Nancy Dussault, Alumnae Award Recipient

Alumnae Award Recipient, 1990

The Alumnae Award recognizes a woman who has brought honor to Northwestern University through outstanding professional contributions in her field and who has attained national recognition. Established in 1976, the Alumnae Award has been presented every year to an alumna who has had a significant impact in her field of endeavor. Educators, journalists, doctors, scientists, and artists are included among The Alumnae’s roster of awardees.

Actress, singer, talk show host (photo from 2010)

Born in Pensacola, Florida, and later a resident of Arlington, Virginia, she graduated from Washington-Lee High School before going to Northwestern University.

Broadway:  In 1962, Dussault stepped into the role of Maria in the Broadway production of The Sound of Music. She received a Tony Award nomination in 1961 for Best Featured Actress (Musical) for Do Re Mi and was nominated for her performance in Bajour (1965). Of her performance in Do Re Mi and later career, Bloom and Vlastnik wrote: "Confidently clowning alongside such pros as Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker...she never faded into the scenery. Equally comfortable as a pure soprano or a rangy high belter, her versatility was well captured on the...cast album...Well cast as a situation comedy wife, she spent much of the 1970s and 80s in California." ^[2] Other stage shows included Quality Street in 1965 at the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania.^[3] She also appeared in the City Center Gilbert & Sullivan NYC Company, directed by Dorothy Raedler, with such Metropolitan Opera singers as Nico Castel, Muriel Costa-Greenspon, and Frank Poretta, Sr. Dussault took over as the Witch in Into the Woods on Broadway (1987–1989). She had appeared twelve years earlier in the review Side by Side by Sondheim on Broadway.

Film:  In Arthur Hiller's 1979 film, The In-Laws, she played Carol Kornpett, wife of Alan Arkin who played Sheldon S. Kornpett, D.D.S.

Television:  On television, she was a regular on the 1970s series The New Dick Van Dyke Show, and played Ted Knight's wife in the role of the photographer Muriel Rush on the 1980s situation comedy Too Close for Comfort. She was the first anchor of Good Morning America, working with David Hartman, when the show started in 1975. She was the first actress to portray the character of Theresa Stemple, the mother of character Jamie Stemple Buchman, in season one of the NBC TV series Mad About You.

Wikipedia

September 27, 2017

Amanda Stathopoulos, Curriculum Innovation Award Recipient

Curriculum Innovation Award Recipient, 2017

Awardee Amanda Stathopoulos is the William A. Patterson Junior Chair of Transportation and an assistant professor in the civil and environmental engineering department in the McCormick School of Engineering. She works at the intersection of science and humanities and is a teaching fellow in Northwestern’s Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching. Her course will focus on connecting students’ understanding of civil engineering with knowledge of current societal challenges. They will learn to identify problems in urban environments and customize engineering solutions for individual communities and cultures.

Engineering Possibilities: Decision Science in the Age of Smart Technologies

In her course, Amanda Stathopoulos invites civil and environmental engineering freshmen to develop a holistic understanding of potential options and outcomes of interventions in urban systems, specifically those in response to environmental, energy, health and mobility challenges. The goal of the course is to “prepare students to address the complexity of problems and engineering solutions with pervasive (and conflicting) impacts.”

The course will give students multiple perspectives on global problems while helping them understand how local conditions contribute to the success or failure of real-life engineering projects. Through a mixture of lectures, discussions with industry professionals and experts, in-class exercises and teamwork, students will be able to identify urban challenges, research and apply analysis tools and find relevant data and metrics to rank possible solutions with an understanding of implications and trade-offs.

“There is ample evidence that young engineers are eager for space and tools to reflect on the social impact of their work,” Stathopoulos notes.

Through teaching students how to evaluate technological, economic and policy implementations as well as the benefits, costs and trade-offs of competing solutions, Stathopoulos says she hopes this course will provide these opportunities for students in the beginning of their engineering courses, helping to increase critical thinking and engagement throughout their education.

The above is an excerpt from: Faculty given support to create innovative curriculum, Northwestern News, December 20, 2016 | By Kayla Stoner

The name of this award was changed in 2019 from Curriculum Development Award to Curriculum Innovation Award.

Jenny Halpern, Sr. Woman's Volunteer Service Awardee

Senior Woman's Award for Volunteer Service Recipient, 2017

Jenny, from Highland Park, Ill., a senior graduating this spring, is majoring in Human Development and Psychological Services, School of Education and Social Policy, with honors, Dean’s List, with a minor in Dance, School of Communication.

She became involved with Dance Marathon as a freshman, realizing then the power of the Northwestern community. She quotes a phrase, which has inspired her to stay so deeply involved in Dance Marathon: “What we do with our lives echoes in eternity.” The impact of those words is the reason she remained deeply involved in Dance Marathon throughout her years on campus, first as a dancer, then a committee member, and finally as Executive Director.  With this theme as her mantra, Jenny led the 20-person board in its two main duties: evaluating the 60 nonprofit applications requesting funding from Dance Marathon, selecting Gigi’s Playhouse as their primary beneficiary; and planning the committee work leading up to and during this year’s Dance Marathon, held March 3-5, which raised more funds than any former event of its kind.

Gigi’s Playhouse is a nationwide network of Down Syndrome Achievement Centers that promotes free programming to individuals of all ages, their families and communities, impacting two million people across the country. The network provides families a place to understand the diagnosis of Down Syndrome while celebrating their children’s achievements. Northwestern is the first college campus to promote Gigi’s Playhouse. As a leader of the NUDM community, Jenny worked to unite the campus in changing the way the world views Down Syndrome.

In addition to Dance Marathon, Jenny was a company member of Graffiti Dancers, which performs in various campus events. Her advisor, Adrian Bitton, Assistant Director for Leadership and Community Engagement notes, “With her love of Northwestern, ability to connect with others, and her strong sense of responsibility and leadership abilities, Jenny is very much deserving of this award.”

“Jenny, an excellent student, made time to devote herself to raising awareness for those with Down Syndrome, raising funds to help many children. She is a model for volunteer service on the Northwestern campus,” note Margo Brown and Julie McDowell, chairs of The Alumnae’s Senior Woman’s Service Award committee.