Stephen Stearns to Speak at Commencement

Stephen Stearns

Stephen Stearns knows what it means to have a dream. And he knows what it means to make a dream come true. And better yet, he helps others achieve their dreams. As our graduates now head out to achieve their own goals, hearing from Dr. Stearns seems particularly appropriate.

Ignoring those who told him it would never work, in 1999, he created the New England Youth Theater in Brattleboro where year-round productions and classes include: Shakespeare, musicals, circus, melodrama, clowning, and technical theater. In the process, he has helped hundreds of youth discover and pursue their love of theater.

Stephen Stearns has been teaching, directing and performing as a professional clown, mime and actor for 30 years. He has a post doctorate degree in acting from England's famed London Academy (LAMDA). He received his MA in directing ('Best Director Award' 1968) and PhD in Elizabethan and Scandinavian Drama, both from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Prior to starting the New England Youth Theater, he taught college theatre at Bucks County Community College, Newtown, PA, then went to England for actor training and returned to the USA to perform in several Shakespeare Festivals (Oregon and Vermont). He worked as an equity actor in New York and trained with master mime, Tony Montanaro, at Celebration Mime Theatre in the mid-seventies. In addition, he has also had a solo clown/mime career while simultaneously creating the Horizons Project, a Federal Title IV funded program bringing Vermont artists into rural Vermont schools.

Summer Open House, Saturday, August 4th

August will mark the end of another great year here, but we're already looking forward to the next one. You can help a co-worker or friend be part of that by urging someone you know to attend our Open House on Saturday, August 4th. As a supportive alum, you are the best spokesperson the GC can have.

The event will kick-off at 10:30 a.m. and will run until 1:00 p.m. including lunch with students, alums, and faculty.

Participants will have the opportunity to:

• Learn about our programs
• Tour our facilities
• Talk about their career plans
• Meet with faculty, student, and alums
• Discuss their plans with admissions counselors
• Learn about financial aid

For more information, see http://gradcenter.marlboro.edu/news/openhouse.html.

Robin Ragle-Davis Launches New Firm

For some of our students, there's just no holding them down. And current BSMIS student Robin Ragle-Davis is one.

Recently, she announced the formation of rr.interactive.

Formerly known as robin ragle design the name change reflects a significant shift in the firm's direction, focus, and plans for future growth.

With more than a decade of experience working on a variety of interactive projects rr.interactive will help clients realize the full potential of any digital or web based project.

Robin Ragle-Davis, Principle, designed and developed the campaign website for the Deval Patrick and his successful bid for the Governorship of Massachusetts. She also designed through Alipes CME the current NikiTsongas.com.

Far from focusing merely on political sites, Robin has developed a number of e-commerce websites, online college applications, event registration applications and more. Robin's clients include a patent attorney firm in Boston Massachusetts, an architecture firm in Portland Maine, a medical consulting firm in New Orleans as well as a firm which manufactures and installs tennis court sensor equipment.

We wish you all the best, Robin, and take a bow for all your good work.

Admissions Office Having Busy Summer

Prospective students are still knocking on the Admissions Office door, and Bethany Lindsey and Don Parker are working to finalize the applications as we look toward September. Traditionally, August has seen heavy activity as prospects get the "back-to-school" mentality. If you know of someone who is in that mode, please recommend that the Admissions Office, 1-888-258-5665, be contacted immediately.

Class Notes

Paul Butler, MSIT '04 updated us recently: "Wow, it is hard to believe that I got my degree almost 3 years ago!

Well, I'm still with TD Banknorth Wealth Management (the latest iteration of a string of corporate agglomerations) - the TD standing for "Toronto Dominion" which now owns 100% of Banknorth.

TD Banknorth made me a full vice president, rare in the land of back office work, so I'll give them their due - I'm very involved with rolling out a new web access portal, along with analyzing web adaption rates and the components of our customer base that use on-line access to their investment accounts. Plus all the usual application support, data mining tasks, and fund accounting that I've done for many years.

I'm now overseeing vendor analysis and some management tasks for all of the many software vendors (portfolio management, portfolio modeling, investment performance, securities pricing, retirement plan administration, securities accounting, client relationship management, new business development etc. etc.) as well as making sure that all the systems we're paying for are being fully utilized and that the users are getting trained. See, all those IT management classes can really come in handy!

My wife and I are actually living together much of the time! I'm still based in Marlboro, VT and she is still in West Hartford, CT. but I'm now working part time out of our New Britain office so after almost 4 years of marriage we're making progress on the cohabitation end of things.

