Elizabethtown College names recipients of annual "Educate for Service" award

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Dr. Roger Hoerl ’79, Carl J. Strikwerda, president of Elizabethtown College, Dr. Carl Bowman ’79.

ELIZABETHTOWN, PA (10/28/2011)(readMedia)-- Dr. Carl Bowman '79 and Dr. Roger Hoerl '79 were named recipients of the 2011 Educate for Service Award at a ceremony hosted by Carl J. Strikwerda, president of Elizabethtown College. The award is the highest honor that alumni of Elizabethtown College can receive. Presented annually at the President's Dinner, since 1966, the award is given to recipients who exemplify the foundation of the College's spirit and legacy of education applied in lifelong service. Three distinct categories define the awards criteria: service to the College; service to humanity; and service through professional achievement.

Dr. Carl Bowman '79 was named the Educate for Service honoree for Service through Professional Achievement in recognition of his steadfast and noteworthy contributions to education and the global understanding of the Church of the Brethren. Bowman, an American sociologist widely recognized for his studies of Anabaptist religious groups, is perhaps the foremost expert on the social and cultural history of the Church of the Brethren. The author of various books, chapters and monographs, Bowman is perhaps best known as the author of "Brethren Society: The Cultural Transformation of a Peculiar People". His analysis of Brethren history was characterized by Donald F. Durnbaugh, pre-eminent Brethren historian, as one that would "shape the interpretation of Brethren history for many decades." Bowman conducted the 1985 Brethren Profile Study, the first nationally-representative survey of Brethren during the twentieth century, and served for many years as Contributing Editor to "The Brethren Encyclopedia, Volume IV".

On the broader topic of Anabaptist religious groups, Bowman co-authored "On the Backroad to Heaven: Old Order Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish, and Brethren" with Donald B. Kraybill, senior fellow at Elizabethtown College's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. He was a research fellow at the Young Center and directed the Brethren Member Profile 2006, the second nationally-representative survey of Brethren in the United States. "Carl Bowman was a bright and delightful student. Throughout the years, I have greatly enjoyed working with him as a colleague," said Dr. Kraybill. "Carl's intellectual curiosity and creative scholarship in his landmark book, "Brethren Society," have enhanced worldwide understanding of the Brethren. Moreover his study of contemporary culture has contributed much to our scholarly knowledge about the power of culture in everyday life."

Bowman was chair of the department of sociology at Bridgewater College in Bridgewater, Va. from 1988 until 2007. He has served as director of survey research for the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture since 1995. Bowman has designed social surveys on political and moral culture that were fielded by the Gallup Organization and was a statistical software consultant for SYSTAT Software.

Bowman completed a B.A. in Sociology from Elizabethtown College in 1979, an M.S. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1981, and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1989. His dissertation, "Beyond Plainness: Cultural Transformation in the Church of the Brethren from 1850 to the Present," was completed under the direction of James Davison Hunter, author of "Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America".

Born in 1957, the second of four children born to Fred M. Bowman, a minister in the Church of the Brethren, and Wanda Martin Bowman, an elementary school teacher, Bowman moved with his family to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia at the age of five. Except for short periods in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Spain, he has lived in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains for most of his life. He is married to Laura Desportes and is a parent to four children.

Dr. Roger Hoerl '79 was named the Educate for Service honoree for Service to Humanity in recognition of his steadfast and noteworthy contributions to the global understanding of how to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa, as well as his personal support of the people of Africa. Hoerl leads the Applied Statistics Laboratory at General Electric Global Research, which focuses on new product and service development within each of the GE businesses. Hoerl has been named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Society for Quality, and has been elected to the International Statistical Institute and the International Academy for Quality. He has received the Brumbaugh and Hunter Awards, as well as the Shewhart Medal, from the American Society for Quality and the Founders Award from the American Statistical Association.

In November 2006, Hoerl was awarded GE's prestigious Coolidge Fellowship which honors one scientist a year from among the four global GE Research and Development sites for lifetime technical achievement. It recognizes individuals who have demonstrated a record of accomplishment and who have made a positive impact both inside and outside GE. When asked what he would like to do with the award, his response was to study the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

Roger's initial interest in AIDS research began during a 2006 visit to South Africa. It was during this visit that he became aware of the suffering caused by this disease. Hoerl used the Coolidge Fellowship to expand the research begun during the 2006 trip. Because he and his partner in research, Presha Neidermeyer of West Virginia University, had no medical background, they limited their research to areas of their expertise. They focused on better understanding the root causes of the spread of HIV and documenting what was, and was not, working well. After reading volumes of published research, Hoerl traveled to meet respected researchers, representatives of the World Health Organization and the United Nations. In August and September 2007, Hoerl, along with his wife and son, took an extended one month trip to Africa-during which they spoke with officials and spent time with those infected by HIV.

After returning home, Hoerl and Neidermeyer continued their research for about one year. The pair compiled their insights in a book titled "Use What You Have: Resolving the HIV/AIDS Pandemic". Their research espouses five issues that, once addressed, may "turn back this tide of death". According to the pair, the HIV/AIDS crisis will be resolved with the development of more holistic approaches to addressing the disease, more economically sustainable plans for assistance agencies, broader access to education, the global empowerment of women with basic human rights and bolder leadership in driving the dramatic cultural changes needed to fight the disease.

Hoerl and his wife continue to be personally involved in the crisis by organizing additional teams from African-American churches to be actively involved with visiting Africa. Through these visits, it is their hope that long-term relationships will develop that will motivate these churches to get more active in addressing AIDS in Africa as well as at home in their own communities. With no clinics or hospitals in the African villages, Hoerl says "if the churches teach people about prevention and treatment and offers screening and testing, it would go eighty-percent of the way toward solving the problems there. The AIDS crisis will not be solved any time soon, but it can be solved. It will be solved one village at a time, one person at a time."

Hoerl has authored five books in the areas of statistics and business improvement, two book chapters and more than 35 refereed journal articles. Hoerl's introductory text, titled Statistical Thinking: Improving Business Performance, was co-authored with Dr. Ronald Snee and described as "... probably the most practical basic statistics textbook that has ever been written within a business context" by the journal Technometrics. More recently, Hoerl served as an editor of the fourth edition of Statistics, A Guide to the Unknown, published by Duxbury Press in 2006. He also has worked with Neidermeyer on a book, which was published in June 2009, discussing ways to combat the global HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Elizabethtown College, in south-central Pennsylvania, is a private coed institution offering more than four dozen liberal arts, fine and performing arts, science and engineering, business, communications and education degrees. Through personal attention, creative inspiration and academic challenge, Elizabethtown College students are encouraged to expand their intellectual curiosity and are given the opportunity to become a bigger part of the world through experiential learning-research, internships and study abroad. Elizabethtown College's overall commitment to Educate for Service is fulfilled as students are taught intellectually, socially, aesthetically and ethically for lives of service and leadership.

Visit www.etown.edu for more information about Elizabethtown College.