Discovery

September 4, 2015

Innovative Melanoma Treatment

Huntsman Cancer Institute investigators are seeing promising results in fighting melanoma, a form of skin cancer, with a surprising and innovative treatment—a mutated herpes virus. The new treatment, which is free of the often ravaging side effects of chemotherapy, has been found in research trials to create dramatic reversals in 60 percent of metastases injected with the virus-derived therapy, talimogene laherparepvec (or T-VEC). More than half of patients with tumor shrinkage became melanoma-free for a year or more. An FDA review committee voted 22 to 1 this spring for approval of T-VEC. Final decision on approval is expected by late October.

Huntsman oncologist Dr. Robert Andtbacka, an associate professor in the University of Utah’s Division of Surgical Oncology, has been leading the T-VEC research and is first author of a report on the research, published in May in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

HOW THE TREATMENT WORKS:

1Doctors inject T-VEC, based on a herpes simplex type 1 virus, into a melanoma lesion or lesions. (In the study cited in May, researchers injected the largest and newest lesions first.) T-VEC has been genetically modified to hijack the virus that causes cold sores and change its genome so it attacks only melanoma cells and secretes the growth factor Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF).

2 Once inside the body, the virus replicates and secretes GM-CSF, overwhelming and eventually bursting the melanoma cells at the lesion site, exposing melanoma cancer proteins to the immune system and initiating an immune response against them. GM-CSF is naturally secreted in the body as part of an immune response and is commonly used as support medication to stimulate a patient’s white blood cell recovery after chemotherapy or stem-cell transplant.

3 The GM-CSF attracts and trains the patient’s T cells (a type of white blood cell) to find and destroy any melanoma cells that may have spread to the lymph nodes, lung, liver, or other sites.

4Over the first few months of treatment, doctors may follow up to inject T-VEC into new or growing lesions to kill new melanoma metastases and use melanoma cancer proteins to maintain the immune system response.

5
The immune system now remains on guard to recognize and fight melanoma cancer proteins whenever and wherever they might appear.

Better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of melanoma has led to a boom in the development of targeted agents and immunotherapies for the disease. Andtbacka and other researchers are also conducting clinical trials of other virus-derived drugs to fight melanoma, such as one from Coxsackie.

Shade-Grown Coffee Best for Birds and Farmers

The next time you reach for a “wake up” cup of Joe or a chunk of chocolate, you may want to consider whether the coffee or cocoa beans were grown in the shade or open sun. Choosing the shade-grown variety can offer huge benefits to tropical birds, their ecosystems, and farmers—and organic Ethiopian shade-grown coffee is the best option to accomplish that, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Ornithology.

Cagan Şekercioğlu, the study’s senior author and assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah, compared the types of birds that utilize primary growth forests, where crops like coffee and cocoa are grown in the shade of native trees, and open farmland, where these same crops are grown in bright sun. The study found that agroforests promote and maintain far more bird life than open farmland does, and the wider variety of birds living in the tree canopy aids the overall health of the ecosystem.

“As you go to more and more open agriculture, you lose some bird groups that provide important ecosystem services like insect control, seed dispersal, and pollination, while you get higher numbers of granivores that actually can be crop pests,” Şekercioğlu says.

Organic shade-grown coffee from Ethiopia, where the coffee is a native species of the forest, is the best coffee for biodiversity, he says. “It is grown where it belongs in its native habitat, with native tree cover and without chemicals.”

Şekercioğlu’s findings are especially important now. A rapidly spreading fungus is affecting shade-grown coffee crops worldwide, resulting in a rapid trend toward fungus-resistant sun-grown coffee. Shade-grown coffee cropland has decreased by 20 percent globally since 1996, with rapid conversion to sun-grown coffee.

“There is potential for consumer choice to have far-reaching and powerful impact,” Şekercioğlu says. “Choosing products that promote conservation and responsible farming practices provides those farmers with the financial incentive to take a risk and produce crops in a way that is economically risky but helps maintain global biodiversity.”

Brief Walk Breaks Offset Hazards of Sitting

A new University of Utah study suggests that while low-intensity activities such as standing may not be enough to offset the health hazards of sitting for long periods of time, squeezing in two minutes of walking each hour just might be the solution.

Numerous studies have shown that sitting for extended periods of time each day leads to increased risk for early death, as well as heart disease, diabetes, and other health conditions. Those hazards loom for the many people who hold desk jobs or other positions that require them to sit for long periods of work.

Researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine investigated the health benefits of trading sitting for light activities for short periods of time. They found that while the risks of sitting weren’t offset by adding low-intensity activities such as standing, light-intensity activity such as walking for just two minutes each hour was associated with a 33 percent lower risk of dying.

The findings of the U study were published this past April in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. “The current national focus is on moderate or vigorous activity,” says Dr. Srinavasan Beddhu, a U professor of internal medicine who was the study’s lead author. “To see that light activity had an association with lower mortality is intriguing.”

Other studies have found that while moderate or vigorous exercise is important to strengthen the heart, muscles, and bones, and confers other health benefits that low- and light-intensity activities can’t, isolated periods of vigorous exercise are inadequate to offset the risks from long periods of sitting. “Based on these results, we would recommend adding two minutes of walking each hour in combination with normal activities, which should include 2.5 hours of moderate exercise each week,” Beddhu says.

One More: Fussing Over the Fight Song

December 8, 2014

University of Utah fans sing and cheer at a football game during the 1950s. The song “Utah Man” has undergone several evolutions since it first came into use. (Photo courtesy Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah)

Its authorship is unclear. Its date of origin is murky. Its lyrics have been modified several times. Yet many of those who currently belt out “Utah Man” are fiercely loyal to “how it’s always been.” Turns out “always” isn’t necessarily such a long time.

“Utah Man” became the University of Utah athletics “fight song” in the early 1900s. With only minor changes, the song lyrics very closely resemble an 1885 fraternity song, “My Name is Sigma Chi,” likewise sung to the tune of the old folk song “Solomon Levi.”

Exactly how and when “Utah Man” became the U’s fight song is unknown. In a 1978 Daily Utah Chronicle article, U professor emeritus Mary Webster asserted that the 1904 U football team composed “Utah Man” during improvisational sing-alongs on Head Coach Joe Maddock’s porch. Others insisted the song originated with his predecessor, Coach Harvey Holmes (1900-1903). The first currently known mentions in print are a May 1907 Chronicle item noting that “A Utah Man” was sung during an outing of the U’s Normal (public school teaching) Department, and a page in the U’s 1907 Utonian yearbook that included the song’s lyrics.

Like the Sigma Chi song, the original version of “Utah Man” included the line “We drink our stein of lager and we smoke our big cigar.” By 1942, that had been changed in the U fight song to “our coeds are the fairest and each one’s a shining star.” Those lyrics became the new standard until this past summer, when the first part of the phrase was modified to “our students are the finest.” The official 2014 version includes “fan” as an alternative anywhere “man” was originally used in the lyrics, and “no other gang of college men” became “no other band of college fans.”

Several other universities nationwide also have updated their fight songs over the years to reflect modern sensibilities. The University of Mississippi in 2009 trimmed one of its fight songs to discourage fans from chanting “the South will rise again.” In 2007, the University of Hawaii at Manoa changed “Here’s to each valiant son” to “Here’s to each valiant one.” And Michigan State University, originally known as Michigan Agricultural College, modified “its specialty is farming” to “its specialty is winning,” among other changes.

At the U, alternatives to “Utah Man” have been proposed in the past but didn’t prevail. In May 1934, The Utah Alumnus announced that “the students of the University have become tired of singing ‘Utah Man’… [and] they are after a new Alma Mater song.” A contest offered awards for both words and music, and by 1937, the song “Fair Utah” was on offer, but by popular sentiment, it was decided the song wouldn’t replace “Utah Man” and would merely supplement it. In 2000—the year sportswriter Rick Reilly famously mocked the “jolly” references and tone of “Utah Man” in Sports Illustrated—the University of Utah debuted a new “Utah Fight Song,” with music by Mormon Tabernacle organist emeritus Robert Cundick BA’49 MFA’50 PhD’55. But again, Cundick and others emphasized that the song “was not a threat to the status quo—it was just an addition.”

The latest evolution in the lyrics to “Utah Man” was approved this year after faculty members and student leaders spearheaded efforts to modernize the lyrics and address concerns expressed in recent decades that certain words and phrases were sexist or racist. The new lyrics will be printed in all current versions of the song, but U President David Pershing has said fans can sing whichever version they prefer.

So sing it loud, sing it proud, and realize that “traditions” do change. Perhaps one day, “jolly” Utah fans will even decide it’s time to toughen up that line.

—Marcia Dibble is managing editor of Continuum.

Web Extras

Read the complete lyrics to “Utah Man” here.

Read the complete lyrics to “My Name is Sigma Chi” here.

Web Exclusive Photo Gallery

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Discovery

December 5, 2013

Bad Day of Skiing Leads to Fresh Idea for Skiers

For University of Utah undergraduate student Alex Carr, a bad day of skiing led to an innovative idea: Chār Poles, a sort of ski pole equivalent of a Swiss Army knife.

Carr says he got the idea for the poles one day after he hiked up a mountain in the Utah backcountry in order to ski down, only to realize his ski bindings weren’t adjusted properly. “After failed attempts using rocks and twigs as screwdrivers, I decided to make it my mission to create ski poles with screwdrivers.” He brainstormed during the long trek back down the hill, eventually coming up with the model that has just hit the market.

University of Utah student Alex Carr’s Chār Poles feature multiple tools. (Photo courtesy U Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute)

Chār Poles not only feature screwdrivers built into the handles, they also have bottle openers and camera mounts, and are customizable. These four aspects of the poles garnered them the name char, the Farsi word for four. (Carr, a senior, has been studying Farsi and entrepreneurship at the U, though he took a leave in spring 2013 to focus on his business.)

Skiing Magazine named Chār Poles to its 2013 Top 10 list of innovative and creative products, and the poles also garnered a spot on the 2013 “Wish List” of the SnowSports Industries America trade show.

Carr credits as crucial to his success several programs at the U’s Pierre Lassonde Entrepreneur Center, including its Startup Center for Students, Innovation Scholar program, and The Foundry, and he remains active with the entrepreneurship program’s student advisory board. His company, established as an LLC in 2012, when it filed its first patents, was then reorganized as a corporation in 2013. Like most businesses that arise from undergraduate work at the U, it is independently owned by its creator, Carr. Chār Poles are now available through the namesake company’s website.

3-D Visualization Tool Aids Biological Research

FluoRender, a free tool developed at the University of Utah for studying three-dimensional images of biological samples, is now seeing diverse applications in biological research and has been used to create stunning images that have garnered awards in international biology image competitions. Version 2.13 was just released in mid-2013, and the next release is expected in spring 2014.

In this image of a mouse embryo limb, red highlights the muscles, green the tendons, and blue the nerves. (Image by A. Kelsey Lewis, Gabrielle Kardon, Yong Wan, and Ronen Schweitzer)

FluoRender is an interactive, flexible software tool for confocal microscopy visualization. Confocal microscopy has become an important imaging tool in biology research in recent years. The technique—which uses fluorescent stains to delineate separate parts of a biological sample—creates a 3-D visualization of the sample. Before FluoRender, most of the visualization tools that were available created images that, though complex, were static and unable to be manipulated. FluoRender images are interactive. For example, users can “paint” directly on the visuals and select particular structures for closer analysis and manipulation.

The late University of Utah biologist Chi-Bin Chien (who died of cancer in 2011) and his postdoctoral fellow Hideo Otsuna, now a research associate in the U’s Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, partnered with Charles Hansen, associate director of the U’s Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, and his graduate student Yong Wan (now PhD’13 and a postdoc with Hansen’s group) to design and develop the software tool starting in 2008, with the earliest version coming out in 2009. The project received National Institutes of Health awards in 2010 and 2011, ultimately resulting in the latest FluoRender software package.

PowerPot Creates Portable Outdoor Power Source

Even when camping, people often want to have battery power in their smart devices for evening reading, listening to music, and ready connectivity when they need to get back in touch with civilization. The PowerPot, created by University of Utah alumni Paul Slusser BMA’09 MS’09 and David Toledo BMA’10, provides a solution.

The small cook pot contains a thermoelectric generator that charges USB devices by using the heat of water in the pot as it is warmed. The basic model, the PowerPot V, weighs less than a pound and produces five volts, enough to charge a cell phone in 60 to 90 minutes. Larger models, such as the PowerPot X, produce 10 volts and can charge larger devices, such as a tablet computer.

The PowerPot uses heat from water in the pot to generate electricity to charge USB devices. (Photo courtesy U Technology Venture Development)

Toledo and Slusser came up with the idea while studying thermoelectricity at the U in 2008. They bought a thermoelectric cooling device on eBay, began manipulating it, and eventually built the first PowerPot prototype using an old pot from Toledo’s mom. Then the project hit some roadblocks, and Toledo and Slusser both graduated and moved on, Toledo to working on a doctorate at Cornell University, Slusser to a job in Silicon Valley. Then, while surfing the Internet, Toledo made a breakthrough, finding a key missing piece to their engineering puzzle: a cheap power regulator designed for hobbyists. Toledo took a leave of absence from Cornell, and he and Slusser moved back to Salt Lake to resume work on the project. They used the crowdfunding tool Kickstarter to get startup money and officially founded their new company Power Practical in 2011.

Though Power Practical is an independent company owned by Toledo and Slusser, the team received essential support from the University of Utah’s Foundry program (a student startup incubator that is part of the Lassonde Entrepreneur Center of the U’s David Eccles School of Business) in the early stages of business development. The team also received seed funding from the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge, a student business plan competition offered by the Lassonde Entrepreneur Center. PowerPots are now available through the company website, as well as retailers such as Sportsman’s Warehouse.

> Read the complete 2013 Innovate Report online here.

Discovery

September 8, 2013

Microwave Cooks Up Less Toxic Semiconductor

Michael Free, left, and Prashant Sarswat. (Photo by Stephen Speckman)

University of Utah metallurgists have used an old microwave oven to rapidly produce a nanocrystal semiconductor using cheap, abundant, and less toxic metals than other semiconductors.

The researchers hope the process will be used to produce more efficient photovoltaic solar cells and LED lights, biological sensors, and systems to convert waste heat to electricity.

