Alumni
1970-1979
Kathe P. Fox '70
Baltimore, Maryland, Ph.D. - Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale, 1981, Vice President, Medstat. I oversee consulting services for a healthcare information company. My history degree made me a good reader, writer, and appreciate of the importance of what has come before when considering current policy issues. I tend to take an historical perspective in my work. Epidemiology is really the "history" of disease.
Diana Hellinger '70
Majoring in history at Skidmore taught me critical thinking, particularly under Professor Bryntenson's tutelage in the required historiography course. One entire month was devoted to the search for the meaning, of the purpose, and the truth of history. Using the Socratic pedagogy prepared me to analyze reported news and recorded history to determine whose perspective was presented as fact, what influences or biases influenced purportedly objective news and written history. The workload of history majors during my four years at Skidmore was onerous. The reading, papers, two theses, bluebook tests, class hours in addition to the other mandated liberal arts courses - philosophy, anthropology, sociology, government, English, art history, biology, psychology - compelled me to become an organized student with consummate time management skills. I learned to think and write clearly, crisply, and correctly. I honed in on the big ideas, thought about their permutations, and distilled their salient significance at the time of their discovery and their direct or indirect impact on later eras. My intellectual growth and comprehensive approach to studying events and circumstances were forged by majoring in history at Skidmore. Equipped with this background enabled me to contribute to the now LDEF's Project on Equal Education Rights where I worked for eight years on programs that monitored Title IX compliance and on research projects that discerned the reasons girls dropped out of high school or did not excel in math, science, computer technology or sports after their middle school years. Later I became the Executive Director of the Vietnam Women's Memorial Project (VWMMP), responsible for shaping the strategy to win passage of authorizing legislation to place the first memorial in the nation's capital to honor women's military service; develop and manage the national competition to select the memorial design; raise the funds to cover the cost of the memorial and project activities; and plan the three day celebration that welcomed 50,000 Americans - men, women and children; veterans and not veterans; black, white, native American, Asian and Pacific American - to Washington, DC for the dedication of the Vietnam Women's Memorial 300 feet directly across the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Again, the history major prepared me for this challenge. This effort required high level organizational skills, time management, problem solving abilities, and understanding how attention to detail was necessary to reach the ultimate goal. I am finally the teacher I always dreamed of becoming since second grade. I am a sixth grade homeroom teacher and teach English - grammar, reading comprehension, and writing - to 28 fourth graders, 29 fifth graders and 29 sixth graders. History. His story? Her story? Our story. Myth, legend, fact, a little of each? History is a field that deepens our understanding of the human condition and expands our willingness to make a contribution toward making a positive difference in the present and the future. Man's inhumanity to man over the tens of hundreds of year perhaps is what touches our own humanity and makes us determined to do better. Or perhaps it is man's humanity to man that pulls at our heart and makes us resolve to show our humanity to each other. Which will be our history?
Judith Lohman '70
West Hartford, Connecticut. Other education: MA, Ph.D. (History), Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Current Job Title: Chief Analyst, Office of Legislative Research, Connecticut General Assembly. The Office of Legislative Research (OLR) is the Connecticut state legislature's research office, one of three major nonpartisan offices in the Connecticut legislature. (The others provide fiscal analysis and bill drafting and legal support.) OLR provides nonpartisan, objective research and policy analysis for legislators and legislative staff, writes aplain-language analysis of the legal effect of each bill reported to the House or Senate and of amendments to those bills, and writes plain language summaries of the new laws the General Assembly passes each year. We are also the professional policy staff for 23 legislative committees, providing information, advice, and technical assistance on legislation to committee chairmen and members. OLR currently has 18 researchers. We publish about 900 written research reports per year on a range of topics, and answer about 7,000 questions annually by phone, e-mail, or in person. All of our research is performed in response to requests from legislators, usually with relatively short deadlines deadlines and often under high pressure (similar to newspaper reporting). If you would like to see some of our work, our website is at http://www.cga.state.ct.us/olr/. I have been a researcher in OLR since September 1978 (25 years - I can hardly believe it.) I got the job right after I got out of graduate school, when my mother saw an ad in the paper and told me about it. OLR researchers have to have at least a master's degree. Most of my colleagues have law degrees or MAs or Ph.Ds in public affairs and public administration. Each researcher specializes in one or two broad policy areas. Mine are education and taxes. In the past, I also worked on energy and labor. My history training is very important to my career. My job has four major functions: doing research, writing clear and objective reports and analyses, explaining policy, and giving advice. I learned the basic techniques for the first three by studying history, starting at Skidmore. My history training taught me to do thorough research, analyze information critically, and write it up clearly. It also taught me how to remain objective, a basic requirement for working in a nonpartisan legislative office. And it gave me a long term perspective, which I have found very useful in a career spent working with politicians.
