WAA News
Voices Heard ’Round the World
WAA honors UW-Madison’s distinguished alumni.
Six alumni who worked for positive change in their communities, their countries, or the world were honored at the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumni Awards program in May. The honorees were chosen for having demonstrated what the power of a voice alone — or several thousand joined together — can do.
The 2006 program marked the seventieth anniversary of the annual event, which is part of Alumni Weekend. The recipients, who came back to campus and the Wisconsin Union Theater to accept their awards, included Quarles & Brady-Madison attorney Jeffrey Bartell, retired governor of Delaware Russell Peterson, former UW athletic director Pat Richter, and Florida International University professor Judith Hicks Stiehm. The two Distinguished Young Alumni Awards, which honor exemplary UW-Madison graduates under the age of forty, were given to Benjamin Karlin, executive producer of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, and to Jean Geran, a member of the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State.
“The voices of our 2006 Distinguished Alumni Award winners have resounded throughout the world, mobilizing support for a clean environment, for universal education, for thoughtful political action, for furthering the arts, and for peace,” says Paula Bonner MS’78, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Alumni Association. “They are making sure that the many diverse voices that emerge from the University of Wisconsin benefit all of us.”
Six alumni who worked for positive change in their communities, their countries, or the world were honored at the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumni Awards program in May. The honorees were chosen for having demonstrated what the power of a voice alone — or several thousand joined together — can do.
The 2006 program marked the seventieth anniversary of the annual event, which is part of Alumni Weekend. The recipients, who came back to campus and the Wisconsin Union Theater to accept their awards, included Quarles & Brady-Madison attorney Jeffrey Bartell, retired governor of Delaware Russell Peterson, former UW athletic director Pat Richter, and Florida International University professor Judith Hicks Stiehm. The two Distinguished Young Alumni Awards, which honor exemplary UW-Madison graduates under the age of forty, were given to Benjamin Karlin, executive producer of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, and to Jean Geran, a member of the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State.
“The voices of our 2006 Distinguished Alumni Award winners have resounded throughout the world, mobilizing support for a clean environment, for universal education, for thoughtful political action, for furthering the arts, and for peace,” says Paula Bonner MS’78, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Alumni Association. “They are making sure that the many diverse voices that emerge from the University of Wisconsin benefit all of us.”
Jeffrey Bartell ’65, JD’68 was Wisconsin’s assistant attorney general from 1968 to 1971. When he was appointed Wisconsin commissioner of securities at age twenty-nine in 1972, he became the youngest securities commissioner in the country. For fifteen years in a row, Woodward/White, a New York corporation that lists the top legal talent in the United States, has named Bartell one of the best lawyers in America.
Not only has his law career been one of service to the state, but Bartell has dedicated significant time and energy to UW-Madison and the state’s arts community. He chaired the $1 million capital campaign for the Memorial Union Director’s Fund, and since 1992, he has been chair of the Wisconsin Foundation for the Arts. Bartell was instrumental in the creation of two of Madison’s signature icons, the Monona Terrace and Overture Center for the Performing Arts. Bartell’s late parents, Gerald ’37, MPH’40 and Joyce ’38 Bartell, received a joint Distinguished Alumni Award in 1978, making him the first second-generation graduate to receive the award.
As a chemist at DuPont in the 1940s and 1950s, Russell Peterson ’38, PhD’42 was a leader in the development of the synthetic fiber Dacron. He served as governor of Delaware from 1969 to 1973. He spent his four-year term instituting long-overdue reforms, such as abolishing the whipping post and debtors’ prison. A pioneering environmentalist, Peterson successfully blocked an attempt to convert the state’s unspoiled coastal zone into a multi-billion dollar network of refineries and petrochemical complexes. In 1971, Peterson was named the World Wildlife Fund’s Conservationist of the Year.
