April 24, 2025
Class Notes
Find out what your Beloit friends have been doing.
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1940-1949
- Katherine (Kay) Huffer Hotchkiss ’46 turned 100 last April. She is the daughter of Professor Emeritus Ralph Huffer, who taught mathematics and astronomy at Beloit College from 1923 to 1961. Her stepdaughter, Betsy Tolstedt ’75, is the daughter of Ardis Candy Tolstedt ’46, and granddaughter of Bertha Johnson Candy (1916) and Walter Candy (1916). Virginia Skinner ’49 established a scholarship in Professor Huffer’s name to support a student or students enrolled at Beloit College, with preference given to mathematics majors.
1950-1959
- Dr. Fred Gobel ’56 stopped by campus last September on his drive home to Naples, Florida, to personally deliver a gift to the college in honor of his late wife, Suzanne Carpenter Gobel ’56. Fred and Suzanne, who met in English class at Beloit College, were married for 66 years.
1960-1969
- A group of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) brothers and their wives, including Gordon Dirksen ’65, Marcia Flynn-Dirksen, George Olson ’65, Dave DeCock ’67, Jane Trowbridge DeCock ’67, Janet Abelt Olson ’67, Bob Doud ’69, and Mary Allen Doud ’69, continued their annual “ringing in the New Year” celebration this year in rural Woodstock, Illinois. They met near the home of the late Charlie Kane ’66 and Andrea Alt Kane ’66, who for over 18 years hosted the New Year’s Eve event.
1970-1979
- Ellen Schneerer Mann ’71, retired accountant and administrator with her husband’s Reno, Nevada CPA firm, recently retired as operations director and finance manager for the Adams County Historical Society in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where she helped design and build a $12M archives and education center, and the award-winning Gettysburg Beyond the Battle Museum. Voted Best New Museum of 2023 by the readers of USA Today, the museum has been praised by notable supporters of history preservation, including filmmaker Ken Burns, Susan Eisenhower, author Jeff Shaara, and many actors, including Martin Sheen, Sam Waterston, and Stephen Lang. She reports that her Beloit degree in English Literature ended up being a huge asset in all of her careers.
- Beloit College activism is still alive. Dr. Dominick Maino ’73 and five other plaintiffs sued their Chicago alderman alleging that he violated their First Amendment rights by blocking or deleting their comments from his official Facebook page. In a settlement, the alderman agreed to pay $157,500 which is considered one of the highest awards ever in such a case. Dominick was also recently asked to be a peer reviewer for PLOS One, a highly regarded, peer-reviewed open access journal and is active in his community as an emeritus board member of the Filament Theatre and a member of Chicago’s 30th Ward Zoning Committee.
- Michael Newman ’74 was reappointed by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker to the Department of Labor Advisory Board. Newman has over 40 years of experience in labor relations and workers’ rights. He currently serves as an international vice president of AFSCME International Union, vice president of the Illinois AFL-CIO, and deputy director of AFSCME Council 31. Since joining Council 31 in 1982 as legislative director, he has played a pivotal role in securing collective bargaining rights for public employees and administering key labor agreements.
- Catherine Reid Day ’75 first discovered poets and writing as a student at Beloit. She recently returned to poetry, and has now been published in Crowstep Journal Collection 7. She lives in St. Paul, and is one of the founders of the Chroma Zone Mural Festival, which has installed over 60 large-scale murals in her neighborhood.
- Sela Barker ’76 and Christine Ye ’80 met in 2016 on a ski vacation organized by a mutual friend in Methow, Washington. They discovered that they both graduated from Beloit, and they have been skiing together there every year since.
- In November, Judith Warner ’76 and Shirl Ahrens, retired Beloit College physical education professor, visited the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, one of the seven modern wonders of the world.
- After over 40 years in investment management, mostly focused on managing endowments, pensions, and other institutional investments, David Eisenberg ’77 retired at the end of 2024. It was a great career that he always found interesting, engaging, and purposeful. He remains actively involved in the community, as co-chair of the Israel Ride, a board member of Jewish National Fund of New England, and an annual participant in the Pan-Mass Challenge, among other things. He’s looking forward to spending more time with his grandchildren, children, family, and friends.
