Alumni Awards Winners 2007

The Alumni Medal
The Alumni Service Medal
The Norman Maclean Faculty Awards
The Young Alumni Service Citations
The Alumni Service Citations
The Public Service Citations
The Professional Achievement Citations

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The Alumni Medal
Created in 1941, the Alumni Medal is awarded to recognize achievement of an exceptional nature in any field, vocational or voluntary, covering an entire career. It is the highest honor the Alumni Association can bestow. Because the value of the medal is defined by its recipients, it has been given sparingly. The medal is awarded to no more than one person each year and need not be awarded on an annual basis.

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James Dewey Watson
James Dewey Watson, PhD, PhB’46, SB’47, is the father of modern genetics and one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. Born and raised in Chicago, he received a scholarship to the University of Chicago (at the age of 15), where his boyhood interest in bird watching blossomed into a serious study of genetics. He went on to graduate study at Indiana University, where he earned his PhD in zoology in 1950.  

In 1951, Dr. Watson began work at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and entered an arena where scientists were racing to determine the structure of DNA. X-ray crystallography experiments had already determined that DNA was a molecule in which two strands formed a tightly linked pair, and Dr. Watson and his research partner Francis Crick proposed that the structure of DNA was a winding helix in which pairs of bases (adenine paired with thymine and guanine paired with cytosine) held the two strands together. This groundbreaking work won Drs. Watson and Crick, along with Maurice Wilkins, the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.” Dr. Watson chronicled the excitement of this discovery in his book The Double Helix, which has inspired generations of scientists to pursue cutting-edge research. In addition to his Nobel, Dr. Watson has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a National Medal of Science, and an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Chicago. He was also made a Knight of the British Empire.

From 1956 to 1976, Dr. Watson was a member of the Harvard Biology Department, where his major research interest was the role of RNA in protein synthesis. He has also made considerable contributions to the understanding of the genetic code. Dr. Watson was named associate director of the National Center for Human Genome Research in 1988 and became director in 1989. The Center successfully sequenced the human genome in its entirety and was by far the most ambitious, generously funded endeavor in the history of biology. In 1994, Dr. Watson was named president and subsequently became chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, where he is an accomplished administrator and bold advocate for basic research in science.

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David Bevington
David Bevington, the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and professor emeritus in the Departments of English Language & Literature and Comparative Literature and the College, is one of the world’s most respected Shakespeare scholars. He has written or edited more than thirty volumes on the Bard and his contemporaries, including The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, now in its fifth edition and hailed by many as the preeminent Shakespeare anthology. Professor Bevington began teaching at the University of Chicago in 1967, remained on the faculty for thirty-eight years, and continues to teach in retirement. He received a Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1979. An expert on English drama and literature from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, Professor Bevington has taught everything from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard, but is best known for his Shakespeare classes, which proved so popular that students would camp overnight on the Quads to secure a spot in them.
Known as a great campus citizen, Professor Bevington has served on the editorial committees of several publications and the boards of the Court Theatre, University Theater, and the Library Society Steering Committee. He plays the viola in various University musical productions and has been an active and engaged advisor to numerous student groups. Professor Bevington is described as a patient and open-minded teacher whose service to students extends beyond the classroom. He and his wife Peggy often brought students into their home for seminars and socializing, and when he was invited to lecture on Shakespeare to high-school students at Kenwood Academy, he not only accepted every invitation, but arranged screenings of Julius Caesar and Throne of Blood (an adaptation of Macbeth) for the students. Former students and fellow scholars alike praise Professor Bevington for his vibrancy and contagious spirit of inquiry. “With David, learning is joyous and learning is fun,” says a former student. “Learning is a sociable and civilized pursuit; it takes place not just in the classroom but everywhere and all the time.”

“There is simply no university in the entire world where I would rather teach than at the University of Chicago. The students are so serious about the right things, so rewarding to talk with; and the alumni are just like that, right through their lives. No better evidence could be found to suggest what this place accomplishes for its students and its faculty.  Being here has inspired me to keep publishing a lot as well. One wants to live up to the intellectual challenge of the greatest place on earth.”

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Ralph Nicholas
Ralph Nicholas, AM’58, PhD’62, the William Rainey Harper Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology and the College, is an internationally recognized expert on the religious, cultural, social, and economic life of rural people in the West Bengal region of India. Since 1971, when he began teaching at the University of Chicago, he has exhibited an extraordinary commitment to teaching and a dedication to his students, undergraduate and graduate alike, many of whom are now distinguished anthropologists themselves. Winner of the 1977 Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Professor Nicholas has also contributed significantly to the administration of both the College and the University. He served as dean of the College from 1986 to 1991, deputy provost of the University from 1982 to 1987, and director of the Center for International Studies from 1984 to 1995. He is currently president of the American Institute of Indian Studies.

