David Brusick

CAS Hall of Fame member David Brusick (MS '65, PhD '70, Biological Sciences) has been named the recipient of this year's Distinguished Alumni Award from Illinois State University. He will be recognized at the Founders Day Convocation on February 14 at 1 p.m. in the Bone Student Center's Braden Auditorium and then honored later that evening at a special banquet. He studied genetics and microbial genetics at ISU before joining Howard University’s College of Medicine faculty. In 1974, he became the director of the Department of Molecular Toxicology at Litton Bionetics. By 1991, Brusick was vice president for Global Toxicology for Covance Laboratories, the world’s largest independent contracting company supporting pharmaceutical development and commercialization. Global Toxicology employed more than 1,000 people and generated approximately $200 million in revenue annually during his vice presidency.

Madeline Ostrander (BA '97, English and Biological Sciences) is an ISU 2008 Outstanding Young Alumni Award recipient. The CAS alumna is an associate editor for YES! magazine in Seattle, Washington. She works to shed light on the human and environmental challenges society faces through writing, activism and scholarship. As an editor for YES!, she provides news coverage on solutions to such issues as climate change and foreign policy. In 2007, Ostrander served on a steering committee for Seattle Step It Up, which was one of the largest rallies on climate change in the nation. “Ms. Ostrander's achievements are varied,” said Professor of English Robert McLaughlin, “But they are linked by a passionate commitment to the environment, to education, and to the power of the written word.” As an undergraduate, Ostrander won a Presidential Scholarship in 1993 and was named a Bone Scholar in 1996. Her publications include public-policy analyses, interviews, reviews, poetry, and even an academic essay on Thomas Pynchon. 

Professor Gabriel Gudding, Department of English, recently published Rhode Island Notebook, a 436-page epic poem literally handwritten in Gudding’s car during 26 roundtrips beween Normal and Providence to visit his daughter Clio, now ten. The book is a personal chronicle intended as a gift for Clio when she is older, but it is also a meditation on the nature of Being and the nature of happiness, the run-up to the war in Iraq, the rise of jingoism in the United States, and the socio-emotional reactivity and violence inherent to late-capitalist society. World-renowned writer and artist Alan Sondheim calls Gudding's book “the first 21st-century classic.”

Diane Zosky

Diane Zosky, Associate Professor in the School of Social Work, joined the ISU faculty in 2001. This year she is serving as the Interim Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and is leading the search committee for a permanent chair. Much of Zosky's research and practice focuses on the area of domestic violence. Her recent work has dealt specifically with the effects of witnessing domestic violence on children. Research confirms that early exposure to trauma, including domestic violence, can have a marked detrimental effect on children. She is currently serving as President of the Board of Directors of Prevent Child Abuse-Illinois, a statewide organization that provides direct services and consultation to the continuum of services for family violence.