09/22
Save the Date! | Virtual Author Event from the 1990 Bookshelf on October 26th
Dues 2022 | Keep our coffers full so we can plan the reunion we all deserve.
Constant Trip Down Memory Lane: Alumni Parents |
By Stacy Bereck Chernosky ’90
Now & Then: First Year Orientation | By Stacy Bereck Chernosky ’90
Spotlight | David Bermudez ’90
Packrat Celebration |
Class of 1990 Welcome Letter from Dean Bruce Donovan
As shared by Dr. Joan Gelin ‘90
1990 Feedback | Turn your speakers our way
SAVE THE DATE
FALL 1990 AUTHOR EVENT IN THE VIRTUAL SPACE
Wednesday, October 26, 8 p.m. ET, 5 p.m. PT
Mark your calendars for a fun interview with some of our favorite Class of 1990 authors! This event will be moderated by Ashley Mason ‘90, Associate Managing Editor of Algonquin Books.
CLASS OF 1990 MEMBERSHIP DUES…2022
With all types of great events occuring now each year, and in planning for our 35th Reunion in 2025, we are looking to continue the growth of our class account.
Just in this past year and a half we’ve hosted a slew of events including a second 30th reunion with Zoom drinks and trivia; a puzzle night featuring our classmate AJ Jacobs, and a Campus Dance meetup. As you see elsewhere in the newsletter, we have a great Class Authors' event coming in October and there will be more events to enjoy next Spring. And all of this is possible due to the engagement of all of you.
We hope to enhance what we will have available in our accounts to keep bringing everyone great and educational times. Most importantly, for our Reunion in 2025, we want to help subsidize the costs of our class events to the greatest extent possible: this way more of us can join in the fun at a great rate, and have an excellent time re-connecting with all of our classmates on College Hill in only 2½ years time.
The Leadership Team is asking that you donate a bit to the class, if you are able to do so. Our general dues request is for $90 per year, but as always please feel free to donate as much or as little as you like. Whatever you can do will help all of us from what is clearly the best graduating class ever to walk through the Van Wickle Gates.
We appreciate it! Ever True... to Brown and the Class of 1990!
– Class of 1990 Co-President Jonathan Steinberg ‘90
Constant Trip Down Memory Lane: Alumni Parents
By Stacy Bereck Chernosky ‘90
When Luis Lopez ’90, P ’26 dropped off his son Brosnan ‘26 on the Brown campus for first-year orientation at the end of August, Brosnan was one of a dozen members of the incoming class at Brown who has at least one parent from the class of 1990.
Lopez was struck by both what was different—and the same—on campus and on Thayer Street since his time at Brown, including the construction of new buildings and the arrival of several new chain restaurants to Thayer Street. “What catches my attention most is the artwork located throughout campus, in monuments or others.”
While Lopez noticed updates and modernization at the Ratty, he said dorm life for Brosnan at Andrews feels like it is exactly the same as it was for Lopez at Keeney Quad when he was an undergraduate. Regardless of any physical changes though, it is the spirit of the campus that most speaks to Lopez, “The energy of the community is the best – that is wonderful to see and to feel on visits,” he said.
Lopez and his wife Gladys Mendez ’94 P’26 had a mini class of 1990 reunion at the Ratty during drop off where they spent time with fellow new Brown parents Nichelle Maynard-Elliott ’90 P’26 and Gerald Wayne Elliott ’91 P’26 who were there to drop off daughter Nailah ‘26, as well as with fellow classmates Dominick Boyce ‘90 and Dr. Rick Quiles ‘90.
Maynard-Elliott is looking forward to the journey that Nailah is embarking on at Brown.
“We are so excited for her and proud of all her hard work and accomplishments,” Maynard-Elliott says. “She and her older brother grew up coming to Brown and hearing our stories. We are so glad it was a natural fit for her.” Her advice to Nailah is to enjoy the college years and, “Be open to new people and perspectives. Make lifelong friends.”
During their trips to Providence over the years Maynard-Elliott says she and her family have watched downtown Providence and Thayer Street change and old restaurant favorites like Montanas leave, while new favorites like bb.qchicken. have emerged. However, she is happy to see one constant remain: Brown’s strong sense of community with an increasing commitment to diversity.
“Nailah will be better equipped to navigate the nuances of excelling academically and engaging with the administration because of what we learned and have passed on. We’ve already seen signs that she’s building a strong community and group of friends just like we did.”
Louise Davidson-Schmich ’90 P ‘25’s daughter Klara ’25 is now a sophomore. Klara is one of the nearly 40 students in the classes of 2023 through 2025 with a class of 1990 parent. Davidson-Schmich agrees with Lopez that the dorms that were at Brown in the late 1980s are little changed today, saying about the Grad Center where her daughter now lives, “Paint that was there in the 1980s is probably peeling off her bathroom today.”
