Past Recipients: Distinguished Alumna of the Year

First presented in 1978, the Scripps College Distinguished Alumna Award was established to celebrate the notable achievements of Scripps alumnae and to focus attention on Scripps’ role in the education of women. The award is presented each year during Reunion Weekend.

Latest Recipient: Susan D. Anderson ’75

Susan D. Anderson is a fourth-generation Californian whose maternal family settled in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1890s. In 1920, they founded Bethlehem Lutheran Church in West Oakland, where it still flourishes. During a tour for prospective students, upon entering Denison Library and seeing its vibrant stained-glass window and reading tables surrounded by books, she was instantly enamored and chose to attend Scripps College. The years she spent on campus were filled with social, cultural, and political upheaval and influenced her passion for contributing to a world that honors all its inhabitants.

The first stage of her professional life was spent working for radio and television news and public affairs broadcasters in Los Angeles. She produced documentaries, nighttime news, and live performances such as the first radio appearance by the East L.A. rock band, Los Lobos, and a marathon twenty-four-hour poetry reading to bring attention to hunger and homelessness. Susan interviewed public figures such as writer Maya Angelou and British historian E.P. Thompson and was a member of the Steering Committee of Target L.A., the first anti-nuclear arts festival. She eventually turned her media skills into a consultancy, Civic Arts, doing public relations and research work for nonprofits, social change organizations, and political campaigns.

Throughout these years Susan was active as a writer, publishing her poetry and short fiction in literary journals such as The Massachusetts Review, The Antioch Review, and Obsidian, as well as freelancing articles for national newspapers and magazines. When the Los Angeles Times invited her to become a contributor to Sunday Opinion, she explored her passion for history in her opinion pieces, starting with a news angle and revealing for readers the roots of the issue in the past. She won the “Best Blogger on Ethnic Perspectives” award from New American Media for “The Reparations Chronicles,” her weekly blog on the Loop exploring the work being done in the United States to right historical wrongs.

Her career as a history curator began when the State of California asked her to organize the centennial exhibit for Allensworth, an independent Black town founded in 1908 north of Bakersfield that has been preserved as a state historic park. Susan’s research on Allensworth was recognized when she was selected as a Lois Langland Alumna-in-Residence at Scripps. She has curated exhibitions at UCLA Library Special Collections, on Alcatraz Island in San Franciso Bay, and at the California African American Museum (CAAM) which navigate hidden social and cultural histories from beat poets in Venice Beach to Persian L.A., the Watts towers, Buffalo Soldiers, and mass incarceration.

Her current work is focused on restoring California’s African American history through preservation of public places of memory, exhibitions interpretating powerful hidden histories, and caring for archival collections. She serves as an advisor to the state of California Office of Historic Preservation and the City of Los Angeles and the Getty Conservation Institute on African American historic places, is Principal Investigator of the African American History & Engagement partnership between CAAM and State Parks, and a member of the editorial board of California History journal. She is completing a book for the California-based Heyday Books, African Americans and the California Dream.

Since her son couldn’t qualify as a student at Scripps, she is glad that one of her nieces is an alum. When she’s not working, Susan enjoys going to the opera, the bounty of diverse restaurant cuisines, and deep soulful talks with her friends.

Past Recipients