President's Letter

This spring ASU graduated more than 8,000 students on May 8 in a Commencement ceremony that featured remarks by honorary doctorate recipient James J. Duderstadt, president emeritus at the University of Michigan and founder of the Millennium Project, a laboratory on the Michigan campus where new paradigms of learning institutions are designed, construct and studied. The Alumni Association hosted its Golden Reunion in conjunction with Commencement on May 7-8 for the class of 1958.

In the 50 years since the members of our Golden Reunion class receive their degrees, ASU has worked to provide educational opportunities to ever-greater numbers of students. The growing list of Sun Devil students who have been awarded "name" scholarships and fellowships such as Fulbright, Truman, Marshall, Udall and others is testament to the university's success sin nurturing both access and excellence. This issue, we highlight ASU's latest crop of fellowship award winners and take you inside their world — how they prepared for these honors, what their academic interests and passions are, and what life "on the road" during the fellowship is like for them.

The Alumni Association named its own set of outstanding scholars in April, as we introduced our 2008-09 class of Medallion Scholars. Since being reconstituted in 2006, this program — which offers four-year scholarships worth $2,750 per year to incoming freshmen who have also qualified for ASU's University Scholarship — has grown substantially, thanks to alumni generosity and growth of the Arizona DMV collegiate program. Seventeen dollars of the $25 annual fee for an ASU "Sparky plate" goes to the Medallion Scholarship program, so please support tomorrow's academic high-achievers by showing your Sun Devil pride on your bumper.

Finally take a look in this issue at our alumni news section, as we recap two of our new outreach programs designed to build relationship between graduating seniors and alumni — The Senior Send-Off and our inaugural Greek Outreach networking event. We hope to expand our programming for upperclassmen and cement connections with our newest members of the alumni family before they ever leave campus.

Christine K. Wilkinson '66, '76 Ph.D.
President, ASU Alumni Association
Senior Vice President and Secretary of the University