Davidson-Schmich mentions that the addition of new dorms to Brown has caused some necessary changes in the nicknames for the older ones “Keeney Quad (what we called “The Quad”) has renovated lounges & kitchens. There’s lots of other “quads” nowadays so no one calls it “The Quad” anymore.”
Having Klara at Brown has been very meaningful to Davidson-Schmich. “It’s a constant trip down Memory Lane. I didn’t expect to be so moved by her attending the same institution; it’s great.”
Rohina Gandhi-Hoffman ’90 MD’94 P’24 also loves having a child at Brown but feels some pressure to make sure Brown delivers a great experience to her daughter.
“It feels great having Maya at my alma mater,”Gandhi-Hoffman says. “It gives me an excuse to visit my old stomping grounds and friends that still live there. I am excited to have this extra bond with her (like we share a secret), however I also sometimes feel a bit of responsibility that she has as good of a time as I did.”
Maya ‘24, who started during the heart of Covid lockdowns, had many restrictions during her first year.“I think her experience has been vastly different from mine as she was the Class of 2024 that started college during the pandemic and in isolation (online classes, no roommates, pick-up and go dining.) She missed out on the very important and fun orientation that Brown is known for. The in-person socializing was really missed,” Gandhi-Hoffman says.
“The advice I gave Maya was to keep making friends until you graduate. Stay open-minded and keep making your circle bigger …I also told her to learn Providence and become a part of the city and enjoy that aspect too.”
David Simons ’90 P’24 agrees that Covid created some challenges when daughter Rayna ’24 began Brown, but believes students managed to build friendships in dorms anyway, “Covid protocols were a huge change (from our experience) for her first year, including delayed start in January, and not eating in the dining halls. Fun with friends in the dorm seems like a constant.”
When it comes to the academic side of Brown, many of the students are concentrating in very different things than their Brown parent(s) did, although Nailah plans to study economics like her mom and Gandhi-Hoffman and Maya studied neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience respectively. Several of the students are taking advantage of Brown’s great flexibility to take their time exploring different options before picking a concentration, with Davidson-Schmich’s daughter Klara currently considering history, sociology, and economics. “Brosnan is thinking about engineering,” Lopez says, “but has various ideas, as it should be at Brown.
“Brynn has forged a path at Brown that is uniquely her own. The magic of Brown is that we can have two completely different but equally wonderful experiences.”
When visiting Providence, Brown parents from the class of 1990 try to balance nostalgia and reconnection with the exploration of new things. A campus visit for Simons includes a meal at Aspara and a visit with Professor Andy Van Dam. Maynard -Elliott is also looking forward to enjoying great food when her family returns to Providence.
Davidson-Schmich says, “I am now trying to see new things I never actually saw when I was at Brown. Last parents’ weekend we went to Newport. This time at drop off I went to the RISD museum.”
A perfect visit for Gandhi-Hoffman combines nostalgia and new discoveries with a wistful sense of what might have been, “When I visit, I feel compelled to do a walk or drive by all the places I lived and show them to her, show her Whispering Arch behind Metcalf, go to Al Forno (my favorite) and then her favorite Persimmons (new since my time) and then stroll Benefit Street because I think it is the most beautiful street and I still regret not getting a chance to live on it.”
“It is nice to be able to bond on things like food in the Ratty and understanding references to campus & city landmarks.
Now & Then: First Year Orientation
By Stacy Bereck Chernosky ‘90
Parents and kids unloading cars and hauling suitcases and boxes? Students waiting in line to pick up dorm room keys and student IDs? Families sharing hugs and sometimes tearful goodbyes?
Photos from the Brown News Agency of move-in day in late August for the over 1,700 first year students starting Brown this year look remarkably like ones you might have seen when our smaller class of 1,325 came to campus 36 years ago.
The class of 2026 had many activities on their calendars for orientation that mirrored ones that the class of 1990 also participated in during late summer in 1986—course placements, meetings with unit (now rebranded
neighborhood) mates and advisors, an orientation dance, movies on the green, neighborhood rallies, and a midnight organ concert to name a few (although the trip to Newport has disappeared from the schedule—perhaps a victim to Providence’s notoriously quirky fall weather.).
Today’s incoming class has access to very different technology than we did to help them get them informed and connected both before their time on College Hill begins and after arrival.
Brown still waits until nearly the last minute to notify students about roommates and dorm placement, but now does so via email, of course, instead of white index cards.
New roommates can now quickly connect via text, Snapchat, Instagram, cell phone or other electronic means as opposed to waiting, like we did, for the busy signal to end on their future roommate’s family phone line.
