Eric Steeves ’88Christopher Calcagno ’94Paul Cohen ’76Cheryl Madden ’02Wendi Weber ‘92Class Acts Profiles
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Heidi Phelps ’04
As a freshman, Heidi Phelps planned a career in fashion design, but French studies drew her like a magnet. The Narragansett native now finds herself serving as the assistant to the Cultural Attaché at the French Consulate in Boston, a position she started right after New Year’s Day.
“I am unbelievably excited about the work that I’ll be doing here,” she said. “I have already learned so much.”
Learning has always been her focus. One of her URI mentors, Alain-Philippe Durand, describes Phelps as a devoted student who showed great enthusiasm for French studies. She impressed him enough that he hired her to teach two sections of Introductory French last fall after she completed graduate studies at the University of Kansas. “Although [the consulate job] was a very competitive job application with hundreds of applicants from New England and beyond, I’m not surprised that Ms. Phelps got it,” Durand said.
After taking intermediate French courses to fulfill degree requirements at URI, Phelps took a course on French female authors—which inspired her to change her major—as it incorporated her enjoyment of French with her interests in world literature, history, and women’s studies. “I realized how much I genuinely enjoyed studying French and was struck by how much I learned not only about France and French culture but various cultures throughout the Francophone world,” she recalled.
In her position at the French Consulate she’s writing a bi-monthly newsletter, drafting letters and speeches, and writing French to English translations. She has also worked on a statewide educational program to promote French language and culture in Massachusetts schools.
“I am very grateful for the education that I received at URI,” said Phelps, who occasionally serves as a DJ and hosted an all-French dance party at a coffeehouse in Providence recently. “I sincerely feel it could serve me in a number of different career fields, particularly those that stress the importance of communication, analytical skills, and world knowledge.”
—John Pantalone ’71
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Eric Steeves ’88
“I was that guy you met at the party who was always talking about that book I was working on,” says Eric Steeves, who started writing a novel in 1995. “One night I stopped and thought, ‘I’ve had this same conversation 50 times.’”
That was his turning point. “I was going to finish it and have it printed even if I just printed one personal copy.” With his newfound focus, Steeves completed his first novel, Paradise Made, published in 2003.
Readers enjoyed this thriller featuring John Thompson, an anti-hero engaged in worldwide criminal activity and described the book as a “fast-moving page turner.” Steeves’ goal in developing Thompson is “to create an expression of a man who has zero responsibility and tries to get through life with a good tan and not too much of a hangover.”
Motivated by his success, Steeves followed Paradise Made with last year’s Race the Rising Sun, which follows John Thompson’s international adventures.
Steeves has created a franchise character, though time will tell if Thompson becomes a household name like Tom Clancy’s fictional hero Jack Ryan. “If I am lucky enough to get a three-book deal from a large publisher, I could see myself writing full time,” says Steeves.
In the interim, Steeves, who holds master’s degrees from George Washington and Boston Universities, will not be quitting his day job as a senior marketing manager for Verizon.
When he is not juggling his professional interests, this former track team captain and physical education major helps support URI Athletics. He and fellow teammates attend the first indoor track meet annually and reach out to former track and field athletes to raise thousands of dollars to help defray team expenses.
Steeves is now busy finalizing an anthology of short crime stories due to be published this summer. “It’s rewarding to do something creative, and I hope to inspire others. I want someone to say, ‘I remember this guy. If he could do it...’”
For more information, check ericsteeves.net.
—Maria V. Caliri ’86, M.B.A. ’92
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Christopher Calcagno ’94
Whenever you’re down and out in New York City, Chris Calcagno would love you to drop by for a few laughs. The standup comic performs several nights a week at clubs in Manhattan, slaying audiences with his edgy take on life in the 21st century.
“I talk a lot about relationships between the sexes, how ridiculous political correctness has become, and I get a lot of funny material from everyday life in New York,” he said during an interview at Caroline’s, a comedy club on Broadway.
A political science major from Clifton, N.J., Chris took a circuitous road to the Great White Way. He worked at an investment bank after college, moved to Seattle and lived “an artsy life for a couple of years,” then returned East to study law, graduating from New York Law School in 2002. Contract work for law firms and corporate clients allows him to pay his bills and concentrate on his comedy career.
A natural clown who cracked up his fraternity brothers at Phi Kappa Psi, Chris started doing open mike nights in 2004, but his early routines “bombed terribly.” He enrolled in a comedy workshop where he revised his jokes, honed his act, and developed a killer set.
Chris learned to work audiences at URI playing bass in The Joneses, a band that played campus parties and bars around Narragansett. Now he’s a regular at Caroline’s and performs at many other clubs including the Gotham Comedy Club and the Broadway Comedy Club.
He’d love to get back in touch with friends from URI, and urges acquaintances to email him at christopher.calcagno@gmail.com and look him up whenever they’re in town.
