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Alumni News — 90s
Firms specializing in advertising, marketing, and public relations
have been hiring Badgers this spring: Jen (Jennifer) Cannestra
'90 is a new production manager at Hetrick Communications
in Indianapolis; Michelle Bartelt '96, MS'98
has joined Reiter Thomas Innovative Marketing in Neenah, Wisconsin,
as its director of marketing strategy; and the Karma Group in Green
Bay, Wisconsin, has chosen Heather Johnson '02
to be its new account coordinator.
“I want to let everyone know about the big move from the
famous New Yorker mouth — I have moved to the West Coast!”
announces Jeff Resnick '91, who's now
living in Foster City, California, working as the market research
manager for video games producer Electronic Arts. E-mail him at
jresnick@ea.com because, he adds, “I miss Wisconsin!”
(With thirty-two exclamation marks in the original message, we believe
him.)
Word of two new books came in recently, both bearing the name
of Nancy Appelbaum MA'92, PhD'97: Muddied
Waters: Race, Region, and Local History in Colombia, 1846–1948
(Duke University Press) and Race & Nation in Modern Latin
America (University of North Carolina Press). Appelbaum, who
teaches history at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton,
co-edited the latter with two other history instructors: Anne
Macpherson MA'92, PhD'98 of SUNY-Brockport
and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt MA'90, PhD'96
of Syracuse [New York] University.
Kristin Kelly MA'92, PhD'98 has also
been writing, but on a much different subject. In Domestic Violence
and the Politics of Privacy (Cornell University Press), she
contends that the answers to this very troubling problem —
as well as her model for change — are based on addressing
the tension between preserving privacy and protecting vulnerable
individuals. Kelly teaches political science at the University of
Connecticut.
Johannes Loschnigg '92 — a former
Hoofer Sailing Club instructor and commodore — is now the
legislative fellow for science and technology in U.S. Senator Joseph
Lieberman's (D-CT) office. Prior to that, he was on the research
faculty in the School of Ocean Earth Sciences and Technology at
the University of Hawaii. (Must've been nice…)
Whether it's a coincidence or not, we heard from a second
1992 Badger grad who's working for Senator Lieberman: Ted
Osthelder of West Des Moines, Iowa, began in March as that
state's caucus director for the Lieberman for President campaign.
He has lots of experience with mayoral, congressional, and gubernatorial
campaigns, and was the executive director of Wisconsin's Democratic
Party in 1996–97.
The American Dairy Science Association (ADSA) was pleased to announce
that Kent Weigel MS'92, PhD'92 took
home from its annual meeting in June not one, but two 2003 industry
honors: the Agway Young Scientist Award and the ADSA Foundation
Dairy Production Award. Weigel is a UW-Madison assistant professor
and extension genetics specialist.
Bradley Axel '93 is taking charge! He's
among the senior attorneys who've acquired the Chicago law
firm where they've practiced for several years. The new firm,
called Torshen, Slobig, Genden, Dragutinovich & Axel, specializes
in civil litigation involving business transactions, professional
negligence, and regulated businesses.
Jonathan Burns '93, MA'96 is beginning
the career of his dreams. In June, he graduated from the Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev MD Program in International Health and Medicine,
a pioneering endeavor that equips future physicians with the skills
to advance global health. Burns joined the family practice department
of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, this summer as
a first-year resident.
Work doesn't feel like work when you blend your passions
and talents. In the case of James Boyle MS'96, PhD'99
— an avid sailor and an assistant professor in the physics,
astronomy, and meteorology department at Western Connecticut State
University in Danbury — a $183,000 grant from the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is allowing him to be “at
sea” while improving upon an instrument (which he helped to
develop at the UW) that measures atmosphere-ocean heat exchange.
James Hagengruber '96 has some exciting
news. As a reporter for the Billings [Montana] Gazette,
he received a 2002 Arthur F. Burns Fellowship. That funded two months
in Munich at Germany's largest daily, the Sueddeutsche
Zeitung, where Hagengruber's articles on that nation's
fascination with Native Americans earned him Germany's Burns
Prize, presented by the German minister of state in Berlin in May.
Meteorology: Understanding the Atmosphere (Brooks/ Cole)
has garnered a 2003 Talbot Prize from the Society of Academic Authors
for John Knox PhD'96 and Steve Ackerman
— for something you may have taken for granted: visual excellence
in color textbooks. Knox is a research scientist and lecturer at
the University of Georgia in Athens, and Ackerman teaches atmospheric
and oceanic sciences at the UW. The textbook is dedicated in part
to the late UW-Madison Professor Lyle Horn '55, MS'56,
PhD'61.
The CPA exam is so difficult that, on average, only 10 percent
of those who take it pass all four sections. What an accomplishment
it is, then, to earn the Gold Medal for the highest score in Illinois
— and Eunjoo Cheong Lee '97 has done
it. A 1989 emigrant from Korea, she holds a master's from
Stanford and a master's of accounting from the University
of Illinois-Chicago. Lee is with the Chicago accounting firm of
Shepard Schwartz & Harris.
