College of Liberal Arts & Sciences honors Bowlsby, Lang, Yazel as 2015 Alumni Fellows

Thursday, September 24, 2015

The commissioner of the Big 12 Conference, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, and the executive editor of Cosmopolitan may have had very different career paths. However, they share one important thing in common—they are all alumni of the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (CLAS).

CLAS honored athletic administrator Bob Bowlsby, composer David Lang, and editor Leslie Yazel as the 2015 class of Alumni Fellows on September 16 in the Old Capitol Museum Senate Chamber. In an event co-sponsored by the UI Alumni Association, the honorees received awards from CLAS Dean Chaden Djalali, made comments, and participated in a panel discussion about their UI experiences and the value of liberal arts education.

The CLAS Alumni Fellows program is made possible by funds from the UI Alumni Association Dean’s Chair in the Liberal Arts and Sciences. Each year, distinguished (CLAS) alumni are honored as Alumni Fellows and invited to campus to speak to classes, meet with small groups of faculty and students, and make a public presentation based on his or her experiences since leaving the University.

Read on to learn more about the Fellows and their visit to the UI, or browse photos from the awards ceremony.

Bob Bowlsby​​Bob Bowlsby
Commissioner, Big 12 Conference

MA 1978
Recreation Education, Department of Health & Human Physiology

Bob Bowlsby, one of the most respected athletic administrators in the nation, was named the Commissioner of the Big 12 Conference in 2012. From 1990 to 2006, he was the University of Iowa Director of Intercollegiate Athletics, a storied tenure that included guiding and supervising the merger of the Hawkeye men’s and women’s athletic departments, a total of 24 varsity sports. After leaving Iowa, he directed the athletics department at Stanford University. Throughout his career, Bowlsby has been a national leader in intercollegiate and amateur athletics. In 2002, President George W. Bush chose him to be a member of the Commission on Opportunities in Athletics, and he served on the United States Olympic Committee Board of Directors from 2007 to 2014. The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) named him the 2001-02 Central Region Athletic Director of the Year, and Sports Business Journal selected him as the National Athletics Director of the Year.

Bowlsby's public presentation on college athletics was standing room only. See media coverage and video of his talk by The Gazette.

David LangDavid Lang
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer

MM 1980
Composition, School of Music

David Lang, one of the world’s most highly recognized composers, received the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2008 for the little match girl passion. In 2010, a recording of that piece won a Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. The co-founder and co-Artistic Director of the renowned Bang on a Can ensemble, his works have been commissioned by the world’s leading ensembles and cultural institutions, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, the John F. Kennedy Center, and Hancher Auditorium. In 2013-2014, he served as the Richard and Barbara Debs Chair at Carnegie Hall, and he has won the Rome Prize, the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and France’s Chevalier des l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres.  He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2014, and currently serves as Professor of Composition at Yale University and Composer-in-Residence at De Doelen in the Netherlands, home of the Rotterdam Philharmonic.

Along with being recognized as a CLAS Alumni Fellow, Lang also visited the UI as a lecturer for the Creative Matters series, sponsored by the UI Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development. His presentation, "Music and its secret powers for good and evil," was recorded and is available online through Creative Matters.

Leslie Yazel​​Leslie Yazel
Executive Editor, Cosmopolitan

BA 1993
Journalism & Mass Communication, English

Leslie Yazel—who started her journalism career as a reporter at the Daily Iowan—is the Executive Editor of Cosmopolitan. While still working toward her undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa with a double major, she was a correspondent for the Des Moines Register, and after graduating, went on to work for some of the nation's most highly acclaimed publications, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Glamour, and Maxim. Yazel, who has served as a Hearst Fellow at the University of North Carolina and a Washington Post Media Fellow at Duke University, is recognized as one of the most powerful and influential female journalists in the country, and regularly speaks to aspiring journalists about her experiences as a leader in the field.

While on campus, Yazel gave a public presentation at the Adler Journalism Building that included a Q&A session with journalism students, others in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication, and members of the public.

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.