Each year, the College of Arts and Sciences honors alumni who have made exceptional contributions to their fields and to the lives of others. A ceremony for the 2017 winners will be held during Homecoming Weekend, Oct. 5–8, 2017.
William H. Powell (ADL ’67, GRS ’70) a top executive in the specialty chemicals industry until his retirement in 2006, spent a major portion of his career with National Starch and Chemical Company, managing a series of divisions as a corporate, group and executive vice president before being named chairman and CEO in 1999. In addition, he has been a board member, director or chairman of several other corporations and organizations, including Imperial Chemical Industries, Arch Chemicals, the American Chemistry Council and the Corn Refiners Association. He is currently chairman of the board of the Granite Construction Company and a board member of FMC Corporation and PolyOne Corporation.
Powell served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force after earning a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s degree in chemical engineering. The Department of Chemistry at Case Western Reserve honored him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2010. He has been a member of the visiting committee and the capital campaign committee for the College of Arts and Sciences.
Since he retired, Powell has focused his efforts on providing opportunities to underprivileged teenagers in Southern California. He has served on the board of the Casa Pacifica Centers for Children and Families in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, and he’s been recognized for his mentorship of minority teens in Oxnard, Calif. His passion today, he says, is convincing baby boomer retirees to spend time mentoring young people from low-income, single-parent families, “providing guidance and opening up their eyes as to how they might achieve the American Dream.”
Dennis R. Santoli (ADL ’67) spent more than three decades founding and leading insurance companies that underwrite liability risks for health care facilities. Before his retirement in 2016, he was president and CEO of The Campania Group and president of Hanover Healthcare.
Santoli majored in history at Adelbert College and went on to earn a law degree at Georgetown University Law Center. He has remained strongly connected to Sigma Chi, his college fraternity, serving as chair of the Sigma Chi Leadership Institute and as the 67th Grand Consul (international president). In 2004, he was inducted into the Order of Constantine, the fraternity’s highest honor, and he has been recognized as a Significant Sig. He is currently chairman of the Sigma Chi Risk Management Foundation.
A retired major in the U.S. Army Reserve, Santoli has assumed leadership roles in several cultural and educational institutions. He is on the board of directors of the Casa Italian Cultural Center, Language School and Museum in Washington, D.C., and executive director of the Blue & Gold Education Foundation in Vienna, Va. For Case Western Reserve, he is an Alumni Admission Ambassador and a member of the visiting committee for the College of Arts and Sciences.
Naomi Stanhaus (FSM ’67) majored in Romance languages at Flora Stone Mather College and later completed a master’s degree in French literature at Harvard University. Finding that she missed the volunteer and service activity she had enjoyed as an undergraduate, she decided to pursue a master’s degree in social work at Boston University. Her first job after graduate school, with the National Council of Senior Citizens in Washington, D.C., set the direction for her career, which has been devoted to improving the quality of life of older adults.
For the past 40 years, Stanhaus has had a consulting practice in Chicago, offering guidance to nonprofit organizations and charitable foundations. For her principal client, The Retirement Research Foundation, she managed an initiative that provides older adults with online tools to help them assess their retirement security and access benefits, and she created a grant program to support nonprofits seeking to improve their management and governance. In addition, Stanhaus has mentored program officers at other foundations through Grantmakers in Aging, a national membership organization. Seeing these officers advance in the field has been, she says, “one of the absolute joys of my work.”
Among her volunteer activities, Stanhaus has been a trustee of Latin School of Chicago and board president of the Chicago chapter of Little Brothers–Friends of the Elderly, a nonprofit that addresses the isolation and loneliness experienced by many older adults.
Chris Hook (CWR ’03, GRS ’04) is a budget analyst with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where he oversees funding for homeless assistance grants, lead abatement programs and Community Development Block Grants, among others. Prior to joining HUD, he spent 12 years with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), holding various roles in the Justice Management Division’s budget staff, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Security Division. He first entered government service as a U.S. Presidential Management Fellow.
