Class Secretary: Janice McLean, 15 Bristol St., Worcester MA 01606, janmcle@charter.net,

Class President: Mary Raftery, 16 Hobart St., Westerly RI 02891 maryr@edgenet.net

David Beaulieu joined Amisys Synertech Inc. in Rockville, Md., as chief operating officer. The firm advances health plan business through industry-leading products and services. David is responsible for all customer service operations, including software product account management, technology and application hosting, implementation services and business process outsourcing services.... Despite tearing a knee ligament, John Casey continues to play tennis, ski, hike, golf, and coach his daughters’ soccer teams. Oh yes, he also practices law.... Garrand & Co., a Portland-based advertising and marketing firm owned by Brenda Garrand, signed the largest single ad account ever for a Maine company when it entered into a contract with Osram Sylvania Inc., one of the world’s largest lighting companies. It is estimated that the account will exceed $10 million in gross spending each year. ... Laurie Schultz Heim is sorry to have missed Reunion. “Tough time to get away from Washington, D.C.”... In an interview with the magazine CIO Today, Susan Schulze Kozik, executive vice president and CTO of TIAA-CREF, discussed changes in the management of information technology, stressing that security and compliance are paramount. Susan, along with classmates Bill Sweat, senior vice president and general manager for Fidelity Personal Investments, and Chris O’Leary, management consultant for the Concours Group, offered a Reunion 2004 panel discussion on the value of a liberal arts education. “I find myself explaining how I went from being a history major who had never set foot in Carnegie Science Hall — I had only two science courses in four years — to a 25-year career in information technology,” Susan told the audience. “Every time I came back to Bates, professors Leamon and Muller and others in the history department would just look at me and say, ‘I don’t get it; how did it happen?’ And I started to formulate an answer that: If you think about listening and writing, and communicating and analyzing, no matter what degree you have from Bates, you did a lot of that in most of your courses here. Those are the foundation and skills for learning to learn.” Bill Sweat described how he works for Fidelity Investments running a phone center in Merrimack, N.H.: “We have about 600 people there...and we’re not hiring people necessarily for a specific discipline. What we’re trying to do is hire people who can solve problems on behalf of our customers. That may be a trading problem one time, or solving a goal for how to send children to school, or, ‘Is my money going to last until I’m 95?’” And Chris O’Leary noted how “when I was 40, I took a turn in my career. I went from doing industrial hygiene, occupational health and environmental health to consulting in marketing and sales and customer service. It was a huge, dislocating change.... What was interesting is that my graduate education, which was very vocational, was at that point good only by virtue of the name on the diploma. But the content of what I learned here at Bates — and the discipline of focusing not on what I know but knowing how much I don’t know, and focusing on not just thinking but thinking about thinking, and learning what it was other people knew that I needed to learn — that enabled me to take some core process skills and apply them in other areas.” A transcript of their discussion is at www.bates.edu/x57225.xml... Sue Reid is one of the principal authors of The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion, which was named the 2004 KitchenAid Cookbook of the Year by the James Beard Foundation. The cookbook was also selected as one of the best cookbooks of the year by Food & Wine, People, and The New York Times Book Review.... After 24 years at Rohm and Haas, Dave Underwood has been named president of CROWN Aerosol Packaging USA in Philadelphia.