In 2022, by the time roommate assignments arrived in August, many first years had already started forming friendships with other classmates through months of being connected via Facebook Groups and Instagram, GroupMes and other forms of technology and social media. Parents were also able to get into the act, connecting on Facebook parent groups and sharing photos of dorm rooms and transitioning advice.
In the summer of 1986, Brown kept the US Post Office busy by mailing entering first years a variety of publications designed to help new students get quickly acclimated to Brown: Bear Facts, Guide to Liberal
Learning, and Opening Doors: A Guide to Freshman Housing at Brown. These publications were the primary—and in many cases the only—way for new students to learn about Brown before arriving, short of
visiting campus itself.
Today, Brown sends most official communication to new students electronically both through emails and electronic publications like BrownU_Your-Bruno-Beginnings which has hot links to different sites online and comes with a companion website where students can join different communities.
Students also must complete some required and strongly recommended online courses over the summer including 1styear@Brown, which is designed to help students tackle Brown’s Open Curriculum (still known as the New Curriculum in our day), courses from EverFi on health and wellness educational empowerment, as well as completing training about Brown’s standards of contact.
Beyond these sources, information for new students is almost limitless online and can range from other University-sanctioned and produced content to anonymous bulletin boards on Reddit or the Brown-student run underground “Dear Blueno.” When students get to campus, course registration is now completed online. In 1986, our class waited in line to
register at Alumnae Hall (unless you were from New York, in which case you called that “on line” too.)
Students today can access schedules for orientation events on Bruno Beginnings and events throughout the year using the Brown University App on their phones.
One thing that clearly hasn’t changed is the fun and friendships that first years start to form from the moment students step foot on campus—although now they can easily publicly document that fun on Tik-Tok and Instagram.
A 29 Year Mail Delay
While most members of the class of 1990 got their copy of Bear Facts in the summer of 1986 prior to their arrival on campus, Jonathan Steinberg’s copy was late. It was very, very, very late. It was nearly 29 years late.
In February, 2015 while Steinberg and many other classmates were gearing up to attend our 25th reunion, Steinberg’s parents in New Orleans received a package addressed to him. The package was wrapped in a large plastic bag printed with an apology note from the US Postal service that the contents had been damaged. Inside was a bright red copy of Bear
Facts, complete with a typewritten address label.
Thinking he might have been pranked or that Brown was running some type of marketing campaign to drum up excitement for the upcoming reunion, Steinberg reached out to alumni relations to see what they knew. They were just as baffled as he was.
To this day Steinberg doesn’t know exactly why the Bear Facts first got to his parents’ house in 2015.
“It definitely was a wild and wonderful thing to happen, especially right before our 25th reunion,” he says. “Since no one has ever stated that
this was a practical joke, I now lean to it truly being a previously lost package. Stranger things have happened.”
Spotlight | David Bermudez ’90
David "Bermi" Bermudez and his wife Lisa founded the non-profit Bend Science Station, which provides inquiry-based, STEM education in Central Oregon's Deschutes County to 7,000 K-12 students and 200 teachers a year through extensive school year programs, summer camps and partnerships with community agencies. Bermi is an innovative teacher and an advocate of student driven scientific research beginning at the elementary school level. He is respected in Central Oregon as an outstanding educator, teaching in both English and Spanish, and provides mentoring for science teachers throughout the area. When he isn’t teaching, Bermi, a Chicago native, can be found playing ice hockey, skiing, or somewhere outdoors with his family. He remains an avid White Sox and Blackhawks fan.
VW or Ratty?
Neither. I preferred calzones at the Gate, pita bread stuffed with melted cheese at the Ivy Room or late-night egg sandwiches from the Silver Truck, especially after a few beers. My arteries wish I had spent more time at the Ratty salad bar...
Favorite Class at Brown?
Invertebrate Zoology sophomore year with Professor Mark Bertness. Being from the Midwest, it was remarkable learning about a host of living organisms that I had no idea existed. The labs were incredible. Squishing two different sponges through metal screen material, turning them to mush, mixing them in a flask and then observing them re-coalesce into two distinct organisms. Observing tardigrades--microscopic and remarkably different from any other living organism on the planet. They can survive almost anything--even radiation! To be honest, this class inspired the rest of my track at Brown, including a semester abroad at the West Indies Laboratory in St. Croix and then assisting in Prof. Bertness’ lab for the remainder of my time at Brown. I ended up majoring in aquatic biology. The skills that I learned in his lab are the skills I try to teach my students at the Bend Science Station–asking questions, designing investigations, analyzing data and learning that experiments often fail the first time around.
