Class Notes
The 1950s and ’60s featured a Winter Weekend hosted by the junior class, which included all sorts of winter fun.
1979
Mark Eagle had his second grandchild in June. He continues to mentor, advise, and invest in startups and does fractional CTO work in Denver, Colorado. He received his pickleball certification and has started teaching. His motto is make a difference, have fun, and oh, by the way, make some money.
Posted 2024-01-17
William J. Delaney joined Cohn & Dussi, a full-service law firm with its principal office in Boston, as counsel. He has had an active role in many of the significant commercial law and insolvency cases in Rhode Island over the past 34 years.
Posted 2021-09-29
David Hess was appointed to the board of directors for Woodward Inc., where he will also serve on the Compensation Committee and the Nominating and Governance Committee.
Posted 2021-09-29
Engineering
Paul Sicard writes: Almost 100 people from ’79 enjoyed last September’s 40th Reunion. We had an enjoyable kickoff at Wolff’s Biergarten and a very enjoyable class dinner buffet at Brown’s Revolution Hall, both along Troy’s River Street just north of the Green Island Bridge. As usual the Class of 1979 was by far the largest class there except for the 50 Year Club. Just think how we will dominate Reunion when that’s us in another 10 years. (Mark the year 2029 on your calendar now!) We had a blast with a ’70s-style band party (OK, it was a DJ) at Mother’s on Saturday night. I hadn’t seen the video of Meat Loaf doing “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” in years! What a wonderful time. Thanks to Karl Oestreich and Susan Brownell and everyone else on the Reunion planning committee.
Jeff Shapiro, the speaker at our class dinner, insists that when he retires from Disney later this year he is moving back to Boston from southern California because the housing prices are so much cheaper there. Twisted! And we had lots of people announcing retirement, including Pete McCowan, whose last day at the NY Department of Transportation was the Friday of Reunion.
Doug Lentivech left his wife Kathy home to mow the lawn while he spent Saturday afternoon at Reunion; Doug is a deputy commissioner for the New York State Department of Education, splitting his work between Albany and New York City.
Unfortunately, there is also sad news to pass along. Dave Shulder passed away suddenly at his home in Austin, Texas, on November 3, about a month after attending our 40th Reunion. Dave had worked 30-plus years as an engineer at IBM. I received word at Reunion that one of my nuclear engineering classmates, Steve Jaquez, had passed away last year. Steve had been running a website design business in LaGrange Highlands, Ill.
Posted 2020-05-19
Engineering
Bill Jameson was deployed with Team Rubicon in 2019 to Beaumont, Texas, and Grand Bahama Island for disaster relief for flooding and Hurricane Dorian. Bill was named the Charlotte, N.C., metro area field operations lead for Team Rubicon, an independent agency that provides disaster relief. Bravo, Bill!
Posted 2020-05-19
Business
C.J. Urlaub is now the senior vice president of strategic partnerships, integration, and care delivery at Mount St. Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston, N.Y. He had previously been president and CEO of Mercy Hospital in Buffalo.
Posted 2020-05-19
Engineering
Chuck Kunze has been appointed director of marketing and product management for 3A Composites USA, a global supplier of composite panels for the architecture, graphic display, and industry and transport markets.
Posted 2020-05-19
Ron Yu traveled to New York, Beijing, Turkey, Dubai, Doha, and Geneva (the UN World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO) among other places in the past year. He is celebrating the Year of the Pig with wild boar sightings near his urban Hong Kong home.
Posted 2019-10-01
Joe Campbell was the featured speaker at a lecture program in his hometown of Oneonta, N.Y., on "Combating Human Trafficking & Illicit Marketplaces on the Web Using Artificial Intelligence." Joe leads the Artificial Intelligence and Systems group at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.
Posted 2019-10-01
Ruth (Sessler) Bernstein is a professor in nonprofit studies at the University of Washington-Tacoma. She had previously worked in the oil industry after earning a master's in geology at Brown, and settled in Washington state where she and her husband, Jeffrey, raised their family. She completed a philanthropy program at Indiana University and a Ph.D. in management from Case Western Reserve before beginning her teaching career. "I teach with a focus on the United States and the Northwest nonprofit sectors," she says. Students in Ruth's classes work with local nonprofits to have real-world experience.
Posted 2019-10-01
Carson Taylor ’69, John Paserba ’88, and Nicholas Miller ’79 (l) - Daniel Sabin ’93 (r)
Engineering
Peter Fedun has joined Urban Engineers in Philadelphia as deputy practice leader for rail and transit. He has more than 30 years of engineering experience specializing in rail transit design for light rail transit, heavy rail, and high-speed rail. He is a registered professional engineer in six states, a member of the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA), and serves on the Committee of 12 – Rail Transit as secretary.
Posted 2019-03-10
Nick Miller has won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Utility Variable-Generation Integration Group for his work integrating wind and solar energy into electrical systems. Nick has worked for GE for 37 years and is a senior technical director of GE’s Energy Consulting Group. He has spent more than 15 years working as an inventor and technology developer for GE’s wind equipment business, focusing on making wind and solar power grid-friendly, including developing several patents.
