Richard Gaber
Curriculum Innovation Award Recipient, 2018
Richard Gaber is a Professor of Molecular Biosciences in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. For many years, he was also the Director of the College’s Program in Biological Sciences, housing Northwestern’s undergraduate major in biological sciences and courses taken by students in many other fields as well. Under Gaber’s directorship, the program undertook a major restructuring of its undergraduate curriculum, funded by a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Foundation. Goals included earlier and stronger emphases on inquiry-based and interactive learning and on analytic reasoning. Gaber’s work will further enhance the three foundational laboratory courses introduced as part of the general restructuring. “Enhancing Biological Sciences Laboratory Courses using S. commune”
Gaber’s proposal involves enhancements to Northwestern’s foundational laboratory courses in Biological Sciences, a set of three courses whose combined enrollment typically totals around 800 students each year. He is developing a series of projects using multiple strains of the mushroom-forming fungus Schizophyllum commune. This fungus is found on all continents except Antarctica and is thought to harbor more genetic diversity than any other organism. Gaber will visit forests, logging operations, and woodpiles across the U.S. to collect a geographically diverse array of S. commune specimens for use by students in the lab courses.
Students’ laboratory work with S. commune will continue across all three laboratory courses and involve increasingly sophisticated experiments, data acquisition approaches, and analyses. The diversity among specimens will allow each small group of students to analyze their own unique strain, increasing their interest and motivation. Students from different groups will also mate their fungi and perform morphological and genetic analyses of the progeny. They will generate new data and develop and test their own, original hypotheses, while gaining experience working as a team. At the same time, they will learn key biological principles and research techniques and approaches.
The name of this award was changed in 2019 from Curriculum Development Award to Curriculum Innovation Award.
2017 Alumnae Award Recipient Alicia Boler Davis
pam.james
18 November, 2017 12:34 PM
Alicia Boler Davis, 2017 Alumnae Award Recipient with Ron Braeutigam, Associate Provost, (left) and Dean Julio M. Ottino, McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science (right) at the November 9 Presentation and Reception. Alicia, a graduate of McCormick, is the Executive Vice President, General Motors Manufacturing. Her responsibilities include manufacturing engineering and labor relations. She is a member of the GM Senior Leadership Team and the GM Korea Board of Directors.
Alicia Boler Davis
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 2017
Alicia Boler Davis
Alicia Boler Davis is executive vice president, General Motors Manufacturing. Her responsibilities include manufacturing engineering and labor relations. She is a member of the GM Senior Leadership Team and the GM Korea Board of Directors.
Boler Davis, who holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Northwestern University, also received a master’s degree in engineering science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an MBA from Indiana University. She began her GM career in 1994 as a manufacturing engineer at the Midsize/Luxury Car Division in Warren, Michigan. During her career, she has held many positions of increasing responsibility in manufacturing, engineering, and product development.
Previously, Boler Davis was senior vice president, Global Connected Customer Experience at GM, where she led the company’s connected customer activities, including infotainment, OnStar, and GM’s Urban Active personal mobility initiatives. She now leads about 180,000 employees at 171 facilities that manufacture tens of thousands of cars, trucks, and SUVs every day. In her role as chief of labor relations, she interacts with all unions representing hourly workers around the world as partners in driving employee engagement – a difficult task with 45 different unions representing hourly workers in 31 countries.
Numerous organizations and publications have recognized Boler Davis for her professional accomplishments and community service. Of note, in 2014 she was named Technologist of the Year by Women of Color magazine. In 2013, Fortune magazine named her one of the 10 most powerful women in the automotive industry In 2010, Automotive News included Boler Davis in its list of the 100 Leading Women in the North American Automotive Industry.
She serves on the board of directors of General Mills, is a member of the Northwestern University McCormick Advisory Council, and a board trustee of the Care House of Oakland County, Michigan. Boler Davis also serves as Executive Liaison for the GM WOMEN leadership board.
