“Other” Class Notes

Geoffrey Weiss (Engr ’91 CM) will take command of the U.S. Air Force 505th Test and Evaluation Group, located at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, on June 29, 2015. Col. Weiss is currently the deputy director of the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization, in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia. He and his wife, Karen Gonsky Weiss (Col ’92, Educ ’92 L/M), have three children: Alison, who graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in May 2015; Scott Weiss (Engr ’17 L/M); and Brian Weiss (Engr ’19).

Melanie Nix (Col ’91 CM) was a featured speaker at the Young Survival Coalition’s YSC Summit, a national conference focused on young women with breast cancer, in March 2015. Ms. Nix, a triple-negative breast cancer survivor who is also a speaker, author, life coach and health advocate, spoke at three sessions, including one titled “Giving Yourself Permission to Change.” She continues to run the Breast Cancer Comfort website, for breast cancer patients and survivors.

Deborah Lewis (Col ’90) has published an essay, “The Weight of Ash,” in There’s A Woman In The Pulpit: Christian Clergywomen Share Their Hard Days, Holy Moments & the Healing Power of Humor, a collection edited by Martha Spong. Rev. Lewis also is the director and campus minister for the Wesley Foundation at the University of Virginia.

Christopher Graney (Grad ’90) has published Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo, an account and analysis of seventeenth-century scientific arguments against the Copernican system, with the University of Notre Dame Press. Mr. Graney’s research calls on newly translated works by anti-Copernican writers of the time to challenge the idea that opponents of the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus and Galileo were motivated by religion or devotion to an outdated intellectual tradition and instead proposes that science played an important, even predominant, role in that opposition. Mr. Graney is a professor of physics at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky.

Ronald Polly (Com ’87 CM) has been re-elected managing partner of the national litigation firm Hawkins Parnell Thackston & Young. He will continue to lead the labor and employment group, which represents Fortune 500 companies, public entities and senior executives.

Sara Austin (Col ’87 CM) is president-elect of the Pennsylvania Bar Association; she will become president in 2016. She is a partner in Austin Law Firm, located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Ms. Austin served on the organization’s board of governors from 2009 until 2012 as the zone governor for Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Juniata, Lancaster, Lebanon, Perry and York counties. She is a past president of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, the continuing legal education arm of the PBA, and is chair-elect of the bar association’s solo and small-firm practice section and is treasurer of the PBA commission on women in the profession.

Donna Frisby-Greenwood (Col ’86 CM) has been appointed president and CEO of the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, which generates, directs and manages private philanthropic resources in response to the goals of the School District of Philadelphia. She joins the current executive director, Angela Connor, as the second full-time executive of the fund. Most recently, Ms. Frisby-Greenwood served as the Philadelphia-based program director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, where her work focused on retaining talented people and expanding economic opportunity in the city. Prior to that, she was the director of the School District of Philadelphia’s office of college and career awareness.

Eric Callisto (Col ’86 CM) has joined the Madison, Wisconsin, law office of Michael Best & Friedrich as a partner on the firm’s energy and environmental teams. He has an extensive background in regional and national energy matters. Previously, Mr. Callisto worked for nine years at the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, where he was chairman, commissioner and chief of staff and regulated Wisconsin’s public utilities, including the energy, telecommunications and water utilities. He also was lead commissioner for regional energy market and national electric transmission policy, held leadership positions in the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, and worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and with an environmental consulting firm.

Haywood Rhodes (Educ ’03) and his wife, Virginia, welcomed twins Jonah James and Matthew Haywood on Jan. 8, 2014. The family lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

Mark Scharf (Col ’84 CM) has received a 2015 Individual Artist Award in playwriting from the Maryland State Arts Council. He also won first place in the 2014 Storefront Theatre Festival of Ten-Minute Plays for his play Our Place. Another of his plays, Fortune’s Child, premiered Jan. 8, 2015, at the Baltimore Theatre Project. Mr. Scharf was a 2010 Great Plains Theatre Conference PlayLab playwright and a 2012 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference semifinalist. His adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau will open Oct. 16, 2015, at the Twin Beach Players in North Beach, Maryland.

George Pitts (Law ’83 CM) has joined the McLean, Virginia, office of Sands Anderson, where he will maintain a practice in bankruptcy and creditors’ rights and commercial litigation. Previously, he was a partner with Wiley Rein in northern Virginia.

Jeffrey Elkin (Col ’83 CM) has been named litigation practice group leader for Porter Hedges in Houston, where he focuses his practice on complex commercial disputes, partnership and LLC dissolutions, federal and state securities laws, and business torts.

Robert Conrad (Law ’83) received the 2015 Distinguished Service Award from the Clemson University Alumni Association. A U.S. District judge for the western district of North Carolina, Judge Conrad serves on the board of directors for Clemson’s Tiger Letterwinners Association and mentors law students who are Clemson graduates.

Jim Davidson (Engr ’81) has been promoted to associate vice president of Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm. He currently manages the bridge department in the Fairfax, Virginia, transportation group, where his responsibilities include reviewing and supervising the design of bridges and other civil structures. A structural engineer and project manager with more than 30 years of experience, Mr. Davidson is a licensed professional engineer in 11 states and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Nancy Keene (Col ’78) has published Your Child in the Hospital: A Practical Guide for Parents, a book that provides information and emotional support for parents. She has written fourteen other consumer health books, and her work has appeared in many national journals and magazines. Ms. Keene is a managing editor at JBS International and executive director of Childhood Cancer Guides, a nonprofit publisher. Previously, she was a paramedic, an air traffic controller, and manager of a publications department.

Christopher D’Angelo (Col ’75, Law ’78) was a featured speaker at the 2015 National Conference on Class Actions: Recent Developments in Quebec, in Canada and the United States, where he presented “What the European Union Is Doing with Collective Redress or Class Actions.” Mr. D’Angelo is an attorney with Montgomery McCracken in Philadelphia, where he is chairman of the firm’s international practice and co-chairman of the product liability, toxic torts and catastrophic events practice. He is national counsel for several major U.S. clients and represents foreign concerns in the United States and U.S. concerns abroad.