The Alumni Awards: Current Recipients

Awards presented during Alumni Weekend, May 29 - 31, 2009:

The Haverford Award - Dr. H. Alan Hume '49

Doctor Hume was born in Lynchburg, Virginia September 25, 1926.  His father was a Chemistry Professor at Sweet Briar College which determined his place of birth.  The family moved to Upper Darby, Pennsylvania in 1929 where he attended grammar and junior high school.  He entered The Episcopal Academy in 1941 and graduated June 6, 1944. 

After serving two years in the U.S. Navy he entered Haverford College in the fall of 1946.  Spending two summers at Gettysburg College enabled him to graduate from Haverford with the Class of 1949.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1953 and served his Surgical Residency at Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia.  This was followed by a Fellowship in Surgery at The Lahey Clinic in Boston.  He returned to Philadelphia in 1958 and entered surgical practice with Doctors William H. Erb and Lloyd W. Stevens who had trained him at Presbyterian.

During his 18 year career in Philadelphia Doctor Hume served as Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery at Penn Med and as Chief of Surgery at Taylor Hospital in Ridley Park.  He also team taught a course in Biomedical Engineering at Swarthmore College during the 1970’s.

Doctor and Mrs. Hume moved to Maine in 1976 where he worked in a U.S. Public Health Service Project as Director of Emergency Medical Services.  He returned to surgical practice in Waterville, Maine in 1980 and continued until his retirement in 1990.

At that point Doctor Hume became Medical Director of Student Health Services at Colby College.  He served on the Board of Overseers from 1985 through 1997.  In 1991 he established a January Program in Furniture Making for Colby College students.  In January 2010, at the age of 83, he will teach his 20th annual course for the college.  This has been a volunteer activity and during this time he and his wife have endowed and created the Colby-Hume Center which is home to the Colby crew teams and a myriad of other student activities.

Doctor and Mrs. Hume have served as volunteers at the Maine General Medical Center in Waterville for a number of years. 

The Alumni Award - Greg Kannerstein '63

Greg has served as a Freshman Dean of Students, Freshman Seminar leader, Baseball coach, Athletic Director, Dean of the College; also informal historian. 

He has been a role model for generations of Haverfordians and external entities regarding how to be an authoritative administrator, teacher, counselor, and alumnus---with unquestioned focus on the Haverford mission of excellent scholarship, integrity, fairness, dignity, and tolerance. Does any living Haverfordian better epitomize this service?

Every Haverford president since Jack Coleman has had the privilege of sending our community an announcement about new trails to be blazed by Greg Kannerstein.  Since his return to campus in 1968, Greg has been Dean of Freshmen, Athletic Director, Baseball Coach, Acting Dean of Admission and, most recently, Dean of the College.  In fact, the only time he took a break from matters ‘ford was from ’74 – ’79 when he got his doctorate from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.  (Why Harvard?  “Where else can you play on a softball team called The Ed Sox?”).

The Haverford community now looks forward to the next chapter in Greg’s multi-faceted career:  Special Advisor, Institutional Advancement and Lecturer in Independent College Programs.

As Special Advisor, Grey will work with colleagues in alumni affairs and development to spread the exciting news of our vision for Haverford’s future, with a special focus on our upcoming comprehensive campaign.  He’ll also work with the Office of Communications in the course of writing a history of the College since its founding in 1833, while remaining in touch with students as a Lecturer in areas of his interest and expertise, such as sports and society, history of Haverford College and journalism.

Haverford College Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award - H. Ronald Kaback '58

