1950s
Roger Remington
MS 1959 — Art
Roger Remington, the Vignelli Distinguished Professor of Design, is retiring from the Rochester Institute of Technology after 57 years on the faculty.
1960s
Donald Kappes
MS 1963 — Curriculum and Instruction
An NDEA grant Donald received resulted in exceptional experiences in teaching, counseling, the development of training programs for the handicapped, directing vocational rehabilitation training at the state level, and finally, being a small business owner. Donald, who retired in 1994 and now lives in Sun City, Arizona, says, “Great education and great university.”
Jeanne Blievernicht
1965 MS — Physical Education
Jeanne Gelner Blievernicht was inducted into Valparaiso University’s Athletic Hall of Fame. She was recognized for her many achievements in several sports, especially tennis, where she participated in the Intercollegiate Tennis Championship in St. Louis, reaching the semifinals of the doubles competition in 1959, 1960, and 1961. She reached the semifinals of the singles draw in 1961 and the quarterfinals in 1960. Jeanne competed in many other tournaments highlighted by an appearance in the quarterfinals of the 1960 Cincinnati Masters, which was then the second-largest summer tennis event in the U.S. In 1961 she was No. 2 in the USTA National Public Parks singles rankings. In 1960 she won the Midwest Collegiate Badminton Tournament. After graduate school Jeanne went on to a long high school officiating career in Michigan where she officiated state finals in volleyball and girls’ lacrosse, and was inducted as an inaugural member of the U.S. Lacrosse Michigan Chapter Hall of Fame. She is now retired and living in Southfield, Michigan, with her husband David, also a UW–Madison graduate.
Tim Donovan
BS 1969 — Physical Education
Tim received a master of arts in special education from the University of Arizona in 2000 and is now retired and living in Tucson, Arizona.
Linda Montano
MFA 1969 — Art/Sculpture
Linda continues to make performance art.
Wayne Nelson
MS 1969 — Behavioral Disabilities (Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education)
Wayne retired after many years of professional experiences in schools, private organizations, and with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He now provides care to his wife, who is in assisted living and under hospice care. He credits his education and work experience with helping cope and communicate with his wife, her caregivers, and their family.
1970s
Mary Montgomery Lindquist
PhD 1972 — Curriculum and Instruction, Mathematics Education
Mary is retired and remains active with the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study for the 2019 assessment and reports. She is also active in community groups in Lewisburg, West Virginia.
Charles Carothers
MS 1972 — Educational Administration
MS 1974 — Counseling Psychology
Charles is enjoying retirement in Sun Lakes, Arizona, after a 40-year career in student financial aid administration.
Carol Clements
BS 1975 — Physical Education, Dance Therapy
Carol gives talks and presentation events on the subject of her book, “Better Balance for Life: Banish the Fear of Falling with Simple Activities Added to Your Everyday Routine.” Due to the pandemic she is now exclusively appearing on radio shows, podcasts, and YouTube. She also writes magazine articles about preventing falls and improving balance.
Clifford Dillhunt
BSE 1971 — Curriculum and Instruction
MS 1975 — Curriculum and Instruction
Clifford is editor of the international poetry journal, “Hummingbird: Magazine of the Short Poem,” which celebrated its 30th anniversary in May 2020. See more at hummingbirdpoetry.org.
Debora Oliveira
BS 1977 — Occupational Therapy
Debora (Olsen) Oliveira has been elected president-elect of the Florida Occupational Therapy Association. Her term of office begins July 2021. She is currently the Program Director at Florida A&M University.
1980s
Mary Brady
MS 1981 — Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Technology
Mary moved to Vermont, joined the American Association of University Women, and is learning to make Vimeos about the revolutionary fashions of the Suffrage Era. In the Green Mountain State, the Vermont Suffrage Centennial Alliance had scheduled a comprehensive year-long program of celebrations and educational lectures, films, and participatory parades and events, all throughout 2020. Now, we are rescheduling or going virtual until all clear. Visit Mary as suffragist Clarinda Nichols of Townshend, Vermont, on Vimeo, launching in August 2020, only 100 years after the 19th Amendment finally became law, and 180 years after Clarinda took a stand.
