■Russell William Carrier of Ryan Road was the recipient of a bachelor of arts degree in history from Westfield State College Sunday. While at Westfield, Carrier participated in student government, The Owl, a student exchange to Puebla, Mexico, and Phi Alpha Theta, the History National Honor Society.
■Vincent Falardeau, a French teacher at Northampton High School, is a past world champion in backstroke and the present national record holder in the 25-yard breaststroke. This weekend he is competing in the National Wheelchair games in New York City.
■Local Democrats played a key role during Saturday’s convention in shifting the party’s message more toward the liberal and progressive views that prevail in Hampshire and Franklin counties. The issues convention at the Mullins Center drew about 2,500 delegates, fewer than the 3,000 that had been expected.
■Ruth J. Simmons, president-elect of Smith College in Northampton, has been elected to the board of directors of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. in New York. Simmons will succeed Mary Maples Dunn as president of Smith in July 1995.
■A longtime teacher of English as a second language at the Amherst Regional Middle School was named Massachusetts Teacher of the Year at a ceremony in Boston Friday. Floris Wilma Ortiz-Marrero has been helping the children of immigrants and foreign scholars learn English in Amherst for 17 years.
■After two decades as pastor of the First Churches in Northampton, the Rev. Peter B. Ives will climb to the pulpit for a farewell service Sunday, two weeks before he puts the historic institution into an interim minister’s hands. Ives is the 27th minister since the church’s founding in 1654.