The Maxine Platzer Lynn Women’s Center has selected Cornell President Elizabeth Garrett to receive the University of Virginia’s 2016 Distinguished Alumna Award. A 1988 graduate of the UVA School of Law, Garrett will receive the award and give a keynote address and discuss leadership in higher education at UVA April 29.

In his nomination of Garrett, UVA Law School Dean Paul Mahoney cited achievements such as her record of legal scholarship and public service on issues of democracy, legislative process and tax reform; the positive impact of her leadership as provost at the University of Southern California (USC); and the vision of higher education she has begun to articulate since beginning her term as Cornell’s first female president in July 2015.

Prior to serving as provost at USC, Garrett was a professor at the University of Chicago School of Law with visiting professorships at law schools including UVA and Harvard University. Early in her career, Garrett served as a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and as legislative director and tax and budget counsel for Sen. David L. Boren from her home state of Oklahoma.

UVA’s Distinguished Alumna Award was established in 1991 to honor alumnae whose contributions at the highest level have brought about progress in such fields as medicine, economic development and civil rights. Previous winners of the award include Janet Napolitano, former governor of Arizona and now president of the University of California; Kathryn Thornton, former NASA astronaut and currently a professor in the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science; and Dr. Vivian Pinn, retired former director of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research on Women’s Health.