Hook earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science, and he has been active in the alumni community at both the local and national levels. He is president of the D.C./Baltimore chapter of the Alumni Association of Case Western Reserve University, and he is in his sixth year as a member of the association’s board of directors. In addition, he is an Alumni Admission Ambassador.
A strong advocate for LGBT individuals, Hook was recently elected president of CWRU Pride, the university’s LGBT alumni network. He has also led two LGBT organizations for federal employees; he is the current president of HUD FedQ and a former president of DOJ Pride.
Jane W. Kessler (GRS ’51) is the Lucy Adams Leffingwell Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychological Sciences. As a clinician, scholar, teacher and community leader, Kessler has made major contributions to the understanding and treatment of children with developmental disabilities.
Kessler completed a master’s degree in psychology at Columbia University in 1941. Two years later, she enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was assigned to San Diego Naval Hospital to conduct psychological evaluations. After retiring from the service, she became the first staff psychologist at University Hospitals (UH) in Cleveland, and in 1948 she was named chief psychologist in UH’s Child Psychiatric Clinic. She retained this position while earning a doctorate in psychology at Western Reserve University.
In 1958, Kessler joined the WRU faculty as founding director of the university’s Mental Development Center (MDC), an interdisciplinary clinical facility that evaluated and treated children with developmental disabilities. The MDC was the first such facility to operate a preschool and provide services to the families of children receiving care. Kessler herself emerged as a pioneer in her field, becoming one of the first to recognize that mental retardation can co-exist with conditions such as emotional disturbance that also require treatment. Her book Psychopathology of Childhood, published in 1966 and revised in 1988, became a landmark text for generations of graduate students preparing to become clinical child psychologists.
In addition to directing the MDC for 20 years, Kessler served her department as an acting chair (twice) and as clinical training director. Beyond the university, she has been a president, board chair and board member for several national, state and local professional organizations and service providers. After retiring in 1993, she spent many years as the proprietor of Appletree Books in Cleveland Heights.
Jacqueline Greene (CWR ’07, LAW ’11) is a partner at the Cleveland law firm Friedman & Gilbert, where her practice focuses on civil rights and criminal justice issues. Greene litigates cases involving police and correctional misconduct, including use of excessive force, illegal seizures and denial of medical care for prisoners. In addition, she provides criminal defense representation in federal, state and municipal courts.
As co-coordinator of the Ohio Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, Greene leads efforts to protect protesters’ First Amendment rights. She recruits and trains pro bono criminal defense lawyers to defend demonstrators, takes on such cases herself and trains observers who monitor law enforcement conduct at demonstrations. Greene is also vice president of the Ohio Innocence Project’s Northeast Ohio Board of Advocates, which supports OIP’s exoneration work across Ohio and promotes community education concerning wrongful convictions.
Greene earned her bachelor’s degree in political science. Before joining Friedman & Gilbert, she worked in the field of international human rights, serving on prosecution and defense teams in war crimes trials of former leaders of Cambodia and Liberia and supporting international development and access-to-justice projects for the International Bar Association, the American Bar Association and public health organizations in Southern Africa.
To nominate graduates of the college or its predecessor institutions for the 2018 Alumni Awards, please contact Sharon Jordan-Davis, executive director of constituent relations, at sjj@cwru.edu. The deadline for nominations is Dec. 31, 2017.
Photo of Dennis Santoli by Ashtyn Brooke Photo; photo of Jane Kessler by Mike Sands; photo of Jacqueline Greene by Keli Schimelpfenig. All other photos courtesy of their subjects.
The second annual Cleveland Humanities Festival, organized by the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, addressed the theme of immigration with a series of public events presented in collaboration with the area’s major museums, educational institutions and arts organizations. The festival began on March 23 with a keynote address by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this year’s F. Joseph Callahan Distinguished Lecturer, at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.From left: Peter Knox, the Eric and Jane Nord Family Professor and Baker-Nord Center director, joined Gates onstage for a post-lecture conversation. Photo by Daniel Milner.
