Alumni News

This Fall 2006, the program held two excellent alumni events:

1. At the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in Boston this November, the SPHHS reception on Monday evening was crowded with alumni chatting with current students and faculty.  Among the grads attending the reception were:

Fern Goodhart MS 1979
Heidi Klein  MS 1990
Leland Ackerson  MPH 2000
Elizabeth Rudenberg  MS 1983
Meenakshi Verma  MPH 2002
Shelly Yarnie  MPH 2000
Jo-Ann Kwass  MS 1984
Jose Corporan  MPH 1998
Kathleen O’Rourke  MPH 1991, PhD 1994
Sarah Kemble  MPH
Jenny Yi  PhD 1992

It was also especially nice to see our retired faculty Dr. George Cernada and Dr. Al Winder there.

1. On November 14, the SPHHS student organization held its first “Life After MPH” evening talk with three of our alumni: Epi Bodhi, Kate Kelly and Jeff Harness.  At this meeting we asked our alumni to talk about their professional life after obtaining their graduate degree, the organizations they work for, how they found public health positions after their graduate program, and their potential willingness to be mentors to current students.  The current positions of these three esteemed alumni are:

Epi Bodhi, MPH in CHE in 1982
Current Position: Director of Public Health, Town of Amherst, MA
Description of Work: Local PH Director

Jeff Harness, MPH in HPM, 1991
Current Position:  Director of the Western Massachusetts Center for Healthy Communities; a program of Cooley Dickinson Hospital funded primarily by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health

Kate Kelly, MPH in HPM in 2003
Current Position:  Assistant Statewide Coordinator of the Strategic National Stockpile Program at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health

If any alumni would like to volunteer to be part of our next “Life After MPH” evening, please email Dan Gerber (gerber@schoolph.umass.edu), the student organization advisor.

Finally, a database with all alumni who are willing to mentor current graduate students (M.P.H, M.S., & P.H.D) is being created.  If you are want to be a mentor by offering advice and/or possible internships, please contact Dan Gerber (gerber@schoolph.umass.edu).