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Millersville University’s Alumni Association has announced the recipients of the 2011 awards. The Distinguished Alumni Award goes to Dr. R. William Field ’77, ‘85M, and the Outstanding Volunteer Service Award goes to Stephen Focht ’70. They will accept their awards at the Honors and Awards Convocation on April 30 at 10 a.m. in Pucillo Gymnasium.
Field is a professor in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health and the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Iowa. He is also an internationally renowned expert on the health effects of radon gas. Field started his research on radon gas after the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. He serves on the World Health Organization’s International Radon Project and the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (U.S. EPA) Science Advisory Board, Radiation Protection Committee.
Field also received the U.S. EPA’s National Environmental Health Association’s Individual Achievement Award for Excellence in Radon Risk Reduction, the EPA’s Children’s Environmental Health Recognition Award. He is married to alumna Elizabeth Field ’74, who also received this highest-accolade alumni award in 1984.
Focht, of Willow Street, currently serves as the alumni association’s treasurer and financial planning committee chairman. He was a member of the alumni association’s board of directors from 1985-1995, serving as president from 1991-1993. He is employed by Fairfax Compliance Group, Inc., where he is an environmental health and safety consultant and at the American Red Cross, where he is a trainer and instructor.
His current and past community service includes the Willow Street Lion’s Club and the Quarryville Masonic Lodge. While he was a student at Millersville, he participated in intercollegiate band, the Phi Sigma Pi Honors Fraternity and the American Chemical Society.
For more information on the Honors and Awards Convocation, contact Alumni Services, at 717-872-3352.
