1980s
Elizabeth Z. Bartz, BA ’80, MA ’82, Akron, OH, is president and CEO of State and Federal Communications Inc., with offices in Akron, Ohio, and Washington, DC. Founded in 1993, the firm provides government compliance information and consulting to Fortune 500 and other leading companies worldwide. The firm’s in-house staff of attorneys is expert in state, federal and municipal laws regarding lobbying, political contributions and procurement.
Douglas Tulino, BBA ’80, Aldie, VA, a 41-year veteran of the US Postal Service, was appointed deputy postmaster general, reporting directly to Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy, effective May 2021. Tulino also becomes a member of the Postal Service’s Board of Governors and continues in his current role as chief human resources officer.
Tulino will ensure that the organization’s culture, talent, labor relations and leadership development will contribute to the successful implementation of Delivering for America, the 10-year plan unveiled on March 23, 2021, to restore service excellence and financial sustainability to one of America’s most treasured institutions and a vital part of the nation’s infrastructure. He will also play a key leadership role in stakeholder outreach.
Vickie Deane, BFA ’81, Santa Fe, NM, painter and jeweler, moved to New Mexico in the mid-80s and started making jewelry about 25 years ago, in addition to continuing to paint. Pre-COVID 19, she traveled the country for art markets and fairs. She now sells her work at the Fuller Lodge Art Center in Los Alamos, the Georgia O’Keefe Gallery in Santa Fe, the Fine Arts Museum in Albuquerque and the Harwood in Taos, as well as other venues outside New Mexico. She’s not going back on the road for now but plans to attend local events once they start up again. See www.vickiedeane.com.
Rinku Dutt, BS ’81, Murrysville, PA, ophthalmologist, now provides glaucoma treatment and other services at Luna Vision, an eye care center and medical spa based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dutt is a board-certified member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons, and the Pittsburgh Ophthalmological Society. She has performed over 6,000 LASIK and 5,000 cataract surgeries and has more than 10 years of experience in refractive surgery.
She received an MD from Case Western Reserve Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, interned at the Cleveland Clinic and completed residencies at University Hospitals in Cleveland and UTMB, Texas. She has fellowships in glaucoma from Cornell and cornea and refractive surgery from the Tulane Medical Center. She has been a private practitioner for more than 20 years.
Alan R. Miciak, BBA ’83, PhD ’93, Wexford, PA, is the new president of John Carroll University, effective June 1, 2021. With 28 years of experience in teaching, research and leadership at top colleges and universities in Canada and the United States, Miciak is John Carroll’s 26th president.
He had served since 2018 as dean of the Boler College of Business at the university, where he drove enrollment growth, strategic investment and program innovation. Under his leadership, the business college developed new programs and facilities across its schools and departments, and secured three significant naming gifts, part of $25 million raised in the college’s Inspired Lives campaign.
Craig Koehler, EDS ’84, MEd ’85, PhD ’92, Avon, OH, retired in July as principal at Avon Middle School. Under his leadership the school was named a 2020 National Blue Ribbon School by the US Department of Education.
With a background in school guidance and counseling, Koehler joined the administrative team of the Avon Local School District in 1994, moving into administration after receiving two master’s degrees in education and an educational specialist degree. In 1988, he began work on a doctorate at Kent State and earned a PhD in educational administration.
Koehler is president of the Board of Directors of the Lorain County Prevention Connection and vice president of the Board of Directors of the Lorain Community Music Theater. His plans for retirement include traveling and writing more books, as well as consulting work.
Kerry Schrader, BBBA ’84, MBA ’02, Hoover, AL, is co-owner with her daughter, Ashlee Ammons, of Mixtroz, a networking mobile app that has a new, enhanced version. According to the website, Mixtroz (the name comes from the combination of the words “mixer” and “introduction”) is an event planning platform that engages attendees and improves event experiences, while collecting data for event hosts—including colleges and universities, enterprise organizations and event planning companies.
Attendees download the app and complete a virtual name tag and survey customized by the organizer. The app matches up attendees and guides them to a group connection experience in real time. After the “mix,” the organizer can use the survey data collected from the interactions to drive future revenue-generating, cost-cutting measures.
The new enhancements allow attendees to access information from past events and re-engage with their contacts through the app. Attendees can use metrics from the app as conversation starters and icebreakers. Learn more at www.mixtroz.com.
