lorenzen '90 and a group from UMass Lowell were invited to observe a “Longwood Thunder” 

counterterrorism exercise, held by the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Boston in October. Front row, from left: students 

Thuquynn Dinh, Alexandra Robinson and Erin Sole and UMass Lowell Asst. Radiation Safety Officer and Laser Safety Officer Steven Snay. Back row, from left: Student 

SuHan Kim, radiological science faculty Mark Tries and Clayton French, Lorenzen and students Warnie (Sonny) Gick and Thompson Joe. 4 Atlas Venture Partner 

Peter Barrett '74, third from left, who spoke to a chemistry class on campus, with, from left, College of Sciences Assoc. Dean Fred Martin, Provost Ahmed Abdelal, 

Chemistry Department Chair James Whitten, Vice Provost for Research Julie Chen and Dean of Sciences Robert Tamarin. 

5 6 

5 From left, Ken Pickering, David Vario, Larry Acquarulo ’81 and Tony Listro ’88, ’89 enjoy the 2nd Annual Plastics Golf Tournament at Connecticut National Golf Club. 

6 Turnout was great for the First Annual Sigma Phi Omicron Golf Tournament at Merrimack Valley Golf Course in Methuen. 


Alumnievents 

1 2 3 

1 Scott Huennekens, CEO of Volcano Corp., wears the UMass Lowell corporate rowing shirt for his hike up Mount Fuji in Japan with a friend. 2 Getting caught up at the 

Delta Kappa Phi Reunion are, from left, Walt Brown ’69, Jim Denuccio ’69 and Dave Healy ’69. 3 Jose Pino ’08 and Jineyda Tapia ’06 relax at the Young Alumni Professionals 

River Walk at Salvatore’s in Lawrence. 

4 5 

4 Participating in the Rowing Alumni Day at the Bellegarde Boathouse are, from left, David Cormier ’12, Hengky Susanto ’04, Brian Legg ’07, Robby Walters ’10, Robert 

Pitkin ’04, Bridget Mahoney ’13, Katrina Walthers ’11 and Denny Wirth, current doctoral student and captain of men’s team. 5 Rowing Alumni Day supporters, from left, 

Catherine Curran ’84, Karen Scammell ’85 and Steve Curran ’82. 

6 7 8 

6 Sitting in the Alumni Rowing Day coach’s launch boat, from left, are Bob Bowles ’67, Chad Moore ’97, and Asst. Coach Leigh Eubanks. 

7 Field hockey alumnae enjoy a Sunset Social at the Bellegarde Boathouse, from left: Sara Hohenberger ’06, Asst. Coach Chelsey Feole, Lizzy Ales ’11 and Erin Stewart ’01. 

8 Linda Carpenter '90 and Larry Ardito '69 at the Ninth Annual Wine & Dine at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. 

9 10 

9 Attending the Ninth Annual Wine & Dine are, from left, Mary Anne Durand, J.P. Durand, Stacey Hubbard '91, Dana Hubbard, Beth Doyle 

and Matthew Hubbard. 10 Al Peterson ’55 throws out first pitch at the Annual Alumni Night at the Lowell Spinners game. 


Classnotes 

DON FINEGOLD writes that, in 1953, he was the first 

graduate of the Leather Engineering program and that he 

has many fond memories of the school. He hopes to attend 

the next reunion. 

1963 

Ron Lafond played third base 

for the Wilmington (N.C.) 

Port City Pirates slow-pitch 

softball team that won the 

2011 championship in the 

65-69 age group division at 

the National Senior Games 

in Houston, Texas. 

1964 

Two recipes from Ann Fox 

Chandonnet’s cookbook, 

“Gold Rush Grub” (University 

of Alaska Press), have been 

selected for inclusion in a 

Parks Canada smart phone 

app for the Chilkoot trail site. 

The recipes are for Sourdough 

Starter and Sourdough Flapjacks. 

Parks Canada has been 

compiling phone apps about 

that country’s food and 

heritage for all its national 

historical sites. 

George Perrone conducted 

concerts and lectured in 

Spain and St. Petersburg, 

Russia, throughout the 1990s 

and part of the present 

decade. In 1994, he was the 

first American to conduct 

the new Russian National 

Anthem at the Palace of 

Peter The Great in St. Petersburg 

and, in 2011, he was 

inducted into the Italian- 

American Hall of Fame. 

With George in the photo is 

his son, Alexander, a musician 

and basketball player at 

Loomis-Chaffee School, who 

accompanied his father on 

trips to Russia and Spain. 

Marilyn Pinschmidt has 

moved to North Carolina 

where husband 

Bob is employed 

by the University 

of North Carolina, 

Chapel 

Hill. She moved 

her piano studio 

to the area and is very active 

in local music groups. One of 

her high school students won 

first place recently in the 

Chapel Hill Music Teachers 

Association piano auditions, 

playing Kabalevsky and Liszt. 

In December 2010, Marilyn 

brought Netherlands concert 

pianist Misha Fomin to a 

Raleigh venue. She also is active 

in local book clubs and 

occasionally does freelance 

writing. She says she would 

enjoy hearing from former 

classmates. 

1966 

Carol Baldwin is entering her 

42nd year of teaching elementary 

music in Vernon, Conn., 

and says she thoroughly enjoys 

every day with the kids and 

her colleagues. She was named 

the Vernon Teacher of the 

Year in 1985, received Connecticut's 

Celebration of Excellence 

Award in 1986 and 

was included in Who's Who 

Among America's Teachers in 

2004, 2005 and 2006. 

1967 

Donna Lane Nelson's latest 

novel, her sixth, is “Murder in 

Argeles: A Third Culture Kid 

Mystery.” 

1970 

Richard J. Lynch retired this 

past summer as executive vice 

president for Enterprise-Wide 

Strategic Technology Initiatives 

at Verizon Communications 

Inc. after 39 years of 

service at Verizon and its predecessor 

companies. He had 

earned bachelor’s and 

master’s degrees in electrical 

engineering at Lowell Tech. 