Using microwaves “is a fast way to make these particles that have a broad range of applications,” says Michael Free, a U professor of metallurgical engineering. “We hope in the next five years there will be some commercial products from this, and we are continuing to pursue applications and improvements.”

Free and the study’s lead author, Prashant Sarswat, a research associate in metallurgical engineering, published their study of the microwaved photovoltaic semiconductor—known as CZTS for copper, zinc, tin, and sulfur—in the June 1 issue of the Journal of Crystal Growth. Sarswat says that compared with photovoltaic semiconductors that use highly toxic cadmium and arsenic, ingredients for the CZTS photovoltaic material “are more environmentally friendly.”

Hands-Free Devices Found Unsafe at Any Speed

Hands-free devices are not risk-free, a University of Utah study found. (Photo courtesy AAA)

Using hands-free devices to talk, text, or send email while driving is distracting and risky, contrary to what many people believe, says a new University of Utah study.

“Our research shows that hands-free is not risk-free,” says U psychology Professor David Strayer, lead author of the study, which he conducted for the foundation arm of the nonprofit AAA, formerly known as the American Automobile Association.

“These new, speech-based technologies in the car can overload the driver’s attention and impair their ability to drive safely,” says Strayer.

“An unintended consequence of trying to make driving safer—by moving to speech-to-text, in-vehicle systems—may actually overload the driver and make them less safe.”

“Don’t assume that if your eyes are on the road and your hands are on the wheel that you are unimpaired,” says Strayer. “If you don’t pay attention, then you are a potential hazard on the roadway.”

In a 2006 study, Strayer first showed that even talking on a hands-free cell phone was just as distracting as using a hand-held phone while driving, but the message seems to have failed to fully connect with the public, with many people believing hands-free devices are safer.

Strayer conducted the latest study with fellow U Department of Psychology members Joel M. Cooper, research assistant professor of psychology, and doctoral students Jonna Turrill, James Coleman, Nate Medeiros-Ward, and Francesco Biondi.

Imaging Opens Doors for Treating Down Syndrome

U researchers have conducted path-breaking imaging of the brains of people with Down syndrome. (Photo courtesy U Health Sciences)

Results from groundbreaking research at the University of Utah may pave the way for changes in the course of treatment for Down syndrome and other genetic disorders.

For two years, neuroscientists at the University of Utah studied the brains of 15 people with Down syndrome and compared their brain images with those of 15 “healthy” control individuals. The researchers discovered remarkable differences in the images from people with Down syndrome—information that could change the way the disorder is treated in the future, says Julie R. Korenberg, principal investigator for the Down syndrome study and director of the University of Utah’s USTAR Center for Integrated Neurosciences and Human Behavior.

“It opens up a whole new world of possibilities for accelerating therapeutics with Down syndrome and for other developmental disorders,” Korenberg says of the study. “Up until now, there was no functional imaging of Down syndrome, and we knew we needed it.”

The research idea in itself was innovative, says Jeff Anderson, first author of the study, published in June in the online journal NeuroImage: Clinical. “It turns out that Down syndrome, in spite of being an incredibly common disorder, has been almost completely ignored by the scientific community in terms of brain imaging,” says Anderson.

The scientists set out to record the brain function of people with Down syndrome. “What we found were some pretty striking abnormalities,” he says. “It looks like there is massive overconnectivity in the brains of individuals with Down syndrome. These are larger differences by an order of magnitude than we’re seeing in autism or in other disorders. In addition, we’re also seeing that there are some places in the brain that are underconnected—areas that are far apart and are part of networks in the brain where regions in a healthy brain work together to perform tasks.”

As a practical matter, researchers for the first time will now be able to use brain imaging to measure how and if a certain therapy is having positive results for a Down syndrome patient.

Mineral Named for University of Utah Geologist

Nashite has been found in Utah and Colorado. (Photo by Joe Marty)

A bluish-green mineral discovered in Colorado and Utah has been named nashite in honor of University of Utah geology and geophysics Professor Barbara Nash, who has studied related minerals.

Avid rockhound Joe Marty MS’76, a retired medical technologist at the University of Utah School of Medicine, discovered the mineral in abandoned uranium mines in Colorado and Utah in 2010 and 2011. Marty and three other researchers wrote a study describing and characterizing the new mineral and naming it nashite for the U scientist.

Nash is known for her study of volcanic rocks, including those spewed by massive eruptions of the Yellowstone hot spot during the past 16 million years. She also has done extensive chemical analysis of other vanadium minerals found by Marty.

“I’m thrilled and honored to have received this recognition from my colleagues,” says Nash. “But I can understand that for most people it probably isn’t obvious just how satisfying it can be to have ‘ite’ added to your last name.”

Through The Years: Short alum profiles and Class Notes

June 3, 2013

Bidder 70

U alum Tim DeChristopher is the subject of an award-winning documentary film.

By Marcia C. Dibble

The story of monkey-wrencher Tim DeChristopher BS’09 has come to the big screen in the feature-length documentary film Bidder 70.

DeChristopher entered the national spotlight when, as a University of Utah student in 2008, he found himself holding a bidding paddle at a widely disputed federal auction of Utah land. The George W. Bush administration had put thousands of acres of pristine wilderness on the block for oil and natural gas drilling, and DeChristopher was attending the auction intending simply to protest. But literally handed the chance to do more, he began bidding—and winning bids, with no intention to drill—which subverted the process. Incoming Interior Secretary Ken Salazar eventually invalidated the entire auction and protected more than 100,000 acres of land. Nonetheless, DeChristopher’s act of civil disobedience landed him in court, and he was sent to federal prison.

But DeChristopher became an instant environmental activism star and co-founded the Salt Lake City-based “climate justice” organization Peaceful Uprising, which describes its work as “at the intersection between environmental degradation and human rights.” The group held the first national screening of Bidder 70 this year on April 22, the day after DeChristopher finished his prison sentence and, fittingly, Earth Day.

George and Beth Gage

Bidder 70 has now been recognized with 15 major film festival awards. Filmmakers Beth and George Gage have previously produced documentaries including American Outrage, about two Western Shoshone sisters fighting the U.S. government, and Fire on the Mountain, a profile of a World War II Army unit made up of winter-sports enthusiasts. The latter played at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, where it became a personal favorite of Robert Redford. The actor-activist makes an appearance in Bidder 70, as does writer and environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams BS’79 MS’84. Following filming, the Gages gave Redford a baseball cap with “Bidder 70” embroidered on it, and Redford wore the hat in his latest movie, The Company You Keep, in which he plays a Weather Underground member who uses the cap as a disguise when hiding from the police.

The Gages note, “Tim DeChristopher is a young man with a message that needs to be heard. Climate change is upon us, and there is nothing more important to work for than a livable future.”

DeChristopher is now considering becoming a minister in the First Unitarian Church, of which he is a member, and plans to attend Harvard Divinity School starting this fall. “I see divinity school and ultimately the ministry as an extension of my previous activism, not a new direction,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I’m continuing on the path I’ve been on, just stepping my game up.”

Web Exclusive Video

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Other Notable Alumni

’50s

Spencer F. Eccles BS’56 was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2013 Governor’s State of Sports Awards, organized by the Utah Sports Association. Eccles for decades has been a generous and significant donor to athletics efforts at the University of Utah and throughout the state, from youth sports to the Olympics. He was also an award-winning athlete in his youth. He skied competitively for 13 years, becoming a four-year letterman at the U, an All-American, and a member of the 1958 U.S. world championship team. After college, he spent four decades in banking, including nearly 20 years as chairman and chief executive officer of First Security Bank, before its 2000 merger with Wells Fargo. He remains chairman emeritus of Wells Fargo’s Intermountain banking region. LM

’70s

Bryan J. McEntire BS’78 MBA’82 has been named a Fellow in The American Ceramic Society, in recognition of his notable contributions to ceramic science and technology. McEntire holds one patent and three pending applications and is author or co-author of more than 30 technical papers on processing and characterization of ceramics for heat-engines, industrial applications, and medical devices. Presently chief technology officer at Amedica Corporation in Salt Lake City, his current interests involve the development and manufacturing of ceramics for orthopedic applications. Between 1986 and 1995, McEntire served as a shortcourse lecturer on “Forming of Ceramics” for the National Institute of Ceramic Engineers. He spent nearly a decade with Ceramatec and also worked with Norton/TRW Ceramics, the Advanced Ceramics Division of Saint-Gobain Corporation, and Applied Materials Corporation. He previously served as a member of Applied Materials’ Technical Review Board.

’80s

David Marcey PhD’85, a biology professor at California Lutheran University, has been named a Vision and Change Leadership Fellow and is spending a year helping identify ways to improve undergraduate life sciences education as part of the new Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences, a joint initiative of the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Marcey recently began teaching courses in which students watch lectures online and spend in-person class time collaborating on problembased activities. He pioneered the use of web-based tutorials in macromolecular structure, putting together a website of interactive tutorials that are used throughout the world. His tutorials, often co-authored with students, have also accompanied several prominent textbooks. Marcey co-edited the 2008 book Integrated Science–New Approaches to Education: A Virtual Roundtable and has served on the editorial board of Project MERLOT, an online peer-reviewed journal of digital learning tools.

’90s

Jason Thatcher BA’94 BA’99, associate professor of information systems in Clemson University’s Department of Management, has been named to the “Circle of Compadres” by the Information Systems Doctoral Student Association of The PhD Project, an award-winning program to create a more diverse corporate America. The “Circle of Compadres” recognizes faculty members who promote and inspire African American, Hispanic American, and Native American students as they pursue degrees and take positions in academe. Those chosen are outstanding mentors to doctoral students in information systems and related science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines. Since joining Clemson in 2002, Thatcher has mentored students through efforts such as sponsoring the Association for Information Systems student group and one-on-one interaction with students through Clemson’s Eureka and Creative Inquiry programs. Thatcher holds a master’s of public administration degree from the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy and a doctorate in business administration from Florida State University.

’00s

Dheeraj “Big D” Gadicherla MEn’08 quit his job with IBM India in 2012 and embarked on a motorcycle ride across India from the lowest plains to the world’s highest motorable road, through the Khardung Pass. “It was an absolute back crusher of a ride, traversing roads, no roads, mountains, rivers—you name it, I rode on it,” says Gadicherla. At the U, he was involved in many campus programs, including the Associated Students of the University of Utah. After graduation, he took up safety and ergonomics consulting and moved first to Philadelphia and then New York before moving back to India to be near family, taking a position with IBM India as a program manager for safety operations. “Three years into the job,” he says, “I had the opportunity to sail a boat on the river Ganges, when I realized there are better things in life.” He quit his job and set off for more adventures, including learning to paraglide, backpacking, and exploring the world by motorcycle (garnering corporate sponsors here and there). Gadicherla also pursues his art and works part time as a research consultant for an engineering school. See pictures of Gadicherla’s motorcycle journey through India, Ganges trip, and more here. View a gallery of his art here.

’10s

Vishal Gupta PhD’11 received the 2012 Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the Industrial Minerals & Aggregates Division of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration. The award recognizes members of the society who have an outstanding reputation for professionalism and accomplishments and have significantly contributed to the workings of the society and this division. A research engineer with FLSmidth, Gupta also won the company’s 2012 Business Idea Competition and was selected as one of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration’s 2012-13 Henry Krumb Lecturers. In addition to a doctorate in metallurgical engineering from the U, Gupta holds a master’s degree from Southern Illinois University and a bachelor of technology with honors degree from Indian School of Mines. Gupta has received one patent and published 12 journal articles, one book, and one book chapter. He has presented work in many national and international technical conferences, and since joining FLSmidth in 2010, has put forward three invention disclosures in the area of mineral beneficiation and solvent extraction.

Chelsea Sloan BS’12, co-founder of the retail clothing franchise Uptown Cheapskate, was awarded first place in the 2012 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards, garnering $150,000 in cash and in-kind business services from the Entrepreneurs’ Organization to help build her business. Sloan was selected for the award from nearly 2,000 student applicants from around the world. She is the competition’s first female winner since the awards began. Chelsea and her brother, Scott Sloan BS’06, co-founded Uptown Cheapskate in 2009 while Chelsea was still a student. Their parents are the founders of the children’s resale franchise Kid to Kid, and the two young entrepreneurs set out to create a similar concept for their own demographic. Their store buys, sells, and trades new and gently used designer and fashion-forward clothing and accessories for men and women (primarily between the ages of 16 and 35). Since 2009, the siblings have opened more than 25 Uptown Cheapskate franchise stores in 14 states, with plans to develop more.

U Professor a 2013 TED Fellow

Miriah Meyer PhD’08, a USTAR assistant professor in the University of Utah’s School of Computing, has been named a 2013 TED Fellow, recognizing her efforts in interactive visualization systems that help scientists make sense of complex data. Meyer received her bachelor’s degree in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University before heading to the U for her doctorate. Prior to joining the U faculty, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University and a visiting scientist at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. She was awarded a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship in 2012 and has been included in Fast Company’s list of the 100 most creative people. “I’m really looking forward to participating in the TED Fellows program, in large part because it will give me an opportunity to spread the word about the amazing research going on in the School of Computing, the SCI Institute, and the College of Engineering,” Meyer says. “The TED vision seems very much in line with our focus on tackling challenging and important problems that matter for our quality of life today, as well as in the future.”

TED is a nonprofit group devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” It started in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three fields: technology, entertainment, and design.

LM Lifetime Member of the Alumni Association AM Annual Member of the Alumni Association

We want to hear from you! Please submit entries to Ann Floor. To read more alumni news, check out the “Honor Roll” column in the Alumni Association’s online newsletter here.

