Seven amazing Lawrentians to be honored with Lawrence University's 2025 Alumni Awards

Seven Lawrentians are being honored with 2025 Lawrence University Alumni Awards. 

The impressive achievements and service of Katherine (Wroblewski) Diop ’00, Rebecca Doyle-Morin ’00, Michael Johnson ’75, Marjorie Liu ’00, Steven Wereley ’89, and Charles ’75 and Janice ’75 Woodward will be celebrated at Reunion June 19-22.

A new award is being introduced this year: the Joseph F. Patterson Jr. ’69 Service to Society Award. The award will be presented annually to a Lawrentian who best exemplifies the ideals of a liberal education and the principles of inclusivity through local, national, or international service to society. The award honors the late Joseph F. Patterson Jr. ’69, whose leadership and advocacy led to the establishment of the LU Black Alumni Network (LUBAN). Patterson’s legacy at Lawrence runs deep—football exploits as a dominant lineman; leadership among Black students that led to the establishment of Lawrence’s first diversity center in the late 1960s; unrelenting advocacy for cultural improvements and opportunities for students of color on campus; decades of mentoring students; and a history of philanthropy and service to his alma mater.

The Alumni Awards are divided into three categories: Career Achievement, Service to Society, and Service to Lawrence. 

Career Achievement

Marjorie Liu ’00, Nathan M. Pusey Distinguished Achievement Award: Liu has crafted an impressive career as a best-selling author, writing comic book titles for Marvel, creating the popular Monstress series of graphic novels for Image Comics, and launching The Night Eaters horror series for Abrams Books.

A former attorney, her work at Marvel includes X-23, Black Widow, Han Solo, Dark Wolverine, and Astonishing X-Men. Her work as co-creator of Monstress (with artist Sana Takeda) has won multiple Hugo Awards, British Fantasy Awards, the Harvey Award, the World Fantasy Award, and seven Eisner Awards, of which Liu was the first woman in the 30-year history of the award to win in the Best Writer category. 

Her latest work is The Wingbearer Saga for middle-grade readers, as well as the Eisner Award-winning Night Eaters series, an Asian American horror-comedy trilogy. 

Shortly after graduating from law school, Liu began exploring her interests in comic books and graphic novels. It was while at Lawrence—she majored in East Asian Languages and Culture and minored in biomedical ethics—that Liu found herself making weekly sojourns down College Avenue to her favorite shop, Power House Comics. Back on campus, she was embracing English literature courses, being mentored by faculty who helped hone her writing skills.

That set the foundation for a career that has taken her to unexpected heights as a writer. 

“I thrived in Lawrence’s small classes, thrived under the mentorship of my professors, expanded my ideas of what life could look like and what mattered to me,” Liu said.

Steven Wereley ’89, Lucia Russell Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award: A professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio University (formerly a longtime member of the faculty at Purdue University), Wereley has spent a career teaching, creating, and writing. He is the co-author of two textbooks and more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and has 11 patents and numerous invited and conference presentations to his name. 

“My main research contributions have come in fluid mechanics of microscopic systems, many with biomedical or healthcare applications,” he said. 

Wereley has had visiting appointments at institutions around the world, including Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany), Universität der Bundeswehr (Germany), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia), Zhejiang National University (China), and Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Mexico). 

He has started two businesses, Microfluidics Innovations and OmniVis. He contributed to assessing the size of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 as well as several other oil spills around the world. He was awarded the U.S. Geological Survey Director's Award in 2010 for his "exemplary service to the nation.” 

Wereley was a 3-2 graduate in physics at Lawrence and mechanical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He went on to earn MS and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern University. 

Service to Society

Katherine (Wroblewski) Diop ’00, Joseph F. Patterson, Jr. ’69 Service to Society Award: A career member of the Foreign Service (Diplomatic Service), Diop has served at U.S. Embassy Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as counselor for public affairs since August 2023, where she advises the ambassador and Department of State officials on public diplomacy aspects of the bilateral relationship and manages a large team in applying resources and tools to advance U.S. foreign policy goals.  

It is the latest stop in a foreign service career that has included more than two decades of work with the U.S. Department of State.

“I credit study abroad opportunities at Lawrence, specifically the 1998 Francophone Seminar in Dakar, Senegal, and 1999 Washington Semester Program to American University in Washington, D.C., and Harare, Zimbabwe, with instilling a love for international relations, travel, and cultural experiences that charted the course for my career,” Diop said.

She served at U.S. Embassy Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 2019 to 2023 as the cultural affairs officer. Prior to that, she was the cultural affairs officer at U.S. Embassy Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, from 2016 to 2019. She also served at U.S. Embassy Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2013-16), managing press and public outreach and serving as embassy spokesperson. Diop worked in both the business and non-profit sectors before joining the U.S. Department of State in 2004.

