FOOTBALL & FUN | ARTS & CULTURE | ALUMNI AWARDS OF MERIT
Football & Fun Photography
Photography by Tommy Leonardi C’89
Arts & Culture
Photography by Sarah Bloom
Alumni Awards of Merit
Photography by Stuart Watson
Edward T. Anderson, M.D., C’65, M’69
Alumni Award of Merit
Penn has greatly benefited from your knowledge and good judgment, the warmth and kindness of your personality, and your readiness to serve your alma mater in every way you can. You are, indeed, an outstanding University citizen.
You were a stand-out undergraduate: a member of the Men’s Student Government, the Dormitory Council, and the Phi Kappa Beta Junior Honor Society. You served as scribe for the Sphinx Senior Society and as vice president of your senior class. The culmination of your undergraduate career came when you were named Spoon Man at graduation (a Hey Day award given to the most popular member of the senior class), before heading to Penn’s Medical School. You excelled as an athlete as well, setting records for the triple and broad jumps and helping bring the varsity men’s basketball team to its first victory in Philadelphia’s heated Big Five tournament in 1963.
In a classic case of sports imitating life, your on-court role as a point guard has influenced your life as a quintessential Penn alumnus: You bring the ball up the court, help lead the team, call out plays, and make assists. As a member of the University Board of Trustees for ten years, your committee appointments spanned academic planning, alumni nominations, neighborhood initiatives and honorary degrees. You also have served on the University Committee for Undergraduate Financial Aid and the Medical School’s National Alumni Council and you are a former member of the Athletic Board of Overseers and the Agenda for Excellence Council. You currently serve on the Penn Alumni Board of Directors. In 2005, you were honored with a resolution of appreciation from the Trustees for your many areas of service to Penn.
A scholarship recipient yourself, you have given others the gift of a Penn education through the Edward and Lois Anderson Endowed Scholarship, which you established with your wife, Lois, PT’65. You also have supported the 21st Century Scholars Fund for medical students, the Track Fund, and The Penn Fund. In 2009, you served on your medical school’s 40th reunion committee, encouraging your classmates to attend and support the school. The same year, you, Bill Thompson, M’69, and Louis Kozloff, C’65, M’69, your close friend from freshman year on, established the Anderson Kozloff Thompson Fund for the construction of a new medical education classroom.
Although you have made your home in Palo Alto ever since heading west to complete your internship, residency, and cardiology fellowship at Stanford University, living over three-thousand miles away from campus clearly has not impeded your involvement with Penn. Penn was—and continues to be—a life-defining experience for you. You arrived as a freshman and left as a doctor. Your met your wife on campus, and your daughters, Britt, C’93, and Lindsey, C’99, are second-generation alumnae. For your wholehearted love of Penn, which has touched so many parts of our University, we are delighted to bestow upon you the 2011 Alumni Award of Merit.
Calvin Kai Chen, W’97, C’97
Young Alumni Award
The influence of your Penn experience has extended far beyond your four years on campus to inform how you live today. A truly engaged alumnus, you are a community-builder who, drawing on your own experiences, takes the initiative to create new ways for alumni to connect with Penn.You hit the ground running after graduating in 1997 by conducting student interviews for the Secondary School Committee in Washington, D.C., relishing the chance to offer insights from the perspective of a recent Penn graduate. Fifteen years later, you still meet with prospective students each year in the New York area.
Your desire to reconnect with a community of Asian Penn alumni inspired you to help found the University of Pennsylvania Asian Alumni Network (UPAAN) in 2001. Subsequently, you have served as its vice president and president. You helped craft UPAAN’s mission—to inspire, develop, and nurture the interests of its constituents within the University—a cause you have furthered with great flair. Since its inception, UPAAN has grown to include branches in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles. You personally have organized a book signing event with Jennifer Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, a talk with actor Kal Penn, community service with New York City middle school students, and picnics with other Ivy League Asian alumni organizations.
