MSUM honors seven alumni at Homecoming celebration
MSU Moorhead will honor seven alumni for extraordinary achievements in their professions at this year’s Homecoming, which runs Monday through Saturday, Sept. 19-24.
This year’s honorees: Gregory Lof ’79 & ‘81, Sharon Werner ‘85, Mary Jo Richard ’86, Diana Divecha ‘80, and Lori Wightman ‘82 have been designated Distinguished Alumni and Ryan Sylvester ’98 & ‘02, as Outstanding Young Alumnus. An Outstanding Volunteer Service award will be revealed and presented at the alumni awards banquet.
The Alumni Awards Banquet will be Friday, Sept. 23 with a 6 p.m. social and 7 p.m. dinner at the Heritage Hjemkomst Center. Reservations are required by calling 477-2143.
Distinguished Alumni Award winners:
Gregory L. Lof, Department Chair/Professor
MGH Institute of Health Professions
Gregory Lof is a professor and chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston, Mass., a graduate school founded by Massachusetts General Hospital. It’s one of the largest speech-language pathology graduate programs in the country.
Lof received his B.S. in speech pathology and audiology in 1979 and his M.S. in speech-language pathology in 1981, both from MSUM. He earned his Ph.D. in communication disorders at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Lof has published 17 peer-reviewed articles. His research, teaching and clinical interests primarily are with children who have speech sound disorders, and he recently studied the lack of efficacy for using non-speech oral motor exercises to change speech sound productions.
He’s presented over 40 peer-reviewed and 35 invited presentations and workshops at universities, school districts, and national, state and international association conventions. He’s served as editorial consultant for the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology; Contemporary Issues in Communication Sciences and Disorders; and Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.
He has coordinated and served on numerous ASHA convention planning committees, and is a selected member on ASHA’s Center for Evidence-Based Practice in Communication Disorders. He is on the Communications Committee of the Council on Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders and was elected to a three-year term as Massachusetts’s representative on the ASHA Speech-Language Pathology Advisory Board.
Lof and his partner, Thomas Mutschler, live in Boston.
Sharon Werner, Owner
Werner Design Werks, Inc.
Sharon Werner started her own design firm 20 years ago, and since then it has been recognized nationally and internationally. Werner Design Werks, Inc., located in St. Paul, focuses on combining strong visual language with sound design solutions to impact commerce and culture.
Werner started as an accounting major, but switched to design when she realized she was more interested in a dorm-mate’s art homework than her own. “I would lie awake at night wondering how I’d answer her assignment. The second semester of my freshman year, I took a drawing class—the hardest class of my life—but I was hooked.”
Werner credits her success, in part, to Professor Phil Mousseau. She said his teaching style created an environment that is similar to working in a design office today—healthy competitiveness that fosters creativity. She earned an art degree in graphic design in 1985.
After starting as an intern and working her way up to creative director at Duffy & Partners, Werner opened her company. The firm’s list of clients includes Target Corporation, Mohawk Paper, Blu Dot Design and Manufacturing, Nick at Nite, VH-1 Networks, Levi’s, Minnesota Public Radio, Ogilvy, Comedy Central and Urban Outfitters.
Werner Design Werks was named Target’s Vendor of the Year in 2002, and their work is included in the 100 World’s Best Posters and is part of the permanent collection of The Library of Congress, The Rumpus Room of Ernest and Viola Werner, Musée De La Poste, Victoria and Albert Museum, Musée des Arts Decoratifs and the Cooper Hewitt Museum.
Werner is married to Chuck Hanna, and they have one son.
Lori L. Wightman. President
Unity Hospital
Lori Wightman inherited an attraction to the health care industry from her parents. Her father was a hospital administrator and her mother was a nurse; Wightman has done both.
She is the newly named president of Unity Hospital in Fridley, Minn., which is part of Allina Hospitals and Clinics. She is responsible for the operation of a 221-staffed bed acute care hospital with 1,400 employees, and a net operating revenue of $187M. Wightman was president of New Ulm Medical Center for eight years prior to joining Unity Hospital. She is also a licensed registered nurse.
Wightman was elected as the Minnesota Regent in the American College of Health Care Executives from 2008 to 2010, and now serves on the Board of Governors. She is a Blaine/Ham Lake rotary member, TPC Rose member and a board member for the Twins Cities North Metro Chamber.
