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Alumni News
Alumni NewsIn 1937, William Everitt Rowbotham graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from LSU. In 2003, his oldest surviving niece, Betty Bouris, found his name on our lost alumni list and wrote to inform us of his untimely death during World War II. Following is a recap of the details that she provided:
^ TopAlumnus Honored as Professional Engineer of the YearJack R. Hopper was honored as the Professional Engineer of the Year by the Texas Society of Professional Engineering. Hopper received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from LSU in 1969. He is currently the dean of the College of Engineering at Lamar University. We send him wholehearted congratulations on receiving this prestigious award. ChE Alumnus--Accomplished BusinessmanCharlie Ton, who earned his B.S. in chemical engineering in 1995, has been very busy since graduating from LSU. At 33 years old, he is the owner of 620 Regal Nails salons, four Charlie's Coffee shops, and a manufacturing plant (as reported in the March 8, 2004, edition of The Reveille). He first started his manufacturing plant, Alfalfa Nail Supply, right out of college. His plant makes furniture, chemical products, and nail products for nail salons throughout the country. Next, he approached the Wal-Mart Corporation to pitch his idea for including nail salons in the Wal-Mart stores. Ton was at first rejected, but eventually succeeded in convincing the corporation to open five test stores in 1997. There are now 620 Regal Nail salons in Wal-Mart stores nationwide and the number is continually growing. His latest venture is Charlie's Coffee. The first one opened in 2003; he now runs four in the Baton Rouge area. As with his nail salons, Ton soon hopes to go nationwide with his coffee stores. A trial store, located in a Wal-Mart in New Hartford, Connecticut, is open. If it does well, Charlie's Coffee could be a fixture in Wal-Mart stores across the country. Congratulations to Ton on his early success! Alumnus Inducted into the 2003 Alumni Hall of DistinctionOn October 10, 2003, the LSU Alumni Association inducted Charles Preston Siess, Jr., into the 2003 Alumni Hall of Distinction in honor of his life-long contributions to LSU. Siess is a long-term member of the LSU Alumni Association, Tiger Athletic Foundation, and the LSU Foundation where he served as a director and president. He and his wife, Jean, are Star-level lifetime contributors to LSU and have an established professorship in the College of Engineering. Siess was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1927. After living a few years in Texas, his family returned to Louisiana, settling in Baton Rouge. He graduated from University High in 1943, prior to enrolling at LSU. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1944 and returned to LSU in 1946, receiving his B.S. in chemical engineering in 1948. His career has spanned more than 50 years in the energy industry. His first 20 years were spent with Petrolite Corp, where he initially worked as a product development engineer. Over time, he worked in many capacities all over the country and South America. Ultimately, he was responsible for both the Tretolite and Petreco Divisions reporting to the CEO. Upon leaving Petrolite, he became Executive Vice President and Director of Apco Oil Corp in Oklahoma City. He later became President of Apco and, subsequently, moved the headquarters to Houston. In 1975, Siess became president and director of Marathon Manufacturing Co. and remained president and CEO of Marathon and a director of Penn Central Corporation after Marathon merged with Penn Central until his retirement in 1987. During his retirement, he became director of Cabot Corp. in Boston, Massachusetts. While there, he was asked to take Cabot Oil and Gas out of Cabot Corp. as a public company. He served as Chairman and CEO of the company for three years after it became independent, retiring briefly, and then returning to chair the company until he retired in 1998 in Sante Fe, New Mexico. During his long career, Siess has also served as a member of the National Petroleum Council of the Department of the Interior, director of the American Petroleum Institute, and director of the National Petroleum Refiners Association, among many other organizations. We would like to congratulate Siess on his induction into the Hall of Distinction and congratulate him on his outstanding service to and continued support of LSU. Alumni UpdatesIf you would like for us to print news of your latest achievements, please send us an e-mail at gradcoor@lsu.edu, or sign our guestbook. We would love to hear from you! 1930s Ellsworth Nelson Smith (B.S., 1934) served 20 years in the U.S. Navy upon graduation, retiring in the early 1960s at the rank of captain. Sadly, he passed away in December of 1995 after suffering a debilitating stroke that left him paralyzed and requiring around-the-clock care for several years prior to his death. The preceding information was graciously supplied by his grandson. 