Hinton, Malafa head list of UW-Green Bay alumni award honorees
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has announced the recipients of major awards to be presented at the 2012 Alumni Association Awards Nights on Saturday, April 28.
The annual ceremony recognizing alumni who have made special contributions to the University and to their communities will take place this year in the Grand Foyer of the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts. Recipients are selected by a committee made up of University and Alumni Association representatives.
Two individuals will receive Distinguished Alumni Awards. They are:
Maria Hinton
Maria Hinton, Class of 1979, graduate in Communication and the Arts — At 101 years of age, the revered Tribal Elder remains an active force in preserving Oneida stories, language and culture. Her keen memory was critical to the Oneida preserve-the-language movement. She is one of Wisconsin’s last surviving native speakers — she grew up on old Seymour Road in a household that spoke only Oneida, learning English at the government school at age 10. After receiving her UW-Green Bay diploma she helped found the tribe’s Turtle Elementary School and taught there for two decades, well into her 90s. Only two years ago, Mrs. Hinton and Prof. Cliff Abbott completed their invaluable, long-awaited recording of a spoken-word dictionary of Oneida. In 2009 the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian presented its first NMAI Prism Award to Hinton in recognition of her lifelong work preserving Oneida language and culture.
Dr. Mokenge Malafa
Dr. Mokenge Malafa, Class of 1982, Human Adaptability — Malafa is a nationally prominent surgeon and leading researcher in the fight against cancer. Malafa grew up in a small African village in the nation of Cameroon and moved away to boarding school in Paris as a teen. It was there a mentor told him to investigate the excellence of the UW System and its Green Bay campus for studies in pre-med. Malafa is chair of the Department of Gastrointestinal Oncology at the Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute at the University of South Florida, located in Tampa. He specializes in surgical oncology, often with patients battling pancreatic cancer, and has been named to the “Best Doctors in America” list of specialists most often named by other doctors as the ones they’d choose to see. In his previous position as an assistant professor of surgery at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, he received the award for “best faculty member” as voted by the graduating class. Malafa attended medical school at UW-Madison with surgical residency at the Medical College of Ohio, Toledo.
Jacqueline Frank
Two individuals will receive Outstanding Recent Alumni Awards, which are presented to alumni within 15 years of graduation who are making important contributions to their communities and professions.
Jacqueline Frank ’00 English and History, is executive director of the highly regarded National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, and has been a frequent collaborator with UW-Green Bay faculty and students on history-related projects.
Dr. Laura Rammer ’01 Mathematics, operates her own dental practice in the Sheboygan area and has already won statewide recognition in her field.
Dr. Laura Rammer
The April 28 awards program will begin with a 5 p.m. social and will follow with dinner at 6 p.m. The cost is $30 per person. For more information, or to register for the event, contact the UW-Green Bay Alumni Office at (920) 465-2074 or alumni@uwgb.edu.
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