was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at Wayne State University.

A new book by essayist Lawrence Velvel, Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, has won the 2009 gold medal in the essay/creative category of Independent Publisher, the voice of the independent publishing industry.

The “IPPY” Award was conferred for his non-fiction work “An Enemy of the People: The Unending Battle Against Conventional Wisdom,” published by the law school’s Doukathsan Press. Last year, Doukathsan Press brought out Velvel’s unsparing fictionalized memoir, the 818-page quartet “Thine Alabaster Cities Gleam.” It chronicles post 1960 cultural declines—a moral meltdown that caused America to go from the world’s hope to a country often reviled abroad.

Charlotte Robinson, BA ’95, recently became Managing Editor of Economic Development and Cultural Change, a multidisciplinary journal of development economics, at the University of Chicago Press.

Glenn Robertelli, founder of Intelligen and makers of ViewGuard™ brand products, was selected as Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year in Entrepreneur® magazine’s inaugural 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year contest presented by The UPS Store®.

Glenn Robertelli, not only created a business that competes with a corporate giant, but he’s also done so completely on his own with a virtual, 99 percent paperless office. He started Intelligen in October 2006, which makes ViewGuard Anti-Glare Privacy Filters. He has since broadened his product line and estimates 2008 sales at $2.8 million.

About ViewGuardâ„¢: ViewGuardâ„¢ offers a full line of unique and novel electronics accessories including privacy filters, anti-glare and cleaning products for even the rarest computer or television models: www.BuyViewGuard.com.

Michelle M. Gallardo, a senior corporate lawyer with Ford Motor Company in Detroit, was appointed by the President of the American Bar Association to the following two leadership positions in 2008:

• The Council for the Fund for Justice and Education, the public service arm of the ABA, which funds nearly 200 law-related public service programs each year, with approximately $60,000,000 in yearly revenue; and
• The Presidential Advisory Council on Diversity in the Profession whose mission is to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of attorneys admitted into the bar by focusing on educational issues related to law school admission, bar passage and K-12 education.

Ms. Gallardo has served in numerous leadership positions within the ABA since 1998 including appointments to the Executive Councils for both the Young Lawyers Division and the Section of Business Law. Ms. Gallardo is Assistant General Counsel and Assistant Secretary at Automotive Components Holdings, LLC, a business managed by Ford Motor Company, and has held various positions within the Ford Motor Company since 2000. Ms. Gallardo graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1992.

For the third year in a row, James A. Burns, Jr (A.B. ’77, J.D.’80) has been named an Illinois Super Lawyer, an honor given to the top 5% of the attorneys in the state, in the area of Employment and Labor. Jim is a partner at Reed Smith LLP in Chicago.

I am now using that journalism degree I received from Michigan in 1957 as editor of the Ingham County Legal News, located in Mason, MI My background as a teacher and a lawyer are a nice mix with the writing.

Susan Liss, of Maryland, 1973 grad of LSA is being honored on Thursday, March 12, 2009, in Washington DC as the recipient of the Judge Learned Hand Award, given by the American Jewish Committee. This award is given annually to an attorney who has demonstrated a commitment to the highest principles of the legal profession and has made an outstanding contribution to the enrichment of the community.

Susan Liss is Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. She has devoted her life to public service, civil rights, women’s rights, and human rights.

Ann Marie Lipinski was the co-editor-in-chief of the Michigan Daily, 1977-78. She left Michigan a few credits short to start work for the Chicago Tribune. (She completed her degree in 1994). In this spring’s alumni newsletter for past staff members of the Daily, the Michiganensian yearbook, and the Gargoyle humor magazine, journalist Sara Fitzgerald, who was also an editor of the Daily (1972-73), noted, “Winning a Pulitzer Prize (for investigative reporting, in 1988) would probably be considered qualification enough for the Athena Award, but Ann Marie went on to become managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, and then, in 2001, senior vice president and editor of the paper. Nevertheless, she still found time to give back to the university and her profession, serving on the Board for Student Publications from 1992-1998 and on the board of the University of Michigan Knight Wallace Fellows program in journalism, as well as on the boards of the Poynter Institute and the Stanford University Journalism Fellows program.”

Ms. Lipinski resigned from the Tribune in July 2008 and is now the University of Chicago’s Vice President for Civic Engagement. In that position she oversees the university’s relationships in a number of areas, including public schools, public safety, economic development and the city’s bid for the 2016 Olympics.