Anchor Awards

The Anchor Award, the University of Hartford Alumni Association’s most prestigious award, is presented each Hawktober Weekend. The awards were established to recognize alumni who have distinguished themselves by achieving the highest levels of professional and community accomplishments. Recipients of the 2020 Anchor Awards were honored during a virtual ceremony and reception on Saturday, Oct. 17.

BERNIE ROSEN ’61 M’66

Outstanding Alum: Impact on the University of Hartford

Bernard “Bernie” Hersh Rosen dedicated decades of his life to education, beginning his career in 1966 as a teacher at South Windsor High School, where he worked until 1977. He then went on to New Britain Senior High School from 1971 to 1995, holding positions as an accounting and business law teacher, chairperson of the business department, vice principal, and, lastly, as housemaster. Even in his retirement, he continued his service to education, working as a part-time substitute teacher and acting vice principal at Cromwell High School.

ABDULAZIZ ALOTHMAN ’14

Outstanding Alum: Early Career Professional

Abdulaziz S. AlOthman is a management consultant within the Strategy and Transformation team at Ernst & Young—one of the Big Four accounting firms in the United States and globally. AlOthman advises large organizations and government entities in the Middle East on executing corporate strategies, designing target operating models, and formulating customer experience strategies.

CHRISTOPHER ALBERT M’10

Outstanding Alum: Early Career Professional

Christopher P. Albert has established himself as a young leader throughout the finance space. Based in Hartford, he began his career with Deloitte in 2006 as a tax consultant, from which he quickly advanced to manager in 2010 and senior manager in 2013. In 2016, he was admitted to the partnership, where he serves as a business advisor and consultant to many of the firm’s largest clients in the insurance industry.

KENNETH GLUECK ’89

Outstanding Alum: Exceptional Professional Success

Kenneth Glueck is a well-known name in the tech space. He has spent more than two decades with the software giant Oracle, where he currently serves as executive vice president in the office of the CEO. As noted in Vox, Glueck “built a career as a tech lobbyist before there was a phrase for it.”

NELBA MÁRQUEZ-GREENE ’97

Distinguished Alumna Award

Nelba Márquez-Greene is the founder of The Ana Grace Project. She founded The Ana Grace Project in 2013 as a response to the school shooting in Sandy Hook, Conn., in 2012, which took the life of her daughter, Ana Grace Márquez-Greene. The Ana Grace Project is dedicated to promoting love, community, and connection for every child and family through three initiatives: partner schools, professional development, and music and the arts. (see story on page 28)

RACHNA KHANNA M’03

Outstanding Alum: Exceptional Professional Success

Rachna Khanna is the founder and managing partner of Rachna Khanna Law, LLC, based in Manchester, Conn. The firm specializes in immigration, naturalization, and small business law, as well as estate planning, personal injury, will planning, criminal defense, trust and estate litigation, and labor and employment law.

SIDNEY KAPLAN ’69

Outstanding Alum: Exceptional Professional Success

After a yearlong worldwide trip overseas, Sidney Kaplan decided to change careers and joined the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer. He has served in the Philippines, Mauritania, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, as well as several years at headquarters in Washington, D.C. Kaplan was a member of the 43rd Senior Seminar, the Department’s executive leadership program available to senior foreign policy and national security officials of the international affairs agencies across the U.S. Government. In Washington, he served in senior positions in management and strategic planning, officially retiring from the Foreign Service in 2012. Kaplan was inducted as a Fellow of the Academy of Public Administration, a congressionally chartered non-partisan organization.

KATHARINA LINDNER ’03 M’05

Outstanding Alum: Posthumous Recognition

Katharina “Kat” Lindner was a gifted film and gender scholar, published author, and highly accomplished athlete. Lindner was a lecturer in film and media and a member of the Centre for Gender & Feminist Studies at the University of Stirling, UK. Her research interests were interdisciplinary and included gender and queer theory; feminist film and cultural criticism; question of identity, subjectivity, and embodiment; and film phenomenology, as well as media and sport. In 2017, Lindner published her book Film Bodies: Queer Feminist Encounters with Gender and Sexuality in Cinema, which takes existing debates into new directions and integrates queer and feminist theory with film phenomenology, exploring the female body’s presence in a range of genres including dance, sports, and queer cinema.

Katharina Lindner ’03 M’05

Watch for the selection of our 2021 Anchor Award recipients to be honored during Hawktober Weekend, Oct. 15–17

Front page of student newspaper announcing the Hawk as Hillyer College’s new mascot (1947)

The first “known” costumed Hawk (1963)

A lesser-known version of the Hawk flanked by President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg (left) and AD Gordon McCullough (cicra 1980)

Howie at the Hartford Civic Center (1987)

A favorite of kids, Howie at Homecoming (1999)

Howie at the desk of President Walter Harrison (circa 2000)

From Harry to Manny to Howie, the Hawk enjoys a storied history

Winging It

For almost 75 years, the Hawk has been a part of University of Hartford lore. Hillyer College came up with the nickname Hawks in the late 1940s, and its teams were known as the Fightin’ Hawks to symbolize the never-give-up nature of Hillyer student-athletes.

In October 1947, a depiction of the new mascot was released—the Hawk with a cane and top hat—based on a sketch allegedly drawn by a member of Walt Disney’s staff. By December, a pair of living mascots, Mr. & Mrs. Harry Hawk, were introduced.

In 1962, five years after the University of Hartford was chartered, the University’s first-known costumed mascot appeared. Worn by student Mike “Manney” Bernstein, and created by his mother, “Manny the Hawk” also wore a top hat and carried a cane.

The creation of “Howie the Hawk” took place in the mid 1980s when Howie Kassman donned the Hawks’ costume and became the spirit leader of UHart’s new Division I athletics teams. The name has lived on through many successors and the mascot has seen several iterations in recent decades—but Howie the Hawk continues to serve as a goodwill ambassador for the University of Hartford on campus and in the community.