GARY J. WINSCHEL ’81 was promoted to senior vice president and regional sales manager for PNC Investments. WILLIAM J. DOAN, PH.D. ’82 was named associate dean for administration, research and graduate studies in the College of Arts and Architecture at The Pennsylvania State University in University Park. ELIZABETH W. KIDD, C.P.A. ’82, ’06M became a certified management accountant and was elected treasurer of the Erie Chapter of the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Elizabeth is director of financial services at St. Benedict Education Center in Erie. PHILIP J. PACSI ’82 was selected Marketer of the Year by Brandweek magazine. Philip is the vice president of North American Consumer Tire Marketing for Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire LLC. MATTHEW J. SMITH ’82 was re-elected to a second fouryear term as Mohave County (Ariz.) Attorney.
MARGARET (CHURCH) BOYD, C.N.M. ’83VMC, ’94M is a certified midwife (one of only three in the Erie area), practicing with the Lake Erie Women’s Center. JAMES W. MARTIN, C.F.R.E. ’83 was elected to the United Way of Erie County’s board of directors and was recognized by Edinboro University of Pennsylvania as the 2008 Outstanding Business Community Leader. Jim is the community affairs director at Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield. GARY D. VESHECCO ’83 was named senior vice president, division officer and deputy general counsel for Law and Government Affairs at Erie Insurance. MITTIE M. DRAGOSLJVICH, M.D. ’84 joined Skaggs Cancer Center in Branson, Mo. as a radiation oncologist. ERIC KLANN, PH.D. ’84 joined the faculty at New York University as a professor at the Center for Neural Science.
STEPHEN A. BALCZON ’83 is a route salesman with Schwebel’s.
Grad Represents University
Alumnus Christopher Wodarczyk ’76 (middle) represented Gannon and President Antoine M. Garibaldi, Ph.D. during the recent inauguration of Dr. Helen C. Sobehart (right) as the sixth president of Cardinal Stritch University in October. The event also featured another Gannon graduate: Joseph A. Sobehart ’69 (left), Dr. Sobehart’s husband.
Social Networking: What It Means for Alumni Over the past several years, we have focused on developing the online alumni community as a tool for alumni to stay connected to each other and to the University. The Alumni Services staff has worked with alumni and University representatives to start an alumni Web site, get early user feedback and develop a redesign to provide a user-friendly site that can be navigated easily by all members of the alumni community, even a grad like me from the Class of ’65.Visit www.gannonalumni.org to see the site’s new design, which launched Jan. 1. As our alumni site has evolved, so too has the understanding and use of social networking. Networking Web sites have proliferated, with now familiar names like Plaxo, LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook. The University is closely following this new technology frontier, as you can read about on p. 10. Why has this phenomenon taken hold? The networks afford an opportunity for individuals to connect with professional contacts and leverage these contacts to connect to others. These networks then become a great source for job candidates, employment leads, prospective clients, deals, investors, etc. We have also learned that no one networking site does it all, which is why we are invited into (and will likely join) several. What does this mean for us as alumni? It means we have one more set of trusted connections to access when we are looking for new career opportunities, trying to find ways to grow our business or hoping to catch up with old friends from our college days. We can use the Gannon alumni Web site as a link not only into the Gannon community but beyond. In addition, the main Gannon Web site (www.gannon. edu) is a great way to get news about the University and sign up for upcoming events; the site can also be a link to the Career Services office for help finding a new job, crafting a résumé or posting available positions and internships. We can even contribute to the Annual Fund online. But have you used the site to reunite with old classmates and friends, network with peers and talk to alumni established in their field? How about setting up a blog or using the message boards? As with any social network, we can create special affinity groups and invite others to join, share photos and announce both business and personal news. As our use of social networking grows, our online alumni community can only benefit, as it is one more way to use a trusted friend to expand our links into the world around us.
President, National Alumni Association
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