NEBHE's 2009 New England Higher Education Awards were held on Friday, March 6, 2009 at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf Hotel in Boston,
Massachusetts. Over 450 guests attended the gala dinner.
The 2009 New England Higher Education Excellence Awards Recipients
Special Recognition Award Recipients
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Jason Li, Co-Chairman, U.S. – China Partnership Committee / Senior Advisor, Beijing Education Commission
In appreciation of his commitment to fostering a spirit of partnership, educational collaboration and greater global cooperation between the six New England states and China.
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Stephen J. Reno, Former Chancellor, University System of New Hampshire
and
Robert Clarke, Former Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges
For their leadership, service and tireless advocacy for students and for the vital mission of public higher education.
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Regional Excellence Award Recipients
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The Eleanor M. McMahon Award for Lifetime Achievement
David S. Wolk
President, Castleton State College
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The Governor Walter R. Peterson Award for Leadership
The Hon. George J. Mitchell
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The David C. Knapp Award for Trusteeship
Paul J. Holloway
Chair, Board of Trustees, Community College System of New Hampshire
and
Lawrence D. McHugh
Chair, Board of Trustees, Connecticut State University System
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The Robert J. McKenna Award for Program Achievement
Sol Gittleman
Former Provost, Tufts University
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State Merit Award Recipients
About the recipients
The Eleanor M. McMahon Award for Lifetime Achievement
 David S. Wolk
David S. Wolk became president of Castleton State College in December 2001. He has overseen an increased involvement by the college in the local community and an expanded commitment to civic engagement and service learning.
During Wolk’s tenure, new construction at Castleton included an $8 million residence hall, fitness center and three 36-bed residence houses. The college’s Fine Arts Center was renovated, and an enlarged and renovated science center opened in 2007. In addition, the Castleton athletic program was reinvigorated and significant investments have been made in the arts and sciences and in the library.
The college is also currently engaged in the Castleton Student Initiative, a $26 million project to improve and expand the Campus Center and athletic facilities, completing a more than $51 million investment in new buildings and renovations during this decade.
Prior to his role at Castleton State College, Wolk served as a guidance counselor and teacher, principal of Barstow Memorial School in Chittenden, principal of Rutland High School, superintendent of schools in Rutland City and Vermont's Commissioner of Education. He was a Vermont state senator and Gov. Howard Dean's chief of policy.
Wolk is currently president of the North Atlantic Conference and a member of Vermont Campus Compact, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and the Vermont Higher Education Funding Commission.
The Governor Walter R. Peterson Award for Leadership
 The Hon. George J. Mitchell
The Hon. George J. Mitchell represented Maine in the U.S. Senate from 1980 to 1995 and served as majority leader from 1989 to 1995. After leaving the Senate, Mitchell served as U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland and chaired the all-party peace negotiations that led to the Belfast Peace Agreement, which was signed on Good Friday 1998. He currently chairs the global law firm DLA Piper US LLP and serves as chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland. In January, he was tapped by President Barack Obama to be the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.
Mitchell served as a trial attorney for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington from 1960 to 1962 and as executive assistant to U.S. Sen. Edmund S. Muskie from 1962 to 1965. He practiced law in Portland, Maine, for the next 12 years and was assistant county attorney for Cumberland County, Maine, in 1971.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Mitchell U.S. Attorney for Maine. He served in that capacity from 1977 to 1979, when he was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine. Mitchell served as a federal judge until 1980, when Maine Gov. Joseph Brennan appointed him to the Senate to replace Muskie, who had resigned to become U.S. secretary of state.
After leaving the Senate in 1995, Mitchell joined the Washington, D.C., law firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand and later became the firm's chair.
From 2006 to 2007, Mitchell chaired an independent investigation into the illegal use of performance-enhancing substances in Major League Baseball. In 2008, Time magazine included him on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
He is the founder of the Senator George J. Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute in Portland, Maine, whose mission is to increase the likelihood that young people from every community in Maine will aspire to, pursue and achieve a college education.
The David C. Knapp Award for Trusteeship
 Paul J. Holloway
Paul J. Holloway is chair of the New Hampshire Community College System Board of Trustees. He was first appointed to the board in January 2004 and has been selected as chair three times since 2006. He also served on the University System of New Hampshire Board of Trustees for 16 years, chairing the board for the final four years of his tenure.
Holloway is one of three commissioners for the New Hampshire Lottery and a member of the boards of the New Hampshire Automobile Dealers Association, the National Automobile Dealer Charitable Foundation and the Automotive Youth Education System.