You have helped forge closer ties between UPAAN members and current students because, recalling your limited exposure to alumni during your own undergraduate years, you recognize the value of alumni guiding and mentoring Penn students. UPAAN’s mentoring exchange, now in its seventh year, is an annual event during Homecoming Weekend. Asian and Asian American alumni share career-related experiences and advice with current students, recent graduates, and alumni career-changers. To ensure that this and other UPAAN initiatives will continue to flourish, you helped establish the UPAAN United Future Fund to support the academic and career development of Asian and Pacific Islander students at Penn.
In your work life as a consultant, you manage digital experiences for client organizations. As a thoroughly engaged Penn alumnus, you create optimal alumni experiences. You currently serve on the Penn Alumni Board of Directors and are a former member of the Penn Alumni Council. This past year, you served on the host committee for Penn Spectrum, the University’s first-ever conference devoted to diversity and community. And, most recently, you were invited to join the James Brister Society in recognition of your steadfast commitment to diversity at Penn.
We are delighted that you are a frequent presence on campus and at Penn events in New York City. In recognition of your tireless and creative advocacy on behalf of Asian students and alumni, as well as your dedication to the extended Penn community, we present you with the 2011 Young Alumni Award.
Susanna E. Lachs, Esq., CW ’74, ASC’76
Alumni Award of Merit
With a mind sharpened by your Penn education, powers of persuasion honed by your legal training, and a generosity of spirit that appears to be genetic, you are both an inspired and inspirational alumna. If it is within your purview to help Penn in any way, your response is always “yes!”–and then you get others to follow your lead.
For you, Penn is a true family tradition. Your family’s connection with the University spans nearly a century, beginning with your maternal grandfather, Benjamin Seltzer, M’24, who arrived on campus in 1919, and extending to your younger daughter, Sara, a member of the class of 2015. Both of your parents are alumni (Samuel Lachs, C’46, and Phyllis Seltzer Lachs, CW’52, L’82), as are your husband, Dean (W’79, L’83), and your older daughter, Anna (C’11).
Since graduating, you have demonstrated an enormous commitment to the University as a leader in a wide variety of areas over an extended period of time. You are a member and former chair of the Trustees’ Council of Penn Women, and a member of the Boards of Overseers of the Penn Libraries and of the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. You also serve on the boards of Penn Hillel and the Penn Alumni Admissions Resource Center.
The libraries rank high among your many Penn passions. Based on your family and life experiences, you have a unique understanding of the essential role the libraries play in campus life and the challenges facing research libraries in the 21st century. Your late father was a noted religious studies scholar who used Penn’s research libraries extensively, while creating a robust personal library related to his studies. Your mother and family recently donated a significant part of his rare Judaica book collection to the Katz Center’s library. As a Penn undergraduate, you worked at the Annenberg Library. Now, you have two daughters who, like you, understand how vital libraries are to the life of the mind.
A consummate connector, you are constantly encouraging and inspiring friends and family to further the University’s highest priorities. You and your husband (co-chair of the Campaign Major Gift Committee for the Making History campaign) are involved all across campus—with the Penn Libraries, the Katz Center, Penn Law, the Zell Lurie Real Estate Center, and the Penn School of Design. Your depth and breadth of understanding of all things Penn makes you an exceptional advocate for the University in its entirety.
Ever grateful for the privilege of a Penn education, you established the Lachs-Adler Endowed Scholarship in 1999 to help pass along that gift to others. Upon returning from visiting your daughter at the Penn-in-Cannes program, your strong positive impressions inspired you to provide financial support for a student who might not otherwise be able to afford that experience.
Your parents taught you that living a truly meaningful life means giving back to your community and caring deeply about the needs of society as a whole. You have embraced this responsibility fully and gracefully in your many volunteer roles throughout the Philadelphia region. We feel fortunate that Penn is at the top of that long list. As a remarkably engaged and truly philanthropic Penn alumna, you have made a strong and positive imprint on the life of this university. It is with great respect and gratitude that we honor you with the 2011 Alumni Award of Merit.
