Message From Your Co-Chairs

As university editors and communications professionals, it has never been more important that we be at the top of our game. Budgets are lean and priorities are being examined at colleges and universities around the country-large and small, public and private, rich and poor. And let's face it, print isn't getting any cheaper. At the same time, the roles of our communications and publications are more exciting-and more complex-than ever before. The ways in which we reach out and connect with our audiences are multiplying and morphing so fast, we could spend all our time just keeping up.

Join your colleagues from around the country as we take a fresh look at our work, our communications strategies and our magazines. We have assembled a diverse cast of speakers, faculty and experts to lead us in an exploration of cutting-edge communications trends as well as tried-and-true techniques. In our jobs, most of us both help shape the broad vision and attend to the thousands of small details that make up the big picture. This conference-held in beautiful Boston, home of some of our most prestigious institutions-should help us be better at both.

Paige Parvin, Co-Chair
Editor, Emory Magazine
Emory University

Paige Parvin joined Emory Magazine, Emory's central alumni quarterly, in 2000 and has served as editor since 2007. Her work in Emory Magazine has won two CASE Circle of Excellence awards for feature writing, and the magazine was recognized in 2008 with the CASE III Grand Award for Excellence in Feature Writing and a Special Merit Award for feature writing, as well as a Special Merit Award for overall excellence.

Before her arrival at Emory, Parvin was a staff writer at Southern Voice newspaper, a public relations officer for American InterContinental University and the High Museum of Art, and features writer for the Northside Neighbor newspaper.

A graduate of the University of the South (Sewanee), she holds a master's degree in film studies from Emory's Institute of Liberal Arts.

Shawn Presley, Co-Chair
Director of Public Affairs
Editor, Kenyon Magazine
Kenyon College

As the director of public affairs at Kenyon College, Shawn Presley oversees sports information, media relations, and all print and electronic communication, including Kenyon's Web site. In addition to working with broadcast, electronic and print media to increase the visibility of Kenyon, Presley is the editor of the Alumni Bulletin and coeditor of Fortnightly, Kenyon's biweekly newsletter for administration, faculty and staff. Prior to joining Kenyon's public affairs office as the news director in 1997, he worked in university news services at the University of Iowa.

A graduate of Ouachita University, he holds a master's degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Upon receiving his master's degree in 1990, he began his public relations career working for Investigative Reporters and Editors, which is headquartered at the University of Missouri. Presley has also worked at Central College as the coordinator of news services.

FACULTY

Emily Aldrich
Freelance Designer and Designer for the Carleton College Voice

Emily Aldrich has 16 years of experience designing award-winning publications. Since opening Aldrich Design in 1996, she has had the opportunity to work on a variety of newsstand, special interest and college magazines. She designs alumni magazines for Carleton College, Kenyon College and Mount Holyoke College. During the past five years, her work on the Carleton and Kenyon magazines has received seven design medals in CASE Circle of Excellence Awards, including four gold. She is also a perennial winner in the University and Colleges Designers Association's magazine design category.

Brian Barry
Sales Representative
Brown Printing Company

Brian Barry has been working with publications since 1993, doing everything from selling advertising to launching magazines. For the last ten years, he has sold print services and helped other publishers launch publications as well as digital editions. Barry is currently a sales representative for Brown Printing Company in Nashville, Tenn.

Hannah Fichandler
Senior Art Director
Taylor Design

Hannah Fichandler is the senior art director at Taylor Design in Stamford, Conn., where she has crafted award-winning creative in print and interactivity for the past 11 years. Her clients range from mom-and-pop shops to Fortune 500 companies, as well as numerous colleges, universities, and private schools. Previously, she worked for studios in New York and Boston. A native of Walpole, Mass., and a graduate of Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts, Fichandler is a very big fan of the color orange.

Suzanne Gray
Associate Director of Creative Projects
Sarah Lawrence College

Suzanne Gray is editor of Sarah Lawrence magazine, which won the Grand Gold award for periodical design from CASE last year. She started stringing for Sarah Lawrence as a graduate student in the college's MFA program in 2002, and had taken over the whole show by January 2007. Previously, she worked as an editor and writer for nonprofit organizations, and also has professional expertise in wrangling spreadsheets and scrubbing large, crusty pans.

