John F. Chaney, AM ’47, has recently retired after a career of teaching English and speech in the local high school and junior college in Auburn, CA. He not only retired from a 33-year teaching career but also from a 37-year service in the United States Army Reserve.

In his 56-year-long career in education, Dr. Forest Fouts, AM ’50, has not only served as District Superintendent in the South Pasadena Unified and Escondido Union High School Districts for 20 years but has also been Education Supervisor for 16 years at the National University in San Diego, CA.

Marilyn Tower Oliver, AM ’58, has authored four books for young adults, including most recently, The Importance of Muhammad, a biography of the prophet and founder of Islam. She also produces a cable TV talk show,“Opera! Opera! Opera!”

Arizona State University honored Susie Barker Lavenson, AM ’59, by asking her to serve as the inaugural Chair of the Advisory Council for the newly founded Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.

Carole Carion, AM ’62, has published her sixth poetry book entitled Emotional Poison.

Adele K. Miller, AM ’65, did volunteer teaching in Tanzania, as well as Eastern and Southern Africa in 2001. She has also tutored in special education at the Brunswick School System in Brunswick, ME and now lives in Grand Junction, CO.

On July 12, 2004, Michael John Sesich, AM ’68, was named Teacher of the Week by the San Jose Mercury News. He teaches history at Mountain View High School and has taught for the past 36 years.

Don Sharpes, AM ’68, Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University, serves as Co-Director of a National Endowment of Humanities grant, assisting teachers on an archeological dig in Jordan this past summer.

After graduating from Stanford, Carole Sherman, AM ’68, remained in the education field for six years: four years at the U.S. Office of Education and two with the University of Hawaii’s Graduate Division. From 1974 to 1980, she lived in Corfu, Greece; owned and ran a boutique in Negril, Jamaica; and designed her own line of clothing in Bali, Indonesia. In 1990, she became the Director of Meetings and Conferences for a biomedical government contracting company. In 1998, she established her own building company, Bethesda Too, LLE in Bethesda,MD.

Don Edgar, PhD ’68, has authored 15 published books.Two of his most recent books are The Patchwork Nation: Rethinking government, Rebuilding community (Harper Collins, 2001) and The War Over Work (MUP, 2003). He is currently a member of the Victorian Premier’s Children’s Advisory Committee in Eaglemont, Victoria in Australia.

As K-1 teacher and art mentor at the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District in California, Jan Switick, AM ’70, is part of the district’s arts committee, which is working on the third year of a $75,000 grant to train elementary school teachers on teaching the visual and performing arts in their classrooms.

M. Georgeann Freeman Hendrick, AM ’71, is the Dean of Studies for a start-up high school in Teaneck, NJ. The school is supportive of the Jewish community.

Kaye Storm, AM ’71, is founding Executive Director of Industry Initiatives for Science & Math Education (IISME), celebrating its twentieth year of offering paid summer fellowships for San Francisco Bay Area science, math, and technology teachers.

Stephen Mark Dobbs, PhD ’72, is Executive Vice President of the Bernard Osher Foundation, which gave SUSE a $1 million endowment for the Osher Scholars program. He also serves as Executive Director of the Taube Foundation, another Stanford benefactor. Dobbs recently completed a history of the Koret Foundation of San Francisco (a third Stanford supporter), which he headed as CEO after stints at the Getty Trust as Senior Program Officer in the 1980s and the Marin Community Foundation (Buck Trust) as a CEO in the 1990s. He is currently writing a biography of SUSE’s Professor Elliot Eisner.

For the past three years, Marlaine E. Lockheed, PhD ’72, has directed the World Bank Institute Evaluation Group (IEG), which has been responsible for evaluating the learning and capacity enhancement efforts of both the World Bank Institute and of the internal training activities for Bank staff.

Gary Garfield, PhD/ABD ’77, has retired from teaching English at Flintridge Preparatory School and lives in West Hills, CA. He and his wife, Elaine, reflect on their years at Stanford as the most exciting of their lives and would be thrilled to hear from other alumni and faculty.

Douglas G. Danforth, PhD ’78, has not worked in the field of education but rather has focused his career on computer software programming. He has met six Nobel Prize winners due to his background in physics. He is currently caring for his 90 year-old mother in Richmond Heights, OH.

