1973
Claudia Covalt Auger (AB) is retired and residing in the wonderful living museum of Bali, Indonesia. Bali has always been a magical meeting ground for people of many worlds: Anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson spent time here in the 1930s, as did Miguel Covarrubias, whose legendary self-illustrated Island of Bali remains the bible on cultural tradition for many scholars. Baliphiles are also comprised of uncounted writers, painters, musicians, filmmakers, and dancers, including notables like H.G. Wells, Charlie Chaplin, and Noel Coward. The island also teems with inquisitive folks who are not so notable—like me. But we are distinguished for at least two things: our good luck in having come here, and our ingenuity in figuring out how to stay.

1975
Kit W. Wesler (AB) is professor of archaeology at Murray State University in western Kentucky. The summer of 2009 marked the first year since 1980 that he has not had a field project. Instead, he supervised moving the MSU Archaeology Laboratory to a newer and better facility than it had occupied for nearly 30 years (air conditioning! elevator! squirrel proofing!). Also, as of July 1, he has taken on the roles of graduate coordinator for the Department of Geosciences and director of the Mid-America Remote Sensing Center.

1977
Bert Jacobson (PhD) is project director for the Illinois Community College Sustainability Network. He has been selected as one of 12 Higher Education Association Sustainability Consortium (HEASC) Sustainability Fellows for 2009.

1980
Kenneth Carstens (PhD) recently won the Kentucky Historical Society’s 2009 Distinguished Lifetime Dedication Award for his work in archaeology and history in Kentucky.

1982
Stephen Easley (PhD) has worked for New Mexico Governor Richardson as a high-level government IT executive for 6.5 years. His wife, Sue, is working as a school counselor in Santa Fe. His older daughter is working on her PhD in communications disorders at Northwestern; she is married to a lawyer. His younger daughter works as a nuclear medicine technologist in Albuquerque; she is married to an electrical engineer. Recently, he was happy to catch up on the news with fellow alums Paul Garber, Tom Przybeck, and Darwin Horn. For the record, he says, Garber has not got any better looking.

1982
Linda Nichols (PhD) (see article) and Dr. Jennifer Martindale-Adams headed the REACH VA Project, the first national clinical translation of a proven dementia behavioral intervention. This project won the 2009 Rosalynn Carter Leadership in Caregiving Award.

1984
Suzanne (Mears) Damadio (BS) is the administrative head and elementary director at Patuxent Montessori School, a privately owned Montessori school she and her husband started in 1992. Recently, she was nominated and selected to participate in the annual Oxford Roundtable on Early Childhood Education in Oxford, England, where she presented a paper on early childhood literacy that has since been used in several education courses. She lives in Maryland, just outside Washington, DC, with her husband; she has two children, ages 26 and 29.

1985
Neathery Batsell Fuller (MA) and Michael Fuller (see 1987) were jointly awarded the 2009 Joukowsky Award by the Archaeological Institute of America in recognition of their local, national, and international service in archaeology.

1986
Steve Taxman (AB) has been married for 19 years to Debra (Hertzig) Taxman (AB 1987, biology); they have two children, Emilee (12) and Nicole (2). He is a jazz announcer for 90.7 FM, WNCU, from 8pm-11pm EST on Saturdays, and he planned to climb another 14,000-foot peak in Colorado in August.

1987
Michael Fuller (PhD) received a summer fellowship for 2009 to develop a curriculum module on Slavic archaeology for the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He and Neathery Batsell Fuller were jointly awarded the 2009 Joukowsky Award by the Archaeological Institute of American in recognition of their local, national, and international service in archaeology. He continues to direct a service learning archaeological conservation project at Blake Mound in Chesterfield, Missouri.

1992
Jason Mark Anderman (AB) has founded WhichDraft.com, where users can automatically create, share, compare, and build contracts online for free.

1993
Carrie (Kelley) Bonanno (AB) has an 18-month-old daughter who keeps her even busier than school did!
Carol Diaz-Granados (PhD) has a chapter in Cave Archaeology in the Eastern Woodlands: Essays in Honor of Patty Jo Watson, published in 2008 by the University of Tennessee Press. She received the Dean’s Faculty Award in 2009 from Washington University’s University College in Arts & Sciences.
Rebecca Torstrick (PhD) has been promoted to professor of anthropology at Indiana University South Bend effective July 1, 2009. Her new book, Culture and Customs of the Arab Gulf States, co-authored with Elizabeth Faier, was published by Greenwood Press in January 2009. Her other great news is that the department has received approval to offer a bachelor’s degree in anthropology in an innovative, joint program with the sister campus at IU Northwest; the first students begin the program this fall.

