Class Notes

1968 BS Business



1968-1970 Honeywell Minneapolis MN



1970-1977 Gates Rubber Co Denver CO



1977-2002 Freightliner/Daimler Trucks NA Portland OR



2002-present Retired Sunriver OR

Leif Palmer, BA ’ 83 and JD ’87, has been selected as the Regional Counsel of the U.S. EPA’s Region 4 Office of Regional Counsel located in Atlanta, Georgia. Leif, a member of the Senior Executive Service and a career EPA attorney with 25 years of experience at EPA, heads an office of 70 lawyers and support staff. The Region 4 office is the headquarters for EPA’s southeastern region which includes the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Before being selected as Regional Counsel, Leif, worked as a manager of Superfund attorneys who handled hazardous substance and oil spill Emergency Response matters as well as long-term remediation sites. Leif also headed ORC’s General Law, Criminal Law and Defensive Litigation Branch. Prior to entering management, he was a Senior Attorney handling a wide variety of matters including Everglades Restoration, the Atlantic Station brownfields redevelopment, environmental enforcement and disaster response on the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coasts after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Hurricane Katrina. At the UO, Leif received a certificate in Ocean and Coastal Law. Prior to moving to Atlanta, Leif was an associate attorney for Luvaas, Cobb, Richards and Fraser, in Eugene, Oregon.

Matt Thomas, BA '02 (business administration, Spanish), has propelled his kombucha company, Brew Dr. Kombucha, to one of the largest in the nation, now distributed in all 50 states and Canada. The business recently received a "B Corporation" certification for balancing purpose and profit.

Katie Newton, BFA '14 (photography), exhibited her "Nature's Afterimage" series as part of the Vanishing Nature display at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton.

Kevin Sanchez, BA '89, MBA '91 (finance), finished his fourth of the Seven Summits last February when he climbed Carstensz Pyramid, which, at 16,024 feet above Indonesian Papua, is the highest peak on the Australian continent. He plans to finish number five in May by summiting Alaska's Denali.

Wearing his Oregon T-shirt, Greg Zimel, BS '02 (biology), skydives in Baldwin, Wisconsin, on September 1—the same day the Ducks kicked off their 2018 football season.

Martha Biery, BS '86 (elementary education), attended the Oregon Migration event in Denver to send off a former fourth grade student of hers, Shannon Golden, who started at the UO in September.

Mitch Martin, PhD '90 (chemistry), and his son, Derek, who started his freshman year at the UO last fall as a computer and information science major, hiked the Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan province, China.

Walt Hull, BS '59 (education), has been appointed to the Portland Police Bureau Training Advisory Council.

On a recent trip to Chicago with his wife, Lynn, to celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary, Gerry Kosanovic, MS '82 (educational policy and management), PhD '91 (educational policy and management), stood on the vertigo-inducing Ledge, a glass balcony 1,353 feet high, extending four feet outside the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower Skydeck.

Doug McNaughton, BS '88 (speech: rhetoric and communication), and his wife trekked to Northern Africa, where they found the camels near Tangier, Morocco, to be "O"-dorable.

Thomas Goodman, BS '13 (educational foundations), was named coach and director for the Siena Heights University eSports program in Michigan.

Nora Simon, BA '11 (history, journalism: news editorial), has joined the Washington Post as a multiplatform editor.

ADAM STEPHEN, BArch ’12, was promoted to principal with Bend-based Steele Associates Architects._

Elisabeth Lefebvre, MA '12 (international studies), has been hired as an assistant professor of education at Bethel University, Minnesota.

Elcon Associates Inc., a Portland-based mechanical engineering company, has hired Nick Meusch, BS '13 (business administration), as marketing manager.

Cooper Green, BA '17 (journalism), has joined the Camas-Washougal Post-Record as a news reporter, covering government, business, and features.

Hangping Xu, MA '13 (comparative literature), has joined Middlebury College in Vermont as an assistant professor of Chinese.

Philip Kovac, PhD '17 (chemistry), has joined the faculty at Elmira College in New York as an assistant professor of chemistry.

Gini Piercy, MArch '15 (landscape architecture), has joined Portland-based Mayer/Reed as a landscape designer.