As a direct result of his experience at Haverford College, Ron Kaback serendipitously pioneered the development of bacterial membrane vesicles early in his career. In addition to transforming the field of transport from phenomenology to biochemistry, this seminal development caused him to forego the practice of pediatrics for a career in basic science, thereby saving the lives and alleviating the suffering of untold numbers of children.  The use of membrane vesicles from various sources has become a classic tool today for testing models and performing hypothesis-driven research.  Subsequently, he demonstrated quantitatively that an electrochemical hydrogen ion gradient is the immediate driving force for accumulation of many different solutes, which constitutes the basis for the energetics of ion gradient-driven active transport postulated originally by Peter Mitchell, who termed this basic cellular process “chemiosmosis”.  Kaback extended his interest to the molecular mechanism of membrane transport, using the lactose permease of Escherichia coli (LacY; aka the lactose/H+ symporter) as a paradigm for ion gradient-driven active transport proteins.  Thus, the product of the lacY gene became established as one of the most intensively studied models for membrane transport proteins.  With the emergence of molecular biology, he and his colleagues pioneered Cysteine-Scanning Mutagenesis in combination with chemical modification, as well as a battery of site-directed biophysical/biochemical techniques for structure/function studies. This general experimental approach is well recognized today and has become a standard tool for membrane protein research.  Without a crystal structure, Kaback and colleagues succeeded in using this approach to obtain essential information about helix packing, the organization of the sugar-binding site and the residues involved in proton translocation and coupling. He and his colleagues then achieved a major breakthrough by obtaining an X-ray crystal structure of LacY, an essential step towards understanding the molecular mechanism, which has had a great impact on the field of membrane transport.  His laboratory is now continuing to extend and refine studies on the mechanism of ion gradient-driven active transport.  In recognition of his accomplishments, Kaback was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1987.  He is also a Distinguished Alumnus of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1988) and a Fellow of the Biophysical Society, the American Society of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as the recipient of a number of national and international awards.

Haverford College Young Alumni Award- Ann Marie Baldonado '94 and Elissa Steglich '94

Ann Marie Baldonado ’94 is a producer with Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the award-winning National Public Radio (NPR) show.  Fresh Air is one of public radio's most popular programs, focusing on contemporary arts and issues.  Each week, nearly 4.5 million people listen to the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine's intimate conversations broadcast on 500 NPR stations across the country.  The show is well-known for its sophisticated approach to the arts with a particular appeal to intelligent and curious listeners.  Interestingly, Ann Marie began her career working as an unpaid intern for WHYY, an NPR affiliate, more than 10 years ago and quickly became an invaluable member of Fresh Air's staff.  Today, she is one of Fresh Air's most senior producers where she is responsible for covering television and films.  In her unique role, she is both part critic and part facilitator/collaborator of thought-provoking conversations with a diverse range of writers, actors, directors, producers, and film or television subjects.  Through her work as a producer, Ann Marie plays an integral role in ensuring that the show continues to offer what the Peabody committee noted were "probing questions, revelatory interviews and unusual insights."  Ann Marie's position at Fresh Air and the show's unique and noteworthy place in media make her one of the most important and powerful gatekeepers in television and film, allowing her to introduce, review, and promote these works to millions of Americans and help shape their selections.  In 2008, Ann Marie returned to Haverford to inspire the next generation of Haverfordians to pursue careers in journalism and/or the arts as a speaker in the Alumni Year in the Arts series.  Ann Marie lives in center city Philadelphia with her husband Rick Swedloff (Haverford '94) and their 20-month-old daughter Amelia Jane.

Elissa Steglich '94 is the Managing Attorney at the American Friends Service Committee’s Immigrant Rights Program in Newark, New Jersey.  In addition to supervising legal staff, she provides direct representation to asylum seekers, immigrant children, and immigrant victims of violence and human trafficking.  Ms. Steglich was the Managing Attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago, Illinois from 2002-2006, and Trafficking Project Officer at DePaul College of Law, where she conducted extensive field research on trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean. Ms. Steglich received a B.A. in English from Haverford College and a Juris Doctor (with honors) from the University of Texas School of Law. Ms. Steglich is co-editor of In Modern Bondage: Sex Trafficking in the Americas (Transnational 2003), and the author of Hiding in the Hulls: Attacking the Practice of High Seas Murder of Stowaways through Expanded Criminal Jurisdiction in Texas Law Review, May 2000, and Where is the Protection? A Failed Response to Gender-Based Persecution in Public Interest Law Reporter, Spring 2003.

The Forman Award - Not awarded

Awards presented in the Fall during Board Weekend 2009:

The Sheppard Award - Sarah Willie-LeBreton  ’86

 

The MacIntosh Award - Anne Fleischmann '84

 

The Perry Award - Seth Bernstein '84, Stephen L. Begleiter '84, Roger B. Kafker '84, and Dana Shanler Ladden '84

 

The Kaye Award - Sidney "Skip" West '77

 

The Friend of Haverford College Award - Professor Emeritus of History, Roger Lane