The Grinnell College Alumni Council selected 13 remarkable Grinnellians to receive Alumni Awards during Alumni Assembly at Reunion.
Alumni Profiles
Gray knows the importance of positive affirmations. The increased cultural polarization they have witnessed in the world lately motivated them to create a unique way to connect with Grinnell’s LGBTQIA+ students to let them know they are supported well beyond the boundaries of the College’s campus.
As the daughter of a Korean mother and African American father, Sim Wimbush ’08 enjoyed the best of two cultural and culinary worlds.
Sisters Nancy Welch Barnby ’61 and Jill Welch ’64 said they never felt under pressure to attend Grinnell College. It was just an expectation that they never questioned.
Heather Benning ’96 never thought she would be part of conversations that decided the course of the NCAA basketball tournament and other collegiate sports championships.
The journey from her hometown of Yucaipa, California, to Grinnell was notable. She was the first in her family to attend college, it was the first time she had traveled by plane, and Iowa was the farthest she’d ever been from home.
When racing was shut down by the pandemic, Neil Martin ’99, clinical director of radiation oncology and co-director of the Prostate Cancer Center at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center in Boston, didn’t stop. He did dozens of 26.2-mile training runs, the equivalent of 57 marathons in a row. Running was a stress reliever at an incredibly stressful time.
Born and raised in Nepal, Suyog Shrestha ’06 knew early on that he wanted to study physics in the United States; and in the summer of 2002, he came to Grinnell. Now a particle physicist, he’s been working at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), just outside Geneva, Switzerland, for the past decade.
Booking concerts for the College led to the Stanford's work with Cajun culture, and from there to an album, an art exhibit, and a book.
Nominated by classmates and peers, recipients have distinguished themselves by service to their professions, communities, and the College