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Alumni Profile: Amy Liu, Deputy Director, Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy
by Lee Prater Yost
30s
Marguerite Shee (BS39, MA42) of Plantation, Fla., enjoys taking exercise and writing classes. She tells jokes in talent shows and says, "Keeping busy keeps me healthy."
40s
Rowena Walker Markham (BS42) of Pasadena, Calif., has been a Presbyterian pastor's wife for 41 years.
50s
Genevieve Mahre Alexander (MA50) of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, retired after 35 years of teaching high school business courses.
Lores J. Borke (BS54) of Cupertino, Calif., retired after 32 years as a learning disabilities and ESL first-grade teacher at Vinci Park School in San Jose.
Ann Wells Kelly (BS54) of Phoenix retired after a teaching career for children with learning disabilities.
Evelyn Ransdell Richer (BS54) of North Barrington, Ill., a retired teacher, serves on her Northwestern reunion class committee, the board of the Chicago Drama league, is a member of the John Evans Club and chairs the Barrington Community Association of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is active in the American Association of University Women, in garden, bridge and book groups and in Northwestern-sponsored travel.
Lucy Jane Moore Block (MA55) of Austin, a retired elementary school teacher, has been married to Nelson (EB42, GSM54) for 60 years. They are parents of Stephen C. (EB68) and Jean Warren.
Stanley Krippner (MS57, PhD61) of San Francisco received the Ashley Montagu Peace Prize at the 11th Annual Peace and Conflict Resolution Conference.
60s
William W. Joyce (MA60, PhD64) of East Lansing, Mich., professor of education and deputy director of Canadian Studies at Michigan State University, was a guest editor of the spring 2003 issue of the Michigan Social Studies Journal, published by the Michigan Council for the Social Studies.
Elizabeth M. Mittelsteadt (MA62) of LaCrosse, Wis., teaches piano and organ in her home studio.
Roycealee Johnson Wood (C62, MA64) of Lake Bluff, Ill., was appointed Lake County Regional Superintendent of Schools for a four-year term.
Susan Firestone Hahn (WCAS63, MA65) of Winnetka, Ill., poet, playwright and the editor of Northwestern's TriQuarterly magazine, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievements in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishments. Hahn is the author of five books of poetry, two of which, Holiday and Mother In Summer, were named among the "Best Books of the Year" by the Chicago Tribune.
Joseph Karlson (MA63) of Chicago, a retired high school math teacher, enjoys activities with the NU Club of Chicago.
Kenneth W. Thorson (BS, Nav63) of Richmond was appointed Virginia's tax commissioner in May 2002. Previously he was executive director of a War on Poverty agency and held a commission as a naval officer. He is married to Eve Moses Thorson (J62).
Robert B. Townsend Jr. (MA64) of Gurnee, Ill., retired as associate professor of sociology and anthropology at the College of Lake County after 30 years. He was the first teacher hired by the college in 1969. His entire teaching career spanned 43 years. While at Northwestern, Norman Bowers (deceased) was his adviser.
Penelope Berlet (BS66) of Evanston, curator of education at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian in Evanston, attended a workshop on "Using Museum Collections with Young Children" at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. The museum was awarded Evanston's Mayor's Award for the Arts for 2003.
Michael M. Buckner (BS66) of Akron retired after more than 36 years of teaching. In the summer of 2003 he began work at an Akron golf course.
Laval Wilson (PhD67) of East Orange, N.J., was appointed East Orange's school superintendent.
Lee E. Hanson (WCAS68, BS70) of Clayton, Mo., was named associate vice chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis.
70s
Kathryn Barrath Tooredman (BS70, MS76, PhD81) of Palatine, Ill., was named vice president for human resources at National-Louis University in Wheeling, Ill. She and her husband, David (McC69), have a son, Scott, and a daughter, Jessica (McC01).
Jane Gaines (BS71, PhD82) of Durham, N.C., an associate professor and director of the Duke University Art Museum, was named a 2003-04 Radcliffe fellow. Gaines is writing a historical investigation of the work of women in the international motion picture industry from 1895 to the end of the silent film era.
Michael K. Jones (PhD71) of Greensboro, N.C., a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has twice been president of the Northwestern Alumni Club in North Carolina. He writes a column for Patriot Newspaper on education and business interaction called "Ask Dr. J."
Darrell Lund (BS71) of Tenafly, N.J., signed a three-year contract to head the Tenafly School District, his second post-retirement job.
William Prince McLemore (PhD71) of Cordova, Tenn., a tour guide for the National Civil Rights Museum and former professor of Governors State University in University Park, Ill., traveled with his wife, Elsie, to Antarctica, the seventh continent they have visited.
Ronald C. Riley (BS71, L76) of Olympia Fields, Ill., was promoted to colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve in October 2002. In his role as a military judge advocate he oversees the legal services provided to the members of the facilities engineer group based in Darien, Ill.
