Centralight

13 centralight spring '14 After Central: Boersma has applied her passion for fairness to leadership and advisory roles all over the world, from the United Nations to a hometown position on the CMU Board of Trustees. But mostly, she looks out for penguins. The New York Times calls Boersma "the Jane Goodall of penguins." For 30 years, she's been the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's study of Magellanic penguins at Punta Tombo, Argentina, home of the world's largest colony of the species. Using numbered metal bands, Boersma and her team follow hundreds of individual penguins to learn where they go, what they eat and how they survive to the next breeding season. Oil pollution and climate change take a toll on the well-dressed birds. But conservation eff orts Boersma spearheaded, such as moving oil tanker lanes further from the coast, have helped her beloved birds. "Penguins are not that diff erent from us," Boersma told an audience at a TED talk. "They're trying to make a living, they're trying to raise their off spring, they're trying to get on and survive in the world." > PHOTO BY GODFREY MERLEN P. Dee Boersma, '69 Seattle Conservation biologist/penguin expert; Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Science at the University of Washington What she was known for at CMU: Student Senate president; won Outstanding Freshman/Woman of the Year in 1966 The backstory: Dee Boersma was a biology major at CMU, on the road to becoming one of the world's foremost experts on penguins. But when she shares her best memories of Central, it has nothing to do with biology. It's about fairness. Getting rid of the residence hall curfew for women was a milestone during her time at CMU, Boersma says. "Finally, both men and women were treated the same," she says, "and one sex didn't have to be in their dorm halls by 11 p.m. while the opposite sex did not. It was a small move forward, but a meaningful one." 13 centralight spring '14 PHOTO COURTESY OF CLARKE HISTORICAL LIBRARY

• Cover