Class Notes

Scroll through this page to find out what your former classmates have been doing since their time at Colorado State. If you don't see your name, send us your career and family updates and we will post your news to this site.

Note: Every attempt is made to ensure the information published in this section is correct. If you notice an inaccuracy, please notify Andrea Leland to rectify the error.

1950s

Russell W. McCrackin, '50, provided his personal and employment timeline:
1950-56: Design Engineer, Southern California; Edison, CO
1956-63: Physics Professor, Los Angeles City College
1957: M.A. Ed., Los Angeles State College
1963-1983 Physics Professor, Los Angeles Pierce College
1983: Retired and moved to Corvallis, Oregon
1985: Married Elizabeth Eaton.
1995: Started career as artist. Member of Oil Painters of America; the Tucson Plein Air Painters Society; and the Corvallis Art Guild. Listed in AskArt.com
1985 to Present: artist-in-residence at Tumacacori National Historical Park. He spends his summers in Oregon and his winters in Arizona.
Russell can be reached by email at rusty@proaxis.com.

Howard Benton, '50, retired in 1990 and lives in Alaska. Though he enjoys a couple trips a year to the lower 48, he has no plans of relocating. Howard adds, "Keep painting the "A" up on the side of the mountain."

Raul Pettai, '53, retired 11 years ago. He very much enjoyed attending his 50th class reunion on October 3-4. He worked hard to get all four surviving members of the EE class of '53 to attend - they came from Florida, California, Colorado, and New Jersey! He also attended the College of Engineering's Homecoming Celebration. Raul has three sons: two EEs and one in political science.

Gil Reeser, '59, retired from Hewlett-Packard in 1997. His last position was general manager of a division located in Scotland. He notes, "Retirement suits me just fine. It seems like I am busier than ever with golf, bridge, travel, grandkids, etc."

Gil's father is living in Estes Park, CO, and just turned 90 in June 2004. The family threw a party for him in Fort Collins and there were more than fifty family members in attendance, ten of which were CSU graduates, five from the College of Engineering: Gil '59; Warner Jr. '69 and '75; Rick '69; Dave '75; and Tim '92. The other CSU graduates were: Laura '70; Bonnie '91; Lindsay (McMaster) '91; Mandy (Zerngast) '95; and Zack '02. Several great-grandchildren are expected to be future Rams as well. Gil adds, "The family had a great time and will always remember CSU with fond memories."

1960s

Glen Young,'61, retired from General Electric, Fort Wayne, in Sept 2002 after 35 years of service. He plans to stay in Fort Wayne to be near his son's family (grandchildren Krysta and Jonathon) and his daughter, who lives in Chicago.

Warren W. Cook, '61, retired after 21 years as a US Air Force R&D engineer. Upon retirement, Warren started an engineering and information systems business with other partners. He sold out of that business and is now fully retried. His son and daughter-in law carry on the engineering tradition. His son's Electrical Engineering Ph.D. is from Purdue and his daughter-in-law earned an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Ohio State. Warren's family lives in Annapolis, Maryland, and his son's family resides in Lafayette, Indiana.

Ralph Burbey, '64, currently resides in Richardson, Texas, where he works for A.R. Schell & Son, an insurance company. He has 11 grandchildren.

Richard Seale, '64, owns a software company and has been writing software for the insurance industry for 24 years. He and his wife became grandparents for the first time on August 18, 2003, and celebrated their 38th wedding anniversary on November 6, 2003.

Edward "Ned" Pickett, '66, has been working at PDC, Inc. since early 2004 as a senior electrical engineer. With offices in Fairbanks and Anchorage, PDC, Inc. is a full service engineering company (all disciplines) serving Alaska for almost 30 years. Ned moved to Alaska from the Dallas, Texas area where he had worked for several firms and had experienced many layoffs due to the economy.

Dan Megilligan, '66, retired from Shell Oil Company after nearly 33 years of service. While at Shell, he worked in various engineering and management positions with assignments in Oklahoma City, Denver, Houston, and New Orleans. Dan currently lives in Pearl River, Louisiana with his wife Joleen. Their retirement days have been filled with enjoying their four grown children and ten grandchildren and extensive traveling, visiting several foreign countries and much of the United States.

