Alumnotes

We are proud of our graduates!

PATRICIA MARRIOTT (’67), SSU’s first physics graduate, is now director of corporate marketing at Active Software in Santa Clara.

STEPHEN D. JILKA (’71) is a senior project manager with NCR in San Diego. He earned master’s degrees in physics at San Francisco State University in 1972 and in systems management at the University of Southern California in 1979.

BRUCE KEMMELL (’72) teaches physics, mathematics, and astronomy at the University of New Mexico, where he earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1992.

WILLIAM F. CABRALL (’76) is a lead engineer with the Boeing Company in Colorado. He earned an M.B.A. in finance at the University of Denver in 1985.

The best part of my education at Sonoma State was the small class size coupled with full professors. The opportunities this environment provided were invaluable.

ARTHUR B. FLYNN II (’76) is a physical scientist with the Department of Energy in Albuquerque. He formerly managed the nuclear safeguards and security program at Los Alamos National Laboratory. and before that was an F-14 fighter pilot with the U.S. Navy.

DOUGLAS MORRIS (’78) is a senior manufac turing operations manager with Motorola in Albuquerque. Formerly an engineering manager and engineer, he has been awarded three patents. He is now working on an MBA at the University of New Mexico.

RONALD R. BLEAU (’79, physics and psychology) is a staff engineer in fighter avionics sensors and systems design with Lockheed Martin in Marietta, Georgia.

RICHARD K. DeFREEZ (’80) is principal scientist of Met One, Inc., an Oregon company which develops new products for counting particles in air, gases, and liquids. Honored as one of SSU’s Distinguished Alumni in 1995, Rick earned his Ph.D. in applied physics at the Oregon Graduate Institute in 1985.

LANCE ERICKSON (’80) was recently promoted to professor of aeronautical and physical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. He earned his Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Flor ida in 1987.

The greatest benefit I have derived from my undergraduate education is the mathematical and physics tools that allow me to teach at both the technical and nontechnical levels. My favorite classes were the upper level physics, especially mathematical physics, and Prehistoric to Byzantine Art.

STEPHAN R. CRANDALL (’82) is a manager of software development at Cisco Systems, San Jose, where he develops ATM backbone switches.

WILLIAM C. TOMLINSON (’83) is a technology consultant with Andersen Consulting in San Francisco.

TERESA BIPPERT-PLYMATE (’84, physics and art) is an instrument/observing specialist on the McMath Pierce Telescope at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson.

MICHAEL ROGEN (’84) is sales manager for the western Unites States for Maxon Precision Motors, Inc., Bur lingame.

MICHAEL BROWN BICK (’85) is a graduate student in physics at San José State University.

TOM McMAHON (’85) is at the University of Arizona, where he is the principal systems engineer on the multiband imaging photometer for the forthcoming Space Infrared Telescope Facility. He earned an M.S. in instrumentation physics at the University of Utah in 1990.

JOHN PALMERLEE (’85) is an Internet technician at the Doctor’s Company in Napa.

LEE STEELE (’85) is a self-employed technical writer in Silicon Valley. He has documented telecommunications and electronics hardware and CAD/CAM software.

GEORGE AMORINO (’86) is a research instructor in radiation oncology at Vanderbilt University, where he supervises a radiobiology laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. in cellular and molecular radio biology at Colorado State University in 1995 and his M.S. in bio medical engineering from CSU, Sacramento in 1988.

STEPHEN MESSINGER (’86) teaches science in Southampton, NY. He earned his teaching credential at SSU in 1987.

As a returning student (at the age of 33), I found the faculty extremely open and encouraging towards me as I prepared myself for a career in education. The intimate atmosphere of SSU furnished me with the environment I needed in order to make a successful job switch.

PETER ROONEY (’86), the American Phys i cal Society’s Congressional Fellow for 1997-98, is working in the office of Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Formerly a program officer working on science policy at the National Research Council in Washington, DC, he earned his Ph.D. in physics in 1995 at UC San Diego.

SCOTT ROWLANDS (’86) is a manager of programs at DSC Communications in Petaluma. He was formerly an engineer at Optical Coating Laboratory, Inc., Santa Rosa.

CHARLES CARPENTER (’88) is a senior member of the technical staff of the Time Space Position Information group at Edwards Air Force Base.

DOUGLAS EPPERSON (’88) is doing research at the HERA accelerator in Germany for his Ph.D. in physics at UC Santa Cruz. He received his M.S. at San Francisco State University in 1994.

LAUREN NOVATNE (’89) is a graduate student in physics at California State University, Fresno.

I feel very fortunate to have received such a good educationÉ What I liked best was the friendly, supportive environment we had to learn in, and the emphasis on astronomy.

KATHERINE RHODE (’89) is a graduate student in astronomy at Yale University. She earned an M.A. in astronomy at Wesleyan University in 1997.

MARC AFIFI (’89, physics & commu nication stud ies) teaches physics and chemistry at Pacific Grove High School on the Monterey Penin sula. He is also coach of the Odyssey of the Mind team and a part-time instructor at Monterey Peninsula College. He has worked two summers at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. He earned his secon dary creden tial at SSU in 1990.

STEPHEN K. MOSIER (’90) received his M.D. from the State University of New York at Brooklyn in 1998.

DANIEL SWEARINGEN (’90) is a senior soft ware engineer at at SoftAd in Mill Valley and the principal of PolyWeb Services in San Rafael. He earned an M.S. in physics at California State University, Northridge in 1991 and an M.S. in astronomy at Indiana University in 1997.

ERIC WEISS (’91) works for Trilogy in Texas. He earned his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Washington in 1998 with research in experimental parti cle physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

ELIZABETH "LIBBY" HAYS (’93) earned her M.D. at the University of California, San Francisco in 1997. She is now a resident at Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa.

HOLLY JESSOP (’93) is an astrophysicist at the Smith sonian Astrophysical Observatory, where she works on data analysis software for the Advanced X-ray Astro physics Facility. She was formerly a research associate at the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics at the University of California at Berkeley.

BEN OWEN (’93) has accepted a postdoctoral research position at the new Albert Einstein Institute for Gravita tional Physics in Potsdam, Germany. He just completed his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, which he entered with a National Scientific Foundation fellowship upon graduation from SSU.

PAUL SOMERVILLE (’93) is a sales engineer for Spectra-Physics Lasers in Mountain View.

DAVID LAMB (’94) is a graduate student and research assistant in physics at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, where he received his M.S. in 1997.

MARIO MARCKWORDT (’95) is working at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. He earned his M.S. in physics at San Francisco State University in 1997.

CHERIE COPELAND (’95) is a technical support engineer at Advanced Fibre Communications in Petaluma.

My education has allowed me to get a good job as an engineer utilizing knowledge in many different areas in Physics, including optics, electronics, microprocessor ap plications for testing, as well as my experience in the lab.

DANIEL HALE (’96) has accepted a graduate assistantship in astrophysics at Michigan State University beginning Fall 1998. He is now a grad student and teaching assistant in astronomy at San Francisco State University.

ADOLFO DUARTE (’97) is a network engineer at Hughes Network Systems in Napa.

AMY WEBER (’97) is an engineer at Next Level Communications, Inc. in Rohnert Park.