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Distinguished Alumni Award Winners 2012

May 1, 2012

Distinguished Alumni Award Winners 2012

The College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Alumni Awards were presented to Dianne Ruth McIntyre, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, R.L. Stine, Lonnie G. Thompson and Stephen Eric Chappelear on April 27, 2012. The Annual College Of Arts And Sciences Distinguished Alumni Awards Dinner gave us an opportunity to recognize and honor those whose accomplishments are tangible evidence of the distinction of arts and sciences alumni.

Dianne Ruth McIntyre - Distinguished Achievement Award


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(BFA, dance, 1969), choreographer, dancer, director, and scholar, is a Cleveland, Ohio native who resided in New York City as a dance artist for more than 30 years. McIntyre has performed virtually around the world, from Hollywood to Broadway to Europe and back, on big stages, dance floors, film sets, and concert halls.

A 2007 John S. Guggenheim Fellow for Choreography, McIntyre founded Harlem’s legendary dance/music ensemble, Sounds in Motion, operated a popular dance studio, and mentored hundreds of young aspiring dancers who have gone on to exemplary careers. 2012 is the 40th anniversary of the founding of Sounds in Motion. She has choreographed for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Dallas Black Dance, as well as college dance groups.

McIntyre’s work in theatre has been for Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional productions and London, England. Her theatre choreography credits of more than thirty plays include Mule Bone, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Spell #7, Crowns and Scott Joplin’s opera, Treemonisha. For film, McIntyre’s work appears in Beloved and for television, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, Langston Hughes: The Dream Keeper and Miss Evers’ Boys, for which she received an Emmy nomination.

McIntyre continues to enjoy a busy career in dance – in teaching and choreographic residencies for university dance departments; for choreography for theatre – regional US and Broadway; choreography for professional dance companies nationally, producing her own ensembles in dance-theatre works, and even performing. She continues to mentor young dance artists from around the country. She is now seen as a pioneer in her own right. This fall she will be honored by American Dance Guild in New York City.

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Ellen Mosley-Thompson - Distinguished Achievement Award


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(PhD, geography, 1979), Distinguished University Professor of Geography and director of Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research Center. Mosley-Thompson is considered one of the world’s leading experts on paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climates. She has led nine expeditions to Antarctica and six to Greenland to retrieve ice cores.

Mosley-Thompson was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, the American Philosophical Society in 2009 and is a Fellow in the American Geophysical Union. She is also a member of the National Research Council’s National Academy of Sciences’ Polar Research Board.

Mosley-Thompson and her research partner and husband, Lonnie Thompson, founded the world-class Ice Core Paleoclimate Research Group (ICPRG) at Ohio State, which has a distinguished history of conducting cutting edge science. The group deployed the first solar-powered drill system and have remained at the forefront of the light-weight thermal and electro-mechanical drilling that is required for these logistically challenging programs.

Ellen and Lonnie Thompson have created one of the most impressive “libraries” of the Earth’s climate history, located here at Ohio State. Under their leadership, the Byrd Polar Research Center has amassed the second largest archive of prehistoric ice core samples in the world.

As director of the Byrd Polar Research Center, Mosley-Thompson leads a highly respected research team focusing on paleoclimatology. Her work in retrieving and analyzing ice cores drilled from glaciers in some of the world’s most remote sites has shown some of the clearest evidence to date of serious climate change around the world.

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R.L. Stine - Distinguished Achievement Award


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(BA, English, 1965), was born in Columbus, Ohio. His mother Anne Stine, was homemaker and his father, Lewis Stine was a shipping clerk. Stine is one of the best-selling children’s authors in history. His Goosebumps series, along with such series as Fear Street, The Nightmare Room, Rotten School, and Mostly Ghostly have sold nearly 400 million books in this country alone. They are translated into 32 languages.

The Goosebumps television series was the top-rated kids’ series for three years in a row. Stine’s television movies, including The Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It and Mostly Ghostly, are perennial Halloween favorites. The Haunting Hour is to begin its third season on The Hub Network.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Goosebumps book series, which comprises over 100 books. Stine continues to turn out Goosebumps books, published by Scholastic. In addition, his first hardcover horror novel for adults in many years, titled Red Rain, will be published by Touchstone books in October, 2012.

Stine has been honored with many awards, including the Disney Children’s Choice Award and the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award. In 2011, he was honored by the International Thriller Writers, as Thrillermaster, at their annual banquet.

Stine says that he enjoys his job of “scaring kids.” And he’s delighted to be terrifying a whole new generation of kids. But the biggest thrill for him is the millions of young people who have discovered the joys of reading through his books.

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Lonnie G. Thompson - Distinguished Achievement Award


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(PhD, geology, 1976), Distinguished University Professor in Earth Sciences and senior research scientist, Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research Center, has led more than 50 expeditions to ice caps and glaciers on five continents, retrieving ice cores that contain a diary of past climate conditions around the globe, some dating back more than 750,000 years. His observations of glacier retreat over the last three decades confirm that glaciers around the world are melting and provide clear evidence that the warming of the last 50 years is now outside the range of climate variability for several millennia, if not longer.

Thompson is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the recipient of the National Medal of Science, arguably the highest honor the United States bestows on an American scientist and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the environmental science equivalent of a Nobel Prize. He has been named one of America’s Best by Time and CNN; and featured as one of “25 leaders who are fighting to stave off the planetwide catastrophe” in Rolling Stone.

His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Geographic Society, among others.

Thompson and his research partner and wife, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, served as advisers to former Vice President Al Gore in the production of his 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Author, mountaineer and scientist Mark Bowen chronicled Thompson’s research career in his 2005 book, Thin Ice. In the book, Bowen stated, Lonnie Thompson occupies that narrow perch on the adventure’s summit alongside Ernest Shackleton.

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Stephen Eric Chappelear - Distinguished Service Award


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(BA, social sciences, 1974, JD, 1977), is the managing partner of the Columbus, Ohio offices of Hahn Loeser + Parks LLP, one of the premier law firms in the country. He has nearly 35 years of experience in business litigation, construction law, patent and trademark litigation, dispute resolution and appeals.

Chappelear is the current president of the National Conference of Bar Foundations and serves as the chair of the Trial Techniques Committee of the American Bar Association Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section. He is the past president of the Ohio State Bar Foundation, the Ohio State Bar Association and the Columbus Bar Association.

Among his many accomplishments, Chappelear is the recipient of the Ohio State Bar Foundation 2012 Ritter Award, the highest honor given by the Foundation.

In addition to his impressive contributions to the legal profession and to the Columbus community, Chappelear is an ardent supporter of Ohio State. In 2006, he was instrumental in getting the SBS Alumni Society off the ground by providing legal guidance in crafting the Society’s constitution and by-laws. He currently serves as a member of the OSU Moritz College of Law National Council and president of its Law Alumni Association.

In 2009, when the university announced the move to a unified College of Arts and Sciences, Chappelear stepped up to assume the leadership role in moving the SBS Alumni Society into the new Arts and Sciences Alumni Society. His strong leadership skills were a tremendous asset in building the consensus and support necessary to ensure a smooth transition.

Chappelear is a leader, a consensus builder, a team player, a volunteer, and most of all a Buckeye who deeply cares about the future of Ohio State.

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