THROUGH THE YEARS

Honored as Entrepreneurs of The Year for 2001 by Ernst & Young, Utah, are the following alumni: David Blain BS’88, Blain Olsen White Gurr Advertising; Philip M. Thompson ex’64, Industrial Supply Company; Daniel B. Fugal ex’72, Niels Fugal Sons Company; Kent H. Murdock BA’72 JD’75, O.C. Tanner Company; Rhoda Ramsey BS’47, Jodie Bennion BA’66, Barbara Carrier ex’74, Sue Christensen BS’56, Richard Lockwood BS’81, Norine Foote ex’56, The Ramsey Group; and Eric Olafson BS’78, Tomax.

Paul E. Nord ex’56 graduated from the John F. Kennedy School of Law in Walnut Creek, California, in December 2000, and passed the California Bar examination in February 2001. He retired as a partner in the San Francisco office of an international CPA firm and now has a private practice in law and accounting in Walnut Creek. AM

James P. BA’61 and Peggy K. Pappas BS’62 received the husband-wife team “Hellenic Heritage Award” from the Hellenic Cultural Association. This award honors those who demonstrate dynamic civic leadership on a local and national level, who promote and preserve Hellenism, and who, by example, inspire others to serve. James Pappas is vice president for outreach at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, and oversees programs that serve over 150,000 participants. Peggy Pappas is marketing director of the Donald W. Reynolds Department of Geriatric Medicine, Oklahoma City, Okla.AM

David N. Sundwall BA’66 BA’67 MD’69 has been appointed to the Board of Trustees of Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, the oldest college for African-American women in the United States, founded in 1880. Sundwall is president of the American Clinical Laboratory Association in Washington, D.C.

William W. Hansen BS’67 MS’73 has been appointed to the National Defense University Foundation board of directors. He will serve a three-year term and will focus on the civilian support activities for the National Defense University. Hansen is vice president for the Army programs and technology services business area for the Washington, D.C., Operations Office, Lockheed Martin Corporation. He is a graduate of the Army War College and a distinguished graduate of the Navy Command and Staff College. During his 27 years of military service, Hansen has been awarded the Silver Star (twice), the Legion of Merit (twice), the Purple Heart, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Gold Star.

Larry E. Nelson BS’70 was named head of the Department of History at Francis Marion University, Florence, South Carolina. He has been a member of the FMU faculty since 1974, and received his doctorate from Duke University.

J. Scott Buehler BS’71 is with the Ogden office of Van Cott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy, where he is a member of the business and litigation sections. His practice is focused on real estate and construction law. Buehler earned his juris doctorate at the University of the Pacific/McGeorge School of Law and has practiced in northern California and Weber County. He is a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Utah State Bar, and the State Bar of California.


Robert L. Jays MBA’71 has published an article, “Patent No. 6,035,321—Opening the Door to Software Product Liability Exposure,” in the Stanford Journal of Law, Business & Finance, Vol. 6, No. 2.

James R. Shaw PhD’73, senior scientific advisor with Weyerhaeuser Co. in Federal Way, Washington, has received the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Award of Merit for his exemplary service to ASTM Committee E05 on Fire Standards. This award recognizes his guidance and support of ASTM’s role in the internationalization of fire standards through his leadership in the U.S. delegations to the Fire Safety Committee of the International Organization for Standardization. The Award of Merit is the highest Society award for individual contributions to standards work and is accompanied by the title of fellow.

Marty Plunkett BS’74, Craig Kaminski BS’88, and Mike Merrill BS’00 have been given new staff assignments by the Salt Lake office of CB Richard Ellis. Plunkett was appointed vice president of the office buildings division; Kaminski was named senior associate in industrial/ flex properties; and Merrill was made sales associate in industrial/flex properties.

Anne M. Rogers MBA’76 was honored as one of the top 20 women in information technology for 2001 in Houston, Texas. She currently provides IT systems management and security consulting for various clients, focusing on implementing broadband communication and services.

