Laura Washington

Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 2002

Sondra Gair

Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1992

BSS 1945

Public affairs Chicago radio talk show host Gair was a veteran Chicago-based broadcast journalist best known for her public affairs talk show, Midday with Sondra Gair, which aired on WBEZ and focused on international news from 1986 until her death in May 1994. She began her local radio career in the 1940s, appearing on soap operas, dramas and comedy shows, including WGN radio’s Theater of the Air the Colgate Comedy Hour, Ma Perkins, Bachelor’s Children, Woman in White and Corliss Archer.  She became a star on a CBS show titled, Meet Miss Sherlock, about a female version of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Gair became interested in news reporting, and in 1975 she joined WBEZ-FM in Chicago, primarily doing on-air interviews, which later led to her popular midday show.

Barbara Uehling

Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1985

MA 1956; Ph.D. in experimental psychology1958, Chancellor and Professor of the University of Missouri and the University of California, Santa Barbara Uehling was the first woman in the United States to lead a land-grant university. In 1981 she served as the third Chancellor and 17th chief executive officer of the University of Missouri (MU) campus in Columbia, Mo. During her tenure as Chancellor, she prioritized campus restoration. She left MU in 1987, to become Chancellor of the University of California. She later served as a senior visiting fellow on the American Council of Education in Washington, D.C. She met her first husband, Edward Uehling, while she was a Ph.D. student at Northwestern in 1958. She retired from the University of California in 1994.

Phyllis Elliott Oakley

Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1993

Lynn Nesbit

Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1994

Mary Zimmerman

Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1999

Grace Bumbry

Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1997

Lois Weisberg

Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 2003

First to serve as Chicago’s Commissioner, she was appointed by Mayor Harold Washington to head the city’s Office of Event Planning in 1983. She created the Chicago Blues Festival and in the summer of 1999 she launched the Cows on Parade exhibit – the In first in the US,  The city reaped millions of dollars in tourist trade from the exhibit and raised #3.5 million for charity when the cows were sold.  She converted an abandoned public library building into the Chicago Cultural Center and founded Friends of the Park.  In 2000 she placed 300 ping-pong tables all around town and she was the brains behind Chicago’s unique Millennium celebration.  Among her many city and arts awards:  the League of Women Voters Civic Contribution Award, Governing Magazine’s Public Official of the Year Award, the Harold Washington History Maker Award, the Chicago Tribune “Chicagoan of the Year” Award, and the 2014 Inaugural Fifth Star Award from the City of Chicago.   Born in 1925, she died in 2016. 

https://www.governing.com/poy/lois-weisberg.html