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Portland State Magazine

2021 Alumni in the News

Brett Bigham
Photo by Edis Jurcy

Brett Bigham MS ’02 received an honorary doctoral degree in humane letters from Portland State this spring in recognition of distinguished public service. The 2014 Oregon Teacher of the Year known for his work in special education—including the creation of a nationally recognized Special Needs Prom—was fired after speaking up as an openly gay teacher for the rights of LGBTQ+ youth. His fight to retain his job with the Multnomah Education Service District went to the Supreme Court in the form of an amicus brief in the historic Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia ruling, which made it illegal to discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Bigham now works for Portland Public Schools. Watch his acceptance speech.

Molly Gloss
Photo by Gretchen Corbett

Molly Gloss ’66—an Oregon novelist whose works include Wild Life, The Jump-Off Creek and The Hearts of Horses, among others—was honored at the 2021 Oregon Book Awards with the C.E.S. Wood Distinguished Writer Award for her “enduring, substantial literary career.” From horse whisperers and homesteaders to newly discovered planets and an elusive Sasquatch or two, Gloss’ tales bend genres and break conventions. She has won an Oregon Book Award, two Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards, a PEN West Fiction Prize, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and a Whiting Writers Award.

Christine Meadows
Photo courtesy of Christine Meadows

Christine Meadows ’83 retired after 15 years as PSU’s Director of Opera and Vocal Area Coordinator. Under her leadership, Portland State Opera flourished into an award-winning professional training program, with two full-scale productions per year performed for sell-out crowds. Meadows received the Maseeh Award for Outstanding Fine and Performing Arts Faculty in 2012 and was named the Vollum Professor of Voice in 2017.

Fall 2021

Sara Jean Accuardi ’06 won a $3,500 Leslie Bradshaw Fellowship in Drama from Oregon Literary Arts.

Marwa Al Khamees ’19 is Willamette University’s new assistant director of student engagement and leadership.

Heidi Allen MSW ’00 PhD ’08, an associate professor of social work at Columbia University, was appointed to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC). This federal, non-partisan, legislative branch agency provides policy and data analysis and makes recommendations to Congress, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the states.

Leila Aman ’99 was sworn in as city manager of Manzanita, Oregon in June.

Osvaldo Avila ’07 MA ’14, Talent, Innovation and Equity Grant Administrator for the State of Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission, was elected to the Salem-Keizer School Board and voted in as board chair. He and two other newly elected members are the first Latino representatives to serve on the Salem- Keizer School Board.

Dawn Babb Prochovnic ’89 published the children’s book Lucy’s Blooms with West Margin Press.

Marcy Bacon ’94 and her Rochester-New York- based modern chamber music group, fivebyfive, are launching their debut album, which will be crowdfunded through the Eastman School of Music/ ArtistShare New Artist program. Learn more at fivebyfivemusic.com.

Chelsea Bieker MFA ’12 was a finalist for the 2021 Oregon Book Awards’ Ken Kesey Award for Fiction for Godshot.

Alexis Braly James ’08, lead consultant at Construct the Present; Domonique Debnam ’08, senior director of fitness and tennis footwear at Nike; Edward Dominion ’05, president and founder of D6 Inc.; Liz Fuller ’08, president and CEO at Gard Communications; Emily Henke MPH ’14, executive director of Oregon Public Health Institute; Caroline Lewis MBA ’11, managing partner for Rogue Women’s Fund; Emielle Nischik MPA ’09, executive director of College Possible; and Jacob Pavlik MRED ’19, research manager at Colliers, were named to Portland Business Journal’s “Forty Under 40” list of the region’s most influential young professionals in 2021.

Miriam Calderon MSW ’02 was appointed as Deputy Assistant Secretary, Policy and Early Learning, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education for the U.S. Department of Education by the Biden-Harris Administration. Previously, she served as the early learning system director for the state of Oregon.

Megan Crayne MS ’20, former digital manager at PSU’s Ooligan Press, launched a poetry publishing company, Crayne Books. Its inaugural book is Away With Words. Crayne also works as an ebook production assistant at W.W. Norton & Company.