1994
Carol Maxwell (PhD) is editing Namibian women’s stories into radio scripts for the Women’s Leadership Center in Namibia, and will be editing a volume of new works.

1995
Elisa Vinson Borah (AB) is completing her doctoral degree in social work at the University of Texas at Austin in 2009. She is project coordinator for a clinical trial evaluating brief motivational intervention to reduce alcohol abuse and related injuries. She lives with her husband, Adam Borah, and two children, Madeline (6) and Zachary (4), in Georgetown, Texas.

1996
Benjamin Z. Freed (PhD) is now a tenure-track professor at Eastern Kentucky University. Previously he was lecture-track faculty at Emory University.

1997
In 2008, Fusun Ertug (PhD) moved from Istanbul to the countryside where she bought land in a small, very old historical town, Iznik (Nicea in Byzantian era), about 2.5 hours southeast of Istanbul in the province of Bursa. Her dream of applying her ethnobotanical knowledge to growing fruits and vegetables is coming true. She hopes this peaceful land of nine acres near the Phragmites reeds of Lake Iznik will provide her a fieldwork area as well as a place to read and write during the winter. She also hopes it will become a workshop location for ethnobotanical courses. Anyone who would like to work in the garden to grow organic vegetables or medicinal plants, volunteer to work in the quince orchard, or plan a workshop for plant–human relationships is welcome. Address: Orhangazi Caddesi, Kumbasi Yolu no 109 Iznik-Bursa.
Gary Schwartz (PhD) recently received tenure and was promoted to associate professor at Arizona State University.

1998
Michelle Singleton (PhD) is associate professor of anatomy at Midwestern University and course director for the College of Health Sciences Gross Anatomy/Embryology course. She continues to serve as book review editor for the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (volunteer reviewers welcomed!) and associate editor for the Journal of Human Evolution. She and her partner, Scott Schneider, were married in a private civil ceremony in March 2009.

2000
Lise Byars (AB and JD 2003) received a Master of Arts in Anthropology from The Ohio State University in June 2000. Her thesis was entitled “Conceptualizing Vulnerability: The Impact, Meaning, and the Human Response to Social Catastrophe.” She became engaged to fellow Washington University alumnus Michael George in February 2009; the wedding is planned for July 2010.
Chet Cain (PhD) has been appointed to direct a study abroad program in Tanzania for the Associated College of the Midwest for the fall 2009 term. An interesting aspect of the program is that, after studying Kiswahili, human origins, and African ecology at the University of Dar es-Salaam, the student must complete a small independent project during a six-week field trip in the north of the country. Cain will be teaching the research course to prepare students to conduct ethnographic, archaeological, geological, ecological, or other research.

2001
In August 2009, Brooke (Fisher) Liu (AB) will join the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland as an assistant professor of public relations. Previously, Liu was an assistant professor at DePaul University.
Jessica Maykopet (AB) completed her Master of Social Work in 2007 and moved with her 8-year-old son, Kollin, to Ewa Beach, Hawaii, in 2009.
Monica McDonald (AB) received a Master of Science in Ecology and Systematic Biology from San Francisco State University in December 2008. She worked as a molecular lab technician at the California Academy of Sciences until July 2009 when she and her husband, Scott Johnson (EN 2001), moved to St. Louis so she can pursue a PhD in anthropology at Washington University.

