“Old Pals,” Kate Lenz and Missy Taylor took a Copper Country Road Trip to Houghton last fall (2010) to see the colors and visit the area. It was Kate’s first visit to the “new” building since graduation. She said, “It’s nice to see that students hopefully never have to endure classes in the trailers again!” Kate works for the Wisconsin DNR and lives in Peshtigo. Missy lives in Marquette and is employed by Peninsula Land Surveying.
Paul Leach lives in Hancock, Michigan during the summer months and Largo, Florida during the winter. Paul mentioned that Hal Williams was his roomate in college. They married sisters and he described their relationship as “inseparable buddies.”
Cody Caulum has accepted a Forester position with Joseph Bollig Forest Products of Mauston, Wisconsin. Bollig is a small family logging company in Southwestern Wisconsin. Congratulations, Cody!
Paul Gaberdiel stopped by the School while his son was attending orientation at Michigan Tech last August (2010). Paul graduated with a BS in Forest Management. He works for the Michigan DNR in Newberry where he is the Forest Fire Supervios for the MDNR Newberry management unit. He is also the incident commander for the eastern Upper Penninsula incident management team.
Lacey Mason was a fall visitor to the School while on vacation in the UP. She and her husband James have a one-year-old daughter, Caroline Lucille Mason.
Lacey graduated with an MS in Forestry and now works as a computer research specialist for the University of Michigan’s Institute of Fisheries Research in Ann Arbor.
Dave and Miriam Wellman visited the Copper Country in the fall of 2010, celebrating their 50th anniversary and touring the campus. Dave said, ” The Forestry Facilities are unvelievable. Thank you, Tech!” Dave is retired from the Michigan DNR and lives in Indian River, Michigan.
Larry “Tree Hugger” Jokinen, who was at Tech in 1979 and finished his Forestry degree in 1991, stopped by the school while visiting the Lake States for a Fall (2010) color tour. Larry commented, ” I miss the Copper Country in the Fall. ”
Regarding Gene Hesterberg, Norm Sloan and Bob Sajdak, he said, “I had these men as professor/instructors in college during the early 70’s. These men were all a great inspiration to me in college, especially Gene.
Larry is employed with the Idaho Transportation Department and lives in Stanley, Idaho.
Professor David Flaspohler is participating in a 5-year NSF-funded research project to better understand how birds interact with naturally fragmented forests created by lava flows. He and his team are finding and monitoring nests and color banding individual birds in 34 forest fragments that vary in size from 0.2 ha to 30 ha in mid-elevation native Hawaiian forests. In half of these fragments, we will remove the introduced non-native black rat, and in the other half we will not. Rats are known nest predators that also compete with birds for insect food so their influence on the food web and on the reproductive success of the birds may be strong. The work is being conducted by Dr. Flaspholer, Dr. Jessie Knowlton (Michigan Tech post-doctoral associate), and 4 bird interns. Other collaborators are from Stanford University, the University of Maryland, and the USFS, Institute of Pacific Island Forestry.
See more pictures at: Flaspohler Hawaiian Sabbatical