Diop majored in international development at Lawrence and earned an MBA in organizational management from University of Phoenix. She speaks French, Wolof, and has studied Amharic, Bahasa, and Khmer languages. 

Michael Johnson ’75, George B. Walter ’36 Service to Society Award: Johnson, a board-certified general surgeon and ordained deacon, has lived a life of service alongside his family. 

“Our first mission trip to Zaire (the Congo) was in 1984 when the Lord touched us and told us that we should do overseas missions,” Johnson said. “We returned after seven weeks and opened a private practice in general surgery for three years, and then a second trip to Kenya East Africa in 1987 led us to our long-term commitment to that nation.”

Over the next 23 years, the Johnsons worked full-time in Kenya and short-term in several other African nations, including Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania. In addition, they led short-term trips to Haiti and mission exploratory teams to Honduras and El Salvador.

When they returned to Philadelphia in 2010, they began the Miriam Medical Clinics, offering hope and healing to the underserved of the city. Johnson now serves as a deacon in the Tasker Street Missionary Baptist Church, which has supported him and his family through their mission work.

“Our work in Philadelphia includes the Out of Nazareth ministries, helping the incarcerated and their families with financial assistance, emotional support, and seeking employment,” he said. “We also promote gun buy-back programs in Philadelphia in an attempt to remove lethal weapons from within the community.”

Johnson graduated from Lawrence as a pre-med student and then attended medical school at the University of Michigan.

Service to Lawrence

Rebecca Doyle-Morin ’00, Marshall B. Hulbert ’26 Outstanding Service Award: Doyle-Morin’s career as a professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville has its roots in the biology program at Lawrence. As an undergraduate, she worked with Bart DeStasio, the Dennis and Charlot Nelson Singleton Professor of Biological Sciences and professor of biology, to complete an honors thesis on the freshwater zooplankton ecology of Lake Winnebago. That led her to Cornell University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, where she completed her Ph.D. with a thesis funded by an NSF Biocomplexity grant, studying the plankton ecology of Lake Ontario embayment ecosystems. 

While finishing her Ph.D., Doyle-Morin was hired as a visiting assistant professor of biology at Lawrence. She would stay on for an additional year before securing her full-time professorship at Platteville in 2010.

“I thoroughly enjoyed getting to experience my alma mater from ‘the other side’ while teaching the courses that inspired me to pursue my current path,” she said.

Doyle-Morin has stayed connected with Lawrence ever since, serving as class secretary for many years and actively engaging in Reunion and fundraising efforts. 

“My experiences on ‘both sides of the desk’ have really made the value of a Lawrence University education clear to me, and I am grateful for the opportunity to give back,” she said.

At Platteville, Doyle-Morin has been granted tenure and promoted to the rank of full professor. Hired as the university’s invertebrate zoologist, she has taught and designed courses ranging from invertebrate zoology to freshwater ecology to wetland restoration and management.

“I have also started a number of programs on campus, including the animal husbandry and outreach program, The Animal House and the campus apiary, and have been heavily involved in a variety of undergraduate research initiatives, engaging hundreds of undergraduates and thousands of community members in science research and education programs,” she said. 

Charles and Janice Woodward, both Class of 1975, Gertrude Breithaupt Jupp M-D’18 Outstanding Service Award: Since graduating from Lawrence—Chuck with a major in history with a focus on medieval history and Janice with a major in German and a Wisconsin teaching certificate—the Woodwards have remained committed to Lawrence.

“Lawrence has always remained dear to us,” they said. “We have attended alumni events in many cities and often marvel about the fact that ‘once a Lawrentian, always a Lawrentian’ and that we can always find something meaningful to talk about with grads of all ages.”

Janice represented Lawrence at college fairs and has served as a class agent for many years. They both have served on two reunion committees—one for their 45th and now for this year’s 50th. They have been regular donors to Lawrence and recently joined the Legacy Circle to further strengthen their commitment.

Chuck built a career in marketing and senior management, mostly in the food and food service business sector. His work took them to multiple locations in the U.S. and abroad. He tried retirement for a short time, but he was not quite ready to relax. So he trained as a mediator and now mediates throughout the state of Colorado and serves on the state-wide mediation board.

Janice started her teaching career at a junior high, teaching German and social studies. She remained flexible amid multiple moves, earning teaching certificates in many states. She discovered a passion for teaching in underserved communities, teaching in charter high schools and dropout re-engagement schools, working with unemployed women, and teaching in multiple correctional facilities across the U.S. and in England.

“When we left Lawrence as proud graduates, we were confident that Lawrence had prepared us for a successful life in the ‘real world’,” they said. “And now, 50 years later, we know that the foundation built at Lawrence gave us the tools, skills, and confidence to achieve our successes.”