Ken Morey, '66, has worked for TRW Semiconductors in California; Teledyne Semiconductors in California; Kaman Sciences in Colorado; TRW Systems in Colorado; and HP/Agilent Technologies in Colorado Springs. Ken has 25 years of service with HP/Agilent as a Production/Reliability Engineer. He completed his graduate work in Computer Science and is a Registered Professional Engineer in Colorado. He is married with four children and three grandchildren.

James W. Bilbro, '69, has been elected president of the International Society for Optical Engineering.

1970s

Peter Haub, '70, is currently working for Pacific Engineering Corporation, a division of the Keith Companies, in Portland, Oregon. PEC is a consulting engineering company specializing in electrical utility work and industrial construction, with an emphasis in electrical and instrumentation and controls engineering. His current work includes several small projects: an upgrade of the fresh water supply system in Central Point, Oregon; a project to add decorative lighting to a historic highway bridge in Gold Beach, Oregon; and an upgrade to the protective relays for a Bonneville Power Administration substation in eastern Washington. He recently prepared proposals for a desalination plant upgrade and expansion in Saudi Arabia and a distributed generation project for a semiconductor fab west of Portland. He is married to Donna and lives in Beaverton, Oregon. His favorite hobby is music. He performs with an internationally acclaimed choral group, the Oregon Repertory Singers, and is a principal trumpet of a small chamber orchestra, the Oregon Sinfonietta. Peter has three children. His daughter, Sarah, lives in Beaverton and works for SAIF Corporation. His son, Douglas, and his wife, Erica, live in Los Angeles, where she is a student at Fuller Seminary. Doug works for the seminary and is a part-time student there as well. They are expecting their first child in October. His other son, Jeremy (Doug's twin), lives in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida with his wife, Amy. She teaches high school English and he is a free-lance web site designer. They recently purchased their first home.

Tom Williams, '71, has been named a Synopsys Fellow. Synopsys Inc. is the world leader in integrated circuit (IC) design software. This award of distinction acknowledges the contributions Williams has brought to Synopsys, the influence he has had on the company's technical direction, and delivering design for test (DFT) technology innovation to customers. Synopsys Fellows are an elite group that currently consists of seven members.

Michael Roluti, '73, is director for the Bureau of Reclamation's Technical Service Center. He leads Reclamation and Interior Department-wide scientific, applied research, and engineering services related to water resources management. He has received the Department of Interior's Superior Service and Meritorious Service awards. He resides in Arvada, Colorado, with his wife, Lori, and his three children: Amy, Joy, and Mike.

Glenn R. Smith, ’73, established a patent law firm in Orange County, California in 1999. Prior to that, Smith received an MSEE from the University of California Irvine, an MBA from California State University Fullerton, and a JD from the University of California Los Angeles.

Rod Sato, '74, has been with Intel for 25 years. He plans to retire in 2005 and then rest and relax! His wife Judi (Hanes) is a '74 zoology grad and the household manager. They have three children: Jeremy, Eric, and Sye Ok.

John M. Manning, ’76, is the CEO and president of dpiX, LLC. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, dpiX (pronounced "depicts”) provides high-resolution imaging solutions to some of the world's most demanding medical, industrial, and military markets.

Edward Sedivy, '79, currently works for Lockheed Martin as the Program Manager for the Mars Phoenix 2007 Lander (NASA's next interplanetary lander). Previously, Edward served as the Spacecraft Manager for the Spitzer Infrared Observatory; Chief Systems Engineer for the Mars Odyssey Orbiter; Chief Systems Engineer for "ACIS," the primary science instrument on Dr. Chandra's X-Ray Observatory.
Ed is married with five children and resides in Morrison, Colorado. His interests include skiing, hunting, fishing, backpacking, woodworking, bicycling, and running.

1980s

David Hicks,'81, reports that his son Brian will enter CSU's Electrical & Computer Engineering Department to pursue a Bachelor's degree. He follows a path that David pursued 27 years ago.

Paul D. Worley, ’81, was recently promoted to group supervisor of the Information Technologies Group at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Joseph M. Harris II, '86, is an engineer with Motorola SPS. This sector is splitting off from the parent company soon to become its own independently traded company. He is the IC design manager of the Libraries and Memories SRAM design group. His fiancées name is Micki.

Brian Arnold, ’87, is the director of Design Tools and Methodology at Vitesse Semiconductor. He currently resides in Colorado Springs and is married to Tobi-Lynn Arnold, also a CSU alumnus. They have three children.