Catherine “Kaki” Marshall, CW’45
Creative Spirit Award
It is fitting that Penn, the institution where you first dipped your toe in the creative waters 70 years ago, honors you for your influence on the performing arts. Your work here produced ripples that have radiated out into the world with undiminished strength.
Arriving on campus in 1941, you found a home with Penn Players, where you directed Hal Prince in an undergraduate production. It was—forgive the cliché—the beginning of a beautiful friendship with the future director of Phantom of the Opera and winner of 21 Tony awards.
Following graduation in 1945, you stayed on campus, first as assistant director and then as director of drama. Then, during a hiatus from Penn, among other things, you raised six children with your husband, Joseph Marshall, now professor emeritus at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law. After a dozen years as a stay-at-home mother, you returned to Penn and ultimately touched the lives of thousands of young people during your subsequent career from 1975-1989. More recently serving as part of the inaugural Platt Student Performing Arts House Advisory Council, you continue to show your dedication and commitment to Penn’s artistic community.
You were a true mentor. As artistic advisor to students in the performing arts, one of your many roles at the Annenberg Center, you encouraged them to find their own paths. And what paths they found! Among the “kids” who passed through your office are several household names in the theater world: Todd Haimes, C’78, and Harold Wolpert, C’88, became artistic director and managing director, respectively, of the Roundabout Theatre in New York City. Vicki Reiss, C’77, is the executive director of the Shubert Foundation, which provides significant support for theatre and dance companies across the country. Your former assistant, Seth Rozin, C’86, created the path-breaking InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia, of which you were a founding board member. The list goes on.
Your work with and for young children, however, is perhaps your most lasting legacy. As you tell the story, you spent a summer attending children’s festivals in Europe and realized there was no American equivalent. You returned to Philadelphia determined to create a festival where children could experience quality performing arts at an early age. You and Stephen Goff, AR’62, founded the Philadelphia International Children’s Festival in 1985 with financial assistance from the late Walter Annenberg, W’31, Hon ’66. It has been going strong ever since.
Each spring, upwards of 20,000 children and their families come to the Annenberg Center for plays, mime, music, storytelling, puppetry, juggling, folk singing, and arts and crafts from around the world. This cornucopia of arts experiences, offered at a minimal cost, inspires budding performers and opens young eyes to the wonder of the world as a stage—and the stage as a world.
With your warm smile and infectious laugh, you have welcomed Penn students, audiences and festival goers alike to the Annenberg Center. Your fierce determination to share the joys of the performing arts has touched generations. Truly, the ripple effect of your life in the arts has been nothing short of remarkable. Therefore, with the greatest appreciation of your many achievements, the University of Pennsylvania presents you, Kaki Marshall, with its Creative Spirit Award for 2011.
Mae Agnes Pasquariello, PhD., CW’53, GRD’85
Alumni Award of Merit
You prove F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous observation to be wrong. There are second acts in American lives—and your second act at Penn wins rave reviews. You reconnected with Penn after a 25-year hiatus, when your friend, the late Rosemary D. Mazzatenta, ED’53, GED’53, insisted in 1978 that you become editor of your class newsletter. More than three decades later, you remain deeply engaged with the University as a volunteer, donor and, most remarkably, as a student.
As you tell the story, your first act at Penn opened when you saw the campus from the window of a trolley car. Astounded by the beauty and the grandeur of the buildings and grounds, you got off at the next stop, found the Admissions Office, and applied as a transfer student. You arrived in 1950 and soon became a sister in the Zeta Tau Alpha Sorority, and a member of the Newman Club, the Italian Club, and Bowling Green, the honorary dramatic society.
Your passion for education is a lifelong affair. After receiving your undergraduate degree in 1953, you earned two Master’s degrees, from Temple and Villanova Universities. Eventually, you made your way back to Penn’s campus, to earn a doctorate in education in 1985 at age 55. With four diplomas hanging on the wall, a less intellectually curious person might have felt sufficiently educated. Not you. For over 30 years, you have audited classes at Penn each term as a member of the Senior Associates Program, studying women and religion, Italian cuisine and culture, 20th-century American poetry and gun control.