Richard Wedemeyer (PhD74) of Three Rivers, Mich., was named the 2002 recipient of the President's Medallion at Glen Oaks Community College in Centreville, Mich., where he teaches.
Jim Blazevich (BS75, MA78) of Matthews, N.C., has started a sales and marketing firm in Charlotte, N.C., called the Blaze Group.
Jan S. Half (BS75) of San Mateo, Calif., promotes educational programs sponsored by NASA Ames and two nonprofit organizations, Tech Corps and Resource Area for Teachers.
Gloria Peace (PhD75) of Olympia Fields, Ill., is professor emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University.
Clement Craig Kopstain (MS78) of Mount Prospect, Ill., a former U.S. Navy captain and Middle East analyst and Desert Shield/Desert Storm veteran, has appeared four times on "Beyond the Beltway with Bruce DuMont," a nationally broadcast weekly panel show on WLS-AM and Channel 20 (PBS) in Chicago. A world traveler of 97 countries, he manages Community Education Travel, a worldwide group educational travel program. Craig and his wife, Judy, are parents of Lori Kristine (WCAS89) and Eric (WCAS95, KSM01).
Deborah Fagen Lee (BS78) of Highwood, Ill., is the hospice clinical coordinator for the Lake County office of Palliative Care Center and Hospice of the North Shore.
80s
Ross D. Peterson (BS88) of Washington, D.C., is vice president for business and government relations for a public affairs firm in Alexandria, Va. He and his wife, Amanda, are parents of Nathaniel David and Margaret.
90s
William E. Hook (BS90) of Lockport, Ill., is an assistant principal at Morrill School in Chicago. He and his wife, Diane, are parents of Tommy, Nick and Michael.
Robin N. Black (MS93) of Chicago, director of government affairs for the Chicago Board of Education, received a fellowship from the German Marshall Fund to travel through Europe and learn about European education policy.
Dan Fouts (MS93) of Romeoville, Ill., a teacher and director of professional development at Maine West High School in Des Plaines, co-founded Minduniversity, a distance learning academy that offers correspondence technology courses to the K-12 community.
Lisa Michel Stone (WCAS93, GMS5) of Libertyville, Ill., is a math teacher at Community High School District 128. She and her husband are parents of Kevin Timothy, Emily Rose and David Michel.
Laura Smith Lang (BS96) of Chicago married Joshua Lang July 12. Laura is a reading specialist and English teacher at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill.
Suzanne Wagner Budak (BS98) of Chicago, a volunteer community liaison for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, celebrated her one-year wedding anniversary with Hasan Efe in Kocaeli, Turkey, Hasan's homeland.
Nichole Pinkard (MA98) of Ann Arbor, Mich., was a co-winner of the Jan Hawkins Early Career Award at the American Educational Research Association meeting and will speak at the 2004 AERA meeting.
Elizabeth Shook (MS98) of St. Louis creates and manages education programs for adults, age 50 and over, for OASIS, a national, nonprofit education and volunteer organization.
Iris Tabak (PhD99) of Fairfax, Va., received a fellowship for a year-long sabbatical in Israel.
00s
Nithya Candra (BS00) of Philadelphia has enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's secondary teacher education program. She was awarded a Puente-Forchic Scholarship, created by comedian Bill Cosby and named after musician and philanthropist Tito Puente and Cosby's sixth grade teacher, Mary Forchic Nagle.
Dan Cottrell (MS00) of Northfield, Ill., a substitute teacher in Chicago-area middle schools, spends summers as a "smokejumper" with the U.S. Forest Service. With his colleagues he parachutes into the area of remote forest fires to dig fire lines and cut down trees in an effort to contain the flames.
Gary Kossman (BS00) of Granada Hills, Calif., works for America Learns. Out of 1,000 applicants he was named one of 10 2003 Fellows by the Echoing Green Foundation, an international venture philanthropy. The fellowship includes two years of seed funding and technical assistance.
Jim Withington (BS00) of Evanston teaches at the Illinois Institute of Art in Shaumburg, Ill.
Eric Baumgartner (PhD01) of Seattle and his wife, Laura, are parents of Grace, born July 7.
Stefanie Delucca (PhD02) of Baltimore is an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Rachel Dunifon (PhD02) of Ithaca, N.Y., is an assistant professor in the department of policy analysis and management in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University.
Tondra L. Loder (PhD02) of Birmingham is an assistant professor of social foundations in the School of Education at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, Loder's hometown.
Sam Fugazzotto (MS03) of Oak Park, Ill., is district registrar at New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Ill.
Amanda Klingman (BS03) of Chicago has opened Klingman Group, a permanent placement search firm in Chicago.
In Memoriam
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Ron Burton spoke at the 2000 convocation. Photo by Brian Kersey. |
Ron Burton (BS60), 67, Framingham, Mass., Sept. 13. Mr. Burton was deeply committed to Northwestern University, to football and to serving underprivileged youth. In 1959 he was named NCAA Back of the Year, nominated for a Heisman Trophy Award, and, in 1990, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. After graduation, he played for the Boston Patriots (now New England Patriots) until 1965.