Claudia Amrhein, BA ’85, MA ’87, Kent, OH, general manager of the Portage Area Regional Transportation Authority, has been appointed to the Hattie Larlham Foundation Board of Directors for a three-year term. Hattie Larlham is a nonprofit organization that creates opportunities for more than 1,800 children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the state of Ohio.
Amrhein joined PARTA in 2004 as the director of human resources and has served as the organization’s general manager since 2014. She also holds positions on local and statewide boards, including Ohio Public Transit Association, Ohio Transit Risk Pool, the NEORide council of governments, Portage County Transportation Improvement District, Ohio Health Transit Pool, Children’s Advocacy Center of Portage County and Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study. She and her husband, Jack, have two adult sons.
Michael Finnegan, BS ’85, Cincinnati, OH, retired in May after 36 years of teaching. He taught physical education in Cincinnati Public Schools for 33 years, most recently at Withrow University High School in Hyde Park. Finnegan developed Withrow’s fitness program, which now will be implemented in all CPS schools.
He recently created the Mike Finnegan Health and Wellness Scholarship Fund to help vulnerable Withrow students through college. He planned to ride about 500 miles a week to raise awareness and money for the fund during a biking adventure from Santa Monica, California, to Washington, DC, during the summer.
As he set off on his cross-country journey (with two friends coming along in a camper van with food and other supplies), Cincinnati Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman proclaimed Saturday, June 5, 2021, Mike Finnegan Day as members of the Major Taylor Cycling Club of Cincinnati and his friends and family cheered.
Finnegan grew up in Canton, Ohio, and worked at a bakery after graduating from high school. A first-generation college student, he paid for his degree at Kent State with the money he earned working weekends, summers and Christmas breaks at the bakery.
He started as a physical education teacher at Schwab Middle School in Northside in 1988 and moved to Withrow in 2001.He had served as a coach and teacher in Niger, West Africa, in the US Peace Corps and had a stint teaching English in Tokyo. He was a physical education teacher, athletic director, fitness instructor and coach of football, basketball and track in the Cincinnati schools.
Rob Gentry, BS ’85, Perrysburg, OH, retired in May 2021 after 34 years as theater director at Perrysburg High School, where he staged 100 shows. He originally planned to be a professional actor and earned a theater scholarship to Kent State, but quickly decided it wasn’t for him. He switched majors to comprehensive communications with the goal of becoming a high school drama teacher.
Alice Licata, MA ’85, PhD ’88, Dayton, OH, has published her debut novel, Whitecaps on the Lake (TouchPoint Press, March 2021). In the book, Licata explores complex human emotions within the context of an adventure to find treasure—bringing readers through the shock and heartache of sudden loss, the despair and hopelessness of a slow demise and the desperate pursuit of happiness under it all. Her unique perspective takes readers on an emotional journey of learning to let go of those we love most.
Licata, a psychologist, spent years teaching in Charlottesville, Virginia, before turning her energies toward raising her two daughters. Inspired, she wrote It’s Not Rocket Science: Down-to-Earth Advice on Raising Stellar Kids (Lulu.com, 2009), hoping to empower other parents. When her daughters were fully launched, she returned to teaching—now grades 6–12—where she makes it her mission to make sure today’s kids still know how to use an old-fashioned dictionary and tell time on an analog clock. She also has been a high school diving coach for the past 20 years, helping student athletes reach new heights both on and off the diving board.
Keith B. Wilson, MEd ’85, Lexington, KY, has received recognition from two national associations in the mental health and rehabilitation counseling field. The American Mental Health Counselors Association recognized him as a fellow in clinical mental health counseling education and research at its annual conference in June. He also received the National Association of Multicultural Rehabilitation Concerns fellow credential, which honors those who contribute to multicultural concerns in rehabilitation professions through research, education, practice and leadership.
Wilson is a professor of rehabilitation and counselor education in the Department of Early Childhood, Special Education and Counselor Education at the University of Kentucky College of Education. He previously served as an administrator and faculty member at Pennsylvania State University for 15 years and was dean of the College of Education and Human Services at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He received his doctoral degree from The Ohio State University.
His research interests center on cross-cultural and multicultural issues among persons in the US with disabilities, and privilege based on phenotype, such as skin color and gender. His current research focuses on improving multicultural competencies through application-based approaches to cross-cultural training in education and health services. He has more than 100 scholarly publications and has given an estimated 170 presentations across the US and internationally.