Each year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awards Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grants to scientists “who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.” Several senior faculty members in the college are past recipients of this funding. Now, two assistant professors—Emily Pentzer (chemistry) and Michael Hinczewski (physics)—have won what the NSF describes as its most prestigious award for early-career faculty.
Emily Pentzer. Photo by Mike Sands.
Pentzer, whose five-year grant began last summer, works in a branch of chemistry that develops novel carbon-based nanomaterials with industrial and commercial applications. Such materials, she explains, have already led to innovations in areas ranging from “harvesting solar energy to making medicine more efficient to preventing barnacle growth on the underside of ships.”
In her current project, Pentzer is modifying nanosheets—two-dimensional particles—of the carbon-based compound graphene oxide. Using synthetic chemistry, she alters the nanosheets’ properties and organizes them into larger structures to serve specific purposes. She can even cause one side to have different properties than the other, creating what she calls “Janus nanosheets.”
“We’re looking at them for energy applications and coating applications, and then we’ll see where we go from there,” Pentzer says. For instance, the modified compound could serve as an active material in batteries and superconductors, or as a transparent, antimicrobial coating for wood or metal. Beyond these potential applications, Pentzer notes that her work “will help researchers across many fields understand how nanoparticle organization influences and dictates properties so they can be improved.”
With a portion of her NSF grant, Pentzer is enlisting high school, undergraduate and graduate student researchers to assist with her project. She is also creating a professional development course for senior undergraduates and first-year graduate students, emphasizing skills necessary for success beyond academia.
Michael Hinczewski. Photo by Mike Sands.
Hinczewski, whose grant begins this July, is a theoretical biophysicist exploring the push and pull of forces that influence cellular behaviors in the human body. His NSF-funded project focuses on adhesion proteins, specialized molecules that bind cells to one another and help maintain the stability of tissues. Adhesion proteins play an important role in all close contacts between cells, including those involving the immune system. When a white blood cell halts at the site of an inflammation, for example, it does so in response to signals from adhesion proteins, which hold it in place so that it isn’t carried off by the rapid flow of the bloodstream.
Through mathematical modeling, Hinczewski analyzes experimental data in order to explain the molecular details of adhesion in a variety of biological contexts. He is especially interested in a phenomenon called catch-bonding. In daily life, when we try to break something apart, we expect a sharp yank to be more effective than a gentle tug. But a catch-bond between cells doesn’t conform to this pattern: “When you tug on it with a larger force,” Hinczewski says, “it actually gets stronger.” He hopes that his models will help scientists understand how such bonds work.
Advances in knowledge of adhesion proteins could have medical applications, Hinczewski says. “Malfunctions of these proteins are often implicated in various cancers, for example. When they break down or change their behaviors, individual cells can get loosened from their surrounding tissue and then migrate. That’s one of the ways in which cancers metastasize.”
In addition to supporting his research, Hinczewski’s CAREER grant will fund a project for students in his undergraduate biophysics class. The students will develop their own course materials—problem sets based on recent research articles—and make them available to educators elsewhere through an online database. These activities, Hinczewski says, will give the students “valuable experience in scientific pedagogy and communication.”
Erin Benay and Maggie Popkin, assistant professors in the Department of Art History and Art, have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for 2017-18. These awards are among the country’s most competitive and prestigious humanities grants; only 86 scholars were selected from a field of 1,200 applicants. The fellowships will enable Benay and Popkin to devote an academic year to researching and writing their next books.
Erin Benay. Photo by Mike Sands.
Benay, a specialist in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, is examining how merchants and missionaries traveling between Italy and India during the 16th and 17th centuries influenced the production and collection of art in both countries. During an age of increasing global mobility, she argues, the circulation of art and of artistic ideals affected European and South Asian cultures’ understanding of each other and of themselves.
Maggie Popkin. Photo by Keli Schimelpfenig.
