Each year, the UB Alumni Association accomplishes the difficult task of selecting a handful of our many accomplished grads to recognize at the annual UBAA Achievement Awards. At this year’s ceremony and reception, held in March at the Center for the Arts, many award recipients spoke of gratitude to UB and Buffalo—especially, as several mentioned, for the gift of meeting their spouses.
“I know how a rock star must feel.”—Steven A. Guttenberg (DDS ’69, BS ’65), founder and president of the Washington Institute for Mouth, Face and Jaw Surgery, reflecting on receiving the Samuel P. Capen Award—UB’s most prestigious alumni honor—for making the largest bequest to date to the university’s dental school. (Apparently, bow ties are his signature look; his wife and partner-in-giving, Diana Winters Guttenberg, attested that he has “at least 1,000 of them.”)
“Good studying weather.”—Alejandro Rivera Becerra (PhD ’01, ME ’98, MS ’93), the International Distinguished Alumni award recipient and Mexico’s chief negotiator to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, on one reason he enjoyed Buffalo. See the full interview with Becerra here.
“We come here as blank slates, and the university and community really come together to create the next generation.” —Rear Adm. Rebecca McCormick-Boyle (BS ’81), deputy chief of the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Medicine, Education and Training; commander of the Navy Medicine Education and Training Command; and director of the Navy Nurse Corps.