As president of the International House of Chicago, Professor Nicholas helped many international students, gracefully easing their transition to academic life in the U.S. and fostering a community of friends and scholars. One former International House resident describes him as a constant source of personal support and intellectual dialogue whose open-door policy made International House “a friendly place of encounter and dialogue between residents, students, and scholars cutting across cultures and disciplines.”

Over the past thirty-five years, Professor Nicholas has accrued a growing list of devoted fans. A former graduate student describes his role in her dissertation process not as that of an advisor, but as that of a “dissertation heart-lung machine” without whom she would not have completed her PhD. Indeed, many students have written that Dr. Nicholas was instrumental to their success at the University of Chicago. One former undergraduate writes, “He was always willing to put the students first and do what was best for them,” while another comments that “his influence on my life has been to always make me aim high, look upwards, and think positively at all times.”

“From the moment I first arrived at The University of Chicago fifty years ago to begin my graduate work, I have been stimulated continuously by its intellectual demands.  I got them first, of course, from my teachers, then from my fellow students, from my colleagues, and now from my own students.  I cannot imagine that there is a more intellectually provocative environment than this University.  I knew in 1957 that Chicago would serve my particular interests, in anthropology and the study of the Indian subcontinent, but I could not have anticipated all of the collateral challenges and opportunities it has given me.  I am indebted to The University and to the people who have constituted it during this wonderful half-century.”

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The Young Alumni Service Citations
The Young Alumni Service Citations-awarded for the first time during the 1992 University Centennial-acknowledge outstanding volunteer service to the University by individuals aged 35 and younger.

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Albert Chang
Albert Chang, AB’93, a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, has taken a leadership role in organizing his fellow alumni in the region. As an active member of the Bay Area Alumni Club, who served as its President from 2003 to 2005, Mr. Chang helped introduce several useful changes in the group’s organization. His accomplishments include implementing more structured roles for board members and investigating the need for bylaws; improving publicity and marketing; studying demographics to determine what events alumni want; organizing sporting events and happy hours,; and introducing programs to recognize and reward local volunteers.

Despite the demands of his career as a senior marketing analyst at Intuit, Inc., the makers of TurboTax and Quicken software, Mr. Chang has also found time to assist in student recruitment. As chair of local Alumni Schools Committee, he arranges interviews with local alumni for high-school and transfer students who are applying to the University of Chicago. Additionally, Mr. Chang is a mentor in the Alumni Careers Network and has served on the University of Chicago San Francisco Leadership Committee, the Delta Kappa Epsilon Alumni Advisory Board, , and his 10th Reunion Gift Committee, for which he helped raise a record-setting amount. He also attended the Chicago Leadership Caucus in 2004–2006.

His peers credit Mr. Chang with keeping alumni informed about improvements to student life and encouraging them to stay connected to the University. One colleague quips, “If Albert’s life were a television program, it undoubtedly would be filled with commercials for the University of Chicago,” while another asserts that “Albert’s affiliation with the University will only continue to grow in the years ahead, benefiting each party under the high ideals that both represent.”

“I made my best friends at the University of Chicago, and through them, I met my wife.  Because of my continuous interactions with my friends and other alumni - in engaging in intelligent discourse and ultimately learning more about the world around me - my sense of commitment to the University of Chicago is ever renewed.  It is by serving alumni abroad that we can perpetuate the academic experience of the University away from Hyde Park.”

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Amy Gardner
Since her graduation from the University of Chicago Law School, Amy Gardner, JD’02, has been a tireless advocate of the University and its law students. An associate litigation attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in Chicago, Ms. Gardner is a board member of the Chicago-area alumni club and has planned several successful events on general-interest legal topics. She is also a volunteer contact for the Alumni Careers Network and participates in the biennial Chicago Leadership Caucus volunteer training.

Since 2004, Ms. Gardner has counseled first-year women Law School students through the Women’s Mentoring Program, and for the last two years she has worked with her law firm to sponsor events for the women students and their mentors. As a member of the Law School’s Alumni Admissions Committee, she answers questions from admitted students and encourages them to attend the Law School. She also serves as a moot court judge, helping prepare students for the courtroom. Additionally, Ms. Gardner has organized panels on general-interest legal topics and in 2005 spoke on a panel at the Law School about achieving work-life balance.

