 
| Selected alumni profiles. Martin Hellewell ’58Joseph V. D’Ambra ’66Barbara Bergen ’68Steve Simmons ’71Paul A. Roselli ’74, M. Ed. ’76Edward McSweegan Ph.D.’85Michelle Cournoyer Girasole ’93, M.B.A. ’97 | |||||||||||||
Class Acts Profiles
Martin Hellewell ’58 With three grown daughters who left “bicycles galore,” the URIde program was a blessing for Martin Hellewell. “I read about URI’s new bicycle program and thought it a great opportunity to recycle our excess bikes.” Martin also helps to collect and repair other bikes, so he was asked to become the off-campus member of the URIde Advisory Board, which is made up of students, faculty, and staff. The board promotes cycling as an alternate mode of campus transportation. Donated bicycles are tuned, repaired, or used for parts, and receive distinctive orange paint and a URIde logo on the rear frame. Martin, who lives in Jamestown, says cycling is a wonderful way to get around. “It’s green, makes us less dependent on OPEC, and you can always find a parking space.” Initially, the program—modeled after others here and abroad—called for leaving bikes at racks around campus. Students and staff could take the bikes at will, ride to class, and leave them at the nearest bike rack for the next person. Sadly, many bikes were trashed, stolen, or lost. “Thanks to research by Allie Fong, a senior who is, more than any other, responsible for initiating URIde, we found that other bike programs suffered similar results, and for that reason, we are shifting to a lease program,” says Martin. “Now, for a nominal fee, students can choose their own bike with lock for the semester with the possibility of renewal.” While the program utilizes many makes and models of bicycles, Martin prefers Schwinns for their ease of maintenance and durability and especially likes older English three speeds: “They’re virtually indestructible, easy to tune, and provide enough hill climbing power as well as a head’s up riding position that is ideal for the crowded campus traffic.” Martin welcomes further donations of bikes in good riding condition. He suggests donors contact Lorraine Keaney, coordinator of the campus sustainability program, at 401-874-4947. — Maria V. Caliri ’86, M.B.A. ’92
Joseph V. D’Ambra ’66 Sometimes the path you pursue in education is not the path you ultimately follow but simply a foundation upon which to build. Consider Joe D’Ambra, engineering ’66. After graduation, D’Ambra went to work as a civil engineer in New York City, but, as with many young men in the ’60s, Uncle Sam soon came calling, and D’Ambra decided to join the Air Force rather than risk the draft. Never having flown before and apprehensive about going into a flying organization and practicing civil engineering, he enrolled in pilot training. As an Air Force pilot, he flew 199 missions over Southeast Asia, receiving several air medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Back home, D’Ambra became a development engineer working in technical intelligence through the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Education With Industry program. After earning an M.S. from Texas Christian University, he returned to flying as a pilot instructor and staff commander on Air Force Two based at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. D’Ambra flew cabinet members, congressional leaders, the First Lady, and the Vice President. His later assignments included classified projects’ manager and executive officer at Headquarters Air Force System Command (the Air Force’s research and development arm), Department of Defense program manager, and joint defense acquisitions officer working with the Navy and the FAA. After retiring from the Air Force, D’Ambra continued flying as a pilot for American Airlines from their Washington, D.C base. He recently retired from American Airlines as a captain, based in New York City, right back where he began his post-URI career. “It doesn’t matter whether I was a civil engineer in New York, an Air Force pilot in Southeast Asia, a program manager in Washington, or a commercial airline pilot,” D’Ambra said recently. “I learned the basics and the discipline in Bliss Hall.”