1971 

A piece by Vince Bennett has 

been included as one chapter 

in the book, “Young Scientist 

Journeys.” The book is the 

first of a trilogy written for 

those aged 12 to 20 who are 

inspired to pursue careers in 

science or to use science in 

other careers. Vince’s chapter 

details his journey from an 

engineer focused on improving 

the papermaking process 

to one viewing life as a 

process focused on improving 

his corner of the world by 

making every interaction 

positive. Vince is now 

semi-retired and focused 

on consulting and contract 

engineering. 

Mark Cocozza and his wife 

Susan (Scanlon) ’69 visited 

the Stanley Cup in the home 

of their neighbor, Boston Bruins’ 

player Zdeno Chara, after 

the Bruins 2010/2011 season. 

Betty Yokell, director of Performing 

Arts for Fall River 

public schools, has retired 

after completing a 40-year career. 

Husband Louis, a music 

teacher in the city, retired at 

the same time and the two 

say they will keep busy traveling 

and dabbling in digital 

photography. Betty also will 

continue to put her French 

horn to good use as a member 

of the Fall River Symphony 

Orchestra. 

CLOSE-UP CLASS OF 1980 


Inspired by Catastrophe, 

Today She Makes Music for Peace 

Opportunity, as we all know, sometimes comes in 

unlikely guises. But few unlikelier than the one it 

took for Gael Berberick ’80 in the spring of 1995. 

She was living with her husband and their four 

children in Fort Sill, Okla., where her husband had 

then been stationed for two years. It was the day 

after the Oklahoma City bombing; she was on her 

way to a sing-along at her daughter’s school. 

“I didn’t have a 

song to sing,” she recently 

told a reporter 

in Rhode Island, “but 

all of a sudden this 

beautiful song just 

came [to me].” 

She wrote down 

its beginning in the 

car on the way to the 

school, the following 

four verses later at home. The next day, “Hope for 

Peace” was performed at St. John of God’s Parish in 

Fort Sill, where she worked as a church musician. 

Not long after, it started airing on local radio—and 

is still heard regularly on stations throughout the 

Midwest. The song earned her $3,500, which she 

donated to a scholarship fund for the children of 

some of the bombing victims. 

It was the first of many such songs Berberick 

would publish, though she had been involved with 

sacred music for years—beginning as a young girl in 

Marshfield, singing and playing the guitar for her 

local parish. Writing songs, though, had begun later 

for her: inspired by the day, in 1989 in Fort Leavenworth, 

Kansas, when she’d discovered liturgical 

music. “It was the most uplifting music I had ever 

heard in the Catholic Church,” she would remember 

later. [From that moment on] I wanted to write 

music for the Church.” 

And so she did. Not long after, she began 

composing songs and sending them off to liturgical 

publishers; but until “Hope for Peace,” none would 

see the light of day. 

The rejection letters, though, are long behind 

her now. As of early this year, Berberick had published 

more than 50 songs with liturgical- music publishers—including 

the recent “Mass of the New 

Covenant,” co-written with Barney Walker, which 

was introduced in Catholic parishes beginning in 

November. “You don’t make a living doing this 

kind of work,” says Berberick, who is orchestra 

director at Tiverton High School in Rhode Island. 

“You have to have some higher calling—a vocation.” 


Classnotes 



Actresses, from left, Sheriden Thomas, Ellen Colton and Cheryl McMahon perform Jack Neary’s 

“The Porch” at the Stoneham Theatre. 

Jack Neary: The Unpretentious Playwright of Lowell 

Precisely at 9 a.m.—the appointed meeting 

time—actor, director and playwright Jack 

Neary ’73 is outside the River View Diner, 

checking his phone to make sure I haven’t 

canceled or gotten lost. Signature Red Sox 

hat perched atop an engaging Irish mug, his 

handshake reveals a bit of shyness. 

Without looking at the menu—it’s clear 

he’s been here before—he orders up an omelet. 

I do, too, but I skip the home fries, explaining 

that I’m trying to “behave.” He tells me he’s 

behaving, too, by skipping the bacon. 

I tell him I’m awestruck—this man has 

published 34 plays, in addition to his storied 

career directing, acting and serving as artistic 

director of the summer theater programs at 

Mount Holyoke and Northampton’s New 

Century Theatre, which he co-founded at 

Smith College. His work has been widely 

produced; perhaps his best-known work, “Jerry 

Finnegan’s Sister,” was performed all over 

the country, played in Paris and toured France. 

“To Forgive, Divine,” professionally introduced 

at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, was 

purchased for film by Walt Disney Pictures. 

I confess that I’ve read every available excerpt 

online. “Jesus Christ!” he responds. 

“Seriously?” 

This reaction is indicative of a special 

kind of Irishman. The antithesis of the often 

typecast Lucky Charms rogue, Neary is a 

man who won’t—for a single minute—get 

too full of himself. 

“My great uncle was right off the boat 

from Ireland. I remember him sitting with 

my uncle at the table, going on about how 

he was hit by ‘the very first automobile ever 

driven in Ireland!’ He goes on and on with 

the story, and my uncle is just looking at him 

straight in the eye. At the end of the story, 

my uncle simply says, ‘That is a lie.’ ” 

His favorite playwrights include Neil Simon, 

whom he describes as a master at 

creating characters who ring true, and are 

funny. They aren’t forced—they feel real, 

and absent the phony sitcom laugh tracks. 

Neary strives for the same in his characters, 

mining his own truth to present fully formed, 

fallible people. The inspiration for “The 

Porch” came from none other than his own 

mother and her two porch-sitting friends. 

“I know what to give actors, I know how 

to sell an audience,” he says. 

He’s not making empty boasts. “The Porch” 

earned wide critical acclaim. Dick Flavin, 

Emmy-award winning author and humorist 

said, “‘The Porch’ is everything theatre should 

be. It is endearing, drop-dead funny, heartbreaking 

and, in the end, triumphant. 

I left the theater thinking to myself, gee, I 

wish I'd written that." 

Perhaps more importantly, audiences loved 

it—68 of the 72 performances at the Stoneham 

Theater ended with standing ovations. “But 

standing O’s are easier to get these days,” 

Neary cautions. “You know, the lights go up, 

and people stand up to leave, then one person 

claps and everyone sort of joins in.” 

But for all his success as a playwright, 

Neary’s art has a deeper foundation. “I spent 

many years acting and directing, so I have a 

good sense of what will work,” he says. 

