Linda Duttenhaver Award

University of Bordeaux, France 1968-69, UC Santa Barbara

Leslie was born in Chicago but raised in San Fernando Valley. She attended UC Santa Barbara from 1966-1970 and her year abroad with UCEAP at the Université of Bordeaux (1968-69) was a life-defining event. After returning from France, Leslie received her teaching credential from UCLA and taught English and French for three years at the same all girls parochial high school in the Valley that she attended.

On a dare, Leslie took the Foreign Service written exam in late 1974 and entered the Foreign Service on September 25, 1975, for what she intended would be only one tour of duty. Forty-eight years later, Leslie is still active in the State Department, inspecting embassies overseas, bureaus and offices domestically, and offering her coaching and editing skills to the next generation. In her free time, Leslie supports a local Salvadoran-Honduran family with multiple health and legal challenges with transportation, interpreting, managing medical, and life safety issues.

Leslie’s Foreign Service career appointments:

• 1976/1977  - Vice Consul at the U.S. Embassy in London
• 1977 5 months of intensive Serbo-Croatian language training
• 1978 Vice Consul at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade (Yugoslavia still existed)
• 1978  Resigned from the FS and moved back to the UK to run a business
• 1981-1983 Rejoined the FS; Consul at U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
• 1983-1985 Foreign Service Institute, Instructor in Consular Law and Practice for new consular officers
• 1985-1987 Consul at U.S. Embassy in Antigua covering Eastern Caribbean
• 1987-1989 State Department, Bureau of Consular Affairs Executive Officer with the Latin American portfolio
• 1989-1990 State Department, Operations Center, Senior Watch Officer (the entire Iron Curtain fell on my shifts!)
• 1990-1993 Consul General, U.S. Embassy in El Salvador (one year of Civil War, one year of cease fire, one year of peace)
• 1993-1994 Senior Training year with group of 30 foreign affairs leaders from military and other agencies
• 1994-1997 Deputy Permanent Representative and Chargé d’Affaires at U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva
• 1997 State Department, Board of Examiners to tells and select new diplomats
• 1997-1998 State Department, Office Director, Bureau of Oceans, International Environment, and Scientific Affairs
• 1998-2001 State Department, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
• 2001-2004 Minister Counselor for Consular Affairs, U.S. Embassy in Ottawa with oversight for all 7 consular operations in Canada
• 2004-present State Department Office of Inspector General - 3 years as full-time inspector; 17 years as retired annuitant.

Complutense University of Madrid, Spain 1989-90 and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico 1990, UC Santa Barbara

Dr. Kendall A. King is a Professor of Multilingual Education at the University of Minnesota, where she specializes in applied linguistics and language teaching and learning. King has been a faculty member at NYU, Georgetown University, and Stockholm University in Sweden. She co-leads a U.S. Department of Education-funded project (via CARLA) which promotes more equitable access to state seals of biliteracy. Additionally, King helped to formulate and build support for legislation that promotes multilingual approaches for English language learners that passed in 2014. At the University of Pennsylvania, where she researched Quechua language loss and revitalization in the Ecuadorian Andes, she landed both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics. The list of accolades about King goes on!

Watch Kendall receive her award at our 2023 Annual Conference!

UCEAP Costa Rica, 1989-90, UC Berkeley

Mari Metcalf is a bilingual and bicultural attorney, specializing in Spanish language investigations, and trauma-informed interviewing. Mari became fully fluent in Spanish as a result of her time in Costa Rica and has since dedicated herself to helping others. As a volunteer attorney with the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, she assisted victims of violent felonies in their applications for U-Visa status and interviewed Spanish speaking victims of sexual assault and rape. As an attorney, Mari has also volunteered her legal services at Project Homeless Connect, a convention-like daylong event where homeless men and women receive a variety of free services. She also spent over a year volunteering as an immigration attorney assisting low-income Spanish-speaking clients applying for the U visa and asylum. As a bilingual attorney trained in trauma-informed interviewing, she served victims of violent crime who had survived extreme levels of trauma. At the International Institute of the Bay Area, she was the only trauma-informed volunteer attorney on staff, as well as the only fully bilingual attorney licensed in California. Mari says that a large part of her ability to serve Spanish-speaking clients, especially trauma survivors, is that as a result of study abroad she became bicultural as well as bilingual.

As an alum of American Field Service, Mari has spent over a decade volunteering with high school applicants who wish to study abroad. She has interviewed candidates and their families and served as a liaison to high school exchange students living here in the Bay Area. She has also spent more than ten years interviewing candidates for NSLI-Y (National Strategic Language Initiative for Youth) run by the US Department of State. She truly lives with a passion for bilingualism and study abroad, and never hesitates to tell young students and their parents that study abroad changed the course of her life and that her year abroad in Costa Rica was an incomparable experience that she wants every undergraduate to have.

