Two Woodrow Wilson graduates receive alumni honors

   Two graduates of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs who have devoted their careers to public service have been selected as the 2007 recipients of the university’s top honors for alumni.
   Paul Sarbanes, a 1954 graduate and a five-term U.S. senator from Maryland, has been chosen for the Woodrow Wilson Award. Julius Coles, a 1966 graduate who had a 28-year career with the U.S. Agency for International Development and is now president of Africare, will be awarded the James Madison Medal.
   They will receive their awards and deliver addresses on campus during Alumni Day activities on Feb. 24.
   The Wilson Award is bestowed annually upon an undergraduate alumnus or alumna whose career embodies the call to duty in Woodrow Wilson’s famous speech, "Princeton in the Nation’s Service."
   The Madison Medal, established by the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni, is presented each year by the university to a graduate of the Graduate School who has had a distinguished career, advanced the cause of graduate education or achieved an outstanding record of public service.
   On Alumni Day, Mr. Coles will present "An Examination of the Prospects for Africa in the New Millennium" at 9:15 a.m., and Mr. Sarbanes will speak on "Reflections on a Life in Public Service" at 10:30 a.m. Both talks will take place in Richardson Auditorium of Alexander Hall.
   Mr. Sarbanes earned his bachelor’s degree from the Wilson School in 1954 and was that year’s recipient of the Pyne Honor Prize, the highest general distinction conferred on an undergraduate. Selected for a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, he studied at Oxford University for three years, then earned a law degree from Harvard University.
   He is perhaps best known for his participation in the Watergate hearings as a member of the House Judiciary Committee and for the legislation he shepherded through the Senate Banking Committee to reform the accounting industry and restore investor confidence in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals.
   Mr. Coles came to Princeton after earning a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College. He completed his master of public administration degree at the Wilson School in 1966, and joined the U.S. Agency for International Development. Over the next 28 years, he saw duty in several Asian and African countries and worked on a range of programs, including agriculture, health care, education and HIV/AIDS prevention.
   Upon retiring from USAID in 1994 with the rank of career minister, Mr. Coles became director of Howard University’s new Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center.