Class of 1997

Class Secretary: Sharleen Joy Davis, 354 Weirs Blvd., Laconia, NH 03246-1613

Class President: Lawrence L. Ackerman, 378 Baldwin Ave S., Apt. 2, Jersey City, NJ 07306, larryack@hotmail.com

Next Reunion in 2002. Got news? Tap out a note to magazine@bates.edu!  For the past four years Ilse Abusamra has been working at Vassar. She was sad to leave, but is excited to start graduate school for a degree in higher education admistration at Michigan. She also was training for another marathon last fall…. Larry Ackerman completed his M.B.A. at Rutgers/Newark. Otherwise he continues to work at Notara, an Internet software company in New York City and is gearing up for Reunion…. After completing a master’s in English from Stanford, Heather Alcock began work as curriculum content manager for Achieva, an online education company. She continues to run marathons and explore the San Francisco area…. Christy Ballantyne completed her master’s in education and teaches grades K-2 at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Mass., where she lives…. Leslie Billingham has been a school psychologist in the Bridgewater-Raynham (Mass.) public schools. She graduated from UMass.-Boston with an M.Ed. and CAGS in school psychology…. Working for a master’s in marine science through UC-Santa Cruz, Kara Buckstaff conducts her fieldwork on wild bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota, Fla…. A research assistant at Palo Alto (Calif.) Community College, Beatrice Canales is “having a blast.” She helps locate sources of federal or state funding for the college. On weekends she treasures the moments as a volunteer at a deaf community center to practice her sign…. Adam Chadbourne is in his third year with the U.S. Ski Team and has taken over their national development projects for athletes 15 and younger, a job that entails constant travel. Last spring he took a group of 25 athletes and six coaches to Norway for three weeks of glacier training. He and Alison Megroz ’00 live in Woodstock with retriever Midas, enjoying all that Vermont has to offer…. For the past year Kerry Coffin McQuaid has been a programmer for Allenbrook, an insurance software company…. Living in Chicago, Pat Cosquer works with Varsity Gold, Inc., doing fundraising for high school athletic programs throughout Illinois. Pat and Sarah Mulcahy ’98 have been roommates for two years and spend a lot of time with Phil Sheridan ’00Heather Davies lives in Austin, Texas…. Having finished her two-year Peace Corps stint, Sharleen Davis hightailed it home where she has enjoyed a few months of freedom before beginning at Georgetown Law School. She found the Peace Corps to be “very disappointing” but it was “valuable nonetheless.”… Still in Tokyo, Kinmochi Eguchi says the biggest event of 2001 was the Bates Tokyo reception that he organized with about 60 people at a historical place where the Emperor Meiji took his office a little over a century ago…. Jennifer Felton completed her M.S. in secondary education at Pennsylvania and is finishing a master’s in English while teaching high school English in Cherry Hill, N.J. Both years she was a graduate associate in one of Penn’s undergrad dorms…. Since she graduated from Yale Law School last May, Lucy Fowler has been clerking in Portland for Judge Kermit Lipez on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In October she began working at Foley Hoag in Boston…. Chris and Leah Wiedmann Gailey bought a house in Falmouth last winter. They love living in Maine and go sea kayaking in spare time. Chris is a marketing analyst in men’s sportswear at L.L. Bean, and Leah began her new position as assistant director of alumni relations at Bates in October…. Working at Morgan Stanley in Washington, D.C., William Garnett is involved in the company’s Internet brokerage services and various other special projects. He and Katie (McQuilkin) see other Batesies in the area…. Jill Glazewski is living in Australia…. Aaron Hewitt returned to the U.S. from a summer studying and working on international trade and human rights law in Hong Kong and mainland China. “The experience was amazing, allowing time to travel to Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok, Bali, Tokyo, and Kyoto.” Aaron is in his second year at American Univ. Law School in D.C…. Nikola Hoenisch Harnisch moved from Berlin, Germany, to Massachusetts. She and her husband bought a house in Groton and live there with daughter Sunniva. Nikola does a little translation “here and there.”