2000: Rensselaer 1976 ClassNotes

March 2000

Scott Mackler has opened up his own consultancy, “Cleanroom Consulting” specializing in industrial sales & marketing, new product & market introductions, conceptual design planning and contamination control, leveraging off of his 23 years of industrial experience. He previously served as National Accounts Manager for Clestra Cleanroom. Scott’s business is located in Fayetteville, NY. Bryan Fisk has been named vice president of Hillier Engineering and Technologies, headquartered in Scranton, PA. He is responsible for the civil and structural departments including marketing, project management and office operations. Hillier E&T is a subsidiary of Hillier International located in Princeton, NJ.

As I prepare this column, we are completing the merger of our factory automation software company, Object Factory with Cimetrix, Incorporated headquartered in Salt Lake City, UT. The combined companies are now better positioned to “bringing the power of the PC to the factory floor”.

June 2000

Robert Goldsmith has enjoyed (endured?) another year in Longwood, Florida. He was appointed Manager of Assessment Services and is enjoying using his large R&D budget to develop a state-of-the art assessment process for middle managers at his company, DDI. Rusty Gordon left Chicago and is now in Pittsburgh working as the EDI Coordinator/Manager for Cutler-Hammer. Like Bob, Rusty "grew up" in Pittsburgh and is glad to be back with family and friends. He is planning to be very active in the local alumni club. Star Ault is working as a health care consultant for Kurt Salmon Associates. Her home base is in Queens, NY although she is more frequently on an airplane or at the customer site. She recently co-authored four articles that were published in the Journal of Healthcare Information Management.

Al Wargo is in the news again. He was named treasurer of Eastman Chemical Co in Kingsport, TN. He is continuing his duties as director of Eastman's investor relations department. Donna Kelly has completed her PhD in management with her area of concentration in entrepreneurship. She has accepted a faculty position with Babson College and lives with her husband, Larry, in Amherst, MA.

Check out our class web page at www.alumni.rpi.edu/services/class/1976. Please forward your suggestions and offers of assistance to help make this a useful source of information for our class.

September 2000

Congratulations to Richard Beach who received his Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Connecticut this year. His dissertation title was "Fully Implantable Miniaturized Telemetry Based Glucose Biosensor and Real-time Video Camera Implant for Tissue Biocompatibility Studies". Richard plans to continue his work at the UCONN Health Center on the telemetry system for remote biosensor monitoring and a fully implantable camera. This camera will be able to transmit live real-time images from the implanted in-vivo sensor tissue areas to TV sets on CATV Channel 59. Richard started taking night school courses at UCONN and soon realized that work at his former employer, Northeast Utilities, did not hold the attraction that the Biomedical Field did. He resides in Windsor, CT with his wife, Gina.

Since Richard's e-mail was the only input I received, I resorted to calling people. This is what I found.

Betsy Longendorfer completed her first 5K at the Ridgewood Run. She is also proud of her oldest son Dan who graduates from high school and will be attending Northwestern. Betsy was at her husband's (Steve Jackson '75) 25th reunion and met many old friends including a few lab partners. Betsy is the Software Development Manager for Crestron Electronics located in their new headquarters in Rockleigh, NJ. Crestron makes advanced remote control audio and video systems and has been growing rapidly. Steve Ashmead is Associate Director of Family Practice which has also been expanding. He laments not learning more about computer technology as he accessed some contact information from the Palm Pilot on his belt. Steve recently took a pilgrimage from Grand Rapids, MI to New York and stopped to visit Tom Masten in Jamesville, NY on his way back to campus. Tom recently adopted his third child, Ben adding to his family of two daughters, Katie and Sara. Steve Derby is up to his eyeballs in automation projects at Rensselaer. He is currently bringing two of his inventions to market this fall.

Our 25th reunion is fast approaching! The class reunion committee is organizing and starting to plan events. If you would like to help, contact Tom Charis or any other member of the reunion committee: Rusty Gordon, Kris Costa, Nancy Kippenhan, Steve Derby, or Betsy Longendorfer. The most important thing however, is to save the weekend of June 7-11, 2001! The real fun of a reunion is to see lots of classmates. Although it seems a long way off, the more of us who mark the date now, the more dear old friends and classmates we'll see in Troy. One of our immediate tasks is too get in touch with everyone and find our "lost" class members. Please check in at our class website (http://www.alumni.rpi.edu/services/class/1976) and see if your contact information is up to date. You will find information about fellow classmates, planning for our 25th reunion, and class notes from this column from the past ten years. We welcome your suggestions and plan to include other features that you find interesting.


Return to ClassNotes Index Michael Mino, Class Correspondent