Extraordinary Cal Lutheran neighborhood members obtain Alumni Awards

Six excellent alumni and mates of Cal Lutheran have been honored for his or her achievements and impact — from vocation achievements and humanitarian endeavors to social reform.

This distinguished crew was regarded for his or her skilled achievements and legacy of service in a couple of teams: Honorary Alumni, Distinctive Alumni and Unbelievable Younger Alumni.

“These esteemed alumni have manufactured quick impacts of their communities, equally domestically and near the world,” stated Steven Guetzoian, affiliate director for Alumni and Relations Relations. “These distinguished prospects of the Cal Lutheran partner and kids are leaders who’re assured of their identification with a deep dedication to supplier and justice.”

Honorary Alumni

The Honorary Alumni Award is bestowed on individuals who have rendered an implausible quantity of providers to Cal Lutheran and whose personal achievements have garnered recognition from exterior the home individuals or corporations. They’re:

Paul Hanson, PhD (Honorary Alumni 2021-2022)

In the middle of his 40-year tenure as a professor of South Asian and Center Jap historical past at Cal Lutheran, Paul Hansen, PhD, has nurtured a multidisciplinary world viewpoint between college students and colleagues alike. As a youthful Fulbright scholar in India, Hanson grew to become enthralled with the massive vary of languages, religions and structure on the subcontinent.

His early travels throughout Asia, the Middle East and Europe instilled in him a deep-seated ardour for bringing a world-wide lens to the human sensible expertise when he arrived at Cal Lutheran in 1978. He developed one explicit of the college’s core packages — Western Civilization — to Earth Civilizations. He later launched the World-wide Scientific assessments Utility, connecting faculty from varied disciplines to collaborate and staff-instruct programs centered on world large info.

“My most memorable and gratifying encounters at CLU arrived from my interactions with pupils and college, so numerous of whom enriched my particular person life-style enormously,” Hanson stated.

Hanson introduced your entire world to Cal Lutheran and introduced numerous of his pupils to significantly-reaching corners of the world, leaving an indelible affect on the college’s collective understanding of humanity.

Jim Overton (Honorary Alumni 2022-2023)

Often known as to serve on the Cal Lutheran Board of Regents in 2010, Jim Overton has used 12 a very long time dedicated to the mission and values of the college. He has been instrumental in appointing presidents, rising the north campus, opening the Swenson Science Centre and bettering selection by way of the college’s designation as a Hispanic-Serving Establishment.

“My dad and mother and grandfather have been sturdy Lutherans who instilled in me the good significance of supporting CLU’s larger-instruction targets,” Overton reported. “It’s an honor to hold on their legacy and convey impactful alter to a space that’s profoundly vital to me.” 

Overton’s affect on Cal Lutheran is nearly unattainable to qualify: His passions are assorted, his generosity is boundless, and his ardour for serving learners is limitless. From Overton Hall, Overton Courtroom and the stained-glass home windows in Samuelson Chapel to the Frederickson Household Early Childhood Coronary heart, Overton has improved our campus past measure. As well as, the numerous scholarships developed by Overton and his members of the family — the Overton Prize in Economics, the Summertime Evaluation Scholarship and, most a short time in the past, a brand new music scholarship for string devices — have skilled a transformative affect on our neighborhood.

Excellent Alumni

The Excellent Alumni Award is specified to Cal Lutheran graduates with distinguished knowledge of occupation achievements or humanitarian endeavors centered to social reform. The recipients embrace:

Marisol Rodriguez ’94, MPA ’00, PhD (Excellent Alumni 2021-2022)

A ardour for supplier and a generate to continuously enhance have propelled Marisol Rodriguez to an esteemed occupation that spans nearly 3 a very long time with the Ventura County Fireplace Division. Rodriguez credit her working expertise as a Regals volleyball participant with instilling in her a powerful get the job finished ethic and a willpower to teamwork and management values that advise her dynamic do the job as a hearth captain proper now.

“It’s this sort of an honor to get the job finished the place I grew up and provides again to my local people,” Rodriguez defined. “As a CLU Regal in a helping profession, it’s my enthusiasm to serve different people.”

First uncovered to fireplace suppliers by way of a Cal Lutheran undergraduate internship, Marisol runs Ventura County’s Fire Academy packages, raises recognition about chopping down hearth risks and serves as an teacher for the Los Angeles Fireplace Division’s Administration Academy. She retains bachelor’s and grasp’s ranges from Cal Lutheran and a PhD from Capella School. An exemplary chief centered to providers, Rodriguez maintains shut ties to Cal Lutheran. She is a frequent visitor speaker at college conditions, earlier panelist for the Mathews Administration Discussion board and labored for a time at Cal Lutheran Fire Station 34.