Alice Phillips Zolkheh '70
I live in Palo Alto, California. Received an AA in Nursing in 1972. I've been a practicing registered nurse since then. I work in Labor and Delivery at a local hospital as a floor nurse. History does not come into my daily life. I appreciate the perspective a liberal arts education gave, and the strategic thinking skills I learned. I am often teased by my family that my history degree is a waste -- but it taught me how to think and analyze. azelkha@yahoo.com
Class of 1971
Position: Owner/operator Christmas tree farm. M.A. in history, "A.B.D." in history,
Washington University. None of the positions in which I have been employed, past or
present, have anything to do with my degree. I would say it has been useful as a tool
of analysis with respect to weighing the merits of argument and appreciating logical,
well-constructed reasoning supported by appropriate and substantive facts and evidence.
With regard to issues of the day, it is a good background against which to separate
cant from good reasoning. Sadly, while employers are willing to perceive every English
major as having an aptitude for writing, they never seem to think history majors have
any comparable ability. The discipline could do a better job to change that
perception.
Jaye Scholl Bohlen '71
Glendale, Ca. (Suburb of Los Angeles) Knight-Bagehot Fellow, Columbia University Graduate School of Business, Certificate in Business and Financial Journalism, 1982. Former West Coast Editor, Barron's Business and Financial Weekly Magazine, A Dow Jones publication, 1982-2002, former Business Editor, Trenton, (NJ) Times Newspaper, 1976-1981; former staff writer, Center For Analysis of Public Issues, Princeton NJ 1971-1976. I have spent my entire career in journalism and my history degree was perfect training. Why? Because history majors know better than anyone that "history" has more than one version--it depends on who is telling the story. Good journalists know that there is always more than one version of events, as well. Majoring in history also requires that you write a lot of papers. I never really mastered writing at college, but I got my start at college and kept at it. And now, I count the ability to write clearly and lucidly among my greatest satisfactions in life. As Anna Quindlen said in one of her New York Times's columns that she wrote before leaving to become a novelist, "I never really know what I think until I write it down." History helped me to know what I think.
Susan Horowitz Notar '72
I graduated from Skidmore in 1972 with a major in History and a concentration in American Studies. I worked for the NY Historical Society and as a researcher for a professor in New York City during the summer after graduation. I began teaching Social Studies at Newburgh Free Academy in Newburgh NY in September 1972 and am currently in my 31st year as a high school teacher. I have taught all areas of history and government including European History, American History and Advanced Placement US History. I have an MS degree from SUNY New Paltz and an additional 60 credits beyond my BA. In 1994 I was awarded a fellowship to study the Holocaust in Poland and Israel and have taught elective courses, and in-service courses in Holocaust Education since 1995.
Gary Muldoon '73
1973 graduate, Government/History major Rochester, NY J.D. degree, 1976 attorney in small private practice, author, adjunct instructor at community college; previously held local elective office "A lawyer without words or history is a mechanic." Walter Scott
Deborah E. Davis Moore '74
Syracuse, New York B.S. Date Processing - Washington University in St. Louis, 1982 MBA - Syracuse University 1984 J.D. - Syracuse University 1991. Currently I serve as the Senior Law Associate to Chief Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr. , United States District Court for the Northern District of New York I am a career law clerk to the Chief Judge of the Northern District of New York. In this capacity, I supervise two "term" clerks as well as several law students who extern with us during the academic year and summer. I have spent all but two years of my legal career as a federal law clerk. I spent two years in private practice where I focused primarily on labor and employment law issues. My history degree has been invaluable to me in my career. First, and foremost, being a history major provided me with the opportunity to develop my research and writing skills. It also taught me