ALUMNI CONNECTION
Top Cats, circa 1992
Top Cats reprise
Reunion concert marks 25 years of a cappella
As the alumni of the UVM Top Cats prepared for their 25th anniversary concert, there may have been a few trips to the tailor to let out the tux. Understandable, it’s been more than a couple of decades since some of these guys last harmonized on the Ira Allen Chapel stage.
The Top Cats have bridged musical eras from early eighties “big hair” bands to hip-hop. Though the songs on the charts have changed, the Top Cats’ a cappella style on covers from James Taylor to Marvin Gaye is timeless. More than 100 UVM students have been Top Cats since the group first formed in 1981 and close to half of them returned for the February 25th anniversary concert.
Despite a snowstorm, Ira Allen Chapel was full to near capacity for the event. Top Cats past and present divided by generations into four groups to cover some of the standards of their various eras. Though it’s a challenge to roll into town, rehearse with a mix of old friends and new acquaintances, and pull off a tight performance, the Cats assembled rose to the moment.
“It was one of those shows,” says Malachi McCaulley ’05. “Pretty much everybody was on their game.”
Pulling together the concert was a tribute to team effort and the glory of the Internet Age. Much of the long-distance communication was due to alumnus Jon West ’05 casting an ever-widening Top Cats e-mail web from Florida. (When a request for favorite songs—see “Name That Tune”—was broadcast, the response was swift, rich with memories and anecdotes.) Alums closer to home divided and conquered when it came to setting up logistics for the reunion and concert.
If you missed the show, but could use a little dose of UVM-style harmony, the
Top Cats released a 25th anniversary CD, No Shoes, No Problem, in February. No details yet, but there’s also talk of putting out a live CD from the concert. See uvm.edu/
~topcats.
—Thomas Weaver
Greens to the Rockies
Sarah Peoples ’72, who headed west not long after UVM graduation, has been a residential real estate broker in Denver for the past 28 years. She’s also been a loyal, creative, and energetic UVM volunteer for most of that time, playing a key role in helping to bring Vermont’s Green Mountain spirit to the Rocky Mountain state.
Q. Tell me about how you first got involved as a UVM volunteer.
A. That’s a funny story. I met John Williams, Class of 1936, at an event he organized around 1976. He was looking for someone to help him with events, so I went over to his condo to have lunch with John and his wife and talk about it. He had pictures up of his kids and I see a photo of his daughter Lynn (Lynn Williams ’72) who was a classmate of mine. Oh, my god, what a small world it is! I had no idea. It’s wonderful to make those kinds of connections.
Q. How has the UVM alumni scene in Denver changed over the years you’ve been involved?
A. It really hasn’t changed in some ways. UVM alumni come here to continue their educations in Boulder or maybe to be a ski bum for a year after graduation, and they end up staying. The same story repeats itself. We have such a mixed bag, people of all ages.
Q. What would you tell people who have never attended an alumni event to convince them to give it a try?
A. Regardless of what the event is, you’re going to meet fun people.
Q. What is the best UVM alumni event you’ve been involved with?
A. In 1989, Vermont played Air Force in hockey down in Colorado Springs and beat the bejeezus out of them. We had about 130 people there and we were determined to be the antithesis of the button-down Air Force fans. Our seats were all in one section, behind the Air Force goalie for two of the three periods. We had the poor kid in tears.
Q. Is there any particular volunteer work you’ve done for UVM that stands out?
A. I think my most valuable contribution to UVM was the establishment of the sports simulcast get-togethers. It was my idea to start these so I could watch UVM hockey myself. But I was glad to see the idea work in lots of venues, especially for alums who don’t get back to Vermont.
Dusting off the Cynic
A look back at 1964
The Votey Building opens in late February.
Nelson Rockefeller speaks in Patrick Gym.
Catholic students pledge $10,000 to build a chapel and student center on campus.
Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa shows on campus. Admission: $.50 general, $.25 students.
Commencement 2006 nears
The University of Vermont commencement ceremony returned to the campus green in 2004, the graduation of UVM’s 200th class. While the traditional setting has been wonderful, the weather has been less than cooperative with a couple of damp ceremonies. So, thinking blue skies, planning is well under way for Commencement 2006, set for Sunday, May 21.
Mexican writer and social activist Gustavo Esteva will deliver the graduation address. A prolific author and pioneering scholar in fields from economics to cultural anthropology, philosophy to education, Esteva also has substantial ties to UVM. His work in intercultural communication and post-development studies has been key to the evolution of UVM’s innovative international education program in Oaxaca.
For more information on UVM’s 2006 Commencement, uvm.edu/commencement.
