1970s
Barbara Wallace Grossman, MA’70, and her husband, Massachusetts State Treasurer Steve Grossman, received the annual Community Service Award from the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts for their active involvement and dynamic leadership in activities throughout the state and within the Greater Boston Jewish community. The award recognized the Grossmans’ long-standing devotion to Temple Emanuel of Newton, their love of Israel, and their dedication to and active participation in organizations such as Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Barbara has been a faculty member in the Department of Drama and Dance at Tufts University since 1991. Gene Tobin, MA’70, PhD’72, is a program officer in the Liberal Arts Colleges Program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His grant-making responsibilities at the foundation encompass the areas of faculty and curricular development, presidential leadership, undergraduate teaching and learning, educational effectiveness and institutional collaboration. Gene spent 23 years at Hamilton College as a faculty member, a department chair, the dean of faculty and the school’s 18th president. He is the co-author of “Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education,” winner of the 2006 American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Book Award. He is a member of the board of directors of Sweet Briar College. Leslie Lamport, MA’71, PhD’72, works at Microsoft Research as a computer scientist and an expert on distributed systems, temporal logic and concurrent algorithms. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. Brandeis hosted an academic conference in honor of Steve Whitfield, PhD’72, the Max Richter Professor of American Civilization. Titled “Thinker, Teacher, Scholar, Friend,” the conference — timed to coincide with Steve’s 70th birthday — celebrated his contributions to the study of America, Jewish life and intellectual history. At a separate event, Steve received the 2013 Sachar Award from the Brandeis National Committee (BNC). Named in honor of Brandeis’ founding president, Abram L. Sachar, the award is presented annually to a person of outstanding achievement in the field of education. Steve has visited every BNC chapter in the country. In addition, he has written materials for BNC study-group programs. Steve is one of the faculty most frequently mentioned by students and alumni as having profoundly and positively influenced them during their time at Brandeis. He is the author of eight books and has edited two others. Judith Kroll, MA’72, PhD’77, a professor of psychology, linguistics and women’s studies at Pennsylvania State University, received the Faculty Scholar Medal for outstanding achievement in the social and behavioral sciences. She was honored for her scholarship in the area of second-language acquisition and bilingualism. A Penn State faculty member since 1994, Judith has developed a foundational theoretical model of how language is represented cognitively. Ruben Rumbaut, MA’73, PhD’78, a University of California, Irvine, sociology professor, was elected to the National Academy of Education for outstanding contributions in educational research and policy development. He is internationally known and widely cited for his research on children and young adults raised in immigrant families of diverse nationalities and socioeconomic classes. He has authored, co-authored or edited numerous publications on the topic, including 14 books. B’nai B’rith International Executive Director Daniel Mariaschin, MA’73, received the Distinguished Humanitarian Award from B’nai B’rith during ceremonies on April 25 in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes a long-term and exemplary dedication to advancing human rights through both professional and personal commitments. Daniel has worked for B’nai B’rith for 25 years. In his current role, which includes directing the organization’s International Center for Human Rights and Public Policy, he oversees all B’nai B’rith programs, services and staff in more than 50 countries. Frederick Hoxie, MA’76, PhD’77, the Swanlund Professor of History at the University of Illinois, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. At Illinois, he is a Center for Advanced Study Professor of History and holds appointments in the College of Law and in the university’s American Indian studies program. Frederick has taught at Antioch College and Northwestern University, and has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. Ivy Schweitzer, MA’76, PhD’83, a professor of English at Dartmouth, won the lifetime achievement award in early American literature from the Modern Language Association’s Division for American Literature Before 1800. She was the first winner of the award since 2009 and just the third woman recipient. Since 1990, she has served as an editor for the “Heath Anthology of American Literature,” working on the volume that covers the period 1400-1800. Ivy has been influential in exploring literary voices beyond the Puritans. She is in the midst of her third scholarly study of American women writers from 1650-1990.