Corinne Asturias
Alum 2000Corinne Asturias is an award-winning journalist and content strategist whose career has spanned print, broadcast and online media. Having worked throughout her career as a reporter, news anchor, news editor, managing editor, executive advisor and columnist, she brings a wide range of experience to her role as advisor for the Sonoma State STAR, the student-run newspaper published on campus each week. She currently works as Features Editor for The Press Democrat, where she manages six sections and is part of the newsroom that received the Pulitzer Prize in 2018.
Viveka Chen
Alum 2000Viveka Chen is an organizational development consultant, certified coach, facilitator and trainer. For over twenty years she has worked for social justice across a spectrum of cultures, communities, movements and sectors. She specializes in leading through change and conflict, leadership transition, visioning, strategy, theory of change, alliance building, developing learning communities and designing and implementing leadership development and capacity building initiatives. She also co-founded Coaching for Justice, a multi-racial/generational group of certified coaches committed to increasing access to high-quality coaching for social change leaders and non-profit staff.
Gary Whitehead
Alum 2001Gary Whitehead is a poet, teacher and crossword constructor. His writing awards include, among others, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Pearl Hogrefe Fellowship at Iowa State University and the PEN Northwest Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency Award. His poems have appeared widely, most notably in The New Yorker.
Shay Solomon
Alum 2001Shay Salomon is an author, educator and a builder in the field of natural construction methods. She is a co-founder of the Small House Society. The Small House Society has been recognized by Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, The Columbia News Service and other news media sources. Shay earns her living mainly as a carpenter and natural builder. She's taught at least a hundred courses in carpentry, straw bale building, solar design and related subjects. She specializes in coaching owner builders and teaching women's courses and in building very small houses.
Andrea Ross
Alum 2001Andrea Ross writes essays, creative nonfiction, fiction and poetry. She formerly worked as a National Park Service ranger and wilderness guide throughout the American West. As an adopted person, she is passionate about bringing to light the experiences of adopted people. She teaches writing at the University of California, Davis. Also an avid outdoorswoman, Andrea has worked as a wilderness guide and owner of an all-women's wilderness adventure travel company, and as a national park service interpretive ranger.
Amy Rawe
Alum 2001Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, Amy Rawe joined Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) as Communications Manager in May 2020. Amy coordinates earned media responses and collaborates with SACE’s communications, policy and program teams to create engaging messaging for the press, the public and the organization’s members. She also writes about her life as a single mom on her blog "Rawe-Struck," at www.amyrawe.com.
Christian Parenti
Alum 2001Christian Parenti is an investigative journalist, academic and author. His books include Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis, a survey of the rise of the prison-industrial complex from the Nixon through the Reagan Era and into the present, and The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America From Slavery to the War on Terror, a study of surveillance and control in modern society. Christian's reporting in Afghanistan was the subject of an award-winning HBO documentary, Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi. He has also written for the London Review of Books, Mother Jones, Jacobin and Condé Nast Traveler.
Susan Moir
Alum 2001Susan Moir, ScD, is Director of Research at the Labor Resource Center at UMass. In partnership with regional building trades unions, construction contractors and government representatives, she is co-convener of the participatory action research project, the Policy Group on Tradeswomen’s Issues (PGTI). Susan has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct a comparative study of women working in the construction industry in India where 50% of the construction workforce is female.
Ellen Meloy
Alum 2001Ellen Meloy was a celebrated nature writer. She earned a pulitzer prize nomination for her work, The Anthropology of Turquoise Meditations on Landscape, Art & Spirit. She authored three additional books and numerous radio essays. The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers, which grants a $5,000 award for creative nonfiction writers, was created in her honor.
Eileen McNerney
Alum 2001Sister Eileen McNerney, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, founded Taller San Jose Hope Builders in 1995. By bringing together sponsors representing local government, churches, corporations, foundations and private individuals, Sister Eileen opened an educational and job-training center in downtown Santa Ana for high-risk youth ages 18 – 28. Sister Eileen also authored A Story of Suffering and Hope: Lessons from Latino Youth, which chronicles her dogged determination to find what it takes to walk wounded young people out of poverty. She served as Hope Builders’ Executive Director for 13 years. She currently serves on Hope Builders’ board of directors.
Dean Crawford
Alum 2000Dean Crawford is visiting associate professor of English at Vassar College and is also the author of The Lay of the Land. He is married to Dara Goldstein, an award-winning cookbook author.
John Baldwin
Alum 2000University Planning, Public Policy and Management associate professor John Baldwin taught Russians how to resettle the radiation-ravaged land around Chernobyl. He spearheaded a study of the effects of long-term growth in the Willamette Valley and started the University’s Environmental Studies Program and the Institute for a Sustainable Environment. John did much international work in the field of sustainability during his life. As an associate professor in Planning, Public Policy and Management (PPPM), he taught courses on environmental planning and impact analysis, world energy policy and planning, sustainable development and Oregon’s land use program. He served twice as PPPM department chair. John died in 2005.