Distinguished Alumni

The following six alumni are being recognized for significant career advancement, long-term leadership within their chosen professions, and noteworthy professional accomplishments.
Doug Bennett
Marvis Boscher
Judith Forney
Karen Jamesen
Donna Lero
Mary Ellen Posthauer

Outstanding Young Professional
The following alumna is being recognized for her outstanding career development, support for the profession, and involvement in professional organizations, school alumni association, or community activities.
Becky Pea-Stenger

Friend of Purdue
This award honors those who have made significant contributions to the enhancement of CFS through personal or professional influence, service, or financial support.
Georgia Higley Foster

Doug Bennett
HTM BS '83
Vice President of Sales
Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association
Indianapolis, Indiana

When the streets of Indianapolis are filled with people wearing convention badges, Doug Bennett is a happy man. As vice president of sales for the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association (ICVA), Bennett leads a 14-member sales department that strives to keep the hotels, restaurants, and meeting facilities in the capital city filled with guests.

The ICVA's mission is to build a dynamic community, stronger economy and quality of life through developing, marketing, and selling Indianapolis as a tourism destination. Bennett plays a leadership role in implementing plans to make sure this happens. In 2000, the ICVA was responsible for 565,000 room nights booked in Indianapolis.

"I love this job. You never know when a small board meeting could lead to a bigger decision for your city down the road," he says. "Each day is different and no two challenges are the same."

He joined the ICVA in 1992 as a senior sales manager. He soon moved up to national sales manager and then director of sales before being promoted to vice president of sales in 2001.

He is active in the Professional Convention Managers Association, where he served as chair of the Community Service Committee. He is also a member of the American Society of Association Executives and a member of the Exhibitor Advisory Board. Bennett also volunteers on the board of the IUPUI Jaguars Athletic Club and is active in the Ben Davis Little League organization.

Marvis Boscher
CFS BS '79
Director of University Residences
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana

As a Purdue student, Marvis Boscher worked as a residence hall counselor. She so impressed the administrators she worked for that upon graduation, she was offered a full-time position as an assistant residence hall manager. She quickly was promoted to manager, serving at both Terry Courts and Windsor Halls. She served as director of residential life for six years before being promoted to her current position as director of University Residences in 1998.

University Residences is the largest residence hall system in the country that houses students on a voluntary basis. Boscher provides oversight for nearly 600 full-time staff, 270 counseling staff, and 1,000 students. As a group, the 12,000 students housed in University Residences make her operation larger than 85 percent of the towns and communities in Indiana!

Among her career accomplishments, Boscher created and implemented a program to increase the number of minority students hired as residence hall counselors. Today, the counseling staff has a greater percentage of minority students than the University as a whole.

She also created Penny Wars, a clever way for the residence halls to support the campus United Way campaign. Each year, Penny Wars has raised more than $4,000, with more than $8,000 raised last year. This is thought to be the largest single contribution by a student organization to a campus United Way campaign in the country.

Boscher is a strong leader who is well-known for her participation in campus organizations, such as the Tri-Kappa Alumni Board and Purdue Convocations Advisory Board. She also speaks to students on such subjects as interview skills and etiquette.

Judith Forney
HE BS '71, CSR PhD '80
Dean, School of Merchandising and Hospitality Management
University of North Texas
Denton, Texas

When Judith Forney was appointed interim dean of the School of Merchandising and Hospitality Management at the University of North Texas (UNT) in 1998, enrollment was declining and the school was fighting for its life. A professor of merchandising at the school since 1992 and chair of the division of merchandising since 1995, Forney led several bold initiatives that helped reverse the school's downward spiral. Today, there is tremendous growth in enrollment and, following a national search, Forney was named dean of the school in 2001.

During her term as interim dean, she initiated numerous innovative programs in collaboration with the merchandising and hospitality industries.

One of her most recent ventures was to make UNT's online merchandising degree available to the federal employees of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service. The AAFES operates retail stores in U.S. military bases worldwide and ranks 79th among the world's top 200 global retailers. Forney oversaw the development of the online degree, the first of its kind in the nation.

She played a key role in building a partnership with J.C. Penney Co. Inc. to establish the Campus Catalog, a student-run catalog store and merchandising lab. This is the first time the retailer has joined with a university to establish a student-run catalog desk on campus.

She also developed an interdisciplinary program that combines a master's of business administration with a master's of science in merchandising or hospitality management. Instead of taking 72 hours of coursework to earn two degrees, the program allows students to earn the dual degree in just 54 hours.

She is active in several organizations, including serving on the editorial board and as a reviewer for the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences. She has been a board member, editor, and reviewer for the International Textile and Apparel Association and a reviewer for the Texas Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Karen Jamesen
FN BS '62, MS '66
Assistant Professor, Department of Foods and Nutrition
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana

In the Book of Great Teachers at Purdue University, there's the name of someone whom many foods and nutrition alumni remember fondly. For more than 35 years, professor Karen Jamesen has been making a lasting impact on the lives and careers of foods and nutrition students.

Entered into the Book of Great Teachers in 1999, Professor Jameson has been garnering awards for most of her teaching career. She was inducted into the Teaching Academy in 1997 and has earned the Mary L. Matthews Teaching Award, the Amoco Teaching Award, the Phi Tau Sigma Award, the Gamma Sigma Delta Award of Merit, and has been placed on the permanent list of Outstanding Teachers in CFS.