In fact, Neary was 35 before he wrote his 

first play, “First Night.” A member of the 

Dramatists Guild, the Actor’s Equity Association 

and the Screen Actors Guild, he recently 

had a role in Ben Affleck’s Boston-based 

movie “The Town” and auditioned for the 

role of Alice Ward’s husband in “The Fighter.” 

Earlier roles include both Felix and Oscar in 

“The Odd Couple,” Clarence in the musical 

“A Wonderful Life,” Amos in “Chicago” and 

Maurice in “Beauty and the Beast.” On network 

television, he has appeared in “Spenser: 

For Hire” and, more recently, on “Law and 

Order” and Showtime’s series “Brotherhood.” 

He also directed Cindy Williams from TV's 

“Laverne and Shirley” in 2009 in his play 

“Kong’s Night Out” at the Meadow Brook 

Theatre in Michigan. 

As far as the writing process goes, Neary 

says, “I often begin with an idea about a play 

with a particular actor in mind—‘First Night’ 

started with a role I knew would be perfect 

for Maryann Plunkett.” 

Plunkett—a Tony-Award winning actress 

who attended Lowell State with Neary— 

very nearly played the role off-Broadway in 

1994, but had to bow out when she learned 

she was expecting. “First Night” was first 

produced professionally at the MRT. 

So, what’s next for this man of many 

talents? Two things: children’s plays, and a 

book proposal. 

“Lately, I’ve been writing a lot of stuff for 

kids—a lot of parodies of classic stories,” 

Neary says. 

He’s also forayed into another creative 

outlet: developing a book proposal for Jeanne 

Stawiecki, a remarkable woman who has 

completed marathons and climbed the highest 

peak on every continent—including Everest 

on her third try. 

And he has high hopes for his most recent 

play, “Auld Lang Syne,” a two-character comedy 

that is currently being considered by an 

Emmy Award-winning TV star and a Tony 

Award-winning actress. 

Oh yeah, and then there’s the summer 

musical theater program he’d like to create 

for Lowell. 

While many would rest upon such accomplishments—boast 

about them, even—Neary 

isn’t that guy. 



1972 

Michael Paloian, an instructor 

at UMass Lowell, is a recognized 

expert in plastics part 

design. His vascular imaging 

device, VeinViewer, which 

won the 2011 Medical Design 

Excellence Award, uses 

near-infrared light and other 

patented technologies to project 

a real-time digital image 

of patient vasculature directly 

onto the surface of the skin. 

1976 

Ted Stokes has published a 

book about entrepreneurship. 

1977 

Pervez Qureshi has been 

named president and chief executive 

officer of Epicor Software 

Corporation, an international 

business with customers 

in 150 countries. Pervez had 

been president and CEO of 

Activant Solutions from 2006 

until that company and Epicor 

were combined. He brings 

to his new post more than 20 

years of management experience 

in the software and 

technology industry. 

1978 

Jerry Colella, vice president 

and COO of MKS Instruments, 

joined other senior 

management of MKS in ringing 

the NASDAQ opening 

bell on June 15, 2011 in 

recognition of the 50th anniversary 

of the founding of 

the company. Jerry also serves 

as a member of the Manning 

School of Business Advisory 

Board. 

Gale Pemberton was remarried 

in March 2011, to Robert 

Knowles, a retired teacher 

from Michigan. Her grandson, 

Joseph Beagley, is a freshman 

at UMass Lowell. 

Susan Laite Tansey is an 

elementary music teacher in 

Wareham, where her duties 

include classroom music for 

grades 1-5 as well as directing 

the chorus and two bands. 

Susan also participates in 

local chorus and woodwind 

ensembles. 

1980 

Joseph Carelli, executive vice 

president for commercial 

lending at Citizens Bank, has 

been named president, heading 

up the bank’s New Hampshire 

and Vermont operations. 

Barbara Balch Packales recently 

became technology 

chair for the North Carolina 

Music Educators Association. 

She continues to participate 

as a board member of both the 

TI:MENC Chapter and of the 

National Association for 

Music Education Society for 

General Music. Her current 

assignment is at Olds Elementary 

School in Raleigh, teaching 

K-5 music and technology 

integration. 

1981 

Bonnie Comley, and husband 

Stewart Lane, recently 

visited campus to attend the 

Chancellor’s Leadership 

Society reception at the 

UMass Lowell Inn & 

Conference Center. 

1986 

Michael McGovern has been 

vice president of Information 

Technology at the Cambridge 

Trust Company for the last 

eight and a half years. He has 

been in the IT field for more 

than 25 years. 

DARLA HANLEY ’86, dean of the Professional Education 

Division at Berklee College of Music in Boston, has been 

elected to the Jazz Education Network board of directors. 

This national organization is in its third year and replaces 

the former International Jazz Educators Association. 

1987 

Stephen Russell is a senior 

talent acquisition manager for 

CVS Caremark Corp., a Fortune 

25, $100 billion healthcare 

company with more than 

200,000 employees and 7,200 

stores across the United 

States. He manages national 

recruiting efforts to identify, 

attract and secure top business, 

healthcare and retail 

professionals. Steve, the son 

of Richard Russell, ’61, began 

his career with Citizens 

Financial Group and Fidelity 

Investments. He lives in 

East Providence, R.I., with 

his wife, Rosa, and their children 

Zachary, Christopher 

and Monica. 

1989 

Rich Cusolito, vice president 

of Sales, North America for 

Technicolor, has been named 

a director of business development 

for Pelican Products, a 

manufacturer of high-performance 

protective case solutions 

and advanced portable 

LED lighting systems. Rich 

brings more than 15 years of 

business development, sales 

and customer relationship 

management experience to 

his new post. 

1992 

Susan Dirks ’92, ’95 is coowner 

of North Shore Nurse 

Practitioners LLC, which provides 

mental health services. 

1993 

Tina Santos has been named 

vice president for patient care 

and chief nursing officer at 

Heywood Hospital in Gardner. 

Prior to this appointment, 

Tina was director of adult and 

in-patient services at Lowell 

General Hospital. 

Dante Varrasso has been 

named head coach of the 

varsity wrestling team at Mc- 

Quaid Jesuit High School, a 

private Catholic college 

preparatory school in 

Brighton, N.Y. Dante, who 

has taught history at McQuaid 

Jesuit High since 2004, also 

coached wrestling at various 

other levels during that time. 

