From MacArthur season to Nobel season to the Golden Globes and Oscars, the awards cycle churns on and begins again—and sometimes that’s great news for alumni magazine editors. This past October, you could feel a zip in the campus air when the news struck of Chicago Booth professor Douglas Diamond’s economics Nobel Memorial Prize. “A Cut Above” looks at Diamond’s foundational work clarifying the role of banks in the economy, now recognized with the loftiest of honors.

One awards season commands this publication’s UChicago-centric attention year in and year out. In this issue read about the individuals chosen to receive this year’s UChicago Alumni Awards and Norman Maclean Faculty Awards.

Since the awards were launched in 1941, some world-famous alumni have added these laurels to long lists of them. There was Benjamin Mays, AM’25, PhD’35, in 1967 and 1978; Susan Sontag, SB’51, in 1981; Lien Chan, AM’61, PhD’65, in 1991; and Mildred Dresselhaus, PhD’59, in 2008. Household names or not, as a nominator said of one of this year’s recipients, all of the honored Maroons bleed maroon.

As we were preparing the award notices, a handwritten card reached our mailbox. It contained news, too late to be included in this issue, from Marjorie Sullivan Lee, AB’43. She wanted to update readers on her longtime advocacy for Americans with disabilities and to hear from classmates.

Lee, we found in the Magazine’s archives, received the UChicago Public Service Award in 1993 for the work she described in her note—work she remains deeply engaged with 30 years later. Read more about her in Alumni News in the Spring/23 issue. For now, appreciate, as we do, her demonstration of the uncommon passion driving alumni awardees from every era. Do you know someone just as driven? Nominate them for a 2024 award.

Drumroll, please

In November we welcomed Chandler A. Calderon to the Magazine as the Alumni News editor. Chandler comes most recently from Yale University, where she interned for Yale’s magazine while earning her PhD in French literature. As lead editor of the Peer Review section, she will work closely with the College class correspondents and all of you who have news to share, while also contributing to every part of the publication. We’re impressed already by her editing and research chops and her eye for detail, reflected in this very issue.