Centrepiece Online | Spring 2012

Q & A with Centre's 2011 Distinguished Alumni

Each year the Alumni Association presents Distinguished Alumnus/a awards for outstanding service to Centre, professional accomplishments, and/or civic accomplishments. The Young Alumnus/a Award honors alumni who have graduated within the last 15 years. The Centrepiece recently chatted with the 2011 honorees.

Distinguished Alumnus
S. Kern Alexander ’61

Kern Alexander ’61 is one of the country’s leading experts in education administration, especially in the field of education finance. After majoring in English and history at Centre, he earned an Ed.D. at Indiana University and a Diploma with distinction in educational studies at the University of Oxford, in England. Currently a professor of education law and finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, his career includes three stints as a university president—at Western Kentucky and Murray State (twice)—nearly two decades teaching at the University of Florida, where he also directed the Institute for Educational Finance, and six years teaching at Virginia Tech. He has also been a consultant and court expert in education litigation in 22 states. He and his wife, Elizabeth Bohon Alexander ’65, a pediatrician, split their time between Illinois and Louisville. Between them they have raised four sons and three daughters.

Q: Why do you do what you do?

A: My parents were educators—my father was deputy state superintendent of Kentucky—and they believed in the public schools, the common schools. And that’s what I veered toward, after graduating from Centre. It was mostly parental influence, I guess, that made me move toward education, but I think Centre College well prepared me to do about anything I wanted to do.

Q: How did your experience at Centre prepare you for your adult life?

A: When I was at Centre, I played football. I think that helped me develop the idea of camaraderie and working with my fellow teammates and coaches. I attribute much of what I later did to thinking about how we worked together as a team.

Q: What, to you, are your most important accomplishments?

A: Probably my most important contribution was that I was the expert against the state of Kentucky in the suit that ultimately resulted in the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. We changed the entire system of funding for public schools in Kentucky in that case. I worked with two counsels, [former governor] Bert Combs and lead counsel Ted Lavit ’61. The case took two or three years, and it was a struggle, but we finally won, and the schools are better as a result.

Q: What would it surprise people to know about you?

A: I’d like to run the Athens marathon in Greece.

Distinguished Alumnus
Reginald M. Mudd ’75

Reggie Mudd ’75 took his economics and government major to his fraternity’s national organization for a couple of years, then joined Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores in 1982 as a store manager trainee. By the time he left the company 15 years later, he was senior vice president and chief operations officer and had overseen the expansion of the company from 28 restaurants to 320. He then set a new career course, this time in real estate development, when he started Mudd Properties with his wife, Mary Anne. They have a particular interest in historic preservation. The governor of Tennessee recently appointed him a regional director with the state’s Economic and Community Development department. A native of Bardstown, Ky., he now lives in Gallatin, Tenn., with his wife and their son, Nicholas.

Q: Why do you do what you do?

A: I’ve been fortunate to do several different things in my life but all of them evolved out of things I really enjoyed and had good friends involved in. My advice is to be sure to enjoy what you are doing. Life is much too short to spend time doing something you don’t enjoy.

Q: How did your experience at Centre prepare you for your adult life?

A: I was a pretty naive kid with a rural upbringing. I had some great classes and great professors with names like [Larry] Matheny, [David] Hughes, and [Charles] Campbell. There were great people on campus like Tom Hensley ’69 [director of alumni affairs]. I think it was not what I learned but how I was taught to go about solving problems. You have to solve problems your whole life, and Centre gave me a good foundation about how to go about that. I also think I learned as much or more in the fraternity house and around campus as I learned in the classroom. I’ve said that life in the Deke House was the ultimate exercise in leadership training.

Q: What, to you, are your most important accomplishments?

A: The Distinguished Alumnus Award is a great honor. Another great project I was lucky enough to be a part of was the Gallatin Library Project. A group of local citizens came together to conceive, design, fund raise, and oversee the construction of a new $6 million, 30,000-square-foot library without much government interference. We finished on time and under budget. It was a very successful community project. The whole town got involved in it and supported it. It was also something I never saw myself doing in 1975.

Q: What would it surprise people to know about you?

A: I’ve finished two marathons in less than four hours. I have a 1955 Ford fire truck that’s been stalled or towed in from every road in middle Tennessee.