Eric S. England, BFA ’86, Oxford, OH, displayed his artwork at the Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, from July 10 to Aug. 28, 2021, and gave an artist’s talk on July 17. In an exhibit titled 25¢ gods, England displayed a collection of large-scale sculptures inspired by the comic book heroes of his youth. The individual sculptures inhabited a carnival-like setting in the gallery’s street-level space, suggesting a festive and titanic competition between these superheroes.
He wrote, “The goals of my work are simple: to pass on a love for the history and the medium of the comic—its artwork, its stories, its inspirations, its entertainment, its past and contemporary Masters—to revisit, re-examine and share the thrills I’ve known and await in the pages, films and games yet to come.”
England earned an MFA from Miami University in 2016, and his work has been featured in numerous exhibitions throughout Ohio. He lives in Oxford, Ohio, where he maintains his studio practice.
Mary Jamis, PhD ’86, Mocksville, NC, president of M Creative, was recognized among other Outstanding Women in Business for 2021 by Triad Business Journal. Her firm, which specializes in values-driven strategic communication, has helped clients raise more than $700 million in capital campaign gifts over the last 12 years. M Creative is a certified B Corporation, a designation granted by B Lab to organizations that believe in the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.
Alice Ripley, BFA ’86, Long Island City, NY, received a 2021 Mid-Career Artist award from the Cleveland Arts Prize for expanding the role of the arts in the community. She received a Tony Award (Best Actress in a Musical) for her performance in Next to Normal as Diana. In her band RIPLEY, she plays guitar and drums, and has produced three albums.
Jyotsna J. Sreenivasan, BA ’86, Columbus, OH, published a debut collection of short fiction These Americans (Minerva Rising Press, May 2021), which won the press’s Rosemary Daniell Fiction Prize. The eight stories and a novella explore what it means to live between Indian culture and American expectations.
Sreenivasan’s short stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies. She was selected as a Fiction Fellow for the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference and was a finalist for the 2014 PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. She received an artist fellowship grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Her 2012 debut novel, And Laughter Fell from the Sky (William Morrow Paperbacks, June 2012), is a contemporary story about two young Indian Americans trying to find love and their place in the world, while dealing with the confines and pressures of their culture and families.
Sreenivasan’s parents are from India, and she was born and raised in northeastern Ohio. She has an MA in English literature from the University of Michigan and has lived in Washington, DC, and Moscow, Idaho.
Carl Williams, BS ’86, MS ’90, Haddonfield, NJ, who teaches computer science at Temple University, has received the university’s Part-Time Faculty Excellence in Teaching and Instruction Award. He also was recently inducted into the New Internet IPv6 Hall of Fame, which recognizes and celebrates the experts and evangelists of Internet Protocol version 6 who have made extraordinary contributions to the design and large-scale deployment of IPv6 around the world.
At Kent State, Williams majored in computer science and software engineering, and participated in internships at Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corp. and Firestone Research Labs. After graduation he worked at Sun Microsystems for 10 years, working on the development of IPv6. Internet Protocol provides locations and identifications for computers on networks and routes traffic across the internet. A significant portion of modern devices still use IPv4, and Williams says a key to the newer version is global accessibility. Around four billion IPv4 addresses have been exhausted, and experts say IPv6 is more efficient, increases security and improves performance.
Jennifer Podnar, BS ’87, MEd ’91, New Franklin, OH, a fourth-grade math and science teacher at Sauder Elementary in the Jackson Local School District, was named in The Repository as a Walsh University Teacher of the Month for March 2021. She began teaching second grade in the Revere Local Schools in the early 1990s. She has taught fourth grade at Jackson for 10 years and previously was a reading tutor for two years.
In a March 14, 2021, Repository article, when asked the most challenging part of her job, she responded, “Before the pandemic, I wasn’t the ‘techiest’ of teachers, but now I can hold my own with making videos, teaching using Google Meet, and creating and uploading material that is accessible to our eLearners.” What secret to success would she share with her students? “Effort is everything. My job is content . . . I teach them about the subject area. Their job is to put forth effort and to think about it so that they can make ‘connections’ to their own life.”
