Deborah Heydenburg ’87 Fuller


The Hope College Alumni Association is honoring four alumni
with Distinguished Alumni Awards this year.
The association plans to celebrate both the 2020 and 2021
honorees virtually at a date to be determined. The awards
are normally presented at the annual Alumni Banquet during
Alumni Weekend each April, but this year’s and last year’s events
were canceled because of the pandemic.
As reported last year in the Spring 2020 issue of News from
Hope College, the spring 2020 honorees are the late Dr.
Elton Bruins ’50, who played a leading role in chronicling the
Holland area’s and college’s history across more than 50 years
as a member of the Hope faculty and administration and as a
scholar; and Craig S. Morford ’81, whose career in law has
included leadership roles in the U.S. Department of Justice and
in the health care and energy industries. Bruins died on Monday,
March 23, 2020, at age 92 and will be recognized posthumously.

The 2021 honorees are Dr. Deborah Heydenburg ’87 Fuller, who
is a professor in Department of Microbiology at the University of
Washington School of Medicine, and chief of the Infectious Diseases
and Translational Medicine Division at the Washington National
Primate Research Center, and co-founder and chief technology
officer of the biotechnology company Orlance Inc.; and Lara Plewka
’98 MacGregor, who is founder and director of the international
nonprofit organization Hope Scarves, which through scarves, stories
and research supports people facing cancer.

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