Alumni Pride
Our Arts and Sciences alumni are an enormous source of pride and inspiration. In 2005, for example, three more of our graduates were honored with Pulitzer Prizes. Nick Anderson (Political Science) was honored in the editorial cartooning category, Walt Bogdanich (Journalism) for national reporting, and Julia Keller (English) for feature writing.
Now more than 160,000 strong—a full 40% of the university’s total living alumni population—Arts and Sciences alumni have followed almost every career path imaginable. Two have been recently featured on prime time television: two-time Emmy winner Patricia Heaton (Theatre) starred in Everybody Loves Raymond, and Melina Kanakaredes (Theatre) is featured in CSI: New York. Behind the scenes in news and entertainment, our alums include former CBS president Frank Stanton (Psychology); Carole Black (English), who recently headed Lifetime Television; Leonard Downie Jr. (Journalism), managing editor of The Washington Post; and Rand Morrison (English), executive producer of CBS News Sunday Morning.
Arts and Sciences alumni who have worked in the diplomatic world include Ljubica Acevska (International Studies), the first ambassador to the United States from Macedonia; Sengalese Ambassador to the U.S., Amadou L. Ba (Entomology); Milton Wolf (Chemistry and Biology), who was U.S. Ambassador to Austria; and John Ong (History), who recently served in Norway. In addition, of Ohio State’s two Nobel Laureates—Paul Flory in chemistry and William Fowler in physics—both are Arts and Sciences alumni.
John Jakes (English), chronicler of Revolutionary and Civil War action; R.L. Stine (English), icon of adolescent literature with the Goosebumps series; Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (Fine Art), Oscar-winning actress Eileen Heckert (Theatre), and humorist James Thurber (English) are all Arts and Sciences alumni. So are internationally acclaimed clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and noted opera singers Theresa Cincione, Barbara Daniels, and Diane Kesling (all Music), as are immunologist Howard M. Johnson (Microbiology and Biological Sciences), Olympian Stephanie Hightower (Communications), astronaut Nancy Currie (Arts and Sciences Interdisciplinary Program), renowned educator Samuel DuBois Cook (Political Science), and historian Douglas Brinkley (History).
The entrepreneurial spirit of Arts and Sciences graduates is personified in the work of those who strive to make the world a better place: Barbara Ferris (Sociology) founded the International Women’s Democracy Center to teach women around the world how to run for office; Tim Rosta (Journalism) raised millions of dollars for Lifebeat, the music industry’s response to the AIDS crisis; Daniel Katz (Chinese) founded the Rainforest Alliance to preserve a critical part of the Earth’s ecosystem; and Judah Folkman (Biology) is blazing new trails in cancer research that may soon suggest more effective treatments.
