Seven young Penn Staters honored with Alumni Achievement Award

University Park, Pa. -- Seven young Penn State alumni were honored for outstanding professional accomplishment and presented with the Penn State Alumni Association's Alumni Achievement Award in a dinner ceremony on April 3 at The Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus.

From a filmmaker to a doctor to a glaciologist, the 2009 Alumni Achievement Award honorees have reached an extraordinary level of professional accomplishment, all by the age of 35 or younger. These prominent young alumni are nominated by an academic college or campus, selected by a University-wide committee and invited by President Graham B. Spanier to return to campus to share their expertise with students and the University community. The Alumni Achievement Award began in 2005 and since then has honored 49 outstanding alumni.

This year's Alumni Achievement Award recipients, along with their year of graduation, current title, place of employment, and residence are:

-- Brian Alfred '97, artist, Brooklyn, N.Y.

-- Sarah B. Das '03g, assistant scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Hull, Mass.;

-- N. Benjamin Fredrick '00g, assistant professor of family and community medicine at Penn State College of Medicine, Hummelstown, Pa.;

-- Lacresha L. Hall '95, founder and CEO of Hallway of Life Recovery Center and president and CEO of DeAnima Psychiatric Services, Margate, Fla.;

-- Christopher T. Kaag '04, founder and owner of Corps Fitness, IM Able Foundation, and Got the Nerve? Triathlon, Reading, Pa.;

-- Riva M. Marker '00, founding partner of Rosemark Pictures, New York City;

-- Sara L. Woods '96, executive director of the Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program, Merion Station, Pa.

These Alumni Achievement Award recipients were given a commemorative medal by Spanier at the April 3 dinner and ceremony. The medal was commissioned by the Alumni Association and designed by internationally recognized artist Jeanne Stevens-Sollman, a 1972 graduate of Penn State's master of fine arts program. For full biographical information about past award recipients, go to the Alumni Association's Web site at http://www.alumni.psu.edu/awards/individual online.

Alfred is an artist who has exhibited his paintings, collages, digital drawings, animation and other works to wide critical acclaim in New York City, Europe and Japan. In addition to frequent solo and group exhibitions in galleries around the world, Alfred's work is in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Denver Art Museum and the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia), among others. A documentary on Alfred, "Artflick," was shown at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Alfred lives and works in Brooklyn.

Das, a glaciologist in the Geology and Geophysics Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has participated in 10 polar field expeditions. Her discoveries about the Greenland Ice Sheet are causing scientists to rethink important aspects of the future of the earth's coasts. Das led the fieldwork, analysis and publication in the journal Science of the startling observation that lakes atop the Greenland Ice Sheet wedge open crevasses, triggering floods to the base of the ice with flows in excess of Niagara Falls. This causes floating and shifting of the ice sheet and potentially speeding its flow toward the coast to raise sea levels.

Fredrick is assistant professor of family and community medicine at Penn State College of Medicine and serves as associate medical director of the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Fishburn Clinic. Fredrick ranks in the top tier for patient satisfaction and students have repeatedly recognized him as an outstanding educator and mentor based on his creative teaching methods. Fredrick developed and co-directs the innovative Global Health Scholars Program at the College of Medicine. He works with medical students on several community service-learning projects, including Penn State's Lion Care Clinic at Bethesda Mission (serving Harrisburg's homeless population) and several orphanages in Haiti.

Hall is founder and CEO of Hallway of Life Recovery Center, a sober living environment for women in Delray Beach, Fla. The center provides a safe place for women to practice the skills necessary to maintain abstinence from substance use and provides support for women with eating disorders. After graduating from Penn State, Hall earned her medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Hall has lectured extensively and published on trauma and psychiatric services in minority communities and related topics. She also has a private practice, DeAnima Psychiatric Services.

Kaag is president and founder of the IM ABLE Foundation, Got the Nerve? Triathlon and Corps Fitness. After graduating from Penn State, Kaag founded the annual Got the Nerve? Triathlon that raises money for The Myelin Project, an international organization furthering scientific research into myelin disorders like his own. To date, the triathlon has raised more than $100,000. Also in 2004, Kaag established Corps Fitness, which combines his five years of experience as a U.S. Marine with helping people achieve their fitness goals. Two years ago, he launched the IM ABLE Foundation, which promotes fitness and being active for disabled and able-bodied people.

Marker is the co-founder of Rosemark Pictures, which currently is in pre-production on its debut comedy script "Guidance." Before that, Marker served as head of post-production with Plum Pictures, overseeing post-production on 11 feature films. Marker has co-produced such films as "Grace is Gone" (starring John Cusack) and "Trucker" (starring Michelle Monaghan). She also was post-production supervisor on the Academy Award-nominated documentary "The Betrayal: Nerakhoon." Her current projects include the thriller "After.Life" (starring Liam Neeson and Christina Ricci) and "The Winning Season," which was picked up by Lionsgate Films at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

Woods is executive director of the Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program (VIP), which provides free civil legal services to low-income clients by recruiting and training volunteer lawyers to handle pro bono cases. Before joining VIP in 2007, Woods was director of Public Service Careers and Pro Bono Programs at Villanova University School of Law. Before that she was a staff attorney with the Domestic Abuse Project of Delaware County (Pa.) and with Women Against Abuse, Inc. After graduating from Penn State, Woods earned her J.D., cum laude, and a master of public administration, both from Villanova.