She has contributed significantly to the quality of life and the improvement of the educational experience for many Purdue students. She helped establish and continues to advise the Eating Disorders Awareness Committee. She has served as a faculty fellow, advisor to the F&N Society, and faculty advisor to Kappa Omicron Nu, the CFS student honor society.

Professor Jamesen has promoted an increase in food science teaching in high schools by training high school teachers in food science content. She has developed new courses and chaired the committee to develop the Nutrition, Fitness, and Health major.

She has been very active in promoting the programs and students of the foods and nutrition department to industry contacts. She is the coordinator of Cooperative Education and Summer Internships in Food Science and Foods and Nutrition in Business and has developed an externship experience for food science students during Christmas break. The response from industry has been so favorable that some years there are more placements than students to fill them.

When the school celebrated its 75th anniversary last October, Professor Jamesen was mentioned numerous times by alumni as someone who had a career-shaping influence. This reflects the warmth, dedication, and creative thinking that she has consistently given to her students over the years.

Donna Lero
CDFS MS '72
Co-Director, Centre for Families, Work and Well-being
Associate Professor, Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition
University of Guelph
Ontario, Canada

Upon receiving her PhD in psychology from Purdue in 1974, Donna Lero joined the faculty at the University of Guelph as an assistant professor in family studies. Ten years later, she was promoted to associate professor and is today the co-director of the Centre for Families, Work and Well-being at the university.

Lero is known for her careful attention to teaching and her ability to make connections with students.

"Donna was responsible for my earliest training as a researcher, and I have now won awards for my research," says Shelley MacDermid, director of the Center for Families at Purdue. "She taught us to be thoughtful and rigorous when we read about research, evaluate programs, or gather data."

Her impact goes far beyond the local community and she is one of the most respected researchers in the social sciences community in Canada. The studies she has conducted, in addition to being some of the largest and most detailed in the history of research on child care and early childhood, have influenced both the provincial and federal governments.

As a result, children and their families throughout the country are better understood and have access to good quality care, services, and resources they might otherwise not have had.

Lero is a founding member of the Center for Families at Purdue and is an invited member of the National Panel of Experts, Canadian Council on Social Development.

Mary Ellen Posthauer, RD, CD, LD
F&N BS '60
President/CEO
M.E.P. Healthcare Dietary Services, Inc.
Evansville, Indiana

For more than 30 years, Mary Ellen Posthauer has worked in her major field of study as a consultant dietitian. If not the first dietitian in Indiana to establish a professional corporation for dietary consulting in long-term care facilities, she is certainly among the earliest to do so.

In 1975, she founded M.E.P. Healthcare Dietary Services, Inc., which has more than a dozen registered dietitians providing dietary consulting services to Indiana and Illinois residents.

From 1981-96, she served as the coordinator/program director/instructor for the Dietary Manager's Course at the University of Southern Indiana, where she designed and published the Field Experience Manual that has been adopted by other universities. She also served as research project director for Head Start for five years.

She has been a food stylist for Commercial Advertising Companies in Evansville and an editor for the Cookbook for Michigan Blue Cross/Blue Shield that is distributed to the elderly on limited income. She also tested and developed soy-base milk-free formula recipes for a recipe book published and distributed by Mead Johnson and Co.

Posthauer has maintained an active role in leading membership of her professional associations and has held positions at the district, state, and national levels of the American Dietetic Association (ADA). Currently, she represents the ADA on the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. In 2000, she received the Medallion Award from the ADA, the highest honor awarded in the profession of dietetics.

Becky Pea-Stenger
HTM BS '93
Owner
Pea-Fections
Vincennes, Indiana

Becky Pea-Stenger and her chef husband, Bill, run a thriving restaurant and food-stuff retail store in downtown Vincennes. When they opened Pea-Fections in May 1996, it was a dream come true for the Vincennes native. Pea-Fections serves lunch to more than 100 customers daily along with specialty desserts. They also operate a catering business.

After graduating from Purdue, Pea-Stenger attended Johnson & Wales University to pursue an associate degree in applied science in baking and pastry arts. While in school she worked as a baker/student manager for ARAMARK at the Charleston Southern University cafeteria. She graduated from Johnson & Wales in February 1995 and then went on to be a pastry chef/supervisor for ARAMARK at Clemson House at Clemson University.

Pea-Stenger and her husband, who is also a graduate of Johnson & Wales, frequently return to Purdue to talk to hospitality and tourism management classes about the challenges and rewards of owning a small business. Over the past five years, the couple has learned the ropes of owning their own business - starting with a small pastry and coffee shop and turning it into a thriving downtown eatery.

Georgia Higley Foster
HE BS '35, MS '54
West Lafayette, Indiana

Georgia Higley Foster is a quiet but strong supporter of the School of Consumer and Family Sciences and Purdue University. A firm believer in education, she is excited about the future of the school and has supported the programs and policies that the school has implemented within the last 25 years.

She can always be counted on for moral and financial support. She enjoys attending alumni events such as the Central Indiana Boiler Mixers and is always eager to learn about school programs and to see what CFS alumni are doing in the Indianapolis area. An advocate for the Center for Families, she has a will provision to support CFS and Purdue athletics.

Young at heart, Foster has been a long-time supporter of athletics. She and her husband, Tom, who died in 1992, were very involved with Purdue athletics and Georgia continues this involvement today, attending sporting events and keeping up with Purdue's sports teams.