Letters to the Editor

Fall 2022

Photo from the 1980s of two students walking on campus.Archives & Special Collections, Samuel C. Williams LibraryIdentity Revealed

(Editor’s Note: A reader has identified the female student who appeared on page 37 of the Spring/Summer ’22 Indicator, in the archival photo, at right, that opened the Alumni News section.)

The woman in the photograph is Susan Zagar ’80, then a freshman from Pearl River, New York. She is now a senior software development engineer at IBM. She is my wife and the mother of three sons. Two of our children also graduated from Stevens: Robert ’13 and Peter ’21. We now live in Rhinebeck, New York.

— Robert Demkowicz ’79


Finding Work-Life Balance

Your most recent issue spoke to me on a deeply personal level … The piece on “Rethinking How We Work” echoes my career choices over the past few years. Having left a high-paced career as a startup product manager, I took time off to reflect and nurture my family.

Today, like many alumni featured in your issue, I find myself running a small family business, having finally attained that elusive work-life balance. My company, Art & Technology, provides world-class piano tuning services to universities and concert halls. It’s quite a departure from my previous career, but with my business expertise and my partner’s musical talent, it’s a flourishing small business that makes us happy.

I am [also] grateful to you for including a piece on Ukraine. As a Ukrainian immigrant myself, recent events have been unbelievably hard. To help in our small way, we too have been sending a part of our proceeds to Ukraine in the form of medical supplies via direct pipelines.

Snezhana (Karas) Ostrovsky ’07


More Kudos on the 150th Anniversary Issue

Thank you for the phenomenal work that you did in putting together an excellent issue of The Stevens Indicator to commemorate the 150th anniversary of our university’s founding (Spring/Summer 2021 issue). It truly is a keeper!

And thanks for the wonderful article on my classmate, fraternity brother and friend, Buddy Roedema ’60. We first met as part of the freshman class that first occupied Hayden Hall in September 1956 and also lived in the original Delt house that is seen in several photos in the issue.

— John Dalton ’60