Through the Years: Ahead of the Game (computer science innovators)

February 20, 2013

Alan Kay

The University of Utah has been a leader in personal computing since the phrase was coined. Many of the very foundations of modern computing were built by U alumni such as Alan Kay MS’68 PhD’69, who helped innovate the graphical user interface and object-oriented languages, as well as the laptop computer. His groundbreaking work has been recognized over the years with many honors, including the A.M. Turing award, known as the “Nobel Prize of computing.” Kay is currently president of the nonprofit Viewpoints Research Institute and an adjunct professor of computer science at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The long list of U computer science pioneers also includes such innovators as Alan Ashton BA’66 PhD’70, who cofounded WordPerfect; Jim Clark PhD’74, cofounder of what became Netscape; Fred Parke BS’65 MS’72 PhD’74, a trailblazer in early animation combining facial expressions and vocals; and Jim Kajiya BS’77 MS’77 PhD’79, whose honors include an Academy Award recognizing his groundbreaking technique for creating computer-generated images of fur and hair. Ashton and his wife, Karen, later founded and still own the Thanksgiving Point gardens and museum complex in Lehi, Utah. Clark, who was one of the co-founders of Silicon Graphics, Inc., also founded Healtheon, which merged with WebMD. Parke is currently a professor and director of the Visualization Sciences Program at Texas A&M University. Kajiya is a researcher emeritus with Microsoft Research and founded Tolt Machine Works in 2010 to create complex, precision components for applications such as wind and hydroelectric power.

Jim Kajiya

The U has continued its computing innovation, making deep inroads into the latest computer graphics applications with the introduction and fast rise of its Entertainment Arts & Engineering program, which focuses on video games, as well as game technology-based digital films. Now in its sixth year, the program is already sending out successful graduates. Jason T. Williams BS’10 MS’10 currently works for Microsoft Studios, which develops and publishes games for the Xbox, Xbox 360, Windows, and Windows Phone platforms. While still at the U, Gene Peterson BS’10 MS’10 interned with both Disney Interactive Studios and Electronic Arts, Inc. He is now a senior software engineer with Zynga, where he worked on the Mafia Wars franchise for a few years and now focuses on mobile games. Chris Bireley BS’10 MS’10 is also now with Zynga, as are Daniel Van Tassell BS’11 and Russell Bloomdale BS’12.

Damean Lyon

The U added a master’s degree to the Entertainment Arts & Engineering program in 2010, and many of the program’s first undergraduate class continued on in this new Master Games Studio. One alum of both the first bachelor’s and master’s cohorts, Sean Forsgren BA’11 MFA’12, as an undergraduate was the lead producer on Rapunzel’s Fight Knight, the first game released by the U program. He is now working for glasses.com on an Augmented Reality project. Tyler Hamill BA’11—who while at the U worked on the highly successful game Minions!—is now an animator with Electronic Arts.

During his undergraduate studies, Damean Lyon BA’12 led a team of fellow students in creating the game Heroes of Hat, which in May 2012 became the first student-created video game released through Utah Game Forge, the company the U created to help students market their work. Lyon, who is now in the U graduate program, has been producing short films and banners for Forward Solutions, an entrepreneurial company focused mainly on training items or tools for military personnel. Lyon served in Iraq with the U.S. Marine Corps as a sergeant specializing in aviation ordnance, and he also now does graphic design for Rogue Corps, which helps wounded veterans participate in outdoor activities. The nonprofit group was founded by his brother, David, a double amputee injured while serving as a Marine in Afghanistan. Heroes of Hat’s lead designer and programmer, Jon Futch BS’12, is also now in the graduate program, as well as working full time at Disney Interactive Studios in Salt Lake City. Hat team member Johnathan Nielsen BS’12 recently built the user interface for Superbot’s new game PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.

Laura Warner

Alumni who worked on the first Master Games Studio release, Robot Pinball Escape, also are continuing to create. Laura Warner BFA’10 MFA’12, one of the game’s main animators, is now working at Disney Interactive in Salt Lake. She cofounded the Utah chapter of Women In Games International, which works to support girls and women interested in joining the video game industry. Game producer Kurt Coppersmith BFA’10 MFA’12 is now technical program manager with Daily Bread Food Storage and a producer with Argonaut Interactive. Alex Johnstone BA’09 MFA’12, the game’s lead designer, is running the exhibit part of The Leonardo museum in Salt Lake. Artist Eugenia Hernandez BFA’10 MFA’12 is an e-learning developer with Intermountain Healthcare. Adam M. Ellis MS’12, an engineer on Robot, is now with Microsoft Studios in Redmond, Washington. Engineer Wade Paterson MS’12 is working at Merge Interactive in Texas, while engineer Brandon Davies BS’12 is with Electronic Arts.

Matt Anderson

The nine students who worked on Utah Game Forge’s second release, Erie, include Matt Anderson HBA’09 MFA’12, the game’s chief designer, who was an Independent Game Developers Association scholar in 2012 and is now a producer at Wyrd Games and creative director for Broken Compass Studios, which released the app game Catball Eats it All in 2011. Level and sound designer Christopher Diller BA’10 MFA’12 is working in IT with the Natural History Museum of Utah. Jamie King MS’12, the game’s main engineer, is teaching at Neumont University. Ryan Bown MFA’12, the game’s main environmental artist, is now an adjunct instructor for the U’s program and is working on Erie II. Diller and Bown later teamed up with Adam Ellis and Betina Tin MFA’12 (also an artist on Robot) to create Tactical Measure, which took Honorable Mention at Microsoft’s 2012 Imagine Cup.

Other alumni have drawn on their U experience with “machinima,” movies created using video game technology. Eden, created by a team of 12 students led by senior film student Luke Hartvigsen, won the Best Science Fiction award at the International Student Film Festival in Hollywood, California, in 2011. Edgar Nielsen BFA’11 provided the 2-D animated opening sequence for the film. Nielsen and fellow film graduate Michael Whitaker BA’10 co-founded the game company Cerbercat and have published titles online and on mobile devices, including Grow the Grass, Puzzle Candy, and Halloween Panic. Nielsen also teaches animation and the basics of story to students at Salt Lake City’s Bryant Middle School and has contributed to the Render Exhibit at The Leonardo museum. He also creates cartoons that he features on his personal website, partnered YouTube channel, and elsewhere. Another former machinima student, Sarah Ripley BS’12, is now a software developer with L-3 Communications, where she has worked on projects including the NASA Global Hawk program.

Edgar Nielsen

Several of the core faculty members in the U’s program are also alumni. Corrinne Lewis BA’03 is program manager for the Master Games Studio. Robert Kessler BS’74 MS’77 PhD’81, associate director of the School of Computing, cofounded the Entertainment Arts & Engineering program and has been executive director of the Master Games Studio since its inception. He worked as a student programmer with Burroughs Corp. in the early 1970s (his master’s project became a text editor and file system for a Burroughs computer system), and he went on to found two software companies and serve as a visiting scientist at the Hewlett-Packard Research Labs.

Another Entertainment Arts & Engineering program cofounder, Roger Altizer MS’06, is the program’s director of game design and production. He previously worked as a tester on the original Xbox and was a videogame journalist for about.com, a website owned by The New York Times. Mark van Langeveld PhD’09, the program’s engineering track director, designed and directed interactive music videos for Sting and Peter Gabriel, as well as the first major interactive TV (I-TV) show at Microsoft, Vine Street. He has now taught computer graphics for more than 20 years.

—Marcia C. Dibble is associate editor of Continuum.

We want to hear from you! Please submit entries to Ann Floor. To read more alumni news, check out the “Honor Roll” column in the Alumni Association’s online newsletter here.

Tivo-ing Heat and Cold

May 25, 2012

Under the lawn behind the University of Utah’s Sterling Sill Center, mechanical engineering professor Kent Udell MS’78 PhD’80 has buried a 35-foot-wide by 40-foot-deep “ice ball” about 10 feet below the surface. On a spring afternoon, he stops to sit on a patch of grass marked by a web of shallow trenches as he checks the tubing covered by green valve boxes that provide the only evidence above ground of his experiment in testing how heat and cold can be stored for later use.

Like much of Udell’s current research, the ice-ball experiment focuses on various aspects of what he calls “Tivo-ing” energy. His initial idea for the ice ball was for it to be a collector that would absorb some of the many days of deep cold that northern Utah gets in the winter for later use as building air conditioning in the summer. But with the “aha!” addition to the experiment’s equipment of a simple compressor from a standard air-conditioning unit, he says, the project developed the potential to be used for both cooling and heating. “It opened up the possibility that even in the worst climate, you could still save a lot of money and a lot of carbon dioxide being produced.”

Udell’s deep belief in the importance of environmental sustainability permeates his research and his life. With decades of groundbreaking work in environmental mitigation under his belt, he now directs the U’s Sustainability Research Center, conducting research and fostering the work of others on campus to help modern civilization become more green.

In casual interactions, Udell exudes a mellow grooviness. Dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, khakis, and Merrells, he refers to his wife, Cherise (a onetime ecotourism guide in Ecuador who later went on to graduate school at Yale), as “my Amazon jungle lady.” His office shelves are dotted with small brass Buddhist figures. (“I enjoy contemplating Buddha. Concerns disappear. If there was a mudstorm, everybody would be muddy but Buddha. It would just run off.”) Ethics for the New Millennium by His Holiness the Dalai Lama sits on a shelf right alongside Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer.

When Udell starts talking about the latter, it’s evident that he’s really smart as well as groovy. He spent more than 25 years as a professor at the University of California-Berkeley and is now professor emeritus there, having been lured back to the University of Utah in 2005.

Udell’s path to the U began in the quiet little town of Lehi, Utah. But when he was 4, his father, “a bit of an adventurer” who worked in a midlevel job with the U.S. State Department, took a position in Afghanistan and relocated the household to Kabul. The youngest of seven, Kent and his three next-youngest siblings (the others were already out of the house and married) attended an international school there for the next few years, meeting other young students from around the world and learning a smattering of French and Farsi and Arabic. Udell points to the experience as one that opened his eyes to the world’s possibilities.

Transplanted back in Utah, Udell says he was always “into building stuff, making things, taking stuff apart and putting it back together.” He recalls taking a skills test in about ninth grade that concluded that he “seemed to have an aptitude for a Ph.D. in engineering mathematics. I had no idea what that meant. But when the time came, I looked for a major that was something related to my background in hands-on, mechanical construction, and mechanical engineering just seemed like it fit me.” He headed to Utah State University for a bachelor’s in the field, then to the U for master’s and doctoral degrees in the same. Udell’s doctoral thesis at the U was on oil shale, which continues to resurface as a hot new thing in energy about every 10 years. Yet Udell’s conclusion then, more than 30 years ago, remains the major concern of today, with no workaround yet found: It creates a huge amount of waste product, at great environmental cost. “It’s probably the most carbon-intensive form of energy possible,” he notes.

Kent Udell, left, a University of Utah mechanical engineering professor, talks with graduate student Michael Beeman BS’10 MS’10, who has been helping with work on Udell’s ice-ball experiment at the Sill Center.

As he was completing his doctorate, Udell in 1979 took his first position at Berkeley, where he taught petroleum engineering for about five years. After achieving tenure, he decided he wanted to branch out and began exploring more in environmental engineering. At the time, California was just beginning to tackle cleaning up its Superfund sites, where hazardous liquids such as dry-cleaning solvents had been dumped into the subsurface. Udell says he and his colleagues “applied stuff from petroleum engineering to removing those contaminants and developed technologies that are still the gold standard today in terms of their effectiveness.” With the new technologies, Udell says, they found they could “take something super-polluted to drinking water standards in less than a year.”

In 2004, Udell was approached by University of Utah College of Engineering Dean Richard Brown, who was looking to bring in a new chair for the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Brown had asked for the names of some potential candidates from K.L. “Larry” DeVries BS’59 PhD’62, now a Distinguished Professor of mechanical engineering at the U, who has taught here for more than 50 years. Brown was looking for promising candidates with a U connection who were at “name universities,” DeVries recalls, and Udell’s was one of two names that DeVries put forward. “I remembered [Udell] from when he was here, of course,” DeVries says. “And I had talked to him a time or two when I was down to California for NSF [the National Science Foundation], evaluating programs for potential grants. He had talked about his work down there in cleaning up oil spills and things of that sort, and those are things, of course, of considerable interest nationally and to Utah.”

In considering Brown’s invitation, Udell realized that though he’d loved his time at Berkeley, he wasn’t sure it was where he necessarily wanted to spend the rest of his career, and he found the prospects at the U—and back in Utah in general—intriguing. He had also recently started a new family, and having already raised a daughter in Berkeley, he knew it was expensive and difficult to find good, safe neighborhoods and schools. Between extended family and recreation, Udell had regularly returned to Utah during his time in California, and after visiting the U with an eye for a new home base and new professional challenges, he returned as professor and chair of mechanical engineering.

Udell notes that his focus had long been shifting toward examining the ramifications of human-caused global climate change. “As an engineer and as someone who teaches ethical engineering, I realized I had abilities that I could bring to that problem, and that my best use in serving people and serving society would be to look for ways that I could make a contribution to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. So, it was something I’d been wanting to do for a long time, and coming to Utah gave me the opportunity.”

While Udell was resettling at the U and refocusing his efforts toward sustainability-related research here, the U’s Craig Forster was helping work on two related proposals, one for what eventually became the Office of Sustainability and another for a “Sustainability Research Center.” After Forster’s death in late 2008, Dean Brown and then Senior Vice President David W. Pershing approached Udell about taking a look at Forster’s nearly complete proposal for the research center.

Kent Udell, who directs the University of Utah’s Sustainability Research Center, talks to some of his engineering students about his ice-ball experiment in storing heat and cold.

Udell eagerly took up the cause, and the center became a reality in 2010. Based in a small corner office adjoining his on the second floor of the College of Engineering’s Kennecott Building, the center is a bit of a living demonstration lab in sustainability, with cork flooring, a conference table made from recycled milk cartons, and an abundance of plants to optimize the air quality in the room. But the center’s primary purpose is to attract and disperse sustainability-related research funding.

“As engineers, we always need to be thinking about the larger implications of what we do,” says Udell. “We always should be thinking about the ‘if’ and ‘why.’ I’m lucky that being an academic I have the opportunity to be able to shift my focus, to say, ‘This is what I believe, and these are the kinds of technologies that need to be developed,’ and then with a little bit of an understanding about how to get technologies out there and into the marketplace, to be able to make a contribution. So, given that I can and I should, it’s obvious that I will.”

That technological exploration is the significant difference between the Sustainability Research Center and the Office of Sustainability. “What we’re worried about is the creation of new knowledge and funding research and understanding all of the interactions between the various forces that determine whether we’re moving in a sustainable direction,” explains Udell. “What they deal with is looking at the sustainable attributes of the U itself.”

