The passion followers

Six alumni dedicate their time to the things that matter.

Words by Michelle Rivera

Robert Newman '62 is most at home around planes.

COLLEGE IS OFTEN SEEN AS THE PLACE where career wisdom takes root. But for some students, those nuggets of knowledge lead to passions that define them well after the workday ends. We introduce you here to some alumni builders, creators, and literal life savers who have found meaning and success in pursuits beyond their jobs.

ROBERT NEWMAN ’62
BUILT TO FLY

ROBERT NEWMAN’S PASSION for aviation began in childhood, building model airplanes with his father. But the first time he actually flew a plane, the earth unfolded beneath him like nothing he’d seen before: winding waterways, the contours of the land, familiar geography transformed from above. 

“To be up there in the sky and looking down, everything looks like a portrait,” he says.

A career educator, Newman majored in industrial arts at Trenton State College and earned a master’s in education in 1963. He was working as an administrator at the Ocean County Vocational-Technical School in Brick, New Jersey, when a staff member who owned a plane invited him for a ride. “That hooked me on a lifetime of aviation,” says Newman, who went on to get his pilot’s license in 1979.

His enthusiasm flew even higher. While studying for his doctorate in school administration, Newman craved something more hands-on than the paperwork that consumed his days. “I needed a distraction,” he says. He found it in building airplanes. Only this time, it was the full-size versions. Drawing on his industrial arts training, Newman started with a fiberglass kit. More than a dozen planes followed.

Newman became a go-to resource in the aviation-building community. In 2022, he took on an especially complex project when pilot Jessica Cox, who was born without arms, asked him to help create what became known as the “Impossible Airplane,” designed so she could operate it with her feet.

Newman and about 20 volunteers from Ocean County’s Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 898 spent four years adapting the plane’s controls, radios, and gull-wing doors to Cox’s needs. In summer 2026, they shipped the aircraft to Mesa, Arizona, where another crew is reassembling it ahead of flight testing and Federal Aviation Administration approval.

Today, Newman shares his expertise with fellow builders through the chapter. Together, they are rehabbing a donated aircraft whose sale will create a scholarship fund for people pursuing flight training, whether for a career or as a hobby.

At 89, Newman still flies weekly when weather permits, alongside a younger pilot, and continues building aircraft. “There hasn’t been a time that I don’t have an airplane in the workshop,” Newman says. “There will continue to be one there until I can’t do it any longer.”

MARIA HOPPER ’62
FAMILY TREE TRACER
LIFELONG LEARNER: Retired from teaching in 2004. Became a certified genealogist in 2006.
NOT A PASSING PASSION: Was waiting in line to buy a Cub Scout uniform for her oldest son in the early ’70s; spotted a merit badge book on genealogy on a wire rack, bought it, and never looked back. “Best 50 cents I ever spent,” she says.
DETECTIVE WORK: Treats genealogy like solving mysteries, diving deep into colonial wills, deeds, and historical records. Self-published the first six generations of the Hopper family.
COOL CONNECTION: Found that her family is related to the famous artist Edward Hopper. He is her children’s seventh cousin three times removed.

REGINA PHILIPPS ’07
THE SYSTEM FIXER 

REGINA PHILIPPS HAD 15 MINUTES to convince a New Jersey state senator that a stalled bill deserved his attention. So she shared a video.

On her phone were clips of her son, Shane: Strong and healthy as a newborn, slowly losing movement over the next several months, then beginning to regain some of what he’d lost after treatment. At 10 months old, Shane had been diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic disease that had robbed him of much of his motor function. Had his disease been detected sooner, before symptoms had appeared, treatment could have prevented his symptoms from developing in the first place.

Philipps, a criminology major turned partner and civil litigator at Madden & Madden, became a mom on a mission.

“I couldn’t fix what happened to Shane,” she says. “So I knew I had to fix the system that failed him.”

Using her legal training, Philipps learned of a bill that would bring SMA screening to every newborn in New Jersey. The bill had already been introduced — but was going nowhere. Accustomed to pushing past dead ends, she contacted lawmakers and helped rally more than 1,100 New Jersey residents behind the effort. The bill passed unanimously and was signed into law in January 2020.

Philipps continues to share Shane’s story with families facing the same unknowns. And she has spoken with students from elementary school through graduate school — including genetic-counseling students at the University of Pennsylvania — about what life with SMA looks like beyond a textbook. More recently, she became part of an NIH-funded Clinical Working Group on genomic newborn screening led by geneticist Wendy Chung, who helped develop SMA screening. The group will examine which conditions and variants should be included and how screening can be expanded responsibly.

For Philipps, it all comes back to Shane. Now 8, he uses a manual wheelchair, can stand with bracing, and continues to work toward greater independence. “I tell him all the time, ‘You changed the world,’” Philipps says.

AMULYA VELDANDA VADALI ’18
WRITE BRAIN, LEFT BRAIN THINKER

BY DAY, AMULYA VELDANDA VADALI steps into a state-of- the-art laboratory at Students 2 Science in Whippany, New Jersey, and designs science and technology programs for high schoolers. A biomedical engineer, Vadali started her career at Roche and then spent five years in research and development at Integra Life Sciences before joining the science education nonprofit.

Yet beneath the lab coat lies something just as meaningful: a passion for writing. “Ever since I was little, it was a dream of mine to be an author someday,” she says.

Vadali’s journey into writing began with a simple adventure story for children that featured her own beloved golden retriever, Cosmo. When she was ready to put her story out into the world, she applied her characteristic research skills and weighed the pros and cons of publishing paths before starting her own publishing company, AVVBooks.

“I wanted to have that creative control over how my book would look,” she says. “And I like being deeply involved in every step of the publishing process.”

That deep involvement paid off. She first set a humble goal of selling just 50 copies to friends and family. Soon she had sold tens of thousands of copies globally and penned a full series of children’s books, including the heartwarming bestseller, I’ll Be Your Friend Forever, about losing a pet. Her most recent project delved into writing for adults: The Art of Being Let Go is a satirical picture book that aims to help adults laugh through career transitions.

Vadali navigates her dual worlds effortlessly. “There are honestly a lot of similarities between being a writer and being a scientist,” she says. “You need to explain things in understandable ways. There’s creativity in both.”

TOM CASAZZA ’94
BRICK MAKER
THE BRICK BOND: Picked up LEGO building as an adult, a passion that accelerated during the COVID pandemic with the creation of a massive six-table LEGO city in his garage.
ACT ONE: As a student at TCNJ, worked in Kendall Hall on the main stage, focused on lighting design. Built a career in technical theater and is currently a business development manager at InterAmerica Stage.
SET DESIGNS: Designed a custom minifigure-scale theater and named it Builtmor Theater, but his inspiration came from the look of Kendall Hall. It features working front-of- house lighting, an orchestra pit, and interchangeable sets for more than 30 different productions, including Sweeney Todd with a working trapdoor, which he displays at regional conventions.

GLENN FUCHS ’85
LIFE SAVER
HIS JOB: Graphic designer at Bristol Myers Squibb
HIS PASSION: Giving blood
RARE BIOLOGY: O-negative and CMV-negative blood makes him a universal donor whose blood can safely go to just about anyone on Earth.
THE TURNAROUND: Initially had a fainting spell during a blood drive in his 20s but was coaxed back years later by a coworker at BMS. Since then, he has had 27 separate donation appointments and given more than 3.5 gallons of blood.
SCI-FI CROSSOVER: A Star Wars fan, he posts pictures of his post-donation arm bandage with the hashtag: “This is the way.”

Photos Newman and Philipps by Hannah Yoon
Photo of Valdali by Peter Murphy