Lucia R. Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award

Nathan M. Pusey Young Alumni Achievement Award

George B. Walter '36 Service to Society Award

Gertrude Breithaupt Jupp M-D'18 Outstanding Service to Lawrence Award

 

Bob Landis '62
Lucia R. Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award
Bob Landis is an Emmy award-winning cinematographer who has produced over a dozen wildlife films for programs such as National Geographic Explorer and Nature. His work has taken him to Denali National Park in Alaska, Kluane National Park in the Klondike, and Algonquin National Park in Ontario, but he has made his home at Yellowstone, where he has excelled in the art of wildlife filmmaking for over 30 years.

In that time he has produced films on a wide variety of subjects, including coyote behavior, the natural recovery of Yellowstone from forest fires, the life cycle of an elk herd, and a year in the life of the endangered trumpeter swan - but he is best known for his contributions to the effort to return the gray wolf to Yellowstone after an absence of 60 years.

"Bob has had a huge impact on the wolf recovery program in Yellowstone and the nation," writes the executive director of the International Wolf Center. "The quality and uniqueness of his work has brought the art of wildlife photography to a new level, and the product of his work has brought major new insights to the science of animal behavior."

Respected by scientists, environmentalists, and educators for his persistence, patience, dedication, and quiet competence, but most of all for the outstanding quality of his work, he is credited with significantly advancing humanity's knowledge and understanding of his wild subjects, their behaviors, and their homes. His films have been shown everywhere from PBS to classrooms around the world.

"Bob Landis is not just a cinematographer," says a colleague. "He is a keen wildlife observer, an educator, a conservationist, and a scientist."

A mathematics major at Lawrence, he received the Master of Arts degree in math from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1964 and was for many years a high school math teacher. Bob is married to classmate Connie Menning Landis '62, who is professor of art and chair of the art department at Montana State University–Billings.

Bonnie M. Morris '72
Lucia R. Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award
Bonnie Morris is co-founder and producing director of Illusion Theater, a nonprofit drama company in Minneapolis that has been described as "a theatre that means something to the people who go to it."

Designated a "Scholar of the University" at Lawrence, she graduated in 1972 with majors in religion and theatre. Two years later, she and Michael Robbins created Illusion Theater. Since then, it has grown from a six-actor touring company with an annual budget of $400 to a highly respected educational and cultural institution that has just completed a $1.3 million renovation of its home theatre.

Along the way, Illusion began specializing in what has become its distinctive brand of "prevention/outreach" theatre: plays that are content-rich and deeply concerned with issues in the audience's own experience. Beginning in 1978 with Touch, a play that introduces children to the concepts of "good touch" and "bad touch," Illusion Theater has created works that deal with some of the most sensitive issues of our day: domestic abuse, AIDS, families of divorce, sexual harassment, workplace diversity, justice in housing, and surviving breast cancer.

The company collaborates with the Minnesota State Department of Human Resources in offering the "Peer Education Program," which takes the process of new-play development and training in fundamental theatre skills into the state's schools. In one recent year the program worked with youth in 19 communities and staged 315 performances for over 28,500 people.

In recognition of all this, Bonnie Morris, Michael Robbins, and Illusion have received a number of honors, including the Minneapolis Award for contributions to the city; the Sally Award for vision and leadership in the arts; and most notably, the Coming Up Taller Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and President's Council on Arts and Humanities.

Thomas A. Steitz '62
Lucia R. Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award
Thomas A. Steitz has been described as "a world-class molecular biologist widely known for his contributions to protein chemistry." The Eugene Higgins Professor and chair of the molecular biophysics and biochemistry department at Yale University, he recently was named a Sterling Professor, a title Yale reserves for a handful of its most distinguished professors. He serves as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator studying structures of protein-nucleic acid interactions.

He graduated cum laude from Lawrence in 1962 with a B.A. degree in chemistry and later received the Ph.D. in molecular biology and biochemistry from Harvard University.

