photo by Rajan Chawla
[DEVELOPMENT]
LECTURE HALL RENAMED IN HONOR OF THOMAS SULLIVAN
Last spring, the University of Vermont College of Medicine’s 120-seat Case Method Classroom, the main lecture hall for medical students since its construction in 2005, was officially renamed the Sullivan Classroom to recognize the generosity of Dr. Thomas Sullivan ’62 MD’66.
A retired radiologist from Etna, New Hampshire, Sullivan practiced at Mt. Ascutney Hospital in Windsor, Vermont, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and served as a professor of radiology at Dartmouth Medical School. A 1962 UVM undergraduate alumnus, Sullivan completed residency at the former Medical Center Hospital of Vermont.
Sullivan says his giving is motivated by a wish to give something back to Vermont. “I’ve always felt this kinship with Vermont and with UVM,” he says. “It didn’t cost me a penny to go there, what with scholarships and all, so I thought it would be a nice thing to give something back.”
Manon O’Connor, director of major gifts in the college’s development and alumni relations office, says that Sullivan “is thrilled by the naming and hopes that it inspires others to donate to the college.” All of Sullivan’s major giving has been directed to advance the College of Medicine’s top priorities through the Dean’s Fund.
Sullivan’s initial gift, which prompted the lecture hall renaming, was used to help fund the renovation sponsored by the College of Medicine and the Provost’s Office, of another educational space on the medical campus, the 260-seat Carpenter Auditorium, which had not been upgraded since it first opened more than forty years ago. After an intensive renovation that began as soon as classes ended in May, the auditorium was completely redone, with new seating, painting, lighting, electrical, and audiovisual equipment, and was ready to welcome returning UVM students on their first day of classes in August. The project significantly enhanced the technological resources available to students in the College of Medicine’s Vermont Integrated Curriculum.
This summer, Sullivan extended his generous support with another gift to the Dean’s Fund, which will be used to fulfill plans for a new Simulation Center for teaching students in the health sciences.
Jay Goyette
SUPPORT UP SLIGHTLY, DESPITE DOWNTURN
In a year when fundraising efforts throughout higher education have faltered and endowment values have plunged, the University of Vermont managed a slight increase in giving over last year. And, though UVM was among the many institutions whose endowment took a painful hit in the economic turmoil that finally seems to be waning, it was considerably less severe than that experienced by many other institutions.
Total voluntary support to UVM during the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009, amounted to $26,667,814 compared with $26,344,820 in the prior year—a $322,994 increase, or 1.2 percent. The university exceeded its goal for unrestricted giving, with $2,530,000 raised, compared with a goal of $2,344,000.
Market value of the endowment, at $266,791,503 (unaudited) represents a 19 percent loss in value in the period from June 30, 2008, to June 30, 2009.
“I want to express our thanks to all our loyal donors for their support last year,” said Kathleen Kelleher, interim vice president for development and alumni relations. “It’s because of their continued philanthropy, despite a steep economic downturn, that we were able to achieve the results that we did last year.”
[PLANNED GIVING]
photo by Sally McCay
OF WARM HANDS AND GIVING TWICE
Wolfgang and Barbara Mieder have been generous donors to UVM over many years, including a major estate gift during UVM’s last comprehensive campaign. “I think it was remarkable that we reached that goal, and that we had such good participation across the board from alumni, parents, faculty, trustees, staff, and even students,” says Wolfgang of the campaign.
Even so, he says it’s the gifts that he and Barbara give to a variety of causes and organizations in the here and now that give the most satisfaction.
“I think it’s the joy of participating in giving while you are part of it that I find special,” Wolfgang says. He recalls fondly the expression “Giving With Warm Hands,” the title of a talk on philanthropy that the late Warren McClure gave some years ago. “The idea is, to do something while you have the pleasure of seeing the result of your philanthropy.”
“I think everybody has some philanthropic interest,” he continues. “It’s just a matter of deciding where your priorities lie, and one of ours is to give to education.”
Wolfgang is professor of German and Folklore in the Department of German and Russian at UVM, which he chaired from 1977 to 2008, and is nearing forty years of service with the university. Barbara is a long-time teacher of German and Latin at Milton High School.
With both of them in the teaching profession, offering their support to a number of educational institutions is a natural. “We’ve always been committed to supporting education, says Barbara. “We feel we can make a difference.”
A volunteer for numerous community-focused activities in Vermont, Barbara says the couple’s philanthropic support is tied to their love for Vermont. “Vermont is a special place, and it behooves us to do what we can,” she says.
Hailed by Smithsonian magazine as “the world’s top proverb expert,” Wolfgang has a proverb at the ready when the subject is giving. “There’s a famous, classical Latin proverb, bis dat, qui cito dat, which means ‘who gives fast, gives twice.’ It’s a wonderful rule for philanthropy.”
