The Alumnae/i Association of Vassar College (AAVC) Announces 2026 Honorees
The Alumnae/i Association of Vassar College (AAVC) has announced its slate of awardees for 2026; they represent a wide swath of class years, professions, and passions. “Every time we research nominees, I leave the process with a sense of both wonderment and inspiration at the people that we consider part of our Vassar community,” said Eddie Gamarra ’94, chair of the AAVC Alum Recognition Committee. “It’s really extraordinary.” Read on to meet the 2026 honorees and the criteria for each award.
Outstanding Faculty/Staff Award: Marianne Begemann ’79
When Marianne Begemann graduated from Vassar in 1979, she had no idea that just six years later she would be returning as a chemistry professor. She also couldn’t have foreseen that she would, in 2012, be appointed as the College’s Dean of Strategic Planning and Academic Resources—a demanding and delicate role in which she shepherded complex development projects to completion, such as The Winton Evans Bridge for Laboratory Sciences and The Dede Thompson Bartlett Center for Admission and Career Education, while balancing the concerns of the various groups that make up the Vassar community. Yet Begemann took to the role with focus and grace, making a lasting impact on the College that has earned her the AAVC’s Outstanding Faculty/Staff Award. The award is presented to “a faculty or staff member who has demonstrated exemplary service, leadership, and commitment to engage with alums and current students through a range of programs, initiatives, and activities over a period of years.” The award was presented at Reunion 2026 in June.
At the ceremony, President Elizabeth H. Bradley, who worked closely with Begemann, said, “Marianne has embodied the Vassar ethos as much as anyone I know—she dives deep into every facet of every project with thoughtfulness and creativity, and never loses sight of the ‘why.’” She noted that when the College embarked on any number of policy discussions, Begemann was always there to remind colleagues, “First, we should get clear on our values.”
AAVC President Monica Vachher ’77 noted that an important requirement for this award is a commitment to engage with alums over a period of years. Vachher said Begemann’s “tireless stewardship” of the Class of 1971 Gateway to the Old Vassar Farm exemplified this. “She acted as a vital liaison between the Class of 1971 and the College, ensuring that their collective desire to revitalize the ecological preserve was met with professional rigor and ecological sensitivity,” said Vachher. “Marianne didn’t just oversee a project; she nurtured a legacy, attending countless committee meetings and community workshops to ensure alum perspectives were woven into the very landscape of the campus.”
Speaking at the award ceremony, Begemann attributed her lengthy affiliation with the College to its special character. “Vassar’s truly a place that values and encourages intellectual exploration. That means recognizing what you don’t know, the freedom to ask questions, discover, and learn—learn about what truly interests and motivates you,” she said. “So I’m deeply grateful for having been able to spend 40 years recognizing what I don’t know and the freedom and support to explore those unknowns, while sometimes appearing to know more than I do.”
Distinguished Achievement Award: Jonathan Karl ’90
Studying journalism in College is far less important to a successful career in the field than developing critical thinking skills. So believes Jonathan Karl ’90—and he would know. Karl, who majored in sociology at Vassar, is a Washington, DC-based television journalist and bestselling author who has covered five presidents. He currently serves as Chief Washington Correspondent at ABC News, a position he has held since 2021, and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Karl has been recognized with some of the most prestigious accolades in his profession—including multiple Emmys and two Walter Cronkite Awards. His work has now earned him the AAVC’s Distinguished Achievement Award, presented to an alum who has reached the highest level in their professional field while exemplifying the ideals of a liberal arts education and using “their position of visibility, power, or leadership to better the human community and serve the wider goals of society.”
Gamarra said Karl was the AAVC’s choice not only because “he is an absolute superstar in his field,” but also because of the way Karl has provided “thoughtful investigation, constructive insights, and balanced perspective in a time of extreme bifurcation in our political discourse.” Gamarra said Karl has also “been able to stand up to attacks on free speech with strength, dignity, and grace.”
Karl told VQ that he considers his selection for this award a “high honor,” adding, “My experience at Vassar was formative; it’s a big part of how I became what I became in my career.” Karl noted that his time at the College included his very first broadcast job: hosting a psychedelic music show on WVKR. “It wasn’t exactly prime time, but I loved it,” he said. Karl also loved spending time reading and writing amidst the stacks of the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library. “Vassar was an awakening of my intellectual experience,” he said. “I would find the quietest, darkest, most remote places and engage with ideas. It was a real liberal arts experience.” And that, said Karl, is what gave him the grounding he needed to excel in his field. “I never studied journalism,” he said. “I took a couple of classes on politics, but what I learned at Vassar was how to think, and I can’t think of anything that could have prepared me better for a career in journalism.”
Outstanding Service to Vassar Award: Katrine “Cage” Ames ’69 and Katherine “Gig” Babson Jr. ’69
What do you get when you cross a retired trusts and estates attorney with the former music critic for Newsweek and NPR, both from the class of 1969? The most phenomenal fundraising and outreach team Vassar has probably ever known. Katherine “Gig” Babson Jr. ’69 and Katrine “Cage” Ames ’69 were acquainted during their college years, but didn’t become inseparable best friends until they joined forces to co-chair their 50th class reunion. Working with what they call “three superb, tireless fund co-chairs and a vast peacetime army of volunteers,” they helped amass more than $16 million for their class gift—a new Vassar record. Perhaps even more amazing is that the group succeeded in getting nearly every single member of their class to pitch in. But they didn’t stop there; the two are constantly brainstorming new ways to bring alums together to support the College and are currently co-chairs of the Fearlessly Consequential campaign, which will help secure Vassar’s future.