Popkin, a scholar of Greek and Roman art, has embarked on a study of Roman souvenirs, memorabilia and miniatures. Such objects include glass flasks engraved with cityscapes, lamps commemorating sporting events and miniature reproductions of famous statues. Often, Popkin writes, images on souvenirs were “the only way that many Romans learned of various sites, monuments and events.” For this reason, they are “critical to understanding how ancient Romans perceived and conceptualized their world.”
In addition to winning the NEH award, Benay has received a fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies to fund a research trip to India. Popkin is a principal collaborator on a separate NEH research grant supporting archaeological fieldwork on the Greek island of Samothrace.
Karen Beckwith, the Flora Stone Mather Professor and chair in the Department of Political Science, has obtained a Presidency Research Fund grant from the American Political Science Association’s Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs. The grant will support her collaboration with two colleagues—Claire Annesley of the University of Sussex and Susan Franceschet of the University of Calgary—as they complete a book on female officeholders titled Cabinets, Ministers, and Gender.
Robert W. Brown, Distinguished University Professor and Institute Professor in the Department of Physics, and Brian Grimberg, an assistant professor of international health at the CWRU School of Medicine, were co-leaders of a research team that received a Patent for Humanity Award from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office during a White House ceremony last fall.
The researchers were honored for inventing a device that uses magnets and laser light to determine, in less than a minute, whether a drop of blood contains malaria parasites.
The other team members, all from the Department of Physics, were senior research scientist Robert Deissler (CIT ’74), mechanical designer and machinist Richard Bihary, visiting scientist William Condit and technician Jason Jones (CWR ’12), who became involved in the project as an undergraduate.
Janet McGrath, professor in the Department of Anthropology, received the 2016 Moher Downing Distinguished Service Award from the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group of the American Anthropological Association. McGrath was honored for outstanding scholarship and “exceptionally meritorious contributions to the improvement of the health of people infected with or at risk of infection with HIV.”
John Protasiewicz, professor and associate chair in the Department of Chemistry, has received the second annual Morton L. Mandel Award, which recognizes members of the chemistry faculty who have contributed to excellence in the department through their research, teaching, mentoring or service. Morton L. Mandel (HON ’07, CWR ’13) established the award with a $100,000 endowment gift through the Morton and Barbara Mandel Family Foundation.
Jeremy David Bendik-Keymer, the Elmer G. Beamer–Hubert H. Schneider Professor in Ethics and associate professor in the Department of Philosophy, is the author of Solar Calendar, and Other Ways of Marking Time.
Three associate professors in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures have recent publications to their credit. Gilbert Doho is the author of The Indigenous Code: Fundamental Pillars of States in Francophone Africa. Jacqueline Nanfito is the translator of The White Island (Las Islas Blancas), a book of poems by Marjorie Agosin. Cheryl Toman is the author of Women Writers of Gabon: Literature and Herstory.
Cassi Pittman, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, has been awarded a Career Enhancement Fellowship through a program administered by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
David Kaawa-Mafigiri (GRS ’03, ’07, anthropology), adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and senior lecturer at Makerere University, is the editor (with Eddy Joshua Walakira) of Child Abuse and Neglect in Uganda, the sixth volume in a series titled Child Maltreatment: Contemporary Issues in Research and Policy. The series editors are Associate Dean Jill Korbin, the Lucy Adams Leffingwell Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and Richard D. Krugman, Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
SAGES Fellow Brad Ricca, a full-time lecturer in the Department of English, has published Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City’s Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation.
Steve Pinkerton, a full-time lecturer in the Department of English, is the author of Blasphemous Modernism: The 20th-Century Word Made Flesh.
Cleveland Play House Archives, Kelvin Smith Library Special Collections
Ron Wilson, the Katharine Bakeless Nason Professor of Theater and director of the Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Play House MFA Acting Program, died on April 14, at age 70, shortly before this issue of art/sci went to press. A full tribute will appear in our next issue.
Wilson was a man of the theater in multiple senses, achieving distinction as an actor, director and playwright, movement coach, fight choreographer and mime. Just as important, he was an influential and beloved theater educator. Wilson chaired the Department of Theater from 2000 to 2015, and under his leadership, the MFA program became one of the nation’s preeminent graduate theater programs.
