UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Alumni Association is recognizing five longtime Penn State champions and benefactors with the 2024 Honorary Alumni Award.
The Honorary Alumni Award has been given by the Alumni Association since 1973 to honor people who, while not graduates of Penn State, have made significant contributions toward the University’s welfare, reputation or prestige.
The recipients will be recognized during an award ceremony on Saturday, June 1, on the University Park campus. The ceremony also will feature the presentation of the 2024 Distinguished Alumni and Philanthropist of the Year awards.
Since the Honorary Alumni Award was established, more than 100 individuals have been given honorary alumni status.
This year’s honorees are listed below. Learn more about their accomplishments and contributions to Penn State on the Alumni Association’s website.
Cheryl Achterberg was most recently the dean of the College of Education and Human Ecology and a professor of nutrition at Ohio State University, until her retirement in 2018. She previously served as the inaugural dean of the College of Human Sciences at Iowa State University. Prior to these roles, she served as the founding dean of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, in addition to being an award-winning teacher, researcher, author, academic leader and international speaker.
J. Gary Augustson was Penn State's first chief information officer, responsible for directing IT activities at all 24 campuses, supporting its faculty, staff and students, and its multibillion-dollar business enterprise. During his 24 years at Penn State, Augustson built a technology team that grew to 500 that provided stellar, robust technology services, distinguishing Penn State as a leader among research universities. He brought visibility to Penn State’s excellence that was instrumental in developing key strategic corporate partnerships.
Judith S. Bond is an Evan Pugh Professor Emerita of Penn State and an adjunct professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill. She was at Penn State from 1992 to 2011 and served as chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the College of Medicine, the founding director of Penn State’s Medical Scientist Training Program, assistant dean for graduate education, and co-director of graduate education for the Life Sciences Consortium, now the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State.
Nina V. Fedoroff received a bachelor of science degree in biology and chemistry from Syracuse University and a doctoral degree in molecular biology from the Rockefeller University. She is now an Evan Pugh Professor Emerita (2010-present) at Penn State and was the founding director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State.
Julie Anna Potts serves as president and chief executive officer of the Meat Institute, a 118-year-old trade association representing the meat and poultry industry based in Washington, D.C. An agriculture veteran, Potts previously served the American Farm Bureau Federation as its executive vice president, treasurer and general counsel. In those roles, she supported a corporate family of boards that included agricultural advocacy and educational nonprofits, in addition to reinsurance and crop insurance companies. Potts has served on Penn State's Board of Trustees since July 2015.
For more than 150 years, the Penn State Alumni Association has provided alumni with a strong and welcoming community representative of the Penn Staters it proudly serves. The association keeps alumni connected to the University and to each other, while upholding Penn State traditions and supporting the University’s mission of teaching, research and service. The association also produces the award-winning Penn Stater magazine and other publications, and offers alumni and friends volunteer opportunities, educational programming and many other services. For more information about the Alumni Association, visit alumni.psu.edu/youbelong.