One of Ms. Gardner’s great strengths as a volunteer lies in her understanding of her peer group and her ability to bring individuals together on behalf of a common cause. A generous donor herself, Ms. Gardner has served as Gift Chair for her 5th Law School Reunion, spearheading an effort to get 35 percent of her classmates to contribute $25,000 to a Class of 2002 Faculty Research Fund. One colleague calls Ms. Gardner “an outstanding ambassador for the Law School,” and predicts that “she will play an integral role in alumni leadership well into the future.”

"Being an alum of the University has had a tremendous impact on me personally and professionally.  The Law School gave me phenomenal career opportunities and allowed me to learn alongside incredibly talented people and friends.  Through the Alumni Club of Chicago I have met terrific people of all ages from all disciplines.  I have been able to stay in contact with professors old and new, and to continue to be part of the life of the University through various volunteer opportunities.  I am well aware that my career and life today would not be possible if not for the University, and I hope to repay the debt.”

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The Alumni Service Citations
Created in 1988, the Alumni Service Citations are awarded for outstanding volunteer work on behalf of the University through service in alumni programs, on advisory committees, and through efforts made to ensure the welfare of the institution.

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Patricia Klowden
Patricia Klowden, AB’67, has loyally served the University of Chicago for more than forty years. A visual artist living in Southern California, Ms. Klowden took an early and active role in local alumni activities, serving as program chair for the Los Angeles Alumni Club, as a member of the Alumni Schools Committee, and as an effective fund-raiser for the University. Subsequently, she has represented alumni on a national level, serving on the Alumni Cabinet and on the Alumni Board of Governors. She has also been a member of the Women’s Board, the Visiting Committee on the Visual Arts, and the Library Visiting Committee. On behalf of the College Class of 1967, she has been a member of several reunion committees and is currently co-chair of the 40th Reunion Committee with her husband, University Trustee Michael Klowden, AB’67. The Klowdens’ son Kevin holds degrees from Chicago, as do Ms. Klowden’s parents and two of her brothers.

In addition to her other activities on behalf of the University, Ms. Klowden has been a generous benefactor. She and her husband endowed the Klowden Family Scholarship Fund and in the late 1970s established the Clinton M. and Dorothy R. Doede Book Fund, named in honor of Ms. Klowden’s parents, which in the past seven years has added more than 10,000 titles to the library’s collection. In recent years the Klowdens have also endowed the Klowden Family Library of alumni and faculty publications in Alumni House. John D. Lyon, former president of the Alumni Association, calls Ms. Klowden an “indefatigable and unfailingly cheerful” volunteer who “inspired countless others to give more of themselves and their treasure to the University, and has made it fun to work beside her in the University’s service.”

“The University of Chicago and the education I received there are with me always. When I am exchanging views with friends, listening to a one-sided view presented on the radio,or written in the paper I am filled with curiosity and more questions than I can give voice to. The answers presented are too easy and glib. Where are the shades of gray, the various points of view and the depth of under standing of the complexities of our lives? My mind is engaged and full of questions and possible interpreta- tions. It is this education that keeps our minds engaged in the many facets of our lives and makes me an active participant in life.”

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David Whitney
Despite his busy schedule, Chicago-based dermatologist David Whitney, MBA’78, MD’80, has always found time to devote to the University of Chicago. In 2001, Dr. Whitney was appointed to the Medical and Biological Sciences Alumni Council, and he was elected as its president in 2004. He has served on the Council’s Editorial Committee and Alumni Senate and chaired the Nominating and Philanthropy Committees. During his years on the Alumni Council, Dr. Whitney has made great progress in improving alumni programming and recruiting other alumni leaders. He has attended numerous career panels, orientation sessions, and graduation events in order to encourage students to become active alumni. He headed the selection committee for the “Day in the Life Experience,” the Medical and Biological Sciences Division’s externship program. Dr. Whitney has also served on the Biological Sciences Division Visiting Committee and participated in the 2006 Chicago Leadership Caucus.

Dr. Whitney has also taken an active role in alumni philanthropy. In 2005, he made a gift-matching challenge to the MD classes of 1990, 1995, and 2000, and the following year he extended a matching challenge to his fellow Alumni Council members. He has raised thousands of dollars for the University by reaching out to alumni in person, by phone, and by letter, and has worked closely with faculty and alumni leaders to raise funds for the Section of Dermatology, where he and his wife were residents. One of his supporters calls Dr. Whitney “one of the best volunteers the Medical and Biological Sciences Alumni Association has ever had the pleasure of working with,” and says, “He adds value in every capacity of his service and is one of the University’s finest advocates.”

