WMU News

Alumna Karen Stone receives WMU Foundation award

Nov. 11, 2002

KALAMAZOO -- Karen S. Stone of Alexandria, Va., a 1978 accounting graduate of Western Michigan University and former director of the WMU Foundation, was awarded the foundation's Bill Brown Award for Exemplary Service and Leadership.

The Bill Brown Award was established in 1995 and is presented upon the recommendation of the president of the University. The award is not made annually. It is given only as warranted to those alumni and friends who have demonstrated the exceptional depth, breadth, and length of voluntary service exemplified by Willard A. "Bill" Brown Jr. in support of the work of the WMU Foundation. Stone was honored at the September annual meeting of the foundation.

Stone served as a foundation director for eight years beginning in 1991. She was cited for her longstanding relationship with alumna and University benefactor Merze Tate, a relationship that began when Stone served as Tate's tax advisor. Stone was a tax and pension partner with the accounting firm of Grossberg Company. In 1987, Money Magazine named her one of the top six tax advisors in the Washington, D.C., area.

Stone and her husband, Ted, also a WMU graduate, are members of the national steering committee for the University's centennial campaign, Partnering for Progress. Ted Stone has served as a foundation director since 2000.

Brown is a 1953 business graduate of WMU, earning one of the first bachelor of business administration degrees awarded by the University. He has served as a director of the WMU Foundation since 1983, was president of the foundation from 1986 to 1989, and still serves on the foundation's executive committee and chairs its real estate committee. Brown Auditorium in Schneider Hall and the Bill Brown Alumni Football Center at Waldo Stadium are named in his honor.

Media contact: Thom Myers, 269 387-8400, thomas.myers@wmich.edu


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