Patricia Geishirt
BS 1981 — Business Education
After graduation, Patricia went to UW–La Crosse and earned an accounting degree. She worked as a CPA for about 15 years, then retired from accounting to self employ as a longarm quilter. She loves quilting using a Gammill Statler in her home studio under the company name Frayed Knot Quilts in Deerfield, Wisconsin.
Tim Bakken
1982 MS — Counseling Psychology
Tim, a professor of law at West Point, published in 2020, “The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military.”
Deborah Verstegen
1981 MS — Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis
1983 PhD — Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis
Deborah has retired as an emeritus professor after a long career. Her 2020 text, “Financing Education in a Climate of Change,” was recently released by Pearson. She is grateful to her UW–Madison advisor Dr. Richard Rossmiller for his support over the years.
Lisa Postles
BS 1984 — Communication Disorders
Linda retired in 2019 after 35 years as a speech pathologist in the public schools of Wisconsin.
Thompson Brandt
MS 1985 — Educational Administration
PhD 1985 — Curriculum and Instruction
Thompson earned a graduate certificate in education law from Indiana University and is pursuing a master’s degree from the University of Arizona Law School. He has also written “Sconnie Swing!” for jazz ensemble (with echoes of “On, Wisconsin!” noted throughout), “Redemption Redux” (a revision of a jazz ensemble arrangement he wrote 50 years ago), and “Overcoming” for concert band (a program piece in tribute to the COVID-19 pandemic).
Ellen Roberts
BSE 1984 — Behavioral Disabilities
MS 1985 — Rehabilitation Counseling
Ellen has returned to worker’s compensation case management and for the past 18 months has been working at a small company, PriMedical, Inc, based out of Miami. The company prides itself in providing top-notch medical and vocational case management services to those injured or disabled on the job. Ellen covers the metro-Atlanta and north Georgia area.
Aaron Blecha
1987 BFA — Art
Aaron is an illustrator and author of children’s books and lives in Brighton, UK. Aaron’s solo art exhibition — Aliens, Zombies & Monsters! — is touring around galleries, museums, and entertainment venues across England. This show is an immersive exploration into how children’s books are created. Rooms are filled with vibrant, life-sized, colorful characters that encourage visitors to interact with the exhibit. Beam aboard an alien spaceship, take a photo amongst the monster mayhem, or be part of a zombie family! Aaron also visits local schools explaining how he creates characters and encouraging students to use creativity and humor in their art.
Paul Burmeister
MA 1986 — Art
MFA 1987 — Art
Paul has served as the assistant dean of advising at Wisconsin Lutheran College in Milwaukee since 2014. He was promoted to full professor of art in 2020.
Kim (Hlavacek) Suhr
1987 BS — Secondary English Education
Kim’s 2018 story collection, “Nothing to Lose,” has been named a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
Rita Yanny
BS 1988 — Art Education
In March, Rita exhibited recent mixed media pieces in a two-person show with Yuji Kobayashi at B-gallery in Tokyo. One of her collages, vibrant, was included in The Art of Collage II, an online exhibit curated by the Frank Juarez Gallery in May. She also participated in the Tissue Box Challenge. Quebec Collage invited collagists to incorporate the top of a tissue box into an original collage for this online project. #quebeccollagedefi
Ann Kremer
BS 1989 — Elementary Education
Ann earned her master’s degree in Early Childhood Education at Northern Illinois University in 2003. She has been the director of Early CHOICES, a preschool inclusion initiative of the Illinois State Board of Education since 2014. The initiative provides professional development and coaching to support inclusion of preschoolers with disabilities in typical preschool programs. Ann has worked to advance inclusion in Illinois and is currently expanding the project with additional funds from Preschool Development Grant Birth-5, to support inclusion from birth to 5 across systems in Illinois.