(watch the 2022 Alumni Awards celebration event)

University of Bordeaux, France 1962-63, UC Berkeley

After returning from France, Nell graduated from UC Berkeley, received a MA from UCLA, and completed her Ph.D. in American History at Harvard University. Today, Nell is the Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University, and is recognized as an award winning author and artist. Her 2018 memoir Old in Art School reflects on her transition from a career in academia to attending art school and following her passion for art.

Nell Painter (the visual artist formerly known as the historian Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University, author of The History of White People, Old in Art School, Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol and Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over) lives and works in Newark, New Jersey. She writes opinion pieces for the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Paris Review and other journals when not painting self-portraits and artist’s books that visualize people and history.

(watch Nell accept her award)

University of Göttingen, Germany 1982-83, UC Santa Cruz

John C. Williams is the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In that capacity, he serves as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee. From 2011 to mid-June 2018, Mr. Williams was the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Prior to that, he was the executive vice president and director of research at the San Francisco Fed, which he joined in 2002.

Mr. Williams began his career in 1994 as an economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In addition, he served as a senior economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers and as a lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Mr. Williams holds a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, an M.S. degree from the London School of Economics, and an A.B. from the University of California at Berkeley.

(watch John accept the award)

University of Padua, University of Bologna, Italy 1987-89, UC San Diego

Monique is an International Volunteer Coordinator who has established lasting connections between maternal and child welfare non-profits in Nepal and the U.S., including Pushpa Basnet’s Early Childhood Development Center, One Heart World-Wide, Next Generation Nepal, and BlinkNow/Kopila Valley Children’s Home and School. She manages internship placement for international volunteers, and coordinated relief efforts after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. In addition, she successfully crowdfunded and currently manages a pilot program to provide nursing scholarships for disadvantaged young women from rural Nepal. Monique is also a professional photographer and business owner, who has collaborated with organizations in Nepal for product development in sustainable fashion and to promote the #MadeInNepal brand and campaign. She received a U.S. Department of State Professional Development Fellowship grant for photography in 2011. Monique received her B.A. in Political Science from UC San Diego, and spent two years abroad with UCEAP in Italy (University of Padua and University of Bologna). She later received her M.Sc. in Government from the London School of Economics. Monique is fluent in Italian and Spanish.

Monteverde Institute, Costa Rica 1991-92, UC Santa Barbara

Julie is the co-founder of Ecology Project International, an education non-profit that empowers youth to take an active role in conservation through hands-on field science. The program engages both local and international high school students, who come together to work collaboratively. More than 30,000 students across five countries have participated in EPI’s science and conservation programs. Julie participated in the Tropical Biology & Conservation program at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica, and graduated from UC Santa Barbara.

University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom 1968-69, UCLA

Nobel laureate Dr. Randy Schekman received this year’s Linda Duttenhaver Distinguished Alumni Award. As an undergraduate at UCLA, Randy participated in the University of Edinburgh program in 1968-69. He credits his year in Edinburgh as a key event in the development of his career aspirations as an academic scholar and teacher. Dr. Schekman has been a professor of molecular and cell biology at Berkeley for 39 years and in 2013 received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

(Watch Prof. Schekman talk about his time abroad at a UCEAP event on 8/29/15)

University of Bergen, Norway 1971-72, UC Santa Cruz  

Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan distinguished scientist, renowned astronaut and intrepid explorer. Her expertise spans the frontiers of space and sea. An accomplished oceanographer, she was appointed NOAA’s Chief Scientist in 1993, where she oversaw a portfolio that included fisheries biology, climate change, satellite instrumentation and marine biodiversity. She was one of the first six women selected to join the NASA astronaut corps in 1978 and holds the distinction of being the first American woman to walk in space. Kathryn flew on three shuttle missions during her 15-year tenure, including the mission that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. She was confirmed by the Senate as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator in 2014. Kathryn has also held the positions of Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction and Deputy Administrator, and also performed the duties of NOAA's Chief Scientist, a vacant position. As Assistant Secretary, she played a central role in directing Administration and NOAA priority work in the areas of weather and water services, climate science and services, integrated mapping services and Earth-observing capabilities. She also provided agency-wide direction with regard to satellites, space weather, water, and ocean observations and forecasts to best serve American communities and businesses. She is the United States Co-chair of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), an intergovernmental body that is building a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) to provide environmental intelligence relevant to societal needs.

(Watch Dr. Sullivan accept the award)

University of Bordeaux, France 1973-74, UC Berkeley

Dr. Kaplan is a professor of Romance Studies, Literature, and History and the Chair of the Department of French at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. While an undergraduate studying French at University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Kaplan participated in the 1973-74 UCEAP Bordeaux, France program. She completed her 1981 Ph.D. at Yale and her current research interests include World War II and post-war France, literature and law, biography/autobiography and French cultural studies. Alice Kaplan became a professor of French and an expert on the literature of French fascism. Dr. Kaplan was astonished and delighted to be the recipient of the first Duttenhaver award. "This past fall I celebrated the 40th reunion of my study abroad year in Bordeaux with a small group of friends from the UC program. It was an experience that sealed our friendship, enriched all of our lives, and continues to inform our thinking and our eye on the world." - Alice Kaplan