Three alumni received Joseph F. Wall Sesquicentennial Alumni Service Awards of more than $20,000 each for service projects with their selected non-profit organizations. The Wall Alumni Service Awards are named for the late Joseph F. Wall, a Grinnell alumnus and long-time professor of history who inspired an ideal of social responsibility in his students.

The Wall service awards provide financial support for Grinnell graduates to engage in service projects, programs, and organizations that are dedicated to improving the lives of others. The 2008 Wall Alumni Service Award winners are:

Kara Murphy '97 will use her Wall Alumni Service Award to fund a medication assistance coordinator position for Access DuPage, a program for low-income, uninsured residents of DuPage County, Ill.

Murphy, a public healthcare administrator, has served as managing director of operations for Access DuPage for the past four years. The position she proposed will help to connect uninsured patients in need of medications with free or cost-assisted pharmaceutical programs.

Elizabeth Powley '93 and John Fuson '93 will use their joint Wall Alumni Service Award to support a non-profit organization called Every Child is My Child, which provides education access to children in Burundi and Rwanda.

Powley founded Every Child is My Child, a Washington, D.C.-based organization, in 2006, with Fuson as board president. The Wall Award funds will help to start a second school in the African region.

Powley was recognized for her organization's work with a Grinnell Alumni Award in 2007.

The Wall Alumni Service Awards are open to all graduates of Grinnell College with a service commitment to benefit others.