What's Sanjay Srikantiah '97 been
up to? We're glad you asked. He's been working on his
master's in international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School
of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. Then, while
studying Mandarin in China last fall, Srikantiah learned that he'd
been chosen for Peace Corps service in China. He embarked on that
adventure in June.
“The Mistreaters are treating themselves right,” began
a May Milwaukee Journal Sentinel online article about the
four-member band The Mistreaters, which boasts Dusty Mistreater
(Kevin Meyer '98) on guitar and former UW student Christreater
(Chris Treater) on vocals. The group serves up
a “blues-based punk rock you could dance to,” and its
latest album is Playa Hated to the Fullest (Estrus Records).
We heard from Anthony Divello '99 that
he's an aerospace engineer at Analex Corporation in Litton,
Colorado. In April, he helped to launch a Titan 4B rocket from Cape
Canaveral. The rocket carried a Military Strategic and Tactical
Relay (Milstar) spacecraft, which, when linked with other Milstars,
forms a ring that transmits voices, data, and images from virtually
the entire planet.
Sarah Holste Hodges MD'99 is off to a great
career start. An otolaryngology/head and neck surgery chief resident
at the UW Hospital and Clinics, she received the Steven Dean Gray
Resident Research Award from the American Broncho-Esophagological
Association in May. Her research work, “Remodeling of Neuromuscular
Junction in Aged Rat Genioglossus Muscle,” was co-authored
by Nadine Connor PhD'97 and Alexandra
Anderson '00.
So, what is it with figure skating? Why do we love it so? Ellyn
Kestnbaum PhD'99 of Washington, D.C., explores America's
fascination with the sport in this first book-length study of its
cultural aspects, Culture on Ice: Figure Skating & Cultural
Meaning (Wesleyan University Press).
“The experience was really unreal,” writes Skye
Schulte '99 about her January trip to Saudi Arabia
through the Saudi-American Exchange, which was founded to “promote
understanding through communication” following 9/11. As a
recent graduate of the Master of Public Health program at Tufts
University in Medford, Massachusetts, Schulte was especially interested
in the Saudi health system.
It was great to hear from a favorite former WAA intern, Kira
Winter '99, who's making it big in the Big
Apple. Winter is the new manager of client relationships at the
Ann Taylor corporate office. You go, girl!
Catching Flak
 Being
a journalist carries certain responsibilities. You become the proxy
of a thousand tastes and desires. If Americans want to know, for
instance, what it's like to eat FrostyPaws, an ice cream marketed
for dogs, well, it's a journalist's job to tell them.
At least that's how James Norton '99 sees
it. Norton, a former editor of the Daily Cardinal, now
runs Flak Magazine
with the aid of a passel of former Badgers, including Dylan
Graham '95, Ben Chandler '98,
Eric Wittmershaus '98, Andy Stilp '00, Sean
Weitner '00, Stevie (Stephanie) Kuenn '01, Dan Norton
x'02, and Andy Ross '02.
Billing itself as a “noncomprehensive guide to everything,”
Flak has managed to stick out from the maze of blogs and
'zines on the Internet, earning praise from PC Magazine
this year as one of the top one hundred undiscovered sites on the
Web. About one hundred thousand people load up on Flak
each month, which posts new reviews and essays daily.
Conceived on the back of a placemat in a Madison-area truckstop,
the five-year-old site's staple is cultural criticism, including
movie, book, and TV reviews. But it's found a niche by probing
the extraordinary in the ordinary, publishing prose on such prosaic
topics as euchre, the new McGriddle sandwich, the state of TV jingles,
and the demise of the Whatchamacallit candy bar.
“We try to start with something specific that really connects
with people,” says Norton, whose essay on FrostyPaws wound
up contemplating whether pets supplant human relationships in an
increasingly cloistered world. “But from that point, you can
go just about anywhere.”
Inconceivable without e-mail, Flak represents the work
of some three dozen regular contributors, editors, designers, and
cartoonists, most of whom are separated by thousands of miles. Norton
lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has a full-time editing gig
with the Christian Science Monitor in Boston. Wittmershaus,
who serves as managing editor, works for a newspaper in Santa Rosa,
California, and, like the rest of the staff, devotes snatches of
free time to the all-volunteer effort.
“It's a hobby for us, and it's also a means of
staying in touch,” Norton says.
Next up is an ambitious plan to launch a print version of Flak.
The first issue, centered on the theme of bubble gum, is due out
this fall and will be sold over the Internet and in bookstores in
several cities. The goal of the new venture, Norton says, is “to
fail as little as possible.”
— Michael Penn
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Fall 2003 Features
Alumni News
Regulars
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