Class Note 1991
Issue
January-February 2021
The College held a Volunteer Officer eXperience (VOX) conference as part of its expanded volunteer engagement week in October. As part of that I attended the meeting for the Class Secretaries Association. I saw some familiar faces, including Ned Ward ’89 and Kelly Shriver Kolln ’92, on the call. A few people used their nifty Dartmouth Zoom backgrounds and were virtually transported to the Tower Room and other beautiful locations. To get yours, visit www.library.dartmouth.edu/library-zoom-backgrounds.
I received an update from our class representative on the Alumni Council. Erica Coles Jacobsen attended the council meeting at the end of October and had this to report.
“Like so much of 2020, the fall Alumni Council was a virtual affair. We were able to hear about the search that is underway to hire a chief diversity officer and were introduced to the council nominating committee’s candidate for trustee, Joyce A. Sackey ’85, DMS’89, M.D. Joyce is associate provost and chief diversity officer for Tufts University Health Sciences Schools, where she works closely with university leadership to fulfill the strategic mission and goals for diversity, equity, and inclusion. I am now serving on the new alumni engagement committee. We are tasked with facilitating the transition from graduating Dartmouth to becoming an active member of the alumni community. I’m leading the subcommittee’s work to gain insights into how to establish positive relationships with the most-recently graduated students. Since it has been almost 30 (seriously, almost 30?!) years since we graduated, I will turn to my professional experience in qualitative consumer and human insights to create surveys, virtual focus groups, and individual interviews to better understand the needs of new alumni. We are hoping to have some great recommendations to welcome the class of ’21 into the alumni community in the spring.”
In September the College hosted “Dartmouth in Latin America: A Conversation with Prof. Erika Pani ’91; The U.S. and Mexico: Two hundred years of reimagining your neighbor.” Our classmate lives in Mexico, teaches at El Colegio de México, and has chaired its center for historical studies. Her talk explored some of the ways in which Americans and Mexicans have, since independence, engaged with each other. The goal of the conversation was to move “beyond the pithy but flat description of them as ‘distant neighbors.’ ”
You may have received an email from our co-presidents, Heather Lane Spehr and Sarah Barton Gardella, and vice president Sara Burbine Potter in the fall. In case you didn’t see it, here’s a short update: “As our class heads into our 30th reunion year, we are reaching out to touch base. We remain hopeful that we will be able to gather in person to celebrate June 17-21, 2021, but we are sure it will not be a surprise that event planning at the moment is tentative, at best. We will keep you posted, though we don’t expect any updates until the first quarter of 2021.”
In this month’s issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, President Emeritus Jim Wright explains how Mister Rogers ’50 made an indelible impression when he returned to campus after more than 50 years. I’m sure many of us have fond memories of Jim Wright and his wife, Susan, who was our class dean. In the vein of the article, I would love to hear from classmates on this topic: How did Jim or Susan Wright (or even Mister Rogers) make an impression on you?
Stay healthy!
—Deb Karazin Owens, 166 Colonial Drive, Fairfield, CT 06824; djowens@optonline.net
I received an update from our class representative on the Alumni Council. Erica Coles Jacobsen attended the council meeting at the end of October and had this to report.
“Like so much of 2020, the fall Alumni Council was a virtual affair. We were able to hear about the search that is underway to hire a chief diversity officer and were introduced to the council nominating committee’s candidate for trustee, Joyce A. Sackey ’85, DMS’89, M.D. Joyce is associate provost and chief diversity officer for Tufts University Health Sciences Schools, where she works closely with university leadership to fulfill the strategic mission and goals for diversity, equity, and inclusion. I am now serving on the new alumni engagement committee. We are tasked with facilitating the transition from graduating Dartmouth to becoming an active member of the alumni community. I’m leading the subcommittee’s work to gain insights into how to establish positive relationships with the most-recently graduated students. Since it has been almost 30 (seriously, almost 30?!) years since we graduated, I will turn to my professional experience in qualitative consumer and human insights to create surveys, virtual focus groups, and individual interviews to better understand the needs of new alumni. We are hoping to have some great recommendations to welcome the class of ’21 into the alumni community in the spring.”
In September the College hosted “Dartmouth in Latin America: A Conversation with Prof. Erika Pani ’91; The U.S. and Mexico: Two hundred years of reimagining your neighbor.” Our classmate lives in Mexico, teaches at El Colegio de México, and has chaired its center for historical studies. Her talk explored some of the ways in which Americans and Mexicans have, since independence, engaged with each other. The goal of the conversation was to move “beyond the pithy but flat description of them as ‘distant neighbors.’ ”
You may have received an email from our co-presidents, Heather Lane Spehr and Sarah Barton Gardella, and vice president Sara Burbine Potter in the fall. In case you didn’t see it, here’s a short update: “As our class heads into our 30th reunion year, we are reaching out to touch base. We remain hopeful that we will be able to gather in person to celebrate June 17-21, 2021, but we are sure it will not be a surprise that event planning at the moment is tentative, at best. We will keep you posted, though we don’t expect any updates until the first quarter of 2021.”
In this month’s issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, President Emeritus Jim Wright explains how Mister Rogers ’50 made an indelible impression when he returned to campus after more than 50 years. I’m sure many of us have fond memories of Jim Wright and his wife, Susan, who was our class dean. In the vein of the article, I would love to hear from classmates on this topic: How did Jim or Susan Wright (or even Mister Rogers) make an impression on you?
Stay healthy!
—Deb Karazin Owens, 166 Colonial Drive, Fairfield, CT 06824; djowens@optonline.net