Wightman said the experiences she gained as a student at MSUM impacted her professional development, such as her infection control preceptorship, exposure to public health and assessment skills. “Sr. Callista Roy’s Adaptation Model will be with me forever!”
Wightman graduated from Fargo South High School, received her BSN from MSUM and her master’s in health administration from the University of Colorado. Wightman resides in Blaine.
Diana Divecha, Developmental Psychologist
Consultant
Diana Divecha promotes developmental science through writing, consulting and activism. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in psychology from MSUM in 1980, she attended Cornell University to earn her master’s and Ph.D. in developmental psychology. Divecha said MSUM helped prepare her for an Ivy League doctoral program.
Divecha was a consultant at Yale University for a one-year research project that studied cultural influences on the development of children’s thinking. In 1990, Divecha became an assistant professor of psychology at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, Calif. Four years later she served as chair of the interdisciplinary studies in human development. “I internalized the student-faculty relationships I’d experienced at MSUM as a model of how to orient myself to students,” Divecha said.
In 1997, she left teaching to parent full time and write about children, teens and cross-cultural family life. She is working on her book, Kids Do Better When…: A Developmental Psychologist Shares her Favorite Research on Parenting and Child Development.
Divecha has consulted for Family Violence Prevention Fund, Women Donors Network and TEDx Golden Gate: Compassion in Education, and published Paranteen, a publication on parenting teens.
Divecha’s professional agenda is to push the science of children and adolescents’ development into the world to positively impact the quality of human development. She has presented academic papers for the American Psychological Association, National Council on Family Relations, Society for Research in Child Development, Eastern Psychological Association and more.
Divecha is immersed in yoga philosophy, mediation and Hinduism. She is married and has two daughters.
Mary Jo Richard, Partner
Eide Bailly, LLP
Mary Jo Richard is a certified public accountant with more than 20 years public accounting experience, providing audit and accounting services. Richard was promoted to partner at Eide Bailly in May 2000—the first female partner in Fargo’s home office and the third in the firm.
She is the firm’s director of service organization reports, where she manages consulting and auditing engagements, and specializes in serving SEC registrants, dealerships, wholesale and retail companies, manufacturers and non-profit entities. She also provides outsourced internal audit departments.
Richard earned an accounting degree and minor in management in 1986, and she remains connected to the School of Business. “I have been a member of the School of Business Advisory Board for over 10 years. During this time, the School of Business received their accreditation. The commitment of the accreditation team turned a vision into reality,” Richard said.
Volunteering is an important part of Richard’s life. She served on the local Girl Scout council board for nine years and was on the YWCA Cass Clay Women of the Year banquet planning committee until 2010. In 2005, she was the Volunteer Service award recipient.
Richard was a member of the United Way of Cass Clay Women’s Leadership Council for six years. She serves on the board and finance committee of Minn-Kota Red Cross in order to give back to an organization that helped her family during the ’97 flood. Richard is the chair for the North Dakota Society of CPAs peer review committee.
Richard and her husband, Paul, live in Fargo.
Ryan J. Sylvester, JAG Corps Officer
U.S. Navy
This fall, Ryan Sylvester begins as an officer in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General Corps. His interest in international affairs and law began when he took a class from Professor Andrew Conteh, whose in-depth teaching style, with heavy emphasis on historical and philosophical perspectives, prepared him for graduate study in law and global affairs.
Sylvester was immersed in many student activities—resident assistant, student orientation counselor, tour guide and The Advocate advertising manager, among others. His greatest contribution to MSUM is the annual Student Academic Conference, which he initiated, along with Conteh, as part of his educational leadership master’s practicum. “I really felt like I was able to engage and contribute to the development of programs and traditions at MSUM, and those experiences served as the best learning laboratory one could ask for.”
He earned MSUM degrees in mass communications, 1998 and educational administration, 2002.
In 2003, Sylvester moved to New York to work as an administrator at NYU, where he also completed his M.S. in global affairs. He soon developed international connections, and he interned for the Sierra Leone Mission to the United Nations and the U.S. Department of State for the Foreign Service Institute.
Sylvester received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, and in fall 2010 he studied at the American University in Cairo as David L. Boren: National Security Education Program fellowship recipient, and was a legal intern for the Resettlement Legal Aid Project assisting refugees. As part of an international human rights project, Sylvester also traveled to Conteh’s homeland of Sierra Leone.
Sylvester and his wife, Kristen, have been married four years.