Classnotes | North Central College

Stacey Schiel Garrity '95

Stacey Schiel Garrity is a senior manufacturing process development scientist for Epicentre, based in Madison, WI, which manufactures and sells kits for DNA sequencing, transcription and ribosomal RNA removal, among other products. Her role in the manufacturing group is to take incoming new products from the research and design group and “scale them up” to large-scale production, taking processes from a lab bench scale to a production scale.

Carley Wrobel Born '96

Carley Wrobel Born is an academic technologist at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, where she supports curricular development in teaching foreign languages. She’s currently designing a custom open-source, Web-based program to facilitate oral exercises for foreign language classes. On the side, she provides technical consultation and English-Japanese translation for a small martial arts equipment vendor in Japan.

Ray Odom '97

Ray Odom is radio host Crazy Ray on WRXQ-FM 100.7. He has worked at WLUP-AM, WBVS-FM, WLLI-FM and WONC-FM in the Chicago market and was morning show host at WXLP-FM in the Quad Cities. He began his radio career as an intern for Chicago radio legend Fred Winston at WPNT-FM.

North Central Now Winter 2012

Rick Guzman '99

Rick Guzman was named assistant chief of staff to the mayor in Aurora, IL. He is liaison to community organizations and nonprofit groups, with neighborhood quality-of-life issues and housing included in his duties. Guzman is founder of Emmanuel House and previously served as director of community development for Community 4:12. He was director of the Office of Reentry Management for the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), 2004-2006, and IDOC program director for the Illinois Going Home Program, 2000-2003.

Lindsay Hill-Batorski '05

Lindsay Hill-Batorski is a postdoctoral research associate in the laboratory of Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is studying Ebola virus pathogenesis and is currently working with a biologically contained virus developed in their lab. She is not able to elaborate because, she says, “We are in the process of submitting several new manuscripts that will hopefully be published in the next few months!” She earned her Ph.D. from UW-Madison in 2010 in the laboratory of the late Dr. Paul Bertics.

Charlie Bartsch 1973

Charlie Bartsch was named senior program advisor for economic development for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He’s responsible for promoting inter-agency and public-private partnerships to spur site cleanup and land revitalization. He’ll also work on the EPA’s green infrastructure and area-wide planning initiatives and provide support to the White House “cities in transition” effort. He may be reached at bartsch.charlie@epa.gov.

Bryant Cobarriubias 1999

Bryant Cobarrubias owns Atomic Games, a place for kids to hang out and play board games and card games—a resource to the community. The store has a large library of open board games for people to enjoy at no cost and he hosts events for popular card games every week. He’s working with local schools, churches and organizations to set up more game nights. The store also supports The Edge Youth Center, located across the street. In his other career, he’s a software developer specializing in document imaging solutions.

Susan Storcel 1977

Susan Storcel is director of the Cook County Child Protection Mediation and Facilitation Program in Chicago. Before being appointed, she worked for the Office of the Cook County Public Guardian for more than 13 years in the disabled adult and juvenile divisions. As a staff attorney in the juvenile division, she represented abused, neglected and dependent children. She serves on a variety of committees focused on child welfare and child protection issues, including the Illinois Child Death Review Team and the Court Culture Implementation Team.

Jeremy Gudauskas 1999

Jeremy Gudauskas was promoted to assistant dean of students at North Central College. He previously served as director of ministry and service. He lives with his wife Michelle ’99 and three sons, Brady, Jesse and Judah, in Naperville and may be reached at jkgudauskas@noctrl.edu.

Jim Caliendo 1979

Jim Caliendo was inducted into the Illinois High School Swimming and Diving Hall of Fame in March after being involved in high school swimming and diving for 40 years. He started the sport as a freshman at Thornwood High School in 1971. Caliendo said, “I had great coaches like Kimo Miles who instilled a love for the sport in all who swam for them.”