1996 

After a 13-year career in 

financial services, Steve 

DeSimone began classes this 

fall at Bentley University to 

pursue a Ph.D. in accounting. 

Steve has also 

been teaching 

a Financial 

Accounting 

course at 

UMass Lowell 

since January 

2010. 

Cheryl J. Henry is chief 

branding officer and senior 

vice president of Ruth's Hospitality 

Group Inc. (RHGI), 

the company that owns the 

Ruth's Chris Steak House, 

Mitchell's Fish Market, 

Mitchell's Steakhouse and 

Cameron's 

Steakhouse. 

Cheryl is responsible 

for 

developing 

and executing 

the company’s 

marketing and 

branding strategy, enhancing 

existing sales initiatives and 

developing new revenue centers 

for all RHGI brands. Prior 

to joining the RHGI team, 

Cheryl was the chief of staff 

for the mayor of Orlando, 

where she was instrumental in 

the development of $1.2 billion 

in downtown entertainment 

venues, including 

a performing arts center 

and new arena. 

1997 

Adam Miloro has been 

named a vice president of 

Longfellow Advisors, a 

Boston-based retirement plan 

consulting and advisory firm. 

Adam previously had served 

as a senior consultant and 

has written for the Employee 

Benefit Plan Review. He 

recently was granted the 

Certified Financial Planner 

(CFP) designation by the 

Certified Financial Planner 

Board of Standards. CFP is 

the industry’s top designation 

for financial planners. 

1998 

Jodie Minahan is the senior 

placement specialist for the 

Youth Villages Intercept 

Intensive In-Home services 

program in Woburn and 

throughout Middlesex County. 

The organization 

helps 

children with 

emotional, 

behavioral 

and mental 

health issues 

and their families. 

Jodie 

now lives in Haverhill. 

2003 

Kate Hanson Foster has 

had her first book of poems, 

“Mid Drift,” 

published by 

Loom Press of 

Lowell. The 

compilation 

of 38 poems 

reflects the 

drama of family life and other 

subjects she observed while 

growing up in Andover and, 


Classnotes 

later, while attending UMass 

Lowell. Kate holds a master 

of fine arts degree from the 

Bennington Writing Seminars 

at Bennington College. 

Rosalind Gendreau and her 

wife, Nicole, celebrated the 

birth of their 

daughter, 

Dillon May, 

last July 9. 

2004 

Amy Berdos, who spent the 

last 15 years in the Norton 

Public School system—first as 

an elementary school teacher 

and most recently as K-12 

director of Curriculum and 

Instruction—has been appointed 

assistant superintendent 

of Foxboro Public Schools. 

Amy, who topped a field of 

34 applicants for the position, 

holds a doctorate in Leadership 

in Schooling from UMass 

Lowell. She also earned a 

degree in architecture and 

building construction from 

Texas A&M and considered 

working on Boston’s Big Dig 

project before her love of 

math, science and children 

pointed her toward the 

teaching profession. 

Ali Bogdan has joined Avison 

Young, a commercial real estate 

company in Boston, as a 

brokerage assistant, a post in 

which she leads various marketing 

projects and supports 

the company’s suburban brokerage 

team. She came to Avison 

Young from Noble Wealth 

Management, an independent 

financial planning firm. 

2005 

Isa Cann is a 

director, website 

designer 

and website 

video producer 

at Media 

Architects, 

which serves clients in the 

New England area. 

Greg Maloney, an SRT major, 

has been working in Los 

Angeles as technical music supervisor 

for Oscar-nominated 

film composer Danny Elfman 

for the past three years. His 

most recent project was 

“IRIS,” a new 

Cirque du Soleil 

show that will be 

featured at the 

Kodak Theatre 

in Hollywood. 

Greg is currently 

working with 

Elfman on the film scores to 

“Hunger Games” and “Men 

in Black 3.” 

Beth Odian graduated cum 

laude from Marquette University 

Law School in May 2011. 

Following graduation, she accepted 

a temporary position 

clerking for federal magistrate 

judges William Callahan and 

Patricia Gorence in the Eastern 

District of Wisconsin. Her 

clerkship ended 

in November. 

Although she 

does not currently 

have job plans 

following the 

conclusion of her 

clerkship, she is 

excited to begin the next 

stage of her career. A native 

of Wenham, Beth graduated 

magna cum laude from UMass 

Lowell in 2005 with a degree 

in business. While at UMass 

Lowell, she was a member 

and two-year captain of the 

women’s varsity soccer team. 

2006 

Mandy Whittier Breton was 

married in July 2010 to Jeremie 

Breton. She is working 

toward a master's degree in elementary 

education at Salem 

State University and expects 

to graduate in May 2012. 

Cam Preciado, who earned 

his degree in graphic arts, is 

using the talent acquired in 

that discipline to provide free 

design work for nonprofit humanitarian 

organizations. His 

first “customer” was Living 

Continued on Page 52 

19 CLOSE-UP CLASS OF 1992 AND 1993 

The Odd Couple: Sharing a Home and a Marriage, 

From Different Sides of the Fence 

To all those who lament the incivility of our society, who bemoan that we’ve 

grown too polarized as a people to any longer see past the differences between 

us—there is a living, breathing rebuttal: 

Dwight Robson and Lena Robinson, husband and wife. 

Robson ’93 and Robinson ’92 are the James Carville and Mary Matalin of 

Massachusetts politics, but without the fanfare. She’s a consultant to Republicans, 

he to Democrats; her values run to low taxes and small government, his are 

rooted in more help for the little guy. He wrote a check last fall to the Deval 

Patrick campaign; she canceled it out with a bigger one to Charlie Baker. When 

it comes to politics, they don’t agree on much. 

And yet. 

And yet they’ve been together since they met at ULowell—where she was as 

left-wing as he was (“of the ACLU card-carrying persuasion”) until she read Ayn 

Rand. They have two children together, share a home on the North Shore, and 

only rarely give way to screams. ("Occasionally I lose my cool,” she told a 

reporter last fall. “Dwight really doesn't.") They made it through last year’s 

election by agreeing on no lawn signs. 

But there are moments. There are flash points. 