The Office of Planned Giving
411 Main Street, Burlington, Vermont 05401
Voice: (802) 656-9535 Toll-free voice: (888) 458-8691
Website: alumni.uvm.edu/plannedgiving
Email: Becky Arnold at plannedgiving@uvm.edu
[ALUMNI NOTES]
Nearly 3,500 UVM parents, students, alumni, and friends gathered on campus for a crisp and colorful autumn weekend to celebrate Homecoming & Family Weekend 2009. The campus-wide event took place October 1–4 and drew guests, mostly first-year parents, from thirty-seven states and three countries.
Featuring more than eighty events, the activity-packed weekend included lectures, open houses, athletic events, concerts, sold-out Lake Champlain cruises, and a variety of opportunities for socializing. Highlights of the weekend ranged from the inaugural President’s Family Brunch in the Davis Center to the ever-popular Soul Food Social, as well as the Homecoming Concert headlined by student a cappella groups.
The Finest Hour lecture series showcased several beloved UVM professors, including Frank Bryan (“Everything You Need to Know about Vermont—In 30 Minutes or Less”) and 2009 Kidder Award recipient Elaine McCrate, professor of economics and women’s studies, who gave the George V. Kidder Homecoming Lecture.
In addition to the perennial Homecoming favorites, this year’s schedule included multiple events with a career focus. The School of Business Administration sponsored “Job Searching in Tough Economic Times” featuring five alumni panelists—Ged Deming ’64, Stephen Ifshin ’58, Liz Paley ’88, James Schaefer ’90, and Jeffrey Steinhorn ’85—who gave real-world advice about entering and navigating the workforce to a packed classroom of business students.
Saturday morning’s “UVM Career Networking Event,” sponsored by the Alumni Association’s Career Services subcommittee, brought together job seekers with alumni networkers from Vermont, New York City, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Keynote speaker Ron Lumbra ’83 of the executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates headed up the program with a discussion of trends in the job market and job search best practices, which was followed by time for networking and resume review.
On Friday afternoon, the “ALANA Alumni Panel”—organized by the association’s Diversity & Equity subcommittee—aimed to connect ALANA alumni and students with one another. The panelists—Nathaly Agosto Filion ’05, Tamia Rashima Jordan G’06, Bernard Palmer ’75, Armando Vilaseca ’81, and Anu Yadav ’96—described their own experiences at UVM and beginning their careers, and answered a series of student-generated questions that probed the challenges at UVM for students from diverse backgrounds. The panel, the culmination of an idea that arose a few years ago, generated a candid and at times heartfelt dialogue, resulting in resolve to keep the conversation going with a goal of supporting UVM students.
Caroline Gilley
ALUMNI SNAPSHOT
A graduation party in Burlington for Polly Perkins ’09 brought together a three-generation UVM alumni family. That’s Polly in the red with her hand on the shoulder of her grandmother Jo Ann Dodge Perkins Becker ’52. Ed Perkins ’52 G’58 proudly sports his freshman beanie and is seated next to his son David Perkins ’78 and Dave’s son James Perkins ’11. Cousin Meghan Moore, behind her grandfather, is a William & Mary grad. We’ll forgive her that since her mom, Amy Perkins Moore’82 (not pictured), is yet another Perkins in the UVM fold.
Reunions with old UVM friends, weddings, babies, Catamount pennants streaming in the winds atop Denali? Send VQ your best photos and we'll share them in our on-line Alumni Snapshots album.
[ALUMNI FOCUS]
COOKING ON CAMERA
MELISSA D’ARABIAN ‘90
After nine weeks of grueling competition this summer, Melissa d’Arabian ’90 was crowned The Next Food Network Star, an honor that sent her straight into production of her own Food Network program, “Ten Dollar Dinners with Melissa d’Arabian.” We touched base with the alumna this summer. An excerpt of the conversation follows, and the complete interview is available on-line: alumni.uvm.edu/vq.
How did you celebrate your win?
That night I attended a viewing party in a restaurant filled with friends and fans. The place went crazy when they announced the winner. Right as the TV crew came to capture my first response, my two older daughters said, “Mommy, we have to go to the bathroom!” I thought, “They’re only three and four, and they’re feeling overwhelmed by the crowd and have been so quiet all evening. I’m going to take them myself.” So I asked the TV crew to wait a few minutes. I was laughing to myself because eight seconds after I found out I won, there I was in the bathroom with my daughters. But it was perfect and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I was so excited, but it was still just a regular night after the party. The kids were cranky getting ready for bed, asking me questions about what we’d do the next day. It was off their radar completely!
You were the only contestant who hadn’t gone to culinary school or worked professionally as a chef. Did you find you had to overcome that, or was it an asset?
