1980s
Joan Wallace-Benjamin, Heller PhD’80, retired as president and CEO of the Home for Little Wanderers in January. In 2017, Steven Bloom, PhD’82, received the Eugene O’Neill Medallion from the Eugene O’Neill Society at its international conference in Galway, Ireland, along with actors Jessica Lange and Gabriel Byrne, and two other O’Neill scholars. Steven has written two books about the playwright. He joined the board of the Eugene O’Neill Society in 2000, served as the organization’s president from 2006-07 and is currently chair of its governing board of directors. He is associate vice president for academic affairs at Lasell College, in Newton, Massachusetts. Judith Eisen, PhD’82, a University of Oregon biologist and a pioneer in using zebrafish as a model to study the nervous system, was among the 213 individuals selected in April for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In November 2017, she was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Theresa Rebeck, MA’83, MFA’86, PhD’89, was featured in May in a New York Times article about creativity. In September, the same paper published a major profile of her (under the headline “‘She Should Be Revered, and She Is Not’”). Last winter, the Pulitzer Prize finalist and creator of the TV series “Smash” presented her adaptation of the Restoration comedy “The Way of the World” at the Folger Theater, in Washington, D.C. In September, her play “Bernhardt/Hamlet,” starring Janet McTeer, opened on Broadway at the American Airlines Theater. And in November, her family drama “Downstairs,” starring sibling actors Tyne Daly ’67 and Tim Daly, opened off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre.