College alumni and emeritus receive the U's Outstanding Achievement Award

Several college alumni and one emeritus professor have been honored in the last six months with the Outstanding Achievement Award (OAA), which recognizes exceptional achievement in a professional field or service and is the highest honor granted to alumni and friends of the University.

Aletha Huston (Ph.D., psychology; child psychology minor) received an OAA on June 3. Huston is the Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor of Child Development in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas.

The award was presented in recognition of Huston’s achievements in teaching, research, and service, spanning a 40-year career. She has contributed to the field of child development in these primary areas: the effects of television and media on child development, gender differences and the processes of sex typing, childcare and child development, poverty and its effects on child development, and child development and public policy.

Left to right: Dean Steve Yussen, Maynard Reynolds, Edna
Downing, Carol Johnson, and University of Minnesota President
Robert Bruininks at the Aug. 17 OAA ceremony at Eastcliff,
official home of the University president.

On Aug. 17, two college alumni and one emeritus faculty member were honored with OAAs.

Edna Downing (B.S., ’41, English education) worked as a teacher, administrator, and consultant in public schools.

Carol Johnson (M.A., ’80, curriculum and instruction; Ph.D., ’97, educational policy and administration) served as superintendent of St. Louis Park, Minn., schools before being named to the high-profile job of Minneapolis superintendent. Last year she moved to the superintendency of the Memphis, Tenn., school district. While in Minneapolis she served on the boards of the Guthrie Theater, the Viking Council-Boy Scouts of America, and the University of Minnesota Foundation. Her professional work and volunteer contributions have been recognized by leadership awards from the Viking Council of the Boy Scouts of America and Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and she was selected as both Citizen of the Year by Rotary and as Minnesota Superintendent of the Year in 2002.

Maynard Reynolds received an M.A. and Ph.D. in educational psychology from the college and then stayed to begin a career as faculty member—a career that covered nearly 40 years. Reynolds devoted a great deal of his time and energies to increasing the mainstream participation of students with disabilities and encouraging collaboration between general and special educators. He was part of a group of policymakers who crafted Minnesota’s first state Special Education Law in 1957 which preceded federal laws by about 20 years. He also helped to found the Council for Exceptional Children and served as its president in 1965–66. This increased visibility for special education led, in turn, to the formation of a Department of Special Education within the college. Reynolds was the department’s first chair and quickly built a faculty that was widely acknowledged to be among the best in the country, and is currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.