As the founding chair of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, Peterson was the first politician to call for a worldwide ban on the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). In 1978, he found his dream job when he was named president of the National Audubon Society, where he served for six
Not only has his law career been one of service to the state, but Bartell has dedicated significant time and energy to UW-Madison and the state’s arts community. He chaired the $1 million capital campaign for the Memorial Union Director’s Fund, and since 1992, he has been chair of the Wisconsin Foundation for the Arts. Bartell was instrumental in the creation of two of Madison’s signature icons, the Monona Terrace and Overture Center for the Performing Arts. Bartell’s late parents, Gerald ’37, MPH’40 and Joyce ’38 Bartell, received a joint Distinguished Alumni Award in 1978, making him the first second-generation graduate to receive the award.
As a chemist at DuPont in the 1940s and 1950s, Russell Peterson ’38, PhD’42 was a leader in the development of the synthetic fiber Dacron. He served as governor of Delaware from 1969 to 1973. He spent his four-year term instituting long-overdue reforms, such as abolishing the whipping post and debtors’ prison. A pioneering environmentalist, Peterson successfully blocked an attempt to convert the state’s unspoiled coastal zone into a multi-billion dollar network of refineries and petrochemical complexes. In 1971, Peterson was named the World Wildlife Fund’s Conservationist of the Year.
As the founding chair of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, Peterson was the first politician to call for a worldwide ban on the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). In 1978, he found his dream job when he was named president of the National Audubon Society, where he served for six
Pat Richter ’64, JD’71 holds the record for the longest tenured UW-Madison director of athletics — he served from 1989 to 2004, a period now known as “The Richter Era.”
He brought the department out of a $2.1 million budget deficit and led it into compliance with Title IX regulations. Wisconsin student athletes earned more Academic All-Big Ten honors during the 1990s than any other school in the conference. A three-sport letterman himself, Richter played baseball, basketball, and football. As athletic director, he led the UW to three national championships, forty-nine Big Ten championships, and eight bowl games.
When Richter stepped down from his athletic director’s role in 2004, Chancellor John Wiley MS’65, PhD’68 said, “Pat’s commitment and service to the University of Wisconsin, through three administrations, is beyond compare. Through his leadership and ability to assemble a strong departmental team, UW Athletics is more fiscally sound, more highly competitive, and more visible worldwide than ever before.”
In her days on campus, Judith Hicks Stiehm ’57 was a student senator, co-founder of a literary magazine, and chair of the Union Art Gallery. An ardent advocate for women’s rights, she became vice-provost at the University of Southern California in 1984, when few women were being appointed to such posts. She is the author or coauthor of nine books, including her most recent, Champions for Peace: Women Winners of the Nobel Prize for Peace.
He brought the department out of a $2.1 million budget deficit and led it into compliance with Title IX regulations. Wisconsin student athletes earned more Academic All-Big Ten honors during the 1990s than any other school in the conference. A three-sport letterman himself, Richter played baseball, basketball, and football. As athletic director, he led the UW to three national championships, forty-nine Big Ten championships, and eight bowl games.
When Richter stepped down from his athletic director’s role in 2004, Chancellor John Wiley MS’65, PhD’68 said, “Pat’s commitment and service to the University of Wisconsin, through three administrations, is beyond compare. Through his leadership and ability to assemble a strong departmental team, UW Athletics is more fiscally sound, more highly competitive, and more visible worldwide than ever before.”
In her days on campus, Judith Hicks Stiehm ’57 was a student senator, co-founder of a literary magazine, and chair of the Union Art Gallery. An ardent advocate for women’s rights, she became vice-provost at the University of Southern California in 1984, when few women were being appointed to such posts. She is the author or coauthor of nine books, including her most recent, Champions for Peace: Women Winners of the Nobel Prize for Peace.
In 1995, the Peacekeeping Institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, invited Stiehm to be a visiting professor. For her research there, the army bestowed its highest civilian honor, a Distinguished Civilian Service Medal.
In 2000, Stiehm traveled to Namibia, where her research on gender and peacekeeping was the subject of a three-day conference. That report formed the foundation on which United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 was built. The groundbreaking measure was the first-ever to require women’s participation at peace negotiations. Its first implementation was in Afghanistan following 9/11.
