Jerry Berka ’63, of Bay Shore, N.Y., was honored, as a man of service in his community with an administration building named in his honor. Berka, a member of the board of education for 37 years, has served as chairman of the student aid fund. He comments on his long service: When I returned home after the Navy JAG, I wanted to do something for the community. After you stay around and see a lot of good things happening, you want to keep contributing. A geology major at Wesleyan, he received his law degree from Cornell.
Alan Brewster ’64 was named deputy dean at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES). Brewster joined F&ES in 2000 as associate dean for management and resources. In addition to his duties as deputy dean, Brewster leads a program to provide training on sustainable development for municipal officials in China. Since 1997, he has also served on a working group and task force of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. He holds a master in public administration degree in economics and public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Musician Darius Brubeck ’69 received a Rockefeller Foundation residency fellowship, spending November at the Bellagio, Italy, Conference Center in composition and collegial exchange with other artists and scholars. His upcoming winter months will also be filled: “I’ll be taking part in concerts with my father, Dave, and brothers Chris and Dan in London with the London Symphony Orchestra in December, with some dates in Germany following. Will visit New York and vicinity mid-January for the International Association of Jazz Educators Conference, then a Memphis concert Jan. 29,” he says. For further information on Brubeck and his family of musicians, please visit www.brubeckmusic.com.
Kenneth Schweller ’68, professor of computer science and psychology at Buena Vista University in Iowa, has been named chair of the board of the Great Ape Trust. The trust is a scientific research facility in Des Moines, dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools, and intelligence, and to the preservation of endangered great apes in their natural habitats. The trust is home to a colony of seven bonobos, and will collaborate with the organization Bonobo Hope, also in Des Moines, to fundraise for the international effort to support bonobos around the world. Schweller, who majored in English at Wesleyan, received his PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Illinois. He teaches courses in artificial intelligence, software engineering, compiler theory, and programming languages at Buena Vista.
Jerry M. Melillo ’65, Distinguished Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), was named chair of a joint public-private sector committee that will produce the next National Climate Assessment report for the United States. Melillo, co-author of the landmark report to Congress, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” issued by the USGCRP, was also a lead author on both the 1990 and 1995 Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and he served in President Clinton’s Office of Science and Technology Policy from 1996–97. He has been on the scientific staff at MBL since 1976, and is a professor of biology at Brown University. At Wesleyan, he majored in biology and then earned his MAT in 1968, followed by his doctorate from Yale. His research focuses on the impacts of human activities on the biogeochemistry of terrestrial ecosystems, and modeling analysis of the feedbacks and impacts of climate change.
Alfred S. Joseph III ’65 was appointed by the governor of Kentucky to serve on the state’s Oral History Commission, a nationally recognized program to record and preserve the diverse stories that are part of Kentucky’s history. Additionally, he received the 2008 Commercial REACH Award from the Greater Kentucky Chapter of the March of Dimes for his contributions to commercial real estate and to the community. Joseph, counsel with Stites & Harbison in Louisville, Ky., joined the firm in 1983 and focuses on complex development projects, affordable housing, commercial financing transactions, general real estate law, zoning, and insurance. He is a fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers. A government major at Wesleyan, he earned his JD from the University of Michigan.
Charles Work ’62, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Chicago-based McDermott, Will & Emery, was named by Legal Times magazine as one of their “90 Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Last 30 Years” in a cover story by that title. Cited as one of the 30 “visionaries” in the field, he was one of the earliest leaders of a firm to grow his office through lateral hiring. In his 14 years as managing partner, Work increased the office from 12 lawyers to 117, most of whom were partners or associates previously affiliated with other local firms or government agencies. The office now has 250 lawyers and, in terms of revenue, ranks number eight locally. His so-called “No jerks” rule was also touted as one of the first, explained in his own words as: “Life is too short not to go to work with friends.”
Dr. Michael R. Rosen ’60, the Gustavus A. Pfeiffer Professor of Pharmacology, Professor of Pediatrics, and Director of the Center for Molecular Therapeutics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in New York, has been elected professor honoris causa of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the leading scientific body of the country. Founded in 1724, it is one of the oldest such organizations in the world and awards its degrees to only the most eminent foreign scientists. He has focused his research interests on the prevention and treatment of cardiac arrhythmias. In the 1970s, the National Institutes of Health and the Soviet Ministry of Health started joint research in sudden cardiac death, and by the late 1980s he was spending a significant portion of his time working with Russian scientists in Moscow and New York. His work is credited with increasing our understanding of how best to provide therapy for hearts that have developed arrhythmias.
Peter Sipples ’64, an attorney and standout athlete in high school and college, was inducted into the Middletown, Conn., Sports Hall of Fame. He coached both soccer and baseball at Xavier High School, soccer at the University of Hartford, baseball in three different twilight leagues, and officiated high school and college soccer for 20 years. He is a three-year letter winner in both soccer and baseball at Wesleyan, and his scoring record of 33 goals in one season stood from 1963 to 1995. He was an English major at Wesleyan.
Gil Seeley ’60, the James W. Rogers Professor of Music at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., received the Governor’s Arts Award for his dedication to furthering choral arts in the state, including his artistic direction of the Oregon Repertory Singers. “Music may be the most intangible of the arts, but in my years at Lewis & Clark, I’ve enjoyed teaching my students about what an exciting and uniquely challenging study it can be,” Seeley said. He also noted: “It’s great to see that the state is invested in supporting the artistic community.”
