Class of 2001

Jessie Petricka
petrickj@gmail.com
5152 Torrey Pine Lane
Durham, NC 27713
(507) 301-9704
I am enjoying my postdoctoral research at Duke after graduating this spring. My son Leif is now two and quickly learning that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Carl Tape
carltape@gps.caltech.edu
Post Office Box 80425
Faribanks, AK 99708
(626) 755-7504
I’m still trying to wrap up my thesis at Caltech, but at least I am enjoying it. I’m modeling seismic ground motion in southern California for a variety of different earthquakes. I never thought I’d do something really practical in science, but it’s starting to look pretty useful!

Todd Springer

springer@physics.umn.edu
I am still at the University of Minnesota in the physics PhD program; my research focuses on high energy/nuclear theory, especially on gauge/gravity duality and its application to the quark-gluon plasma created at RHIC. It has been a productive year for me on the research front, as I got my first ever paper published, and have another one currently under review. The current plan is to finish up my degree by next summer, and then hopefully take either a postdoctoral research job, or teaching position. If anyone has any leads on suitable positions, please let me know! Hope everything is well with you all, and drop me a line if you are in Minneapolis!

Class of 2003

James Lloyd
james.lloyd@me.navy.mil or jl681398@ohio.edu
LTJG James Lloyd
MARLO
PSC 451 Box 330
FPO AE 09834-2800
I am working out here in sunny Bahrain as a liaison officer for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Things are fine, and I’m considering getting out of the Navy, or perhaps transitioning to the reserves, at the end of this tour. I’d like to do work in alternative energy or perhaps go to graduate school. I’m in Bahrain until November 2010, so everyone can feel free to drop by when they’re in the area.

Tim O’Connell
Big things are happening! By the time you are reading this I will have received my PhD, bought a house, moved into the house, and started a new job. I am still at the University of Illinois in Champaign and am frantically working on my dissertation right now (Electrical Engineering), with the final deposit deadline on December 19th. My wife Megan and I just bought a house and our closing date is December 4th. I took a job with Paul C. Krause and Associates, a small engineering consulting firm in West Lafayette, IN that specializes in modeling and simulation of aircraft power systems. All my years of toil trying to learn how motors work will finally pay off (figuratively and literally). We had a great time at Reunion in June, and it was really nice to see all my old classmates and Physics professors. Bruce, Bill, Joel -- the only profs I had who were missing were Nelson and Cindy, but I’m sure I’ll see them at the next Reunion! While I haven’t been to anywhere cool like Namibia or Kazakhstan this year like my classmates Carl Ebeling and Nick Auger, respectively, I did make a trip to Switzerland and France with Megan in August. It was nice to get shoved past the Mona Lisa by a raving horde of Japanese tourists, just like in the movies! If any of you are in the East Central Illinois area anytime soon, I have two spare bedrooms with your name on them! One contains an ear of corn and the other Barack Obama! You get to choose.

Class of 2004

Brynn Barile
bebarile@hotmail.com
616 Windridge Lane
Morristown, TN 37814
(423) 581-1739
It was one of my New Year’s resolutions this year to actually remember to send in my update. Ten and a half months of waiting apparently cuts into intended prompt enthusiasm, but I remembered!

It’s been an interesting few years in Brynn-land. I’ve got plenty of new experiences under my belt. I taught high school physics for a year at the all-girls Salem Academy in Winston-Salem, NC, where I learned that all teachers are gods and godesses among the rest of us mere mortals. It’s hard work! I loved the classroom work, and the students were great, but I learned that’s not the right path for me. So, I moved back to Tennessee, just in time to be chauffeur when my mom broke her arm, then help her with a successful campaign for mayor. One of her early acts - setting up a lighting ordinance based on the Dark Sky Initiative!

After deciding to not become a nanny for my brother’s two sets of twins, I found my way into the family chair business, following in my father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. Right now I’m sort of a jane-of-all-trades, focusing in herding fabrics. It’s probably not the final stop in my career search, but I enjoy it. Other than that I’ve taken up watercolor painting, gotten involved in the local arts center (Morristown had a Rose Center long before the Hayden Planetarium, but it’s not the same thing), done a few talks on the night sky and still break out my telescope when the nights are nice. I’ll hopefully be going on a trip to Patagonia in February, and am looking forward to my first sight of the southern stars!

I miss Carleton and Northfield and think of them often, and am determined to get up to visit. Reunion sounds like a good excuse, don’t you think?

Theresa (Engel) Dudek
TDudek@stlabre.org
Post Office Box 802
Ashland, MT 59003
(406) 784-2814
Sorry I haven’t kept in touch better! After I graduated in 2004 I spent a year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. I worked at St Labre Catholic Indian School in Ashland, MT. I was basically a high school special needs study hall teacher. I ended up staying at St Labre teaching high school math and taking certification classes. I taught for three years and now I am taking a break to be a Mom. I married Bruce Dudek (one of our high school science teachers) two years ago and we had a baby boy on August 13, 2008. His name is Noah James Dudek. We just finished another hunting season here in Montana so we have our meat for the year. I am really enjoying processing our own meat and I can’t tell the difference between venison and beef and elk though I am starting to taste the difference in antelope. I had never thought of hunting before I lived out here in Montana. Some other quirks of our life out here are that we heat primarily with a wood stove (it is sooo nice and warm!) and we use a “solar clothes dryer” (aka clothes line, which isn’t as fun of a name). We are also in the process of making a brick oven and solar oven to take advantage of the summer sun. We don’t know if they will actually work but it would be really fun if they do work. We also choose to not have a TV because there are so many other things we want to do and it saves money. Our students think we are crazy for not having a TV and they think our kids will be deprived without one. Yet when we ask our students how their weekend was they say “boring” and when asked what they did they say “watched TV” so we can’t really understand what is so great about TV. I am taking a break from the fire department but Bruce is still on it and still leads the trainings. We are active in our church. In fact I am working part time as the church secretary which basically involves computer work. Noah gets to come with me to work. It is awesome to see how Fr Paschal lights up whenever he sees Noah. Fr Paschal is supposed to be retired but he came out of retirement to be our priest because there aren’t enough. If you ever need something to do you should check out the St Labre website -- they just added a ‘radio station’ at http://www.stlabre.org/bravenation . I still have and use my c-clamp Warren taught us how to make. I hope some one is continuing his airplane tradition at the picnics! I miss all of you!!! God bless you all!