ALUMNI PROFILES
A tale of one city, two presidents
There’s an old story about how Burlington, North Carolina came by its name. Yes, it has a whiff of myth, but it serves our purpose, so let’s just suspend disbelief for a moment. In the early days of the city, located in the north-central part of the state, a well-traveled renegade bull—purportedly escaped from a Burlington, Vermont farm—roamed the burgeoning village. Eponymous bull, maybe, but there’s no doubt about a tangible connection between the two Burlingtons over the past seven years. The presidents of both of Greater Burlington, North Carolina’s higher education institutions spent graduate school years in Burlington, Vermont, where they earned master’s degrees in UVM’s highly regarded Higher Education and Student Affairs Program.
Leo Lambert G’78 is president of Elon University, a 4,400-student private institution that has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance over the past 30 years. Martin Nadelman G’72 heads up operations at a very different school, Alamance Community College, which has grown dramatically as hard economic reality shuts down the region's textile mills and drives workers back to the classroom to finish high school degrees or refocus job skills.
photo courtesy of Elon University
Engine on track
When Leo Lambert took the presidency at Elon in 1999, he stepped into the large shoes of Fred Young, a 25-year president who guided Elon’s rise from a local institution to a national exemplar for student-centered education and service. In his book Transforming a College: The Story of a Little-Known College’s Strategic Climb to National Distinction, higher education scholar George Keller uses Elon as a case study of effective change. Soaring application rates, a beautiful campus that has seen nearly 30 new buildings over the past two decades, high notices in the media and college ratings books—Keller effuses and writes, “Elon is the little engine that could.”
During Lambert’s tenure the pace of progress has remained swift. His focus has been upon building the school’s intellectual life and rigor (he tripled the library budget and added more than 60 new faculty), strengthening athletics, focusing on building the endowment, and adding a law school. Not to mention a couple of significant name changes—from Elon College to Elon University and from the Fighting Christians to The Phoenix. Likening Elon’s appeal to UVM’s, Lambert says, “You get out of your car and sigh, and say, ‘I’m home.’”
UVM’s Living/Learning was home to Lambert and his wife, Laurene, during their first years of marriage. When the director went on sabbatical, Lambert was put in the acting director’s role at L/L at age 23. He has fond memories of the place and the early on-the-job training it provided. Elon’s “Academic Village” is built on a very similar model to UVM’s Living/ Learning, Lambert adds.
As president, Lambert lists the chance to interact with students as a key reward of his job and it’s something he’s vigilant about clearing room for on his schedule. “Watching these incredible young people blossom before your eyes—the process of being turned on to science, theater, medicine, or law—it’s a wonder to behold and you never get tired of it.”
photo courtesy of Alamance Community College
Creating new paths
Located just miles apart, Elon University and Alamance Community College are worlds away from one another in their missions and the students they serve. Alamance, located just off the Interstate in Graham, North Carolina, serves some 16,000 students. President Martin Nadelman describes it as a typical community college, listing off some of the course offerings in technical professions, automotive, welding. Typical, and very busy. Enrollments are up 55 percent over the past five years. If a plant closes in the area, Nadelman says, ACC anticipates they’ll see at least 40 percent of the laid-off workers. In North Carolina, community colleges administer the state’s adult learning programs.
Meeting the needs, both urgent and highly practical, of that student population appealed to Nadelman early in his higher education career. The UVM alumnus helped start up a brand new community college in Maryland, Wor-Wic Tech, and eventually became acting president of the school. Before joining Alamance in 1999, he was president of Martin Community College in Williamston, North Carolina, for eight years. “At a community college, 95 percent of the students know exactly what they want to do —they want the skills to get a better job,” Nadelman says.
As more and more area residents seek those skills at Alamance, Nadelman’s hands-on management style is put to the test. The 88-acre campus is maxed with classes seven days a week, meeting in every room available on campus. “Finding space is the toughest thing right now,” Nadelman says and adds a quip about the parking crunch, seemingly universal to every campus—“I swear we’ve got students who drive two cars here.”
Looking back on his year in UVM’s master’s program, Nadelman recalls practicums in the dean of students office and financial aid as key learning experiences. He currently advises North Carolina State University doctoral students on their dissertations, and Nadelman says an increased focus on teaching, passing on lessons to the next generation of higher education leaders, is something he may pursue down the line.
—Thomas Weaver
Global citizen
It’s Friday, late afternoon, in a Church Street coffee house. The aroma-laden air buzzes with conversation and caffeine as workday nerves are soothed by warm beverages. As Matt Messier ’91 G’00 talks through his world travels of the past decade, stories of the harsh conditions of refugee camps from Africa to Nicaragua provide stark contrast to the warmth and comfort of this place.
