Notes from the Cornell Class of 1991 - 1992 May/June

Class Notes, 1992 May/June

May 1992

I've lived in Ithaca for almost five years, now, but the weather never ceases to amaze me. It's early March as I write this, and while yesterday was sunny and 60 degrees, this morning finds several inches of snow on the ground. Enough weather commentary; on to this month's news. Paula Burdett is taking a year off before grad school; in the meantime, she's a lab technician in Cornell's food science department. Others remaining in (or returning to) Ithaca include Kimberly Brown, who's here working on a book after having spent the summer working for Xerox in Denver; Jennifer Nass, working as a research assistant in the entomology department; and Beth Goelzer Lyons, currently an editor for the Office of Publications Services. Beth married her high school sweetheart, Charles Lyons, last summer on a bridge at Upper Robert H. Treman State Park, and guests included classmate and maid of honor Barbara Burke, Beth's father Alan Goelzer '63, Mark Hunt '92, and Ron McCurdy '78.

Jared Aragona is writing TV coverage scenes for Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, and Meg Arnold has settled into her job as a telecommunications analyst for the systems department of the Royal Bank in Toronto. The new year found Pia Napolitano with a new career; she's now a marketing representative for the Atlanta Braves, and she'll be attending most of this season's home games as part of her job. David Kleidermacher is working as a computer programmer in Santa Barbara, while Kevin Covert recently started work for Foreign Policy magazine, after visiting Albania as an employee of the Agency for International Development. Kevin took along 200,000 schoolbooks for Albanian children and met with the minister of education while he was there.

Not only is Debra Epstein working as a teacher's assistant in the Upper Nyack (NY) Elementary School, but she has also taken the job of director at the Pearl River School-Aged Child Care Program in Pearl River, NY. It's quite a bit of work to take on all at once, but a Cornell undergraduate education should be good preparation for that. Another well-rounded member of our class is Molly Buchholz, who is taking a year off before attending law school at Northeastern; meanwhile, she worked all summer at a factory job at Kodak, and she's currently hostessing at a restaurant and volunteering lots of time at the public defender's office in Rochester.

Jennifer Gray is participating in the Teach For America program, teaching a multi-ethnic second-grade class on the southeast side of Houston, while Jeff Carver is an assistant research scientist at Progenies Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, NY, researching AIDS and other human viral diseases alongside fellow alumni Alexia Belperron '90 and Abhijeet Lele, MBA '89. Kimberly Best has taken up permanent residence in Alexandria, Va., and is currently a research analyst at the Inst. for a Drug-Free Workplace in Washington, DC. One of Kimberly's new neighbors in Virginia is Tamar Cohen, who's pursuing a master's of fine art in visual information technology at George Mason U.; she's working on a virtual reality installation which will be in the Smithsonian this coming summer.

While we're on the topic of higher education, Kwame Satchell is loving law school at the U. of Virginia, and Robert Baca is studying limnology (lake ecology) at Texas Christian U. Bob says Texas is totally different from Ithaca: "After walking up Libe Slope for four years, the flat-as-far-as-the-eye-can see landscape is quite a change. Plus you can't beat the BBQ's." John Whelan has begun a PhD program in physics at the U. of California, Santa Barbara, and he mentioned that he ran into several Cornellians at the Cornell-Stanford football game in Palo Alto this past October, including Mark Steiglitz '90, Becky Remis, Steve Walton, and a couple of Kappa Alpha Psi brothers who had driven from Ithaca just for the game, stopping at Cornell College in Iowa along the way--I understand Steve Bent and Tom Calupca made it back in time for Homecoming.

Others in grad school include Margaret Chen, pursuing an MA in nutrition education at Immaculata College in Pennsylvania; Allison Crandall, studying food science at Rutgers; and Sarah Fox, whose research assistantship at Syracuse U. is combined with a position at the Energy Clearing House, developing a $12.5 million program of energy use and family budgeting education for low to moderate-income families. Just a side note: Liana Son is pleased to report that she has become a US citizen; congratulations, Liana! Okay, I think I've backed myself into a Quote Corner, so here we go. Randi Wolf says, "It feels great to put into use all the things you learned for four years at Cornell." Jeff Sprague, who following graduation drove with Marc Bloomstein from Boston to Seattle via Toronto, Cleveland, Memphis, Flagstaff, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Reedsport, says, "Great time, but it was too short; we only drove 5,000 miles'." 'Nuff said. Go Red, and I'll see you all in three. *Jeffrey Anbinder, 934 Stewart Ave., Apt. 31, Ithaca, NY 14850.

June 1992

It's difficult to imagine that we've been away from Cornell for a full year already (except for some lucky folks such as Jessica Lifland, who spent this past year at Cornell). Being away seemed surreal at first, and it certainly took some time to adjust to new surroundings. However, being away in body does not mean that we are separated in spirit. For example, Robert Weiner writes that he's "Still receiving feedback from Cornell course assignments," and explains that he recently received a best paper award from the New England Political Science Assn. for a paper he wrote for a history class and presented at a conference last year. Robert also writes that he is working as an environmental consultant with the Cadmus Group Inc., in Boston, where he's active with the Cornell Club. He asked me to encourage other classmates to get involved in that particular club, but the message holds true for almost anywhere. The Cornell clubs provide a great way to meet other Cornellians and to maintain ties to the university. Congratulations, Robert!

Oona Lim has managed to locate classmates in Buffalo, where she is a first-year medical student at the U. of Buffalo medical school. Oona says that there are about 20 members of the Class of '91 there, and also that she thinks "it's awesome, although busy." Classmates living in Upstate New York include Christopher Daddis, who's a sociotherapist in Rochester, Suzette Bouis, a landscape architect with Clough Harbour & Associates in Albany, and Sarah Ford, a veterinary assistant near Troy. The New York City area is also well represented. Both Andrew Galligan and Avinash Mehrotra are working in the banking industry in New York, the former at The First Boston Corp. and the latter at Morgan Stanley. Avinash included his business card with his information form! Also in the area are Rob Cignarella, an engineering consultant at LS Transit Systems in New Jersey, and Stephen DiCamillo, also an engineer in the Garden State. Finally, Jodie Rayburn is working as a research assistant at the American Health Foundation in Valhalla, NY.

Fotene Niforos is a graduate student at the U. of Pennsylvania and is interested in getting in touch with Cornellians in the Philadelphia area. Steve Ryu is also a student in Philadelphia. Going a little bit farther from the city, we find Cindy Miller, who's a process engineer at Air Products and Chemicals Inc., in Allentown. That seems to be a popular profession among our classmates, as it's shared by David Toh. David may have a little bit more trouble locating fellow Cornellians than some of the rest of us--he's living in Singapore. There is a middle ground between the Northeastern US and Southeast Asia, of course, and some classmates have managed to find it. After graduation, Linda Shih took a cross-country trip to San Fransisco, where she started a new job. Francine Simon is also in that area, where she started a PhD in sociology at Stanford. Graduate students can also be found in the Midwest; for instance, David Schleuning is a student in Chicago. And, finally, Joan Kochan writes that she is working toward a master's degree in food engineering at the U. of Wisconsin, Madison. Joan offered a suggestion that we should hold a one-year reunion. Although the university only organizes such events every five years, maybe this column can provide a similar function on a more frequent basis. But to do that, we need your input. Without your letters, we won't have information to include in our columns. So to those of you who have written, a heartfelt thank you, and please continue to write. And to those of you who haven't, please start. We really do appreciate hearing from all of you. *Howard Stein, 3909D Leonardtown, U. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.