Marc J. Sievers BA’78 is deputy director to the Office of Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs for the U.S. Department of State. He was formerly political counselor with the American Embassy Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Sievers entered the foreign service in 1981 and has served overseas in Hong Kong; Cairo, Egypt; Rabat, Morocco; Ankara, Turkey; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and in the State Department’s Intelligence and Research and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. He was a Pearson Fellow assigned to the office of Congressman Lee Hamilton and to the staff of the House International Relations Committee. He has received the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award (twice), the American Foreign Service Association’s Sinclaire Language Award, and the Intelligence Community’s Exceptional Collector Award. Sievers was recently designated one of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s “Hometown Diplomats.”

Rodney S. Davis BA’80 fills the position of senior counsel in the music legal affairs department at Sony Pictures Entertainment in Culver City, California. He provides legal services in connection with the creation and acquisition of music for 25 theatrical films and 43 television series a year.



Lloyd Sadler BS’81 MS’84 MBA’89 JD’96, a patent attorney, has joined the law firm of Parsons Behle & Latimer, having previously been with the McCarthy and Sadler law firm. He concentrates his practice on patents, trademarks, copyrights, and licensing.

Thomas Callister MS’82 PhD’86 received the Robert Y. Fluno Award for Excellence in Teaching in the social sciences at Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington. He has served as chair of the education department at Whitman since 1994 and is an expert in the area of education and technology. Callister has held the Paul Garrett Fellowship at Whitman since 1998.

Natalie Gochnour BS’84 MS’88 serves as deputy for policy and communications in the administration of Governor Mike Leavitt. Her background in research and analysis enhance her policy-making abilities beyond the usual image-enhancing skills common to this office. Gochnour was formerly state planning coordinator and deputy director for the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget.

Angela Harwood BA’84, a professor in the Woodring College of Education, has received the Excellence in Teaching Award representing Western Washington University. She joined the Woodring faculty in 1991and has consistently received recognition for her dedication to service learning. Harwood collaborated with a former student to develop and implement Project Connect, through which local students provide services at 23 different community sites. She was recently selected as one of 10 nationwide finalists for the 2001 Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service Learning.

Carl E. Mergele BS’85 has been appointed chief executive officer of SER Solutions, a provider of knowledge-enabled software solutions. Mergele joined the company in 1998 and is responsible for strategic direction and general supervision of the company. His previous work included serving as vice president and assistant general counsel to InfoVest Corporation, The Faneuil Group, and Credit Card Services Corporation. He earned his juris doctorate from the Drake University School of Law in 1988.


Peter Badovinatz MS’85 has been promoted to senior technical staff member at IBM, where he is a key technical leader in the areas of clustering and distributed systems. He is currently the Linux Technology Center expert and leader in these areas and is the contact to the open source community for the Distributed Lock Manager project recently released as open source. Badovinatz is a member of multiple architecture and design groups exploring and defining future directions for IBM. AM

Heather Ferguson ex’86 is a senior designer with Bottom Duvivier, a design, architecture, and workplace consulting firm. She received her BA in interior design from California State University at Long Beach and has developed interior designs for companies such as Hewlett Packard and Levi Strauss & Co. Ferguson is president of the Northern California chapter of the International Design Association.

Michael T. Roberts BS’86 JD’89, a shareholder with Van Cott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy, has received a Master of Laws degree in agricultural law from the University of Arkansas School of Law. Roberts represents clients in the agriculture industry in the western region of the United States in a wide variety of areas and also represents clients in acquisitions and transactions related to the operation of foreign farmland. He is a member of the Utah State Bar.

Erik A. Christiansen BA’86 BA’87 JD’90, president of the U of U Young Alumni Association and a shareholder with Parsons Behle & Latimer, was selected from more than 90 applicants to serve as one of 15 attorney advocates to represent athletes in Salt Lake City’s Court of Arbitration for Sport during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. Christiansen was also tapped by the Utah State Bar Association to represent athletes in hearings before the United States Olympic Committee and before the governing bodies of individual sports. AM

Robert David Mitchell BS’87 has been named senior vice president of global sales and marketing for Cook Incorporated, a medical device manufacturer in Bloomington, Indiana. He joined the company in 1987 as a sales representative covering the Rocky Mountain states for the radiology and cardiology product lines. Since then he has been director of sales of the Asia/Pacific region for Cook’s diagnostic and interventional products division, and was manager of international sales and marketing for that division.

