Table of Contents
Six(ty) Degrees of St. Lawrence (Part 4)
Jacqueline “Wanje” Nyoro ’03. Rahab and Wanje created a study that compared the populations of small mammals they observed on the University golf course and on the Kip Tract along the Little River. Wanje found the experience to be “an intense and interesting exposure to field biology.” She later received a fellowship from Merck Pharmaceutical Company; she used it last summer to study how calcium ions infiltrate immune cells. Also using a University grant to engage in research is
Kimberly Tarr ’04, who received support from the Betsy Cogger Rezelman International Travel Endowment to consider "Form and Function of 13th-Century Castles of the British Isles" while she is studying in London this spring. The endowment was established in 2000 by Kristen Tauck Mahar ’91 and Daniel W. Mahar ’99 to assist students traveling on the University’s abroad program with travel or research stipends, or to offset other related costs. Betsy was a respected and popular fine arts professor on campus, and after her death in January 2000, her portrait, which now hangs in Griffiths Arts Center, was painted by…
Sara Constantine ’00, who says, “Betsy was my art history professor freshman year. I became a member of the Student Art Union and eventually its president. I asked Betsy to be an advisor to the group. After she passed away, the fine arts faculty wanted to memorialize her with a portrait done by a student. Professor Roger Bailey, who was heading the plans for the portrait, asked if I wanted to do the portrait; I talked with Betsy's fiancé, Herb Bartholomew, and plans were made.”
Sara also understands the value of legacy; she’s another St. Lawrence “Chip,” the daughter of an alumna. “The fact that my mother went to St. Lawrence definitely influenced my choice of a college,” Sara continues. “She’s on the Alumni Council, and it is nice to hear what is going on at the University through her.” Sara’s mother is…Calla Bassett ’76, an anesthesiologist who practices at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany. When Calla visits campus for Council meetings, she offers her time to meet with and advise pre-med students at St. Lawrence (one of whom is Jacqueline Nyoro ’02). Calla earned her medical degree at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, and her graduate alma mater has called Calla’s work with undergraduate students “a model program.” A fellow Council member is
Pat Romeo-Gilbert ’74, an energetic volunteer in her town, Lexington, Mass., who says her sense of community developed at St. Lawrence. “I learned that involvement is fun as well as satisfying and that leadership creates an environment for success,” she says. Pat and her husband, Paul Gilbert ’72, have established the Romeo/Gilbert Intercultural Endowment to support independent student research and travel outside the United States (and preferably outside North America and Europe) because “we learned the value of travel as students ourselves,” she says. “Paul was in the first Kenya program,” she recalls. Those memories inspired them to become friends with…
Kenyan student Ken Okoth ’01,who they say “shows what possibilities exist on campus” by being involved in so many ways, from international study to singing to internships. “Can a school in a remote rural area be cosmopolitan?” thought Ken when he arrived in Canton. A German major with a European studies minor, he found out firsthand, spending a year in Austria and a semester in Denmark on study abroad programs. “It is amazing how a small institution like St. Lawrence can be so committed to international education,” says Ken. One day he hopes to teach diplomacy at his alma mater. Meanwhile, he is pursuing a master’s degree in counseling at St. Lawrence and working as a residential coordinator. “The best part about it is that I can teach first-year students about all the resources available to them at St. Lawrence, on and off campus,” says Ken, like Camp Canaras, where he met…
Dean “Cissy” Petty while working there during the summer after his freshman year. She keeps a picture of Ken in her office, of moment when he finally got up on waterskis at Canaras, and everyone there was cheering him on. But her love for the students at St. Lawrence and the community here extends further than that despite the fact that before she moved to Canton she had never lived north of the Mason-Dixon line. She says, “Connections at St. Lawrence have made living and working in the North Country an incredibly rich and textured experience… students carving pumpkins for me, a weekend in Ottawa with friends, alums who stop in to chat,--it's been a great time here.” Cissy teaches Education 416, a class on leadership and love. This semester she asked some of her colleagues to team-teach the class with her; Ed Forbes ’02 calls them “the dream team.” Cissy has worked with
Elaine White for four years. She calls White “the most competent, smartest person I’ve worked with.” Elaine says that “the student life staff work hard, but has fun doing it.” Elaine arrived at St. Lawrence in 1963, and has worked mostly in the Student Life division ever since. In her nearly 40 years at St. Lawrence, she has seen the physical appearance of the campus transform dramatically. “Especially in the past few years, the changes in the campus, especially the renovations in Augsbury, Appleton and the residence halls have been amazing. It’s just an increasingly gorgeous campus,” she says. She remembers Brewer Bookstore when it was the field house where basketball was played by such student-athletes as
Daniel F. Sullivan ’65, who Elaine knew especially well in his role as chief justice of the student judiciary board. Returning to St. Lawrence as president some 30 years after graduation, when “some of my former professors still had their grade books with my marks in them!” was a special privilege. Those marks likely were quite good; St. Lawrence’s president graduated with a B.S. in mathematics, Phi Beta Kappa. As a student athlete (he played soccer and baseball in addition to basketball), he enjoyed the challenge in the classroom and with his teams. He and his, wife Ann H. Sullivan, who also studied at St. Lawrence before completing her degree at Syracuse University, returned to St. Lawrence believing in its mission, adding, though, “there are always things one wants to improve.” Their commitment to the University community is evinced by the enormous number of enhancements— curricular, facilities, financial, cultural—that St. Lawrence has experienced since 1996. St. Lawrence’s president also is a term trustee, and he worked closely in the year 2001 with the immediate past president of the Thelomathesian Society (who serves as a delegate to the Board of Trustees) and fellow math major
Dave Cordella ’02, who student-taught high school math in Ogdensburg, N.Y., last fall, the same semester he was Thelmo president. Highlights of his tenure included planning for the soon-to-be-constructed senior townhouse residences. “I met and worked with many different kinds of people, from students to administrators,” Dave says. He believes that these experiences will be especially useful in his teaching career. Dave, of Pine Plains, N.Y., is also an EMT and a community assistant. He will “most likely” stay at St. Lawrence for graduate school this fall. He appreciates all that he has been able to accomplish at the University: “Student leadership is strongly encouraged at St. Lawrence,” he says. George Williams ’03, Dave’s successor as Thelmo president, would probably agree…
The Connectors
Seven writers forged the links in this chain. University communications staff members Neal Burdick ’72, Lisa Cania M’82 and Macreena Doyle have been connecting with Laurentians since they first became associated with St. Lawrence, as undergraduate student (Burdick, in 1968), graduate student (Cania, in 1980) and media relations specialist (Doyle, in 1985). Ken Okoth ’01, an intern in University communications in his senior year, is a residential coordinator (younger alumni will more likely recognize “RC”) and graduate student at his alma mater, and Laura Besanceney ‘02 of Orchard Park, N.Y., Eileen Fenn ’02 of Morris, Conn., and Alexei Boulokhov ’03 of Novocherkassk, Rostov Region, Russia, are University communications interns in spring 2002.