FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Five Indiana University alumni will receive IU’s Distinguished Alumni Service Award on Oct. 10 during Homecoming weekend. The award is the highest given by the university to its alumni.
The 2019 recipients are Matthew R. Gutwein, BA’85, JD’88; Jane M. Jorgensen, BS’72; Edwin Cochran Marshall, BA’68, BS’70, OD’71, MS’79; Lillian S. Stokes, MSN’69, PhD’98; and Isaac P. Torres, MBA’00.
IU President Michael A. McRobbie will present the awards to the honorees, and Deanna D. Crispen, BA’98, national chair of the IU Alumni Association, will preside at the presentation ceremony at Alumni Hall in the Indiana Memorial Union.
Recipients of the DASA award are chosen for service and achievement in their fields and significant contributions to the community, state, nation, or university. With the addition of these recipients, IU has honored 345 alumni since the award’s inception in 1953.
Following are brief individual bios for each award recipient:
Matthew R. Gutwein
Now serving as president and CEO of Health & Hospital Corporation of Marion County (Ind.), Matthew Gutwein honed his leadership skills through his experience as a partner in the law firm Faegre Baker Daniels, as an adjunct professor at IU’s Maurer School of Law, and as chief counsel for former Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh, BS’78, LLD’96.
Gutwein took the case for a replacement of Wishard Memorial Hospital to the citizens of Marion County and secured unanimous approval for what would become the $745 million Eskenazi Hospital. Opened in 2013, the hospital is the nation’s third-largest safety-net hospital system, providing care regardless of a patient’s insurance status.
Jane M. Jorgensen
Jane Jorgensen’s passion for education and teacher opportunity led her to establish two endowed funds that provided scholarships for Global Gateway for Teachers participants. She is a founding member of the Women’s Philanthropy Leadership Council and also helps guide the Colloquium for Women of Indiana University.
She is a key supporter of the IU Cinema, underwriting its building renovation and successful Jorgensen Guest Filmmaker Lecture Series, allowing IU to host luminaries such as Meryl Streep, Werner Herzog, and Glenn Close.
Jorgensen’s efforts will benefit generations of IU students to come.
Edwin Cochran Marshall
Edwin Marshall has spent a lifetime working at the intersection of health care, equity, and social justice.
He helped produce Indiana’s first data-driven strategic plan for the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities, and he developed national curriculum guidelines in culturally competent eye and vision care for the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry.
An IU professor emeritus, Marshall served as the School of Optometry’s associate dean for academic affairs and student administration. He also spent six years as IU’s vice president for diversity, equity, and multicultural affairs, an office he was instrumental in developing as a result of his student activism in the 1960s.
Lillian S. Stokes
Lillian Stokes has been an advocate for diversity in nursing throughout her 40-year career.
An associate professor at the IU School of Nursing and an IUPUI faculty member since 1972, she served as the school’s director of diversity and enrichment from 1996, retiring in 2008. She is now a professor emeritus at the School of Nursing.
Nationally, she is regarded as a leader in the development of culturally competent care. She co-authored Adult and Child Care: A Client Approach to Nursing, which became a seminal nursing textbook, ushering in a reconsideration of the academic nursing curriculum.
Isaac P. Torres
Isaac Torres had a transformative experience while a student at IU South Bend that changed the course of his life. He came to the U.S. from Mexico to pursue a graduate degree and to develop the skills needed to succeed in a transnational corporation.
Torres frequently sent money back home to his family, and his encounter with wire transfers formed the basis for a class project that would result in the creation of a financial services company now called InterCambio Express.
In gratitude to IU, he established the Isaac P. Torres Family School of Business and Economics Scholarship to help underrepresented students.
The IU Alumni Association is a global alumni organization that brings more than 700,000 IU graduates together to support one another and Indiana University throughout their lives.