“Many people experience life-transforming encounters and events in the years of their undergraduate and graduate education, and I suspect in great part these transformations reflect credit on the relevant institutions. However, my enthusiastic embrace of the opportunities presented to me, as an alumnus, to promulgate the mission of the University of Chicago stems from my absolute conviction that this institution, more than any other in my experience, is uniquely and routinely transformative as a consequence of its campus-wide culture of commitment to critical thought.”

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The Public Service Citations
The Public Service Citations honor those alumni who have fulfilled the obligations of their education through creative citizenship and exemplary leadership in service that has benefited society and reflected credit on the University.

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William Josephson
Public service has been a hallmark of William Josephson’s legal career. As a young lawyer in the State Department in 1960, Mr. Josephson, AB’52, co-wrote a paper that became the basis for the creation of the Peace Corps. He served as its founding counsel and later general counsel. He is president of the Peace Corps Institute and a trustee of Friends of VISTA.

In 2004, Mr. Josephson retired after five years as assistant attorney general-in-charge of the New York State Law Department’s Charities Bureau, where he led investigations of nonprofits and supported federal and state legislation to improve oversight. Mr. Josephson was a partner at the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, from 1966-1999. He represented the New York City pension funds in refinancing the city debt in the 1970’s. He has been a member of the New York State Historical Advisory Board and a trustee of the New York State Archives Partnership Trust. He also served as chair of the Budget and Finance Committee of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, advisor to the National Service Study Project, member of the Board of Overseers of Simon’s Rock of Bard College and a treasurer of the Eldrich Street Synagogue restoration project.

Regarding Mr. Josephson’s remarkable breadth of service, one colleague writes, “Bill has been so effective in public service work because he brings not only immense smarts to the substance of an issue, but also the willingness to wade in and the skill to move the process through personal engagement and earning the trust and support of key players.” Another colleague writes, “He has a unique ability to think outside the box and see possibilities where others see obstacles.”

“I was admitted to The College after a year of high school during which I took two years of courses. In my three years at Chicago, I took all the fifteen required courses regardless of my placement scores. Those courses opened my eyes to the world, provided me with a knowledge base that has served me more than well and instilled in me a love of reading and learning which continues to enrich my life. I treasure my memories of my great teachers, Robert Steiner Foch (Math 1), Charles G. Bell (Humanities 1), Ira Kipnis (Social Sciences 1), Christian Mackauer (History), Donald Meiklejohn (Social Sciences 2 and 3 and OMP), and Joseph Schwab (OMP). I had the great good fortune to audit Leo Strauss’s course on Plato’s Republic. I am honored to have in my will a bequest to The College for the endowment of a Distinguished Service Professorship named for Robert Maynard Hutchins whose farewell address to The University in Rockefeller Chapel I attended.”

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Dorothy Hess Guyot
As executive director of the Myanmar Foundation for Analytic Education, Dorothy Hess Guyot, LAB’53, AB’57, AB’58, co-founded a pre-collegiate program at the Diplomatic School of Yangon in 2003 that has prepared dozens of Burmese high-school students to pursue bachelor’s degrees abroad. Inspired by her experiences as a student at the Laboratory Schools, Ms. Guyot has modeled the program after John Dewey’s philosophy of education, providing students with practical learning opportunities through internships, field trips, and hands-on experiments. The program also fosters national development by encouraging students to return to undertake careers in public service after completing their degrees abroad.

The pre-collegiate program is the latest achievement in Ms. Guyot’s lifelong endeavor to bring people of different cultures together through international and cross-cultural exchange. Her involvement with Burma began in 1961, when she received a Foreign Area Training Fellowship from the Ford Foundation to conduct fieldwork there. After she finished her dissertation at Yale, a military government made further field research in Burma impossible. She launched a long career in education in the U.S., focusing initially on police reform and encompassing the critical juncture of education and social welfare.  
 
A fellow classmate from the Laboratory Schools recalls visiting the program in Myanmar as “one of the best experiences” in his life during which he felt “the quiet exhilaration of doing something tangible to move people to a better future.” Another classmate writes that Ms. Guyot “has spent her whole life bringing people of different cultures together to learn from each other in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding.”

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The Professional Achievement Citations
The Professional Achievement Citations were established in 1967 to recognize alumni who have brought distinction to themselves, credit to the University, and benefit to their communities through their vocational work.

