Two alumni who have helped improve understanding of diverse cultures received the 2008 Distinguished Service Citation, the highest honor bestowed by the University of Kansas and the KU Alumni Association for humanitarian service. They are Eric Sundquist, Sherman Oaks, Calif., and Roger Youmans, Princeton, N.J.
Since 1941, the award has been presented to individuals whose lives and careers benefit humanity. The citation winners were honored during the All-University Supper May 16.
As a teacher and author, Sundquist has been a driving force behind the study of multicultural literature. The author or editor of nine books, he is the UCLA Foundation Professor of Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He won a senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a rare honor for a literary scholar.
His books have received numerous honors, including the James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association. In 2006, he received the Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award, which helps fund his research and teaching related to the Holocaust’s role in American and modern culture. He is writing a book for Yale University Press on Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Youmans has devoted his career to healing racial differences and providing medical care in developing countries. As a KU undergraduate, he sought to unite the campus community by joining the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity—the first intercollegiate greek fraternity for African-Americans.
In 1961, he became medical director of the Sona Bata Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and he later spent many years as a medical missionary and teacher in other African and South American nations. In the United States, he taught surgery at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine and the Oral Roberts University School of Medicine, where he received awards for outstanding teaching. He serves on the board of the United Front Against Riverblindness—a disease prevalent in Africa’s tropics—and the boards of Health Teams International and Blessings International.