Joe Spolar
1989 MS — Secondary Science
Joe spent his last year teaching at Lincoln School in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1990s
Kathleen Grimm
1990 BS — French Education
Kathleen retired in June of 2020 after teaching for 28 years at Madison East High School. She will spend time in her retirement with her hobbies of quilting, reading, gardening, and other crafts and intends to expand her volunteer time at PBS Wisconsin and begin volunteering at her local library.
Anita Jung
MFA 1990 — Art
Anita was awarded a nine-month Fulbright to India. It has been put on hold due to COVID-19. Jung will be focusing on printmaking, vegetable dyes, and conducting video interviews with print artisans and artists in Gujarat, Delhi, Rajasthan, and Bengal.
Linda Finn
BS 1984 — Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education, Behavioral Disabilities
MS 1992 — Special Education
Linda, with the major support of her husband and three children, proudly graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1984. This was 20 years after graduating from high school. She taught students with emotional disabilities at the junior and high school level for six years. She returned to UW–Madison to complete her master’s degree in learning disabilities in 1992. This was a tumultuous year and she did not attend graduation ceremonies, which, now retired, she regrets. Not bad for a farm kid whose high school class had 61 students. For health reasons, she retired in 2006 from teaching children in need of assistance academically and emotionally. Linda proudly states that she graduated from UW–Madison two times, both with honors, and enjoyed the 20 years of learning from the university and most of all from the students.
Randy Handel
PhD 1993 — Educational Administration
Randy completed 10 years with the Universityof Minnesota Athletic Department serving as Associate Athletic Director — Development.
Paul Rux
PhD 1994 — Educational Administration
During 2019, Paul published nine books on Amazon: 1) “Hidden People: Priceless Lessons”; 2) “Time-and-Field Tested Asian Mentoring Wisdom for Survival and Success”; 3) “How to Master Your Future with Classic Trend Forecasting Concepts and Techniques”; 4) “Mentors: Priceless Advisors”; 5) “Canadian Futurist: Thomas D’Arcy McGee and the Idea of National Education”; 6) “Fresh Food for Future Thought”; 7) “How to Master Your Future with Forecasting Concepts and Techniques”; 8) “Root Values”; and 9) “Benchmarking Canada for Creative Comparison.”
Gene Delcourt
BS 1992 — Education
MFA 1995 — Art
After teaching for 21 years, Gene retired from the Madison Metropolitan School District and started a business building environmentally friendly caskets, repurposing trees cut down in the city, then milling them and planing them down to finished boards. He builds the caskets using only glue and pegs. Gene’s motivation for starting this was the death in 1989 of his father. The funeral home industry felt very predatory, using numerous strategies to get Gene to spend more and more money, which as a student in college with a young family, he did not have. Gene told himself that someday he would try to do something about this. He sells the caskets, which are legal in all cemeteries, for a small fraction of the industry standard. He keeps a small supply of caskets in his studio. Recently, he has started teaching part time at a small alternative high school in the area.
2000s
Margene Anderson (nee Janicke)
BS 2001 — Secondary Education
Margene earned her doctor of education from Edgewood College. Her dissertation focused on implementing and evaluating clinical reasoning education in undergraduate anatomy education.
John Geittmann
BS 2001 — Secondary Education, Social Studies
After selling his educational fundraising company, John moved to Nashville in 2014 with his wife and four kids. He is covering the southeastern United States for a software company and not missing the snow and cold.
Laura Johnson
BS 2001 — Communication Sciences and Disorders, Speech Language Pathology
Laura retired as a speech therapist from the Madison Metropolitan School District this year to launch a private practice with a “spotlight” on stuttering and other fluency disorders. Laura received national board certification in fluency disorders (BCS-F) in 2018, one of only three speech therapists in Wisconsin achieving board certification. Along with fluency across the lifespan, she hopes to continue working with child speech and language delays using tele-therapy and at a west side clinic location.
