Class Notes and more
Class Notes by graduation year
Elizabeth Chilton ’91MA, ’96PhD | Jason Raffin ’12 | Tom Fitzpatrick ’63PhD | Patricia A. Petow ’68 | Fran Bositis ’71 | Susan Feiner ’81 | Chris Colbourn ’87, Bill Janovitz ’89, and Tom Maginnis ’88 | Vanessa Vélez ’88 | Amy McGovern ’02PhD | Stefanie (Rousselle) DePaul ’07, Jeffrey Lavin ’07, Edward Ledoux ’07 | Nicole Wetherell ’17, Jordan Helzer ’22 | Christina Allingham ’20, ’25PhD | Sean Bannon ’24
Photo: Jeremy Gasowki, University of New Hampshire
UMass Amherst’s own Elizabeth Chilton ’91MA, ’96PhD began her new position as the University of New Hampshire’s 21st president on July 1, 2024.
A public land-grant university like UMass, UNH attracted Chilton with its strong sense of community and commitment to student success, as well as its research portfolio. Her appointment follows a four-year stint at Washington State University, where she most recently served as chancellor of the school’s flagship Pullman campus.
Chilton’s UMass legacy spans more than 20 years; first studying anthropology as a graduate student, she later held several faculty and administrative positions—including anthropology department chair, associate dean for research in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and associate vice chancellor for research—from 2001 to 2017.
“All of those positions gave me skills and experiences that helped strengthen my ability to serve in the various leadership roles I’ve held since then—most importantly as president of UNH,” says Chilton.
Having attended UMass as a first-generation student, Chilton underscores the importance of “demystifying” what it means—after all, she says, many faculty and staff are also first gen. “I did not even hear or comprehend the term ‘first gen’ until I was a department chair,” Chilton says. “If I had thought about that as part of my identity as a freshman, it would have helped me to understand some of my own confusion and insecurities.” She adds, “One of the most important things we can do as academic leaders and teachers is to lower barriers to seeking support.”
Photo: Anthony Martinez
After Jason Raffin ’12 earned his degree in hospitality management from UMass, he built a successful career as a chef and restaurateur in Napa Valley, San Francisco, and, most recently, Maui. But after the 2023 Maui fires that destroyed many homes—including Raffin’s—he found another way to extend hospitality: by feeding displaced fire survivors.
Within days of evacuating on foot with little more than his knives and passport, Raffin began raising money and tapping his network to lend a hand. This wasn’t the first time Raffin showed up for his community. In June 2020, he founded the Chef Collective for Covid, which raised more than $25,000 to create meals for vulnerable community members—supporting local farms and furloughed restaurant workers in the process. So, he already had partners in place to quickly begin serving hundreds of meals each day to fire survivors.
“I feel like food is a sense of security,” he says. And after losing his own home, he benefited from those kinds of efforts himself. “Now I’ve actually felt at the other end of that.”
Recovery from the fires has been slow, but things are looking up for Raffin. “I finally got housed,” he says. Plus, he has a new cookbook out, Keto Like a Chef (Flashpoint, 2024), which contains many recipes he came up with during the COVID lockdowns. Cooking, he says, is “an opportunity to experiment. My conclusion is that there are infinite roads to deliciousness.”
Photo: Courtesy of Chestnut Hill Local
Tom Fitzpatrick ’63PhD celebrated his 100th birthday in September. After distinguished service in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II, Fitzpatrick utilized the GI Bill to earn a bachelor’s in chemistry from Penn State, a master’s in microbiology from the University of Maryland, and his PhD in biochemistry from UMass. Fitzpatrick is the author of 30 published scientific papers, and he contributed to the discoveries of prenatal vitamins and Lactaid®, a supplement for lactose intolerance. A man of many talents, Fitzpatrick is also a passionate equestrian and is known by friends and family as “a walking encyclopedia.”
Retired attorney Patricia A. Petow ’68 recently created a new crossword format, Crossword Nuances, which she describes as “a friendly vocabulary challenge for puzzle solvers and pre-college students.” Many of these puzzles are gathered in her book Crossword Nuances: 40 Puzzles (2024), and she even created this special UMass-themed puzzle for our readers to solve! At UMass, Petow was a student senator as well as a contributor and editorial page editor at the Daily Collegian, and she continues her opinion writing to this day.