As a professional educator, you first taught students undergoing long-term hospital stays. Then, you worked at Simon Gratz School, Picket Middle School and Masterman in the Philadelphia public school system. Later, you were a school guidance counselor and then a consultant at the Girard Academic Music Program, a fifth-through-12th-grade school of approximately 520 students in South Philadelphia, where you continued to consult after retirement.
You have said that your experience at Penn instilled in you a lifelong desire to keep learning. As an alumna, you have exhibited a similar desire to help others do the same. On the occasion of your 55th reunion, you and your husband, Dr. Patrick Pasquariello, RES ’63, established the Pasquariello/Agnes Endowed Scholarship Fund for undergraduate student financial aid in 2008, to which you continue to contribute each year. You currently are gift chair for the Class of 1953, an active and life term member of the Association of Alumnae board and a member of the Secondary School Committee. The list of your previous Penn alumni activities goes back decades.
We guess that Pasquariello family reunions might involve singing the Red & Blue, since so many members of your family are members of the Penn family, too. Your husband is an emeritus professor at the School of Medicine who has worked at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia since 1963. Your daughter Caroline holds undergraduate and medical degrees from Penn, and her daughter Alexandra is in the Class of 2013. Then, there are your two sisters-in-law, four nieces and a cousin – all Penn alumni.
We are delighted that you remain an enthusiastic Penn student, active volunteer, avid Quaker fan, and one of our most gracious alumnae. With gratitude for your deep and enduring connection with Penn, we bestow upon you the 2011 Alumni Award of Merit.
P. Roy Vagelos, M.D., C’50
Alumni Award of Merit
You are a leader whose values closely parallel Penn’s highest priorities. You care about access to education and engaging globally to solve society’s most persistent problems. You recognize that basic research, cross-disciplinary scholarship, superb teaching and state-of-the-art facilities are the hallmarks of our fine 21st century University. You have brought to Penn a remarkable degree of scientific expertise, business experience, personal integrity and outstanding leadership—and have used these gifts to benefit the university community.
We like to think that Penn, where you came as a scholarship student, helped chart the course for your future. As an undergraduate, you balanced several important elements of student life, including academics, as a Phi Beta Kappa key-carrying chemistry major; camaraderie, as a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity; and athletics, as an oarsman with the Varsity Boat Club and the Men’s Lightweight Crew.
Following graduation from medical school at Columbia University, you had a distinguished academic medical career prior to being recruited in 1975 by Merck. There, you led the company as it developed groundbreaking drugs, topped all of its rivals in sales, and was named “America’s Most Admired Company” by Fortune magazine seven years in a row. In 1987, under your leadership, Merck made the landmark decision to donate medication to combat river blindness, a chronic disease in much of the developing world. It was an act of unparalleled corporate social responsibility. Today, the Mectizan Donation Program reaches more than 100 million people annually and is widely-recognized as one of the most successful public/private health partnerships in the world.
Your visionary leadership has been evident at Penn as well: As chairman of the Board of Trustees, you spearheaded a strategic planning process under President Judith Rodin that resulted in Penn’s Agenda for Excellence. Under your leadership, Penn first made increased access to education our highest priority. You have served Penn wisely and well on boards and committees too numerous to count.
Your personal philanthropy has been exceptional. Reflecting your belief that science education and Penn’s talented undergraduate students are key to solving societal problems and preserving the country’s competitiveness, you have endowed three unique programs to prepare the next generation of scientific leaders: The Vagelos Program in Molecular Life Sciences, the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences & Management, and the new Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy and Research, which will enroll its first class in 2012. Your generosity to Penn also includes the Science Challenge Award to support outstanding undergraduates in biochemistry, biophysics, chemistry or physics; a scholarship in memory of your parents; two endowed faculty in the Chemistry Department; and the Roy and Diana Vagelos Laboratories.
You are equally generous with your time; making a point to visit campus frequently to talk with students about their Penn experience and their future plans. While you call these interactions “productive and fun,” the students likely view your time and attention, as well as your informed perspective, as inspirational.
