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This year marks the first time that six University of Delaware alumni have been recognized though the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy and the CHEP Alumni Association for their achievement, commitments and contributions to their fields with the newly created CHEP Outstanding Alumni Award.
According to alumni association president Gail Lear, the selection committee sought individuals “whose professional contributions demonstrated a deep and abiding commitment” to the fields of study included within the college.
The 2002 recipients of the award are
John C. Carney Jr. of Wilmington
In 1984, Carney graduated from UD with a master’s degree in public administration. From 1993-97, he served as then-Gov. Thomas Carper’s deputy chief of staff. He was the state’s secretary of finance from 1997-2000, and was elected Delaware’s lieutenant governor in 2000.
Carney also was involved in the Governor’s Cabinet Council for State Planning and worked to secure funds to preserve inland bays and water resources, to protect farmland and redevelop Wilmington’s riverfront. As chair of the Delaware Center for Education Technology, he leads the effort to keep Delaware schools up to date in terms of education technology.
Before Carney’s state service, he was deputy chief administrative officer for New Castle County; served on Sen. Joseph Biden’s staff; and was associate director of the Catholic Youth Organization in Wilmington.
In addition to his professional responsibilities, he also is an active volunteer. He founded and coached the boy’s lacrosse program at St. Mark’s High School and helped lead the development of the boy’s lacrosse league in Delaware. Carney also is a member of the board of directors of the Delaware Special Olympics and a longtime member of the board of the Catholic Youth Organization.
Beverly Stewart Cox of Wilmington
Cox was graduated from the University in 1979 with a bachelor of science degree in education, and she received her master’s in education from UD in 1984. She is the director of the Wilmington-based Back to Basics Learning Dynamics Inc., a tutoring service she started in 1985 after six years as a classroom teacher.
In 1998, Cox was voted “Delaware Entrepreneurial Woman of the Year” by the New Castle County Chamber of Commerce and the Delaware Capitol Review. Today, Back to Basics has a staff of more than 100 tutors and works to meet the need for individualized, one-on-one tutoring, providing instruction in more than 50 subjects to students of all ages in the tristate area.
Cox donates company funds and services regularly and volunteers her time to education-related groups. She is a founding board member of the WWB Foundation Inc., which awards scholarships to women seeking to improve their opportunities by returning to school. She also is part of the Miss America Organization and has created a scholarship for a Delaware woman seeking a teaching degree.
Melissa Deifer Hicks of Austin, Texas
In 1988, Hicks was graduated from the University with a bachelor of science degree in human resources. She is currently a child-life specialist for a private practice in Austin, Texas.
As an undergraduate, she interned at Johns Hopkins Hospital Children’s Center and then worked as part of the child-life team in the pediatric oncology inpatient and bone marrow transplant unit. During her time spent at Hopkins, she taught seminars and worked on a team to formalize a school re-entry program for children returning after diagnosis and treatment and cowrote and produced a video on the subject.
Hicks moved to Georgia in 1995 to work as the coordinator of child-life programming for the AFLAC Cancer Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the largest single pediatric cancer institution in the Southeast, and was responsible for providing psychosocial support for hematology and oncology patients and their families. She currently is working on a series of children’s books that deal with such topics as death of a childhood friend, pain and how to manage it and cancer—from diagnosis to returning to school. Hicks also has begun a two-year term as president of the Child Life Council, the international professional association for the field.
David A. Rubin of Boulder, Colo.
Rubin completed a bachelor of science in human resources degree at UD in 1992. He is now the president and general manager of A Spice of Life Event Center and Catering Services in Boulder, Colo. After graduating from UD’s first-ever class in hotel, restaurant and institutional management, Rubin worked for Marriott franchiser Interstate Hotels. After several years with Marriott, he then moved to Boulder determined to start his own business.
Undaunted by initial difficulties, Rubin honed his entrepreneurial skills in an unpaid position, while also taking on a job as a server for a local catering company, A Spice of Life Catering. Impressed with his work, A Spice of Life promoted him quickly, and in less than six months he had bought the company, which then had four full-time and 10 part-time employees. Today, the staff of A Spice of Life has quadrupled, and the company takes in seven times more revenue than when Rubin first bought it.
Rubin actively gives back to the Boulder community by hosting and promoting the Special Olympics and donating services to local schools, hospices and community organizations, including the Boulder County AIDS Project. A Spice of Life has been nominated for Service Company of the Year annually since 1996.
Sibusiso Vil-Nkomo of Pretoria, South Africa
Vil-Nkomo received his master of arts degree in 1983 and his Ph.D. in urban affairs and public policy from UD in 1985. He is currently the dean of the faculty of economics and management services at the University of Pretoria, Republic of South Africa. With approximately 7,000 students, it is the largest academic division at the university, and he is first black dean at a university formerly segregated under apartheid.
After 16 years of forced exile from his native land, Vil-Nkomo returned to South Africa to help hammer out civil service provisions in the interim constitution of the new government. He was then appointed to the national commission that created and administered a new, integrated civil service in a country where people of color previously had been denied a role in government administration. He also is the founder and chairperson of the National Policy Institute of South Africa.
Vil-Nkomo has helped to create a multiracial democracy in the new South Africa, started the first Ph.D. program in public affairs on the African continent and has consistently engaged in work to strengthen higher education among the many other nations of southern Africa.
Valerie Ash Woodruff of Wilmington
In 1971, Woodruff graduated from the University with a master’s degree in education. She is the state of Delaware’s current secretary of education, nominated by Gov. Thomas Carper in 1999, and again by then Gov.-elect Ruth Ann Minner. From 1992 to 1999, she served as the associate secretary for curriculum and instructional improvement for the Delaware Department of Education.
Woodruff has dedicated her life to improving the education of children and youth, leading the creation and implementation of the Delaware Student Testing Program. Prior to joining state government, she was a public school teacher and guidance counselor and an assistant principal at Delcastle Technical High School in Wilmington. Later, as principal of Middletown High School, she led the development of the first school-based Wellness Center in Delaware and was selected as Delaware’s Principal of the Year in 1990.
She currently serves on the executive boards for both the Delaware Coordinating Council for Children with Disabilities and the Southern Regional Education Board. Woodruff also has been cochair of the State Interagency Council for Children and Families and a board member for the Laboratory for Student Success at Temple University.
April 9, 2002
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