Mitt Romney is one. ("Dwight has a personal thing with that," Robinson told 

the reporter.) Al Sharpton is another. (“Don't even go there,” she said to her 

husband; “he’s kryptonite to me.”) And he’s never been happy with her membership 

in the NRA. 

Still, there is common ground—which is something they work hard to stress. 

She is friends with Shannon O'Brien, former Democratic candidate for governor; 

he’s worked on behalf of charter schools, which have strong Republican backing. 

"I never did see things in black and white," he said last year. "Democrat, good; 

Republican, bad—I don't see politics [that way]." 

So the next curmudgeon you come across, arguing that we’re too divided to 

get past our differences, or that Congress is too partisan to ever get anything 

done? 

Send him out to Marblehead to take a lesson from Lena and Dwight. –G.D. 




From a Teenager’s Passion 

to a Lifetime Career 

It began as a volunteer summer job, more 

than 30 years ago. She was 15, a highschool 

student with an interest in science. 

But somehow, the job never ended. 

“It just kept on expanding,” says UMass 

Lowell Education Asst. Prof. Michelle 

Scribner-MacLean ’87, ’90, ’99 of her 

relationship with Boston’s Museum of 

Science. “I just kept going back—working 

different jobs, at the front desk, in the 

library, just about 

everywhere you could 

work. I finally did 

leave to teach elementary 

school—but 

I came back to work 

in the summers.” 

Over the years, 

her jobs there grew 

more diverse, and more responsible: “I 

did the research for my master’s degree 

in the butterfly lab. There I was, with 

the keys to collections of butterflies going 

back to the 1800s. There’s almost no 

way to describe the things I learned.” 

Recently, the museum produced a 

video, “The Heart of the Museum,” which 

profiles four people whose lives have 

been touched by their exposure to it. 

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, 

who grew up in Medford, was one of the 

four; another was Scribner-MacLean. “It 

was a real honor,” she says, “to be able to 

talk about how important, how truly special, 

the place has been for me.” –G.D. 


Classnotes 

Waters Center of Hope in 

Lowell, which needed new 

logo and design work when 

it changed its name from 

“ministry” to “center.” 

Cam and his fiancée have 

launched Christian Hill 

Studios, a graphic arts and 

apparel business. 

2007 

Marine 1st Lt. Matthew 

White, of East Bridgewater, 

who earned his degree in 

sound recording technology, 

returned from Afghanistan 

this past summer after deploying 

with the 8th Engineering 

Support Battalion as a battery 

communications officer. 

Salem’s Derby Wharf to New 

York City this past summer 

along with more than three 

dozen members of SCIP, the 

Park Service’s Student Career 

Intake Program. The program 

gave the Massachusetts participants 

an opportunity to bond 

with other SCIP students from 

New York and Baltimore. 

Saoran, who had been in the 

program for three years, is the 

first SCIP student from Lowell 

to secure a permanent position 

with the Park Service. 

2010 

Ryan Cahill has graduated 

from the U.S. Navy Officer 

Training Command in 

Newport, R.I., and was 

commissioned with the rank 

of ensign. 


Matt says he’s going to stay 

in the Marine Reserves and is 

looking for a job in the audio 

visual, audio engineering or 

television fields. Meanwhile, 

he says he’s trying to become 

adjusted to civilian life. 

2008 

Amanda Coffey, a board-certified 

physician assistant, has 

joined the Amherst (N.H.) 

Family Practice. Amanda is 

affiliated with Foundation 

Medical Partners and is on 

the staff at Southern New 

Hampshire Medical Center. 

After earning her bachelor 

of science degree summa cum 

laude from UMass Lowell, she 

earned a master’s in physician 

assistant studies at the Manchester 

campus of the Massachusetts 

College of Pharmacy 

and Health Sciences. 

2009 

Saoran Roeuth, an administrative 

support assistant at the 

National Park Service in 

Lowell, sailed aboard the 

Friendship of Salem, a replica 

of a 1796 cargo ship, from 

2011 

Sara Shipley, a certified family 

nurse practitioner, joined 

Family Practice of South 

Nashua. Sara is affiliated with 

Foundation Medical Partners 

and is on the active staff at 

Southern New Hampshire 

Medical Center. 


Alum Stars in Microsoft Video 

In a new video produced by Microsoft, Mark Micire, who received his doctorate 

in computer science from UMass Lowell, demonstrates how his DREAM controller 

can command a swarm of robots by using his fingertips. Computer Science Prof. 

Holly Yanco and her Robotics Lab are also featured in the video. 

Pair Win First Place in National Design Contest 

Adam McLaughlin and Jordan Tye met as middleschool 

students at the University’s summer Design 

Camp. Nearly a decade later, the pair were part 

of a team that won first place in a national 

design contest. The recent graduates— 

both working as teaching assistants at 

the University as they each pursue their 

master’s in mechanical engineering— 

took top honors in the recent Design for 

Direct Digital Manufacturing Competition, 

beating 11 other schools from across 

the country. Their entry (created along 

with current students Lisabet Sizer and 

Mark Damplo) was a custom forearm 

handgrip that allows people using crutches 

to comfortably and effortlessly control 

an iPod while walking. “With such a 

large number of crutches sold, if this 

product could reach even just a small 

fraction of crutch users, the product would still 

make a huge positive impact on the lives of people 

with physical disabilities,” says McLaughlin. 




Fear and Fulfillment 


At 6-years-old, huddled in an attic apartment in 

Vienne, Isere in German-occupied France, Marguerite 

Waldron ’89 was terrified. She sat in 

darkness—strict curfews meant lights out at an 

early hour—and heard the clicking of German 

soldiers’ boots as they 

marched down her cobblestone 

street. She hoped 

they weren’t coming for 

her—they knocked at the 

door of her neighbor instead. 

Today, life is much 

different for Waldron, but 

a part of her never forgets. 

After putting her husband 

through MIT and her three children through 

college (one at UMass Lowell) she cast around 

for something for herself. 

“When the children were grown, I had the 

luxury of more introspection,” says Waldron. 

She’d always been interested in painting and, 

at the urging of a friend, took a class at the 

DeCordova Museum. Following that, she began 

lessons with Lowell art instructor Ann Schecter, 

and she was on her way. 

She enrolled in the University’s art program 

at 50, and her official love affair with art began. 