Posted 2018-10-10
Paul Vitucci writes that while he was seriously considering retiring in the next year or two, he received an offer he could not refuse. He left American Bridge Co. after 22 years and started working as the quality manager for Brightline, a new express rail service in South Florida. His focus will be on the east-west rail line construction in the undeveloped corridor from the Florida east coast to the Orlando airport.
Posted 2018-10-10
Engineering
Robin (Block) Kemper was elected president of the American Society of Civil Engineers for the 2018-2019 term. She is the fifth woman to lead the organization in its 165-year history. Her induction in October as president-elect marks the first time in ASCE history that women hold all three levels of presidential leadership (president, past president, and president-elect).
Kemper is a senior risk engineering consultant for Zurich Services Corporation. As an ASCE member since 1979, she has held a variety of leadership roles including president of the New Jersey Section. In 2015, she was named Civil Engineer of the Year by the ASCE New Jersey Section, in recognition of her contributions to the civil engineering profession.
In a career that has spanned nearly four decades, Kemper has worked on many structural engineering building design projects, including the feasibility study of the Bethlehem Steel plant that helped transform the former historical plant into a vibrant community. She holds a Master of Engineering and a dual bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and building science from Rensselaer and is a licensed professional engineer in six jurisdictions.
Kemper joins the ranks of illustrious alumni who have served as ASCE president, including bridge engineer Charles Macdonald, Class of 1857, steel expert William Metcalf, Class of 1858, and Civil Engineer Corps leader Mordecai Endicott, Class of 1868. Posted 2018-03-18
Kemper is a senior risk engineering consultant for Zurich Services Corporation. As an ASCE member since 1979, she has held a variety of leadership roles including president of the New Jersey Section. In 2015, she was named Civil Engineer of the Year by the ASCE New Jersey Section, in recognition of her contributions to the civil engineering profession.
In a career that has spanned nearly four decades, Kemper has worked on many structural engineering building design projects, including the feasibility study of the Bethlehem Steel plant that helped transform the former historical plant into a vibrant community. She holds a Master of Engineering and a dual bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and building science from Rensselaer and is a licensed professional engineer in six jurisdictions.
Kemper joins the ranks of illustrious alumni who have served as ASCE president, including bridge engineer Charles Macdonald, Class of 1857, steel expert William Metcalf, Class of 1858, and Civil Engineer Corps leader Mordecai Endicott, Class of 1868. Posted 2018-03-18
Melanie Brown writes that after serving as chief patent counsel of Cytec Industries, she set up her own intellectual property law practice handling contracts, opinions, and patent protection. Melanie continues to serve on the board of BRICK Academy, a nonprofit established to turn around a failing elementary school in Newark, N.J.; last year, she started to mentor a BRICK family out of poverty, a process which included teaching the second grader to read, tutoring the mom for the GED and securing employment for her, and hosting the three children at her own home during their summer vacation.
Posted 2018-03-15
Bill Jameson retired as a lieutenant colonel from the Army Reserve in May 2017 after 37 years, having served as an Army engineer with the 1st Armored Division in Germany, and then in Korea with the Corps of Engineers.
Bill, who began his orienteering hobby back in ’75 at Rensselaer, was recently elected to the Orienteering USA board of directors and named secretary. He is now retired and living in South Carolina with his wife, Shelly, who is originally from Troy, and they have two children, adopted in Korea, who are now a doctor and a nurse. Posted 2018-03-15
Bill, who began his orienteering hobby back in ’75 at Rensselaer, was recently elected to the Orienteering USA board of directors and named secretary. He is now retired and living in South Carolina with his wife, Shelly, who is originally from Troy, and they have two children, adopted in Korea, who are now a doctor and a nurse. Posted 2018-03-15
Nariman Farvardin, president of Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., was featured in an article in the September 5 issue of Forbes on the use of computer science and advanced math classes in training financial analysts.
Posted 2018-03-15
Mark Eagle writes that he and his family have recently visited Iceland, the Panama Canal, and France. Having found traveling to be harder than working, Mark is now the director of development services for Uncommon Solutions, a technology consulting firm, and is the Denver RAN captain.
Posted 2018-03-15
Rich Lowney received the Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s Jeremiah Milbank Gold Medallion award at the organization’s national conference in Dallas recently. Since 1983, Rich has helped raise money and awareness and affect policy to advance the programs that serve more than 31,000 children in New Hampshire’s 13 Boys & Girls Clubs. Rich is also the president of the NH Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs.
Posted 2018-03-15
John Emmett has retired from his nuclear engineering career after four years with Commonwealth Edison in Chicago and then 34 years at the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. His last assignment was developing Susquehanna’s response to the Fukushima accident in compliance with NRC regulations and Institute for Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) industry guidance. He previously had been a reactor engineer, on-shift in plant operations (including a senior reactor operator certification), systems engineering supervision, and nuclear fuels engineering.
John writes he is now enjoying lots of tennis, being a volleyball referee, playing with his Porsche, and getting better at his hobbies of woodworking and photography. John is married to Bernis Soper ’80 and they live in Mountain Top, Pa., where they raised their two children, David and Grace. Posted 2018-03-15
John writes he is now enjoying lots of tennis, being a volleyball referee, playing with his Porsche, and getting better at his hobbies of woodworking and photography. John is married to Bernis Soper ’80 and they live in Mountain Top, Pa., where they raised their two children, David and Grace. Posted 2018-03-15