Bositis speaks to his players during a 2021 game. Photo: Courtesy of Daily News and Wicked Local/Dan Holmes
Fran Bositis ’71, longtime soccer coach at Franklin High School, has retired after 53 years at the post. Bositis began his career at age 23, fresh out of UMass, as coach of Franklin High’s new boys’ varsity soccer team, despite knowing little about the sport—he played football in high school and lacrosse at UMass. But over the years, he’s shaped the culture of soccer at the school, racked up 532 career wins, and touched countless lives, including around a dozen father and son pairings. “It was never a job to me,” Bositis told The Boston Globe in a recent profile. “It was my hobby because I’m not a golfer and I don’t fish.” Post-retirement, he’s happy to be living in Harwich with his wife, Christine, and their golden retriever, Summer.
Susan Feiner ’81 (far right) with her colleagues at the 2024 conference
Susan Feiner ’81 returned to the UMass campus in September for a conference held by the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA). Feiner reports, “On September 12, 1975, I celebrated my 21st birthday as a grad student at UMass. Partied with my economics colleagues. September 12, 2024—celebrated my 70th birthday at UMass with my economics colleagues!” She praises “the intellectual solidarity and deep friendships that have flourished as a result of UMass’s intellectual bravery in creating a world-unique economics department.” AESA was founded in 1978 by UMass Professors Rick Wolff and Steve Resnick and a group of their graduate students, and it has published the world-famous journal ReThinking Marxism for over 30 years.
Buffalo Tom—the alternative rock band formed in 1986 by UMass students Chris Colbourn ’87, Bill Janovitz ’89, and Tom Maginnis ’88—released their 10th album, Jump Rope, in 2024. They celebrated the release with a performance at The Drake, back in Amherst where it all began. In other recent news, they also wrote and performed the theme song for the NBC comedy Extended Family.
Vanessa Vélez ’88 was sworn in as associate justice of the Boston Municipal Court on May 1, 2024, after being nominated by Governor Maura Healey. Born in Puerto Rico, Judge Vélez moved to the United States at age 18 to further her education at UMass. She began her career as a solo practitioner of civil and criminal law and spent 18 years representing clients as a public defender and as a bar advocate in private practice. She has also served as a faculty member in the Trial Advocacy Workshop of Harvard Law School and as the deputy chief counsel of the Private Counsel Division of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, overseeing the delivery of legal services to 80 percent of indigent clients in Massachusetts through assigned private attorneys.
Amy McGovern ’02PhD, leader of the National Science Foundation AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography at the University of Oklahoma, was interviewed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to discuss how AI is shaping research and forecasting. With AI, scientists can “look at very, very large datasets—collections of all the tornado reports, or simulations of tornadoes at high resolution—and be able to look for patterns that humans can’t see, because humans just can’t deal with that amount of data without being overwhelmed,” McGovern says.
Stefanie (Rousselle) DePaul ’07 reports, “We have some future UMass students playing together!” Pictured from left to right are Anthony Muccio (who attended UMass from 2003 to 2004) with daughter Aida (age 3), Stefanie DePaul and her husband James DePaul with sons Christian (age 2) and David (age 8 months), Jeffrey Lavin ’07 with daughter Camilla (age 4.5 months), and Edward Ledoux ’07 with sons Luke and Bennett (age 2) at the twins’ second birthday party.
Nicole Wetherell ’17 and Jordan Helzer ’22 were married on May 4, 2024, in Hadley, Mass. They crossed paths several times at UMass, met at a contra dance in downtown Amherst in 2018, and continue to live in Amherst.
Christina Allingham ’20, ’25PhD was one of two NIFA Predoctoral Fellowship awardees in New England in 2023 for her research on food safety implementation, educational tool development, and foodborne virus adhesion and inactivation. She has been working to develop a hybrid sanitation certification training program targeted at small food processors. But there’s more to her interest in food than just safety. Her food blog, Bite of New England, has over 25,000 followers across all social media platforms, and she was voted Best Blogger in the Valley Advocate’s 2024 “Best of the Valley.”
