Honors for Four Women With Ties to Higher Education

Toni C. Antonucci, the Elizabeth M. Douvan Collegiate Professor of Psychology and the associate vice president for research at the University of Michigan, was selected to receive the 2012 Distinguished Career Contribution to Gerontology Award from the Gerontological Society of America. She will receive the award at the society’s annual meeting in San Diego in November.

Professor Antonucci is a graduate of Hunter College, a part of the City University of New York System. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Wayne State University in Detroit.

Linda K. Neuman, a faculty member at the University of Iowa College of Law, received the inaugural Equity for Women Award from the organization, 50-50 in 2020. The group seeks to achieve gender parity in state legislative offices.

Professor Neuman is a former justice on the Iowa Supreme Court. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado and the University of Colorado School of Law. She also holds a master’s degree in law from the University of Virginia.

Deborah Berke, founder of the New York architecture firm that bears her name and an adjunct professor at Yale University, was named the inaugural winner of the Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize from the College of Environmental Design at the University of California at Berkeley. Burke will receive a $100,000 prize and will spend a semester teaching at Berkeley.

Berke is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and went on to study urban design at the City University of New York.

Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, has announced that the Center for Work and Life will be renamed for Margaret Von Blon Wurtele, a 1967 alumna of the college. Over the past several years, Wurtele and her husband have donated $5 million to the college. Both Wurtele and her husband have mothers who are Smith graduates.

Wurtele is the author of the novel The Golden Hour (NAL Trade) as well as the books Touching the Edge: A Mother’s Spiritual Path From Loss to Life (John Wiley & Sons, 2003) and Taking Root: A Spiritual Memoir (St. Mary’s Press, 1998).