As a graduate student, he realized that X-ray crystallography was about to become the dominant experimental technique in biochemistry. He was trained in crystallography by William Lipscomb, a Nobel laureate, and has been using that process to study the chemical basis of biological processes ever since.

A colleague writes: "There are several traits that distinguish ordinary, every-day macromolecular crystallographers from Tom Steitz: his technical virtuosity, to be sure, but beyond that, an unerring instinct, which few others share, that has enabled him to identify for study those biological systems where crystallography can have the greatest impact."

Prior to joining the Yale faculty he was a Jane Coffin Childs Fellow at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

He is a recipient of the Pfizer Prize awarded by the American Chemical Society and a member of the American Chemical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In recognition of his contributions to scientific knowledge he was presented with the honorary degree Doctor of Science by Lawrence University in 1981 and was invited to be the keynote speaker at ceremonies marking the dedication of Science Hall at Lawrence in 2000.

Frederick I. Sturm C'73
Lucia R. Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award
In 1971, as part of a student-designed project, Fred Sturm, a 19-year-old sophomore from Oconomowoc, conducted the first Lawrence University Jazz Ensemble, paving the way for the establishment of what would eventually become the jazz studies department in the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music.

After earning his B.Mus. degree from Lawrence in 1973, he pursued graduate study at the University of North Texas and performed in the renowned "One O'Clock Lab Band." In 1974, along with noted pianist/composer and fellow Lawrence graduate John Harmon '57, Fred co-founded the contemporary jazz nonet known as "Matrix," which performed and recorded throughout the United States.

He succeeded Harmon, Lawrence's first jazz studies director, in 1977. Three years later he introduced the Jazz Celebration Weekend, a two-day festival that is still conducted each fall. He directed Lawrence's jazz program for 14 years before leaving in 1991 to become professor of jazz studies at the Eastman School of Music, where he had completed a master's degree in 1984. At Eastman, he led the Eastman Jazz Ensemble, conducted the 70-piece Eastman Studio Orchestra, and coordinated the jazz composition and arranging program. Under his leadership, the Eastman Jazz Ensemble and Studio Orchestra received Down Beat magazine's outstanding collegiate jazz ensemble award seven times.

Nominated for a Grammy award in 1998, Fred has composed and arranged music that has been performed by a "who's who" of jazz legends; his works are currently in print with eight music publishers and have been issued on Concord Jazz, RCA, and Warner Brothers Records. He is the author of three texts: Changes Over Time: The Evolution of Jazz Arranging, Kenny Wheeler: Collected Works on ECM, and Maria Schneider: Evanescence, and he wrote the jazz aural training method All Ears, which is widely used by music educators throughout the United States.

In Fall 2002, Fred Sturm returned to the Lawrence Conservatory as professor of music and chair of the jazz and improvisational music department.

Mark W. Uhlemann C'96
Nathan M. Pusey Young Alumni Achievement Award
Only six years after his graduation from the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, Mark Uhlemann has distinguished himself as one of the most talented bass-baritones of his generation and a singer of great promise, whose performances have been praised as "impressive, dramatic, and nuanced."

A student of Mari Taniguchi, professor of music at Lawrence, his undergraduate performances included Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, Simone in Gianni Schicchi, and Pistola in Falstaff.

In 1997 he was named a national winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and invited to join the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. He made his Met debut, at age 25, as the Herald in Otello and returned later in the 1999-2000 season as a vocal soloist with the New York City Ballet in Brahms' Liebeslieder Walzer.

In 2000 he was a winner of the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, sharing the Nathan Wedeen Management Award as top performer with pianist Anthony Padilla, associate professor of music at Lawrence. Other honors for the Wilmette, Illinois, native have included first place in the Young Artist Division of the Chicago Bel Canto Competition and a scholarship from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy.

Active in the areas of both opera and recital, Mark made his Tanglewood debut again playing Pistola in Falstaff under the baton of Seiji Ozawa, performed with the Seattle Opera Young Artist Program, covered three roles at the Metropolitan Opera, and performed in a concert with James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. His New York solo recital debut at Merkin Concert Hall was most favorably received, as were a recital at Rockefeller University and concert appearances throughout the Northeast.

