Kennedy School To Recognize Three with Alumni Awards

The highest-ranking Canadian civil servant, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve System, and an environmentalist who rescued the Endangered Species Act from congressional dismantling will be the first honorees of a new program to recognize distinguished alumni of the Kennedy School of Government.

Ian D. Clark of Toronto, Paul A. Volcker of New York, and the late Mollie H. Beattie will be recognized this weekend at the first Annual Alumni Awards Ceremony. In addition to saluting those alumni who have made outstanding contributions to the public good in the United States and throughout the world, the honorees will serve as role models for students, according to the School's Alumni Executive Council.

Both Clark and Volcker will be at the School to accept the award this weekend. The recognition of Beattie's service comes posthumously, as she died of brain cancer in 1996 at the age of 49. Her award will be accepted by her husband, Richard Schwolsky.

"It is our hope that Ian, Paul, and Mollie will serve as standard bearers for our future graduates," said Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. "We encourage our students to pursue the path of public service, wherever it takes them, with the passion, dedication, rigor, and excellence which these alumni exemplify and whose achievements we celebrate."

The Alumni Awards Program is chaired by Joshua Gotbaum, the executive associate director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The 1997 Alumni Award recipients are:

Ian D. Clark, a pioneer of the Master in Public Policy program at the Kennedy School, came from Oxford University, where he had been a Rhodes Scholar. After taking his degree in 1972, he returned to his native Canada to work in government and became the highest-ranking civil servant in that country. Clark worked as deputy minister of the federal Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, deputy secretary (plans) in the Privy Council Office, first secretary of the Treasury Board of Canada, and comptroller general of Canada. Most recently, Clark became an international civil servant as an executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), serving on this organization's small governing board.

Paul A. Volcker came to Cambridge as a Littauer Fellow in 1950 to study public administration before there was a Kennedy School. Volcker served in the U.S. Department of Treasury and in the federal reserve system under five presidents, beginning with President Kennedy. Volcker was chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1979 to 1987. Throughout his tenure in government, Volcker has been a model for public service careers, embodying the balance of intellectual and political insight, rigor in pursuit of public policy, and demonstrating determination and skill during turbulent times.

Mollie H. Beattie, who died in 1996 of brain cancer at 49, was a committed environmentalist who worked as a forester, teacher, reporter, habitat director, and foundation manager. She was appointed Vermont's first woman commissioner of forests, parks, and recreation in 1985, and in 1989, deputy secretary of Vermont's Agency of Natural Resources. In 1993, after taking her degree from the Kennedy School, Beattie went to Washington as the first woman director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to work with, as she called them, "the hook and bullet crowd" to fight the environmental backlash then sweeping across Capitol Hill. Her colleagues and her adversaries in government, industry, and environmental organizations testify to her passion and effectiveness. Under her watch were added 15 new wildlife refuges and more than 100 conservation habitat plans. She helped save the Endangered Species Act, and managing the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park became her favorite project. In recognition of her achievements, passion, humanity, and the high regard of those who knew her, 8 million acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have been named after her, as has one of her beloved wolf packs in Yellowstone National Park.