SESP Convocation speaker in 2000, Mr. Burton was honored by Northwestern with an Alumni Service Award in 1978 and the 2000 Alumni Service to Society Award.
He established and directed the Ron Burton Training Village in Hubbardston, Mass., giving inner-city children the opportunity to grow athletically and academically. In summer 2003 he was honored with the creation of the Ron Burton Award for Community Service, to be given to the New England Patriots Player who best exemplifies a giving attitude and community commitment.
Mr. Burton is survived by his wife, Joann, and five grown children, all Northwestern graduates: Elizabeth H. Burton (WCAS85), Stephen Jourdain (WCAS85, GJ88), Ron Jr. (WCAS88), Phil (C94, GJ95, 96) and Paul (C96, GJ98). All four sons played football for Northwestern.
Class Codes
AF Air Force Commission
C Communication (formerly Speech)
CB Chicago Business
D Dental
EB Evanston Business
FSM The Feinberg School of Medicine
G Graduate (Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences or University College)
GC Graduate Communication
GD Graduate Dental
GJ Graduate Journalism
GL Graduate Law
GFSM Graduate Feinberg School of Medicine
GMcC Graduate McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science
GMu Graduate Music
H Honorary
J Medill School of Journalism
KSM Kellogg School of Management or Graduate Business
L Law
Mu Music
N Nursing
Nav Naval Commission
SCS School of Continuing Studies (formerly University College), Continuing Education, Evening Divisions
Tns Transportation Center
Trf Traffic Institute
WCAS Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Liberal Arts
ALUMNI PROFILE
The Power of Ideas: Alumna is passionate about reform.
BY LEE PRATER YOST
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Deputy director and co-founder of the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, Amy Liu (BS93) talks about "spatial divides, regional equity and isolated pockets of despair." |
" We spend 50 percent of our time ensuring we have high-quality research and 50 percent making sure the research 'has legs.'" The center solicits data from a network of urban scholars "beyond the beltway" and packages it to influence policy makers and the media.
In 1996 Liu and the chief of staff left the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where she was a special assistant to Secretary Henry Cisneros, to form the center because they felt that urban policy focused primarily on race and poverty. "No one represented the interests of cities at a national level in any thoughtful, substantive way," she says.
Liu's passion for policy was ignited at Northwestern. A native of downstate Illinois, Liu started out majoring in economics. She planned to "go down the MBA route and become a business executive." But after joining the Northwestern Volunteer Network, service became a driving interest. She transferred to SESP and focused on urban studies. "I followed that path with passion and commitment and feel very blessed" for where it led.
It led first to a practicum with the Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago. Before the practicum experience, Liu says she was naive about what constituted community service. "Seeing business leaders participate on the boards of organizations-and that is considered 'volunteerism'-made me aware of different ways of serving the public. I was impressed with the amount of commitment [of business leaders]. The civic energy in Chicago is why the city works," she says.
Liu came to Washington because "I had done the grassroots work, seen local politics and now wanted to experience the national scene."
At HUD, though Liu didn't think urban policy was working. "Urban policy had become limited to the issues of race and poverty, but those are not the only issues urban areas confront," she says. "Cities are about everything-jobs, transportation, planning, housing, education, taxes-and the way they interact to shape the health of places and the opportunities for people.
" But urban policy had also failed because it tried to fix urban problems with only central city solutions," says Liu. "Cities now operate in a metropolitan context. Housing markets, labor markets, business-supplier networks are all regional. People move constantly across jurisdictional lines to commute to jobs, run errands, visit friends. Today 80 percent of the nation's population and 85 percent of its jobs are located in metropolitan areas. Strategies affecting cities and suburbs must recognize this new reality."
Finally, urban policy, Liu believes, had been rooted for too long in the trends of the Northeast and Midwest and needed to embrace the challenges facing the rapidly growing West and South, such as immigration, water resources, exurban sprawl, growth management and housing affordability. "We need to broaden and update our urban research and policies to respond to the needs of the different regions across the country," she says.
The center aims to redefine what is happening to cities and suburbs to set the context for reform. "We have this monolithic, 'white soccer mom' view of the suburbs, but they are more diverse than that. Immigrants are moving straight to the suburbs. Today, about one in four suburbanites is a person of color, up from one in five in 1990. More singles than married couples with children live in the suburbs today. We mapped the working poor in the 100 largest metropolitan areas and found that 60 percent lived in the suburbs. When you think of issues like affordable housing, workforce and child-care, they are no longer limited to just cities. Suburbs, especially older ones, are beginning to experience similar challenges. There are real opportunities for city and suburban allegiances to be built.
"At Brookings we recognize we are a think-tank-we're not implementers. But we believe strongly in the power of ideas to create change. The only way ideas are powerful is if they respond to modern realities and if there is an audience ready to act on them. We put enormous energies into both of these ingredients."