“I love abstract expressionism—it is an active 

kind of communication; the person viewing it 

has their own personal, individual reaction to 

it,” she says. 

She doesn’t like art that is simple, or too 

literal. “I don’t like pretty little pictures,” says 

Waldron. 

Her canvases are typically filled with vibrant 

colors, and often contain images of ladders and 

doors, a throwback to her fearful childhood. “I think the ladders may 

represent trying to get out—a means of escape, and the doors evoke 

fear of who might be behind them,” she says. 

After graduation, Waldron exhibited work at the Kingston Gallery 

in Boston before moving to York, Maine. 

Recently, in a moment of serendipity, her daughter, Nicole, invited 

her to a wine tasting and art exhibit at The Clown in York. After surveying 

the featured artist’s work, Waldron felt a renewed confidence 

in her own abilities, and approached the Clown’s manager, Monique 

Meadows. 

“I asked her if she would consider showing my work, and she asked 

what kind of medium I use,” recalls Waldron. 

“When I told her I paint abstract, she nearly jumped out of her 

skin! She said ‘I love abstract!’ ” And a friendship was born. 

“Ajmer” by Marguente Waldon 

“I visited Marguerite’s studio, and I imagine I felt the way Alfred 

Stieglitz did upon discovering Georgia O’Keeffe,” Meadows says. “I 

was absolutely blown away with the quality and quantity of her 

work—I wanted to yell at her and say ‘Where have you been? ’ ” 

A showing of 28 of Waldron’s pieces soon followed, with critical 

acclaim and sales. But selling her work isn’t a huge motivator for 

Waldron. She says, “If a work sells, so be it. If it doesn’t, I get to have 

it back, and look at it on my wall.” 

She credits Meadows’ enthusiastic reaction with a new commitment 

to her work. 

“She has reenergized me to continue to work—I value her friendship 

enormously,” she says. 


Classnotes 


Harish Hande Wins 

‘Asia’s Nobel Prize’ 

Harish Hande, who earned a master’s 

degree in renewable energy engineering 

in 1998 and a doctorate in mechanical 

engineering (with a concentration in energy) 

in 2000, was chosen to receive the 

2011 prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award. 

The co-founder and managing director 

of Solar Electric Light Company (SELL- 

CO) India was recognized for his “passionate 

and pragmatic efforts to build a 

social enterprise that brings customized, 

affordable, and sustainable electricity to 

India’s vast rural population, encouraging 

the poor to become asset creators.” 

SELCO has pioneered access to solar 

electricity for rural families living below 

India’s poverty line through a combination 

of customized home-lighting systems and 

innovative financing. 

The annual Magsaysay award—widely 

considered to be Asia’s equivalent of the 

Nobel Prize—is named in honor of the 

former Philippine president who died in 

a plane crash in 1957. Awardees receive 

a cash prize of $50,000. –E.A. 


Inmemoriam 


Leo King, Remembered: 

a Legacy of Caring 

Leo King, who died this fall at the age of 

81, was a man who touched lives. And, 

nearly as often, changed them. 

The memories that trailed his nearly 

30 years as dean of students—beginning 

at Lowell Tech in 1967, finally retiring 

from UMass Lowell in 1996—are vivid. 

“He was definitely 

pro-student,” remembers 

Ellen Duggan, 

who served as his 

assistant dean for 

years, then took over 

upon his retirement. 

“He was absolutely 

devoted [to them].” 

“A 24-hour policeman, a 24-hour 

chaplain, and 24-hour friend of the students,” 

said Larry Martin, who was dean 

of admissions through much of King’s 

tenure, to a reporter earlier this year. 

“He had the hardest job in the 

University, without question.” 

A former student, writing from Florida, 

remembers a crisis 30 years ago: “I 

asked your secretary for five minutes with 

you to explain a problem. You gave me 

an hour. You extended a hand, and held 

me accountable. You made an impact 

on my life, an impact I am still [feeling] 

today. I thank God for you.” 

Today’s Dean of Students, Larry 

Siegel, who says he came to UMass Lowell 

in large part because of King, remembers 

the phone calls he made to arrange 

student loans, or credit at the bookstore 

for a student who couldn’t afford his 

texts, or a proper graduation ceremony 

for a prison inmate who’d completed his 

coursework through the mail. At least 

once, says Siegel, he remembers King 

taking out his wallet to give a student 

money for food. 

“Hundreds of students owe their college 

degrees to him. He would spend a 

lot of his time meeting with [those] who 

felt they were at dead ends – whether it 

was personal, academic or financial. 

He really felt like they were his kids. 

He used to refer to them like that.” 

Donations in Leo’s memory can be 

made to the Leo F. King Scholarship 

Endowment Fund. Checks, payable 

to UMass Lowell, can be sent to the 

Office of University Advancement, 

One University Avenue, Southwick Hall 

250, Attn: Kristen Walsh. 

Marianne Heimburg Knowlton: 

Teacher, Writer, Artist 

Marianne Heimburg Knowlton, who taught English 

at the University for 35 years, was a devoted student 

of the artistic and the literary. 

“She sought out places her favorite authors knew 

and loved in order to know the writers better,” says 

Martha McGowan, a retired English professor and 

longtime friend. “I have photos she took of one of 

Jane Austen’s homes, and of a café Hemingway 

frequented in Spain.” 

Knowlton’s family—including former husband 

Ted, daughters Polly and Liza and son Larry (another 

son, Kned, predeceased her) recently held a memorial 

service for her following her death at 81. 

“Whether deeply immersed in a popular pageturner 

or a dog-eared classic, my mother was perhaps 

happiest when surrounded by stacks of beloved 

books,” says Polly. 

Knowlton found common ground with students 

in challenging the status quos of the ’60s and ’70s. 

“Students flocked to enroll in her course, The 

Modern Lyric, where Joni Mitchell and James 

Taylor songs were played and discussed in their 

cultural contexts,” says Polly. 

Prof. Rudolph Deanin: 

Plastics Hall of Fame 

Prof. Rudolph Deanin of UMass 

Lowell’s Plastics Engineering 

Department died on Aug. 7 in 

Lowell. He was 90. 

A member of the Plastics Hall of Fame and 

a fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers, the 

longtime Westford resident taught at the University 

for 41 years, until his retirement in 2008 at age 87. 