Betty J. Sternberg, PhD ’78, was appointed Commissioner of Education for the State of Connecticut last November. She has been a driving force at the Connecticut State Department of Education for more than 23 years, developing and implementing programs to attract and retain high-quality teachers to the profession, raise expectations for all students, and foster the use of research-based findings to ensure that the most promising practices are being implemented in Connecticut’s classrooms. She served as Associate Commissioner of the Division of Teaching and Learning for 11 years prior to her appointment as Commissioner.

In August 2003, Katherine R. Jones, PhD ’83, joined the faculty at the Yale School of Nursing, where she is currently directing research projects on wound care and nursing home pain management.

Ephraim Kofi Mensah, AM ’84, has been pastor of the St. Joseph’s Parish in Prince Albert, Canada for over three years. He is also an interdisciplinary PhD student at the Graduate School of the University of Saskatchewan, where he is studying the impact of colonial missionary education on contemporary Ghana in West Africa.

As a history professor at Clarion University in Pennsylvania, Bob Frakes, AM ’85, has recently published his third book entitled Writing for College History (Zephyr Press, 2004), a textbook for college students.

Lyn Fairchild, AM ’91, has coauthored a book of curriculum entitled The Compassionate Classroom: Lessons that Nurture Wisdom and Empathy (IPG: Chicago Review Press 2004).

After serving as Director of Recruitment and Evaluation for nine years at the USC School of Dentistry, Mark D. Mitchell, AM ’94, accepted a position as the Associate Dean of Admissions and Student Affairs at the Oregon Health and Science University School of Dentistry.

Jack F. Shepherd Jr., AM ’94, was appointed Director of the Casablanca American School in Casablanca, Morocco last September.

Pia Wong, PhD ’94, is an Associate Professor in the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department at California State University, Sacramento; she teaches courses on multicultural education, critical pedagogy and education research. She is also the Director of the Equity Network, a partnership of 12 professional development schools in the Sacramento region. She has two children, Riley, 7, and Emily, 5.

Silvy Nordquist Brookby, AM ’96, completed her PhD in mathematics education at the University of Missouri at Kansas City in May. Her dissertation investigated the effects of a summer mathematics program on the academic self-efficacy and social self-concept of mathematically gifted youth. She will be returning to The Pembroke Hill School in Kansas City to teach algebra. She is also the proud mother of Charles and Walter, two years-old and six months-old respectively.

After working as a budget analyst for the Washington State House of Representatives Transportation Committee for three years, Melissa Beard, AM ’97, accepted a research analyst job with the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. Her new job allows her more time with her daughter Kainoa Elizabeth, born last October.

After taking maternity leave, Daniella Duran, AM ’97, taught algebra and geometry at Royal High School in Simi Valley, CA last year. She is expecting to switch back to science teaching this fall.

Maisha Tulivu Fisher, AM ’98, recently finished her PhD in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley in the Language, Literacy, and Culture Division. Currently, she is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies Department at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Chelsea Eng, AM ’99, creator and director of the Argentine Tango Program at City College of San Francisco, was among eight American instructors invited to teach and perform alongside 14 Argentine instructors for Las Vegas Tango 2003. She is also a featured dancer with the touring company MonTango.

Nicole Cheslock, AM ’01, recently co-authored Measuring Results (2003).While she continues to consult for Bay Area environmental education organizations, Nicole has recently joined Rockman et al. as a part-time researcher.

Alissa McLean, AM ’01, is now both the mother of a one year-old boy and a Research Associate at LeapFrog SchoolHouse, the school-related division of the educational toy company, LeapFrog. In her spare time, she is on the design team and board of directors of an Oakland, CA charter school that opened this fall.

Over the past five years, Christian Rohrer, PhD ’01, has been working to formally introduce user experience research and usability methods into the product development process at Yahoo! He lives in Pacific Grove with his wife, Lisa, and daughters Isabella and Alexandra.

Catherine Nettune, AM ’03, has returned to the Dallas Museum of Art where she is working with students through the museum’s Teaching Programs Department.

Ruhi Vasanwala-Khan, AM ’03, is a Project Manager for Teachscape.

Megan Zander, AM ’03, is working on education and health program evaluations with a variety of organizations, including Los Angeles Unified School District, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the California State Department of Education.

Gayle Christensen, PhD ’04, was awarded an Alexander von Humbolt fellowship to research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. She will research immigrant student achievement in Germany, conducting interviews with teachers about their training, perspectives and expectations for immigrant students.