He purchased his first dealership in 1967 in Exeter, N.H., and currently owns three dealerships in New Hampshire representing Mercedes-Benz, Buick, Pontiac, GMC and Cadillac.
He has held leadership positions on numerous dealer councils and organizations, including serving as chair of the National Automobile Dealers Association, an affiliation of more than 19,000 retailers of domestic and foreign vehicles.
Holloway’s family endowed the Paul J. Holloway Prize Business Competition at the University of New Hampshire and established the Little Harbour Charitable Foundation, which has raised more than $1 million for children’s causes.
Lawrence D. McHugh has been on the Board of Trustees for the Connecticut State University System since 1983 and has been appointed by four governors to the post. He was appointed its chairman in September 1995 by Gov. John G. Rowland and reappointed in 2005 by Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
McHugh has been president of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce since 1983, taking the chamber from 282 members to 2,400 members that employ more than 50,000 people. He supervises an office staff of 22 employees that went from an annual budget of $109,000 in 1982-83 to $2.1 million in the year 2006-07.
Previously, McHugh was executive director of M-X Development Corp., where he headed the fundraising office of Mercy and Xavier High Schools, and a teacher at Xavier and Durham high schools, in addition to coaching football for 21 years at Xavier High School. He was signed in 1961 to the American Football League’s New York Titans and released in 1962 due to an injury.
McHugh has been inducted into six athletic halls of fame and one business hall of honor. He is on the Board of Directors for Liberty Bank, Llyman Corporation and the Goodspeed Opera House
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The Robert J. McKenna Award for Program Achievement
 Sol Gittleman
Sol Gittleman served as senior vice president and provost of Tufts University from 1985 until he stepped down in 2002. He began his career at Tufts in 1964 as an assistant professor of German and was appointed associate professor in 1966 and professor in 1971.
Gittleman chaired the university’s Department of German and Russian from 1966 to 1981. In 1981 he was appointed provost and academic vice president. In 1992, he was named the Alice and Nathan Gantcher Professor of Judaic Studies. He was also named the Alice and Nathan Gantcher University Professor, one of three such university professors currently at Tufts.
He has authored books on German literature, East European Jewish literature and the American immigrant experience. He continues to teach courses on the migration of East European Jewish literature to America and on American baseball history. Gittleman has lectured extensively on topics of American immigration, baseball and comparative religion, particularly the religions of Abraham and the history of war in the name of God.
He has received two Fulbright awards, the Harbison Prize of the Danforth Foundation for Outstanding Teaching and a citation as Professor of the Year from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.
Connecticut State Merit Award
 Merle W. Harris
Merle W. Harris is president emerita of Charter Oak State College, Connecticut’s distance learning college. She held the position of president from 1989 until she retired in 2008. From June 1995 through June 1996, she took a leave from Charter Oak to serve as interim president of Central Connecticut State University.
Harris is currently consulting and teaching part-time in the University of Hartford’s doctoral program in Educational Leadership and an online undergraduate course for Charter Oak State College.
She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness and the Board of Connecticut Landmarks, whose governance committee she chairs.
Earlier in her career, Harris worked at the Connecticut Department of Higher Education, eventually rising to the position of deputy commissioner of higher education. She directed a number of major policy studies and served on task forces and study groups examining teacher education, nursing, vocational education, adult education and educational technology.
She also served as career education coordinator for the Bloomfield Public Schools and as staff to the Joint Committee on Education for the Connecticut General Assembly.
Maine State Merit Award
 Robert L. Woodbury
Robert L. Woodbury served as chancellor of the seven-campus University of Maine System from 1986 to 1993 and again in 1995. Prior to his tenure as chancellor, he was president of the University of Southern Maine from 1979 to 1986.
Woodbury speaks, writes and consults on issues of higher education and public policy. He was a consultant for the Association of Governing Boards from 2001 until 2008 and worked in more than 20 states and several foreign countries.
From 1968 to 1979, Woodbury was a faculty member and senior administrator at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was also the director of the John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston and interim dean of the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine.
He has chaired the boards of the New England Board of Higher Education, the Maine Community Foundation, the Council on International Educational Exchange, Maine Public Broadcasting, the American University in Bulgaria and the Year 2000 Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care for the state of Maine. He has also served as a trustee of Amherst College, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Maine Humanities Council, the Maine Maritime Museum and the boards of both Maine Medical Center and Eastern Maine Medical Center.
Woodbury has been a faculty member at the California Institute of Technology, a Five-College Professor at Amherst College and a Visiting Scholar at the University of London.