He authored more than 300 technical papers and 

12 books and held 36 patents. 

“Rudy’s greatest accomplishment was establishing 

the Plastics Engineering Graduate Program, which has 

elevated the status of the department and has attracted 

graduate students from around the world,” says 

department chair Prof. Robert Malloy. “He served as 

the program’s coordinator throughout his academic career. 

He will be missed by all.” 

“I still remember when I applied for the M.S./Ph.D. 

program in Plastics Engineering, Dr. Deanin provided 

me with all the necessary information promptly via 

email or via letter typed using his favorite typewriter,” 

says former student Rahul Panchal. “When I met him 

for the first time, I was amazed that at 80+ he was so 

active, prompt, polite and down-to-earth.” 

Donations in Rudy’s memory can be made to the 

Professor Rudolph Deanin Blending and Compounding 

Laboratory Fund. Checks, payable to UMass 

Lowell, can be sent to the Office of University 

Advancement, One University Avenue, Southwick 

Hall 250, Attn: Kristen Walsh. 

Brenda Atwood Pinardi: 

Portrait of Generosity 

Moonchild by Brenda Atwood Pinardi 

Every once in a while, a teacher comes along who 

changes lives. From all accounts, Brenda Atwood Pinardi 

was one of these. Pinardi was a fixture in the Art Department—as 

both professor and chair—for 35 years before 

her death in 2011. 

Pinardi and her husband. Enrico (Henry), an art 

instructor at Rhode Island College, each went beyond 

the traditional role of teacher, and became—to a lucky 

group—more like parents. Doug Bell, a former student of 

Henry’s, describes spending time at the couple’s Hyde 

Park home: 

“A few of us would visit them for the weekend, and in 

return for yard work, Brenda would prepare wonderful 

meals for us. We’d stay up until all hours working on our 

artwork in their studios. My father died in the ’80s, and I 

turned to Henry. Then my mother died a few years later, 

and I turned to Brenda. Since then, I have considered 

them my parents. 

Former Art Dept. colleague Jim Coates remembers 

Pinardi as a mentor: “Brenda was chair when I was 

hired. She was extraordinarily generous with her time 

and showed genuine patience and compassion. 

I’ve often described her as the glue that held the 

department together.” 

For former student Jay Kamins, Brenda’s voice is a 

powerful memory. “Whenever I think of Brenda, it’s 

her voice that first comes rushing back—her tone was 

buoyant, relaxed and accepting,” he says. 

“Last week, I spent some time in her old studio, 

seeing everything as she left it a year before. Collections 

of every sort filled the room—including playful assemblages 

of shells, old dolls, and unusual objects found from 

years of hunting with Henry. On her desk, CDs of Elvis, 

The Doors, Bob Dylan. Off to the side, brushes are lined 

up, well cleaned and ready to go,” he says. 

Colleagues and former students honored Atwood 

Pinardi at two recent exhibits, both of which benefited 

the Brenda Atwood Pinardi Scholarship. 


Inmemoriam 


Russ Willingham ’06: Died Serving the Public 

Russell Willingham Jr. used to work 

multiple security shifts at a hospital 

on weekends to make his UMass Lowell 

dream come true. While also holding 

down a job as an RA on the ninth 

floor of Fox Hall, he wanted desperately 

to earn a criminal justice degree. And 

he did, in 2006. 

But it was the dangerous profession 

he loved that claimed his life. Willingham, 28, died in the 

line of duty on July 30, during a shift with the Winston-Salem 

(N.C.) police department. Willingham was responding to a 

call regarding a possible drunk driver when he crashed into a 

tree and became trapped in his patrol car. 

A native of Framingham, Willingham is survived by his 

wife, Courtney, in addition to his parents, two brothers and a 

sister. 

“The first time I met him, he was the resident advisor in 

Fox Hall, and I was director of Fox Hall,” recalls Nicholas 

Piscitello, associate director of Parking and Transportation for 

the University. “He was an easygoing guy, but very passionate 

about criminal justice. He really wanted to be an officer.” 

Catherine Goodwin ’43: Drawing Life Out of Gravestones 

and Old Canvasses 

Lowell was her life, and her lifelong love. She 

was rooted in its present, but made of herself—above 

all other things—a curator of its 

past. When Catherine Goodwin ’43 died, in 

June at the age of 89, she took with her a 

knowledge and intimacy with the city that 

may never be seen again. 

“She always struck me as someone who 

straddled two worlds,” says Richard Howe, a 

local attorney and blogger who, sadly but willingly, 

will now carry on the tradition of leading 

the cemetery walking tours that Goodwin 

made her calling for nearly 30 years. “She was 

a very modern person, with one foot squarely 

in the 21st century, but so immersed in the 

history of the city, it’s as if she had her other 

foot planted firmly in the 19th.” 

She was a researcher, historian and scholar 

of all things Lowell. Beginning in the mid- 

1970s and continuing until near to the end of 

her life, she choreographed exhibits at the 

city’s museums and galleries that put the city’s 

past—its artists, mill workers, silversmiths, 

city fathers, the clothes they wore, the fabrics, 

china and portraits they crafted—vividly and 

memorably on display. Her cemetery tours, 

beginning in the early ’80s and informed by 

her exhaustive and loving research, revivified, 

for thousands of today’s residents, the longdead 

men and women who made the city 

what it is. Her 1992 book, “Mourning Glory: 

The Story of the Lowell Cemetery,” brought 

many of these figures to the page. 

“She always found the human connection,” 

says Irene Finneral, office manager of the 

Lowell Cemetery, “and translated the stories 

in a way her audience could feel.” 