1940s Virgil Orr (B.S., 1948; M.S., 1950) is more or less retired and deals only with his family and his hobbies at this juncture in life. In January 2000, his term on the Louisiana Ethics Board expired and he implored them not to reappoint him. He had been in public service activity, continuously, since 1944 with the exception of graduate school and two years spent in industrial work; therefore, he thinks he has paid his dues. He says he has been blessed with good health with a couple of sidetracks (prostate malignancy surgery in 1992 and quadruple bypass surgery in February 2003). Currently, all is well. Richard Weldon Waldsmith (B.S., 1948) is enjoying retirement in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. 1950s Grover L. Dobbins (M.S., 1957) is now retired and living in Baton Rouge. Mario Posada (M.S., 1954) worked in International Petroleum Co., Empresa Colombiana de Petroleos, upon graduating in 1954, and was pensioned in 1976. He worked as manager of UCTC (W.R. Grace and Co.) for 19 years. He remembers, very fondly, his years in LSU. Raymond Raffrey (B.S., 1952) passed away in his native Mauritius in July 2000. He is survived by his spouse, Noelle, and four children, Caroline, Annick, Olivier (B.S., 1985), and Denis. 1960s Thomas Jerry Boliew (B.S., 1961) passed away in September 2002. His daughter, Tory, states that he worked until the day he died, and loved LSU and being a chemical engineer. At the time of his death, he was working in Ohio on a project and coming home on the weekends to spend time with his wife in Georgia. Ernest Woodard (Woody) Harrison (B.S., 1961) retired from Exxon Research & Engineering in 1999. He is now busy with grandchildren, his son's new business, church, and his yard and shop. 1970s Claire Cagnolatti (B.S., 1978) earned her M.B.A. from LSU in 1982. She has been a senior consultant for Solomon Associates in Dallas, Texas, since 1994. Her consulting area is in international petrochemicals (manufacturing and economics). She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Dallas/Fort Worth LSU Alumni Association, and was president in 1998 and in 2001-02. She was a recipient of the LSU Alumni Association Chapter Service Award in 1997. Lynn F. Guidry (B.S., 1971) is retired from ExxonMobil. He retired as an engineering associate from the Baton Rouge Refinery. He enjoys fishing, playing tennis, softball, and golf as well as traveling with his wife, Bonnie. He has three sons, all of whom are engineering graduates of LSU—a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, an M.S. in mechanical engineering, and a B.S. in electrical engineering. Jose Rojas (B.S., 1976) currently is the manager of a water and garbage recollection company. He is married and living with his wife, Dorelly, and their three children—Andres Felipe (17), Adriana Maria (16), and Hamer Alejandro (15)—in Bogota, Colombia. David R. Smith (B.S., 1975) lives with his wife and two sons in the Clear Lake area of Houston, Texas. He is now working as an operations manager at Lubrizol's Deer Park plant. Formerly, he worked at Ethyl. He says he is grateful to Dr. McLaughlin for seeking the best from his students. James Wands Turner (B.S., 1976) is Director of Manufacturing at UOP, LLC, which is located in Mobile, Alabama. 1980s Doug Barbe (B.S., 1987; M.S., 1989) worked for Hohm and Haas Co., Rubicon Inc., and GE Plastics after receiving his M.S. in 1989. He is currently the site director of the Bishop, Texas, site for Celanese AG. He lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, with his wife, Jennifer, and their three children—Madeleine (10), Jack (9), and Teddy (5). William Lee Brown (B.S., 1983) is currently the branch president of Optimum Mortgage Group. Doug Griffin (B.S., 1982) is currently the site manager for Cargill's Chondroitin Sulfate facility in Denver, Colorado. After graduation, he worked for Georgia Gulf in Plaquemine, Louisiana, for seven years as a process engineer in the Vinyl Chloride plant, then two years for OxyChem on the startup of their Vinyl Chloride Plant in Corpus Christi, Texas. The next 11 years were with Rhodia in Baton Rouge as a senior process engineer on the startup of a vanillin unit, then production superintendent of the hydroquinone unit, and the last five as an operations manager for the vanillin/hydroquinone production units. Olivier Raffrey (B.S., 1985) is currently the operations manager for International Flavors and Fragrances in Augusta, Georgia. He is married and has two sons, Alexandre and Philip. He is taking up golf in his spare time. Sidney John Theriot, Jr. (B.S., 1988) is currently a U.S. filter sales engineer at Water Treatment Systems Sports and lives in Baton Rouge. Chris Williams (Ph.D., 1987) is working for Shell Global Solutions International in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as FCC principal engineer. He is still dreaming of playing rugby in England (although he is now too old, he says) and is trying to play the piano. 