This award recognizes IUP alumni by bestowing the highest honor presented by the university and the IUP Alumni Association to individuals who have reached the pinnacle of a distinguished career or have demonstrated loyal and sustained service to the university.
The College of Health and Human Services would like to recognize this year's 2021 awardees:
Shaun Gabbidon D'96
Born in England, former New Yorker Shaun Gabbidon earned degrees at Virginia's Christopher Newport University and the University of Baltimore before receiving a criminology doctorate from IUP in 1996. Now Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice at Penn State Harrisburg, he has been honored with many awards, has been a fellow at Harvard University's W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute, and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Africana Studies. His more than 100 scholarly publications include over 70 peer-reviewed articles and 13 books. In 2019, he was named a fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Last year, AcademicInfluence.com rated him the 24th most influential criminologist in the world.
Eric Zahren '90
Eric Zahren has been president and secretary of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission since 2017, the Pittsburgh-based foundation that since 1904 has recognized more than 10,000 individuals in the US and Canada. For 25 years, until his 2016 retirement, he was a special agent with the US Secret Service, ending his career as special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh Field Office. His previous assignments included presidential protection of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and assignments in Newark, New Jersey, Washington, DC, and Berlin, Germany. He received a postgraduate diploma from the University of London and, as an IUP student, studied at Germany's Duisburg University.
Past Distinguished Alumni
Mildred Gregory Grundy '33
Barbara E. Lauffer Harkins '73
Arlene E. Fleck-Kokales '75
Dorothy Holmes Leasure '41
Hester A. Munden '38
Karen Askey Owens-Pote '67
Dorothy Beale Hunter '41
Jim D. Wooding '77
William J. Herbert III '73
Grace Thomas Grainger '56
Mary Jane Miller Tuttle '47
David C. Frye '79
Helen C. Hall '69
Ann Smith Pentz '78, M'81
Susan Snell Delaney '64
The Honorable Jack E. Wagner '74
Colonel Glenn A. Walp '79
William J. Malley '75
Sylvia A. Escott-Stump '74, M'80
Sam Sandora '79
Bethann Fetzer Cinelli '80
Kimberly Brown Moore '74, M'75
Michael A. Staub '80
JoAnne M. Dechert Youngblut '77
Sally L. Stroup '78
Victoria L. Aimino Rich '71, '79
Daniel J. Larkin 82
Stephen J. Pasierb '84, M'86
Jeffrey A. Shockey '80
Susan K. Sandbach Mellott '73
Jeremy W. Critchfield '93
The Honorable Jay A. Costa, Jr. '79
Bonnie Harbison Anderson '80
Marla Prizant Weston '80
Sharon Tahl Cowden '71
L. Edwin Brown '77
Clifford Watson '74
Benjamin L. McAdoo '00
John Ninosky '93
James A. Dill '77
C, Edward Keller '74
Michael Baughman '86
Courtney Barilar Vose '92