Lorrie Brown ’07, MPPA ’09 (Wonderful Alumni 2022-2023)

Because the preliminary Black human being to be elected to the Ventura City Council because the metropolis’s inception 150 a number of years again, Lorrie Brown strives to drop delicate on the challenges confronted by marginalized communities and builds consensus to battle injustice and clear up actual complete world troubles as a one mom of three younger grownup males. Brown put herself by faculty or college at Cal Lutheran and was impressed by a professor to use for the college’s Study of Normal public Coverage and Administration System. This commenced a pathway in direction of her esteemed occupation in most people service.

“Considered one of my principal beliefs is rooted in an ethics class I took at Cal Lutheran,” Brown defined. “Coverage ought to actually convey the best reward to the largest choice of people.” 

As a councilmember, she has proposed and carried out vital procedures and support of individuals of shade and different underrepresented communities together with declaring racism a neighborhood total well being problem, denouncing regulation enforcement brutality and implementing the Progress Initiative to deal with cost-effective housing and financial enhancement within the metropolis of Ventura. Brown capabilities tirelessly to query the place quo in favor of much more inclusive insurance policies that achieve each individual.

Excellent Youthful Alumni

The Excellent Youthful Alumni Award is obtainable to graduates of the previous decade for distinguished occupation achievements or humanitarian endeavors dedicated to social reform. Awardees are:

Asante Sefa-Boakye ’15 (Wonderful Youthful Alumni 2021-2022)

Contemplating that graduating from Cal Lutheran, Asante Sefa-Boakye has adopted his passions near the world, irrespective of whether or not mentoring younger individuals as we speak, creating and executing hip-hop music, or beginning off Ghana’s preliminary youth water polo workforce. A former crew captain at Cal Lutheran, Sefa-Boakye expert within the sport in the middle of Europe and performed professionally in Brazil. At present, he’s championing the expansion of ingesting water polo in Ghana and creating enthusiasm for aquatic properly being and wellness all through Africa and amid diaspora globally.

For Sefa-Boakye, time administration is crucial to success, and he credit Cal Lutheran with furnishing him the composition and self-control to anchor his timetable round his targets. These days, he carves out time to develop audio that acknowledges life’s struggles, but in addition uplifts his viewers and receives women and men dancing.

“Seeing how welcoming the administration, professors and pupils have been to me at CLU made me discover — no make any distinction what — everybody needs to actually really feel welcome,” Sefa-Boakye said.

His info of positivity extends to his mentoring get the job finished. Sefa-Boakye encourages different people to embrace failure as a on a regular basis dwelling lesson that in the long run delivers development. His ideas: Protect possible and by no means ever hand over in your needs. 

Justin Meek ’18 (Excellent Youthful Alumni 2022-2023)

A profound sense of discount reverberated in the middle of the Cal Lutheran neighborhood and additional than when Justin Meek was tragically misplaced within the mass capturing at Borderline Bar and Grill in 2018. The kind of individual that everybody beloved to be round, Meek was acknowledged as a warm-hearted and compassionate youthful one that had an innate journey to guard these individuals he beloved. He examined felony justice and deliberate to be a part of the Shoreline Guard to make a job of protecting different individuals he died a hero executing simply that. As an undergraduate, Meek was an integral part of the material of the CLU campus neighborhood.

“The banners on campus say, ‘Discover Your Goal’,” said Meek’s mom Laura Lynn Meek ’18. “CLU aided Justin discover new ranges of himself and find his particular person distinctive purpose.”

Meek based Cal Lutheran’s line-dancing membership, performed water polo for the Kingsmen, and sang within the choir and Kingsmen quartet. Meek’s mother and sister, Victoria Rose Meek ’20, are additionally Cal Lutheran alumni.

To honor the reminiscence of this superb younger man, the college put in a bench in Kingsmen Park — Meek’s beloved place on campus — creating a space of peaceable reflection for generations to happen.

“Each of those awardees would make Cal Lutheran joyful,” Guetzoian stated. “Their willpower to supporting underrepresented teams, producing foreseeable future leaders and sharing their passions and presents domestically and internationally is the very definition of what it means to be a Cal Lutheran alumni.”