You are indeed an esteemed member of the Penn community. With gratitude and respect for your role in the world, in science, in medicine, in philanthropy, and in the life of this university, we respectfully present you with the 2011 Alumni Award of Merit.
Paul C. Williams, W ’67
Alumni Award of Merit
You have said that Penn’s alumni should “expect a lifetime of engagement and enrichment from their alma mater” – and you have made it your personal mission to make good on that promise. It is hard to find a corner of the Penn community you have not touched with your inspiring engagement.
Beginning as a Penn student, you embraced a commitment to giving back to the community. You were the campus coordinator for the Neighborhood Youth Corps, a tutorial project in the neighborhoods surrounding Penn, and you served on the board of the Community Involvement Council. Your impulse to help others has only intensified over time and Penn has been the fortunate focus of your generous spirit.
You reconnected with Penn around your 25th reunion, becoming a member of the Board of Overseers for our School of Arts and Sciences in 1994 and a member of Penn’s Board of Trustees (as an Alumni Trustee) in 2000. In 2003, after you were named to the board’s Executive Committee, you participated in the Presidential Search Committee that selected President Amy Gutmann. The same year, you were elected president of Penn Alumni, representing over 290,000 Penn alumni around the world, a key leadership position you held for five years. You have served on a long list of committees, including Academic Policy, Development, Honorary Degrees & Awards, and Neighborhood Initiatives. As a member of the Biology Advisory Board, you helped craft the building plan that resulted in construction of the Carolyn Lynch Laboratory and that will be completed by the Neural and Behavioral Sciences Building. Following such an extraordinary commitment of time and energy, many would have enjoyed a well-earned respite. However, you continue to serve Penn as an SAS Overseer and a member of that Board’s Executive Committee.
You have been described as someone who knows how to bring people together and to help them be their best. This is borne out by all the members of the Penn community who have benefited from your cheerful team building, tireless advocacy, and legendary commitment. You have invested countless hours meeting with the leadership of Penn’s alumni diversity groups, attending their events and supporting their mission to make Penn a supportive, nurturing and academically exciting place for one and all.
Off campus, you were Penn’s ambassador in Chicago during the many years you lived there. You founded the Midwest Regional Advisory Board, hosted and attended events, and graciously welcomed administrators, faculty and staff visiting the Windy City. You played an instrumental role in garnering support for initiatives such as the Chicago Regional Endowed Scholarship.
Your personal philanthropy is evident everywhere on campus – from your support for undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships and building projects, to your funding of faculty term chairs, undergraduate research grants and special projects at Kelly Writers House. Your concern for our undergraduate students and their experience on campus motivated you to support programs as varied as an expansion of Penn’s efforts to address the problem of underage drinking and the purchase of a piano for one of the residence halls. Your remarkable generosity and selfless engagement inspired two staff members to make a joint gift to name a practice room in the renovated Music Building in your honor.
Your friends at Penn know you as the strategic thinker who identifies needs and finds ways to meet them. As a thoughtful colleague, you always remember to send birthday greetings. As a quiet deliberator, your sense of humor is both subtle and nuanced. As a good natured Penn Alumni president, you were thrilled to receive a Penn blazer with your nickname embroidered on the inside pocket, “P-Dubs.” In recognition of the significant contributions you have made to this University over many years, Penn is delighted to present you with the 2011 Alumni Award of Merit.
Class of 1986
Class Award of Merit
“Your exemplary organization, energy and creativity inspired your classmates, drew them to campus, and made your reunion a memorable and record-breaking event.”
Class of 2006
David N. Tyre Award for Excellence in Class Communications
“Using every tool in the digital toolbox, compelling message points and old-school peer persuasion, you connected classmates with one another and with Penn” creating record breaking numbers for the 5th reunion.
Penn Club of Los Angeles
Alumni Club Award of Merit
“For your creative crafting of events, unstoppable energy, uncorked enthusiasm for all things Penn and, most of all, for not letting a 2,400-mile distance diminish your passion for your University,” congratulations to PennClubLA.
