INTER ACTIONS 2001

Alumni News

Frank. C. Alexander (B.S.’42) of Media, Pa., met Peg by helping her with physics homework on the #67 trolley. They celebrated their 58th last year. Frank has been a frequent correspondent (see Interactions, 1999) and maintains a keen interest in astronomy, including the Brashear Telescope (see Interactions, 1998).

Alfred B. Bortz (B.S.’66) of Monroeville, Pa., is semi-retired and writes children’s books. Three recent titles aimed at fourth to eighth graders are: "Dr. Fred’s Weather Watch," "Collision Course: Cosmic Impacts and Life on Earth," and "Techno-Matter: The Materials Behind the Marvel."

Robert J. Fritz (B.S.’66) is president and CEO of Avtron Manufacturing Inc. of Independence, Ohio. Bob's father, Dwain, founded the company, which manufactures electronic test, measurement and control equipment as well as component testing equipment for commercial aircraft, in 1953. Avtron was inducted into the Family Business Hall of Fame, an award sponsored by the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Bob and his wife, Linnet Eckel Fritz (MM), live in Brecksville, Ohio.

Burt Marks (M.S.’64, Ph.D.’68) retired from Texas Instruments in 1996. He now works part time at RF Monolithics designing surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices. In August 2000 he started work toward a degree in music at University of North Texas, majoring in clarinet.

Wendy McCausland (B.S.’95), after graduating spent one year with the Institute for International Cooperation and Development working on a project building a school and renovating a water system in La Estrella, Nicaragua. The following year she spent working at a bookstore in Atlanta, and the next working in the Health Innovation Field at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, N.J. She then went to graduate school, and has just completed an M.S. in geophysics at Duke University where her thesis work took her to Mt. Longonot in Kenya. She is now pursuing a Ph.D. in seismology at the University of Washington, Seattle. In July she attended a conference on seismology and volcanology in Erice, Sicily, just days before the spectacular eruption of nearby Mt. Etna.…

Paul G. Nagy (B.S.’91) of Greendale, Wis., received a Ph.D. from the Medical College of Wisconsin in May 2000. He worked briefly as an imaging physicist for General Electric Medical Systems in Milwaukee, then joined the faculty at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He is an assistant professor of radiology in the Division of Medical Physics and Imaging Science.

Leslie G. Polgar (Ph.D.’71) is president of Kodak Display Products, a new venture for OLED’s (Organic Light Emitting Displays), located in Walnut Creek, Calif. He and his wife, Sue, have been selected as co-chairs of the President’s Council of the Unitarian Universalist Association, based in Boston. They live in Lafayette, Calif.

Jeremiah D. Sullivan (B.S.’60) received the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award from the American Physical Society in 2000, the citation reading "For leadership in addressing technically complex and often controversial national security issues, such as antiballistic missiles, stockpile stewardship and a comprehensive test ban; and for setting a high standard for applying the rigorous methods of physics to the challenging problems of integrating advanced technology with sound policy in a democratic society." He delivered one of his lectures at Carnegie Mellon on the subject of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Jeremiah is head of the Physics Department at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Murray F. Spiegel (B.S.’72) of Roseland, N.J., worked on a state-of the-art speech synthesizer that is used in voice-activated dialing for Sprint's mobile phone users. The Telcordia Orator II synthesizer, which is based on Murray's voice, tells users what the system "heard" them say. Murray credits his several shows on WRCT for increasing the clarity of his speech.