Class Notes: 1979

Susan Robison ’79 writes: A few days after I retired in 2019 I began writing Halley and the Mystery of the Lost Girls, a young adult historical adventure, about a 15 year old girl who goes with her father to India in 1952. Shortly after they arrive in Bombay (Mumbai) Halley discovers that the young woman in the hotel room next to hers is a prisoner. When the young woman disappears, Halley is drawn into an ever-expanding web of intrigue and danger.

During my years at Berkeley I took short fiction writing from Masao Miyoshi while he was in residence at Berkeley. His class has had a lifelong impact on me. When I was a child my family of six lived in Poona while my father set up the Virus Research Centre (VRC) for the Rockefeller Foundation before he moved us to Berkeley in 1954. For the rest of his career he worked for the California State Health Dept. and taught virology at UC.

As a Berkeley student, Randy Hall ’79, MS ’80, PhD ’82 was an original member of the student co-op Kingman Hall. Kingman Hall was named for Harry Kingman, a founder of the co-op system that has housed thousands of students over the decades.

Kerr’s book The Uses of the University has been an inspiration for Randy. Kerr depicts universities as “multiversities,” due to their broad spectrum of interconnected activities and their overarching purpose to serve society.

In Randy’s new book, Managing Innovation Inside Universities, Systematic Change for Research Service and Learning (Springer), Randy aimed to bring the multiversity to the present.

Kingman Hall was a second inspiration for Randy’s book. He and his future wife, Janice Partyka ’79, jointly served as workshift managers at Kingman, assigning students to the various tasks needed to keep the house running, including cooking, cleaning, maintenance and even rodent control.

Randy’s book specifically examines how old institutions (i.e., universities) can lead in the knowledge economy. As universities seek to modernize in a world altered by changing demographics and information technology, Randy has articulated a roadmap for change.

He draws from his long experience as V.P. of Research at USC, along with case studies, new scholarship and his student days. In particular, he examines how universities can be more effective as learning institutions, where learning doesn’t just mean educating students.

In his words, “a culture of learning should encompass the entirety of the university, engaging students, staff and faculty in a continuous process of examination, innovation and change. That is, universities can do the things themselves that they have been teaching their own students to do for so many years.”

Maximilian B. Torres writes: “My 13-year-old son, Gabriel Anthony Torres, the last of our eight children, hugged Pope Francis at a Wednesday audience on December 1, 2021. The Vatican posted it on the Pope’s Instagram page. My son was wearing my Cal sweatshirt, which is clearly visible in the Vatican photos. I am the Della Ratta Family Endowed Professor of Business at the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. I taught a leadership class at our Rome campus this past fall, which is why we were in Rome.”

Class Secretary: Maria Protti, 3 Los Amigos, Orinda 94563, maria.protti@cal.berkeley.edu

Michael J. Coffino, J.D. ’79, writes: “After 40 years of law practice and 25 parallel years as a high school basketball coach, I became a professional writer. Since then, I have authored and co-authored eight published books. The most recent is my debut (and award-winning) novel, Truth Is in the House, a work of historical fiction. It tells the tale of two teenage boys—one of color from Jim Crow Mississippi, the other an Irish immigrant—who flee with their families to the Bronx in the 1960s after nightmarish tragedies bring death to their personal worlds and drive them to find common ground over the course of their adult lives.” 

Class Secretaries: Shelly de Vries, 111 Kenwood Way, San Francisco 94127, shelly@de-vries.com; Maria Protti, 3 Los Amigos, Orinda 94563, maria.protti@cal.berkeley.edu