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After five months doing “research” in Paris
(which I returned from with a gorgeous sparkly engagement ring
thanks to Leslie Murray ’02!!!), I am pleased as pie (or
tarte tatin) to be catching up with all of your fantastic
activities. In particular, I’d like to formally welcome our new
assistant class agents Benjamin Chui and Anna Perng.
Go team!
It’s been such a treat
to hear from some people for the first time! Huge
congratulations go out to Morghan Holt and Tom Stenson
'00, who married last October and are nesting outside
Swarthmore with Morghan’s daughter Alexxys (now 9) and
Newfoundland puppy Cedric. Morghan Stenson expects to
graduate from her Women's Health Nurse
Practitioner/Nurse-midwifery program at UPenn, where she is
coordinating obstetric research at the UPenn Hospital and
looking forward to welcoming classmates' babies into the world!
(hint, hint…)
Many warm wishes for
Anteneh Tesfaye, who married fellow Ethiopian Eden Negatu
last April. They are living in West Chester, PA where Anteneh is
working at Swattie-haven Economy.com.
Concluding recent
weddings, Jessica Lee writes in that Heather Fleharty
is marrying her high school sweetheart, Jesse Warren, in a
beautiful July 2006 in Red Bluff, CA. Jessica and
Carrie Cooper-Fenske are in the wedding party, joined by
Kellam Conover and Emily Marks in attendance. It
sounds like Heather Fleharty Warren, Jessica, and
Carrie all took advantage of the med school respite to
party hard!
Becca Lipstein is
marrying fellow dramatic Lee this summer near Philadelphia –
I’ll spill all the juicy details in the winter notes after I see
it in person!
Wining this edition’s
person-I-most-envy award, after six months with family in
Germany, Nicolas Blanco has shifted to Vienna, Austria,
where he is studying at the University of Vienna for a Magister
in Japanese Studies and enjoying translating Japanese comics (manga).
This summer, the lucky man is off to Jamaica as best man for his
best friend's wedding, and soaking up the World Cup ambience in
Germany. (Go Trinidad!).
In new med student land,
Raquel Davis is battling through her first year at the
Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University
(Bronx, NYC). Ranmal Samarasinghe and Chris Keary
are both in their first years at Pittsburgh Med, where Ranmal
is bravely forging his way through a MD-PhD, and Chris is
in utter awe of the famed Pitt football fanaticism.
After two years working
at Exelon in Philly (along with Norense Iyahen and
numerous other Swatties), Ani Silwal has joined the PhD
ranks, in DC, studying Applied Economics at the University of
Maryland at College Park. Anri points out that the slogan
“if you go through Honors at Swat, grad school is a piece of
cake” is not really as true as much as it makes you feel good! (Anri
– I agree!).
Thomas Harding
is entering business school to complete the second part (though
hardly downhill!) of the joint law/MBA program he began 2 years
ago at Columbia University. Across town, Mel Okudo is
enjoying his job with Goldman Sachs. But beware – no more
messing around – after graduating from Columbia Law in May,
Lucy Lang is starting as a District Attorney in Manhattan
this fall, and renovating Swat reunion point number one: her
Harlem townhouse.
In the wonderful world
of Fulbrights, Ilana Luft and Carolynn Laurenza
visited Alyssa Bell in Madrid, where Alyssa is
examining women’s and youth sentiments of integration and
belonging in Madrid’s Ecuadorian immigrant community. Nearby,
Jane DeRonne writes from Hamburg, where she has been
teaching English on a Fulbright teaching assistantship, and
randomly ran into Jonathan Konits '04 at a Fulbright
conference in Berlin.
Before entering her
final year of theatre studies at the London International School
of Performing Arts, Hofan Chau spent last year performing
in Paris, creating a reggae dance piece for the Bytom dance
festival in Poland, and walking a month of the pilgrimage trail
to Santiago in southern France.
Any Swatties in the
rocky mountain area? Kate Hurster is starting an MFA
program at the National Theatre Conservatory at the Denver
Center for Performing Arts in September, where she fears the
Swattie concentration is far lower than in South Philadelphia!
In sunny CA, Matt
Rubin is one year into Stanford law school, along with
Elliot Reed, and bumps into Joanne Gaskell (PhD at
Stanford, studying food security and the environment) and
Nori Heikkinen (working at Google when she’s not
snowboarding). Matt is interning for the US Department of
Labour in Philly this summer, and has a radio show on kzsu
stanford, 90.1fm.
I have a lot to learn
from Joanne Jacobson, who is drinking beer, eating
cheese, learning what 'Big 10' means, and finishing her first
year at the University of Wisconsin's M.B.A. program in Arts
Administration for non-profit organizations.
Susan Christensen
made time in her doctoral degree in biomedical engineering at
Duke to spend two weeks volunteering in post-Katrina Louisiana
(‘a gut-wrenching trip, but full of hope’), and to publish two
more logic books (that makes 4 now) with her mother.
Emily Chavez
is living with partner Alisha and 2 dogs in beautiful Durham,
North Carolina and enjoying being out of the Northern weather,
doing latté art as a barista and dancing with Peruvian Dance
Group, before heading back to school in the fall for a creative
writing program at North Carolina State University. Perhaps she
can get some tips from Kara Levy, who is now working on
her thesis, a collection of short stories.
Julie Gregorio
is living with her sister and having lectures on makeup (by the
metropolitan opera’s top makeup artist!) while studying vocal
performance at the Mannes College of Music in NYC and running
into Mark Angelillo (living in Brooklyn and web
developing for Reflexions Data) and Collin Peng-Sue.
Occasionally, she gives fiancé Andrew Stout a study break
from his master’s degree research on artificial intelligence at
UMass Amherst. New Yorkers may have recently glimpsed Kasia
Koziol-Dube, who dazzled everyone as a Kosciuszko Foundation
debutante last April, re-appearing in the New York City Pulaski
Parade. Just follow the kiełbasa…
Back from his time in
Malawi doing Agroforestry work with the Peace Corps, John
Fort is in Burlington, Vermont, trying to make an honest
life and waiting for inspiration. John writes that
Becca Van Fleet is well in Western New Hampshire, where she
kicked her winter ski-racing habit (with Lycra racing suit!)
long enough to develop a new line of "community minded" pots (www.beccavanfleetpottery.com)
and be named one of New Hampshire's up-and-coming potters! Also
newly returned from her peace corps work in guinea, west Africa,
Ingrid Kaszas is freezing with family in Switzerland
before heading back to New Jersey to regroup.
In her gorgeous new
Boston townhouse (with kitty!), Joan Javier finished
working as a union organizer for the Service Employees
International Union to jump on board with the Swattie-founded
Center for Progressive Leadership lightin' a fire in the
progressive movement all around the country and starting right
there in our alumni-state of Pennsylvania.
Active as always,
Robin Smith has found time from her Cornell research on the
optical detection of protein misfolding in Alzheimer's disease
to found a graduate women in physics group, co-organize a
conference for
middle school girls to learn about science in a hands-on way,
and plan classical music concerts as newly-elected president of
the Physics Grad Society.
One year through his
Masters in Arab Studies at Georgetown, Paul Wulfsberg is
back to the Middle East to travel before assistant teaching at
Middlebury’s Arabic program.
Finally, for all
Swatties in the Columbia, MD area – prepare to have a scream
(sorry) at Todd Gillette’s haunted house this year – his
own study break from his first year as a PhD student in
Neuroscience at George Mason University. |
T