From the Alumni Office

Kate Hamilton ’15/MA<br />Director of Alumni Relations — Kate Hamilton ’15/MA
Director of Alumni Relations

Siena Legacy

Can you believe it? Siena will celebrate our Centennial during the upcoming academic year! It has been an honor and privilege to be a part of the Centennial Committee and work with other faculty, staff, alumni, and community supporters to help plan what will be 100 events for the 100th. Our theme is ‘Legacy’ and all I can say is “WOW,” when I think of all that I have learned already and all that I will learn going forward as we meet and talk with all of YOU who share in this Siena legacy.

I am looking forward to the upcoming year because it means I will be meeting and hearing about the impact Siena has had on so many of our alums and how they have taken those lessons out into our world creating their own legacy. As part of the celebration, we are hosting ‘SHU Legacy Lectures,’ featuring many of our alums who have agreed to come back and share their Siena memories and their journey after graduation. They will spend a day on campus speaking to classes, lunching with students, and then telling their story at a TED-X style talk in the evening.

Also of note happening this year at Homecoming is our All-Alumni Art Show where more than 25 alumni artists will have their work shown at locations on our campus, at INAI (at the Motherhouse), and at the Adrian Center for the Arts (a short drive from campus). This is sure to be one of many weekend highlights. I am sure you will share in my excitement to read Jennifer Hamlin Church’s centennial coffee table book that will provide us with a look back while we look forward.

Fashionable Career

Melissa poses atop The Eiffel Tower during a recent trip to Paris.

By Doug Goodnough

Since high school, Melissa Lefere-Cobb ’95 was determined to live in New York City and work in the fashion industry.

Thanks to a unique Siena Heights degree program – along with a relentless work ethic—she said she was able to achieve both of those goals. For more than two decades, Lefere-Cobb has worked her way up to the pinnacle of the fashion industry. She is currently the division head for Herve Leger, a well-known French fashion house, in New York City.

She said Siena Heights’ fashion merchandising program started her down the “runway” of her very successful career path. She learned about the program while a student at Jackson (Mich.) Lumen Christi High School.

“It was a great program that allowed me to go to Siena for three years, and then my junior year I spent at the Fashion Institute of Technology,” Lefere-Cobb said of the fashion merchandising major, which is no longer offered. “It served me well.”

SHU Family Legacies

With a 100th Anniversary theme of “Legacy,” a Siena Heights education has been a family affair for many over its distinguished history. Reflections Magazine asked alumni to submit their family legacy stories, and the response was fantastic! Over the following pages, learn about how “The Siena Effect” impacted the lives of these families in so many ways.

Jacob Chi, Maurice Chi, Margaret Chi and Jane Chi.

Chi Family

Legacy names: Margaret Chi ’82 (aunt); Jane Chi ’82 (aunt); Maurice Chi ’84 (nephew); Jacob Chi ’85 (nephew).

Our Siena Heights legacy: from Maurice Chi—The Chi legacy started with my Aunt Margaret Chi, who received a full scholarship from Siena Heights College in 1948. It was her dream! But because of the civil war in China at the time, she was not able to obtain the passport. Soon after when the country changed its political system and shut off from the world, so did her dream. It was not until 1978, thirty years later, did she finally have the courage to write to Siena Heights College. The sitting president, Dr. Louis Vaccaro, welcomed her not only with her scholarship reinstated, but also granted her sister, my other aunt Jane, a full scholarship. Together they came, and both pursued their Master’s degree in education. They graduated in 1982. Then in 1981 my brother Jacob and I also attended SHC. I completed a double major in math and CIS with the Outstanding Male Student Award in 1984. Jacob received his B.A. in music a year later. Without the generous financial support from the college, none of these would be possible. We built successful careers thereafter: Jacob held the baton for the Pueblo Symphony and led other orchestras across the continent, and I became an IT professional in corporate Americas like IBM and Thomson Reuters. We are forever grateful to the college for the knowledge, the friend-
ships, the fulfillment, the value of being, the faith to God, and the love from the Dominican Sisters who enlighten us all.