2008 Alumni Achievement Award Winners

Bonnie Christiansen '73
Essex Junction, Vermont

Bonnie Christiansen is an artist, writer, and teacher, who has won numerous awards and earned national praise for her work.  Her highly-acclaimed book, Woody Guthrie, Poet of the People, received accolades such as selection as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year selection as well as a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2001 and a Boston Globe Corn Book Honor Award and a Parents’ Choice Gold Medal for Non-fiction.  Her illustrations in Moon Over Tennessee helped it to receive honors such as a New York Public Library One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing in 2000, and An Edible Alphabet written and illustrated by Bonnie, was a Smithsonian Notable Book in 1994.  She is also an accomplished and versatile printmaker, and she worked on the illustrations for UVM Professor Tom Simone’s book Dante’s Inferno, published by Focus Press.

Miriam Nelson '83
Concord, Massachusetts

Miriam Nelson has become a national leader in the field of health and nutrition.  She has earned national acclaim for her work, receiving a Bunting Fellowship Award at Radcliffe College’s Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Governor’s Committee on Physical Fitness and Sports.  She also was the recipient of the American Diabetes Association’s Women in Valor Award.  Miriam is perhaps best known for her internationally-best selling Strong Women series of books.  An associate professor at Tufts University, she also founded the John Hancock Center on Physical Activity and Nutrition Science Policy, the focal point of translational nutrition at Tufts.  She also is vice chair of the expert committee that is developing physical activity guidelines for the federal government. 

Susan Hudson-Wilson '76
Chebeague Island, Maine

Susan Hudson-Wilson is the founder and chief executive officer of Property & Portfolio Research, Inc.  She is sought as a speaker at industry conferences sponsored by the leading risk management, mortgage bankers’, and real estate associations.  She has received numerous awards, including the Wisconsin Real Estate Award and the Pension Real Estate Association’s Graaskamp Award for Research Excellence, and her firm earned a place on the Inc 500 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies.  Susan is widely published, having co-authored Managing Real Estate Portfolios and edited Modern Real Estate Portfolio Management.  Her service within the real estate industry and community is extensive.  She is a Counselor of Real Estate as well as a founding member and past president of the Real Estate Research Institute.  She also has been chair of the Pension Real Estate Association.  Susan is currently a UVM Trustee, serving on the Campus Life Task Force.