- Adam Koons ’77 is still working for FEMA, and for the past five years has been managing the national team of Disability Advisors sent to every disaster response. 2024 was a year of Beloit connections for him. Last March, he participated in a Student Excellence and Leadership (SEL) visit to Washington, D.C., where he presented to students, met Lirio Hittle ’86, and reconnected with classmate Jon Devore ’76. In July, he stopped by Beloit with his wife, Yukari Horiba, to show her the campus that means so much to him, especially the Logan Museum, where his lifelong career as a practitioner anthropologist began. The stop was part of a three-week, 6,000-mile motorcycle trip to visit six national parks and four national monuments in the Midwest and West. In September, he joined old friend and adventure partner Monty Moree ’74 for a one-week canoe expedition in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness along the Minnesota-Canada border. In October, he reconnected with Emily Johnson ’13 to discuss FEMA employment (they first met years earlier working together at an international NGO). And in November, he rode with Phillip Rogers ’85 in a charity bicycle event in the Washington, D.C. and Maryland area.
- Hilary Landy Krivchenia ’77 has retired from full-time parish ministry and is now doing pulpit supply and finishing a certification in spiritual direction. She is proud of her kids. Lea works for the Norwegian Refugee Society; James is a musician, music engineer, and member of the band Big Thief; Chava is a museum curator at the Kohler Art Center and Art Preserve in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, curating the work of independent, visionary, and non-conforming artists; Mark is an ecological restorationist who works in woodlands and on islands from their home in Southeast Ohio.
- While most of his Beloit friends have retired, Hank Seifert ’77 is still a professor of microbiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine with no immediate plans to retire. His laboratory group studies the genomics, genetics, physiology, and pathogenicity of Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the primary causative agent of gonorrhea. He enjoys live music, plays, and travels with his wife, Vicki Carlee. He is still connected with many Beloit alumni through an online chat started during COVID. He recently spent time with Jim Simon ’77 and Peter Ory ’77 in Seattle this fall when they and their families went to the Northwestern vs University of Washington football game.
- Amy Kanarek Parker ’78 and Professor Emeritus Phil Straffin reunited on a Colorado Club hike to Seven Utes Mountain in Colorado.
- Rodney Chonka ’79 of Philadelphia retired in 2022 after over thirty years at Clarivate (formerly ISI/Thomson Scientific), where for most of those years he curated the selection of physical, chemical, earth sciences, and mathematics journals for the Web of Science database. As an editor for the world’s preeminent science database, he had the opportunity to make presentations to and engage with scientific journal editors and publishers in countries around the world, including China, Egypt, and Algeria, as well as in the U.S. Since retiring, he has been teaching Italian part-time at a local private school (where Ann Perrone ’74 taught for many years) and at an adult community education center, where he has been leading wine tasting classes for over twelve years, supplemented with an ongoing wine blog.
1980-1989
- The third book of Kevin Fenton ’81, Cyan Magenta Yellow Black, will be published in late September with Black Lawrence Press. The novel follows an advertising art director as he rebuilds his life in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, circa 1993.
- Claudia Horsman Hampsher ’82 was selected as a Thomasville Cabinetry Top Designer for 2024, one of 36 designers so designated throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. She completed her National Kitchen and Bath Association certification in 2014.
- Kate Judge ’84 retired last summer from leading the American Nurses Foundation in Washington, D.C. She spent late summer and early fall in Maine, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. She’s looking forward to figuring out what is next.
- Beloit College men’s basketball alums Brain Morello ’85, Evans Papanikolaou ’86, and Bill Fitzgerald ’86 cheered on the Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team and their Assistant Coach Lance Randall ’94 as they defeated the Northwestern Wildcats on Feb. 1 in Evanston, Illinois.
- John Mingus ’89 received a Community Service Award from his employer, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, for “selfless commitment, service, and dedication to the Arlington County Soccer Community.”
- Deborah Potee ’89, a high school social worker at Greenfield High School (Massachusetts), is still dancing — shout out to Chelonia! She dances annually in Act I of The Nutcracker. She also supports high school students with mental health issues and restorative justice, and she advises the quiz bowl team, the drama club, and the students of color group. She finds spending time with teens inspiring and exciting, thanks to the ever-evolving nature of adolescence.