Udell emphasizes that he is looking to create marketable, real-world solutions, so he is at least as much concerned with the economics as the gee-whiz of inventing. With his ice ball experiment, for example, he notes: “Everywhere we look, every thing that we’re examining, the cost becomes a big issue. How can we make this cheaper? How can we produce it with fewer materials? How can we install it using less energy, as well as less destructive technology? We’re always looking at ways to make it as efficient as possible, because ultimately, it’s the economics that will determine whether this thing will really run.”

Through his connections with a dean at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Udell is also working on a giant ice ball project there to provide inexpensive air conditioning for some commercial buildings. “And yes, really, they have air conditioning needs in Fairbanks, Alaska,” he notes. With long days of sunshine during parts of the year, plus high energy prices, air conditioning can be very expensive. Udell helped come up with an experiment that will essentially freeze a good portion of a lake. “If the data can show some good economics from that, great—then that idea can migrate down to the south,” Udell says. “Same thing with the heating technology: If we can show that it’s a great idea in Southern Utah and down in Arizona, then the idea will migrate north.”

This concept of energy storage has so far been neglected in most work on renewable energy, Udell says, including solar energy. “You’ve got to figure out some way of storing energy so you can get past those cloudy, dark winter days.” Energy storage is a key to being able to make the transition to renewable energy, and thermal energy storage is just as important as electrical energy storage, he says. “There’s been a lot of money put into electric batteries, but not as much put into the idea of storing energy as heat.”

Udell’s most recent project is examining how to build thermal batteries for an electric car. An electric car can use 40 percent of the energy from its electrical battery just to heat or cool the car, he says. “So, in Minnesota on a cold day, if you think you’re going to get 100 miles out of your car and you’re using your heater, in 60 miles, you’re dead. In Arizona, if you think you’re going to get that 100 miles out of your car and you’ve got your AC on, 60 miles and you’re dead.” Udell and his team want to develop batteries that would be used for thermal storage, so that the air conditioning and heating systems would run independently from the battery driving the car down the road. The researchers won a grant for the project from a Department of Energy program focused on “transformational energy ideas,” and Udell is collaborating with colleagues from metallurgical engineering who have been working with various metal hydrides that store hydrogen at high and low temperatures, trying to create separate batteries to provide heating and air-conditioning. Further, the technology is not limited to cars and could be put into a building, Udell says. “You could have a big concentrated solar collector, with one system that you’re recharging one day while you’re operating the other, and the next day switch. So you could get all the heating and air conditioning for a building from solar.”

Next year, Udell is taking a year’s sabbatical from the U to go back to Berkeley, do some writing, spend time with his grown daughter there, attend lectures and seminars by longtime colleagues, and work with some of those colleagues to explore additional projects. His enthusiasm and curiosity are boundless as he plunges into still more possibilities: “Another area I’m really interested in pursuing is compressed air energy storage, and the injection of fluids for energy storage—using geologic material for storage. I think compressed air is a really interesting technology and will be really valuable for Utah.”

— Marcia Dibble is associate editor of Continuum.

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Through the Years: Short alum profiles and Class Notes

May 18, 2012

Green Grads

The University of Utah has educated dozens of “green grads” who have gone on to successful careers supporting environmental sustainability, both locally and nationally.

On the University of Utah’s campus, Office of Sustainability co-founder Alexandra Parvaz BA’06 BS’06 MS’11 is now the office’s campus gardens coordinator and serves as the driving force behind its rapidly expanding Edible Campus Gardens Project and an initiative to integrate the gardens into the campus curricula across the academic spectrum.

Lindsay Clark

Fellow Office of Sustainability co-founder Lindsay Clark BA’07 BS’07 went farther afield with her green bent. She got her master’s degree at the University of British Columbia and is now the marketing and communications specialist with Canem Systems Ltd. in western Canada, helping promote its Centre for Building Performance and other sustainability initiatives.

Kevin Emerson

Back in Salt Lake City, seven of the 10 staff members of the nonprofit group Utah Clean Energy graduated from the U, including Senior Policy and Regulatory Associate Kevin Emerson BS’02. As a U undergrad, Emerson helped coordinate the U’s first purchase of wind power and later also joined in the effort to spur creation of the Office of Sustainability. At Utah Clean Energy, a nonpartisan organization working to advocate for clean energy use, Emerson now leads energy-efficiency programs, partnerships, and energy-efficiency policy and regulatory activities. The group’s founder and executive director, Sarah Wright MS’89, works to foster clean-energy partnerships with state agencies, municipal governments, businesses, agricultural groups, and community organizations. She is a frequent intervener in regulatory proceedings and a witness in legislative hearings testifying in support of energy efficiency and renewable energy. Assistant Director Rebecca Nelson BA’98 MPA’07 oversees the administrative functions of the organization, including financial systems, contract compliance, grant writing and reporting, and human resources. Senior Policy and Regulatory Associate Sara Baldwin BA’05 HBS’05 manages the Solar Salt Lake Partnership Project as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar America Cities Initiative. She previously served on the Energy Development and Environment Subcommittee of Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert’s 10-Year Energy Initiative. Communications and Program Coordinator Brandy Smith BS’05 coordinates the organization’s public relations, outreach, fundraising, and special events. Executive Assistant Emily Harris MEd’03 has served and worked in the nonprofit sector for 10 years and oversees Utah Clean Energy’s overall office management. Meaghan McKasy MS’11 is the group’s first Utah Conservation Corps/AmeriCorps member. She also is the project coordinator for the Salt Lake City Community Energy Challenge.

Other U graduates have found careers in sustainability elsewhere in Utah. Amanda Smith BS’89, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality’s executive director since 2009, was appointed in early 2011 to serve double duty as Governor Herbert’s energy adviser. She previously worked as government-relations director for The Nature Conservancy and then as legislative director for then-Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. Carl Fisher BS’05 is the executive director of Save Our Canyons, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to protecting the beauty and wildness of the Wasatch canyons, mountains, and foothills.” Jason Berry BS’03 MPA’07 is currently the Residential Energy Efficiency Program manager for Rocky Mountain Power and is the former State Energy Program Manager for the State of Utah under the U.S. Geological Survey.

Elise Brown

U graduates are also doing their part with the overflowing sustainability initiatives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Elise Brown BS’04, who as an undergrad helped Kevin Emerson lead the campaign for wind-power purchases at the U, went on to work as the Renewable Energy Coordinator for the Utah Department of Natural Resources. She is now the associate director of the California Geothermal Energy Collaborative at the University of California at Davis Energy Institute. Kit Powis BS’82 is the marketing director for the 511 Regional RideShare Program, the Bay Area branch of an interactive, on-demand system that helps people find carpools, vanpools, or bicycle partners. Clayton B. Cornell BS’05 currently manages online strategy at One Block Off the Grid, which organizes communities into solar “buying clubs” that use the aggregate buying power of a group to lower the cost of residential and commercial solar panel installations.

Ron Barness

Ron Barness BS’81 led the effort to place what is expected to be the largest rooftop solar array in the United States, atop the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City. Barness works in the western United States for CarbonFree Technology, a Toronto-based solar energy project development and finance company. The 1.651 megawatt Salt Palace array—the brainchild of Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon—will be owned and operated in a joint venture of Salt Lake County and CarbonFree Technology. Through a 20-year power purchase agreement, the solar generation plant will sell power to the Salt Palace at a contracted rate that is expected to be a hedge against utility inflation. Barness was previously business development director in Utah for Bella Energy, a Denver-based solar energy company that is general contractor for the solar project. Construction on the array was completed in April, and it began generating power in late May. The solar energy system is expected to satisfy about 17 percent of the Salt Palace’s annual energy needs, for a projected overall savings to Salt Lake County of $2.4 million after 25 years.

Ryan Lowder

Alumni who are incorporating key aspects of sustainability into their work in restaurants and urban agriculture along Utah’s Wasatch Front include Ryan Lowder BS’98, chef/owner of both The Copper Onion and Plum Alley, and Scott Evans BS’02, owner of Pago, all of which emphasize using local, farm-fresh (and whenever possible, organic) produce and other products from local purveyors. Lowder studied at the Culinary Institute of America in New York and joined the kitchen of Restaurant Jean-Georges. He then fine-tuned his skills in Colombia, Spain, and back in New York before returning to his hometown of Salt Lake City and opening Copper Onion in early 2010.

Scott Evans

Evans has 16 years of restaurant experience, including managing venues ranging from neighborhood eateries (Sage’s Café) to five-diamond hotel restaurants (Stein Eriksen Lodge’s Glitretind). Before opening Pago, he had most recently been with Squatters Pub Brewery, which is also known for its various sustainability initiatives. Sharon Leopardi BS’08 is the owner of Backyard Urban Garden Farms, an innovative community supported agriculture (CSA) business that uses Salt Lake City residents’ backyards to grow, tend, and harvest fresh produce to sell. In addition to feeding CSA subscribers, she also supplies local restaurants, including Pago, Forage, Les Madeleines, and Caffe Niche. Daisy Fair BS’03 runs Copper Moose Farm in Park City, which uses a 2,400-square-foot passive solar greenhouse and two hoop houses to grow certified organic vegetables and cut flowers for an area CSA, and also sells wholesale to local restaurants such as High West Distillery, The Farm, Montage Deer Valley, and Promontory.

We know we have just barely scratched the surface of the sum of U grads out there doing innovative, significant work on sustainability issues. We encourage you to share your updates with us!

Other Distinguished Alumni

’70s

Ann Weaver Hart BS’70 MA’81 PhD’83 is the new president of the University of Arizona. Hart had been president of Temple University, in Philadelphia, since 2006. Her achievements at Temple included increasing undergraduate and graduate applications while raising the academic qualifications of incoming students, producing an institutional record number of Fulbright scholars, and improving the freshman retention rate and time to degree. Hart previously held positions as president of the University of New Hampshire from 2002 to 2006 and provost and vice president for academic affairs at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif., from 1993 to 1998. While at the University of Utah, Hart served as professor of educational leadership, dean of the Graduate School, and special assistant to the president. She was honored as a Distinguished Alumna in 2008. She currently serves as a member of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities Board of Directors and as a member of the association’s Commission on International Programs, which she previously chaired. She has been recognized for her achievements and service by organizations such as the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation and the University Council for Educational Administration.

Douglas G. Mortensen BS’74 JD’77 taught American tort law this past spring to 31 students at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. Mortensen, a civil trial lawyer who lives in Salt Lake City, taught American civil litigation, with emphasis on injury law. “Much of the tort law theory I taught came straight out of the torts class I took from Prof. Kristine Strachan at the U law school some 36 years ago,” he notes. For extra credit, some of the students gave reports on American movies dealing with issues of law and justice, including Erin Brockovich, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Insider (dealing with 60 Minutes’ difficulties in covering a tobacco industry conspiracy). Mortensen says he and his students also discussed and dispelled widely held misperceptions about personal injury law and practice in the United States. “There now may be more people in the Czech Republic than in Utah who know the real facts of the McDonald’s hot coffee spill case,” Mortensen quips.

Mickey Ibarra MEd’80 (as well as an honorary doctorate) received the inaugural Medallion For Excellence in Government Relations and Public Affairs from the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute. The award will be named in honor of Ibarra and presented annually to an individual who has excelled in government relations and public affairs on behalf of the Latino community. After serving as assistant to the president and director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House from 1997 to 2001, Ibarra established the Ibarra Strategy Group, a government and public affairs firm based in Washington, D.C. In 2006, he founded the nonprofit Latino Leaders Network. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Ibarra Foundation, and eLeaderTech, Inc. In 2007, Ibarra donated his White House and Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Winter Games papers to the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library. This spring, he gave the U’s Hinckley Institute Forum keynote address and was honored at a reception recognizing The Mickey Ibarra Papers.

’90s

Douglas L. Christiansen BS’88 MPA’93 PhD’93, Vanderbilt University’s vice provost for enrollment, dean of admissions, and assistant professor of public policy and higher education, is among three new national trustees elected to the College Board. Founded in 1900, the nonprofit College Board works to expand access to higher education. Christiansen’s term runs through October 2015. Prior to his appointment as trustee, Christiansen served on the College Board’s National Task Force on Admissions in the 21st Century, the Advanced Placement National Higher Education Advisory Council, the trustee-appointed Membership Committee, and the National Colloquium Planning Committee. He also led Vanderbilt as a pilot member in the College Board’s Access Success Initiative. Prior to coming to Vanderbilt in 2006, Christiansen was assistant vice president for enrollment management and dean of admissions at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. He also served as associate director of student recruitment and high school services at the University
of Utah. LM

Bryan Jones BS’95 PhD’03, a neuroscientist at the University of Utah’s Moran Eye Center, recently won the National Science Foundation’s International Visualization Challenge. His first-place submission isolated the different types of cells—from muscles to the retina—in an eye and assigned a unique color to each different type of cell, merging information with beauty. Jones is research assistant professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences with the U’s School of Medicine, adjunct research assistant professor in its Department of Physiology, and joined the research faculty of the Moran Eye Center in 2006. His image, which to many resembles a piece of candy, is actually a metabolic look at the wide diversity of cells in a mouse eye—in all, 70 different types of cells, from muscles to retina, each colored a unique shade. To map out the tissues, Jones used a technique called computational molecular phenotyping. This approach, pioneered by Robert Marc, also at Moran Eye Center, takes advantage of the unique array of molecules in all cells in a tissue.

’00s

Brian Johnson BS’08, the University of Utah’s quarterbacks coach for the past two years, has been elevated to offensive coordinator, following a national search. “Brian is a leader and a special coaching talent, just as he was a special player, and he is the right person to lead our offense,” says head coach Kyle Whittingham, who himself in 1995 became Utah’s defensive coordinator after just one year as an assistant coach. Johnson, the winningest quarterback in Utah history during his career (he was 26-7 as the starter in 2005, 2007, and 2008) and the MVP of the 2009 Sugar Bowl, will continue to coach the quarterbacks in his new position.

LM Lifetime Member of the Alumni Association AM Annual Member of the Alumni Association

We want to hear from you! Please submit entries to Marcia Dibble. To read more alumni news, check out the “Honor Roll” column in the Alumni Association’s online newsletter here.

Evolution of a Scientist

February 28, 2012

Anthropologist Alan Rogers’ book aims to convince skeptics that Darwin was right.

