How have this year’s Distinguished Alumni Award recipients
kept their zeal for their work?

Carmina Fernandes ‘99
Attorney at Law
Distinguished Young Alumni Award

The key to keeping the excitement, motivation, and high energy throughout one’s life (and particularly in mid-career) is to always pursue your passion, even if that passion changes periodically. For example, I was passionate about fashion and traveling, so I became a fashion designer who traveled all over the world for work. Today, my passion is helping others, developing my entrepreneurial skills, seeing the world, and fostering intellectual growth. To achieve these objectives, I became a lawyer and opened my own practice.

When you are learning and engaging in new things, you are not only adding excitement to your life, you are adding value to yourself, to your career, and to any organization. So find what you love and just do it!

Michael T. Foley ’72
Physician
Distinguished Alumni Service Award

There are people who make things happen; people who watch things happen; and people who say, “Hey, what happened?” Keep a passion for what you do and find others who have passion. By staying connected to UMass Amherst, including membership on the University Board of Trustees, I have been in contact with smart, interesting, high-energy people who have a lot to teach me.

Margaret Jablonski ’81, ’84G
Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Distinguished Alumni Award

Being fully engaged with work that you love is what leads to being energized and successful in a career. In my case, that is working with college-aged students as they pursue their dreams and passions. I have also served on the national board of my professional association for many years, which has enabled me to give back to the field of higher education that I am so passionate about. Being of service to others is what life is all about, and I get to do that every day in my job.

Edward M. Fouhy ‘56
Media Consultant
Distinguished Alumni Award

In mid-career I snagged a fellowship that allowed me to rethink where my profession of journalism was going and to engage with thinkers (at M.I.T.) who were inventing the future. That six-month pause reenergized me and allowed me to break out of the conventional thinking rut that I was in as a result of my then 25 years in the news business, most of the time spent meeting daily deadlines.

Joseph G. Gavin, Jr.
Grumman Aerospace Corporation, retired
Distinguished Honorary Alumni Award

I was lucky to have never had a mid-career crisis.  Perhaps this is because I’ve always been involved in the most interesting challenges I could imagine. Of course I’ve always been part of a great team of associates—the “tried and true.” And I’ve had wonderful support at home.

 

Ting-wei Tang
Professor Emeritus
UMass Amherst College of Engineering
Distinguished Faculty Award

Success in mid-career requires continuous efforts in accumulating necessary knowledge and experience. Like many of my colleagues, I have had ups and downs in my entire academic career, but the ability to focus, be fair, and remain open-minded with tenacity are traits that always served me well. You must be ready to embrace change any time and prepare for new challenges with diligence, particularly in today’s economic climate.