Deceased 

YEAR* NAME YEAR* NAME YEAR* NAME YEAR* NAME YEAR* NAME 

1922 Gertrude Kenney Buckley 

1922 Julia Canty 

1922 Lillian Cohen 

1922 Dorothy Griffin Evans 

1923 Leon Davieau 

1923 Helen Powell Dorsey 

1923 Earl Hoffman 

1923 Henry Macher 

1924 Charles Bachelder 

1924 Samuel Burger 

1924 Winthrop Cody 

1924 Eleanor Costello 

1927 Mary Lynch Fisher 

1927 Mary Lenihan Fairbanks 

1927 David Currier 

1928 Edna Berry Learned 

1928 Thomas Connor 

1928 Paul Fasig 

1929 Marion Bustead Howard 

1929 Paul Evans 

1929 Patrick Hetherman 

1929 Fred Kennerley 

1931 David Taft 

1931 Ruth McKeon Kierstead 

1932 John Meehan 

1933 Marie Powers 

1933 Mildred Shanahan 

1935 Faustina Hall Dorr 

1936 Edna Steele Rittershaus 

1936 Loretta Gorman Francis 

1937 Barbara Thompson Havercamp 

1937 Clinton Grossman 

1937 Mary Jo Leahey 

1938 Dorothy Welch Breen 

1939 Estanislao Ocoma 

1940 Helen Fiske 

1940 Alice Foye 

1941 Phyllis Pidgeon Colucci 

1941 D. Ethel Cleary 

1941 Sidney Saltsman 

1942 Ellen Tierney O'Toole 

1942 Irene Lidwin 

1942 Josephine Peary Sankus 

1942 Janet Kenney Duffy 

1943 William Haggerty Jr 

1943 Catherine Hill Goodwin 

1945 Margaret Morgan Cunniff 

1946 Allen Sideman 

1946 Robert Bent 

1947 Kalman Kobrin 

1948 M. Dorgan 

1949 Parker Downing 

1949 Charles Sheehan 

1949 Seymour Lash 

1950 Joseph Weldon 

1950 Robert Sloan 

1950 Angela Orlando Russotto 

1950 Richard Fifield 

1950 Charles Squire 

1950 George Spicer 

1950 Norman Brunelle 

1951 Morris Socransky 

1951 Paul Cushman 

1951 John Knight 

1952 Harold MacLean 

1952 Charles Mack 

1952 Margaret Peters Smith 

1953 Lucinda Silk 

1953 Michael Dielendick 

1953 Charles Flamand 

1954 Donald Nichols 

1954 Harry Woessner 

1954 Lloyd Whitney Jr 

1954 Joseph Iannazzi 

1954 Charles Sturm 

1954 David Austin 

1955 Margaret Thomas Doyle 

1955 Ellen Lyons Martin 

1955 Barbara Slavin Axon 

1957 Terry Husson Kadir 

1957 Sultana Poulios Daoulas 

1957 Lewis Miller 

1958 Mona Griffin 

1958 Thomas Stanton 

1958 Elizabeth Haggerty Gunnery 

1958 Sherman Spiegel 

1958 Catherine Lee Kimball 

1959 Emile Genest 

1960 Rene Gaillardetz 

1961 Edward Anderson 

1962 Shalaby Shalaby 

1962 William Hadley 

1962 Charles Como 

1962 Kenneth Jacobs 

1963 David Preston 

1963 James Rice 

1964 James Nicosia Jr 

1964 Carlton Clark Jr 

1965 Raymond Lord Jr 

1965 Ronald Lareau 

1965 Donald Beede 

1965 Wayne Liptak 

1965 Robert Twigg 

1966 Carl Pitasi 

1967 Lois Choquette Sergi 

1967 Janice Thiel Leahy 

1968 Sandra Dlugosz Boileau 

1969 Neil Vallencourt 

1969 Joyce Scherer 

1969 George Zinkus 

1969 Walter Jones 

1970 Frederick Matthes Jr 

1970 John Bielat Jr 

1970 Donald Samowski 

1970 Francis Sevigny 

1970 Yu Wang 

1971 Judith Ozdemirer 

1971 Robert Moran 

1972 Gary Federici 

1972 James Fiore 

1972 Peter Mazur 

1972 James Pelletier 

1973 Robert Coleman 

1973 John Crosby Jr 

1973 Arthur Driscoll 

1973 Miles Robinson Jr 

1973 William Gallagher 

1973 Frederick Greathead 

1974 Bruce Cecere 

1975 William Pelosi 

1975 Thomas Toner 

1975 Bruce Fitzpatrick 

1975 George Vetter 

1975 Douglas Jenkins 

1976 Fred Heselton 

1976 Jacob Eyssi 

1976 William Gallagher 

1976 Douglas Abbott 

1976 Henry Croteau 

1976 Helen Sable 

1977 Irving Anderson 

1977 Karen Zaccardi 

1978 Nancei Radicchi 

1978 Paul Cavanaugh 

1978 Robert Dwyer 

1978 Pauline Michaud 

1978 Michael Savastano 

1978 Stanley Haney 

1979 Vivian Moores 

1979 David Phinney 

1979 Catherine Evans LeClaire 

1979 Patricia Blake Fuller 

1979 Robert Roche 

1979 John Johnston 

1979 Kin-Chan Chen 

1979 Peter Gagne 

1980 Karen Page 

1981 Edwin Zale Jr 

1982 Gary Richard 

1982 Catherine Privitera 

1982 Gerald Halstead 

1982 James McCaffrey 

1983 Petra Grant Kivikoski 

1983 William Cooper 

1983 Daniel Ryan 

1983 Michael Ackerman 

1984 James Patton Jr 

1984 Jenifer Thomas 

1984 Anthony Cavalieri 

1985 Mark Krawczyk 

1986 David Flaherty 

1986 Monique Ledoux Hines 

1987 Patricia Jacques 

1989 Joseph Vincent 

1990 Thomas Gleason 

1991 Karen Lacasse 

1991 Francis Trowbridge 

1992 Monica McGuire 

1992 Ruth Saltman 

1993 Frederick Wheeler 

1993 James Winter 

1994 Gordon Feltman 

1994 William Peacock 

1994 Michael Szufnarowski 

1994 David Birchenough 

1994 James Leonard Jr 

1995 Edward Lavigne 

1996 Burton Coburn 

1996 Marc Couture 

1996 Alexander d'Arbeloff 

1998 Mary Dunn 

1999 Charles Waldner 

2000 Paul Becker 

2000 Richard Orto 

2000 James Smith 

2002 Mary Gillis 

2002 Sheri Nilsen 

2003 Joanne Lindmark 

2006 Charles Panek 

2006 Russell Willingham Jr 

2008 Kim Forte 

Rudolph Deanin 

Brenda Pinardi 

Leo King 

* year of graduation 


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Winter 2012 - University of Massachusetts Lowell

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