1990-1999
- Mishie Kaput Benedicta ’90 accepted the position last year of archives associate with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, working with a collection of more than 14 million digital items, from photos to audio to videos. Two months after she began, they had a fire. No one was hurt, but the physical archives were affected and she was involved in managing the impact to the collection. In her job interview, she talked about her work with the archives in the Logan Museum and investigating the Rust Collection. She spends a lot of time dealing with intellectual property rights, copyright, and licensing, which means she gets to use her MLIS and Ph.D. at work. She enjoys the work, and the view from her office of Lake Michigan and the Chicago River is amazing.
- While working on an archaeological survey project at Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (a National Park Service (NPS) unit in Rhode Island), Margo Muhl Brooks ’91, an NPS resource planning specialist, Matthew Flynn ’06, an NPS regional archaeologist, and Alexandra Flores ’18, a geophysical survey specialist for Ohio Valley Archaeology Inc., discovered that they are all Beloit alums from different eras!
- Sarah Diehn Manley ’96 recently joined Wells Fargo as vice president-recruitment media for global talent attraction and engagement. As former president of the international nonprofit Laura Ingalls Wilder Legacy and Research Association, she was interviewed for two documentaries last summer on the impact of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s works on culture, television, literature, and history. She is planning an academic conference called LauraPalooza, July 9-11, 2025 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
- Rob Lloyd ’98, chief technology officer for the City of Seattle, was named in November as one of Governing Magazine’s Public Officials of the Year for 2024. His decades of leadership in technology, equity, data science, AI, and cybersecurity earned him recognition as a leader in government who sees ahead and capably readies communities for what’s coming. He helped lead Seattle to #3 in the 2024 Center for Digital Government Digital Cities Awards for government excellence in the use of technology for operations, engagement, and innovation.
2000-2009
- Erin Lane ’00 was awarded the 2024 School Counselor Advocate of the Year Award from the Iowa School Counselor Association. The award recognizes an individual or group whose advocacy of school counseling services has had a positive effect on school counseling on a local, state, or national level. She joined the University of Iowa College of Education faculty in 2022 as a clinical assistant professor of school counseling after working in K-12 and higher education for over two decades as a teacher, administrator, school counselor, and licensed mental health counselor.
- Kristina Trinity (Chris) Hartley ’02 has transitioned to live as the woman she has always been. She and her wife, Annie Hostetter ’05, live in Indianapolis with their two children. Trinity is working with Earth Charter Indiana, an environmental nonprofit. Annie, a facilitator for Interrupting Racism for Children, is pursuing a master’s degree in mental health counseling at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis.
- Alumni from the classes of 2001 and 2002 gathered last September in Austin, Texas, for a weekend reunion to celebrate the birthday of Nery Morales ’02 birthday and over 20 years of friendship. Erin Brown ’01, Allison Koos Fox ’01, Molly Rose Elkins-Ryan ’01, Mary Murphy ’01, Megan Culton ’02, Christina Gorczinski ’02, Sara Shirrell Howard ’02, Kristin Idzikowski ’02, Kate Martin ’02, Elizabeth Milner ’02, Veronica Pedraza ’02, and Allison Rickard ’02 came together from 11 different states.
- Whitney Dirks ’05 recently published her first book, Monstrosity, Bodies, and Knowledge in Early Modern England: Curiosity to See and Behold (Amsterdam University Press, 2024), about a pair of conjoined twins born in 1680, and their social, religious, and cultural context.
- Sonja Whipp ’05 recently earned her MFA in creative writing (fiction) from The City College of New York, where she teaches Freshman Composition as an adjunct instructor. She is also in her thirteenth year of teaching secondary English in New York City.
- Sarah Stephenson Norman ’07 was recently promoted to clinical research operations supervisor at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul, Minnesota. She oversees the orthopedic, spine, and health services research teams at Gillette, a specialty children’s hospital focused on brain, bone, and movement conditions.
- Michael Hartley ’08 has been hired as the farm manager at Serenbe Farms, a certified organic farm in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia.