… In May 2001, Richard Holley III received a Jus.D. with honors from UNC-Chapel Hill…. With his M.D. from Vermont, Brad Huot has an internship in internal medicine at Virginia-Charlottesville. Before graduating, Brad spent three months in Australia and New Zealand working in local clinics with Aboriginal Australians. He also spent six weeks in Nome, Alaska, in a clinic there and got to see the end of the Iditarod sled dog race, was in a golf tournament on the ice of the Bering Sea, and saw Siberia from a helicopter! His wife, Gretchen Pianka, was in Brad’s class in medical school and also has a residency in pediatrics at the Univ. of North Carolina…. At Penn’s Graduate School of Education, Kara Jackson is in the “education, culture and society” program…. In May, Karen Janke earned her M.S.L.S. from Illinois and began as public services librarian at Indiana Univ./Purdue Univ./Indianapolis (IUPUI). In September 2000, she went to the Olympics in Sydney and worked for a corporate sponsors’ hospitality program…. Lydia Langford has moved from New York City to Florida, where she attends the Miami Ad School studying art direction – the creative side of advertising. “Leave it to me to find a school in South Beach!”… “All is well in D.C., but it’s hot and I miss the snow,” writes Tom LeBosquet who has begun his third year at George Washington Medical School…. Jason Levin – perhaps tongue in cheek – says he was on an employment strike until everyone in the U.S. receives a fair living wage. After attempting to spread this message through the south of France, he was holding daily work-out/sit-ins around the Boston area…. John Curtis Loether lives in Bolton, Mass…. In the fall, Jen MacArthur moved to London. After teaching in the D.C. public school system for two years, she spent the summer in South Africa…. Katy McCann spent last year working and traveling. She now is working on a master’s in professional writing. “On a more soul-satisfying level, I took up belly dancing…and am becoming more immersed in the New England and New York Middle Eastern dance community…with plans for my performance debut in the Boston area this year.”… In Cambridge, Mass., Heidi McDonald continues to work in the biotechnology field as a senior clinical research associate for Genzyme Corp…. Kimberly McGuffie has completed a master’s in education in the Human Development and Psychology Department at Harvard, and she is a healthcare analyst at Tufts Health Plan…. Still living in Seattle and loving it, Casey McGuire took a few months off last winter to travel south. In May he began work as North American marketing manager at Getty Images, a global photography company that sells images to ad agencies, designers, and publishers…. In her final year of medical school at Vermont, Katie McQuilkin has done most of her senior electives in the Washington, D.C., area…. Sam Martin works at Putnam Investments as a bond analyst and lives in the North End where he enjoys the great restaurants and wonderful neighborhood. He works on a business degree at Boston College part time at night. Sam still participates in track and field, throwing the hammer and shot-put for the Greater Boston Track Club…. Living in Bethel, Colleen Matlen Ippolito has taught science at Berlin (N.H.) High School for three years. She and Jamie ’96 have a puppy, Lily…. After living in Boulder, Colo., Sarah Prizio-Skigen has been accepted into a two-year master’s program at Monterey (Calif.) Institute for International Studies for a degree in international environmental law and policy…. Anne Breckinridge Smith, still in Boston, works for an asset management firm doing equity research. Now that she has free time she plays soccer, tries to play tons of golf, and had a great winter skiing…. In Portland, Sarah Standiford is a community organizer for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. She looked forward to going to Uganda last fall in a training and exchange with a partner reproductive health organization in Kampala…. In Alaska, Rebecca Steer works for Wyeth-Ayerst pharmaceuticals and was named to their Golden Circle Club, which meant a free trip to Puerto Rico. She cracked the top five in Alaska’s women’s triathlon and then entered a 26-mile race that had several river crossings. “The sun never really sets here during the summer, which means I’m tired by the time September rolls around. The silver salmon are just starting to run up the rivers and my freezer could use a few more for the winter.”…. A Ph.D. candidate, Suzanne Tepper does research in the field of breast cancer genetics. Recently funded with a grant, she presented her research at the annual meeting of the American Assn. for Cancer Research…. For the past two years, Jen Van Gelder has been account executive for the corporate communications department at Putnam Investments. She lives in the Teele Square area of Somerville and is one of the co-chairs of the Boston Bates Club…. Shannon Walker Lightbody graduated from Tufts Veterinary School last May and began work at Wholepet Health Center in Everett in September…. Eliza Woodbury recently moved to Madison, Wis., with Matt LaPenta ’98.