2002
Amy Crystal Regen (AB) recently finished a residency in pediatric dentistry and will be working in a private practice pediatric dental office in Boston, Massachusetts.
Brian M. Howell (PhD) just finished his eighth year teaching anthropology at Wheaton College. Last year he received tenure and spent this past year on sabbatical. His kids (Hannah, 13; Samuel, 9; and Benjamin, 6) were all in school so he spent the year holed up in a library carrel, working on a book on short-term Christian service travel (a.k.a., “short term missions”) and a textbook on anthropology designed for use by Christian colleges. His first book, Christianity in the Local Context: Southern Baptists in the Philippines, based on his dissertation work, came out with Palgrave Macmillan last year. His biggest lesson thus far: Do not let the publisher choose your title.
Carolyn Lesorogol (PhD) (see article) is a faculty member at Washington University’s George Warren Brown School of Social Work, where she received tenure in 2009. In 2008, her book on research among Samburu pastoralists titled Contesting the Commons: Privatizing Pastoral Lands in Kenya was published by the University of Michigan Press. She continues to work with the Samburu, examining issues of land use and social norms; she is also doing some work in Madagascar (with fellow Washington University graduate Lou Brown) on community conservation.
David Saxon (AB) was married to Katie Moorhead on May 30, 2009. He graduated from medical school and started a residency in internal medicine at the University of Michigan in June.
Erin Stiles (PhD) moved to a new position at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she is an assistant professor of anthropology. She is expecting her book, Ethnographic Studies of Islamic Judicial Reasoning, to come out with Palgrave in fall 2009. She married Ed Allen in December 2008.
Lindsay Spence McAllister (BSBA) recently published her thesis entitled “The Effects of the Medicare Modernization Act on the Oncology Community: The Evolution of Cancer Care in America” and completed her master’s degree in public policy and administration at California Lutheran University.

2003
Amish Desai (AB) is a second-year medical student at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. After a year of working for Chicago Health Corps (an AmeriCorps branch) as an HIV/STD test counselor, he enrolled in UIC as part of the graduating class of 2012. He is co-president of AMSA (American Medical Student Association), which looks to help students not only become better physicians, but, just as important, become aware of the social, cultural, economic, ethical, and spiritual issues surrounding health and disease. This is where his anthropology background has come into play with the medical sciences; it has given him a critical eye that he hopes to continue to use and strengthen over the years.
Current activities of Myron Shekelle (PhD) include a sequence for the BBC’s Life, a follow-up to the Planet Earth series. Like the latter, it will have 10 parts with part 9 dedicated to primates with a short tarsier sequence. It is scheduled to be released this year. Along with Sharon Gursky, he is guest editor of the International Journal of Primatology’s special issue on tarsiers, scheduled for next year.

2004
Melissa Halverson (AB) and Daniel Perrault (AB) married in May 2008. She is receiving her certificate in museum studies in June 2009 through the University of Washington in Seattle.
Jenna M. Hamlin (PhD) was married December 6, 2008.
Thomas Witholt (AB) recently graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a master’s in cultural studies and became a University Fellow in English at Syracuse this fall.

2005
Since graduating, Michael Armijo (AB) has worked in the Washington University Office of Undergraduate Admissions recruiting students and coordinating events on campus. This September he became a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. He is interested in researching the transition from high school to college, as well as college access and success for low-income and first-generation college students. He also will be involved with research for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
During the past year at the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University, Alena Groopman (AB) worked on the collaborative effort to develop and launch the new Asia and Pacific Alliance to Eliminate Viral Hepatitis (APAVH) with the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. APAVH is a sustainable global coalition to eliminate the transmission of viral hepatitis and to reduce the complications of chronic viral hepatitis through advocacy, education, vaccination, and treatment and by sharing best practices and developing regional and country-specific goals; APAVH also promotes the implementation of WHO regional recommendations.
Sarah Katz (AB) completed her JD at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in May 2008 and is an associate at Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman, a New York-based law firm specializing in corporate litigation.
After completing her Fulbright year in Azerbaijan, Irina Levin (AB) (see article) moved back to New York to begin the anthropology PhD program at New York University.
Jill Mead (AB) recently finished her 2007–09 Peace Corps service in Paraguay.
Graham Smokoski (AB) received a Master of City and Regional Planning (MCRP) from Rutgers University in May 2009. He married fellow Washington University anthropology alumna Jessica Sperling (AB 2004) in July 2008.
Darren H. Weiss (AB) was married to Nina Shapiro (now Weiss), a fellow Washington University graduate (AB 2005), in July 2007.