Following post-UVM service in the Army from 1991 to 1996, Messier got the itch to travel, and with the organization Volunteers for Peace, he visited a refugee camp in Italy in 1997. That experience would trigger a passion for global peace and justice that has shaped his pursuits since. It also earned him the 2005 Adult Global Citizen Award from the Vermont International Non-Profit Network.
Messier remembers that first trip to Italy as a true eye-opener. “As an American over there, I definitely took quite a beating, and I learned a lot from how other people view us and the difference between viewing us as individuals and say, our government, or our history, or our country,” he says. Messier was grateful to be challenged by the many points of view. Subsequent service-focused travels have taken him to Africa, Central America, and the Middle East.
His own living conditions in these places provide adventures in and of themselves, but Messier doesn’t care to dwell on them. “My motivation isn’t necessarily to go out and ‘help’ other people, because I think that’s a little arrogant. I want to be involved in things, and we’re doing things together,” Messier says. “I’m getting as much out of it as they are. I’m doing it for selfish and personal reasons. I want to travel but I want to travel in a meaningful way.”
Messier counts meeting Yasser Arafat among the most extraordinary experiences of his journeys. He was struck by Arafat’s presence and commanding voice and remembers, “His eyes were very powerful, as well. When he looked at you it was almost like he was looking through you.”
The Jericho, Vermont native is proud, but modest about his Vermont Global Citizen Award, which he received in a ceremony last October. “I’m getting an award for something that maybe…I just feel like I should be doing it anyways,” Messier admits over the whir of a coffee grinder in the background.
A full-time teacher at the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, who also serves on the boards of two international organizations—Peace Brigades International and Volunteers for Peace—Messier is just as active in Burlington as he is abroad. He also volunteers with the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, helping move refugees into their new homes and bringing his Woodside students in to complete needed projects, increasing their awareness of refugee and human rights issues. In addition, Messier is currently pursuing a doctorate at UVM in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, building on his UVM bachelor’s and master’s degrees in secondary education.
Messier believes in humanity’s ability to change for the better, and hopes that his work for global peace and justice and human rights will help in this fight. Thanks to his work, the idea that change begins with one person at a time, doesn’t seem so unrealistic after all.
—Corey Christman G’06
photo by Sally McCay
Profiles in giving
A knack for numbers
A career in accounting may not have been the last thing on his mind when he entered UVM as a freshman in the fall of 1970. But it was far from the first. Like most students at
the outset of their college experience, Michael S. Lewis ’74 didn’t know where his education might take him. He simply knew he wanted to attend UVM as had his mother, Pearl Weissbard Lewis ’46, who still today speaks warmly about her time at the University.
Lewis enrolled in the School of Business Administration, where he was an average student, “nothing special,” he says, until a professor named Gary Michael spotted his ability in accounting and encouraged him to pursue it. “He was my inspiration,” Lewis says. “Because of him, I realized that this was something I could enjoy doing at the end of four years.”
After graduation, Lewis went to work for the “Big Eight” accounting firm Peat, Marwick, Mitchell (today’s KPMG) and became a Certified Public Accountant. After about four and a half years, he began providing accounting services directly to his friends and acquaintances, and soon joined a small New Jersey accounting firm. Within a year, at age 27, he was named managing partner.
Today, Lewis remains managing partner and is also owner of Meisel, Tuteur & Lewis, P.C., a medium-sized, regional accounting firm recognized for its technical competency, its business-savvy partners, and its sophisticated and well-heeled client base. The firm employs nearly 50 people and provides traditional accounting and tax services to closely held businesses and private industry, including some international clients, as well as non-traditional services such as business valuation, estate planning, litigation support, forensic accounting, matrimonial resolution, and management consulting services. Among his many clients are longtime UVM supporters and former trustees Eugene ’50 and Joan Kalkin, with whom Lewis has been close friends for many years.
The accounting profession, he says, offers rewarding career opportunities for today’s graduates, and in fact is one area where the available jobs outnumber the qualified candidates. “There’s a big demand for accounting graduates,” he says, “especially with today’s emphasis on fiscal monitoring and corporate accountability, and in the wake of Sarbanes-Oxley,” referring to the 2002 act of Congress that imposed stringent financial and account disclosure on companies after the demise of Enron.
Lewis is doing his part to spread the word among UVM’s accounting students. Each year, he actively recruits for new employees at the School of Business Administration and has hired a half dozen UVM grads since 1997.
“It’s important to me to stay involved with UVM and help the University to realize its plans for the future,” says Lewis. He’s currently in his second year as a member of the School of Business Administration Board of Advisors, and he’s made a generous provision for the University as a part of his estate. “I feel a strong allegiance to Vermont and to UVM,” he says. “It was a life-changing experience.”
(for UVM staff)