Alumni Achievement Awards

Born and raised in Detroit, Henry Sias (B.A. '98) came to Kalamazoo to study creative writing, with the goal of becoming a novelist. But he went on to Yale Law School and received his law degree in 2005. Sias now lives in Philadelphia, where he has become a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, a community advocate, and the city’s first transgender candidate for elected office. Sias is currently Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Advisory Commission on LGBTQ Affairs. Philadelphia Magazine has called him “a trailblazing public figure.” 

For nearly 20 years, Cara Lougheed (B.A. '96) has taught thousands of students and mentored numerous future teachers. Cara earned her bachelor’s degree in English: secondary education from WMU and completed her master’s degree in teaching and learning from Florida’s Nova Southeastern University. She began her teaching career at Rochester High School in 1998 and was a founding member of Stoney Creek High School when it opened in the fall of 2001. Lougheed was recognized as the 2019-20 Michigan Teacher of the Year. 

Jason Weeby (B.A. '03) earned his bachelor's degree in secondary education and environmental studies at WMU, then completed his master's degree in education at Stanford University. As senior fellow at Bellwether Education Partners, Weeby advises foundations, nonprofits, and government agencies on city-level education reform initiatives, governance, innovation and talent. He is also currently a Pahara Institute NextGen Fellow, a selective 12-month program that encourages and supports education sector leaders to strengthen the educational equity and excellence movement by engaging more diverse perspectives. 

For over 20 years Je­ff Huebner (B.A. '82) has contributed to the weekly Chicago Reader, where he specialized in long-form narrative and investigative journalism. He has also written for Chicago magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Public Art Review, Sculpture, and many other local, national and art publications. He's a six-time finalist for the Chicago Headline Club-Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism in the Arts Reporting/Criticism category for stories in the Chicago Reader (1998-2012). He's written or co-written five books on Chicago-area murals and muralists, sculptors, and park landscapes.

Bonnie Jo Campbell (B.A. ’92, M.A. ’95, M.F.A. ’98) is the author of the novel “Once Upon a River” (July 2011, W.W. Norton) and is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. She was a 2009 National Book Award finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for her collection of stories, “American Salvage,” which won the Foreword Book of the Year award for short fiction. Campbell also is author of the novel “Q Road” and the story collection “Women & Other Animals.” She has received the AWP Award for Short Fiction, a Pushcart Prize, and the Eudora Welty Prize. Her poetry collection “Love Letters to Sons of Bitches” won the 2009 CBA Letterpress Chapbook award.