—David Henley ’96
Barbara Bergen ’68 As a feisty English major at URI, Barbara Bergen earned the nickname “Anthony killer” from Professor Warren Smith after a heated debate in a Shakespeare class. But she also knew when to use charm. Asked to get six big pipe ends threaded for a theater set, she convinced maintenance workers to do the job for free. The skills Bergen developed at URI served her well in jobs ranging from social work to real estate to technology and consulting. Since 1994, she’s worked for Practising Law Institute, her longest tenure at any one job. “My husband is amazed,” she said. She was hired as director of finance and technology, and in 2001 she was elected to the board as associate director. The institute, a New York-based non-profit providing continuing education for lawyers, “has given me varied opportunities. Opportunities I may not have been given in a larger organization,” said Bergen, who reorganized many of the organization’s operations, departments, and finances. One of her assignments was opening a new training center in San Francisco, hiring architects and contractors, negotiating a lease, and obtaining the fire permit just hours before the grand opening. “It was tense. The fireman arrived in full gear looking for the ‘little lady who needed the permit’ so we could legally hold our gala opening that evening.” Bergen said liberal arts is the best training ground for life. Every course that she took at URI—from English, psychology, and physics, to box office management—provided skills she uses today. It’s why she has contributed to URI’s Humanities Challenge campaign, and why the Practising Law Institute donated books to a new pre-law center on campus. “I enjoyed the variety liberal arts offered and had no idea what I wanted to do,” she said. “My father advised me to take classes that I found interesting or would enjoy, and that’s what I did.” It’s what she’s still doing. —David Gregorio ’80
Steve Simmons ’71 Most world championship athletes are in their 20s or 30s. Steve Simmons breaks that mold. A project engineer at the Marathon Ashland Petroleum refinery in St. Paul Park, Minn., Simmons is the player/manager of the Minnesota Masters. His team has won three senior slow-pitch softball world titles in the last five years, the latest coming last October with the capture of the 2003 Huntsman World Senior Games 55-plus AAA championship. That tournament was played in St. George, Utah. Simmons’ team also won the 1998 USSSA 50-plus AAA title (Sherwood, Ark.) and the 2000 Senior Softball World Championship’s 55-plus AAA crown (Winnipeg, Canada). Simmons started playing softball in 1966 with a Warwick-based team. In 1970, he was hired by Providence’s ITT Grinnell Co., then a major employer of URI’s mechanical engineering grads. Simmons was transferred to Chicago in 1971, and there he met his wife, Nancy, a Minnesota native. In 1973, they moved closer to her home, and Simmons settled into his playing career. “I never anticipated playing when I was almost 60,” said Simmons, the Great Lakes regional director for the SPA (Softball Players Association). “It’s recreation, but it’s also a commitment.” Simmons plays 120-150 games a year, mostly against teams in their 20s because other senior teams don’t provide enough competition. “The success we’ve had is very pleasing,” Simmons said. “If I tell my family about softball, they say, ‘big whoop.‘ When you tell other players, the response is, ‘Wow!‘’ Simmons’ career has survived his surgery for prostate cancer following the 2000 world championship and a persistent ankle injury that may require an operation before the start of the 2004 season. double left quoteAt our age, we don‘t get sidelined by just muscle pulls,” Simmons said. “We all have ailments, and they usually require a quadruple bypass. As long as I stay healthy, I’ll keep playing. After all, senior softball includes an 80-and-over division.” — Shane Donaldson ’99
Paul A. Roselli ’74, M. Ed. ’76 While the subjects of his movies may be dated, having been dead for four or five thousand years, and the subject matter a bit macabre, like the one on coffin restoration, Paul A. Roselli has been enjoying his latest career as a film-maker immensely. Roselli, who experimented with 16mm film and video while a student at Kingston, nurtured his interest after graduation by doing freelance photography for newspapers and producing film clips for film and television. After a 10-year stint in public relations at Brown University, Roselli went out on his own in 1996 founding his Providence company, Corporate Film&Video Productions. Since then, Roselli has filmed a host of documentaries, shorts, and other works—including three major works, all for museums. These films have been seen by tens of thousands of people worldwide. The Rhode Island School of Design Museum’s 1999 “Gifts of the Nile” exhibit sent Roselli and co-producer Frank Muhly Jr. to Egypt to film artisans practicing the 5,000-year-old art of creating faience, a blue-green