Sean Bannon ’24 may have only graduated last year, but he’s wasted no time accomplishing something few others have: a solo swim of the English Channel, which he completed last June. Bannon, who received the 21st Century Leader award at Commencement, says, “I have been training at the UMass pools for two years now and am happy to see it through!”
1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s
The latest book by Larry Ruttman ’52 is Intimate Conversations: Face to Face with Matchless Musicians (2024, Torchflame Books). In these conversations, Ruttman sits down with 21 great musicians of the 21st century in genres from classical to jazz to pop—including acclaimed American composer John Harbison and numerous other composers, conductors, and instrumentalists—to delve into their inspirations and influences.
Donald Robinson ’66, ’84PhD recalls participating in the UMass/General Electric (GE) Apprentice Program that admitted its last class in 1960. “Many of us that graduated from that program, with the first two years of the electrical engineering curriculum completed, matriculated to full-time students to complete our undergraduate engineering degree.” Robinson returned to GE after graduating and later served as UMass director of Environmental Health and Safety from 1975 to 2017. “I imagine that very few are aware that this [apprentice] program existed and provided experiential learning at GE, combined with UMass academics. Most of us on the program were first-generation college students and unable to [otherwise] afford to attend higher education.”
We love showcasing what alumni across the decades have been up to—but we need your help! Have you celebrated a professional or personal milestone, reconnected with old UMass friends, or dug up some memorabilia from your UMass days? Your community wants to hear about it!
Submit notes to magazine@umass.edu—and we’d love to see your pictures, too!
Pieper Toyama ’69 has written a collection of stories, Family Stories from the Plantation and Beyond (2023), about growing up on a sugar plantation in Hawai’i and then attending UMass Amherst, where he met his future wife. He says, “I would love to connect to alumni from the same period (1965–1969) and, as we say in Hawai’i , ‘talk story’ with them.”
Gail Langer Karwoski ’70 has two cozy mysteries for adults to add to her list of 14 published books for kids. A Brush with Murder (Black Rose Writing, 2022) and Skeleton in the Art Closet (Black Rose Writing, 2023) are the first two books in her Watercolor Series about a group of women painters from a small Southern town.
Ned Daly ’73 reports that his seventh short film, The Albacore Club (2024), had its world premiere at the Orlando International Film Festival. Says Daly, “This short narrative was developed from a short story I wrote in 2019 for the A.J. Liebling Invitational Short Fiction Conference and was shot on location in Massachusetts. My sister, Betsy Daly ’72, was in charge of the wardrobe and makeup departments.”
Larry Bohn ’74 was included in The Boston Globe’s 2024 list of Tech Power Players 50, which “highlights leaders who make New England’s technology scene vibrant and vital.” As a managing director at venture capital firm General Catalyst, Bohn has backed HubSpot and other successful companies.
Stan Corkin ’76, a retired professor of film and media studies at the University of Cincinnati, is the author of Boston Mass-Mediated: Urban Space and Culture in the Digital Age (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024). The most recent of Corkin’s numerous books, Boston Mass-Mediated explores how the city of Boston has been examined and defined through mass media, from journalism to sports broadcasting to popular film.
Irma McClaurin ’76MFA, ’89MA, ’93PhD is the editor of the award-winning anthology Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics, which was rereleased in a 25th-anniversary edition in 2024 (Rutgers University Press). McClaurin is also the founder of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive at the UMass Amherst Libraries’ Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center, which was recently honored in a special celebration. Her 2024 publications dive into James Baldwin and Black Grassroots Museums.
Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe ’80, ’85MEd, ’92EdD was chosen as a 2024 Diamond Honoree by the American College Personnel Association (ACPA)—College Student Educators International in recognition of her contributions to higher education and the field of student affairs. Wijeyesinghe is the editor or co-editor of five books addressing race, identity, intersectionality, and social justice, including two co-edited with Bailey W. Jackson III, former dean of the College of Education. Wijeyesinghe’s books are used in higher education programs around the country, and her writing has received awards from the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity (NCORE) and the Multiracial Network of ACPA.
Cynthia Delia Coddington ’81 is the coauthor of the award-winning cookbook Senza Glutine: Timeless Italian Dishes for the Gluten Free Palate (2023), which includes over 100 gluten-free variations on classic Italian recipes. The book has been featured on The Today Show and is available on Amazon.