In the summer of 2001 he made his German debut with the Bürklins Sommeroper.

Now resident in New York City, where he studies with W. Stephen Smith of the Juilliard School of Music, Mark returned to Lawrence during Reunion Weekend 2001 to take part in an Alumni Recital in honor of Professor Taniguchi's retirement, an occasion described by one listener as "the best concert ever heard at Lawrence."

Wilhelmine Harms Pollard '37
George B. Walter '36 Service to Society Award
Although she retired from public school teaching in 1981, Billie Pollard of Appleton still makes daily use of the teaching certificate she first received in 1939.

In 1982, she founded Literacy Education Services, an adult language program that began with Billie and two other volunteers teaching English as a Second Language to eight Hmong women in one-on-one sessions. Today, Literacy Education Services, of which she continues as director, has an annual enrollment of 75 students served by as many as 50 volunteer teachers.

Over the years, the program has served adult students from many lands, including Laos, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Finland, Poland, Japan, Korea, and China, teaching them English, reading, workplace literacy, family literacy, and U.S. culture. Once students have completed the basic course, using the Laubach Reading Method adapted to their particular needs, Billie supplements the language study with classes in geography, hygiene and health habits, and cultural and social skills such as map-reading, preparation of American foods, and Western courtesy and table manners. When the students have resided in the United States for five years and acquired basic communications skills, they can, if they desire, take citizenship classes.

Billie Pollard received her B.A. degree in English from Lawrence, with further study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and University of Colorado. She taught English in Medford, Wisconsin, and physical education in Hortonville and was a Girl Scout executive and field worker in Danville, Illinois, and Milwaukee.

In the six years prior to retirement, she taught ESL courses to Mexican, Iranian, Hmong, and Vietnamese students in the Appleton public schools, an experience that led to her determination to help the adults in those families.

One of her greatest satisfactions, Billie once said, has come from getting to know the Hmong: "They are a gentle, kind, and loving people. I enjoy having them as personal friends, and I am anxious to see my friends be independent and have jobs. In order to make a place for themselves in this culture, however, they must learn English."

Constance Pfitsch Vanderhyden '72
George B. Walter '36 Service to Society Award
For nearly a decade, Connie Vanderhyden, a Spanish teacher at Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School in Viroqua, Wisconsin, has worked to bring hope, security, and a better life to a community of Mayans who had fled from Guatemala to the Mexican state of Chiapas in the 1980s to escape a government-sponsored campaign of terror.

In January 1994, when a treaty was signed with a new Guatemalan government, the refugees won the right to return to their country as whole communities, and they wisely and cautiously asked for international "accompaniers" to make the trip with them, as insurance against violence or violations of human rights by the military.

Connie was one such accompanante, riding in a caravan of buses and trucks to a 9,000-acre farm that the community had purchased in the mountains of northwest Guatemala. The returned refugees organized themselves as a cooperative and named their community Nueva Esperanza, New Hope.

That was only the beginning of her involvement with Nueva Esperanza. In addition to living in the community for three months in 1996 and visiting it every year, she realized that there was a need for a continuing organization to broaden and maintain the relationship. Working with the Guatemalan Accompaniment Project (GAP), a Chicago organization experienced in supporting displaced and refugee populations, she organized such a sponsoring group, the Kickapoo Guatemala Accompaniment Project (K-GAP) in Southwestern Wisconsin.

In September 2001, K-GAP sent its tenth accompanier to Nueva Esperanza. It has provided scholarships for Guatemalan high school students; sponsored a yearly delegation and, in 2001, its first youth delegation; and supported the local education committee and land commission.

Although problems still remain, life in at least one returned-refugee community has benefited enormously from the involvement of this Lawrentian and the growing organization of concerned individuals she has created to continue the work.