2006
Robby Boyer (AB) just graduated with his master’s in urban planning from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he will continue to work toward his PhD. He has begun research on sustainable urban development and the use of dynamic modeling systems to enhance local and regional planning, decisionmaking, and stakeholder participation in policy development.
Robyn d’Avignon (AB) was a 2008–09 Fulbright Fellow in anthropology at the Centre d’Anthropologie Culturelle, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, where she studied recent African migration to Belgium. She also served as the focal point for a research project on Rwandan migration to Belgium for the International Organization for Migration in Brussels, where she worked for the IOM’s Migration for Development in Africa program. This year she is starting a PhD program in anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her studies will be funded by the University of Michigan and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. The focus of her studies will be mineral resource extraction and migration in West Africa (Guinea, Senegal).
Mallorie Hulse (AB) graduated with a Master of Public Health in January 2009 from the Boston University School of Public Health. She received Boston University’s 2009 Colton Prize for Excellence in Epidemiology and begins its epidemiology doctoral program this fall. She married fellow WUSTL alumnus Adam Summerville on September 19 in St. Louis.
Erin Jones (AB) graduated with a Master of Science in Public Health Microbiology and Emerging Infectious Disease from George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services in May 2009 and began working with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in July as a CDC/CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellow.
Michelle Mergler (AB) married fellow Washington University alumnus George Hughes-Strange (AB 2006) on June 27 in St. Louis.
Kathleen Muldoon (PhD) was recently awarded an American Association of Physical Anthropologists Professional Development Grant for work on a new fossil site in Madagascar.
Christine Tourkakis (AB) graduated this May with her MA in anthropology from Iowa State University, where she worked with Dr. Jill Pruetz. Last summer she conducted her thesis research, examining the postural and locomotor behavior of chimpanzees at Dr. Pruetz’s field site in Fongoli, Senegal. She has recently been hired as a keeper in the Primate Unit of the Saint Louis Zoo and will marry fellow Washington University alumnus Ryan Rakel (2006) in April 2010 in Graham Chapel.
Chelsea Warren (AB) just received her JD from the University of Michigan Law School and will be joining the litigation department at Jenner & Block, LLP, in Chicago in November.

2007
Danya Cheskis-Gold (AB) is going on her third year in New York City and plans on staying quite a while!
Andrea Holmes (AB) published a research article in the June issue of the American Journal of Primatology. She is beginning a master’s program in anthropology at Northern Illinois University.
Sara Esther Lageson (AB) was accepted to the University of Minnesota’s PhD program in sociology, beginning this fall. She also presented at the American Sociological Association’s annual conference in August in San Francisco with Dr. Christopher Uggen on a study she co-authored called “The Effect of Race and Criminal Record on Employability.”

2008
Caroline Boeke (AB) traveled to Bogota, Colombia, this summer to conduct a birth weight validation study in collaboration with her advisor, Dr. Eduardo Villamor. She is collecting gestation and birth information in hospitals for a subsample of children from the Bogota Schoolchildren Cohort Study that has been running since 2006.
Maria C. Bruno (PhD) is currently in La Paz, Bolivia, conducting analysis of paleoethnobotanical remains from Loma Salvatierra, Beni, a mound site dating between AD 400–1400. This work is being sponsored by the German Archaeological Institute in collaboration with Dr. Heiko Prumers. Next spring she will be a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. She will be conducting research on the domestication of the Andean pseudoceral Kanawa (Chenopodium pallidicaule) under the supervision of Dr. Bruce Smith.
After graduation, Joseph Ficek (AB) did a summer internship working with capuchin monkeys at the Comparative Cognition Laboratory at Yale. After that, he spent the fall working as a research assistant at the Cayo Santiago primate field station in Puerto Rico. While there, he participated in a 10K marathon at the Teodoro Moscoso bridge in San Juan. In August, he began working on a master’s degree in psychology with a concentration in animal behavior and conservation at CUNY Hunter.
Bradley Potts (BS) is enrolled in the University of Leicester’s School of Archaeology and Ancient History for a master’s degree in archaeology and heritage. He has a new baby boy, Timothy Ronal Potts, born November 8, 2008.
Prerna Raj (AB) is pursuing graduate studies at Georgetown University for a one-year master’s program in physiology. She will be applying to medical school for the following year (to matriculate in fall 2009).
Kevin Vinson (BS) has moved over to Washington University’s Sever Institute of Engineering to work on his Master of Information Systems Management with a Graduate Certificate in Project Management. He plans to finish in the summer of 2011.