1990s Dennis Lee Banks (B.S., 1993) is currently employed as a process engineer with the Frontier Oil refinery in El Dorado, Kansas. Michael A. Cromwell (B.S., 1994) lives in Belgium with his wife, Mary Ann, and has two daughters, Clare and Laura. He is currently assigned to ExxonMobil Chemical in Brussels, handling a variety of legal and patent work. Linette D. Dutari (B.S., 1995) has been with ExxonMobil, Downstream Fuels Marketing, in Panama City, Panama, since 1996. She took a two-year break to obtain a M.S. in 2000 and is now back at ExxonMobil implementing operational best practices through Central America and the Caribbean. M. Fahrurrozi (Ph.D., 1997) is currently a faculty member and vice chairman of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia. Steven Gardner (B.S., 1997) has been working for SGL Carbon for approximately four and a half years now. He has recently been relocated to the company's Arkansas plant and has been promoted from a process engineer to Bake and P.I. Department manager. He is looking forward to this "interesting change." Ned H. Issa (B.S., 1999) worked in sales for NalcoExxon for one year following graduation. He has since gone back to manufacturing, and is currently working for DupontDow Elastomers as a Six Sigma Black Belt. Also he is attending the M.B.A. program at LSU and will graduate in May 2004. Issa is married, but no children. Bhala Kanade (M.S., 1992) recently finished his M.B.A. from Tulane University. He currently is working for Vulcan Chemicals in Birmingham, Alabama, as a senior business analyst. He is also a Six Sigma Black Belt. William Mixon (B.S., 1995) has been working for Tru-Tec Services in Baton Rouge since graduation. He is currently the southeast regional manager. Paul Raybon (B.S., 1999) is working for ChevronTexaco at the Pascagoula, Mississippi, refinery. He had worked for four years in process engineering, and is now doing process control work. He says it is a very interesting change and encourages others to give it a try. Melissa Daughdrill Robert (B.S., 1998) was employed as a process control engineer with Tembec in St. Francisville from 1998 until December of 2003. She and her husband, Jean-Paul Robert, will have their eight-year anniversary in June. They have two children—a two-and-a-half-year old boy, Jean-Paul, Jr., and a one-year-old girl, Samantha Grace. Jean-Paul, Sr., graduated from LSU Law School in 2001, and he has his own law practice in downtown Baton Rouge. Last year they bought his grandparents' farmhouse in Gonzales. Melissa recently resigned from Tembec to work part-time as a technical writer with A+ Corporation in order to spend more time with her family; work is only six miles from home. A+ Corporation designs and manufactures sample conditioning components, so she is frequently digging up thermodynamic principles to use in her work. "Life is very good," says Melissa. Chris Rowzee (B.S., 1997) has been working for Shell since 1998 as an IT consultant. In 2002, he formed his own company called Rowzee Ventures. Tegan Blades Treadway (B.S., 1999) is an environmental chemical specialist at the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. She married Scott Treadway, a LSU landscape architect graduate, in 1999. They have a three-year-old daughter, Sophie, and a one-year-old son, Grant. 2000s Gaetano (Chip) Aloisio (B.S., 2002) currently works for the Dow Chemical Company in Hahnville, Louisiana, as a production engineer for Ethylene Oxide/Glycol. Christian Aucoin (B.S., 2001) has recently been offered a full fellowship at Columbia University to obtain a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. He will be moving to New York to begin his research in the fall. His wife, Allison Caire Aucoin, will be working as an attorney for Jones Day law firm. Christian had been working as a process engineer for Shell E&P Company in New Orleans for the past three years while his wife attended Tulane Law School. Keith A. Mayeux (B.S., 2003) landed a job with Turner Industrial Services; got married to Christine and went to St. Lucia; and bought his first rental property and house. He did all this only three months after graduating. His wife is currently working on her second degree in environmental engineering. Mayeux will be closing on his second rental, a four-plex, soon. He says "Life is good." He misses school...but not tests. Dorothy Clement Meyers (B.S., 2002) married Michael J. Meyers (B.S. in mechanical engineering from LSU in 2001) on June 1, 2002. They had a daughter, Kathryn Lyn, on April 25, 2003. Currently, Meyers is working for ConocoPhillips as a process engineer in the Technical Services Department at the Lake Charles Refinery. Scott M. Pollins (B.S., 2002) is working for BASF in Geismar, Louisiana. He currently is a PDP Operations engineer for the Carboxy department. Geaux Tigers! Katherine C. Toney (B.S., 2000) is currently a graduate student in the physical therapy program at Washington University. In her spare time, she enjoys rock climbing, camping, and traveling. In MemoriamWe were saddened to learn of the passing of the following alumni. We extend our belated condolences to their families and friends.
We Would Like to Hear from You!Please Sign ChE Alumni Guestbook! or send us an e-mail at gradcoor@lsu.edu
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