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Six honored with Alumni Awards This year’s Distinguished Alumni Awards were conferred during a special ceremony Oct. 11, 2003 during Homecoming Weekend. Recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award must be Albion College alumni and should: display genuine leadership and dedicated service to others; exemplify the qualities of a liberal arts education; and demonstrate breadth of achievement in career, family and service to the community and/or Albion College.
Kenneth C. Ballou, ’47 Kenneth Ballou had a successful 36-year career teaching biology at Albion College, from 1949 through 1985. Ballou mentored many students pursuing a medical career and was widely known for his Comparative Anatomy and Microbiology courses. He served in various leadership roles within the Biology Department and for 14 years was a faculty marshal for College ceremonial events. His contributions to the Albion community have been significant. Ballou was a charter member and two-time board president for the Albion Area Ambulance Service; in addition, he worked as a volunteer emergency medical technician, driver and dispatcher for 25 years. Ballou served as assistant chair of the Albion Blood Bank for nine years, as president of the board of the Albion Exchange Club, and as vice president of the organizational board for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant in support of volunteerism in Albion. A member of Albion’s First United Methodist Church for 56 years, Ballou has had three terms as chair of its Board of Trustees, and was a superintendent of the church school. He also spent 13 summers as an officer with the Albion Police Department from 1953 to 1966. For his community service, Ballou has received numerous awards, including a Michigan Week Community Service Award, an Albion Minuteman Award, the Battle Creek Enquirer George Award for community service, and a certificate of appreciation from the Albion College Alumni Association. Ballou earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Albion College and did graduate work at Michigan State University. In 1983, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of science from Albion College. Ballou continues to enjoy riding and driving his horses. He and his wife, Polly, live in Albion, and are the parents of Kenneth Ballou, Jr., ’72, and Ann Ballou.
Julie Brigham-Grette, ’77 Julie Brigham-Grette has been a member of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Department of Geosciences since 1987. She is now a full professor and also serves as associate department head. A researcher of the stratigraphy and age dating of geologic systems, she is especially interested in the climate history of the Arctic across Alaska and into northeastern Russia. She has
Pictured with President Peter Mitchell, ’67, are the 2003 Distinguished Alumni Award recipients: (from left) James Garber, ’55, Kenneth Ballou, ’47, Susan Pellowe, ’61, Justin Sleight, ’43, Michael Halbig, ’68, and Julie Brigham-Grette, ’77. participated in 10 field expeditions to very remote arctic regions of Russia, and was cochief scientist in 2002 of an expedition on the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, taking sediment cores from the Bering and Chukchi Seas. Brigham-Grette is equally dedicated to her teaching. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in her specialty of glacial geology, and often handles 600 students in her Introductory Oceanography course. BrighamGrette is also a member of a faculty team that has worked to redesign course offerings to be more inquiry-based, with more emphasis on class participation as well as Web-based learning. A leader among her professional colleagues, Brigham-Grette is president-elect of the American Quaternary Association, chair of the International Science Steering Committee of the International Geosphere/Biosphere Program on Past Global Change based in Switzerland, and currently a member of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs Advisory Board. Other professional activities include service on the editorial board of three international journals, and work on numerous grant review panels and steering committees for the National Science Foundation. She was elected a fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2002. Brigham-Grette holds master’s and doctoral degrees in geology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She and her husband, Roger, live in Amherst, with their sons, Karl and Erik.
James N. Garber, ’55 James Garber spent most of his 37-year career as an attorney and judge working for the citizens of Michigan. From 1958 to 1973, he worked as an attorney in Wayne County, serving the Road Commission, the County Board of Supervisors and the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. In the 1970s, he was executive director of the Criminal Justice Institute and managing partner of Garber, Haslick, and Bramlage, P.C. In 1979, he was elected to the 35th District Court, where he served for 16 years, 10 as chief judge. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, Garber has been active in professional leadership and education throughout his career and into retirement. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of the National District Attorneys Association and the National Center for Prosecution Management. He has served as a consultant to the Institute of Judicial Administration, the National Center for Prosecution Management, the Presidential Commission on National Standards and Goals for the Criminal Justice System, and the Michigan Supreme Court Backlog Reduction System. He has taught seminars and courses for a variety of institutions, had a long career as a guest expert on legal and political matters for WJR Radio in Detroit, and, after retirement, served five years as a mediator for the Wayne County Circuit Court. A devoted Christian, Garber has also given significant time and energy to his church. A member of historic Trinity Lutheran Church, Garber currently sits on its Board of Directors. He has held several leadership positions within the Lutheran Church’s Michigan District and Missouri Synod, and, in the past two years, has participated in mission trips to Panama and Latvia. In 2002, Garber was named Detroit Metropolitan Lutheran Layman of the Year and received the “Christus Primus” award from Concordia UniversityAnn Arbor.
Garber has been included in four editions of Who’s Who in American Law. He was the 1988 Plymouth Citizen of the Year and was a 2001 inductee of the Plymouth Hall of Fame. Chair of Lutheran Attorneys in Witness since 1993, he received that group’s 2001 award for service to church and profession. He and his wife, Marianne Johansson Garber, ’57, live in Northville. They are the parents of four sons, and have 11 grandchildren and one greatgrandchild.
Michael C. Halbig, ’68 Michael Halbig has served for the past 14 years as the dean for faculty and finance at the U.S. Naval Academy, with oversight responsibility for a staff of nearly 500 and an annual budget of over $50-million. In particular, he supervises the hiring, mentoring and promotion processes for the civilian faculty. Halbig has been a member of the U.S. Naval Academy faculty as an officerinstructor and civilian professor since 1972. During that time, he has served as chair of the Language Studies Department, faculty chair of the Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference and director of the German language program. His civilian awards include the Navy Superior and Meritorious Civilian Service Awards and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Halbig recently retired as a naval intelligence officer in the rank of captain, U.S. Naval Reserve. During his 26 years with the reserve, he was associated with a number of intelligence units, four of which he commanded. As the national chief of staff for the Naval Reserve Intelligence Command, Fort Worth, Texas, in September 2001, Halbig