Sasha Chanoff ’94, executive director of Mapendo International, is a recipient of a 2007 Draper Richards Foundation fellowship, a prestigious award given to emerging social change organizations throughout the United States and the world. Mapendo, a lifeline for forgotten refugees, received the support of lead refugee officials from the U.N., the U.S. government, other foundations, and experts across the world.
Awards are rapidly accumulating for Lisa Chedekel ’82, after her series “Mentally Unfit, Forced to Fight“ appeared in The Hartford Courant. Recipient of both a George Polk Award for military reporting and the Selden Ring Award for investigative journalism, the series focuses on the flaws in the U.S. military’s treatment of soldiers with mental illness. The series also was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. In a WESeminar on award-winning journalism during Reunion/Commencement 2007 moderated by editor and colleague Dan Haar ’81, Chedekel noted that the US military has, since her article appeared, increased its screening procedures in efforts to protect soldiers suffering mental health issues.
Wesleyan Visiting Writer Alexander Chee ’89 was one of 10 authors recently named winners of the Whiting Writers’ Award, given annually since 1985 by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation to “emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise.” Chee, a fiction writer, is the author of Edinburgh (Picador, 2002). An English major at Wesleyan, he is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Chee makes his home in New York City.
Donald Clippinger ’66, an award–winning writer with wide experience in the racing industry, was named communications consultant for the National Steeplechase Association (NSA). He had retired as editorial director of Thoroughbred Times Company. Clippinger, whom NSA President Guy Torsilieri praised for his “thorough knowledge of steeplechase racing and its participants,” had been the racing writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and editor of The Thoroughbred Record. In 1996, he won the Eclipse Award for an article that appeared in the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred. With Curtis L. Barrett, Ph.D., he is the co-author of Winners! The Story of Alcohol and Drug-Abuse Programs in the Horse Racing Industry. Clippinger is a founding director and treasurer of the Winners Federation, a nonprofit dedicated to combating addictions in the horse racing environment.
Film location scout Bob Craft ’76 and his team won the 2008 California On Location Award (COLA), honoring their superior work on Eagle Eye. The other nominees included the scouts with Hancock, Valkyrie, and Milk. Although the story for Eagle Eye was set in the Midwest, most of the film was shot in Los Angeles. “It took a team of location scouts to make a movie as big as Eagle Eye,” says Craft. “Each person had certain locations to find and manage. One of my locations was the boyhood home of Shia LaBeouf. It took six weeks—and looking at more than 60 homes—before we found the right location, in Long Beach.” If you saw the film but can’t remember much about this setting, there’s a reason: “Except for a small interior scene, it was cut from the movie. Such is the life of a location manager,” Craft adds.
Bob Coleman ’68 received the “Distinguished Eagle,” awarded by the national Boy Scout organization to those former Eagle Scouts who have proved exemplary in both business careers and community service. An executive director of Morgan Stanley in San Francisco, Coleman also is president of the Piedmont Boy Scout Council, president of the Piedmont Language School, as well as president of the American Fondouk Animal Hospital in Fez, Morocco, which provides free medical care to more than 20,000 animals per year. At Wesleyan, he was a College of Social Studies major; he received his MBA from Harvard.
The Massachusetts Secretary of Public Safety and State Fire Marshal, along with the Task Force on Fire and Building Safety and the Department of Fire Services honored Edward V. Colbert III ’89 as instrumental in the passage of a law they consider a landmark. A reception for Colbert last September marked the second anniversary of the Chapter 304 of the Acts of 2004, An Act Relative to Fire Safety in the Commonwealth. Called “the sprinkler law” and inspired by a horrific nightclub fire in Rhode Island that left 100 dead and more than 200 injured, this law states that nightclubs in Massachusetts with a capacity of more than 100 people must have an automatic sprinkler system installed. As an undergraduate, Colbert was a government major. He earned a Juris Doctorate degree from Suffolk University Law School in 1994.
Alwyn Cohall ’76, M.D., director of the Harlem Health Promotion Center, recently received a $4.375-million award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the impact of Web-based interactive health communication on improving health promotion in Harlem. Additionally, as director of Project STAY (Services to Assist Youth), he also received a $2.125-million award from the New York State Department of Health. “A unique component of the program is the formation of a mobile health team, who provide off-site education and screening services to youth in community sites, such as alternative high schools and alternatives-to-incarceration programs,” he notes. Affiliated with the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, he received his medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentisty of New Jersey.
Gordon J. Coburn ’86 has been promoted to Chief Financial and Operating Officer for Cognizant Technology Solution Corporation in Teaneck, N.J. He has had over sixteen years of experience in the IT industry. After majoring in history at Wesleyan he earned his MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth and is a member of the Board of Directors of the ITC Group in the IT Services Division of the ITAA.
John H. Coatsworth ’63 was appointed dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He had joined the Columbia faculty in 2006. He is the author or editor of seven books on the history of economic development and international relations of Latin America. Previously he served as the founding director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard?now the largest center of its kind in the world. A past president of the American Historical Association, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and president-elect of the Latin American Studies Association. In 2005, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
