The award honors the college's most famous alumna, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Public service is transformative.
I know now that when I left a life behind within the circle of family and friends, I entered another in the wider circle of my country. We can all get used to serving others, so that service becomes not an imposition but a fulfillment - a rounding out of ourselves. I found in public service qualities I did not think I had, reserves of strength and faith I never suspected. I didn't realize it then, but I was in fact experiencing the greatest learning period of my life all through those years of my husband's imprisonment. I tried to explain to my children our very difficult situation under martial rule.