Where Are They Now?

By Carol Olechowski

Congratulations to Robert J. Sampson, M.A.’79, Ph.D.’83, and John Laub, M.A.’76, Ph.D.’80 (Spring 2004 UAlbany, “Understanding the Lives of Troubled Boys”), on receiving the Stockholm Prize in Criminology last June 14. The award, presented by Sweden’s Queen Silvia in a ceremony at Stockholm City Hall, honored the researchers for their study of how and why criminals cease to offend at various turning points in their lives. Sampson is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York. Laub, currently on leave from the University of Maryland, College Park, has served as director of the National Institute of Justice in Washington, D.C., since July 2010.

Former volleyball standout Ashlee Reed, B.S.’06 (Spring 2007 UAlbany, “Team Player”) may be back in Texas, but she hasn’t forgotten UAlbany. The Austin native, who earned a degree in human biology and psychology, is now completing doctoral studies in physical therapy at Hardin-Simmons University. Reed describes the program as “one of the most intense in the country, since we go year ’round and finish in two-and-a-half years. But I know it will be worth it!” Being back in Texas is “very different,” but Reed feels right at home: The school’s colors are purple and gold. “There is also an Albany about 20 miles down the road,” she adds, “so when I hear on the news, ‘In Albany today …’ it still throws me for a loop!”

U.S. Public Health Service Lt. Katrina Mosley, M.P.H.’06 (Spring 2010 UAlbany, Understanding Public Health”), who studied community health and behavioral science, is back home now in Georgia. Formerly stationed with the Food and Drug Administration’s New Orleans District Office in Nashville, she moved to her hometown, Atlanta, to work at the FDA’s District Office there, “which covers North and South Carolina.” In July 2010, during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Mosley was deployed to Mobile, Ala., “where I worked as a medical officer, assisting with the logistics of the beach clean-ups along the coast.”

“Jordan is a fascinating place to work and live,” reports U.S. Foreign Service Officer Jeffrey Loree, B.A.’89 (Fall 2007 UAlbany, “Diplomatically Speaking – and Listening”), a cultural attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Amman since August 2010. “Jordanians have a well-deserved reputation for hospitality in a region famous for it. Most have some facility with English, and it is hurting my already limited ability to communicate in Arabic,” jokes the Lewiston, N.Y., native, who majored in Chinese at UAlbany and also speaks Japanese, French and Indonesian. Loree’s wife, art conservator Hiroko Kariya, is managing “a wide range of archeological projects” in Egypt while the couple lives in Jordan.

School of Criminal Justice faculty member Frankie Y. Bailey, M.A.’79, Ph.D.’86, (Fall 2010 UAlbany, “Author, Author!”) has published the fifth book in her Lizzie Stuart mystery series. In Forty Acres and a Soggy Grave, released July 26, crime historian Stuart and her fiancé, John Quinn, travel to Virginia’s Eastern Shore for a weekend “that turns deadly.” The other books in the series are Death’s Favorite Child; A Dead Man’s Honor; Old Murders; and You Should Have Died on Monday. Bailey, whose research currently focuses on crime, clothing and American culture, has also completed the first book in “a new near-future police procedural series set in Albany.”