Celebrating Excellence: AAVC Honor Alums and Vassar Staff with 2024 Awards

As a Vassar senior in 1984, Stephanie Hyacinth helped solicit the senior class gift from Jewett House and then never stopped serving the College for 40 years running. By the AAVC’s count, Hyacinth has taken on 44 volunteer positions—assuming perhaps her biggest role as Co-Chair of the College’s current Fearlessly Consequential campaign.

Dr. Amy Pullman ’71, who headed the AAVC’s Alumnae/i Recognition Committee, said Hyacinth was an easy choice for the Outstanding Service to Vassar Award, which is presented to an alum in recognition of their extraordinary commitment, leadership, and service in promoting the goals and highest interests of Vassar College and the AAVC. “Stephanie is so well respected and loved by the Vassar community that her choice for this award was unanimous on the first round of voting by the committee,” said Pullman.

At the June 1 award ceremony for Hyacinth, President Elizabeth Bradley looked up from her prepared remarks and said to Hyacinth, “What have you not done here? And you’ve done it for four decades!” Noting that Hyacinth also has a day job as Interim Vice President of External Relations at Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York (CUNY), Bradley said, “We are all lucky that she is so generous about bringing these professional skills to what we do.”

Bradley was followed by AAVC President Monica Vachher ’77, who said, “Stephanie’s passion is infectious: She has that rare ability to entice other volunteers to be all in—and, ultimately, to have just as much fun as she’s having.”

When Hyacinth took the podium, it was to loud whoops and cheers. She opened by saying, “I volunteer for Vassar because Vassar deserves my support.” She described how, as “a skinny, nerdy kid from Brooklyn,” she had felt cared for at Vassar and was now returning that care. “I am passionate about Vassar—and I adore Vassar people because Vassar people are doers; they are not on the sidelines,” she said. “They are smart, funny, strong, fair, creative, curious, quirky, dedicated, and always operating from a place of possibility and optimism. Who would not want to be a part of that?”—Kimberly Schaye

David Ambroz, a lawyer and Amazon executive, is a leading child welfare advocate recognized by President Obama as a “Champion of Change.” His deep commitment to children in need comes from a very personal place, as he spent 11 years of his own childhood unhoused and then several years in foster care—the subject of his recent memoir, A Place Called Home (Legacy Lit, 2022). Ambroz co-founded the multimedia public awareness campaign FosterMore.org, as well as the pioneering National Foster Youth Advisory Council; served on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Youth at Risk; served as the President of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission four times; and has been part of countless policies and laws to improve the lives of children experiencing poverty.

As an against-all-odds success story, Ambroz works tirelessly to better the odds for others. His unflagging efforts have now earned him the Spirit of Vassar Award, which goes to an alum who has “demonstrated extraordinary and distinguished leadership, contribution, and commitment to serving a community in which they effect positive, transformative societal change.”

Said awards committee chair Pullman, “David exemplifies the expression ‘giving back.’ He has devoted his life to helping solve homelessness, and he has never forgotten how his full scholarship to Vassar changed his life.”

Ambroz said he felt “humbled” by his selection for the award, which will be presented at Convocation this fall, and promised “to live up to the Spirit of Vassar, and all that it gave me.

“My liberal arts education has been the key to my everything,” he explained. “I learned to think, to research, to apply, to listen, and to take action. All that was embedded into a deep commitment to progress, to the democratic project, and to my communities of origin.”

Carolyn Merchant is Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, where she specializes in environmental history, philosophy, and ethics. Her many books include The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, originally published in 1980 and reissued in 1990 and 2020. On the occasion of the book’s 40th anniversary, science historian Paula Findlen wrote, “Few books in the history of science have had such a broad and diffuse impact, and few have been generative of so many other fields.” Her current work and lasting impact on the exploration of the relationship between humans and nature have now earned her the AAVC’s Distinguished Achievement Award, presented to an alum who has reached the highest level in their professional field.

“Carolyn is a distinguished historian, philosopher, environmentalist, and feminist who was decades ahead of her time when she drew a groundbreaking connection between the increasingly mechanistic worldview of science and the exploitation of women and the environment,” said Pullman.

“I am highly honored and thrilled that my outstanding alma mater had selected me for this amazing award,” said Merchant. “I loved the education I got in the classes at Vassar. We were taught to ‘go to the sources’ and analyze them for ourselves. We learned to volunteer to speak in class, to think for ourselves, and to say what we believed the texts stated and meant. My Vassar education gave me the confidence to believe in myself, to investigate new subjects, and to trust my own approach to ideas and subjects.

“The fact that Vassar was an all-woman school at the time I attended it played a major role in my intellectual development,” Merchant noted. “I built confidence in my own ideas by contributing something to each classroom discussion.”

Actor, singer, and composer Ethan Slater is a versatile performer who has accomplished a lot in his first decade out of Vassar. He originated the role of SpongeBob SquarePants on Broadway, for which he received a Tony Award nomination and won the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Theatre World, and Broadway Beacon Awards. More recently, he starred as Lee Harvey Oswald in the musical Assassins and in the Broadway revival of Monty Python’s Spamalot. He will soon appear in the film adaptation of Wicked alongside Tony Award-winner Cynthia Erivo and pop star Ariana Grande.

“Ethan’s acting career started just one year after he graduated from Vassar and has hurtled on like a freight train, culminating in his role in the film adaptation of Wicked,” noted Pullman.

Slater said he felt “honored and grateful” to receive the Young Alumnae/i Achievement Award, which recognizes the exceptional personal and professional achievements of an alum who has graduated within the past 10 years. “Vassar was the place where I learned so much about myself, about what I do for a living, about a life in the arts,” he said. “Even 10 years out, it is hard to identify the most formative parts of an experience. But for me, I think the biggest advantage of my liberal arts education was learning how to learn in different ways. Running from a class on international politics, to Sources of World Drama, to Econ 101, to a seminar called Virtually Mediated Social Worlds, meant that I was constantly engaging with different styles of teaching, different disciplines, and surrounded by people passionate about vastly different things. So, I could apply what I learned in a class and I could hone in on what really made me excited.”

Jannette Swanson and Stacy Bingham, shown left to right, are Vassar’s dynamic duo of career education. As Associate Dean of the College for Career Education and Director of External Engagement, respectively, Bingham and Swanson give their all to make sure students and alums alike have every opportunity to fulfill their career aspirations—putting on close to 200 events each year, of which a significant portion are focused on connecting students with alums. A centerpiece of these efforts is Sophomore Career Connections, an annual networking and educational event involving hundreds of current students, alums, and parents that celebrated its 10th anniversary this year.

“Stacy and Jannette have turned the Center for Career Education into an invaluable resource for students and alums, revitalizing the role that networking plays in their careers,” noted Pullman. “They have helped turn Sophomore Career Connections into a blockbuster event.”

Bingham said that she was honored by the recognition from the AAVC and looked forward to creating even more opportunities for students and grads. “I have long said that the Vassar network, which is deep, wide, and brimming with goodwill, is our very best career resource,” she said. “There is no better inspiration for life beyond Vassar than those who have paved the way, and I continue to be struck by just how generous this community is with one another!”

Swanson said she was “deeply honored and humbled” by the award. “The work I get to do is pretty effortless, as our alums are always eager to help our students, but a real joy I find in my work is when our alums also establish meaningful connections with one another at these events,” she said. “In my eyes, this recognition is a testament to the vibrant Vassar community, a community that I am grateful I get to work with daily.”—Kimberly Schaye