Massachusetts State Merit Award
 Sen. Frederick E. Berry
Sen. Frederick E. Berry is serving his 14th term in the Massachusetts state Senate, representing the communities of Beverly, Danvers, Peabody, Salem and Topsfield. He has served as senate majority leader since 2003.
Since being elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1982, Berry has served in a variety of leadership roles including senate assistant majority leader, majority whip, vice-chairman of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, chairman of the Committee on Steering and Policy and the senate chair of the Joint Committee on Housing and Urban Development.
He also served as the Senate chairman of the Legislative Children’s Caucus for 11 years and was the lead sponsor of legislation that created the Children’s Trust Fund, which funds child abuse prevention programs in Massachusetts.
Before serving in the Senate, Berry was a rehabilitation professional at the Hogan Vocational Center, a setting for adults with mental retardation. He later served as executive director for Heritage Industries, which provides day programs for individuals with physical and mental challenges. He also held a councilor-at-large seat on the Peabody City Council for four years.
Berry is a strong advocate and champion of early learning initiatives, such as Early Intervention, a program that provides resources and guidance to children with developmental delays. He is the founder and president of F.B. Charities Inc., a charitable organization that funds social and educational programs for children on the North Shore.
New Hampshire State Merit Award
 The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communications
The Fitzwater Center for Communication was established in 2002 at Franklin Pierce University as an academic institute dedicated to preparing young adults to be politically-engaged leaders of conscience in their studies and professions. The Fitzwater Center was named for its primary benefactor, Marlin Fitzwater, who was the only White House press secretary to have been appointed by two presidents (Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush).
Since its founding, the Fitzwater Center for Communication has gained a national reputation for the caliber of student journalists who hone their skills through its hands-on learning and mentoring programs.
In 2007, student journalists worked alongside national correspondents and news producers during the presidential debates and the New Hampshire primary. In the months leading to the primary, students helped generate a series of Franklin Pierce University/WBZ-TV political polls that were cited by media around the country.
In 2008, teams of student reporters attended the Democratic and Republican National Conventions where they interviewed national political figures and media pundits, then filed reports for Franklin Pierce University media as well as WMUR-TV and the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader newspaper. Students earned the distinction of being WMUR’s “top bloggers” during the party national conventions. Also, students’ video coverage of the New Hampshire primary helped the center’s YouTube channel gain a Top 100 world viewership ranking for several hours on primary day.
Rhode Island State Merit Award
 The Hon. John C. Revens, Jr.
The Hon. John C. Revens, Jr. is a partner in the law firm of Revens, Revens & St. Pierre in Warwick, R.I.
He previously served in the Rhode Island state Senate from 1974 until 2008. During his years in the Senate, he served in the positions of senate majority whip, senate judiciary chairman, senate majority leader and senate president pro tempore.
Revens also served three terms in the Rhode Island House of Representatives, beginning in 1968 during his senior year of college.
His community involvement includes serving as chair of the New England Board of Higher Education from 1977 through 1980, chair of the Rhode Island Children’s Code Commission, solicitor for the Town of North Kingstown and chair of the Senate Presidents’ Forum, a non-partisan organization serving the presiding officers of the 50 state senates in the United States.
His legislative accomplishments include passage of legislation establishing the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families and the Rhode Island Office of the Child Advocate, establishing the Brown University Medical School and a constitutional amendment reducing the size of the Rhode Island General Assembly.
Vermont State Merit Award
 Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center
The Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center is a statewide nonprofit center with headquarters at Vermont Technical College in Randolph Center, Vt. The center provides hands-on assistance, coaching and training to Vermont manufacturers and, through the VMEC Process Strategies Group business unit, to selected non-manufacturing sectors including healthcare, higher education and government.
VMEC aims to improve manufacturing in Vermont and strengthen the global competitiveness of the state’s smaller manufacturers. VMEC provides one-on-one assistance and training to help Vermont’s nearly 2,000 small- and medium-sized manufacturers increase productivity, reduce costs, modernize their manufacturing and business processes, grow and become more profitable.
The center has a documented track record of creating 21st century manufacturing-related jobs and real opportunities for graduates of Vermont’s public and private colleges and universities. Between July 2005 and June 2008, every $1 invested in VMEC assistance and services returned an average of $120 to the assisted company.
In early 2006, the center launched PSG as a specialized business unit designed to bring its expertise and experience to selected non-manufacturing sectors. PSG’s focus is to train clients in continuous improvement methodologies such as “Administrative Lean,” in which staff analyze their own work processes and develop simple, cost-effective ways to improve efficiency and reduce waste. The result is lower costs, higher quality, greater customer satisfaction and an enduring spirit of teamwork.
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Lawrence D. McHugh