Even as a child, Alan Rogers was fascinated by evolution and fossils. During a boyhood visit to an uncle’s home in a fossil-rich area of Texas, young Alan had soon gathered dozens of the ancient remains, and by looking them up in a volume about the state’s fossils, he learned that his were from creatures that had lived in the upper Cretaceous period, between 65 and 100 million years ago. His uncle, however, was skeptical. “Couldn’t God have created those rocks all at once,” he asked, “with the fossils right in them?” The boy was at a loss to reply.

Rogers was born in Texas, where his father was a Southern Baptist minister. Rogers’ father eventually left the ministry to practice clinical psychology, the field in which his mother worked, as well. The family lived in Louisiana until Alan was about 7, when they moved to Charleston, W. Va., and began attending an American Baptist church. Rogers’ mother had grown up on a farm, while his father came from a poor family in north Texas, and scientific endeavors and intellectual inquiry weren’t considered significant by most. Many of their relatives viewed Alan and his family as “objects of curiosity,” he recalls, but the couple were educated and wanted their children to be.

Danielle Flores listens to Alan Rogers in his class.

Many years after that conversation with his uncle, Rogers went on to become an anthropologist specializing in population genetics and evolutionary ecology. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas-Austin, completed his doctorate at the University of New Mexico in 1982, and came to the University of Utah in 1988. During his studies, he notes, he learned that his uncle had made the same argument first presented by Philip Henry Gosse in the 1850s—and that it had been tackled many times over in the decades since.

Yet despite more exchanges similar to that with his uncle, it wasn’t until around 2006 that Rogers felt the need to share “proof” of evolution in his U undergraduate course Evolution of Human Nature (Anth 1050), after reading a poll reporting that only about half of Americans believe humans evolved. Rogers began spending a week or two in this introductory class focusing on the evidence. And finding no adequate textbook to help him in the task, he finally wrote one, The Evidence for Evolution, published in June 2011 by the University of Chicago Press.

Rogers sat down with Continuum to talk about the book and his own evolution as a thinker and teacher.

[Growing up attending an American Baptist church in the South,] were you aware of what other people talked about versus what your church talked about?

I was engrossed in evolution from about the age of 9 or 8, and I don’t remember any difficulty with that in the church in West Virginia. It wasn’t as though they were teaching us evolution, but they weren’t opposing it. However, when I went to visit the church where my father was ordained in Texas, when I was about 10… the Sunday school teacher gave a little presentation about evolution. It was mainly a presentation about Genesis, but then he said, ‘Now, there’s some people who think that first of all there was this big ocean, and they don’t say where that came from. And then something appeared that was alive somehow by magic in the middle of it, and it grew arms and legs and crawled out on land and that was man.’ So, my hand went up, and I said, ‘Pardon me, but I don’t think that’s quite how it went.’ And so we had this conversation, this 40-year-old man and me at the age of 10. And it went back and forth. I don’t remember all the details of it, but I remember at the end, he said, ‘Now, wait a minute. Do you or do you not take the Holy Bible to be the literal word of God?’ And I knew from my parents what the right answer was to that. I knew that you weren’t supposed to interpret the Bible literally, that there was a lot of it that was metaphorical. So I said, ‘Well, no.’ And he said, ‘Then I have nothing further to say to you.’ And that was the end of the conversation. And I sat there, a little pariah at the age of 10 in Sunday school class. It was very, very awkward. So that was my first introduction to the anti-evolutionary perspective that is widespread, certainly in the American South.

And yet, after you started teaching evolution, you taught it for some 25 years with jumping right into, ‘Let’s talk about the mechanics of evolution and how it happens.’ And it was only fairly recently that you went, ‘Wait, something is going on. I have to address the foundations.’

That’s right. It was during the Dover trials, if you remember those [Kitzmiller v. Dover Area (Pa.) School District in late 2005, when plaintiffs successfully argued against the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in ninth-grade science classes]. …It [the trial] got a lot of press, and as part of that press, they went over some of the polling data that had come out. And it was at that time that it dawned on me that it didn’t make much sense to be teaching about the esoteric details of how evolution works to a bunch of students who weren’t at all clear that it worked at all.

Had you begun noticing things from students recently or over the years that led you to believe that some of your students were among the people who had these doubts?

I had had the odd student come to me privately and say, ‘I just want you to know that I don’t believe any of this stuff. I’m going to try to memorize it so that I can get a good grade, but I don’t believe it.’ And I have always responded, ‘Well, that’s fine. As long as you can answer the questions on the exam, that’s all that’s required.’ I haven’t had many such occasions, and there haven’t been many open objections during class, either, but all of this is understandable. People would not be likely to sort of expose themselves in a big classroom like that. I’ve found out a little more about that kind of thing in the last couple of years when I’ve been teaching the evidence for evolution more, because I really do try to get discussion going.

So you started trying to go over some of this underlying knowledge in your introduction to evolution course: ‘Before we start talking about how it happens, let’s prove that it has happened, it does happen, it continues to happen.’

That’s right.

And then, you realized you wanted a textbook to help with this, and there was nothing you could find that was satisfactory?

…People who write textbooks like this, they’re all college professors, mainly, right? So we have this tendency to think that when we speak, people are gonna believe what we say. So, textbooks are written that way, as though the reader is just this vessel into which you have to pour knowledge, rather than a skeptical critic of everything you say. So, I tried to write for that skeptical critic.

…Mine is organized around questions. Do species change? Does evolution make big changes? And so forth. And because of the fact that it’s organized that way, once I had finished answering a question, I didn’t feel that I needed to keep on answering it, piling on yet more data. And so I just stopped. I found the best evidence I could to answer a specific question, and then I moved on. That’s why my book is only 100 pages long.

And because of the fact that I did that, there was plenty of space in the book to consider things that are not considered in other books.

In the University press release about your book, you have a quote that says, in part, ‘In science, you have to be able to change your mind when confronted with evidence. It seems to me that learning that skill is important, not only for scientists, but for everybody. It makes us better citizens.’ So, you’re trying to explain to skeptics that this is what scientists do all the time, and they need to be open to it, too. We understand things this way up to here, and then we learn more…

I have the impression that some of the people who are skeptical of evolution think that scientists are very gullible. They think that we just believe stuff despite of the fact that there’s all this evidence against it. So what I’ve tried to do in here is to sort of tell some of the story of how skepticism works [through the many examples of skeptical scientists, often people of deep faith, looking for scientific answers]. So telling those stories was part of an effort of telling the reader, this is how skepticism works. If you are a skeptic, this is how you go about being an effective skeptic. It’s not just a matter of saying no all the time. It’s a matter of saying, how can we figure out what the answer is?, and doing so. So that’s part of what I wanted to teach in this book, and it’s part of what I try to get across in my courses. I really hammer on that a lot.

You saved the discussion of people until [near the very end of the book]. And the question of the evolution of people is, I think, obviously the biggest. I think a lot of people who are skeptical about some aspects can accept evolution in general…

Absolutely.

They understand that bacteria can evolve and that we need to be concerned about that. They understand and accept all these small things. People—humans—are the sticking point.

Chelsie Jacobsen takes notes in class as U Professor Alan Rogers teaches the evidence for evolution.

It’s interesting. Everybody who writes these books saves people until last. For me, there were sort of two reasons. One was that I didn’t want to talk about people until the reader was onboard with the notion of all this other stuff, with the notion that evolution really does happen, so that if people were different, they really would be an exception. …I wanted to introduce [the foundations] in a less controversial and less threatening context… so that by the time the reader gets to that chapter on people, they have the tools they need to understand the evidence.

For some of the people who are just general skeptics of science, lay people, do you think part of the problem is the scientific use of the word ‘theory’? We talk about the ‘theory of evolution.’ Evolutionary scientists mean that this is basically fact, well-supported by broad evidence. But does this word ‘theory’ create a problem and an opening for skeptics?

Well, certainly it has been used by skeptics. But my own hunch about that is that the word ‘theory’ doesn’t really affect anybody’s thinking much. We’re all comfortable with lots of words that have multiple meanings. The word ‘fly.’ We’re really familiar with words like fly that can mean different things. And ‘theory’ is such a word. And because it has different meanings, it’s possible for people in a debate, if their minds are already made up, they can misconstrue the argument by adopting an inappropriate definition of the word theory, and then misconstrue what is said. But I think it’s a debating tactic. My hunch, and I could be wrong, is that it isn’t really the thing that convinces people; it is a tactic that they employ once they’re already convinced. So I have never really been concerned with this issue.

Is gravity a theory?

Well, it’s also a fact. Just as evolution is a theory and also a fact.

Have you ever tried to tackle head on the idea that ‘the Earth was created in seven days’? Have you ever tried to address, well, ‘Maybe that means God days? God is not human, God is different…’

That was my father’s argument.

…so maybe a ‘God day’ is 100 million years, or whatever.

That was how my father rationalized the Bible and evolution. And I didn’t want to go there. What I wanted to do in this book was keep the focus on science and not try to talk to people about religion. Because I’m not an expert on religion. And you know, when religious people realized that the Earth was indeed round and not flat, it was the experts in religion who went back to the Bible and figured out how to accommodate their religious views to these facts that just could not be denied. So I think when it comes to figuring out how to accommodate science to religion, it really needs to be the people with expertise in religion. You don’t want scientists telling you how your religion ought to be shaped.

—Marcia Dibble is associate editor of Continuum.

Web Exclusives

Extended Interview:

I think popular culture and lay readings sometimes create problems. The main example I can think of is related to global warming, where just a few scientists in the 1970s proposed that the Earth was cooling (against consensus even at the time, as it happens), and for some reason, Time or one of the other big newsweeklies picked that up and made it their cover story. So now global warming skeptics say, ‘Well, now scientists say that climate change means that the Earth is warming. But in the ’70s, they said it was cooling. How can we trust science? Scientists just keep changing their minds!’ Are there examples like that in evolutionary science that a skeptic could similarly point to, like, ‘But 30 years ago, they said that this fossil was definitely that, and now they say this, so how do we know that they have the right answer now?!’

Well, evolution has got the Piltdown hoax. Before radiometric dating was invented, the fossil record, and the human fossil record in particular, was a mess, because nobody knew the ages of anything.

There was a human fossil excavated in England. It was an intrusive burial down into—was it myocene?—very old strata, and the people who excavated it were unable to see the burial pit, so they thought it was in situ, from that ancient sediment. So, this was taken as evidence that people of modern form had existed long, long ago. And then there was Galley Hill, and these became facts that anybody’s story about human evolution had to contend with. And then in about 1950, when radiometric dating became possible, all of these things were dated, and it was quickly discovered that Galley Hill was a recent fossil, and Piltdown was a hoax, and all of that. So, ever since the 1950s, paleoanthropology has told us a consistent story about what human evolutionary history has been like. But it is still possible for evolution skeptics to draw on the literature from the 1930s, ’40s and stuff and point out how wrong people can be.

I have been using the phrase ‘evolution skeptic,’ and there is one thing that I wish I had done differently in this book, and that is not use the word ‘creationist’ so much. …Creationism is a religious doctrine, and what we’re talking about here is not religion, what we’re talking about is science. So, when I argue against a point of view that I call ‘creationism,’ it comes across that I’m arguing against religion, and I don’t want to give that impression. I wish that I hadn’t used that term throughout this book—and in the next printing, if there ever is one, it’s gonna say evolution skeptic in many of the places that it now says creationist.

So many of the early scientists who were naturalists and biologists were also, particularly because of the time period, strongly people of faith. So, they were tackling the questions that today’s evolution skeptics may not be aware were tackled 150 years ago by someone who had evidence in front of them but concerns based on their faith.

In Victorian England, there were lots of people who collected butterflies and fossils. There was lots of interest in nature. I think that’s why Darwin’s book was such a rave success, because there were so many people who were interested in nature, and here was a book that told the story about how all this stuff came to be. But many of those people were also very religious, so this whole conflict between science and religion—there was no segregation between the people who believed in religion and the people who believed in science.

There’s a claim I make in the final chapter, which I think is true. It’s quite clear that science has made a lot of progress in the last 150 years. We’re talking about things now—there are topics in this book—that Darwin couldn’t begin to imagine. However, the arguments that are made by skeptics—all of them were invented between 1859 and 1875. There’s this brief period in which all those arguments were invented. And then over the past 150 years, all of them have been refuted…. Some of them have resurfaced under new names, and one or two small new ones have come up… and these have been promptly dismissed. But it’s a real comment on the poverty of the evolution skeptic movement that they really haven’t been able to come up with anything new in 150 years. … Science has made this incredible progress in 150 years, and the skeptical movement has made none.

Photo Gallery:
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Through the Years: Short alum profiles and Class Notes

February 28, 2012

Former U.S. Ambassador John Price Recounts His Career In Memoir

John Price BS’56, a successful Utah businessman and former international diplomat, has published the memoir When the White House Calls: From Immigrant Entrepreneur to U.S. Ambassador (University of Utah Press, June 2011).

The memoir recounts his life story, beginning with his birth in Germany through his years as a successful builder and real estate developer with business interests in broadcasting, manufacturing, distribution, and banking. The book goes on to recount his life as a diplomat, serving as U.S. ambassador to three Indian Ocean island nations off the east coast of Africa, and his thoughts on the future of sub-Saharan Africa, where he has spent considerable time, both prior to and since his ambassadorship. In a world concerned with the global war on terror, Price reflects on the nations where he served and on the region’s increasing strategic importance to the national security of the United States.

Price currently lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, Marcia. They have three children and eight grandchildren. The Prices are the namesake donors of the University of Utah’s Marcia & John Price Museum Building, home of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. In 1996, the Prices pledged a gift of $7 million for the new museum, then the largest single gift ever given to a cultural organization in the state. Even before it opened, the Price Museum Building won numerous honors, including awards for excellence in design from the Boston Society of Architects and the New England Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Learn more about John Price at his Web site, www.ambassadorjohnprice.com.

’60s

Clayton J. Parr BS’60 MS’65 JD’68 has received the Clyde O. Martz Teaching Award. Established in 1993 by the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation’s Board of Trustees to honor excellence in the teaching of natural resources law, the award is given only when merited. Parr joined the law firm of Parr Brown Gee & Loveless in 1976. He first taught at the University of Utah in 1977-78 when he served as a visiting associate professor to teach legal writing and research. From 1994 to 2009, he regularly taught the mining law class as an adjunct professor. He also served for 20 years as professional advisor to the Utah Law Review and participated for many years as a member of the law school’s alumni board, including a term as chair.