Q: What should I have asked you?

A: Any success I may have had has had the strong influence of my wife for the last 25 years. I was lucky enough to find her and then get her to marry me before she knew me too well. She’s been a great business partner for the last 15 years and a great advisor always.

Distinguished Alumna
Suzanne Wells Miell ’81

Suzanne Wells Miell ’81 did three winter-term trips while at Centre and has been traveling the globe ever since, including two years in Sydney, Australia. From her start in hotel sales with Hyatt, she became a strategic event manager for Coca-Cola, then helped such brands as IBM, Intel, GE, Google, Bayer, and Cisco maximize their return on event and sponsorship investments around the world. As president of Event Works, she is leading the company’s expansion into Latin America, with a new office to open in Brazil later this year. An English major at Centre from Columbia, Ky., she is now based in Atlanta with her husband, Doug.

Q: Why do you do what you do?

A: I love project-related work where there is a new beginning and an ending. No matter how good or bad the experience, you know there will be an end to it at some point, which really drives one to savor the experience. It’s why spring term of senior year is so special . . . you realize it’s all coming to an end. I’ve never understood how anyone could enjoy a job that was the same tasks every day. You might get to go home at the same time every night but then it’s the same old thing the next morning. Plus, my job requires working with international teams, and I’ve always enjoyed multi-cultural experiences.

Q: How did your experience at Centre prepare you for your adult life?

A: Spending winter terms abroad gave me a confidence and sense of independence that I could go anywhere in the world and get along just fine.

Q: What, to you, are your most important accomplishments?

A: Maintaining relationships over the course of decades. I am still in touch with friends from kindergarten, and my Centre friends remain some of my dearest. Time and distance just melt away when we are in contact.

Q: What would it surprise people to know about you?

A: I adore marching bands.

Young Alumnus
Leslie A. Fugate ’02

Les Fugate ’02 was head of Centre’s College Republicans and a volunteer for the Bush-Cheney campaign when a national vice presidential debate first came to Centre in 2000. Every reporter who wanted a Republican student’s take naturally turned to him. After graduating with an economics degree (he also holds an M.Ed. from Vanderbilt), he worked for the Kentucky Governor’s Scholars Program before parlaying his debate experience into a position as communications director for Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Greyson. Currently he heads his own company, Fugate Strategic Affairs, focusing on public relations and governmental strategy. He grew up with his identical twin,Wes Fugate ’02, in Prestonsburg, Ky. He now lives in Louisville with his wife, Katherine, and their new daughter, Kensington.

Q: Why do you do what you do?

A: I love working in places where either I can give back or I can fight for things about which I am passionate. I think this comes from the gifts that I have received from others. My parents dedicated themselves to making sure that my life was better than theirs. I was lucky to receive financial help to attend Centre. Those two things have helped drive me to give back in some way.

Q: How did your experience at Centre prepare you for your adult life?

A: The most obvious is my experience with the 2000 VP debate. It was my first experience with major politics and eventually was one of the reasons Trey Grayson thought to hire me in 2004. I think Centre also taught me that relationships matter. Half the positions I have had rely on relationship management, and at Centre I had leadership positions that taught me how to manage relationships. The final lesson that Centre teaches all students is the importance of communications. You can’t graduate from Centre without being able to write and to communicate verbally. While so very simple, those two skills really help define a successful employee in today’s global society.

Q: What, to you, are your most important accomplishments?

A: My family is my favorite accomplishment. In terms of professional achievement, I think winning the 2007 Jennifer Schaff Outstanding Government Communicator award is probably most special. It is given by the Kentucky Press Corps to the most outstanding government communicator in the commonwealth. For those reporters to believe in my work so much that they nominated a very young guy means so much to me. In terms of my volunteer experience, I always find that my volunteer work for Centre is most rewarding. Most everyone who knows me recognizes my passion for the College, and I love to give back in any way that I can.

Q: What would it surprise people to know about you?

A: I think people are always surprised that a Republican politico could care so much about maintaining arts programming and be personally involved in the arts, specifically the performing arts. I currently serve on two theater boards and love the opportunity to see shows and to expose young people to them.

Comments