She said her students might be surprised to know she was a bus driver for Kent State University while in graduate school. “I needed a job and working for Campus Bus Service, driving a 35- to 40-foot bus, was the best paying job on campus at the time.”
Colleen VanNatta, BS ’88, North Canton, OH, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and Justin Speight, BA ’13, Uniontown, OH, a retired US Air Force Reserve master sergeant, are the new ROTC instructors at Green High School in the Green Local School District, Uniontown, Ohio. Formerly, they had worked together while at the Youngstown Air Reserve, and they plan to rebuild the high school’s ROTC program and attract additional students.
Pamela R. Anderson-Bartholet, AA ’89, MA ’94, MFA ’12, Munroe Falls, OH, wrote, “I have two more books being published this year: The Galloping Garbage Truck, a short collection of poems for children (Kelsay Books/Daffydown Dilly Press, May 2021), and Widow Maker (Finishing Line Press, July 2021).
“During the COVID-19 lockdown, I began writing short poems for my two grandsons. They loved hearing me read poems that reminded them about things they were doing and the whole collection took off from there. The title poem, “The Galloping Garbage Truck,” is a whimsical tale of a boy sitting on his front porch, waiting for the garbage man. These days people seem to struggle to understand and accept each other. But children do not have barriers to friendships, and I hope that these poems are good reminders that we all have a place in this world. The cover art and inside illustrations are by my daughter, Rachel (Lysa) Anderson, BA ’19, Kent, Ohio.
“Widow Maker is a chronicle of the 2015 sudden cardiac arrest and recovery of my husband, Al Bartholet. I wrote these poems to help make sense of everything that was happening to Al and as one way to honor and thank the many people who worked so hard to save his life. The cover was co-created by my niece Meredith Balogh, BFA ’09, Evanston, Illinois, and my daughter, Rachel.” For more information, see https://www.pamelaranderson.org.
Michelle Duffy, BFA ’89, Los Angeles, CA, professional actor and vocalist, was featured in the Minerva Area Chamber of Commerce’s eighth annual Evening of Celtic Music, livestreamed from Roxy Theatre in Minerva on March 27, 2021. Duffy has performed professionally for more than 30 years, throughout the country and abroad, from small theaters to off-Broadway and Broadway, as well as doing extensive on-camera work.
Mitch Gruber, BBA ’89, Columbia Station, OH, is the new director of the SCAN Hunger Center food pantry in Berea. He filled the vacancy left by the Feb. 27, 2021 death of his mother, Lona Gruber, who founded the pantry 20 years ago and served as its director. In a Cleveland.com article, Gruber says, “In working side-by-side with my mother, I have a great understanding of not only what SCAN meant to her, but her views of what she founded SCAN to accomplish. SCAN will continue to serve the people in need in the communities it services with the respect and dignity they deserve.”
Steve Sosebee, BA ’89, Kent, OH/Ramallah, Palestine, is founder of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a humanitarian NGO that supports children in the Middle East. PCRF’s main office in Gaza was extensively damaged during an airstrike by the Israeli military on the evening of May 17, 2021. No one was in the office at the time, but the organization will have to relocate.
According to a May 2021 interview in The Portager and his bio on the PCRF website, Sosebee, a Kent native, was a junior studying international relations at Kent State when he was chosen for a three-week human rights evaluation delegation to Palestine in December 1988, a trip which made a lasting impression.
After graduation, he returned to Palestine to work as a journalist and wrote a story about a boy who lost his legs in a bombing in the West Bank. He befriended the boy’s family and in 1990 arranged for free medical care in Akron for him and his sister, who also had been injured. Sosebee worked as a landscaper in the US to earn money and would return to Palestine in the winter to work as a journalist. As word got out, more people came to him for help, and he started arranging free treatment for other Palestinian children in American hospitals.
He married a Palestinian social worker with the YMCA in Jerusalem in 1993 and they had two daughters. They built the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund with many volunteers around the world and sent hundreds of children to the US for free care. His wife died of cancer in 2009, and he built the first public pediatric cancer department in Beit Jala Governmental Hospital in the West Bank in her name.
Sosebee married again in 2016. His new wife is a pediatric oncologist who also volunteers with the PCRF. He has expanded the organization to bring thousands of doctors from all over the world to Palestine to provide medical care on the ground. He continues to run an effective and efficient humanitarian relief organization, funded mostly by private individuals.