Frank C. Overfelt BA’69 MBA’70 (who served as University of Utah student body president 1969-70) recently received the Excellence in Management Engineering/Process Improvement Award from the worldwide Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Overfelt has been a healthcare consultant with Kaiser Permanente, Intermountain Healthcare, and KPMG Peat Marwick and principal of his own consulting practice for 33 years. A former national vice president and board member of HIMSS, he has served more than 100 hospitals in 25 states, the District of Columbia, and two foreign countries.

’70s

Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson BS’73 (J.D., George Washington University), former mayor of Salt Lake City, has launched a new national political party, the Justice Party, and is its U.S. presidential nominee. Anderson, one of Utah’s most liberal politicians and now executive director of High Road for Human Rights, first threw out the idea of a new political party last summer, when he renounced his affiliation with the Democratic Party. Anderson says he wants the new party to bring about the shift in American politics that he says citizens desire. In a KSL Radio interview in November, he said, “I just hope we can be involved in the debate, because if we don’t, we’re just going to be hearing a bunch of sound bites from people who between their two parties have colluded in so many ways in serving the interests of their campaign contributors, the wealthy and the powerful.” Anderson said that government has driven up the deficit while cutting taxes for those most capable of paying them, and that leaders have failed to provide affordable, essential health care for all Americans.

Daniel L. Orr II MS’79, DDS, Ph.D., J.D., M.D., received the 2011 Daniel M. Laskin Award for an Outstanding Predoctoral Educator from the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. In 2007, after 28 years in a successful Las Vegas oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMS) practice, Orr embarked on a career in academe at the University of Nevada Las Vegas School of Dental Medicine, where he currently serves as professor and director of oral and maxillofacial surgery and advanced pain control. Orr is also a clinical professor of surgery and anesthesiology at the University of Nevada School of Medicine and chief of oral and maxillofacial surgery at University Medical Center. He is the postmortem coordinator for the U.S. Public Health Service National Disaster Medical System for Nevada, chair of the Anesthesia Committee of the Nevada State Society of OMS (of which he is also a past president), and the editor of the Nevada Dental Association journal. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and the Journal of Dental Education.

Healthcare Administrator Wins Deming Cup From Columbia U

Brent C. James BS’74 (computer science) BS’76 (medical biology) MD’78 MSt’84 (master’s of statistics), chief quality officer at Intermountain Healthcare, was presented with the 2011 Deming Cup prize from Columbia University’s Business School.

The award is given annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions in the area of operations and has established a culture of continuous improvement within his or her respective organization.

In November, James was also named by Modern Healthcare among its “Top 25 Clinical Informaticists.” The magazine’s new awards and honors program recognizes medical professionals who excel at using patient-care data to improve both the clinical and financial performance of their healthcare organizations.

James is recognized among the most influential leaders in healthcare nationally and has often given testimony before congressional committees. As the leader of Intermountain’s Institute for Healthcare Delivery Research, which offers advanced training program courses for healthcare executives, James has instructed more than 5,500 healthcare leaders from throughout the world in his courses in Salt Lake City. An additional 7,500 people have been trained at one of James’ 50 sister training programs in the U.S at places such as the University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Center and California-based Sutter Health, and at locations internationally.

Raised on a ranch in Idaho, educated in Utah, and trained and established as a surgeon in Boston, James returned to Utah from Harvard University and joined Intermountain Healthcare in 1986.

’80s

Robert E. Mansfield HBA’88 JD’92, a partner in the Salt Lake City office of Snell & Wilmer, LLP, has been named the Republic of Korea’s Honorary Consul for the State of Utah. The appointment comes after a lengthy, multi-year process of being approved for his new role by the Consul General of Korea in San Francisco, the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., and ultimately, the U.S. State Department. Mansfield’s earliest experience with Korea was his military assignment in the early 1980s with the Combined Field Army unit in Ui Jong Bu. In his new role, he will work closely with Utah’s Korean community in pursuing their organizational agenda. Mansfield’s practice at Snell & Wilmer is focused on complex commercial litigation, real estate litigation, employment litigation, intellectual property litigation, and eminent domain law. AM

Ronald L. Weiss MBA’89, M.D., FCAP, has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the College of American Pathologists. According to the college, the award honors members “who have made a broad and positive impact on patient care through the specialty of pathology.” Weiss is a professor of pathology at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine and currently serves as a staff hematopathologist at ARUP Laboratories, where he has previously served in management positions including president/chief operating officer and chief medical officer/director of laboratories. Weiss received his medical doctorate from the Creighton University School of Medicine. He trained in anatomic and clinical pathology and completed a fellowship in medical microbiology at the University of Utah before joining the Department of Pathology faculty in 1986. LM

’90s

Deborah (Mohr Pincolini) DeBernard MAr’96, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP BD+C, has been named senior vice president and director of acquisitions for Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm headquartered in Fairfax, Va. With more than 25 years of architectural experience in small, medium, and large firms, DeBernard’s skills include design, construction, project management, team development, operations, leadership, and strategic planning. In her most recent role at Leo A Daly, she was responsible for leading an acquisition team including transition and integration planning. In addition to a master’s in architecture from the U, she holds a bachelor’s in environmental planning from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She is a registered architect in Virginia and Arizona and is a member of the American Institute of Architects, the U.S. Green Building Council, and the National Council for Architectural Registration Board.

’00s

Claudette A. Larsen BS’00 (formerly Claudette Everett), who turned 77 in December, continues to work full time in special education/special needs at elementary schools in the St. George, Utah, area. A former longtime resident of Bountiful, Utah, who worked as an executive secretary in distance education at the University of Utah, Larsen raised six children, putting her own education on hold until she reached an age when most people start thinking about retirement. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the U at age 65. After retiring, Larsen moved to Ivins (west of St. George) in 2001. The following year, she began working as a special ed/special needs aide at Red Mountain Elementary School in Ivins before moving in 2009 to Vista Charter School, where she continues. In 2010, Larsen became the oldest graduate in Utah from the University of Phoenix when she received her master’s degree in mental health counseling. She says she enjoyed the process so much she is considering pursuing a doctorate. “There’s so much to learn and so much to do,” Larsen says. “No one needs to slow down just because they hit some number on a calendar.”

Gohar Stepanyan MBA’04 recently joined the IÉSEG School of Management Lille–Paris (France) as an assistant professor of finance. She had previously been living in Lisbon, Portugal, where she was an assistant professor of international finance at the Catholic University of Portugal. A native of Armenia, Stepanyan received an undergraduate degree from the Yerevan Institute of Architecture and Construction, Armenia, in 1998 before coming to the University of Utah to attend the David Eccles School of Business, where she received her master’s degree. She went on to receive a doctorate in management (finance) from the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University in 2009. In her home country, Stepanyan worked for the Ministry of Finance and Economy, in the private sector, and in a nonprofit international organization. As president of the University of Utah’s European Alumni Association, Stepanyan coordinated and planned the 2011 European reunion for U alumni.

LM Lifetime Member of the Alumni Association AM Annual Member of the Alumni Association

We want to hear from you! Please submit entries to Marcia Dibble. To read more alumni news, check out the “Honor Roll” column in the Alumni Association’s online newsletter here.

Through the Years

November 28, 2011

Ruth A. Davis Strampe

Ruth A. Davis Strampe BS’38 was a member of the University of Utah’s pistol team while a student and to this day remains a crack shot. While target shooting during a recent visit to a guest ranch in California, she hit five out of seven small targets during her first time out. At West High School, she was the first woman to be editor of the yearbook. After enrolling at the U at just 16, she joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and became freshman editor of the U’s now-defunct Utonian yearbook. She received freshman scholastic honors as a member of Alpha Lambda Delta. She went on to serve as Junior Class Secretary, became the 1938 Homecoming Queen, and was named to the Beehive Honor Society and Mortar Board. After marrying Wisconsin basketball star William Strampe and moving to Southern California, she taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District and Arcadia School District until retiring in 1974. Strampe remains active in her sorority and frequently visits friends who still reside in Salt Lake City.

’60s

Skip Branch

Skip Branch BA’68 was recently awarded the Silver Medal Award for lifetime achievement by the Utah chapter of the American Advertising Federation. Branch’s work in the advertising industry now spans five decades. He began as an advertising salesman at ABC in Los Angeles in 1963. After returning to his native Utah, he transitioned from copywriter to sales manager at a local television station before eventually paying heed to his entrepreneurial inclinations and founding his own agency in the early 1970s. In 1989, he joined Harris and Love Advertising, which eventually became part of RIESTER, a Phoenix-based advertising agency with offices in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. Branch is now a senior consulting partner for RIESTER. AM

’70s

Neal Copeland BS’71 PhD’76 and wife and research partner Nancy Jenkins, Ph.D., have joined The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI) in Houston as the first luminary scholars recruited by Texas through the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. The internationally acclaimed team now directs basic research for TMHRI and the Methodist Cancer Center, serving as co-directors of cancer biology. The researchers, both members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, have identified hundreds of genes associated with cancers including leukemia, lymphoma, melanoma, pancreatic, lung, breast, and prostate. The duo returns to the United States after spending five years at Singapore’s A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research). Copeland was executive director of the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), and Jenkins served as deputy director of IMCB’s Genetics and Genomics Division. Since meeting as postdoctoral fellows at Harvard Medical School more than 30 years ago, Copeland and Jenkins have co-authored some 780 papers and been cited more than 30,000 times.

’80s

Mark de Bruin BS’82 has been appointed corporate vice president of managed care for H. D. Smith, the fourth-largest national pharmaceutical wholesaler. De Bruin brings to H. D. Smith 29 years of management and leadership experience. An expert in managed-care services, de Bruin most recently served as CEO at Asteres, Inc. Former employers include Rite Aid Corp., where de Bruin served as executive VP of pharmacy; Albertsons/American Stores, as VP of pharmacy and managed care; and RxAmerica/American Stores, as president and general manager. De Bruin is a registered pharmacist in Utah, Pennsylvania, and California.

Mary Relling DPH’85 was recently honored by the Pediatric Pharmacy Advocacy Group with the Sumner J. Yaffe Lifetime Award in Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Relling is chair of pharmaceutical sciences at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in Memphis, Tenn. One aspect of her research seeks to determine whether certain subgroups of patients would benefit from genetic testing more than others. The award is the latest in a succession of accolades Relling has received for her work over the course of a career that has allowed her to combine her two passions: oncology research and pediatrics.

’90s

Bryce C. Bird BA’91 is now the leader of Utah’s Division of Air Quality. Bird has been manager of the division’s planning branch for four years and has worked extensively with groups focused on pollution control plans required under federal law. Bird began his career at the state’s Department of Environmental Quality in 1991 after completing a degree in biology at the U. He has served in the compliance branch and as manager of the hazardous air pollutants section, in addition to leading the planning branch since 2007. Bird also serves in the Utah National Guard, where he has been a member of the 23rd Army Band for 24 years.

Gene Whitmore

Gene Whitmore BS’90 MPA’93 has been selected as an investment advisor on a three-person committee advising the Department of Defense Investment Board in managing more than $600 billion in retirement trust funds. Whitmore is a captain and chaplain in the Army National Guard and an investment advisor in Utah. Service on the committee is a significant selection, with ramifications that can affect potentially millions of current and prior troops, Whitmore notes. After the board was unable to find the assistance it needed among active military personnel, it consulted several investment houses and was quickly offered the kind of assistance it wanted, but with steep management fees. Finally, Investment Board member Major Gen. Phillip McGhee, the Army Budget Director, suggested that if the active duty forces had no one with the appropriate skills and the investment houses were asking for compensation that could be problematic, the reserve component of the military should be considered a resource. An announcement was posted on Defense Department Web sites, and rank was not a consideration, only skill and experience. The other two committee members selected are reservist investment advisors in Oklahoma and Florida. After a preliminary analysis of cash management practices, the new committee suggested some modest changes to start, with additional recommendations to the board to follow. The return on the trust fund investments, according to the investment manager’s projections, could increase by $1 billion for the year. Whitmore says, “We don’t mind getting a little attention for our project, being investment rock stars (as we audaciously see ourselves), and the fact that despite perceptions, there are some financial success stories in the government.”

Melissa (Loew) Schaefer BS’97 is currently the global retail research leader within IBM’s Institute for Business Value. In her current role, Schaefer researches and analyzes consumer and retail trends to provide retail-business executives with insight and recommendations. Her work also assists IBM in identifying future trends that factor into product development. Schaefer has more than 20 years of leadership experience in the industry and is the author of publications including Capitalizing on the Smarter Consumer (2011) and The Retail CEO: Capitalizing on Complexity (2010).

Sarah Buchanan poses in summer 2011 with nyamakala friends in Ségou, Mali, a city of around two million people. The man is playing an instrument called an ngoni, which, among the Fulani, is played primarily by the nyamakala. The American flags some hold were gifts from Buchanan.

Sarah Buchanan MA’95, associate professor of French at the University of Minnesota at Morris, received a 2011 Imagine Fund award, which she used to support a research trip to Mali for a project on the concept of “nyama,” which she says is “loosely defined as the powers of creation and destruction inherent in the spoken word.” In Mali, Buchanan interviewed members of the nyamakala caste of the Fulani ethnicity (and others) to learn more about their conception of nyama. (Nyamakala means “the wielders of nyama.”) Imagine Fund faculty awards support innovative research in the arts, humanities, and design at the University of Minnesota. Buchanan is a francophone specialist who researches and teaches the cinemas, literatures, cultures, and histories of the countries and places where French is spoken, but not usually those of France itself. She specializes in Sub-Saharan African cinema and oral traditions as well as Moroccan oral tradition and immigration in France, with additional research on the French Caribbean. Along with a master’s degree in French literature from the University of Utah and a bachelor of arts in French from St. Olaf College, Buchanan holds a doctorate in 20th-century francophone literature and film from the University of Minnesota. She has also studied at Sorbonne Universités in Paris and Institut de Touraine in Tours, both in France.