Marc Kornblatt
BS 2001 — Education
Marc and his wife moved to Tel Aviv last August, and are looking forward to celebrating their first year anniversary as dual (U.S. and Israel) citizens. While continuing to produce short films, Marc has returned to writing for children, a career that led him into teaching more than 20 years ago. He has several picture books and a novel in progress. He also has been writing the Times of Israel Blog for an Israeli news website. In May 2020, Marc released a film he filmed in Jerusalem to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War, “Jerusalem Voice” — a 30-minute documentary featuring people from different backgrounds (Jewish, Muslim, Christian, religious and secular, Palestinian and Israeli) who live in East and West Jerusalem; he also filmed “The Narrow Bridge Project”— a 10-episode web series filmed during the pandemic lockdown.
Charles Degeneffe
2002 PhD — Rehabilitation Psychology
Charles was named to the California Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Advisory Board. The board is comprised of persons with TBI, family members of persons with TBI, and professionals and researchers. The board provides direction to California state leadership on programs, services, and policies needed to meet the needs of persons with TBI and their families.
Paul Kreutzer
2004 PhD — Education Administration
Paul was recently promoted to full partner at New York Life Insurance.
Julie Luecke
BS 1989 — Elementary Education
PhD 2004 — Curriculum and Instruction
Julie is the associate dean for the Division of Education in the School of Liberal Arts, Education, and the Sciences at Edgewood College in Madison.
Kathi Koppa
2006 MS — Curriculum and Instruction
Having worked in education/teacher support for English language teachers at WIDA for seven years with UW–Madison, Kathi made a change in September 2019. Her new career is as membership services manager with Wisconsin Public Radio. WPR joined UW–Madison in July 2019 and she is happy to still be a Badger!
Marcus Weaver-Hightower
2006 PhD — Curriculum and Instruction
Marcus starts a new position as professor in the School of Education at Virginia Tech in August.
William Adams
BS 2009 — Kinesiology/Athletic Training
In January 2020, William published a textbook titled, “Exertional Heat Illness: A Clinical and Evidence-Based Guide.” This book is targeted toward clinicians, scientists, and students to provide them with the latest evidence on the management of heat-related illness from various clinical settings.
2010s
Joel Spiess
2011 MS — Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis
In July 2020, Joel was appointed the director of academic and student affairs at the Medical College of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy. He provides leadership and supervision of professional staff responsible for student recruitment and admission, enrollment and student affairs, academic and curricular services, assessment and analytics, interprofessional education, and special projects. He is responsible for the complete pharmacy student life cycle — applicant to alum.
Quentin Wheeler-Bell
MA 2007 — Educational Policy Studies
PhD 2013 — Educational Policy Studies
Quentin is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Terrance Green
2013 PhD — Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis
Terrance was awarded one of five William T. Grant Scholars Program Awards. The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.
Laura Novak
2014 BS — Kinesiology
In February 2020, Laura traveled to Lake Eyasi, Tanzania, on a service trip. She spent three days doing manual therapy, teaching manual therapy, and working in a clinic with a local physical therapist. The goal was to reduce the physical pain of abandoned women through manual therapy, teach a local woman how to do manual therapy, and learn more about physical therapy in Tanzania. The group was successful in helping about 30 to 40 local women with their pain, and in a couple cases were able to get them to a place where they could once again work and perform activities of daily living. Physical therapy is a new field in Tanzania, and manual therapy is very rarely used — despite the large amount of physical pain from labor and challenging living conditions. Laura hopes to return in February 2022 to expand the program to help more women, check-in on the local woman trained in manual therapy, and shadow the physical therapist she worked with.
Breanne Litts
2015 PhD — Curriculum and Instruction/Digital Media
Dr. Breanne Litts, assistant professor in instructional technology and learning sciences at Utah State University, received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award (#194363) for work in partnership with Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation and Spy Hop Productions, a digital media arts center. They are exploring how a community-driven and culture-centered approach engages American Indian youth and elders in science and technology through sharing and preserving important cultural and historical stories.
