Nobel Prize–winning economist Gary Becker will receive the Alumni Medal, the highest honor the Alumni Association can bestow, while 16 other distinguished alumni will receive awards in a ceremony at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 5 at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel.
The University’s Alumni Board of Governors invites all alumni, faculty, students, parents and friends to attend the event, which recognizes alumni and faculty who have made exceptional contributions to society, the University and their professions.
Some of this year’s winners include Myron Scholes, MBA’64, PhD’70, Nobel laureate in economics; Bruce Beutler, MD’81, who has made significant contributions to the medical fields of infectious disease and rheumatology; Academy Award–winning film and television editor Lisa Fruchtman, AB’70; California winemaker Warren Winiarski, AM’62; and corporate governance expert Nell Minow, JD’77, editor and co–founder of The Corporate Library.
Here is a full listing of the 2010 Alumni Award winners:
Gary Becker, AM’53, PhD’55, Alumni Medal
Becker has made extraordinary contributions as University Professor in economics, sociology and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and his research illuminates how economic decisions influence people’s lives. Becker received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992, the National Medal of Science in 2000 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2007.
Pat Rosenzweig, AB’61, Alumni Service Medal
Rosenzweig has shown dedication to students and alumni in her years of tireless volunteerism. Some of Rosenzweig’s most prominent contributions have been to Career Advising and Planning Services, while helping countless students and alumni professionally by volunteering weekly. She also played a pivotal role in founding UC2MC, the Chicago alumni club, and volunteers in support of her College reunion class.
Paul McCudden, AB’83, Alumni Service Award
McCudden has been an effective and innovative chair of one of the University’s largest Alumni Schools Committees and for his leadership in Los Angeles–area alumni club activities.
James McQuaid, SB’60, Alumni Service Award
McQuaid has shown commitment to his College reunion class by serving as gift chair and class agent, and dedication to students in establishing the James D. McQuaid Scholarship Fund. He has distinguished himself by serving as international president of Delta Upsilon, and also led alumni volunteer activities.
Coleman Seskind, AB’55, SB’56, SM’59, MD’59, Alumni Service Award
Seskind has been a leader who has made numerous contributions to the Biological Sciences Division and Medical Center, including serving on the Visiting Committee, the Alumni Senate, and the BSD Alumni Association Executive Committee. He also chaired the editorial committee for Medicine on the Midway and served as class chairman of the Pritzker School of Medicine’s Class of 1959.
Tak Lo, AB’02, Young Alumni Service Award
Lo has made creative contributions as vice president of the Washington, D.C. alumni club, helping plan and organize events. He also has served on his College reunion committee, as a CAPS Metcalf Internship application reviewer, as Alumni Schools Committee chair and as a leader in young alumni participation efforts.
Mary Tang, AB’00, Young Alumni Service Award
Tang has shown relentless support to the University through her efforts on behalf of the alumni community in Washington, D.C. This includes serving as the Alumni Schools Committee chair and showing a strong commitment to her College class by serving as class correspondent and on her reunion committee.
Bruce Beutler, MD’81, Professional Achievement Award
Beutler’s research on isolating tumor necrosis factor led to his invention of a drug that is now used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. His work also solved a basic scientific problem about how we perceive infections, which led to one of the greatest discoveries in the history of immunology. His contributions have dramatically improved the practice of medicine in the fields of infectious disease, rheumatology, ophthalmology, dermatology and gastroenterology.
Lisa Fruchtman, AB’70, Professional Achievement Award
Fruchtman is an Academy Award–winning editor who has worked in both feature film and television. Among her many film projects are Apocalypse Now, The Right Stuff, Children of a Lesser God, The Godfather Part III, The Doctor, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Dance with Me, A Love Song for Bobby Long and The Woodsman. Her awards and honors include an Oscar for The Right Stuff, Academy Award and BAFTA nominations for best editing for both The Godfather Part III and Apocalypse Now, and an Emmy nomination and a Cable ACE Award for Truman. She was also sole editor of Children of a Lesser God, which was nominated for best picture.
Cristián Larroulet, AM’80, Professional Achievement Award
Larroulet played a critical role in public policy and the economic transformation in Chile. Together with a small group of Chicago–influenced professionals, he created Libertad y Desarrollo, one of the most prestigious think tanks in Latin America, which has come to serve as a model for many others. Larroulet is also a founder of Universidad del Desarrollo, which is ranked internationally as the top institution for entrepreneurship in Latin America and is a leader among Chile’s universities. He has served as dean of the university’s School of Economics and Business since its creation. In 2010, President Sebastian Piñera named him secretary general to the president, a cabinet–level position.