glaze brought out in clay-like material when it is fired. The film and the show traveled from Providence to Chicago, Los Angeles, and Europe. Next, Roselli helped produce the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ “Pharaohs of the Sun.” His contribution explored the unprecedented power and swift decline of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his Queen, Nefertiti, who rejected Egypt’s ancient ways and built a new capitol, Amarna, in a remote region of the Nile Valley, but who reigned for only about 17 years. Currently part of the University of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery exhibit, “Protected for Eternity: The Coffins of Pa-debehu-Aset,” Roselli’s latest project documents the restoration of the only complete Ancient Egyptian coffin ensemble on display anywhere on earth. “It isn’t often that a graduate in resource development turns into a cinematographer,” Roselli commented. “And rarer yet when a graduate with a master’s in education turns into a film producer.” —David Henley ’96
Edward McSweegan Ph.D.’85 As a globe-trotting microbiologist researching deadly diseases, Ed McSweegan manages to keep the anthrax and smallpox germs on the other side of the microscope. He did catch a dose of the writing bug, but the prognosis was good: two awards and a published novel. “I sort of crept into fiction writing,” McSweegan said in a phone interview from his office at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. A short story won a competition at Writer’s Digest, but his first novel “sat in a drawer for a long, long time” because he couldn’t find an agent. Once again, a contest was the cure. Deliberate Release, in which terrorists release an African virus in Washington, D.C., won an award from the Maryland Writers Association and was published by First Books. It’s available online through Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble, and Borders. Trips to Egypt on an international health project helped McSweegan create realistic scenes in Cairo. His knowledge of the monkeypox virus fueled his thriller, but McSweegan could not believe it last summer when a real monkeypox virus hit the Midwest. The culprit was not a terrorist but a rodent imported from Africa that infected animals at a pet store. Even a novelist could not have predicted a tragedy like that. “I had no idea that anyone would be dumb enough to import rodents from West Africa,” he said. McSweegan has devoted his career to preventing the nightmare scenarios he writes about. Last year he traveled to Siberia with a delegation that is trying to get former Soviet bio-weapons experts to collaborate on infectious disease research. “We went to the vector facility in Siberia; it’s a very scary place. We’re trying to pull the scientists out of their Cold War shell and get them to collaborate on something productive, as opposed to something scary like ballistic missiles filled with smallpox.” —David Gregorio ’80
Michelle Cournoyer Girasole ’93, M.B.A. ’97 In 1999, Michelle Girasole contacted advertising executive Gary Kullberg ’63 through RAMNet, a former Alumni Relations program that connected URI graduates with alumni mentors. “I was unsure about the importance of advertising agency experience and wanted some expert advice,” Girasole said. “I asked Gary what he thought, and he pointed me to an article in Fast Company by Tom Peters called a “Brand Called You” that stressed the importance of acquiring skills needed to market one’s self and achieve career goals.” Girasole took that message to heart and later started her own company, Next Step Web Marketing. The company (at NextStepWebMarketing.com) helps companies use the Internet to generate customer traffic and develop strong relationships with Web site visitors. Girasole started the business after being laid off in the wake of Sept. 11. At the time, she was four months pregnant. “The timing was right, and now I’m living a dream job,” said Girasole, who had her second child in February. “I love the flexibility and the opportunity to work from home. “I work with a lot of local business clients, and we’re always talking about how to expand their reach beyond the local market. It is eye-opening when you see the response you can get on the Internet from places you’d never expect.” Among her customers was the Kullberg Consulting Group. “It was really a pleasant surprise,” said Girasole, who helped build Kullberg’s site, MarketingMilestone.com. “When I contacted Gary in 1999, it was a turning point for me. I never thought he’d be back in Rhode Island, but he moved from New York and got in touch. “Gary had a unique, brilliant idea for packaging the skills of his organization, but he needed help with his online presence. I was so honored! He’s worked with so many executives and high-powered people, but he thought of me. He’s a testament as to why URI students should tap into alumni resources.” —Maria V. Caliri ’86, M.B.A. ‘92 |
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