No, I haven't started my company yet but I have BIG PLANS!!! I really miss web application development believe it or not, and I've been managing a lot of database development at my day job. I had some serious medical issues in 2005-2006 but now I'm mostly cured so I'm back working hard again.

Hope to see you at the Grad Center soon!"

Craig Hannah, MSIE '03 sent us the following: "Three months ago I accepted a position as a Java Web Developer at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. It has required me to relocate from CT, where my house and family still are, but eventually I'll be fully here in the Boston area. The job is great. When I went through the MSIE program this was pretty much exactly the environment and work that I was hoping to find. My GradCenter experience prepared me well and now I get to continue my technical education with the added benefit of being paid to do it."

Marissa Marquez, ISM '00 emailed us: "I'm doing well in online food land. I started working as a technical producer for CHOW.com, an online food magazine and message board last year. It made it into Time Magazine's Top 50 websites of 2007: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1633488_1633458_1633463,00.html

CHOW is owned by CNET and we do have some job openings (Engineering Manager, Software Engineer (2), Associate Software Engineer) in San Francisco. I can give you more details if you want them."

Amy Crawford, ISM 2000 told us: "I've just completed a move from Johnson to Waterville, VT - all of 5 miles! Started a new job in the beginning of May as the ad designer for a local auction house. Not rocket science, but a reasonable commute and good hours. Hoping to ramp up the freelance work in the fall - right now I'm just having too much fun enjoying summer!"

Megan Tucker, ISM '00 brought us up-to-date: "I continue to work for the Community College of Vermont as the Assistant CTO on a wide variety of projects including Blackboard administration and Cold Fusion applications. My son, who some will remember as 7th grader during our ISM '99 year, will be starting his senior year in college this fall!"

Lucie deLaBruere, MSIE '00 passed along: "I invite colleagues from Grad Center to email projects and innovative educational technology ideas that she can feature in her post as edublogger for www.InfiniteThinking.org sponsored by Google and West-Ed. I also invite reader comments to past posts. My website www.LearningWithLucie.com also includes description of recent workshops and conference presentations including my recent presentation at the National Education Computing Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. "Redesigning Research with Social Bookmarking Software" recieved many positive technorati hits.

Along with full time work as a tech integration specialist at St. Albans City School, I have expanded my captsone work with women in Technology "Tech Savvy Girls" (www.techsavvygirls.com) to include other digital equity iniatives such as Tech Savvy Kids (www.TechSavvyKids.com) and a professional development project entitled TechSavvy Learning Communities, which focuses on bridging the digital divide between teachers and the digital natives they teach."

Erin Weisburger, MSIT '05 added: "Nothing terribly new here in NYC... still working on the web team at the Office of Court Administration (www.nycourts.gov). Been doing some freelance work building a new website for a film production company, PureJem Pictures (www.purejempictures.com), and will be starting work with another production company, Penguin Multimedia, in the next few weeks. Aside from that everything's business as usual. The city is super hot and humid!!! Blah! Yay for Harry Potter and air conditioning! But, we did book our first real vacation for November, something to look forward to! 13 days in Peru hiking the Inka Trail and hanging out in the Amazon. Can't wait. Even so, I miss New England like crazy!

Dale P Green, ISM '03 sent good news: "Loving my job at General Tours in Keene was the web marketing manager. Everything I've ever loved about web marketing with the right group of people to work with! My daughter is going off to college in August. She'll be a freshman at Randolph Macon Women's College in Lynchburg VA. Not a baby anymore. Two new offspring - EverGreen's Gryffindor Witch, CGC aka Molly and EverGreen's Canis Major aka Sirius. Watch for Sirius in the obedience competition ring! "

The GCAlum

So… - after a few months of testing and tweaking - (credits given on the site to those key players - MM, BA, JK especially).
Jen Kramer - whose initials many of you will have recognized, has many wonderful sayings. Or at least three. One of them is, when questioned as to a code fix, a management concept, or a general "How you doing Jen?", will often preface a detailed response with the phrase "It Depends…." Another one she uses - to encourage students and remind them of the limitless possibilities of web/Internet technologies - will on occasion state "Done is Better than Perfect"
In that spirit, we present the newest member of our web family - www.gcalum.com
Unregistered users can browse some, but for real interactivity: what the young guns are calling Social Networking!! - send me a request for an alum account.
Jobs, events, announcements, discussion fora, and many other features… Contact kbell@gradcenter.marlboro.edu for a user name and password - the first ten people to post will win a GC-branded prize.