Sightings | Alumni News

Class Notes

Gregory N. Brown PhD’63 (Forestry), retired dean of the College of Natural Resources, has been named Dean Emeritus by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Board of Visitors. Brown had a 41-year career as a college administrator and forestry professor at five different universities. He joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 1992 and was the founding dean of the College of Natural Resources.

Lee Krohn MEM ‘81, who has served as planning director for the Town of Manchester, Vt., since 1989, was honored recently with two awards: 2004 Outstanding Planning Professional for Vermont, and (along with another planner from Maine) 2004 Outstanding Planning Professional for the Northern New England Chapter of the American Planning Association.

Tim McLean T’90 and his wife, Grace Jendrasiak McLean, are 1989 Marine Lab alumni. They were married in 1993 in Beaufort. Tim received his doctoral degree in genetics and molecular biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is employed now in the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Southern California. Grace has a joint J.D./M.R.P. from UNC, and currently works for the Los Angeles Office of the Federal Public Defender. Their daughter, Charleston Annetta McLean, was born on Oct. 1, 2003, in Los Angeles.

Elizabeth A. Brantley MF’92 and Craig Houghton were married on June 12, 2004. Beth and Craig are both forestry instructors at Penn State Mont Alto’s Forest Technology Program.

Susan (McCarthy) Herz MEM’95 and Raphael Herz MEM’96, both CEM-track alumni living outside of Boston, proudly announce the birth of Jacob Crossan Herz on June 1, 2004. Jacob is busy teaching Susan and Raphael how to be parents! Susan is back at work three days a week at ESS Group Inc., an environmental consulting firm in Wellesley, Mass. She has been involved in several coastal- and marine-related projects, including working on the Draft EIS for the proposed offshore wind development project in Nantucket Sound. Raphael works with a quasi-public, independent technology economic development agency, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, which administers the $250 million Renewable Energy Trust Fund. Susan and Raphael are looking forward to hearing from classmates and say “Hello to everyone in Beaufort!”

Karen Christiansen MEM’97 received her law degree from New York University Law School in 2004. She is now an associate with Fish & Neave LLP in Palo Alto, Calif.

Kim Woodbury Drye MEM’97 and her husband, Mark, proudly announce the birth of their second son, Luke Foster, on Sept. 9, 2004. Luke’s big brother Jack also is very pleased with the addition to the family.

Gwen Parker MEM’97 joined the legal firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, Calif. after receiving her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2003. Gwen is specializing in commercial litigation.

Kelly Meadows MEM’98 and Meredith Bennett MEM’01 were married in June 2004. Both are now working for Tetra Tech in Virginia.

Scott Babcock MEM’99 and his wife, Kelly, are the proud parents of a baby daughter, Claire Jessica, born Jan. 3. Scott is still working with ERO (www.eroresources.com) in Denver, Colo., and focuses on NEPA compliance and natural resource planning projects at the local and state levels.

Charlotte Gray Hudson MEM’99 took part in an expedition that has received widespread news coverage and fantastic results. She volunteered to join an Oceana Europe group aboard a Spanish pelagic longline boat with a film crew to document sea turtle bycatch and to collect data. Charlotte brought along a new circle fishing hook to show the fishermen. Research shows that these hooks reduce the number of turtles being caught with the current gear. After a skeptical discussion, the fisherman agreed to try the circle hooks. The results were fish with no turtle by-catch.

Crystal G. Lovett-Tibbs MEM’99 has joined Husch & Eppenberger, LLC, in St. Louis, Mo., as an associate attorney in the firm’s Environmental and Regulatory Practice Group. Prior to joining Husch, Crystal served as a judicial clerk with the Honorable Henry Coke Morgan Jr., of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Matt Brett T’00 (ESP) joined the Board of Directors of the Lake Michigan Federation, which works to restore fish and wildlife habitat, conserve land and water, and eliminate pollution in the watershed of America’s largest lake. While at Duke, Matt interned for the Federation, helping to coordinate the Illinois Beach Sweep, now the Adopt-A-Beach program. Matt practices law with the Chicago firm of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood.