Outside of Class
Besides competing on the downhill ski team, playing intramural hockey and Brick, I spent most of my time driving all over Narragansett Bay collecting water samples for the research lab or scuba diving in tide pools, collecting barnacle feeding rates. If I wasn’t doing that, you would find me in List Art Center creating sculptures or painting. A sophomore year sculpture was a comment on endangered species: a cheetah that was unraveling while attached to a pyramid at the rear containing the names of species that were extinct. Another was a giant man made of mud and hay that was carving himself out of a pile of mud–definitely influenced by Rodin’s Self Made Man. Where the heck did I get the bale of hay from, I don’t remember, but a friend I reminisced with remembers “borrowing” mud from some property across the street.
How Did You End up in Bend, Oregon?
Second semester senior year, I took an Education class and did a practicum in the Providence public school system. I was really intrigued, but I wasn’t sure if I would be good at working with kids, so after graduation I decided to get some experience teaching in an informal setting. I taught skiing for two years in Colorado, and in summers I taught science to kids from Denver at the Keystone Science School, an outdoor live-in camp. That led to a job at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's Marine Science Camp, where I taught invertebrate zoology in tide pools and gave students the opportunity to learn about estuaries while digging for ghost shrimp and clams. Honestly, ending up in Bend was serendipitous. I had been accepted into Stanford’s Master of Teaching program, but the last group of students visiting the coast camp was from Sunriver Preparatory School, and one of the parent chaperones was the principal’s wife. She told me that one of their science teachers was leaving and that I should apply for the job. I got the job teaching science to every other grade from K-12 and decided to try teaching in a classroom as opposed to going to grad school. And, so began my career as a science educator.
How Did the Idea for the Science Station come up?
I had been teaching in private school settings for a decade. I wanted to see if I could provide the same lab-based, hands-on science opportunities for the youth of Central Oregon--not just those who could afford private camps and classes. From my perspective, traditional science education focuses on facts, and if you are lucky, you might conduct a few cookbook experiments. But science is not just a set of facts from a book; it’s a way of asking and answering questions that requires a great deal of creativity. When it is taught well, science inspires curiosity and wonder, and helps develop critical thinking skills.
Unfortunately, many creative people who could be outstanding researchers bail on the sciences because of the way that it is traditionally taught. At the Science Station, our goal is to teach kids the skills that they need to design and conduct their own experiments--to be problem solvers. For example, in a cardiology class, we don’t mandate the specific experiment that students are going to conduct. Instead, we show the students how to collect data with heart rate monitors and then we ask them to brainstorm factors that could influence heart rate and then vote on the factor that they want to test. They design the experiment, collect data and present their findings to their peers. Using this instructional method, you can’t cover as much content, but you can help students develop the skills that are necessary to begin solving the problems facing our planet. We teach teachers, too, and provide them with a comprehensive technology lending library so they can take equipment back to their classrooms.
The Science Station is special because we have centralized expensive instructional equipment and talent in one location, and we rotate an entire community through it. It's cost effective, and every child in our community--no matter their socio-economic background--gets to visit our learning labs on a new college campus and experience hands-on, engaging science lessons, in a place that was built specifically for them.
By the way, we do all this with a staff of four! We are efficient and effective! My wife, Lisa, our Development Director, handles all things office, from accounting to grant-writing. I still design the curriculum and teach the classes. I love really bringing science to life, though when I'm submerging myself in an ice bath to demonstrate homeostasis for my students I start to question if I'm bringing science to life or doing the opposite!
Where is the Science Station 20 years Since its Conception?
This year we are celebrating our 20th Anniversary. It’s an enormous honor to serve our community--and we still pinch ourselves when we walk through our doors, especially when we remember that it all started as a weekend program in a dilapidated lab at a local community college. We operated out of there for our first 15 years. When the lease there was going away, we were offered the opportunity to move our operation to the Oregon State University-Cascades campus, the first new public university in Oregon in 50 years. To do that, though, we had to raise more than $2 million. We had to learn how to tell our story. Fortunately, the community stepped up, and we successfully completed a $2.7 million campaign that allowed us to build a net zero, state of the art facility. Classmate Dave Schrott ’90 has been a huge supporter of the Science Station, serving on the Board of Directors twice over the past 20 years. Pete Beeman ’90, who Bermi met in the sculpture studio in the basement of List Art Center, also built the kinetic art that is part of the building.
– As told to Didier Jean Baptiste
1990 Feedback: We want to hear from you!
Here are some of the articles we are working on for 2023…
1990 Couples: Did you meet at Brown and make an everlasting connection? Let us know!
1990 Nonprofit Magic: Do you work in the non-profit sphere? We are dedicating an issue to 1990 service…let us know about your organization!
– Your Class of 1990 Leadership Team