Brooks Ryan Amiot BA’88 is an associate in the Baltimore, Maryland, office of Piper Marbury Rudnick & Wolfe specializing in labor and employment law. He and his wife, Susan, have one son.

Michael Moffit BS’89 has been admitted to the partnership of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Salt Lake City.

Laura Steensma Scott BA’90 is a member of the litigation department at Parsons Behle & Latimer law firm and concentrates on construction and real estate litigation. She is also a member of the employment department where she advises employers on many aspects of employment law. Scott received her juris doctorate from Arizona State University in 1993.

Scott Storrs BS’90 is creative director at Ogilvy/Interactive in New York, where he has helped shape the online brand identity of IBM since 1977. Previously, he was with Alan Frank & Associates in Salt Lake City, where he worked as a photographer, a producer, a copywriter, and eventually as creative director.

Teri Gee BA’91 MA’94 is vice president of operations for Gold Systems, Inc., a custom software firm located in Salt Lake City. Her responsibilities include oversight of the firm’s project management methodologies and practice, human resource management, development of company policy and strategic planning, and software development. A founding member of the firm, Gee has previously served in capacities from business analyst, software designer, and project manager, and has facilitated the company’s growth to nearly 20 developers, managers, and support staff. She and her husband, Michael Stoker BS’86 MS’91, have one daughter, Heather Gee BA’95. AM

Cliff Holle BS’94, business development manager at Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL), has been appointed by Gov. Mike Leavitt as Utah’s delegate to the Aerospace States Association (ASA). This organization represents the interests of states in federal aerospace policy formulation and implementation and is made up of delegates from 40 states and the District of Columbia. Holle previously served as program manager for NASA’s Commercial Remote Sensing Program and was in the U.S. Navy.

Tawni Anderson Sherman JD’98 has joined the law firm of Snell & Wilmer in Salt Lake City and will practice in the commercial litigation area. She is married to Marcus Sherman BA’92.

Jeff Hoyt MPA’94 PhD’01 is director of institutional research at Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah. His unit of five researchers coordinates 10 to 15 surveys each year across the UVSC campus, fulfilling government reporting requirements, providing information for Board of Regents reporting requirements, and conducting program evaluations and studies. Hoyt has recently had his article, “Performance Funding in Higher Education: The Effects of Student Motivation on the Use of Outcomes Tests to Measure Institutional Effectiveness Research,” published in Research in Higher Education.

Matthew Breen BA’96 has joined the staff of the Austin (Texas) Film Festival as Los Angeles-based film program director. He was responsible for programming films for screening at the 2001 Austin Film Festival and promotes the festival in southern California through year-round film and screenwriting events in the Los Angeles area. Breen is also a freelance entertainment journalist and contributes film reviews to several publications.

Nathan S. Merrill BS’97 was selected to “The Order of the Barristers” for excellence in and service to lawyering skills competitions at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his J.D. from Washington’s School of Law in May 2001.

Rick Lifferth BS’97 MPrA’98 recently transferred to Salt Lake City from the San Francisco office of Arthur Andersen LLP. He joined the firm in 1998 and is a tax senior.

Candace Anne Hutton BS’98 MPrA’99 has been promoted to senior accountant in the audit and business assurance practice in the Salt Lake City office of Arthur Andersen LLP, where she has worked since 1999. She was honored by the Utah Association of Certified Public Accountants for achieving the highest score in the state of Utah on the fall 1999 CPA exam. Hutton currently serves as a member of the UACPA committee for emerging CPAs as well as a member of the advisory board of The Caring Connection, a grief counseling program. She and her husband, Jim, are parents of a daughter.

Linda Ellison BA’98 has been elected president of the Harvard Graduate Council, the student governing body of Harvard University. She is in her third year of graduate study and has served the past two years on the University Council as a representative of Harvard Divinity School.

Correction: The photo identified as biathlon record-holder Peter Karns BS’67 included in “Through The Years” in the Winter 2001-02 Continuum was not Karns, and Continuum regrets the error. The real Pete Karns is pictured here. Karns is associate broker/owner of Real Estate of Jackson Hole in Jackson, Wyoming.