Through the Years

C.A. “Arnie” Ferrin BS’66 (along with a 2005 honorary doctorate) was enshrined in the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame on November 23, 2008. The ceremony was held at the College Basketball Experience in Kansas City, Mo., a world-class entertainment facility and home of the Hall of Fame. The only four-time All-American in the history of the University of Utah basketball program (a consensus first-team All-American in 1945, Ferrin returned to the U years later for a degree in marketing), he won the most outstanding player award in the 1944 NCAA championship and went on to lead Utah to the 1947 National Invitation Tournament (NIT) championship. He is one of only seven Utes to have his jersey retired and was named earlier this year to the U’s 16-member All-Century Team for men’s basketball. Ferrin played for the National Basketball Association’s (NBA’s) Minneapolis Lakers for three seasons, winning titles in 1949 and 1950. He went on to become general manager of the American Basketball Association Utah Stars and also served as director of athletics at Utah. He is one of only two players in history to have played on NCAA, NIT, and NBA championship teams.

Robert A. “Bob” McDonald MBA’78 is chief operating officer for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. McDonald joined P&G in 1980. He was appointed vice president and general manager, Philippines, Asia/Pacific-South, in 1994; president-Northeast Asia in 1999; vice chairman-global operations in 2004; and was named to the new post of COO in 2007 when Procter & Gamble announced an overhaul of its corporate structure. McDonald, 54, holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) and spent five years as a captain in the U.S. Army.

Lily Eskelsen BS’80 MEd’86 has been elected vice president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest professional employee organization, representing 3.2 million educators. Eskelsen, an elementary school teacher, was recognized as Utah Teacher of the Year in 1989 and has held leadership positions in the NEA since her 1990 write-in election as president of the 18,000-member Utah Education Association. She served in that post until 1996, when she was elected to the nine-member NEA Executive Committee. She had served as secretary-treasurer of the NEA since 2002. Eskelsen was also a member of President Clinton’s White House Strategy Session on Improving Hispanic Education in 2000 and president of the Utah State Retirement System (only the second woman to ever be elected to the position). Now a high-ranking labor leader and one of the nation’s most powerful Hispanic educators, Eskelsen has taught at a variety of facilities including the one-room K-6 school at the Christmas Box House Children’s Center for foster children awaiting placement.

Dale K. Nash BS’80, has been named president and CEO of Alaska Aerospace. Nash joined the company as chief operating officer in early 2007. Alaska Aerospace, headquartered in Anchorage, owns and operates the Kodiak Launch Complex, a state-of-the-industry spaceport on Kodiak Island. Nash has more than 25 years of experience in the industry, including in several executive positions on the NASA Space Shuttle Program. He began his career in 1982 at Hercules Aerospace Company, Bacchus Works in Magna, Utah, working on intercontinental and sea-launched ballistic missile systems. In addition to a bachelor’s degree in engineering, he holds an MBA from the University of Florida.

John Aalberg BS’88 is director of Nordic sports at Whistler Olympic Park for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC). Aalberg designed and manages the new Callaghan Valley Nordic venue (outside Whistler, B.C.), which will be the busiest 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics venue, where the winners of a third of the medals will be decided (for the biathlon, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, and ski jumping events). A former national champion and two-time Olympian, Aalberg also designed and oversaw the course at Soldier Hollow, the Nordic venue outside Heber City used for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. Aalberg has also been involved in the International Ski Federation (FIS) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) as a World Cup, World Championship, Olympic and Paralympic Games technical delegate.

Christopher K. Ellis BA’89 is representative director and president of Chrysler Japan Co. Although the imported car market remains small in Japan, Chrysler is among the few foreign car makers with a strong lineup and brand image in the country. Still, facing fierce competition from Japanese automakers (in Japan, American cars are sometimes seen as expensive to maintain and prone to breakdown), Chrysler Japan recently pledged to improve its after-sales service by extending the guarantee on newly purchased models from three years/60,000 kms. to a class-leading five years/100,000 kms. Ellis was assigned to his new post in November 2007 with the launch of Chrysler Japan following the breakup of Daimler and Chrysler that August.