Frank J. Hammer, Jr. '42
Gertrude Breithaupt Jupp M-D'18 Outstanding Service Award
Frank Hammer, a consulting psychologist from Arlington, Washington, has given outstanding service to Lawrence in many volunteer capacities and at all levels of Alumni Association leadership, beginning in 1969-75, when he served the first of two terms on the Association's board of directors.

Personally and professionally interested in the area of career counseling, Frank was supportive of the evolution of Lawrence's former Placement Center into a modern Career Center. He has been a vigorous advocate of mid-career counseling for alumni and career internships for Lawrence students; during a 1994-98 term on the board of directors, he served on its student relations and careers committee and was instrumental in leading discussions of key career-related issues for both alumni and students.

During the college's Lawrence 150 campaign in the mid-'90s, Frank also served on the Alumni Association Scholarship Committee and assisted in fund-raising efforts among the members of the board of directors.

In addition, Frank Hammer could reasonably be called the father of the Lawrence Alumni Association of Seattle. Before there was an official regional alumni club, he helped organize alumni events for the college in the Seattle area. In the 1990s he was instrumental in establishing the new club, and he has served on its program committee since 1994.

As the Class of 1942 approached its 60th Reunion this year, Frank volunteered to serve as class secretary, in which capacity he corresponded with every member of the class and authored a special reunion newsletter.

Kristin Olson Lahner '73
Gertrude Breithaupt Jupp M-D'18 Service Award
Kristen Lahner's volunteer service to Lawrence began when she and her husband, Ron Lahner, '73, lived in Milwaukee and she served on the alumni program committee there and also worked for the Admissions Office as an alumni volunteer.

In the early 1980s, the Lahners moved to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and Kristen soon became one of the mainstays of the regional alumni club, serving as coordinator for numerous alumni events and later the program coordinator for all Minneapolis-St. Paul alumni activities. In 1997, she organized and managed the Minneapolis-St. Paul Sesquicentennial event, a concert by the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra that was attended by nearly 650 alumni, parents, friends, and prospective students.

Kristen has served on reunion committees since her first Lawrence reunion, and she chaired the 20th-anniversary cluster reunion. For this year's reunion, she took on the important role of networking coordinator - tracking all reunion telephone calling in an effort to reach all members of the cluster classes.

Three years ago, she became class secretary for the Class of 1973 and, in that role, wrote the newsletter for this year's reunion.

In 1995, she joined the Alumni Association Board of Directors as the regional representative from Minneapolis-St. Paul. During her second year, she was appointed to the executive committee as chair of the communications committee, and during her third and fourth years on the board she served as president of the Alumni Association.

Betty Thompson Messenger '47
Gertrude Breithaupt Jupp M-D'18 Outstanding Service Award
Betty Thompson Messenger, still known as Tommie to most of her classmates, has been class agent extraordinaire for Lawrence's Centennial Class of 1947 since 1989. In that role, she is known for going far above and well beyond the call of duty, adding personal notes to every letter she sends. At Lawrence's Sesquicentennial celebration in 1997, Betty presented the Class of 1947's 50th Reunion gift, a scholarship fund made possible by contributions from classmates in honor of their milestone reunion year.

That same year, Betty was also responsible (by encouraging Director of Alumni Relations Jan Quinlan, '74, very nicely but persistently) for adding to the Reunion Weekend schedule of events the dance band Big Band Reunion, which has been a staple of Reunion Weekends ever since. Betty asserted (very nicely but persistently) that alumni from the classes of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s would be much more interested in big band music than in the rock music provided at other reunion venues. She was right; in fact, Big Band Reunion has proven to be popular with alumni of all ages.

This year, Betty worked tirelessly with her classmate and friend, Marilyn Kallen Peterson, class secretary for the Class of 1947, to contact each member of the class with a personal reunion invitation. Once again, Betty wrote personal notes on her class agent letters and telephoned many of her classmates.

Betty and her husband, John Cowan Messenger '42, are retired professors of anthropology from Ohio State University, live in Columbus, Ohio, and still travel extensively to archaeological sites around the world.