A top government official, prize-winning agricultural researcher, a distinguished art historian and a leading engineer were added to UD's Alumni Wall of Fame in May.
Jo Anne Bryant Barnhart AS '75, Chester "Chet" T. Dickerson Jr. AG '62, '64M, Joan Mastrangelo Marter AS '70M, '74PhD and Donald R. McCoy EG '75 were honored during a ceremony at Bayard Sharp Hall on the Newark campus.
The wall, which recognizes outstanding professional and public service achievements by UD graduates, is located in the Alumni Lounge of the Perkins Student Center. Established in 1984, the Wall of Fame now displays the names of 192 individuals inducted in recognition of their professional and public service excellence.
Barnhart was nominated in 2001 by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate as commissioner of the Social Security Administration, an independent federal agency with 65,000 employees. She is a former member of the Social Security Advisory Board, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and served as the late U.S. Sen. William V. Roth Jr.'s legislative assistant and campaign manager.
Dickerson retired as director of agricultural affairs at the Monsanto Co. During his tenure at Monsanto, he was responsible for the emergence of the chemical glyphosate, an herbicide commonly known as Round-Up. He later marketed Round-Up, expanding its use beyond the Corn Belt to $1.2 billion in sales in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Dickerson works closely with UD's Cooperative Extension Service and provides his property for UD agricultural research.
Marter is a distinguished professor of art history at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She is president of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation for the Visual Arts and serves on the board of the Ora Lerman Charitable Trust. Marter has assisted many UD students in securing fellowships and internships at the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim and the National Gallery of Art.
McCoy is the deputy associate director for weapons physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He served as technical adviser to the director of the Department of Energy's testing division and received the DOE Award of Excellence, Nuclear Weapons Program, in 1986, 1989, 1990, 1992 and 1993. McCoy has helped UD graduates find jobs at Los Alamos.
Please visit [http://www.udel.edu/alumni/awards/ wof.html] for more details.
--Martin Mbugua