Tom Kalisker, '87, is a proud father of twin boys, Sam and Jack, born on Feb. 11 2002. At the time, Tom was working full time at Merck Research Labs as a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Engineer and pursuing a Master's degree in Software Engineering at Penn State. He finished his Master's degree last summer with a 3.61/4.00 GPA. He now has one publication credit: "Solving Mastermind Using Genetic Algorithms," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2724/2003, Springer-Verlag Heidelberg. He has been at Merck in West Point, Pennsylvania (outside of Philadelphia) for 6 years. Prior to that, Tom served almost 10 years as a sr. Field Service Engineer for Varian NMR instruments, and worked as an engineer for Chemagnetics in Fort Collins. He moved to West Point from Hell, Michigan (25 miles outside of Ann Arbor) in July of 1998. Before that, he lived in Lansing and Ypsilanti, Michigan and northern New Jersey. He still has family in the Denver area and would like to hear from any of his former classmates.

Tom can be reached via email: fidshimmer@netscape.net

Tom notes, "You know that you're getting older when the textbook you use for your Numerical Analysis course in Grad School is the seventh edition and you used the third edition of the same text in the Numerical Analysis course you took at CSU to finish your math minor in 1987."

1990s

Todd Ritterbush, '91, recently accepted a technical engineering position at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. The opportunities at Sandia will allow Todd to continue his historical interests in satellite communications, robotic controls, and computer applications engineering.

Julio Jorge Gonzalez,'91, joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at SUNY New Paltz, NY, as an Assistant Professor in 1993. In 1998 he was promoted to Associate Professor. Later, in 2001, he obtained the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. His wife Monica works as a Spanish Teacher at St. Joseph School and the John Coleman High School, both in Kingston, NY. Their daughter Maria won a scholarship to attend the prestigious Ithaca College, NY, which she will be joining in the fall. Their son Fernando was the most academic student in the middle school and is doing very well as a freshman in the high school.

Billy H.S. Wang, ’91, ’93, currently works for BCS Custom AMS Sales.

Elizabeth Callahan Weese, '93, and her husband Jeff, just celebrated their 10-year anniversary. They have a 3-year-old daughter, Sarah, and are expecting another baby in January 2004. After falling victim to a plant closure last year, she started her own business doing engineering consulting and is working as much or more than she would like from her home.

Blair Miller, '94, is employed with MCI, where he manages the engineering team for the MCI Enterprise Data Network. He currently resides in Colorado Springs with his wife Vanessa.

Dan Harms, '94, and his wife, Kim, had a son, Trevor Logan, on February 24. He was 8 pounds and 19.75 inches long!

John Elliot, '95, is currently the director of production management for Openwave Systems, the company that invented WAP (wireless application protocol). He and his wife, Kim, have two girls: Ashlyn was born in June 1998, and Paige was born in September 2002. They recently purchased a home in Santa Barbara, one block from the beach.

Duncan Halstead, '96, and his wife, Lisa, welcomed a son on April 12, 2004.

Umesh Mehta, '96, does network processor design/validation in Austin, TX.

Von-Kyoung Kim, '97, is a staff engineer at Sun Microsystems in the Processor and Network Products division. He has been working for Sun since he graduated in 1997 and has designed several Ultra-SPARC microprocessors for large computer servers. He has two children: Eunice, who was born in Fort Collins in 1995, and Ryan, who was born in San Jose, California, in 1998.

Jeremy Slade,'98, is headed to Stanford to finish up his Master's in electrical engineering. After spending four years working off-campus as a part-time student, he plans to finish his last semester of the program on campus as a full-time student. Jeremy is looking forward to the fun experience and says it will be very nice to once again be done with school. He is going out there with his wife, Kim, and their three boys. They will be living in student housing on campus.

2000s

Evan Ruzanski, '02, is a Ph.D. student at University of California-Santa Barbara studying electrical engineering, having been awarded a fellowship from UC-MICRO. He is focusing his research on digital speech and audio signal processing.

Mohammed Simsim, '02, is working on his Ph.D. in telecommunications engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Ben Guerra, '03, currently is working with satellite ground command and control systems. He's considering returning for a master's degree. He notes that it would be quite a balancing act with his second child due in April 2004!