"There is no one better to set the standard for this award," said Dean Sam Preston, "than its inaugural recipient." At the sixteenth annual Dean's Forum in March, Natalie Koether, CW'61, L'65, was awarded the Dean's Medal in recognition of her extraordinary service to the School. Koether has been chair of the SAS Board of Overseers for the last nine years, a Board member for 13, and is also a University trustee. She stepped down as Overseers chair this year and has been succeeded by Christopher Browne, C'69, a Penn trustee and general partner in the investment adviser firm Tweedy, Browne Company, LLC.

Referring to Forum keynote speaker Maxine Hong Kingston, Dean Preston observed, "It is only fitting that on the day we are honoring the author of The Woman Warrior, we also honor our own 'woman warrior' who has fought hard to ensure that the liberal arts maintain their special place at the University she so loves."

Koether used the occasion to bid farewell to SAS: "I received two degrees from Penn: one from the School of Arts and Sciences and the other from the Law School. The Law School gave me a profession, but the School of Arts and Sciences gave me a quality of life. The wonders of science that I grasp, every opera I hear, every play I see, every book I read with understanding raises my debt to the School."