In the days following his death, former students took to Facebook with remembrances and expressions of thanks.
“He lived his life with conviction, honesty, discipline and love,” wrote Nicole Fitzpatrick (GRS ‘06). “His carefully cultivated curmudgeonly exterior fooled exactly no one—he had a heart as big as the sky and had the ability to both see and cultivate the best in everyone he met. I loved him as a mentor, teacher and friend, and I respect so much his stoicism and humor in the face of obstacles that would level most of us. . . . I shall not look upon his like again.”
Shirley Koller (WRC ’42) exhibited four pastel drawings at the 112th annual Little Pictures Show & Sale at the Providence Art Club in Rhode Island.
Richard Garwin (CIT ’47, HON ’16) was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom last fall in recognition of his contributions to defense and intelligence technologies through a decades-long research career.
William Heath (GRS ’66, ’71, American Studies), professor emeritus of English at Mount St. Mary’s University, is the editor of Conversations with Robert Stone.
David Sislowski (WRC ’76) has been named general counsel, senior vice president and secretary of Midwest Air Group.
Gina Gibney (WRC ’79, GRS ’82, theater), founder of the performing and social action dance company Gibney Dance, will receive the “Ernie” Award at the Dance/USA annual conference in June. The award honors individuals working in the dance field whose achievements have “significantly empowered artists and supported their creativity individually or as a community.” A story about Gibney appears in the Spring/Summer 2017 issue of think magazine.
Savvas Papacostas (CWR ’82), a professor in the School of Molecular Medicine at the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics, is the author of Madness and Leadership: From Antiquity to the New Common Era.
Nancy Sackson (GRS ’87, art history and museum studies) has been named chief philanthropy officer for the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
Geoff Wedig (CWR ’94) and fellow software engineer Nicholas Apostoloff received an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement for developing a system that transfers facial performances by real-life actors to convincing digital characters.
Heide L. Herrmann (CWR ’95, LAW ’98) was sworn in as a Superior Court Magistrate Judge for the District of Columbia.
Santina Protopapa (CWR ’00), winner of the 2015 Young Alumna of the Year Award from the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named director of educational partnerships for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.
William Doan (GRS ’99, American Studies) has been named director of the Penn State School of Theatre.
Thomas Frazier (GRS ’00, ’04, psychology) has been named chief science officer of Autism Speaks, an advocacy organization that promotes research into autism spectrum disorder, services for people with autism and greater public understanding of the disorder.
Britany L. Salsbury (CWR ’05) has been named associate curator of prints and drawings at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Lelund Durond Thompson (GRS ’06, theater) is the co-creator (with Jason Michael Webb) of The First Noel, a musical that appeared on the mainstage of the Apollo Theatre in Harlem in December 2016.
Xiaobo Chen (GRS ’05, chemistry), assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, is the editor (with Yi Cui) of Black TiO2 Nanomaterials for Energy Applications.
Gennifer Gibbs (CWR ’09, LAW ’12) has joined Benesch, a business law firm, as an associate in its Health Care & Life Sciences Practice Group.
Beth Hankins (GRS ’17, music education), director of the Lakewood High School Orchestra, was named as one of 10 finalists for the 2017 GRAMMY Music Educator Award.
Paige Klopfenstein (CWR ’17, NUR ’17), who majored in both theater and nursing as an undergraduate, appeared this spring in Dobama Theatre’s production of The Flick. The show reunited her with two faculty members from the Department of Theater: Visiting Assistant Professor Christopher Bohan was a fellow cast member, and Associate Professor Beth McGee was the dialect coach.
School and Degree Abbreviations
CIT Case Institute of Technology
CWR Undergraduates, 1989 and after
GRS School of Graduate Studies
HON Honorary Degree
LAW School of Law
NUR School of Nursing
WRC Western Reserve College
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The notes in this section are compiled from news releases, other publications and messages from alumni like you. We want to hear about milestones in your life. Please send your updates, with your graduation year, to artsci@cwru.edu.