Alumni Accomplishments
Shari Worthington '80 received the Emerging Leader Award at the ISA Honors and Awards Gala in Houston, Texas, in October. The award "recognizes up-and-coming leadership benefiting the society and its members." Worthington is the director-elect of the ISA Management Division, which supports ISA members from all industry segments who are involved in management as it relates to instrumentation, systems and automation assets. She is the founder and president of Telesian Technology Inc., providing marketing and e-business services for the technology and manufacturing automation markets, and is co-author of the ISA book e-Business in Manufacturing. Worthington holds an MBA from Babson College and a master's degree from Framingham State College; she majored in psychology and biology at St. Lawrence.
ISA is a nonprofit organization that "helps its 30,000 worldwide members and other professionals solve difficult technical problems, while enhancing their leadership and personal career capabilities." It is based in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Middlebury College Alpine ski coach Stever Bartlett ’96 has been named the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association (EISA) Alpine Coach of the Year. The second-year coach qualified a full team for the NCAAs, where the Panthers finished fifth in the nation. He also helped lead the Middlebury men to the Dartmouth Cup by winning the combined total score of Nordic and Alpine at the EISA Championships.
Bartlett previously was a coach for the U.S. Ski Team. He has also been head Europa Cup coach and a strength and conditioning coach with the program. A staff member at the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics, Bartlett also served as the head coach and project leader at the 2005 World Junior Championships in Bardonechia, Italy. He was named 2002 Vermont Alpine Ski Racing Association Coach of the Year while head coach of the Killington Mountain School. A two-time captain of the Alpine team at St. Lawrence, he has become a respected voice in the Alpine ski racing world and a leading advocate for continuing the development of student-athletes in college, to give them a chance to move on to international competition.
Scott Giles ’82, vice president for policy, research and planning at the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC), which helps Vermonters plan and pay for education or training beyond high school, has been appointed to a three-year term on the U.S. Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance. The 11-member committee serves as independent counsel to the U.S. Congress and Secretary of Education on financial aid policy.
Prior to joining VSAC, Giles served from 2001 to 2003 as deputy chief of staff for the Committee on Science in the U.S. House of Representatives. From 1997 to 2001, he staffed the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in the U.S. Senate, playing an instrumental role in most of the federal higher education legislation enacted during his tenure with the committee. He also has a background in public affairs and as a legislative assistant. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Virginia and lives in Shelburne, Vt., with his wife, Kate, and their three children.
The world of North Country college hockey coaching saw significant change in April, and St. Lawrence alumni were in the middle of it. Head women’s coach Paul Flanagan ’80, who brought the SLU program to national prominence, announced his departure for Syracuse University, to begin the Division I program there, and men’s Associate Head Coach Chris Wells ’92 was named the new women’s coach later the same day. Shortly thereafter, Mike Hurlbut ’89, who had been a volunteer coach for six years, was named assistant men’s coach, replacing Wells.
 Meanwhile, a few miles up Route 11, the Clarkson women’s program will be headed by co-coaches Matt Desrosiers ’01 and Shannon Smith Desrosiers ’03 after former head coach Rick Seeley accepted a comparable position at Quinnipiac. Each had been an assistant coach at Clarkson for the past two years. |
The American Hockey Coaches Association has named Ray Pratt ’61 the recipient of this year's John Mariucci Award for his work as a high school coach. Pratt was born and raised in Lake Placid, N.Y., where he was a standout hockey player. After an outstanding playing career at St. Lawrence, he returned to Lake Placid High School, where he taught history and was head varsity hockey coach from 1964 through 1976. His coaching record there was 167-64-3, with 27 of those losses in his first two years. Coach Pratt’s teams won numerous sectional championships in the days before New York State awarded a state championship. In 1976, he was appointed sports director of the 1980 Winter Olympic Committee. He was elected to the Lake Placid Hall of Fame in 1997, and in 2005 he was inducted into the New York State High School Ice Hockey Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Jack Van de Water ’61 has been named co-leader of the fall 2008 Semester-at-Sea voyage around the world. He will serve as executive dean on the voyage, which departs from Nassau, The Bahamas, on August 29 and calls in Brazil, Namibia, South Africa, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong King, China, Japan, Hawaii and Costa Rica before concluding in Miami in December. Approximately 700 students from 250 colleges and universities will participate. Van de Water, recently retired as dean of international programs at Oregon State University, has been an American Council of Education Fellow in Academic Administration, served as president of the Association of International Education Administrators and received four Fulbright awards during his distinguished career; he is also the recipient of an Alumni Citation from St. Lawrence.
MemPro Ceramics Corporation, of which John Finley ’70 is chairman and CEO, is the recipient of a 2007 NorTech Innovation Award. The annual awards program recognizes companies in Northeast Ohio creating and developing breakthrough innovative technologies. MemPro Ceramics has combined polymer processing with ceramic production to make a new filtration technology using ceramic nanofibers to capture/filter undesirable particles while removing gaseous pollutants from the environment. The innovation will dramatically reduce the costs of using catalysts in the production of pharmaceutical and biotech products, fine and bulk chemicals, as well as food and beverages.
Katy MacKay ’70 was elected to the Board of Directors of the Council of Governing Boards, the public policy organization of New York’s 3,000 Independent College and University Trustees. The CGB is affiliated with the cIcu (Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities), a statewide association representing the public policy interests of the chief executives of more than 100 independent colleges and universities in New York State, including St. Lawrence, whose president, Dan Sullivan ’65, is also a trustee.
Duncan C. Ellis ’86, managing director at Marsh, the world’s leading insurance broker and risk advisor, has been recognized by a leading risk magazine as one of the country’s top insurance brokers serving clients in the chemical, real estate and technology industries. Risk & Insurance® magazine recently published a list of 151 of its 2008 “Power BrokersTM,” the country’s top insurance brokerage executives in 28 different industry categories; the editors and writers developed the list with the help of more than 300 risk managers and made their selections based on the brokers’ creativity in solving risk-related problems, industry knowledge and high level of client service. The designations are based on nominations provided by brokers and risk managers as judged by separate panels of risk managers for each industry segment.
Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer, P.A., one of New Jersey’s major law firms, with over 150 attorneys in five locations, has announced that Todd E. Lehder ‘94 has been named counsel.
Lehder, who lives in Fair Haven, N.J., joined the firm in 2000 and concentrates his practice in commercial real estate transactions, real estate finance, construction law and commercial leasing. He is a member of the firm’s commercial real estate team and part of its redevelopment strategic business unit. He is a member of the New Jersey State Bar Association and the Monmouth and Middlesex County Bar Associations. A Dean’s List student, he was a government major and participated in the Vienna program.