Matthew Jennings
Editor, Middlebury Magazine
Middlebury College

Matt Jennings has edited award-winning publications for more than a decade, first at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., and for the past seven-plus years at Middlebury College in the beautiful Champlain Valley of Vermont.

He's proud of the fact that his magazines have won CASE Circle of Excellence gold medals at each institution; less proud of the number of technicals he received as a high school basketball coach; and more proud of his 3-and-a-half-year-old son, John.

If pressed, he'd admit that his greatest talent is an ability to read a magazine while walking across any imaginable terrain. And yes, the 2009 Editors' Forum co-chair is still called Blazer Boy by many of his peers. He has Ann Weins and Sue Halpern to thank for that.

Dale Keiger
Associate Editor
Johns Hopkins Magazine

Dale Keiger has been writing with both hands since 1973. He is associate editor of Johns Hopkins Magazine and the Johns Hopkins Publishing Group, and he is obsessed with narrative, explaining complicated things, and convincing his editor that he could really nail the story if given an additional 1,000 words.

Sherry Paul-Kurson
District Sales Manager
Mohawk Fine Paper

Sherry Kurn-Paulson is a district sales manager for Mohawk Fine Paper. She has been in the printing industry for 23+ years. She started working in a small print shop during college and has stayed in the exciting ever-evolving industry since. She has worked for several paper companies including Cross Pointe Paper, Sappi Fine Paper, Stora Enso, Smart Papers, Unisource and now Mohawk Fine Paper.

Kathrin Day Lassila
Editor
Yale Alumni Magazine

Kathrin Day Lassila is editor-in-chief of the bimonthly Yale Alumni Magazine (circ. 130,000). Since she joined it in 2003, the magazine has had a CASE award-winning redesign and an editorial overhaul and has won CASE gold awards for articles and for general excellence. It has also published new work by Tom Wolfe, Tom Perrotta, David Leonhardt, Emily Bazelon, Sam Tanenhaus, and many other writers. Stories the Yale Alumni Magazine has broken since 2006 have been covered on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Lassila was previously editor-in-chief of OnEarth (circ. 130,000), an editorially independent magazine on environmental affairs, published quarterly by the Natural Resources Defense Council. She oversaw the magazine's redesign and relaunch (it was previously The Amicus Journal) and published new work by, among others, Bill McKibben, William Greider, Rick Bass, and Ian Frazier.

Mary Loftus
Associate Editor
Emory Magazine

Mary Loftus has been associate editor of Emory Magazine for nine years, covering topics including the return of Ramesses I, robotic surgery, Elvis punch-out dolls, neuroeconomics, Salman Rushdie's old computers and Newt Gingrich's (Emory Class of 1965) healthcare plan. Before that, she was a reporter/editor/columnist for the New York Times group, working at The Gainesville Sun, The (Lakeland) Ledger, and the NYT Feature Production Center in Atlanta. She's won three CASE regional awards for her writing, including the 2008 Grand Award for a story about alumni who donate their bodies to Emory's medical school.

Jeff Lott
Senior Publications Editor
Swarthmore College

Jeff Lott is currently senior publications editor at Swarthmore College and editor of the college's award-winning alumni magazine. As the college's director of publications, he has been involved in every aspect of college communications from student recruitment to development communications to films and books about Swarthmore.

Lott has been a leader among alumni magazine editors in setting professional standards through the CASE-endorsed "Principles of Practice for College and University Periodicals Editors" and in creating the CASE Members Magazine Readership Survey. He has co-chaired the CASE Editors Forum, served on the faculty of the Summer Institute in Communications and Marketing and is a member of the CASE Commission on Communications and Marketing.

Educated in studio art and art education at Middlebury College and the Rhode Island School of Design, Lott taught elementary and secondary school art for 12 years before turning to graphic design, journalism and publications management in the 1980s.

Pam McGuire
Print Production Manager
Mohawk Fine Papers

Pam McGuire is the print production manager for Mohawk Fine Papers, the largest manufacturer of premium printing, writing and digital paper in North America. With over 30 years in the printing industry, for the past 12 of those years she has been responsible for overseeing the production of Mohawk's promotional materials.