2017-18 STEM SCHOLARS ANNOUNCED
janet.bilandic
17 October, 2017 11:09 AM
Eight students were named as 2017-18 STEM Scholars by The Alumnae of Northwestern University.
Click to read about these outstanding students.
Ardis Krainik
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1982
Ardis Krainik, 1929-1997. Ardis was born and raised in Manitowoc, Wisconsin and received her BS in 1951 at Northwestern's School of Speech. With training as a mezzo-soprano, she began her tenure at Lyric Opera of Chicago right out of college, starting as the clerk/typist/secretary to the founder of the Lyric in its first year of existence. It was the only place she ever worked from college graduation to retirement due to illness. In her final 15 years as the Lyric’s General Manager, the Lyric made great strides as an institution - achieving financial stability, growing in stature, and bringing acclaim to the city of Chicago. In 1984 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Northwestern. Two decades after her passing, "her legacy lives on in countless ways" beautifully described in Remembering Ardis Krainik.
Patricia Neal
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1980
Patricia Neal, 1926-2010. Born in Kentucky and raised in Tennessee, Patricia studied theater at Northwestern until 1946, when she was spotted by talent scouts who convinced her to leave for New York. In 1946, she appeared in the Broadway production of Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in the inaugural Tony Award ceremony started in 1947. She also was the recipient of an Academy Award, a Golden Glove Award, and two British Academy Film Awards, and was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards. Her acting career continued to be impressive and award-winning on both stage and screen.
She experienced a lot of tragedy in her life, related to accidents and illnesses of two of her five children when they were young, three strokes while she was pregnant, and a very public divorce from a thirty-year marriage to British author, Roald Dahl. Growing through those life experiences, she became a role-model for recovering. Before receiving the Distinguished Alumnae Award, she turned to philanthropic endeavors and founded the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. She would visit the center often to give inspiration to the patients recovering from stroke, spinal cord and brain injury.
Lee Phillip
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1976
American talk show host, soap opera creator
Lee Phillip Bell was an American talk show host and soap opera creator. During her career on Chicago television, she hosted over 10,000 programs and, early in her tenure, worked five shows a day, seven days a week. She went on to co-create two of American television's longest-running soap operas.
D. 2/25/2020
from Wikipedia
Lois Wille
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1986
Medill BSJ 1953; MSJ 1954
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago journalist Wille launched her journalism career in 1957 at the Chicago Daily News, where she focused on urban issues and state and local politics. She was awarded the first of two Pulitzer Prizes in 1963 for Public Service for a series of critical stories that called attention to the issue of providing birth control services in the public health programs in its area. She won her second Pulitzer in 1989 for editorials on local issues while she was an associate editorial page editor at the Chicago Tribune. Her articles led to important changes in health care, housing, the juvenile court system and numerous other antiquated and corrupt institutions in Chicago. After 18 years as a Daily News reporter, she became the paper’s national correspondent. Prior to joining the Chicago Tribune, she was the editorial page editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and spent one year in the same position at the Chicago Daily News. She retired in 1991 as the Chicago Tribune’s editorial page editor. Wille was a member of the inaugural class of the Medill Hall of Achievement in 1997.
D. 7/24/2019
Nan Robertson
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1991
Medill BSJ 1948
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Robertson was a cultural reporter for The New York Times for more than 30 years. She won a 1983 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for her harrowing account of an attack of toxic shock syndrome that nearly took her life, which appeared as a cover story in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. The New York Times hired her to write about fashion and women’s news in London. In 1955 she moved to New York to cover women’s news for The Times. From 1963 to 1971, she was a Times Washington correspondent, covering the White House, Congress, presidential campaigns, voting and more. From 1972 to 1975 Robertson was based in Paris, covering France and neighboring countries and the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus. From 1975 to 1982, she reported for the Living and Style Sections. She was a member of the inaugural class of the Medill Hall of Achievement in 1977. Her 1992 book, “The Girls in the Balcony: Women, Men and The New York Times,” focused on her fight for workplace parity by female employees of The Times.”
D. 10/13/2009