2014 Board of Directors

Mark Bouman (President)
Mark Bouman’s association with the Calumet Heritage Partnership dates to the opening presentation he gave at the first Calumet Heritage Conference in 1999, although it was not until 2005 that he joined the board when CHP became formally affiliated with Chicago’s Steel Heritage Project. Since 2007, he has served as CHP’s President. Mark has been closely involved with several Calumet regional efforts, including the Lake Calumet Ecosystem Partnership, Calumet Stewardship Initiative, and the Calumet Environmental Resource Center at Chicago State University. He was the Project Director for a widely distributed map of the Calumet region that originally appeared in the Spring, 2009 issue of Chicago Wilderness magazine. Mark’s association with the Calumet region dates to his undergraduate days at Valparaiso University, where the classic geomorphology field trip from the Kankakee sand islands, across the Valparaiso Moraine, and to the lakefront at Mt. Baldy set the hook for a professional lifetime in geography, and, as it turns out, the Calumet region. Mark’s graduate work in geography at the University of Minnesota focused on the relationship between cities and technology, and his work in that area has appeared in the Journal of Urban History, the Journal of American History, and The Cities and Technology Reader. He was a Professor of Geography at Chicago State University from 1984 to 2012. Since 2012, he is the Chicago Region Program Director in the Division of Environment, Culture, and Conservation at The Field Museum.

Kate Corcoran (Secretary)
Kate Corcoran joined the Calumet Heritage Partnership as a volunteer from the Pullman State Historic Site to assist with the rescue of materials from the ACME Steel Coke Plant and with the photographic documentation of the site; she has also worked with preliminary inventory of materials and the metadata descriptions, captions, and identification of photographs on the Industrial Heritage Archives of Chicago’s Calumet Region website in concert with the Pullman State Historic Site and the Southeast Chicago Historical Society. Kate has dual bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and history and two years of post – graduate work from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She served as the principal photographer for the upcoming second edition of Hollywood on Lake Michigan: Chicago at the Movies, to be published by Chicago Review Press. Kate is director of membership and information systems with the national Medical Library Association. Kate and her spouse Michael (a certified a Chicago Tour Guide) live in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago.

David Klein (Treasurer)
David Klein has long been engaged in Calumet regional affairs. David served as the Executive Director of the Calumet Project, a Hammond – based community – labor – religious coalition. Among David’s priorities while at the Calumet Project was guiding Northwest Indiana in acknowledging the inequitable effects of polluting industries on the poor and communities of color. David also volunteers on the Board of the Calumet Area League of Women Voters. In that position he developed the League’s Campaign Finance Online project in which all Lake County Indiana Campaign Finance Reports have been published on the League’s website; a first for Northwest Indiana. He is also the local League’s webmaster. David lives in Hammond, Indiana with his spouse Susan Duncan, a researcher in psychology and linguistics, and their undisclosed number of cats.

William Peterman (Vice President)
William Peterman is a Professor of Geography (retired) from Chicago State University. At Chicago State, in addition to teaching courses in statistics, community development and neighborhood planning, he was the director of the Fred Blum Neighborhood Assistance Center. Prior to coming to Chicago State he was the director of the Voorhees Center for Neigborhood and Community Improvement at t he University of Illinois at Chicago. Although retired he holds visiting professor positions at both the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England in the UK.

Michael Longan
Michael Longan is a Professor of Geography at Valparaiso University. He has a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Colorado at Boulder and earned his masters in geography at the University of Arizona. Mike serves as the webmaster for the Calumet Heritage Partnership website, www.calumetheritage.org.

Richard Lytle
Richard Meredith Lytle is the Local History Librarian at the Suzanne G. Long Local History Room of the Hammond Public Library, Hammond, Indiana. He has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mass communications from the Walter J. Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass media, Arizona State University; a Master of Arts – History Degree from Northwestern State University of Louisiana, and a Master of Library Science from Indiana University. Currently he has three books in publication and for the last eight years has been the Vice – President of the Hammond Historical Society of Hammond, Indiana.

Sherry Meyer
Sherry Meyer is a community builder, urban guide, and health and policy consultant. 

Mary Poulsen
Mary Poulsen is the Director of Community Relations for the City of Blue Island. She is active in a number of regional planning efforts, including the Friends of the Calumet – Sag Trail. She is on the board of the Canal Corridor Alliance.

 Rod Sellers
Rod Sellers taught American History, Chicago History, and Law at Bowen High School and Washington High School in Chicago. He is retired after a 34 year career with the Chicago Public Schools. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Illinois, a master’s degree in Urban Studies, and a master’s degree in Public Service, both from Governors State University. Rod has a special interest in local history and volunteers at the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum. The museum has a collection of thousands of photographs, slides, and negatives, as well as artifacts and documents related to family and community history. Rod has worked extensively with the Southeast Chicago Historical Project Collection since its acquisition by the Southeast Chicago Historical Society. He is the co – author of Chicago’s Southeast Side, a pictorial history of the community and is the author of Chicago’s Southeast Side Revisited both published by Arcadia Publishing.

Tom Shepherd
Tom Shepherd, president of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, has served on the Calumet Heritage Partnership board almost since CHP’s inception. A lifelong resident of the Calumet region, Tom attended Fenger High School and South Suburban College. He has been involved in community affairs at many levels, and has worked in government, as well as being active on social, labor,  and political issues. Tom resides in Historic Pullman, having served three terms as president of the Pullman Civic Organization. He’s led tours and events in the neighborhood for many years, and with his promoting of Pullman has helped to bring thousands of visitors to the historic “town.” Tom is a life-member of the Southeast Chicago Historical Society, and as a member of the local Steelworker Retirees chapter helped to spearhead an effort to preserve the legacy of Big Steel and the ACME Steel Coke Plant on the city’s southeast side. As a member of Governor Quinn’s Millennium Reserve Steering Committee, Tom leads the effort to open Lake Calumet to the public, and is part of teams to help Pullman achieve National Park status, and to gain national recognition of the Calumet Heritage Corridor.

Tiffany Tolbert
Tiffany Tolbert currently serves a Director of Indiana Landmarks Northwest Field Office. A native of Montgomery, Alabama she received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science and History from Huntingdon College (Montgomery, AL) and a Master of Arts in Historic Preservation from Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA). Previously she has served as an intern with the Alabama Historical Commission and served as African American Programs Assistant at the Georgia Historic Preservation Division. She has completed research on rural African American History in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement and African American History in Gary, IN. Her research has been published in Reflections, a publication of the Georgia Historic Preservation Division and Traces, the quarterly magazine of the Indiana Historical Society.

2013 Board of Directors