Keaton Williams
2017 BS — Elementary and Special Education
Keaton will begin his fourth year of teaching in Madison this fall. He has loved his time at Chavez Elementary, and can’t wait to continue helping his scholars learn!
Laura Chávez-Moreno
2018 PhD — Curriculum and Instruction
Laura published an article in the Journal of Teacher Education, one of the top high-impact, peer-reviewed journals in the field of education. She began writing this article in one of her UW–Madison grad courses. Professors and other graduate students helped her think through the ideas in this piece, titled “U.S. Empire and an Immigrant’s Counternarrative: Conceptualizing Imperial Privilege.”
Margaret Cram
2018 BS — Rehabilitation Psychology
For the past year, Margaret has been working as a restorative aide in the therapy department of a skilled nursing facility in Milwaukee. In November, Margaret was accepted into Governors State University’s Master’s of Occupational Therapy program and she started classes in May.
Delaney Egan
2018 BS — Theatre and Drama
Delaney has returned to the School of Education to earn a master’s degree in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis’ Global Higher Education program. Delaney will graduate in fall 2020 and hopes to continue in the higher education industry with a focus on understanding and researching the student experience on U.S. college campuses.
Carolyn Schroeder
2018 BS — Elementary Education/ESL
Carolyn has been working in the Elmbrook School District for the last two years, teaching full-time in third grade. She loves many aspects of her career, and finds it truly rewarding and fulfilling. Carolyn is passionate about supporting fellow young educators and is working on many equity teams within her district. Starting in the fall, she will be going back to school, while continuing to teach third grade, to earn her master’s degree in educational leadership at Carroll University.
Kristan Ventress
BS 2018 — Elementary Education
After working in Milwaukee Public Schools for the last couple of years, Kristan has returned to Madison to get her master’s degree in special education. She is a part of the ALSE program, which allows participants to work within the Madison Metropolitan School District while simultaneously working on completing their master’s degree.
Sun Young Lee
2019 PhD — Curriculum and Instruction/Curriculum Studies
In 2019, Sun began as an assistant professor of teacher education at Weber State University in Utah. Sun is honored to be the 2020 recipient of the Michael B. Salwen Scholarship Award from the Korean-American Educational Researchers Association. Sun is an incoming chair-elect to serve for the Post-foundational Approaches to Comparative and International Education (Special Interest Group) as part of the Comparative and International Education Society.
Megan McNett
2019 BS — Rehabilitation Psychology
Megan will begin earning a master’s degree in prosthetics and orthotics at Northwestern University this fall.
Haley Nemeth
2019 BS — Rehabilitation Psychology
From August 2019 to June 2020, Haley was completing an AmeriCorps term of service at College Forward in Austin, Texas. Haley qualified to apply to the Trinity Fellows program at Marquette University because of her service and she received and accepted the fellowship. Starting in Fall 2020, Haley will begin working toward her master’s degree in educational policy and foundations and as a grants and learning associate at the Zilber Family Foundation in Milwaukee.
Samuel Gallo
2020 BS — Kinesiology/Exercise and Movement Science
Samuel will be matriculating to medical school in Chicago on a scholarship from the United States Air Force.
Kelly Giuliano
2020 BS — Rehabilitation Psychology
Kelly will be attending graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago for occupational therapy in the fall of 2020.
Sarah Laszewski
2020 BS — Elementary and Special Education
Sarah has accepted a position as a special education teacher in an elementary school in the Mequon-Thiensville school district for the 2020-2021 school year.
Michael Sullivan
2020 PhD — Curriculum and Instruction
Michael completed his PhD on the Life Histories of Twelve University Students with Autism and Their Time in Middle and High School. Currently, he is a policy advisor for the government of British Columbia, Canada, working on the development of accessibility legislation for people with disabilities.