“Academic Accomplishment” Class Notes

Dawn Bryant Crim (Col ’89 CM) earned her doctorate in educational leadership and policy analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2021.

Khalilah L. Brown-Dean (Col ’98) was promoted to full professor in the Department of Political Science at Quinnipiac University. She was also appointed as the inaugural associate provost for faculty affairs. Brown-Dean is the author of Identity Politics in the United States and co-author of the forthcoming book, Protesting Vulnerability: Race and Pandemic Politics. She is host of the radio show and podcast, Disrupted, for Connecticut Public Radio. 

Lyndsay Anderson (Nurs ’07 CM) has been accepted into the Nursing Science and Health-Care Leadership doctorate at University of California, Davis. She plans to continue research in cancer and health disparities. She serves as part-time faculty at California State University, Sacramento, in the College of Health and Human Services. She lives in Sacramento with her husband, Steven D. Anderson (Col ’96), and two sons, Thomas and Henry. 

David S. Lessen (Col ’94 CM) has joined the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center after being appointed medical director of Sylvester Deerfield Beach and Fort Lauderdale. He is also a voluntary assistant professor of medicine in the hematology division at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Katherine Bowers (Col ’02, Grad ’04) was promoted to associate professor of Slavic studies with tenure at the University of British Columbia in summer 2020. Her first monograph is forthcoming from University of Toronto Press in 2021.

Jennifer “Kim” Penberthy (Res ’89) published a new book, Living Mindfully Across the Lifespan: An Intergenerational Guide. The book provides user-friendly, empirically supported information about and answers to some of the most frequently encountered questions and dilemmas of human living, interactions, and emotions. Find more information on the book and the link to pre-order it on Routledge’s website.

Grace Gillen (Col ’18 CM) has completed her first year at VCU School of Dentistry in Richmond, Virginia. She expects to graduate as a doctor of dental surgery with the class of 2023.

Casey Chalk (Col ’07, Educ ’07) and his wife, Claire, welcomed a son, Lawrence Casimir, on Aug. 18, 2020. He joins siblings Annemarie, 7; Thomas, 5; and Elizabeth,3. Chalk lives in Fairfax, Virginia, and received a master’s in theology from Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, in August 2020. He is a columnist for New Oxford Review and Crisis Magazine.

Nakita Reed (Arch ’06), an associate with Quinn Evans, has been selected as a member of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Cultural Heritage Stewardship Initiative Advisory Committee. The new program, led by a partnership of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the JPB Foundation, and The Executive Leadership Council, will provide technical assistance and fund preservation-based stewardship plans at up to eight HBCU campuses across the country.

Tom Pettigrew (Col ’52) published his fifth book, Contextual Social Psychology: Reanalyzing Prejudice, Voting and Intergroup Contact. The book reviews Pettigrew’s life’s work in social psychology and analyzes the 2016 vote for Donald Trump. Pettigrew is 89 years old and has been retired from the University of California, Santa Cruz for 26 years.

Mary Caufield Baldridge (Educ ’10) was selected by the U.S. Department of State for a one-month English language specialist project focusing on production of an English writing textbook in Georgia at Tbilisi State University. Baldridge is part of a select group, as her project is one of 130 that the English Language Specialist Program supports each year. Baldridge was an English Language Fellow in Tbilisi, Georgia, during the 2019-20 academic year. During her fellowship, she conducted workshops for English instructors and K-12 teachers at Tbilisi State University, Kutaisi University, and Gori University for the English Teachers’ Association of Georgia. Dr. Baldridge recently retired from Fairfax County Public Schools where she taught secondary English, ESOL, and AP Psychology. She earned a doctorate in education from UVA and received her master’s degree in education from Harvard University.

Charles Ross (Engr ’80, ’83, ’88), professor of physics at Longwood University, will publish his fourth book on the U.S. Civil War, Breaking the Blockade, later this year. Ross has made appearances on PBS, History Channel and National Geographic Channel.