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Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh, AB’58, is an award-winning investigative journalist known for his exposés of political corruption. As a freelance reporter, he broke the story of the My Lai Massacre in which hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed by American soldiers, and won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1970 book My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath. Outrage over the massacre is widely believed to have led to the end of the Vietnam War. As one admirer puts it, “Hersh’s well-written and well-documented articles and books have not only recorded history; they have made history.”

Before covering My Lai, Mr. Hersh had written about biological and chemical weapons; later, he exposed the CIA’s domestic surveillance program and the organization’s role in overthrowing Chilean President Salvador Allende, broke the cover-up aspect of the Watergate story, and reported on Henry Kissinger’s illicit activities. Mr. Hersh’s 1983 book on Kissinger, The Price of Power, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Subsequent books by Mr. Hersh include The Target Is Destroyed: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It; The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy; The Dark Side of Camelot; and Against All Enemies: Gulf War Syndrome: The War Between America’s Ailing Veterans and Their Government. Most recently, Mr. Hersh has written about the Iraq War, including the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, for The New Yorker. A sometimes controversial figure, Mr. Hersh is respected for his long and prolific career as a journalist and watchdog. A fellow University of Chicago alumnus says, “As a just man, he possesses a harmonious blend of wisdom, courage, and temperance.”

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Philip Kotler
Philip Kotler, AM’53, is widely regarded as the world’s leading expert on strategic marketing. As the S.C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Dr. Kotler has urged generations of corporate leaders to reconsider marketing’s fundamental purpose, basic roles, and conventional boundaries. He wrote what is widely recognized as the most authoritative textbook on marketing, Marketing Management, now in its twelfth edition, which the Financial Times listed as one of the fifty best business books of all time. He has also authored or co-authored dozens of other books and more than one hundred articles in esteemed journals, including the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Business Horizons, California Management Review, and the Journal of Marketing.

Dr. Kotler has advised IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Honeywell, Bank of America, Shell, and other top companies in the areas of marketing strategy, organization, and international marketing. Dr. Kotler is a much sought-after speaker and has conducted marketing seminars for companies and organizations throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Dr. Kotler is the recipient of a host of awards, including eleven honorary degrees. He was the first recipient of the American Marketing Association’s Distinguished Marketing Educator Award and in 1995 was named Marketer of the Year by Sales and Marketing Executives International. In 2005, he was voted the fourth most influential business thinker by the Financial Times, following Peter Drucker, Bill Gates, and Jack Welch.As one colleague writes, “Professor Kotler is a giant in his field who has made a huge, indelible, unequaled contribution to marketing and management worldwide.”

“Much of my economics thinking was shaped by taking classes with Milton Friedman and the other great economists on the faculty. I also took classes with other notable faculty members including David Reisman, Bruno Bettleheim, and Robert Redfield, which added a rich social science dimension to my thinking.  I then took my Ph.D. degree in economics at M.I.T., studying under Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow, whose economics had a more Keynesian flavor.  As a result of the clash in the two schools, free market vs. Keynesian, I decided to focus on marketplace economics and leave the macroeconomic policy debates to others.  My economics and social science training at Chicago gave me the concepts and tools to enrich marketing science.”

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William Chase Richardson
William Chase Richardson, MBA’64, PhD’71, President and Chief Executive Officer Emeritus of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and retired Chairman of Kellogg Trust, has made significant and long-lasting contributions to higher education, health policy and management, and philanthropy. Before joining the Foundation in 1995, Dr. Richardson was president of Johns Hopkins University, where he led an important transition that strengthened the University’s academic standing as well as the quality and diversity of its students and faculty. Prior to his work at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Richardson served as executive vice president and provost of Pennsylvania State University and as dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for research at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Nationally known as a health policy expert, Dr. Richardson has published seven books and monographs and more than seventy articles on health policy issues. He chaired the Committee on Quality of Health Care in America for the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to the institutional leadership he has provided, Dr. Richardson has served as a mentor to a national cadre of young scholars and policy professionals.

One colleague notes that Dr. Richardson “uniquely blends the worlds of the academy and social action.” Another writes, “his ability to analyze problems, to tackle the toughest issues, to select those individuals most able to do the job, and to create an atmosphere that supports them with care and concern for their well-being, quite simply sets him apart,” adding that Dr. Richardson “will go down in our history books as one of the most caring, creative, and accomplished leaders of our day.”

