Alumni Achievement Award (Est. 1957)

The highest honor bestowed upon alumni by the University of Illinois Alumni Association on behalf of the University of Illinois. The award is presented to those alumni who have attained outstanding success and national or international distinction in their chosen profession or life’s work, and whose accomplishments reflect admirably on or bring honor to their Alma Mater.

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  Mary Schubauer-Berigan, '87 LAS

  Mary Schubauer-Berigan has achieved international distinction in her four-decade career as a cancer epidemiologist, specializing in occupational and environmental carcinogens. She has spent the last five years at the World Health Organization, in Lyon, France, as a senior epidemiologist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). There, she serves as deputy branch head of the Evidence Synthesis and Classification Branch. She also is the first woman to head the IARC Monographs Programme, the primary source for identifying preventable causes of human cancer, where she manages a staff of 16. The National Cancer Institute awarded IARC multi–million dollar grants to commission research under Schubauer-Berigan’s leadership.

  Before moving to IARC/WHO, Schubauer-Berigan was a senior research epidemiologist at the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. While there, she contributed substantively to the epidemiologic literature on workplace hazards and led the development of epidemiologic methods, including research tools used by more than 400 researchers from 50 countries. In recognition of these accomplishments, she was elected Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology in 2012.

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  George W. Lundeen, MFA '73 FAA

  George Lundeen is president of Lundeen Sculpture, a visual arts studio he founded in Loveland, Colo., in the mid-1970s. A native of Holdrege, Neb., Lundeen was a Fulbright-Hayes Scholar who studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze in Florence, Italy. He received a bachelor of arts from Hastings College in Nebraska before beginning the MFA program at Illinois. Lundeen has been commissioned to sculpt portraits and interpretive works for universities, municipalities, foundations and corporations. His commissioned work for the U of I includes the iconic statue of football legend Red Grange (2009) that stands outside Memorial Stadium, and one of Dick Butkus (2019) that is located in front of the Henry Dale and Betty Smith Football Performance Center. In 2016, the University of Illinois Springfield commissioned him to create a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln for its campus.

  Lundeen’s commissions have resulted in work for the Nebraska Historical Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania, the Atlanta National Golf Club, Nike, the University of Nebraska, the Nebraska State Capitol Building, The University of Wyoming Law Library, Dartmouth College, the Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol, the U.S. Air Force Academy, Denver’s Coors Field, and the University of Texas at Austin. His subjects have included American statesman Benjamin Franklin, business entrepreneur Red McCombs, astronaut Jack Swigert, aviation pioneer Elrey B. Jeppesen and poet Robert Frost. A member of the National Academy of Design and the National Sculpture Society, Lundeen has been recognized by the National Sculpture Society, Allied Artists of America and the North America Sculpture Exhibition.

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