Nell Minow, JD’77, Professional Achievement Award
Minow helped transformed the field of corporate governance. She has authored more than 200 articles and coauthored three books on securities law, shareholder rights and the modern corporation, including the leading business school text. She is editor and cofounder of the Corporate Library, an independent corporate governance research and analysis organization. She has testified before Congress and played a role in drafting some of the key legislation that affects American corporations. Minow was named one of the 20 most influential people in corporate governance by Directorship magazine in 2007 and was dubbed “the queen of good corporate governance” by BusinessWeek Online in 2003.
Myron Scholes, MBA’64, PhD’70, Professional Achievement Award
Scholes has made significant contributions to economics, including co–authoring the Black–Scholes equation. In 1997, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for this model, which provides the fundamental conceptual framework for valuing options. It has become the standard in financial markets globally. During his career, Scholes also worked closely with the University of Chicago’s Center for Research in Security Prices, helping to develop and analyze the center’s important database of high frequency stock market data. His later research interests have concentrated on the economics of investment banking and tax planning in corporate finance.
Warren Winiarski, AM’62, Professional Achievement Award
Winiarski had a historic role in elevating the prestige of the fledgling American wine industry to global significance, which transformed how Californian wines are viewed worldwide. During graduate school at the University, Warren spent a year studying in Italy, and it was there that he discovered winemaking. In 1976, a bottle of Winiarski’s second vintage from his Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars was selected for competition in the historic Paris Wine Tasting, where it won first place among the ten French and California red wines. The story has been documented in the 2006 book: Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine.
Ann Goodman, AB’72, AM’73, PhD’81, Public Service Award
Goodman is cofounder and executive director of the Women's Network for a Sustainable Future. Goodman pioneered global efforts on behalf of women in business, corporate responsibility and sustainable development. She also worked with governments and NGOs in making a wide and lasting impact in these enterprises.
Roy Prosterman, AB’54, Public Service Award
Prosterman has conducted research, teaching and field work (in 27 developing countries) on legal issues in land reform and economic development—all toward the goal of alleviating world poverty. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Prosterman has received the Gleitsman Foundation International Activist Award at Harvard University (he was selected by a board of judges that included former United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and Nobel Peace Prize laureates Shimon Peres, Mairead Maguire, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Adolfo Perez Esquivel).
Amy Kass, AB’62, Norman Maclean Faculty Award
Kass is a Senior Lecturer in the Humanities Collegiate Division. In support of her nomination, her former student Agnes Callard, AB’97, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Philosophy, wrote: “I arrived as a physics major … I was interested in physics because I was interested in truth, and I thought that the natural world was the place to find it … What Mrs. Kass showed me, as a freshman in her Common Core “Human Being and Citizen” class was that there is another kind of truth—there are truths about how shame and courage are related, what death means for life, why eating matters—not to our bodies, but to our souls … Mrs. Kass taught me this—she taught me that there was such a thing as the study of human truths, or ‘the humanities.’ She changed my intellectual orientation, and thereby, my life.”
Frank Reynolds, AM’63, PhD’71, Norman Maclean Faculty Award
Reynolds is Professor Emeritus of the History of Religions in the Divinity School and in South Asian Languages and Civilizations. A former student, John Clifford Holt, PhD’77, now the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Religion and the Humanities at Bowdoin College, wrote: “Frank Reynolds was a veritable institution for more than a generation of graduate students in history of religion and Buddhist studies at the University of Chicago. Frank had an extraordinary career shaping the lives of scores of Divinity students. I can’t think of another individual who could be more deserving of this award than Frank.”
Howell Murray Student Medals
The Howell Murray Awards were first given in 1961 to recognize graduating students for their outstanding contributions to extracurricular programs on campus. The awards were named in honor of Murray, PhB’14, a distinguished alumnus and Trustee of the University.
This year’s winners are Ashtin Berry, Agnes Bugaj, Alicia Bushman, Antonia Clifford, Jonathan Currie, Benjamin Field, Tsion Gurmu, David Klein, Jillian Lenson, Angelina Liang, Brittany Little, Abimbola Oladokun, Aviva Rosman, Bradley Trotter, Adama Wiltshire and Race Wright.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
