Hillyer Alum Writes About Toyota; Dudek Painting Featured in Courant; Chambers Writes About Rituals

Darius Mehri's book, “Notes From Toyota-Land: An American Engineer in Japan.”

This painting by Nancy Dudek, office coordinator for the Physical Therapy Department and a student at the Hartford Art School, was published on the cover of the iTowns section of the Hartford Courant.

Darius Mehri ’86, a Hillyer College alumnus who wrote a critically acclaimed book about his three years working at a Toyota Motor Group company in Japan, wrote a column about the embattled car manufacturer that was published in the Opinion Asia section of The Wall Street Journal on Feb. 11. Mehri’s book, Notes From Toyota-Land: An American Engineer in Japan, provides an inside perspective on daily work life at a Toyota company. In his Wall Street Journal column, Mehri wrote that the culture at Toyota produced tremendously overworked employees who were driven to exhaustion by “unyielding deadlines” and a “fanatical emphasis on increasing market share.” Toyota can recover from its current problems, he writes, but company executives will “need to restructure their employment practices to allow engineers more time to design high quality products.”

You can read Mehri’s column on the Wall Street Journal website if you are a Journal subscriber. Otherwise, you can read the column here. Mehri is currently working toward a Ph.D. at the University of California–Berkeley.


Nancy Dudek, office coordinator for the Physical Therapy Department, ENHP, had a painting published on the cover of the iTowns section of the Hartford Courant on Sunday, Jan. 31. Dudek, who has been painting for 35 years, is working toward a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Hartford Art School. The painting that was featured in the Courant is shown above. The Dudek family is having an exceptional winter – in January, Dudek’s son, John, a senior English major in the College of Arts & Sciences, was one of five undergraduate poets from throughout the state who were selected to participate in the 2010 Connecticut Poetry Circuit.


Timothy Chambers, an adjunct faculty member in the Philosophy Department, A&S, wrote an op-ed column that was published in the Hartford Courant on Feb. 2 – Groundhog Day. In the column, Chambers writes that rituals – from weddings, funerals, and religious holidays to more lighthearted traditions, like Groundhog Day – provide comfort and familiarity, and help us mark important transitions in life. Read Chambers’ column at CTNow.com.