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Jennifer Talley BS’99 MSW’02, director of research and development at Squatters Pub Brewery in Salt Lake City, recently won the craft-beer industry’s Schehrer Award for innovation in brewing. Born and raised in Chicago, Talley moved to Utah in 1988 to pursue her education at the U and, in tandem, her passion for home-brewing. In 1991, she was hired as a brewer’s apprentice at Squatters. With the opening of the company’s microbrewery in 1994, she became head brewer of Squatters and shortly after won a full scholarship to the Seibel Institute of Brewing Technology in Chicago. Talley has now been recognized time and again for her beers, both nationally and internationally, and has become a well-respected beer judge.

’00s

Poloko N. “Naggie” Mmonadibe

Poloko N. “Naggie” Mmonadibe MSW’04 is currently a lecturer in the Department of Social Work at the University of Botswana, where she received a bachelor’s degree in social work. She is involved in health-related social work programs as well as a research project titled “Strengthening Research Capacity in Africa: Gender, sexuality and politics with a strategic focus on the lives of young women,” which is sponsored by the African Gender Institute in Capetown, South Africa. The project uses the research process to encourage young women on African university campuses to take action to promote their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Mmonadibe hopes to eventually pursue a doctorate.

Felicia Martinez BS’05 is currently a reporter and producer with KSWT news in Yuma, Ariz. Martinez came to Yuma from Los Angeles, where she had worked in entertainment television on shows such as So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars. Martinez is a native of Utah and graduated from the U with a major in broadcast journalism. While in college, she interned at KPNZ and 97.1 KZHT and worked part time for KSTU-TV. She also danced for the U’s Crimson Line Dance Team in college, danced professionally for various leagues in Utah, and made it to the finals in competition to select new members of the Denver Broncos Cheerleaders.

Kevin Glen Walthers PhD’06 has been named president of Las Positas College in Livermore, Calif. Walthers had most recently served as the vice chancellor for administration for the West Virginia Community and Technical College System and the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission. Prior to his time in West Virginia, he was vice president for finance and administrative services at the College of Eastern Utah. He also held policy roles with the Utah State Legislature and as a senior administrator with Utah’s State Board of Regents.

Kent Phippen BS’07 took over as race director of the Ragnar Relay series’ marquee run, Wasatch Back, after the 2011 race. Phippen was previously race director of the Washington, D.C., Ragnar Relay. A lifelong runner, Phippen has worked as a senior race director for Ragnar for about two years. Born in Idaho but raised in Farmington, Utah, Phippen graduated from the Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah with a degree in entrepreneurship. The father of four children says, “No job I’ve ever had compares to Ragnar and the fulfillment it gives.”

’10s

Ross Chambless MA’11 presented his environmental humanities master’s thesis in the form of a radio journalism project titled “Plugging Into Nature: A Radio Journey to Source My Electricity,” segments of which aired on KUER-FM, a public radio station licensed to the University of Utah. In the future, he hopes to develop the work into a one-hour radio documentary. Chambless grew up in Utah before pursuing a degree in journalism at the University of Texas-Austin. He completed the U’s environmental humanities program in two years while working as a communication intern for the U’s Office of Sustainability. Chambless has also been writing about sustainability on the U’s blog, RedThread. Read an entry here.

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Amazing Glass

August 31, 2011

The U’s scientific glassblower melds science and artistry into his work.

Photos by Stephen Speckman

Kevin Teaford has been the University of Utah’s scientific glassblower since 2002.

Kevin Teaford learned what it could really mean to be a glassblower during an otherwise ordinary week in the early 1990s.

Glassblower Kevin Teaford works seated at the lathe in his shop at the University of Utah. Click on image to see a larger version.

At the time, Teaford was working for a glassworks in northern California that made a wide range of custom glass products, including brain and lung models used for medical training. When he got the work order for a bifurcated aneurysm model, a product he built all the time, he assumed it was for a routine training purpose. But the order for this model had very specific requirements, and, he recalls, “I was told to drop all other jobs, because this had to be ready and out the door before noon.”

After Teaford quickly built and checked the model, it was sent by chartered plane to a doctor on the East Coast. The doctor then ordered another one the next day, with slightly different specifications. It turned out that the creation was a practice model—for a procedure the surgeon was getting ready to perform on a patient that week.

“About a month later,” recalls Teaford, “out of the blue, I got a handwritten letter from the patient, thanking me for saving his life.”

While Teaford is quick to note that, of course, he had simply made a tool to help the surgeon, he says that letter made him see the impact custom glassware could have.

Teaford, at the University of Utah since 2002, is now the only full-time scientific glassblower in the state (though there are a few part-timers), and during his busiest times, work orders can be three months out. He works in a relatively small laboratory of sorts on the first floor of the Henry Eyring Chemistry Building at the U, tucked down a hall past classrooms full of students bent over various labors at long work tables, safety glasses bedecking each young face.

Holding a coil of tubing, Teaford’s graphite-stained hand rests on his bench torch.

Teaford himself teaches a class in glassblowing every fall to six or seven students at the large central work table in his glass shop, each student equipped with a torch and tools. He also has a glassblowing workshop at his home in West Jordan, where he creates freelance pieces not connected to his university work; he recently made repairs to a $2,000 heart he had created for a Japanese company while working in Denver. His reputation as a glassblower has grown such that he now gets more requests for piecework than he can handle, so a few years ago, he trained his wife, Rhonda (his high school sweetheart), in some of the basics, and they now work together on many projects at home. (This summer, they were working on a large order they referred to in shorthand as their “vacation fund.”)

Teaford became a glassblower by happenstance. He grew up with his brother and sister in the lower Yakima Valley, Washington, the son of a Benton County sheriff and a homemaker mom. After finishing high school in 1984, he was somewhat at loose ends for about a year before deciding to join the Marine Corps, where he became a construction surveyor and managed rifle and other training for a battalion of 1,500. He liked the work and the responsibility, but it just wasn’t feeling like a “career” for him. So after four years, when the time came to consider whether to re-up, he found what sounded like an intriguing position as a patrolman at the Hanford nuclear facility, near where he had grown up.

But within a year or so, he knew the job wasn’t for him and began looking again. He came across a glassblowing position advertised at Hanford and decided to interview, “just for the experience.” The next day, he got the job offer—and decided to take the leap. He had never even seen glassblowing, let alone knew what to do with a lathe and torch. But he was intrigued by the challenge and quickly learned. “I think you should always have a positive attitude and make the best of things, so I just went for it,” Teaford notes. “But I did set myself on fire a couple of times.”

U of U glassblower Kevin Teaford holds one of his practice goblet stems (second from left), along with a selection of the glass tubes and cells with which he regularly works.

At Hanford, as in his position now at the U, much of Teaford’s work was creating custom glass research pieces by modifying flasks and tubes with different valves or sidearms, the parts that protrude from the main body of glass. Teaford also makes simple repairs (such as a recent fix to the lip of a 50-liter, $2,000 flask that took up nearly the entirety of the workspace on his large steel lathe) and minor modifications to flasks (such as adding “baffles,” indentations that maximize mixing, which take him only minutes and add up to hundreds of dollars in savings to scientists over buying flasks made commercially with baffles).

After about three years at Hanford, Teaford’s position was eliminated as part of federal defense cutbacks. But he knew he’d found his craft, so he searched for something similar, finally finding Farlow’s Scientific Glassblowing in Grass Valley, Calif. There, he made his first aneurysm models, including his eye-opening bifurcated design, as well as bladder, stomach, and arterial heart models. “When I left Hanford, I thought I was doing really good. But after I got to Farlow’s, I realized I had a lot to learn,” says Teaford. In particular, he had to teach himself “tight tolerances”—working within very firm specifications, such as no more than 2 millimeters over or under specs for a smaller piece; if it didn’t meet the specs, it was rejected, and Teaford had to begin again. “At a place like Hanford, and at a university, requests tend to be more for something like ‘about 18 inches of straight ¼-inch glass with a sidearm about a third of the way down,’ ” he notes.

After a few years at Farlow’s, Teaford moved to a better position at a similar facility in Denver, where he made his first complete anatomically correct hearts (each of which can take 25-35 hours). But after almost 10 years in heavy commercial production, he began looking for a position at a university, applying and receiving offers from institutions in Connecticut and Nebraska, as well as the U. After discussing it with his family (Rhonda and their children Courtney, then about 12, and Isaac, 10), they decided to stay in the West, and came to the U.

Glassblower Kevin Teaford has now been a professional in the field for some 20 years.

Most of Teaford’s work at the U is performed for the Department of Chemistry, and he does nearly all of it seated at his lathe, working with torches and graphite rods to cut and reshape pieces of glass held in the lathe’s chucks, the grasping jaws providing him internal and external, nearly 365-degree access to the glass. When he works bent over the lathe, both hands are busy, with at least one holding a torch to heat the glass (or both wielding fire, if he needs to heat both the interior and exterior), then busily marking off cutting points with a titanium pencil (creating a tiny mark visible through his tinted protective glasses), using a blowing tube to gently inflate a glass cell, or employing graphite or brass tools to help reshape the glass, perhaps flaring the joint (mouth) to a different requested size or tilt, or prepping a cell for a new joint. Besides the more routine flask modifications and repairs, he has also created specialty items such as plaque-mounted display pieces to be given as thank-you’s from the U to University donors.

Some of the freelance glass pieces Teaford and his wife create in their home shop are of the literally cut-and-dried, test tube variety, but he has also made unique items including a reproduction globe for an antique gumball machine, a large hourglass to be used in a cancer commercial, and replacement globes for street lamps.

Teaford also gets to express himself creatively by making highly detailed wine goblets, which have become the statement pieces he now presents each year to the American Scientific Glassblowers Society conference. Teaford sketches and then experiments with creating a selection of highly complicated stems until he has work he will feel proud to share at the annual symposium, where he is also an instructor.

His goblets regularly sell for hundreds of dollars to fellow glassblowers bidding for his work at the conference. “It is really something to get to make something that impresses other glassblowers,” Teaford acknowledges with obvious pleasure.

“I don’t really think I’m an artist, just persistent,” he notes, turning over some of his practice stems. “I just think you don’t let anything out of your shop until you’re satisfied with it.”

—Marcia C. Dibble is associate editor of Continuum.

Through the Years

August 31, 2011

’60s

Eugene García BS’68, vice president for education partnerships at Arizona State University, has been awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the Erikson Institute, one of the nation’s leading graduate schools in child development, and delivered its 2011 commencement address. García is one of the nation’s most eminent researchers in the teaching of language and bilingual language development, authoring or co-authoring more than 200 articles and book chapters, as well as 14 books and monographs. He previously held administrative and faculty positions at Arizona State’s Tempe campus, as well as the University of California’s Berkeley, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz campuses.

Mike Garibaldi BS’68 MS’69 is being inducted this fall into the USA Water Polo Hall of Fame. A standout at water polo while growing up in California, Garibaldi was perhaps an even better swimmer, holding several state championships. At the University of Utah, he received All-American status as a swimmer while introducing water polo to the campus. A 1964 Olympic qualifier in both water polo and swimming, Garibaldi was unable to continue in water polo after being deemed a professional by the Amateur Athletic Union for accepting a teaching position post-graduation. After nearly two decades away from the game, a chance opportunity to compete for the Guam National Team at the 1988 World Masters Aquatics Championships motivated him to play polo again. Upon returning stateside, he was part of a masters water polo squad in El Segundo, Calif., under the direction of Bryan Weaver. Garibaldi and other players helped Weaver create the first ever USA Water Polo Masters National Championship. From 1988 through 2008, Garibaldi’s teams finished first or second on the national and international level. He continued playing water polo, and when the 50-plus age group started to develop for competitions, he had five first-place finishes and one second-place mark through 2008. He has won medals on several continents over the last three decades. He founded and now hosts the Napa Valley Masters Water Polo Tournament and is boys’ water polo coach for Napa High School and the North Bay Grizzlies water polo club. He also works as an actor and model. AM

Valene Smith PhD’66 was recently honored at California State University, Chico (aka Chico State), with the Valene L. Smith Museum of Anthropology in recognition of her $3 million gift commitment made in 2008 toward Chico State’s anthropology program and a new museum. Smith taught anthropology at Chico State for 31 years and has spent nearly all her life traveling, studying, and writing about the world’s people, history, and customs. The museum’s first exhibit, “Living on Top of the World: Arctic Adaptation, Survival and Stewardship,” showcased some of Smith’s contributions to anthropology. Over the years, she built relationships with Inuit people that became the basis for much of her studies. Growing up in Southern California, Smith read voraciously, loved school, and skipped two grades along the way. At age 20, she received a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of California, Los Angeles, and began teaching at Los Angeles City College. She completed a master’s degree at UCLA in 1950 and taught geography for 18 years at the city college. During a sabbatical, she received a doctorate in anthropology at the U of U in 15 months. Tired of L.A., she took an opportunity to teach in Pakistan on a Fulbright Lectureship. While there, she contracted polio, though she was able to fully recover. She came to Chico State in 1967 to teach anthropology and retired in 1998 as professor emeritus, and she remains affiliated there as a research professor. She has visited every U.S. state, every continent, and obscure islands few people will ever see. In all the world, she says she has two favorite spots: Yosemite National Park, and South Georgia Island in the southern Atlantic Ocean. “They are both beautiful, in very different ways,” she notes. LM[nggallery id=6]

’70s

Darrell Fisher HBA’75, a senior scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., has received the laboratory’s prestigious Fitzner-Eberhardt Award for outstanding contributions to science and engineering education. In addition to a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Utah, he holds a master’s degree and doctorate in nuclear engineering sciences from the University of Florida. He leads PNNL’s Isotope Sciences Program and is based in PNNL’s Energy & Environment Directorate. Fisher was recognized for preparing students for graduate training in the radiological sciences, radiology, and nuclear medicine.

Helen Gordon MS’78, an assistant professor in the Duke University School of Nursing, recently received the school’s Distinguished Teaching Award, which recognizes and rewards demonstrated effectiveness, innovation, and collegial support in teaching at the School of Nursing. Gordon was also recognized with the Outstanding Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) Faculty Award. This award is presented to a faculty member who is an excellent teacher and mentor vested in seeing each student succeed. Gordon teaches the maternity nursing and senior seminar courses in the ABSN program and is a clinical instructor for the program’s community health nursing course. Gordon has spent her entire 37-year career in birth care and women’s health. Before coming to Duke, she managed a grant for the American College of Nurse-Midwives in Washington, D.C. She received a bachelor of science degree in nursing from the University of Arkansas and a master’s degree in parent-child nursing and nurse-midwifery from the University of Utah.