- After over a decade at the Morgridge Institute for Research, Dan Murphy ’08 is attending graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in biotechnology.
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Patrick Sjoberg ’08 began a new position in January as bilingual coaching and player education specialist with the Miami Marlins Major League Baseball franchise, joining Nick Weisheipl ’02, who was promoted in February to manager of the Marlins single-A affiliate Jupiter Hammerheads after serving last year as a player development coach with the Dominican Summer League Marlins in the Dominican Republic.
09 - Veronica Bowers Hartley ’09 recently completed a master’s degree in library and information science at the University of Denver.
2010-2019
Credit: brockit inc.
- Sherrick O’Quinn ’10 booked a role in the new play “Listing” in Los Angeles, directed by Tom Lazarus, writer of the feature film “Stigmata.” Sherrick also booked the title role in the award-winning animated short film “Iffy,” which has been nominated for a 2025 NAACP IMAGE Award for Outstanding Short Form (Animated).
- Beloiters who gathered at the August 2024 wedding of Kate Flynn ’11 and Jay Nemeyer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula included Sarah Coogan ’11, Mary Keister ’11, Greta Mann ’11, Peter Nencka ’11, Amelia Buzzell ’10, Mark Coogan ’12, and Ian Hedges ’12, the officiant.
- Sofia Hernandez Crade ’13 completed another colossal puppet project for the annual Manitou Springs (Colorado) Mardi Gras Parade in March. Last year she created a 24-foot tall puppet in the likeness of late artist Charles Rockey for the parade. This year, she increased the spectacle by creating a nearly 40-foot long Alebrije puppet that joined her Charles Rockey puppet in the parade. The Alebrije puppet is a dream-like amalgamation of species native to Colorado, paying homage to Sofia’s identity as a bi-racial Mexican-Jewish woman and a Colorado native. The massive puppet was escorted by a procession of local musicians, mariachi, traditional Mexican folk dancers, and costumed community members, bringing a taste of the vibrant, often surreal atmosphere of Mexican markets from Sofia’s childhood.
- Kyle Bohrer ’14 and Kristy McClammer Bohrer ’16 married on Sept. 20, 2024, in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. They had a wonderful time with friends and family, among whom were included a number of other Beloit alumni.
- Willow Wallis ’18 recently started a new job as a program and policy analyst assigned to case management for Children with Medical Complexity (CMC) with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. The job is contracted through Spherion, and after working for five years in the private third-party administrator industry, Willow hopes to get hired on by the state next year. The new position is remote, but she sometimes gets to pop up to Madison to work in an office near the State Capitol.
2020-2029
- Aminah Crawford ’21 published an article in the Journal of First-generation Student Success. Drawing from her background as a TRIO alumna, this study employed a geospatial analysis method to assess the accessibility of TRIO SSS programs throughout Texas. The study represents a facet of her research that examines the educational pathways of Black first-generation college students through the lens of educational equity programs. Her research focuses on teacher preparation and development aimed at fostering culturally affirming educator-scholars. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction at Texas A&M University. “Go, Aggies,” she says, “but the cheesehead within me will always endure!”
- Aryssa Harris ’21 was recently selected as the incoming editor-in-chief of the Boston University Law Review, which publishes law professor and practicing attorney articles seven times a year. She is the second Black woman to hold the position. Aryssa is a dual J.D. and Ph.D. (political science) candidate at Boston University and is co-president of the Black Law Students Association.
- After continuing on at Beloit College as a writer and editor in the Communications & Marketing office for over three and a half years post-graduation, Meg Kulikowski ’21 is starting a remote marketing writer position at Fehr Graham, a civil and environmental engineering firm. She’s grateful for all the amazing people she’s kept in touch with and learned from at Beloit and is excited to start this new chapter.
- Autumn Green ’24 played the role of Dr. Larabee in a production of “Akeelah and the Bee” at the Waukesha Civic Theatre in February. She was proud to bring this tale of Black joy and intellect to the WCT stage. She made her professional debut in The Constructivists’ production of “In the Canyon” last August in Milwaukee.
Losses
Recognizing members of the Beloit College community we have lost.