When I arrived on day one, I learned about the resumes of my fellow finalists, who are all amazing cooks and chefs. I think I let it get me a bit intimidated. Here’s the thing—I think you really do learn cooking by doing. And I think culinary school gives chefs years of cooking experience and knowledge condensed down, puts them on the fast track. I let that knowledge lead me to believe that I was at a disadvantage and that I didn’t belong there. I got in my own way. As the season progressed, I was able to do a better job of celebrating what I bring to the table and focus on being the best version of myself. My own internal journey throughout the season was a very big part of the experience for me.
I read that you moved around a bit as a child. How did you end up at UVM?
I had never lived in New England. UVM was on my list of colleges to apply to because of a high school guidance counselor. I applied and got in, and when I visited campus I fell in love with the location and that New England “feel,” the balance of academics and social life. I loved that you could be involved in Greek life, but that you didn’t have to be in a sorority to fit in. UVM had the “X Factor” for me — it had something I just loved. I went home after a two-night trip and decided this is where I’m going.
interview by Caroline Gilley
MULTI-TASKING MUSIC MAN
DAN DEMARS G ‘88
When the phone rings at his office in Norwich, Vermont, Dan DeMars G’88 might be taking a call from a famous guitarist or, just as easily, it could be a research VP from a biotech company. It’s part of the juggling act of running both a high-end guitar-making business and a consulting firm for emerging biotech businesses.
Hello, DeMars Guitars? Hello, Viridis Group? No confusion, he keeps it simple: Hello, Dan DeMars.
“It definitely keeps things interesting,” DeMars says.
Last year, it got really interesting when Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead was one of those callers. DeMars admits he initially thought it was a friend joking around. The surreal call became real after Lesh ordered one of DeMars’s five-string basses, then, a few days later, sent a YouTube video of himself playing the instrument at the Bonnaroo Festival. “It was a complete rush to see him playing my bass,” says DeMars. “He sent me backstage passes to another show where I saw him play it. It was incredible.”
The fact that DeMars makes guitars seems unlikely given his background. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Siena College and an MBA from the University of North Carolina. He also earned a master’s in pathology from UVM, where he met his wife, Leslie Robbins DeMars MD ’87, a gynecologic oncologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. DeMars spent twenty years directing global biomedical research projects for companies like Bayer, ClinTrials Research, and Glaxo before deciding to start his own biomedical R&D consulting business.
His love of music, which began even before he started playing the guitar at age ten, merged with an affinity for the design and function of everyday items when, in 1979, he saw a “headless” bass created by legendary instrument designer Ned Steinberger. The distinctive-looking instrument, played by some of the great musicians of the seventies/eighties, inspired DeMars to think of other ways to revolutionize the guitar.
“It was my ‘aha moment,’” he recalls. “I was in college at the time and I couldn’t believe that he’d just chopped the headstock off, but it made such perfect sense. I’m not an engineer, but this just blew me away.”
Although he’d tinker with instruments in the years to follow, DeMars focused primarily on his bill-paying biomedical career. In 1997, at his wife’s ten-year UVM medical school reunion, fate intervened and put DeMars on the guitar-making path. Incredibly, he met his longtime idol Steinberger, who was dating one of his wife’s best friends, another UVM med school alumna. “Ned and I spent the day drawing guitar designs on napkins,” DeMars recalls. Steinberger later asked DeMars if he would handle advertising, marketing, and promotions for his new concert string instrument company, NS Design. DeMars learned the ropes with Steinberger for three years before starting DeMars Guitars while simultaneously running his biomedical consulting business.
“Ned recognized that I had some novel design ideas and we both thought it was a good idea for me to branch out on my own, so I did,” he says. “My wife told me that if the guitar venture failed at least I’d have a good story to tell at cocktail parties. I ended up selling my first three production runs and it’s been growing ever since.”
DeMars creates the design for each of his instruments using computer-aided design methods; the necks and bodies are made via computer-aided manufacturing. The instruments are then painted/stained, assembled, strung, fine-tuned, and sent directly to musicians or distributors and music stores.
He has earned praise in music circles from magazines like Bass Player, which recently featured a cover photo of Phil Lesh with one of DeMars’s Long Trail basses. Reviewer Jonathan Herrera hailed DeMars for his innovative (patent-pending) idea to put a second pickup in the instrument’s neck heel to capture the tone that designers and builders previously ignored.
As his business expands and his name gets around, many in the music industry are keeping a close eye on the next innovation from the Vermont guitar maker. Bass Player’s Herrera writes, “I give props to DeMars for following through with a new, interesting, and well-considered idea… I’ll be interested to see what else Dan will come up with.”
