2004 Distinguished Service Citation

Ann Bausum, a member of the 25th anniversary class of 1979, is a time traveler who has carried multiple generations along with her on her literary journeys. With an imaginative and intriguing style, she has captured the minds and spirits of young people and carried them away to ancient deserts where they have surveyed timeless horizons with great explorers on camelback. She has also immersed them in the founding years that shaped the life and spirit of a young republic with larger-than-life legends of leadership, and offered lessons in the challenges of writing history as she rewrote the concluding chapter of her book on the American presidency six times before determining which chapter—the one on Al Gore or the one on George W. Bush—would have to go. She has focused attention on Beloit, both city and College, as an editor and author. As director of information services at Beloit College in the 1980’s she helped to shape the message and chronicle the Roger Hull years in the Beloit College Magazine. With her photobiography “Dragon Bones and Dinosaur Eggs,” she has given new life to Roy Chapman Andrews of the class of 1906, a symbol of the age of exploration and an inspiration to the explorers of space, land, and sea today. Through the Andrews Society, she has helped to bring some of the world’s inheritors of Andrew’s spirit to the campus, keeping these dreams of discovery alive for new audiences. She is proof of the inspiration that the mounds can provide to one’s vision.

The Beloit College Alumni Association if proud to confer upon Ann Bausum its highest award, the Distinguished Service Citation.