People on the Move

Springfield College Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Martha Potvin announced that M. Susan Guyer has been named dean of the School of Physical Education, Performance and Sport Leadership. Guyer had been serving as interim dean since January 2020. Guyer has been a faculty member at Springfield College since receiving her doctor of physical education degree from Springfield College in 2003. Four the past four years, she has served as chair of the Springfield College Department of Exercise Science and Athletic Training. In 2017, Guyer was named the Distinguished Springfield Professor of Humanics and focused on a year-long vision to foster collaborative relationships and leadership on campus between exercise, health, and other disciplines. Her vision brought together campus and community members across multiple disciplines to discover, share, and adopt the principles of the ‘exercise is medicine’ program, and assisted in helping change the culture of chronic-disease prevention and management. During Guyer’s time at the college, she has built strong community partnerships and has hosted multiple symposiums benefiting the health of the campus community members and surrounding community neighbors. She has annually collaborated with Baystate Rehabilitation Care to lead programs that highlight the importance of fitting exercise into a person’s daily routine. In addition, she also has worked with health experts from Baystate Medical Center, the New England Center for Functional Medicine, and the Springfield College Nutritional Sciences Program to host an annual Heart Health Symposium on campus. In October 2018, Guyer was honored by the Springfield City Council with a proclamation recognizing her commitment to creating collaborative health initiatives within the city of Springfield to improve the overall health of all citizens. She has also received numerous national accolades from her professional associations, including the National Athletic Training Assoc. Service Award, the National Athletic Training Assoc. Most Distinguished Athletic Trainer Award, and the Gail Weldon Award of Excellence. These awards represent her continued contributions to service, professional development, mentoring, and leadership. Guyer earned her master’s degree in athletic training from Old Dominion University, and her bachelor’s degree in athletic training, with a dual minor in sports science/fitness and coaching, from Castleton State College.

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Asnuntuck Community College Accounting Professor Nicles Lefakis recently retired after 41 years of teaching at ACC. Part of a two-person team in the early years, he and Esther Alaimo built an accounting program that boasted the highest percentage of students in the state’s community-college system. They also negotiated the first transfer agreements with four-year colleges that provided for all degree requirements to be transferred. Lefakis was also key to development of the first accounting course specifically aimed at assisting small-business owners with their bookkeeping needs, again a model for the state’s community colleges. Lefakis was a faculty leader at Asnuntuck, often elected by his peers to serve on committees related to personnel, curriculum and academic standards, and improving instruction. He was also selected by college management to serve on various committees related to accreditation, college management, and course transfer. Always interested in helping the community, Lefakis and Alaimo brought the Internal Revenue Service’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) to Asnuntuck in the early 1980s and ran it for a number of years. Lefakis was key in helping long-time colleague Bill Searle recently get ACC to once again be the host for VITA in Enfield. On the state level, Lefakis was deeply involved with the state Center for Teaching since its inception. Selected to the staff of the prestigious Barnes Seminar in its second year, he was selected as a staff member more often than any other person in the state.

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Western New England University (WNEU) School of Law Dean Sudha Setty announced the appointment of nationally renowned legal scholar and advocate Jennifer Taub to the School of Law faculty. An authority on the 2008 mortgage meltdown and related financial crisis, Taub’s research and writing centers on ‘follow the money’ matters, promoting transparency and opposing corruption. Her new book, Big Dirty Money: The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime, will be published on Sept. 29. Taub was a co-founder and organizer of the April 15, 2017 Tax March, where more than 120,000 people gathered in cities nationwide to demand President Trump release his tax returns. She will join the School of Law faculty in August, teaching white-collar crime, civil procedure, and other commercial and business law subjects. Taub’s 2014 book, Other People’s Houses: How Decades of Bailouts, Captive Regulators, and Toxic Bankers Made Home Mortgages a Thrilling Business, was praised by Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller in his 2015 edition of Irrational Exuberance and won a “must-read nonfiction” honor at the Massachusetts Book Awards. She is also a co-author of the sixth edition of Corporate and White Collar Crime: Cases and Materials. Taub’s scholarly writing on corporate governance, financial market regulation, and banking law reform has been published in law journals and peer-reviewed volumes, and she has testified several times before U.S. congressional committees as an expert, including as an invited witness for the Senate Banking Committee and a House Financial Services subcommittee. Taub has been the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and the University of Connecticut School of Law. She also served as a visiting fellow at the Yale School of Management. Before joining Western New England University School of Law, she was a professor at Vermont Law School. Prior to joining academia, Taub was an associate general counsel with Fidelity Investments. She received her bachelor’s degree, cum laude, from Yale University, with distinction in the English major, and her juris doctor, cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where she was the Recent Developments editor at the Harvard Women’s Law Journal. Taub has appeared on cable news programs including MSNBC’s Morning Joe and CNN Newsroom to discuss legal matters, including the special counsel investigation into links between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign. She has written opinion pieces for a variety of platforms, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, the CNN opinion page, Dame Magazine, the Baseline Scenario, Race to the Bottom, Pareto Commons, the Conglomerate, and Concurring Opinions.

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Florence Bank announced that Rebecca Albro was recently selected as a recipient of its President’s Award. The President’s Award was established by the bank in 1995, affording employees the annual opportunity to nominate their peers for this prestigious honor that recognizes outstanding performance, customer service, and overall contribution to Florence Bank. Albro, who was nominated by numerous colleagues, is a teller operations manager and customer-service representative in the main branch in Florence. She began work at Florence Bank in 2014. “For nearly six years, Becky has been a reliable asset to our organization,” Florence Bank President Kevin Day said. “Her ability to manage and encourage others is admirable. Becky is the consummate employee to receive the President’s Award.”

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Michael Matty, president of St. Germain Investment Management, announced the appointment of Christopher Mainard to Operations specialist and Amanda Limero to Client Services and Operations associate. Mainard has a strong working knowledge of trading, client services, financial operations, and data analysis, with more than 20 years of experience in those fields. His career began in the compliance division of Hartford, Conn.-based Advest Inc. His experience there included responsibilities in retirement operations, subsequently becoming the Operations supervisor for the Investment Management department. His career continued to expand with experience gained from other investment-management firms in Boston. While at Taylor Investments, he was a Trading and Portfolio specialist. Limero, who will be working out of St. Germain’s d/b/a Gage-Wiley office in Northampton, has more than 18 years of banking experience and brings a wide range of skills in operations, administration, corporate communications and customer relationships. She spent the past 13 years at United Bank, with the last five of those years as a Payment Operations manager. She holds an associate degree in liberal arts from Holyoke Community College and a bachelor’s degree in business management from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. She recently passed the Securities Industries Essential Exam, a new-for-2020 requirement pertinent to the securities industry.

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Westfield State University appointed Maggie Balch dean of students. She will report to Vice President for Student Affairs Gloria Lopez, and will oversee student activities and leadership, student conduct, residential engagement, and the Career Center. An accomplished student-development professional, Balch has more than 20 years of experience in the field. She most recently served in a similar position for the past five years at Rhode Island School of Design. Prior to that, she held progressively advancing positions in student life at Brandeis University for 12 years, ranging from director of Residence Life to associate dean of Student Life. Balch earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Pennsylvania State University and master’s degree in higher education administration: student affairs at the University of Connecticut. She later held positions in residence life at Washington University in St. Louis, Indiana University, and UMass Dartmouth.