Tony Crisofulli ’13, PSU record holder in the indoor and outdoor 800 meters, became a full-time firefighter in Colorado, fighting both domestic and forest fires.

Melinda Crouchley ’09 MA ’20, former managing editor at PSU’s Ooligan Press, independently published the second and third books in her Metal Heart Trilogy series: Tin Heart and Iron Curtain. Couchley works as an Associate Editor at The Community Company.

Josh Davis ’21 was highlighted by The Seaside Signal for his work as the new veterans service officer for Clatsop Community Action.

Hadley Heck ’19, a four-year letter winner in volleyball, was selected to be a sports anchor at KVAL News in Eugene.

David Hedges ’59 published the novel The Changer with Road’s End Press. Poet and author Walt Curtis ’66 created the book’s cover art.

Bill Keenan ’90 MA ’92, an abstract impressionist painter, released two videos of his artwork with soundtracks provided by Café De Anatolia. See the videos. Louise Keenan ’94 manages the gallery’s business side.

Jenny Kimura MA ’19 has been promoted from junior designer to designer at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, a part of the Hachette Book Group.

Anthony Levenda PhD ’16 was named director of the new Center of Climate Action and Sustainability for the Evergreen State College.

Michelle Lewis MSW ’13, co-owner of Third Eye Books, celebrated the grand opening of the African-centered bookstore’s new brick-and-mortar location in Southeast Portland this summer.

Jax McFarland ’14 MArch ’17 was named the 2021 Joseph F. Thomas Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon.

Jessica Mehta MS ’07 published When We Talk of Stolen Sisters: New and Revised Poems with Liveright Publishing.

Kathleen Mitchell Burrows MA ’09 was selected to be part of the U.S. Department of State's prestigious three-month English Language Specialist virtual project focused on teacher training in Nicaragua.

Karen Phifer MSW ’95 is the new Director of Clinical Services at Portland’s Cedar Hills Hospital.

Rebecca Saunders MA ’16 presented “Is There a Linguist in the House? The Benefit of an In-House English for Specific Purposes Course for Hospital Employees” at the Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Engaging Humanities in Health Department Administration in April.

Tim Skrotzki MBA ’12, senior market development lead for the nonprofit Elevate Energy, was honored in Corp! Magazine’s Most Valuable Professional Awards. Skrotzski supports affordable housing owners and underserved communities with energy assessments and building retrofit plans.

Taylor Stewart MSW ’21, founder of the Oregon Remembrance Project, a nonprofit dedicated to helping communities in the state confront and repair instances of racial injustice, helped dedicate a monument to Alonzo Tucker, the only documented African American victim of lynching in Oregon, in Coos Bay, Oregon.

Summer Newell MPH ’05 PhD ’18 co-authored a book with Melissa Thompson, sociology faculty, titled Motherhood after Incarceration: Community Reintegration for Mothers in the Criminal Legal System, published with Routledge.

Ethelyn Tumalad MA ’16 MEd ’17 was named 2022 Regional Teacher of the Year by the Clackamas Education Service District. She is finishing her fourth year as an English Language Arts and AVID teacher at Clackamas High School.

Daniel Vega ’17 finished a double master’s degree in music composition and saxophone performance at the University of Missouri. During his time there, Vega earned several awards and created a score to a film about Pedro Zamora, a Cuban AIDS activist.

Jason R. Wiles MS ’99 was honored with a 2021 Friend of Darwin award from the National Center for Science Education. Wiles, a professor of biology at Syracuse University, is a specialist in evolution education.

Masaru “Mas” Yatabe ’69 was awarded the 2020 Volunteer of the Year award by the Japan-America Society of Oregon, recognizing his more than 20 years as head judge of the Toyama Cup Japanese Speech Contest held among university students in Oregon.

Boys of Alabama cover

See this issue’s featured alumni publications in Bookshelf.

To read about losses in the PSU family, see Remembrances.