Matt Grove PhD’00 (Geology) reports that 2004 was a very busy year, full of changes. In May, Matt left his job with Anadarko Petroleum Corp. in Houston and drove back to New England with fiancée, Diane Specht, stopping to visit friends along the way, including Lisa Cioci T’97 and Greg T’94 and Ann Farley T’93. Once in Massachusetts, he started a new job in the Boston office of Brown & Caldwell, an environmental engineering and consulting firm. Diane and Matt were married on Aug. 7 (with a number of Duke alums there to share the day including Lisa Cioci, Greg and Ann Farley, Craig Webb G’95, Charlie Willmore G’99 and John Stinchcombe PhD’01. Then they embarked on a 12-day honeymoon in Hawaii. In November, they bought a house in Tewksbury, Mass. Both are hoping that 2005 is a bit more sedate.

Exploring Biomass Power Generation for Georgia
In November 2004, Nicholas School Board of Visitors member Blake Sullivan MF’89 and MEM candidate Mandy Schmitt visited the McNeil Generating Station, a biomass power generating plant in Burlington, Vt. They were members of a team coordinated by Georgia Power that is looking at the possibilities of bringing a major alternative energy power plant to Georgia.

Currently, Georgia Power only uses nuclear, coal and hydropower to generate electricity. Georgia is limited in alternative power generation possibilities because of natural barriers to options such as wind power. So biomass from the timber industry is an attractive option for the state. The McNeil Station visit offered the team the opportunity to see and understand a major power station that runs off of forest biomass. The McNeil Station also has recently completed a cutting-edge $18 million biomass gasification project, a process of interest to the team.

Julia Kintsch MEM’00 left The Nature Conservancy in Michigan to be program director for the Denver-based Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project (SREP), a non-profit conservation biology organization working to protect and restore large, continuous networks of land in the Southern Rockies ecoregion of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico.

Fielding Arnold T’01 (ESP) was living in Spain last fall and returned to the United States in January. She has accepted a job offer to serve as the science curriculum coordinator for a New York-based nonprofit called Reach the World (www.reachtheworld.org). For the next two-and-a-half years she will be a member of the crew of the Makulu, a 42-foot ketch-rigged sailboat on a round-the-world expedition. The purpose of the expedition is to provide content for the Reach the World Web site, which is used as a curricular resource for underfunded public elementary schools in New York. The students can follow their voyage via the Internet and interact with them via e-mail.

Craig Harper MEM/MPP’02 has left “the Hill,” where he was a legislative fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein. He is back working on Department of Interior issues at the Office of Management and Budget (where he interned in 2002). He and wife, Claire Lankford Harper MEM’02, are still living in Washington, D.C.

Trina Hedrick MEM/MPP’03 is working for the Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Program of the Arizona Game and Fish Department in Phoenix. She is a native fish conservation planner. Although Arizona is a desert state, it has 35 native fish, one of which is extinct, and almost 75 percent of which are federally listed, candidates for listing or listed as a wildlife species of special concern.

On Sept. 19, 2004, Madeleine Shepard Lawrence was born. Her parents, Meg Athey Lawrence MEM’03, G’03 and Robb Lawrence B’03, report that everything went well and they are still trying to figure parenting out, but having a great (and sleepless) time. Madeleine was 8 lbs., 3.5 oz., and 20 inches long and is the most beautiful baby in the world. The family is living in Philadelphia.

Valerie Chan MEM’04 is starting a job in D.C. with the Environmental Protection Agency. It is a two-year internship and she will have opportunities to explore several offices, though she’ll be based in the Office of Science Policy. Valerie also noted that she’s aware of two other recent graduates who are with the EPA: Elaine Lai MEM/MPP’04 is an intern in the Office of International Affairs and Caitlyn Hunt MEM’04 is an intern at Region 2 in New York.

Arthur Fisher MEM’04 has accepted a GIS analyst position with AMEC in Boston, Mass. AMEC operates a leading earth and environmental consulting business and provides multi-disciplined solutions for all aspects of environmental services, geotechnical engineering, infrastructure, materials testing and engineering and water resources. Arthur and his new puppy, Wookie, are excited about the new job!

Shannon Lyons MEM’04 just started a new job with the Mid- Atlantic Fishery Management Council in Delaware and she says it is going well so far. The Council is responsible for the management of fisheries in federal waters that occur predominantly off the mid-Atlantic coast. States with voting representation on the Council include New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.

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