McGuire began her career in an Ohio print shop as a typesetter and form designer. Later she became a production manager for a large agency in Cincinnati. After moving to upstate New York, she worked for New England printers, selling printing in N.Y., Mass., and Vt. for eight-plus years. Mohawk was one of her clients.

Through her work for Mohawk, McGuire has worked with some of the best designers and printers in North America. She is often tapped by the Mohawk sales force, the graphics arts industry and schools as an educational resource for workshops, talks and seminars on paper and printing knowledge.

Michael Penn
Director of Communications
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Editor, Grow Magazine, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Michael Penn is director of communications and media relations for the University of Wisconsin-Madison's College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and editor of Grow, a three-times-a-year magazine devoted to research in the life sciences. Launched in September 2007, Grow strives to bring CALS alumni and external stakeholders lively reports on the latest advances affecting food and agriculture, health, energy and the environment. The magazine won a gold medal for periodical writing for external audiences in the 2009 CASE Circle of Excellence awards. Prior to joining CALS in January 2007, Penn spent 12 years writing and editing for On Wisconsin, UW-Madison's quarterly alumni magazine, where he won or shared six CASE Circle of Excellence awards. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and holds a master's degree in journalism and mass communication from UW-Madison

Don Ranly
Professor Emeritus
Missouri University

Don Ranly is professor emeritus at the Missouri School of Journalism where he taught for 32 years and was head of the magazine program for 28 years. Ranly worked as a newspaper reporter, a magazine editor, a weekly columnist, a radio host and a television producer, director and host. An author of articles and books on writing and editing, he has conducted more than 1,000 seminars for individual newspapers and magazines, corporations, associations and organizations of all kinds.

He has a master's degree in journalism and a master's degree in speech from Marquette University, a certificate in film, radio and television from New York University and a doctorate in journalism from the University of Missouri.

Teresa Scalzo
Director of Publications & Editor, Carleton College Voice
Carleton College

Teresa Scalzo is director of publications for Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., where she supervises a staff of three graphic designers and three writers, who are responsible for producing more than 400 publications each year. The Carleton publications staff has received numerous CASE medals over the years for their admissions and development publications, including a Grand Gold medal in 2008 for the Breaking Barriers, Creating Connections campaign case statement. Scalzo also serves as editor of the Carleton College Voice, a quarterly publication with a circulation of 30,000, which was named the 2001 Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year by the editors of Newsweek magazine.

She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

Shane Shanks
Senior Communications Strategist
Zehno Communications

Shane Shanks previously served as the editorial director/associate director of university publications at Kansas State University. His work has won more than 100 national and regional awards from CASE, UCDA and other professional organizations. In 2005 and 2008 K-State's recruitment Web site (consider.k-state.edu) helped the university win the CASE District VI sweepstakes award for large institutions.

Shanks is a graduate of Baker University and the University of Wales, where he studied on a Rotary Foundation scholarship. His freelance work includes covering Sarah Palin's hometown for the Times of London, writing celebrity gossip for Britain's #1 teen magazine and editing a state bar association magazine (for lawyers, not drunks).
He has presented at several CASE and UCDA conferences, and he won the CASE Crystal Apple for outstanding teaching in 2005.

Ann Wiens
Director of College Communications
Columbia College Chicago
Editor, DEMO magazine

Ann Wiens serves as the director of communications in the Office of Institutional Advancement at Columbia College Chicago, where she oversees multiple print and electronic publications and communications. She developed and launched Demo, the college's award-winning alumni magazine, in 2005, and edits the college's annual report, weekly faculty/staff e-newsletter, and a number of other regular publications, electronic communications, and websites. At Columbia, Wiens led the development and implementation of a college-wide electronic communication and social networking tool, dubbed "theLoop," that is used to communicate with and engage several college communities, including alumni, students, parents, and faculty/staff.

Before coming to Columbia College, Wiens edited a national contemporary visual art magazine, the New Art Examiner. She has written for numerous newspapers and magazines, and continues to write frequently on art for Chicago magazine. Wiens earned a master's degree in fine arts at the State University of New York, Stony Brook; a bachelor's degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and attended the University of Oklahoma when she still thought she'd major in journalism, not art.