Lynne F. Riley ’81 was named to Lawdragon’s 2024 “500 Leading Bankruptcy and Restructuring Lawyers” guide, which recognizes top lawyers who help companies, financiers, suppliers, and other affected parties manage bankruptcy. Riley currently works for Casner & Edwards, LLP, and has served on the panel of Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustees for the District of Massachusetts since 1995.
Mark Wagner ’81 is the author of Native Links: The Surprising History of Our First People in Golf (Back Nine Press, 2024). The book was the first runner-up for the 2024 Coyne Prize, which celebrates the best storytelling in golf.
Debra Wallace ’81 is an award-winning feature and celebrity writer who has interviewed a wide variety of public figures, including Reese Witherspoon, Steven Spielberg, Jane Goodall, Temple Grandin, and presidents Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush and their families. A full-time journalist since graduating from UMass, Wallace currently writes for Parade.com and numerous other outlets. She has written more than 30,000 magazine and newspaper stories and has been published in 45 countries in 30 languages.
Ken Freeman ’86 and his wife, Akiko, are the owners of Freeman Vineyard and Winery in Sebastopol, California. The pair founded the winery in 2001, and they specialize in producing organic pinot noir and chardonnay. Last year, the Freemans traveled to Washington, DC, where their wines were served at a U.S. Department of State luncheon hosted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Kamala Harris in honor of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Peter A. Eden ’87 was appointed president of Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire following a unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees. Eden previously served as president of Landmark College.
John Petrocelli ’88 reports that he has had an interesting career in live streaming and live experiences, having worked with Prince and been involved in the streaming experience of Coachella, the Grammy Awards, the Masters Tournament, the Oscars, and the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine. In 2012, he founded live-stream studio Bulldog Digital Media, which serves clients including Spotify, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and numerous others. “My UMass experience has certainly helped me persevere and navigate a constantly changing tech and media landscape,” Petrocelli says.
Lawrence “Lonnie” Murray ’89 joined Boston law firm Parker Scheer LLP as a partner. Murray has over 30 years of experience in all aspects of employment law and business litigation and has successfully tried cases at every level of the state and federal courts in Massachusetts.
Raechelle Joyner-Jones ’99 was a recipient of the Children’s League of Massachusetts 2024 Program Leader Award. Joyner-Jones serves as assistant vice president of behavioral health and outpatient services at The Home for Little Wanderers. The award honors outstanding and dedicated members of the children’s service workforce for their exceptional contributions and talents in serving families throughout Massachusetts.
Cator Shachoy ’90 recently released The TMJ Handbook: A Therapeutic Guide to Relieving Jaw Tension and Pain (Shambhala, 2024). She is also the owner of Subtle Body Healing with Cator Shachoy, a holistic health practice for the whole family in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Mike Mayer ’94, ’99MS works as a senior professional associate for an engineering and environmental services consulting company, and is the current president of the National Association of Environmental Professionals. He recently released his debut novel (as M. Stone Mayer), Ashes to Ashes (HenschelHAUS, 2024), an environmental thriller about an ex-Army ranger who wakes with no memory in the Oregon wilderness and must evade his pursuers.
Michael Carrer ’97 has joined the Houston office of law firm Phelps Dunbar LLP as counsel. Carrer specializes in complex coverage analysis and serves as defense counsel for insured parties.
Jeremy Hurewitz ’97 is the author of Sell Like a Spy (Diversion Books, 2024), which draws from his extensive network of former CIA, FBI, and special forces operatives to explore the secret world of spycraft and uncover strategies that have real-world applications in business and everyday personal interactions.
Tim Shary ’98PhD, a professor at Eastern Florida State College, has published a number of books about film. He is the author of Teen Movies: A Century of American Youth (Columbia University Press, 2023), the editor of Cinemas of Boyhood: Masculinity, Sexuality, Nationality (Berghahn Books, 2021), and the co-editor of Refocus: The Films of John Hughes (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), among others.
Angela Arsenault ’99 is a current member of the Vermont House of Representatives. Carl Demrow ’87 and Julia Andrews ’93 also served in the 2023–2024 term.