Joey Durham
joey.durham at gmail.com
Hello from Santa Barbara, CA! This is my first time writing in, so I’ll reach way back to what I did after graduation in ‘04. In the fall of ‘04 I participated in the launching of the Stanford DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous vehicle team, working on path planning. It was a great few months and they went on to win the race that year (several months after I had moved on to other things).

In summer of ‘05 I married Danielle Bart (‘04, art major) in California and that fall we moved down to Santa Barbara where I started graduate work in robotics and control systems at UCSB. We’ve both been in academia since then, I got my Masters in ‘07 and Danielle is just now wrapping up hers Global Studies. Along the way we had another wedding ceremony for family and friends in her native Trinidad and spent an amazingly expensive quarter in London (which was also a ton of fun). Right now she’s trying to figure out what comes next and how to get involved green solutions to our global problems.

I’m now well into my PhD work on distributed algorithms for coordination of teams of mobile robots. In English that means I’m working on getting a team of robots to work together to accomplish a joint task without a central leader. I’ve got three (soon to be four) robots scooting around the halls, dividing the space into individual territories. Soon they will keep track of my advisor so I can safely browse the internet at work! I also keep busy by mentoring several undergraduate ro
Contact me if you’re ever in the Santa Barbara area! Lunch on the beach, what could be better?

Clark Ritz
clarkritz@yahoo.com
2801 Century Harbor Road, # 4
Middleton, WI 53562
(608) 827-9716
We are doing well and still in Madison. I’m hoping to finish up grad school in 2009 and get a “real job”. I sort of had one last summer. I had an internship with a big oil company doing geophysical modeling. It was pretty eye-opening to work in the energy industry for a while and see the huge scale of things. We lived in Houston where the culture was very different from what we’re used to in the Midwest and where it was 95 degrees every day. With the record snow fall of last winter in Madison ( 100+ inches!) it was a year of extremes. Although the negative aspects of the weather in Houston were mitigated by having an uncle near there with a sailboat and the negative aspects of the snowfall were mitigated by the cross country skis we got for Christmas. The real news is that Megan and I are expecting our first child in February! The ultrasound tech thought it looked like a little girl. We’ll see. Carleton College class of 2031 here we come.

Class of 2006

Kevin Peterson
Kevin.h.peterson@gmail.com
1813 Willowtree Ln., Apt A3
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
507-391-4942
It’s been a while since I’ve talked to most of you, so hopefully life is treating you well and all that. I’m at the University of Michigan these days pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering after a year spent in Oregon working as an auto mechanic. Since this is Michigan, much of the research centers on the automotive industry, and I wound up doing optical engine research. Essentially we have a single cylinder engine, similar to a smaller version of what is in an everyday, run-of-the-mill car, except that instead of being made of metal, large portions are made out of glass allowing us to take photographs of the inside of the combustion chamber while the engine is running. What really sold me was when my advisor said; “You will get to see the inside of the engine while it is running.” Totally sweet. We add various dopants to the intake air or the fuel, and by exciting the dopants with a laser we can gather information about the flow field, temperature distribution, fuel concentration, etc, inside the combustion chamber. It’s basically the sweetest combination of physics and cars that I could imagine. I wish I had more to say, but my life these days is pretty much work and more work, with the occasional dose of sleep.

Class of 2007

Andy Krominga
andrew.krominga@alumni.carleton.edu
559 Stonewood Lane
Burnsville, MN 55306
(612) 799-8960
I would first like to apologize for not sending my update last year. I was extremely busy with a new job and lost track of time. So, this update will include a little information from last year.

A lot has happened over the last year and a half. After graduation, I started a new job at Honeywell International as a Process Engineer. I work in a manufacturing facility where we produce Inertial Navigation Systems. There are many LASER, chemical, and general lab applications involved, and it is very exciting. It has been great applying the skills I learned at Carleton to real world situations. The hands on experience is fantastic, and it is great getting to know and work with new people.

On the home front, I have gotten married recently to Pamela McMoore, who also graduated from Carleton, Political Science ‘07. We got married in February 2008. She is working at Target Headquarters in downtown Minneapolis. It is very exciting to experience new things and adapt to new roles in work and life. We also just bought a new home in Burnsville near Buck Hill. It has been great moving into a new home and getting settled, but it is a lot of work too. Finally, we will be getting a new puppy in December. Pam has never had a pet before and is very excited and I am thrilled to experience the joy (and short nights) of raising a puppy.
If there are any questions about Honeywell or in general, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Glen Perry
perryg@mail.utexas.edu
2804 Rio Grande Street, # 206
Austin, TX 78705
(518) 588-1468
I’m now in my second year of graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin, in their Nuclear Engineering Department. I should be getting my Master’s degree at the end of May, and take the qualifying exam for PhD candidacy in January. My Master’s work this year has been concerned with looking at high energy (14 MeV) neutrons and how their spectrum and spatial distribution changes in a water environment, as well as how effective different materials are at shielding these high energy neutrons. I’ve recently resumed running (non-competitively right now) and between running, school, and playing competitive chess in Texas I have managed to keep myself busy.