The Phi Beta Kappa Society Presents the President’s Award and John Hope Franklin Award at 47th Triennial Council

WASHINGTON, DC, August 5, 2021 — 

August 3, 2024 — The Phi Beta Kappa Society presented the Society’s President’s Award to former ΦBK President Lynn Pasquerella and its John Hope Franklin Award to Susan Hagen on August 3rd at the Society’s 47th Triennial Council in Baltimore, Maryland.    

The President’s Award  

The Phi Beta Kappa President’s Award, commemorated with the presentation of the Judith F. Krug Medal, is given in recognition of outstanding and extraordinary service to Phi Beta Kappa as a national organization.  
   
Lynn Pasquerella served as president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society from 2018-2021, capping twelve distinguished years of serve on the Phi Beta Kappa Senate. She was appointed president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities in 2016, after serving as the eighteenth president of Mount Holyoke College. She has held positions as Provost at the University of Hartford and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Rhode Island, where she taught for more than two decades. A philosopher whose work has combined teaching and scholarship with local and global engagement, Pasquerella has written extensively on medical ethics, metaphysics, public policy, and the philosophy of law. Her most recent book, What We Value: Public Health, Social Justice, and Educating for Democracy, examines the role of higher education in addressing some of the most pressing contemporary issues at the intersection of ethics, law, and public policy. Pasquerella the host of Northeast Public Radio’s The Academic Minute.  

She is a graduate of Quinebaug Valley Community College, Mount Holyoke College, and Brown University. Her awards and honors include receiving the President’s Award and Judith Krug Medal from Phi Beta Kappa; the William Rogers Award and the Horace Mann Medal from Brown University; the STAR Scholars Network North Star Lifetime Achievement Award; Mary Baldwin University’s Algernon Sydney Sullivan Service to Humanity Award; the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences Advocacy Award; Quinebaug Valley Community College Champions Award; and the Mount Holyoke Alumni Association’s Elizabeth Topham Kennan Award. Pasquerella holds honorary degrees from Elizabethtown College, Bishop’s University, the University of South Florida, the University of Hartford, the University of Rhode Island, Concordia College, Mount Holyoke College, Bay Path University, and St. Mary’s College and was named by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education as one of America’s top 35 women leaders. She serves on the boards of the Lingnan Foundation, the National Trust for the Humanities, the Coalition for the Common Good, and Handshake.         

The John Hope Franklin Award  

The John Hope Franklin Award, created by the Phi Beta Kappa Senate in 2011 in honor of distinguished historian, author and 18th President of Phi Beta Kappa, John Hope Franklin, recognizes individuals for exemplary long-standing service to the Society.  
 
Dr. Susan K. Hagen is the Mary Collett Munger Professor of English Emerita at Birmingham-Southern College, where she taught for 40 years and served as Donald C. Harrison Honors Program Director and Associate Provost until her retirement in 2017. She has been actively involved with the ΦBK Chapter at Birmingham-Southern for many years and served as ΦBK Senator (South Central District) from 2006-2018. She chaired the Senate Committee on Chapters during her second Senate term and chaired the Council Nominating Committee in 2020. Since retiring, she has been giving public presentations on and writing about gardening and international gardens.  She has also been writing and publishing poetry, including the collection Shall We Dance? Dr. Hagen received her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Gettysburg College where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1969. She received her Doctorate in Philosophy in Medieval Literature from the University of Virginia in 1976.