“The University of Chicago has long been virtually unique in its combination of fundamental commitment to scholarship, to intense collaboration, and to assuming that every student - undergraduate, graduate/professional or post-doctoral - is a junior colleague of the faculty. It is also a community that one never leaves intellectually.

I say this because forty-five years after arriving on campus, not a day goes by when one or another of the many lessons learned or the guidance of a faculty mentor doesn’t influence my own life or work. My early research evolved from these deep experiences, which in turn led to a career of engagement with major policy issues, based on my role as a faculty member and later in academic and philanthropic leadership.

It is not a coincidence that now that I am retired from formal organizational responsibility, I have continued my engagement with the Institute of Medicine, international advising, and most importantly, serving pro bono as College Professor of Policy at Kalamazoo College. This Midwestern liberal arts gem represents the same values and excellence that have been with me ever since I left Chicago.”

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Diana Slaughter-Defoe
Diana Slaughter-Defoe, AB’62, AM’64, PhD’68, is one of the nation’s leading scholars in child development and education, and has been a major contributor to U.S. early education policy. In 1998, she became the first Constance E. Clayton Professor in Urban Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Before that Dr. Slaughter-Defoe taught for twenty years at Northwestern University’s School of Education and served on the faculties of Howard University, Yale University, and the University of Chicago.

Dr. Slaughter-Defoe’s research interests include culture, primary education, and home-school relations that facilitate in-school academic achievement. Her enduring interest in school reform models designed to enhance the learning and development of young African American children has led to many projects. For example, she has conducted research with Project Head Start children and with private Chicago-based elementary schools serving African American students. In 1994, she was cited by the American Psychological Association for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy. Her book on family school choice and urban education goals, Visible Now: Blacks in Private Schools, is a classic in its field. Recent work has continued the focus on childhood interventions, this time with an emphasis on out-of-school learning. She is currently helping to implement and study two out-of-school child intervention projects in West Philadelphia, one focusing on middle school girls and math and science and the other on children’s literacy development in grades 1-5.

Dr. Slaughter-Defoe has been an inspiring teacher and mentor to generations of students. As one former student says, “Diana is a wonderful, motivating teacher who has contributed to society in ways that only the next generations of readers and enlightened children will be able to report. She inspires everyone she meets to keep working, because with her support, we know a better society is possible.”

“A Chicagoan, I pursued higher education because I believed it would advantage me.  At the University of Chicago, I learned that collectively African Americans highly value formal education.  I learned education is a powerful remedy for the sufferings of impoverished people, and African Americans are over-represented in poverty environments. However, economic success of its citizens or of the nation is not sufficient incentive to sustain public commitment to schooling.  In this nation, to instruct effectively schools must address children’s personal-social development and cultural backgrounds. Children are persons and race is an important part of their self-conceptions. In the future, equitable education should be a right for all individuals governed under our Constitution.  Civic commitment must be etched in Constitutional guarantees regarding access to public education.”

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Owen Rennert
As scientific director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Division of Intramural Research, Owen Rennert, SB’57, AB’57, MD’61, SM’63, has used his considerable medical knowledge to improve the health of children, pregnant women, and those afflicted with genetic diseases. Dr. Rennert leads both the Laboratory of Clinical Genomics and the Section on Developmental Genomics, where he oversees human development research programs in four key areas: cell fate; growth and development; reproduction; and cognition and behavior. A developmental biochemist by training, Dr. Rennert focuses his research on the interface between biology and clinical practice as it concerns the process of development and cell differentiation.

Previously, Dr. Rennert was chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine, where he is currently professor emeritus. He has also held leadership positions at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and the University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville. He is the author of more than two hundred scientific publications and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Endocrine Genetics, the Board of Directors of the Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation, and the selection committee for the Pediatric Scientist Development Program. In 2005, he became a member of the External Advisory Committee for the Center for Medical Genetics, Peking University. Washingtonian magazine named Dr. Rennert Washingtonian of the Year in 1994 and Top Doctor in 1996. His many honors include Clinical Scientist of the Year from the American Association of Clinical Science (1978) and Georgetown University’s Flame of Hope Award (2005). 

“Many people experience life-transforming encounters and events in the years of their undergraduate and graduate education, and I suspect in great part these transformations reflect credit on the relevant institutions. However, my enthusiastic embrace of the opportunities presented to me, as an alumnus, to promulgate the mission of the University of Chicago stems from my absolute conviction that this institution, more than any other in my experience, is uniquely and routinely transformative as a consequence of its campus-wide culture of commitment to critical thought.”

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