Garry W. Warren PhD’78, a University of Alabama professor of metallurgical and materials engineering, has been named president of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS), an international organization of more than 10,000 metallurgical and materials engineers, scientists, educators, and students from 70 countries. Warren moved to Alabama in 1986 after teaching for several years at Carnegie Mellon University. He has published more than 80 papers on various topics related to chemical and process metallurgy. TMS, with support from the Department of Energy, has initiated many programs in the past year with an emphasis on energy-related issues. “The development of renewable energy sources and finding ways to lessen our requirement for imported oil depends heavily on being able to solve some tough materials-related problems,” Warren notes.

Bruce Weigl PhD’79, author of more than a dozen books of poetry, is the 11th annual recipient of the Robert Creeley Award, given to noted poets each year in Acton, Mass., where Creeley (who died in 2005) lived from ages 4 to 15. Weigl, who received a Bronze Star during his stint in the Vietnam War, found inspiration for his work in the horrors he experienced in combat. He later returned to Vietnam to work with writers there and invite them to the U.S. in an effort to foster collaboration and peace. A poet, essayist, and translator, Weigl is now the first Distinguished Professor at Lorain County Community College in Ohio and previously taught at Pennsylvania State University.

’80s

Patrick S. Moore MD’85 has been elected to fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology. Fellows of the academy are elected annually through a highly selective, peer-reviewed process, based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology. Moore is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine and a member of its Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics Graduate Program. He is also director of the Molecular Virology Program in the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and jointly runs the KSHV Lab at the Hillman Cancer Center with Yuan Chang MD’87. The lab identified the pathogen KSHV (now one of seven known human cancer viruses) in 1993. Moore holds a master’s degree from Stanford University and an M.P.H. from the University of California at Berkeley.

Jim Perkins BS’89 has joined Carton Donofrio Partners, a full-service marketing communications firm, as vice president. Perkins is responsible for managing strategic growth opportunities for the Baltimore-based agency. With more than 21 years of experience in the industry, he has held senior-level management positions on both the agency and client sides. His corporate background includes overseeing U.S. marketing for a large software company and a successful technology start-up. He also held several senior-level positions in advertising agencies across the country. Perkins has worked on well-known brands such as Coke, CoverGirl, Max Factor, Black & Decker, Claritin, and Dr. Scholl’s.

Annette Woodhead BS’89 has been named battalion chief of the Sandy Fire Department, making her the city’s highest-ranking female firefighter ever and one of only two women in that capacity in the Salt Lake Valley. She now oversees 20-plus firefighters in the position, which ranks third in the command hierarchy. The state’s largest fire department—the Unified Fire Authority—has never had a female battalion chief, and Utah’s most-populous county previously had only one. Woodhead joined the Sandy Fire Department as a volunteer in 1993 and later became Sandy’s first full-time female firefighter.

Alan Anderson MBA’89 has been appointed by North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple to head the state Department of Commerce. Anderson has 30 years of leadership and development experience in the oil and gas industry. Before retiring from Tesoro last year, he was vice president of operations strategy and development, charged with the overall development of future business opportunities and the evaluation of strategic options for the company’s future growth.

’90s

Wayne Cottam BS’90 MS’98, DMD, has been named vice dean of the new dental program at A.T. Still University (ATSU) in Kirksville, Mo. The new program will be called a “distant site” of ATSU’s Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health (ASDOH), officially termed “ASDOH-Missouri.” Cottam has worked as ASDOH’s associate dean for Community Partnerships in Mesa, Ariz., since 2005 and helped develop the Missouri initiative. He is relocating to Kirksville to assume his new duties. Cottam also has experience as an associate dentist in a private practice in Midvale, Utah, and as a director of the Urban Indian Health Care Clinic in Salt Lake City. He has been recognized with the National Health Service Corps Dentist of the Year Award, the Clinical Excellence Award from the American Dental Association, and the American Society of Dentistry for Children Award.

Heidi Lasley Barajas BA’92 MS’94 has been appointed executive director of the University of Minnesota Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC). An associate professor (and founding chair) of postsecondary teaching and learning, Barajas has served since 2007 as the associate dean for engagement and faculty development in the UM College of Education and Human Development, working to link research and teaching with pressing community needs and to build long-term campus-community partnerships. She has been co-leader of the interim executive team guiding UROC since its May 2010 grand opening in north Minneapolis as a hub for university-community research partnerships aimed at strengthening urban communities. She received a doctorate in sociology from the University of Minnesota as a National Science Foundation Fellow.

Marlowe Dazley BS’94 MBA’97 has been appointed senior vice president and senior managing director with PNC Healthcare. PNC is one of the first major banks to offer specialized consulting services for the healthcare industry. Dazley will lead PNC’s new revenue cycle advisory group, providing revenue cycle management expertise and advisory services for healthcare payers and providers. Dazley joins PNC with more than 20 years of healthcare experience, most recently with Premier Consulting Solutions. He has worked with payers and not-for-profit, teaching systems, and public health systems throughout the U.S. He is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Healthcare Financial Management Association.

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Through the Years

June 2, 2011

Ferrin in 2008

The lobby of the Ogden [Utah] High School Athletic Complex has been dedicated in honor of Arnie Ferrin BS’66. Ferrin was a co-captain of the Ogden High basketball team in 1943 and led his teammates to the Region 1 championship that year. He went on to play for the University of Utah, where he was named Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA tournament as a freshman. The Utes won the NCAA Championship in 1944 and the National Invitational Tournament Championship in 1947, and Ferrin was selected All-American all four years of collegiate play. In 1948, the Minneapolis Lakers chose Ferrin as their first-round draft pick. He played with the team for three years, helping win two NBA championships. He then went on to coach before being named athletics director at the U, where he served for 10 years. After leaving the U, the NCAA elected Ferrin chair of the basketball committee in 1988. In 2008, Ferrin was named to the College Basketball Hall of Fame. LM

’70s

Christopher Aadnesen BA’71 MBA’73, the Alaska Railroad Corp.’s new CEO, isn’t kidding when he refers to himself as “a very atypical” railroad executive. Prior to entering the railroad industry, Aadnesen, now 62, flirted with a career in rock ’n roll, playing with two bands and releasing several albums. He majored in comparative literature and history during his undergraduate studies at Brown University, and the bachelor’s degree he ultimately received from the University of Utah in English wasn’t in any way related to railroad management. Aadnesen today boasts an impressive résumé outlining his international railroad experience, including various positions with the Union Pacific Railroad Co. over about 22 years, as well as his work as an independent contractor assisting in the privatization of a Mexican railroad.

Roberta Achtenberg JD’75, a co-founder of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and a top housing official in the Clinton administration, has been appointed by President Barack Obama to a seat on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The eight-member panel—half appointed by the president, half by Congress, each for six-year terms—has broad investigatory powers, but no enforcement authority over specific cases. When she was appointed assistant secretary for fair housing within the Department of Housing and Urban Development by Clinton in 1993, Achtenberg became the first openly lesbian or gay presidential appointee to win Senate confirmation. Achtenberg later served the Clinton administration as a senior advisor to the HUD secretary. Achtenberg was a civil rights attorney when she helped found the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights in 1977.

Gregory L. Crawford MBA’78 has been appointed executive director of the Steel Recycling Institute (SRI). Formerly SRI’s vice president of operations, working with private-sector and local/federal government managers on steel recycling issues, Crawford has been active with technical and marketing initiatives for sustainability for many years. In 1990, he joined the original ASTM E50 Committee on Environmental Assessment. In August 1995, he participated in the first meeting of the then-fledgling U.S. Green Building Council, in Big Sky, Mont. Crawford is also the executive director of the Cool Metal Roofing Coalition and secretary for the California-based Cool Roof Rating Council. In addition, he is on the board of the Athena Institute and a member of the California Association of Building Energy Consultants. He is immediate past chair of the Sustainable Buildings Industry Council. In addition to his MBA, he holds a bachelor of science degree in engineering from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.

Greg and Suzanne Starley beside the University of Utah athletics logo on their garage floor.

Greg Starley BS’76 MS’80 PhD’82 was met with a nice surprise recently when his wife, Suzanne, had a bonus feature added to their newly painted garage floor. The Starleys live in Kingwood, Texas, just outside of Houston, where Greg is senior engineering advisor for Devon Energy Corporation. For those who have visited the Warnock Engineering Building, the Starley appellation may sound familiar, as Greg and Suzanne made a gift to name the Starley Commons on the structure’s main floor. The Starleys also contribute an annual scholarship to the U of U Department of Chemical Engineering and are season ticket holders to Ute home football games, making the trip from Houston to Salt Lake City to attend nearly every one. AM

’80s

Stath Karras BS’80 MBA’84 is executive managing director of Cushman & Wakefield’s Investment Sales Group. Based in San Diego, Karras works with investment sales brokers throughout the U.S. He has more than 30 years experience in the real estate industry, including 19 with Burnham Real Estate Services, where he served as president and chief executive officer. He has also been a teaching fellow at the U of U in real estate investment and appraisal.

Kendall Larsen BS’80 is founder, CEO, and chair of VirnetX Holding Corp, a licensing and technology company serving the security sector, which incorporated in 2005 and went public on the American Stock Exchange in 2007. Previously, Larsen was a Limited Partner at Osprey Ventures L.P., a venture fund that makes investments primarily in business and consumer technology companies. Prior to that, he was senior vice president and general manager of the security products division of Phoenix Technologies Ltd., a software and firmware developer. He has also held senior executive positions at leading technology companies including RSA Security Inc., Xerox Corp., Rolm/International Business Machines Corporation, Ramp Networks, and Novell Inc.

Chris Bradley MBA’83 is president and CEO of the Portland, Maine-based company Cuddledown, which makes a variety of bed and bath goods, including pillows, sheets, duvet covers, feather beds, pet beds, pajamas, and bath towels. Bradley, a former Wall Street executive, bought the company in 1988 shortly after moving to Maine. Most of the company’s down comes from large, mature geese raised for food in countries such as Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, where geese are popular holiday fare. But some of Cuddledown’s priciest products are stuffed with eiderdown, which is harvested from eider duck nests by Icelandic farmers. Cuddledown has roughly 100 employees and is at its core a pillow and comforter company, making some 16,000 comforters and 65,000 pillows annually.

Jon Maesner DPh’86 has been named CIGNA’s chief pharmacy officer. He leads CIGNA’s coordinated approach to integrating medication therapy with its medical, health and wellness programs to improve health outcomes and lower total health care and disability costs. Maesner joined CIGNA in 1996 and has held roles of increasing responsibility in his career at the company, including leading development of CIGNA’s health improvement services and health care selection tools for customers. Maesner previously held a variety of other positions in the managed health care and pharmaceutical industries.

H. Mark McGibbon BS’86 is currently the Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMC) Visiting Professor at the National Defense University Information Resources Management College. McGibbon is an NROTC University of Utah graduate and was commissioned in the U.S. Navy. He served his country in Iceland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and deployed on ships throughout Europe. While in the Navy, he received a master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School, founded two small businesses, and was an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, Troy State University, and Pensacola Junior College. After the Navy, he worked for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a leading U.S. specialty technology company, as the European advanced technology concept demonstration oversight manager in Germany. He then joined LMC in 2003 as the European chief enterprise architect/European director of operations. In addition to his visiting professor appointment, McGibbon is an adjunct graduate professor at the University of Maryland and Northcentral University (from which he holds a doctorate).

Patrick Loughlin MS’88 has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s leading professional association for the advancement of technology. Loughlin is William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, where he became a faculty member in 1993. He has made significant contributions to signal processing and bioengineering, including the development and application of nonstationary signal processing methods (especially time-frequency distributions) and development of a physical model of anesthetic uptake, for which he holds two U.S. patents. Loughlin is also associate editor and a member of the editorial board for the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering and a member of the technical committee on acoustic signal processing of the Acoustical Society of America. His research has been supported by institutions including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and Boeing.

Lauri Linder BSN’89 MSN’94 PhD’09, a clinical nurse specialist and assistant professor at the University of Utah’s College of Nursing, was one of seven researchers to receive a 2010 Nurse Researcher Grant from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, which funds research projects nationally. Linder received $100,000 to investigate the relationship between symptoms and the hospital care environment. Over two years beginning this past spring, she is enrolling 50 patients, ages 7 to 18, who have been admitted to the hospital and are expected to stay at least three nights. For each day and night shift, the children will be asked about their symptoms, including fatigue, sadness, pain, nausea, and worry. Linder wants to find out how nurses can improve the hospital environment to best help heal the sick.

’90s

Jeanne “Gigi” Darricades JD’92 has been selected as the new president/chief executive officer of Valley-Wide Health Systems, one of the largest federally qualified health centers in the nation. Originally from Chile, Darricades is bilingual, and in addition to her JD, holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s of public health in hospital administration from the University of California. She brings to Valley-Wide a wealth of knowledge and experience in the health care field, as well as an understanding of the legislative process, affiliations with legislators, and experience with not-for-profit boards. She is also a practicing attorney.

’00s

Erika Overturff BFA’02 is currently a dancer with and artistic director of Ballet Nebraska, the professional ballet company she helped form after Omaha Theater Ballet closed at the end of the 2009-10 season. Performing to enthusiastic audiences through its first year, Ballet Nebraska most recently performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream in May. Overturff grew up and trained in Dubuque, Iowa. She came to the Omaha Theater Ballet in 2004, and has also worked in Alabama with the Montgomery Ballet and the Alabama Ballet. Overturff is married to Brandon Dickerson BS’03 (J.D., Creighton University), who is a corporate attorney at a firm in Omaha. She notes, “We met during our freshman year at the U!”

J.R. Burningham BS’03 won $1 million after a commercial he directed topped the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter. A Salt Lake City native, Burningham graduated from Alta High School before attending the University of Utah. The commercial shows a man mocking a pug with a bag of Doritos through a glass door. The dog then knocks down the door (and the man) and eats the chips. The ad was one of thousands entered in the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl ad contest. The finalists were judged by a panel of viewers who rated the commercials as they watched them.

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