Spring 2021

Melody Bell ’04, founder and CEO of Financial Beginnings, Brian Forrester ’14, co-founder and CEO of Midas Health (now Lumina), Rachael Rapinoe MS ’19, co-founder and CEO of Mendi, and Yoseph Ukbazghi ’18, co-founder of Simple X, were named to Portland Business Journal’s “Forty Under 40” list of the region’s most influential young professionals.

Sabra Boyd ’10 wrote a story for the Washington Post about how surviving teen homelessness taught her skills for living through a pandemic.

Alison H. Chan ’00 is now the commercial controller for the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa regions at Herman Miller, a NASDAQ listed premium designer of office and home furnishings.

Sophorn Cheang ’09 was appointed director of Business Oregon. Cheang will lead the state’s largest economic development agency to promote a globally competitive, diverse and inclusive economy.

Paul Deppen III MA ’18 was hired by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as a clinical research coordinator in the Roberts Individualized Medical Genetics Center.

Andrew Dieckhoff ’13 MA ’17 announced that his proprietary sports analytics system, the Dieckhoff Power Index (DPI), is now partnering with one of the top independent college basketball websites in the country, Heat Check CBB.

Melanie Dixon MS ’09 was selected as president of American River College, a community college serving 30,000 students in Sacramento, California.

Lifeng Dong MS ’02 PhD ’05 was named a member of the Minnesota Academy of Science’s board of directors, where he will be instrumental in guiding the nonprofit organization’s mission of advancing science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the state.

Eric Funk ’72 MA ’78 composed and performed Intermountain Opera’s first-ever commissioned composition, a vocal work titled “Requiem for a Forest,” inspired by the Bridger Foothills Fire in September 2020.

Hadley Heck ’19, former member of the Portland State volleyball team, has been hired as a reporter at KVAL TV News in the Willamette Valley.

Sarah Iannarone ’05 was named executive director of The Street Trust, a nonprofit group that promotes bicycling, walking and public transit safety issues across Oregon.

Sofia Jasani MS ’20, the founder of the Oregon Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development, won the Oregon Counseling Association’s Human Rights Award for her commitment to advancing social justice in the counseling field.

Mary Lee ’20, Anthony Rhodes MA ’11 MS ’13 MS ’19 PhD ’20, and Linda Akagi ’91 were awarded Topics in Language Disorders’ inaugural 2020 Katharine G. Butler Trailblazer Award for their co-authored article titled “AAC and Artificial Intelligence (AI).”

Robert Raschio ’97 was sworn in as Oregon Circuit Court Judge for the 24th Judicial District (Grant and Harney counties) on Jan. 4.

Chris Schweizer ’16, a teacher at Roosevelt High School in Portland, was awarded a Knowles Teaching Fellowship for promising, early-career high school mathematics and science teachers.

Erin Stammer MPA-HA ’09 published “Unassisted,” a memoir centering around 18 months when she ran an assisted living facility and medical clinic in Portland. Learn more at erinstammer.com.

Jennifer Tenorio MS ’14 presented “The Toolbox for Bystander Intervention,” for Tedx Portland State. Tenorio works as a U.S. Customs broker and serves on the Oregon Mediation Association Board of Directors. She is an active member of the Portland Peace Team.

Ellis Torrance ’18, a biology doctoral student at UNC Greensboro in North Carolina, was awarded a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship. Torrance uses supercomputers to process massive amounts of bacterial data, tackling tough questions about how they evolve.

Jacob Wilson ’20 published a revised version of his PSU honors thesis in peer-reviewed journal Young Scholars in Writing: Undergraduate Research in Writing and Rhetoric. Wilson is pursuing his PhD in English language and literature at the University of Washington.

Darlene Zimbari ’10 MEd ’14 premiered “A Window into Elder World,” a theatrical reading about elder advocacy, at the Fertile Ground Festival in February with help from a grant from Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council.

A scene from the film Black Pool

See this issue’s featured alumni publications in Bookshelf.

To read about losses in the PSU family, see Remembrances.

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Share your accomplishments with the Portland State alumni community by sending news to alum@pdx.edu or by submitting it through the Alumni Association website.