Josh Moughan ’99 and Liz Moughan ’99 are the founders of Dirty Hands Project, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about mental health, which they started after losing their son, Ty, to suicide. Last May, for Mental Health Awareness Month, Josh hiked 200 miles along the Bay Circuit Trail to raise funds and awareness through the organization’s inaugural “Hike for a Change” event.
Nicole M. Ledoux ’01 is the cofounder of 88 Acres, a Boston-based healthy snacks company specializing in allergy-friendly protein bars and butters. The company received funding last year from Maroon Venture Partners, a venture capital fund that invests in early-stage companies linked to UMass Amherst.
Kevin Banks ’06STK, ’08 manages Vineyard Golf Club, the world’s first organic golf club, in Edgartown, Massachusetts. Banks reports, “We are global leaders in sustainability. We do not rely on pesticides, and [we] even do other things throughout the property to promote our sustainable efforts, like using recycled water and promoting wildflowers for pollination. We also do our own in-house turfgrass research.”
Sam Brewer ’08 was promoted to general manager of GBH Music, Boston public media producer GBH’s award-winning classical music and jazz enterprise. Brewer joined GBH in 2018 as the assistant director of media relations, later serving as associate director, and became deputy general manager of GBH Music in 2023.
Michael Y. Bennett ’09PhD, an associate professor of English and affiliated faculty in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has recently published several new books. He is the author of Between the Lines: A Philosophy of Theatre (Oxford University Press, 2024) and the editor of both The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature (Routledge, 2024) and Philosophy, Analytic Aesthetics, and Theater (Routledge, 2025).
Samantha Page ’14PhD joined Stites & Harbison, PLLC, as a senior patent agent. Page earned her doctorate in polymer science and engineering, and her expertise includes the fields of polymers and materials science, specifically on matters related to polymer chemistry, polymer composites, nanotechnology, and chemical engineering.
Lynn Brennan ’15MS has found a rewarding career as a high school math teacher at The Putney School in Vermont. Last summer, she traveled to the Juneau Icefield in Alaska to participate in a monthlong geophysics/glaciology research trip through the PolarSTEAM program. Brennan reports, “I lived at Camp 10, accessible only by helicopter or multiday glacier traverse […] and participated in data collection for various research projects.” Brennan credits her interest in cryosphere research to her time at UMass and adds, “UMass professors have been an amazing resource for me and my students.”
Davis Clarke ’19 has gone viral for the business-related, motivational reels he posts on Instagram. His posts revolve around his day-to-day life working in finance in Boston, and he aims to promote positivity to his over 725,000 followers. “I am thankful for how Isenberg and UMass made it possible!” he said in a recent interview. “My only goal is to help people, and I am happy to give back however possible.”
Emilie Menzel ’19MFA won the 2023 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize for her book, The Girl Who Became a Rabbit (Hub City Press, 2024). Named a Debutiful Best Poetry Book of 2024, the book-length lyric pushes the limits of the prose-poetic form to explore how the body shapes grief and what it means to tell a story.
Nicholas Hietpas ’21 has joined Aurelian Law PLLC, an independent law firm focused on crisis response, government investigations, and high-stakes litigation. While in law school, Hietpas served as an intern with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was a member of Cornell Law School’s Securities Law Clinic, where he provided pro bono legal services to community investor clients.
Jodie Childers ’22PhD is one of the directors of Down by the Riverside, a feature documentary about folk singer Pete Seeger’s environmental legacy. The film had its world premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival and its Massachusetts premiere at the 2024 Berkshire International Film Festival.
Brandi Perri ’22PhD received the prestigious 2024 Constance Coiner Award from the Working-Class Studies Association. Perri, an assistant professor of sociology at MassBay Community College, was recognized for her dissertation, “The Unseen Worker? Rethinking Who and What is Invisible in the Blue-Collar Workplace.”
We love showcasing what alumni across the decades have been up to—but we need your help! Have you celebrated a professional or personal milestone, reconnected with old UMass friends, or dug up some memorabilia from your UMass days? Your community wants to hear about it!
Submit notes to magazine@umass.edu—and we’d love to see your pictures, too!
Share your most intriguing nooks, niches, coordinates, or curiosities on campus or anywhere in the region. Email magazine@umass.edu and we’ll investigate!