Schenectady, NY — Clarkson University’s highest community service honor, the Bertrand H. Snell Award, was bestowed upon Capital Region academic and community leader Laura Schweitzer, Ph.D., at a reception in her honor co-hosted by Clarkson University, the Center for Economic Growth and the SUNY University at Albany on August 28, 2018.
The Bertrand H. Snell Award was created by the Clarkson Board of Trustees in 1981 to recognize individuals of outstanding merit and to honor Snell’s significant contributions to the University, the greater community, and the nation. Snell was a New York Congressman from 1915 to 1939 serving eight years as minority leader of the House of Representatives. He was a Clarkson trustee for 47 years spanning from 1911 until his death in 1958.
The award recognizes a new generation of leaders who share Bert Snell’s commitment to Clarkson’s greater community. Recipients are chosen for their professional, business or educational accomplishments, combined with demonstrated integrity and concern for the community.
“Dr. Laura Schweitzer truly understands the importance of partnerships to organizations that have been created to serve the public good and that want to achieve their goals,” said Anthony G. Collins, President of Clarkson University. “She brought her collaborative mindset and skill sets to the Capital Region and put them to good use strengthening educational and economic development initiatives in the greater regional community. She is committed to public-private engagements and the critical intersection higher education can have as a driver of economic development.”
Schweitzer served as president of Union Graduate College (UGC) for six years prior to the institution’s official merger with Clarkson University in February 2016. During her tenure at UGC and its transition to Clarkson, she also served as a member and then Chair of the Board of the 300-plus member, eight-county Council for Economic Growth (CEG) Board. She has also been an appointed member to the New York Governor’s Regional Economic Development Council for the Capital Region.
While her original plan was to retire after initiating the merger of UGC into Clarkson, she answered the call of former UAlbany President Robert Jones to serve as Vice President for Health Sciences and Biomedical Initiatives. In the last two years, she has helped the public research institution expand its health sciences programs. She plans to officially retire again in September from this post to spend more time with her children and grandchild in Kentucky.
A neurobiologist by training, Schweitzer is well known as a skillful academic and administrator. She came to the Capital Region after serving as Vice President for Academic Affairs at SUNY Upstate and Chief Academic Officer at Bassett Healthcare. Prior to that position, she had earned a series of progressive promotions in administrative roles at the University of Louisville, where she became the first female Ph.D. believed to ever lead a U.S. medical school. She has served on the external advisory committee for a National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Program at the University of Cincinnati and on the national faculty for the Executive Leadership in Academic Technology and Engineering Program at Drexel University.
Schweitzer earned a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in neuroscience at Duke University, where she was named to the research faculty. She also earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Miami.
The ceremony held in the Capital District Physician’s Health Plan Conference Center in Albany was only the 15th time in more than 37 years that Clarkson has presented the Bertrand H. Snell award.