Wayne Young MD’91 is in the 2008 class inducted into the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame. Young was the captain of the U.S. Men’s Team at the 1976 Olympic Games, where he placed 12th in the all-around. He also was a member of the 1974 World Championships Team. He won the 1975 NCAA all-around title and earned All-American status in 1974-75 as a member of Brigham Young University’s men’s gymnastics team. He coached men’s gymnastics at BYU from 1979-87 and at Odessa Junior College from 1977-79. Young now lives in Pleasant Grove, Utah, and is a physician in obstetrics and gynecology for Intermountain Healthcare. His son, Guard, was a member of the 2004 U.S. Men’s Olympic Team that won the silver medal.

DJ Kaskade (aka Ryan Raddon BA’95) is currently touring the world to support his recently released fifth album, Strobelite Seduction. He has most recently remixed the works of Seal, Nelly Furtado, Justin Timberlake, and Britney Spears, and his own song, “I Like the Way,” was included on the top-selling soundtrack to one of summer 2008’s biggest films, Sex and the City. More than a half-dozen of his remixes have reached the No. 1 spot on the Billboard dance charts. And at the sixth annual 2008 Club World Awards, he won the title of Best Resident DJ for a stint at the Smart Bar Chicago. Kaskade, now 36, lived in Salt Lake City from 1992 to 2000 after growing up in Chicago, where he was exposed to house music, a genre of electronic dance music that emerged from the Midwest in the 1980s.

Nader Z. Pourhassan PhD’99 has been appointed chief operating officer for CytoDyn, Inc., creators of Cytolin, a novel immune therapy for treating HIV/AIDS. Cytolin, a monoclonal antibody, is designed to correct the flaw in the human immune system that allows Homo sapiens to become sick from HIV infection. (HIV infects other species, such as chimpanzees, but only humans get sick.) Pourhassan was born in Tehran in 1963, immigrated to the United States in 1977, and became a U.S. citizen in 1991. He received his bachelor’s degree from Utah State University in 1985 and his master’s degree from Brigham Young University in 1990. He moved into the business realm after first being an instructor in engineering and mathematics. Raised Muslim, Pourhassan authored the nonfiction book The Corruption of Moslem Minds (published in 2002) after he was spurred to immerse himself more deeply in study of the Koran following his marriage to an American Christian woman. He says he concluded that, like the Bible, “The message of the Koran is resoundingly simple. We should believe in God, which of itself would encourage us to be good and love our neighbor.”

Christopher Borg BFA’05 was nominated for two 2008 New York Innovative Theatre (IT) Awards, which honor the best of off-off-Broadway and independent theater in New York. As a member of the New York Neo-Futurists, Borg received nods for Outstanding Ensemble and Outstanding Performance Art Production for Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind—in which a diverse cast of writer/performers enact 30 plays in 60 minutes. Since leaving Utah in 1993 (later finishing his degree with one final class), Borg has been very active in the professional theater as an actor, director, and dialect coach, receiving critical and audience acclaim for work at nationally recognized theaters including The Shakespeare Theatre (Washington, D.C.), The Folger Theatre, Rep Stage Company, Woolly Mammoth, Studio Theatre, La MaMa ETC, Inverse Theatre, and Ontological. Borg has previously received two OOBR Awards, two Spotlight On Awards, a nomination for a GLAAD Media Award, and an IT Award nomination for Outstanding Director. He recently originated the role of Eddie in the off-Broadway hit The Play About The Naked Guy. He can be seen online as a principal in the pod series In The Can by On the Leesh Productions and starred in a short film, What Are The Odds, that was shown in festivals from Ogden to Cannes.

Emily Dewey JD’06 recently spent nine months in Iraq as part of the U.S. Justice Department’s Law and Order Task Force, assigned with bolstering the Iraqi judicial system. Before leaving Iraq, Dewey was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious achievement in recognition of her work transforming the way cases involving improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are prosecuted, as well as her “great physical courage by continually placing herself at great risk by traveling across Iraq to accomplish her many missions.” Following a brief leave in the U.S., Dewey headed back to service prosecuting military cases in Japan.

We want to hear from you! Please submit entries to: Marcia Dibble. To read more alumni news, check out the “Honor Roll” column in the Alumni Association’s online newsletter, U-News & Views.

Return to Winter 2008-09 table of contents | Back to top