“I feel like my job is to channel all the things that everybody wants to say but can’t say in everyday life. The role of a comic is to be the lance that cuts the boil and lets out all the toxins that build up in people at work and in life. That’s what I try to do.”
—David Gregorio ’80
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Paul Cohen ’76
In the world of consumer products, it’s common to find packaging labeled “new and improved.” Everything from detergent to shampoo is enhanced in some way—or so marketers tell us.
Yet this concept of improvement is not limited to staple goods. Manufacturers aim to advance production processes, and distributors look for more efficient ways to deliver products to market.
It is within this environment that industrial engineering graduate Paul Cohen is a renowned expert. His areas of interest include the transformation of raw industrial materials into finished goods (materials processing) and the science of how friction, lubrication, and wear affect product quality (tribology).
During his distinguished career, Cohen spent more then two decades at Pennsylvania State University where he earned numerous awards and authored more than 80 publications. Now he has moved on to North Carolina State University where he is the first Edgar S. Woolard Distinguished Professor and head of the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Cohen describes his appointment as “the opportunity to be a part of something special. North Carolina State’s outstanding faculty, coupled with an infusion of resources from an accomplished alumnus and proximity to industry in Research Triangle Park, makes this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Cohen plans to propel his department’s reputation to great heights: “Our goal is to be among the elite programs in industrial and systems engineering. We will be working across traditional disciplinary boundaries on problems of major technical and societal significance.”
Given Cohen’s accomplishments, there is a strong probability that he will achieve this objective. However, he derives equal professional fulfillment from his impact on his students’ lives.
“I’ve been fortunate to receive awards from different organizations, but the highlights of my career are awards from students who have recognized my teaching and advising. The ability to contribute to the success of students you’ve taught and mentored is very satisfying on a personal level.”
—Maria V. Caliri ’86, M.B.A. ’92
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Cheryl Madden ’02
Her research on the Holodomor, a Stalinist genocide and forced starvation in Ukraine from 1932-33, has taken an emotional toll on Cheryl Madden, who teaches history at the Community College of Rhode Island.
Her work in creating an annotated bibliography of English language sources was not lost on Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who named Madden a recipient of the Ukrainian national award The Order of Princess Olha for her research and for raising public awareness of the Holodomor (in Ukrainian the word means literally hunger plague).
Madden received the award in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 20. “It was an utterly unexpected honor,” she said. “It really was a stunning surprise.”
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor. “It was very deliberately conducted. Anyone over 12 could be and often was executed for stealing even a few ears of corn.” A worker might receive a three-day supply of food for one person, then divide it among many family members who could not work. Women held up their starving children to passing trains begging for food. Soldiers guarded fields to prevent people from taking the produce left after the harvest; they removed grindstones and marched horses across courtyards to uncover sites where peasants had buried food.
“What I think affected me most as a mother is, how do you tell your child, ‘I don’t have anything to feed you,’” said Madden. “It has an emotional cost to do this work, but I have also made some of the best friends of my life. It’s the kind of subject that the die-hard Stalinists are denouncing, so I guess that means we’ve tipped some stones that they wish had remained covered.
“I tell my students that if people can suffer and die this way, we can respect them enough to study it. If everyone has a gift to give the world, then we’re missing the gifts of 10 million people.”
To see Madden’s bibliography on the Holodomor, go to shevchenko.org/famine.
—Kristen Cyr ’95
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Wendi Weber ‘92
A day does not pass without the media reporting that the environment is threatened by global warming and a host of other causes. Wendi Weber, deputy regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Northeast, has dedicated her career to working on such causes.
Weber, who holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology from URI and a master’s degree in fisheries from the University of Georgia, is responsible for conserving, protecting, and enhancing fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats in 13 states from Maine to Virginia. She tries to minimize the adverse effects of environmental threats and take preemptive action to preserve the natural environment.
Paramount among her worries is climate change: “It’s an overarching concern for the Northeast Region. Models show that sea levels are rising. As a result, we’re losing shoreline and habitats are changing.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service is doing its part to combat this problem. In Weber’s region, for example, local offices are reducing their carbon footprint by recycling and making their buildings more energy efficient.
Population growth is another issue that impacts the Northeast. With nearly one-quarter of the nation’s population residing in this area, Weber says that education is critical to mitigating environmental risk: “We provide technical assistance to members of the public to help them make environmentally sound decisions.”
Weber stresses that the need for public outreach is not limited to adults. All of us, and especially our children, have to be aware of the importance of conservation. “We need to get children outdoors connecting with nature rather than remaining inside in front of their TVs and computers,” says Weber, who urges everyone to spend time outdoors enjoying scenic areas and national wildlife refuges.
Weber hopes the public will think globally while acting locally to conserve our natural resources. She hopes we can maintain a place of clean, diverse, and healthy living for generations to come.
—Maria V. Caliri ’86, M.B.A. ’92