“They’re like Vassar superheroes,” said Gamarra. “They have been extraordinary at not just their fundraising efforts, but their community building. They are hilarious, they are smart, they are dedicated, they are wise. They are the most pro-Vassar people I’ve ever met, and I aspire to be Gig and Cage when I grow up. They are just an extraordinary powerhouse team whose love of Vassar is infectious, and their contributions to community are immeasurable and timeless.” Their years of work for the College have now earned Ames and Babson the Outstanding Service to Vassar Award, presented in recognition of “extraordinary commitment, leadership, and service in promoting the goals and highest interests of Vassar College and the AAVC” made over a number of years.
To hear Ames and Babson tell it, they have an absolute blast rallying alums from all generations and walks of life. “What we have attempted to do, right from the very beginning, is to be very inclusive, so we will look for people that haven’t been involved and aren’t the same people that get asked all the time,” said Babson. “There are not that many people who can tell you at age 70 that they have a whole bunch of new friends. But we do!”
Ames said that having an ever-expanding social circle while approaching age 80 “is actually good for you in every way. It’s good for your brain. It’s good for your soul. It’s good for everything.”
Yet making friends isn’t the main point of the work they do; both say they are “laser-focused” on raising funds for the College. “My Vassar education was phenomenal,” said Ames. “It opened doors for me—it really opens doors in your mind. And especially now, when we look at the devaluation of a college education, which I consider one of the most appalling tidal waves in our country’s history, I want to do what I can to keep people coming to College.”
Spirit of Vassar Award: Eric Marcus ’80
Eric Marcus ’80 describes himself as “a reluctant pioneer in a number of places.” But a reluctant pioneer is a pioneer nonetheless. He was out as a gay man at a time when being open about queerness could sink a career, and he went on to become a founder and host of the highly acclaimed Making Gay History podcast. He has also written a dozen books.
A fearless and generous storyteller who will share his own struggles to aid others, Marcus has authored one book to help gay men navigate coupledom and another to comfort survivors of a family member’s suicide. Making Gay History, which features archival oral histories, also began as a book of the same name, first published in 1992. Since it launched as a podcast in 2016, Making Gay History episodes have been downloaded nearly 8 million times in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Marcus is also a co-producer of Those Who Were There, a podcast drawn from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. And he’s a founding board member of the American LGBTQ+ Museum and a former board member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
“This is a guy who not only cares but who really puts his life force behind making the world a better place,” said Gamarra, “and he has for an incredibly long time. So we’re super excited to be sharing this award with him at this moment, especially when American culture has been shifting into such negative discourse about queer life.”
The Spirit of Vassar Award is presented to an alum who has “demonstrated extraordinary and distinguished leadership, contribution, and commitment to serving a community in which they effect positive, transformative societal change” and recognizes “the values of service and civic responsibility that are fundamental to a Vassar education.”
Marcus said receiving the award “means the world to me” because his Vassar education was itself transformative. “I arrived at Vassar as a very fresh freshman. I really was unformed,” he recalled, adding that he had lived a very sheltered life in Queens, NY, before arriving on campus. “The academic experience of being at Vassar opened me up to all kinds of possibilities that I didn’t know about when I arrived,” he said. “It’s a place that launched me with a much-expanded worldview, a much better sense of myself.”
Young Alum Achievement or Service Award: Juliany “Loma” Taveras ’16
Poet, playwright, screenwriter, photographer—Juliany “Loma” Taveras ’16 is a deeply thoughtful and authentic font of creativity who draws inspiration from their Caribbean diasporic roots and queer/trans identity. Taveras’s work as a staff writer on the Amazon Prime series With Love drew raves from Nick Pepper, Amazon’s then-Head of Studio Creative Content, who told The Hollywood Reporter in 2024, “It’s our pleasure to be working with such a talent.” Their adaptation of the children’s story Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress for the stage earned the 2024 Distinguished Play Award from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education. And just recently, their animated feature screenwriting debut, Julián—an adaptation of the children’s book Julián Is a Mermaid—premiered in France.
Taveras is now being recognized with the Young Alum Achievement Award, presented to graduates of the past 10 years for their “exceptional personal and professional achievement(s) within their respective field” who is also “inspirational to their peers and the current student body, while exemplifying the fruits of a successful liberal arts education at Vassar.”
“Juliany has been on this incredible journey of creativity and social impact as a multihyphenate, multidisciplinary artist,” said Gamarra. “They are demonstrating that to be a working professional storyteller, one can find excellence without having to sacrifice who you are or what you are about.”
“It’s an honor to receive this award uplifting my journey since [graduation], given how much of it has been rooted in the learning, growth, and relationships that Vassar made possible for me,” said Taveras. “Vassar helped me to deepen my creative practice by weaving together my lived experience and lineage with thoughtful interrogations of art and history, leading me to the kernel at the heart of my work: the expansion of the imagination beyond colonial restriction.” This common thread binds their disparate ways of working, from animated films and children’s plays to spoken-word poems and solarpunk novels. “I write to alchemize, to expand, to discover, to question—and above all else to insist that, despite the horrors we humans seem so capable of, it is not all we are, and there is so much more we can be.”
The Alum Recognition Committee seeks nominations throughout the year for its awards program. Community members are encouraged to nominate deserving candidates for any of the awards listed below by filling out this nomination form.