Jon Reidel G’06
demarsguitars.com
viridisgroup.com
photo by Rajan Chawla
ALUMNI HELP RAISE THE ROOF ON JEFFORDS HALL
ALEX HALPERN ’90
ADAM BLANCHARD ‘02
Though Alex Halpern ’90 and Adam Blanchard ’02 have collaborated often during the past couple of years, the fact they are both UVM alumni has never come up in their meetings, phone calls, or e-mails. It’s understandable. They’ve had more pressing matters at hand than trading stories from college days—namely contributing key roles in the construction of Jeffords Hall, the new plant and life sciences building that is in progress and on track to open in 2010.
Halpern, an art major at UVM who went on to earn his master’s in architecture at the State University of New York at Buffalo, is associate principal for Freeman French Freeman, Inc., the prime architecture firm on the project. Blanchard, who followed his UVM bachelor’s in civil engineering with a master’s in the field from Tufts University, is the structural engineer on the job for Lemessurier Consultants.
As Jeffords construction moved swiftly this summer, we picked up a hard hat and headed over to the site to talk with each alumnus about his work and the experience of bringing his professional expertise back to campus.
Alex Halpern ’90
In a construction trailer adjacent to Jeffords Hall, several members of the project’s management team hash out details involving metal panels framing windows. There’s about an inch discrepancy between what’s drawn up in the blueprints and how the actual framing will work. The discussion is efficient and pragmatic. Alex Halpern, as the architectural project manager, gives his blessing to a solution.
While walking the building later, over the buzz and whine of power tools, Halpern says, “There are always unforeseen conditions you find in the field and you have to find a way to make those conditions work out.” It’s a matter, he adds, of balancing “where things want to be and where they are.”
Halpern has been with the project from when it first came on the boards in 2005. As project manager for the Burlington-based firm Freeman French Freeman, he coordinated with the design architects (Boston’s Ellenzweig) and continues to monitor and address the inevitable issues that arise when a drawing becomes a building.
Positioned at the top of the hill along Main Street, Jeffords Hall is a high-visibility project, and Halpern is confident the proportions and materials of the completed building will meet the challenge of such a prominent spot. He notes how the design meshes with Stafford Hall and other new construction on the science and medical campus. It also anchors the east side of the oval green fronting the Davis Center, while still preserving the Camel’s Hump sightlines from the DC.
The focus of much of the academic work inside Jeffords Hall will be plant sciences, something that the structure will outwardly reflect through a landscaping plan that includes an arboretum on the east side, handicapped accessible raised-bed gardens on the west, and a northern kiwi vine that promises to be impressive as it matures and climbs a multi-story steel trellis on the building’s south side.
“From a project management standpoint, the building functions well,” Halpern says. “Everything we designed works the way we said it would. Seeing it coming up the hill, I’m happy with how it sits. It works right in with the landscape. It’s going to be gorgeous and an enormous functional improvement for researchers, students, and the university as a whole; I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product.”
Adam Blanchard ’02
Standing at the construction fence around the Jeffords Hall site, Adam Blanchard offers a thumbnail description of his role as a structural engineer and how it meshes with the architects’. Simply put: “The structural engineer makes the building stand up,” he says. More specifically, he points out some particular fin walls designed by the architects. The structural engineer determines what needs to happen to keep them standing in the face of the common—the strong winds that come across the hilltop—and the uncommon, an earthquake.
Months into the job, the steel framework of the structural engineers’ work is fast disappearing under the masonry façade. But Blanchard points out several of the gray lines of the building’s skeleton that are still exposed, acknowledging, with a smile, that it’s often a structural engineer’s lot to see his work get covered up.
Lemessurier Consultants, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm where Blanchard has worked for the past four years, does a considerable number of higher education projects. Blanchard has worked on buildings for MIT, UConn, and Harvard. When the firm was selected for the UVM project, there was no doubt it would land on the desk of the Vermont alumnus. “I take a lot of pride in all of my projects,” he says, “but having gone to school here there definitely is an extra measure of excitement about it.”
Like Halpern, Blanchard says he’s pleased with how Jeffords is fitting with the campus landscape, though he admits, “I can’t answer that question in an unbiased way.” He recalls that during his undergraduate years, the Jeffords site was home to a drab old house where, “you’d go to pay your parking tickets.” That building and ghosts of traffic tickets past are long gone, part of the changes along Main Street that began with the Davis Center. “This is a very pretty building, it’s going to look sharp,” Blanchard says.
Working in New England, Blanchard has had a role in the restoration of a number of beautiful old buildings, though that beauty is questionable when viewed on a structural level. Looking at the undergirding of a nineteenth-century building, Blanchard says he’s often had to stand back and ask the fundamental question: “Gee, how is that standing?”
On that note, being a cautious engineer, he’s impelled to gesture over at Jeffords Hall and assure, “Not the case here, this will stand up just fine.”
Thomas Weaver