Above: Sunset at the Porter Squiggle (Photo by Carolyn Lagattuta)
Cowell College
’80 Diana Gabrielle SELZ published Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis, 2021, with University of California Press.
Stevenson College
’88 Robin DONOVAN recently published her 44th cookbook, Ramen for Beginners. She is a full-time cookbook author and food blogger and the founder of the food blog allwaysdelicious.com, where she shares easy recipes from around the world. She works out of her sunny home kitchen in her hometown of Berkeley, Calif., but it all started with cooking communal dinners for her housemates on Caledonia Street.
’07 Rebecca RUKEYSER in June published her debut novel, The Seaplane on Final Approach, a bristling, lusty coming-of-age tale about a sex-obsessed young woman on a remote Alaskan homestead. One of Lit Hub and The Millions’ Most Anticipated Books of 2022, the novel was inspired by the author’s own experience working in the Alaskan tourism industry. Rukeyser currently teaches creative writing at Bard College Berlin.
’07 Andrew RODRIGUEZ is CEO and CIO of Change Finance, which has created the first carbon-neutral exchange-traded fund (ETF) listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker: CHGX). Change Finance, an ETF issuer with deep roots in activism, has responded to the trend of “greenwashing” by helping to create the first industry-wide certification process for asset managers who want to claim they have truly carbon-neutral portfolios.
’08 Stephanie FOO’s book, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma, came out on Feb 2, 2022. The book explores her 2018 diagnosis with complex PTSD, which occurs when trauma happens not just a single time, but many times over the course of years. Because Foo struggled to find resources about the condition, she decided to “write the book I needed so badly after diagnosis.” In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly called the book “a work of immense beauty,” and it’s one of Amazon’s Top Ten Best Books of the Month.
Merrill College
’82 Madeleine HOLLY-ROSING wrote and produced the audio drama Boston Metaphysical Society: The Ghost Ship, based on her graphic novel series.
’08 Irene SANCHEZ completed a Ph.D. and is an ethnic studies high school teacher in California, which recently passed a law making ethnic studies a high school grad requirement. In October, she shared her experiences as a high school Latinx studies teacher through poetry and testimony in a presentation for Cal State San Marcos entitled, “Tell Them Where You’re From: Teaching Our Lives/Stories.” She also released a policy brief for a national nonprofit on college access. More of her work can be found on her website.
Kresge College
’89 Joshua ZIMMERMAN, professor of history at Yeshiva University in New York, is coming out with his third book in the spring, a biography of a European head of state before WWII entitled, Jozef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland.
Porter College
’73 Lou MATHEWS and his new novel, Shaky Town, were profiled in the Los Angeles Times. The book also made the long list (1 of 68) for the 2022 Tournament of Books.
’78 Wilson C. HURLEY in October published Compassion’s COMPASS: Strategies for Developing Kindness and Insight, which offers a systematic approach to developing compassionate insight that has been adapted from Tibetan mind training strategies, secularized for modern audiences, and supplemented with relevant research, anecdotes, and exercises in accessible language. The book, which includes a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, contains easy exercises for regaining composure, boosting compassionate insight, preventing compassion fatigue, and maintaining compassion resilience.
’95 Yana JOHNSON, a corporate attorney, has joined Faegre Drinker in San Francisco as a partner, bringing extensive executive compensation experience to the firm. Johnson is a nationwide expert with over 22 years of experience to assist the firm’s public company clients in executive and employee benefits matters. She was previously a principal at Jackson Lewis.
Rachel Carson College
’18 Noelle DUERWALD was admitted last summer to the Global Field Program at Miami University. As part of her first Earth Expeditions course, Duerwald traveled to Belize and studied coral reefs, manatees, howler monkeys, jaguars, and other wildlife while learning the methods communities are using to sustain them.
College Nine
’13 Andy SARTORI launched startup MealPro.com in Sacramento, an online food delivery service that deploys high tech to let users customize the nutrition in their meals. He has been recognized as an innovator and a change agent by the Sacramento Business Journal, which awarded him the prestigious “40 under 40” award.
Graduate Studies
’93 Leslie BOW (Ph.D. literature) published Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy in February 2022. Bow is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of English and Asian American Studies and Dorothy Draheim Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South and Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American Women’s Literature. Her new book traces the ways in which Asian Americans become objects of anxiety and desire, showing how attraction to Asianized objects and images functions as a source of anti-Asian bias and violence.
’99 Dorrit LOWSEN (M.S., Ph.D., computer science) is president and COO Change Finance, which has created the first carbon-neutral exchange-traded fund (ETF) listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker: CHGX). Change Finance, an ETF issuer with deep roots in activism, has responded to the trend of “greenwashing” by helping to create the first industry-wide certification process for asset managers who want to claim they have truly carbon-neutral portfolios.
’17 and ’20 Danielle DADIEGO (M.A., Ph.D. anthropology) won the 2022 Society for American Archaeology Dissertation Award, the most prestigious dissertation award in the field.
’18 Michael Wilson BECERRIL’s (Ph.D. politics) book Resisting Extractivism: Peruvian Gold, Everyday Violence, and the Politics of Attention was named a 2021 Outstanding Academic Title by Choice (American Library Association), an honor reserved for the top 10% of the 5,000-plus books the ALA reviews each year.
In Memoriam
‘72 Richard VICENTI (Cowell) passed away at home on May 7, 2021, from complications of a stroke. At UC Santa Cruz, Vicenti was instrumental in setting up the free bus service to campus that continues to this day. After earning his MBA from Stanford, Rich spent his career in finance, serving as CFO for numerous Silicon Valley companies. He was passionate about his community, serving on the board of his church and as treasurer of Save Our Shores for many years. He also loved the outdoors, especially skiing and hiking at Kirkwood in the Sierras. An avid jogger and cyclist, he completed many long-distance runs and rides.
’72–’95 James TAIT (Cowell ’72 and ’86; M.S. ’88; Ph.D. ’95), professor of science education and environmental studies at Southern Connecticut State University, died April 6, 2021. He joined the faculty in 1997, earned tenure in 2002, was promoted to full professor in 2014, was a co-founder and co-coordinator of the Werth Center for Coastal and Marine Studies. His expertise was in coastal processes, and his research, conducted with his students, contributed significantly to the understanding of beach erosion along the Connecticut shoreline.
’74 Malcolm TAYLOR (Cowell) passed away on June 28, 2021, in Tacoma, Wash. He graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in art. He then went on to get a teaching credential and became a middle school language arts teacher, inspiring kids to love reading, writing, music, and art. During his teaching career, he was active in the California Teacher’s Association. A talented teacher, carpenter, singer, songwriter, actor, producer, and fine artist, Taylor spent his retired years on the stage at the Anacortes Community theater, the Mount Vernon Theater Arts Guild, and the RiverBelle theater.
’79 Suzanne Marie OLMSTED (Porter), an artist and educator, passed away suddenly in her home on November 21. She was an associate professor at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she taught printmaking, photography, and foundation courses, serving as chair of the Print Department from 1999–2005. She enjoyed artist residencies in Belgium, Italy, and Vermont and consistently exhibited her work.
’20 Noah Dayton PEAKE (Rachel Carson), a first-year graduate student in electrical engineering at Caltech, died unexpectedly on November 24, 2021. He was 23 years old. At UC Santa Cruz, he was a member of the Santa Cruz Institute of Particle Physics. He worked in the UCSC Physics Department, where he created and maintained lab demonstrations, repaired electrical equipment, and generated and wrote descriptions of the underlying physics for the UCSC website. After graduation, he worked on upgrades to the electronics of the ATLAS Experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland.