Our alumni are groundbreakers. Leaders. Game changers making a difference. And we're pretty proud of them.
For the next year, the College of Arts and Sciences will be celebrating the enduring legacies of our alumni — the contributions they have made to the university, in their communities, and in their professions. Join us as we begin to celebrate the thinkers, doers, and leaders through a host of online events and weekly alumni spotlights on the College's social media accounts.
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The College has amazing alumni. They're just incredible, and it's so fulfilling to hear about the things they're doing and how invested they are in changing the world for the better.
Rick Van Kooten, Executive Dean
It all started with the flatworm. “I read about this little animal in high school," says H. Michael Shepard (Ph.D. '77, Biology). "The first thing that caught my attention was that, if you cut the flatworm in half, the back end can regenerate the head and the head part can regenerate the tail. And, so, I'm wondering how that works ... That's how I got in developmental biology.” Shepard would go on to develop the groundbreaking cancer drug Herceptin, which targets and slows the proliferation of tumor cells in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer. “It was building a great big old thing out of a little flatworm,” he recalls.
Elizabeth LaBorde had wanted to be a doctor since she was five. “I was pre-med for my first year or year-and-a-half,” LaBorde recalls. “I was a solid B-plus student.” But one not-so-great counselor—followed by some truly valuable mentors—would set her on a slightly different path. Today, she serves as vice president of principal and major gifts for City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles.
The IU College of Arts and Sciences certainly has had its share of greats. Case in point? Meet one of our most distinguished alumna, The Honorable Lorna G. Schofield (B.A. '77, English and Germanic Studies), who is the first Filipino-American to sit on the federal bench.
Bob Chapek (B.S. '81, Microbiology) is chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company, one of the world’s largest media and entertainment companies. This past February, he spoke with IU alumni and students during an hour-long livestream in which he discussed his Northwest Indiana roots, his path to leading one of the world’s largest entertainment companies, and an array of other topics.
Michael Weasner (B.S. '70, Astrophysics) received the Indiana University Bicentennial Medal for Astronomy Outreach in 2019. After a storied career in the Air Force and a stint in the aerospace industry, the IU alumnus now operates his own observatory and has teaches kids and adults about the importance of keeping our skies dark.
Katie Dieter (M.A. '09, Ph.D. '17, African American and African Diaspora Studies, M.A. '12, Gender Studies) is the associate director of African and African American studies (AAAS) at Stanford University, where she's passionately working at this monumental time to promote change and healing through the advancement of the vision and goals of AAAS programs.
Paul Musgrave (B.A. '04, History, Political Science) is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studies how American domestic policies affect U.S. foreign policy.
If you have any questions about our yearlong alumni celebration series, please e-mail Director of Alumni Relations Vanessa Cloe.