Stiehm has been a member of the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations and was appointed to the U.S. Defense Advisory Committee on Women in Service. She recently mobilized support to build a girls’ school in rural Afghanistan, which will soon open its doors.
The first of two Distinguished Young Alumni Awards was presented to Jean Geran PhD’01. When she came to UW-Madison to earn her PhD, Geran brought with her field experience in Africa and Asia for international nonprofits, and previous positions at the United Nations and the World Bank. With this background and her Thai language skills, she was the ideal candidate to research the effects of Thailand’s 1997 economic crisis on the poor in remote, rural areas.
In 2000, Stiehm traveled to Namibia, where her research on gender and peacekeeping was the subject of a three-day conference. That report formed the foundation on which United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 was built. The groundbreaking measure was the first-ever to require women’s participation at peace negotiations. Its first implementation was in Afghanistan following 9/11.
Stiehm has been a member of the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations and was appointed to the U.S. Defense Advisory Committee on Women in Service. She recently mobilized support to build a girls’ school in rural Afghanistan, which will soon open its doors.
The first of two Distinguished Young Alumni Awards was presented to Jean Geran PhD’01. When she came to UW-Madison to earn her PhD, Geran brought with her field experience in Africa and Asia for international nonprofits, and previous positions at the United Nations and the World Bank. With this background and her Thai language skills, she was the ideal candidate to research the effects of Thailand’s 1997 economic crisis on the poor in remote, rural areas.
After graduation, Geran was employed by the U.S. Department of State. Soon after she was hired, reports began circulating that the Burmese army had raped hundreds of Shan women in the area just over the border from the site of her earlier fieldwork. When Burmese military leaders denied the reports, Geran volunteered to go to Thailand to gather testimony from the women. Her interviews raised international awareness and spurred the State Department to initiate a U.N.-led investigation into the incidents.
Sent to Iraq in 2003, Geran helped create the first Abuse Prevention Unit, charged with preventing and investigating human rights abuses in humanitarian assistance programs. She helped document the country’s many mass graves, a leftover of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Benjamin Karlin ’93 arrived in Madison in 1989, not knowing what he was going to study and sick with mononucleosis. After one semester, he joined the staff of the Daily Cardinal as a sportswriter and columnist. He used that experience to get a freelance job at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona for United Press International.
In 1995, Karlin became the editor of The Onion, Madison’s popular satirical newspaper. A year later, he moved to Hollywood to work on a variety of television projects. He contributed material to the feature film Ice Age and the Cartoon Network’s Space Ghost Coast to Coast. In 1999, Jon Stewart, who was impressed with Karlin’s work on The Onion, appointed him as head writer for The Daily Show. Karlin has received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing and a Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting. Today, he is the show’s executive producer and executive producer of The Daily Show’s spinoff, The Colbert Report.
If you’d like to learn more, you can view biographical videos of the 2006 Distinguished Alumni Award recipients at uwalumni.com/daa.
Sent to Iraq in 2003, Geran helped create the first Abuse Prevention Unit, charged with preventing and investigating human rights abuses in humanitarian assistance programs. She helped document the country’s many mass graves, a leftover of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Benjamin Karlin ’93 arrived in Madison in 1989, not knowing what he was going to study and sick with mononucleosis. After one semester, he joined the staff of the Daily Cardinal as a sportswriter and columnist. He used that experience to get a freelance job at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona for United Press International.
In 1995, Karlin became the editor of The Onion, Madison’s popular satirical newspaper. A year later, he moved to Hollywood to work on a variety of television projects. He contributed material to the feature film Ice Age and the Cartoon Network’s Space Ghost Coast to Coast. In 1999, Jon Stewart, who was impressed with Karlin’s work on The Onion, appointed him as head writer for The Daily Show. Karlin has received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing and a Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting. Today, he is the show’s executive producer and executive producer of The Daily Show’s spinoff, The Colbert Report.
If you’d like to learn more, you can view biographical videos of the 2006 Distinguished Alumni Award recipients at uwalumni.com/daa.
