Charlotte H. Hall ’66, Distinguished Service Award

The day Charlotte Hauch stepped onto the Quad, “I knew K was for me,” she says.

That landscape remains one of her fondest memories: “The Quad in all seasons,” she smiles. “Traying down the hill in the winter, studying under the trees in summer, enjoying riotous water fights in late spring.”

The breadth of Charlotte Hall’s distinguished service (to her alma mater, to journalism, to newsroom diversity, to the preservation of Adirondack ecosystems, and to shattering the glass ceiling) derives significantly from the breadth of her K-Plan.

That plan included her B.A. in English; an internship as a writer at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare; study abroad in Caen, France; and a Senior Integrated Project about color imagery in the poetry of Wallace Stevens that earned her the May Stetson Writing Prize.

Her extracurricular activities were every bit as wide-ranging. She sang in K Choir and the Bach Festival Chorus. She wrote and served as news editor for Index and was active in the Kappa Society and student government.

After earning a master’s degree in English (with honors) and meeting her husband, Bob Hall, at the University of Chicago, Charlotte worked nearly four decades in the newspaper business. Near the end of her career, she was managing editor at Newsday, a top-10 national circulation newspaper—the first woman to hold that job. There she directed a project that won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. She then served as editor and executive vice president of the Orlando Sentinel, again, the first woman to hold that position.

Wherever she worked, Charlotte championed newsroom diversity, believing that a paper’s coverage cannot be accurate or complete unless its staff reflects the audience it serves. She won two national awards for those efforts.

Her service to Kalamazoo College reflects the same values. A trustee for 27 years, she led the Board as its first female chair from 2013-19, working to build a board with broad representation. She has served on three of the College’s presidential search committees, chairing the search that nominated President Emeritus Jorge Gonzalez in 2016. She was the keynote speaker at the Class of 2020 Commencement ceremony, where K awarded her an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.

 She also serves on the board of directors of the nonprofit magazine and news website, the Adirondack Explorer, and was chair for six years. She and Bob enjoy a second home in the Adirondack Mountains where they love to hike and paddle in a landscape as dear to her as, well, the Quad. She is active in her church as an elder, deacon, and community volunteer.

Breadth from breadth: The breadth of Charlotte’s K-Plan became a model for breadth of lifelong service. “K helped me go from a timid late teen to a confident young woman who lived abroad, learning another culture and language,” she says. “I gained the wherewithal to handle challenges and to take advantage of opportunities to learn and grow.” And, one could add, to give back and to serve.