USD to Honor Distinguished Alumni, Including Former Poway Mayor

Former Poway mayor and current San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith is among nine people to be given University of San Diego alumni awards, the school announced Tuesday.

Terry Gase, a teacher at St. Michael’s School on Pomerado Road, will also be honored at an April 27 ceremony at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peach and Justice. 

Goldsmith will be given an Author E. Hughes Career Achievement Award for law school graduates. As an attorney, Goldsmith specialized in business litigation before becoming a judge, the first directly elected mayor of Poway and a three-term assemblyman.

“Jan Goldsmith’s distinguished career is exemplary of a commitment to service that characterizes the very best of our graduates and members of the legal profession,” said USD School of Law Dean Stephen Ferruolo. “The law school is very proud of Goldsmith’s achievements and honored that the university is bestowing this award in recognition for all that he has done for the city of San Diego.”

Gase will be awarded the Mother Rosalie Clifton Hill Award for her years of service to the university and the community. Aside from teaching at St. Michael’s School for 37 years, she spent 20 years on USD’s Alumni Board of Directors, serving as its president from 1999 to 2000 and on numerous committees.

Other honorees include:

• Immigrant rights advocate Enrique Morones Careaga, founder of Border Angels, former president of the San Diego County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the first person born in the United States to be given Mexico’s National Human Rights Award.

• Alison Cox, who won a silver medal as a rower in the 2004 Olympics in
Athens.

• Jacqueline Akerblom, who has spent 30 years in corporate finance and
auditing.

• Jeff Carlstead, a longtime hotel developer and manager.

• Christopher Grant, the general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association.

• Karen “Sue” Hoyt, an emergency nurse practitioner at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, former director of the Master’s Entry Program in Nursing at USD, and co-editor of the Emergency Nurses Association's Trauma Nursing Core Course, which has been taught worldwide to more than 500,000 nurses.

• James Waring, the executive chairman and co-founder of CleanTECH San Diego, a nonprofit that helps to create and expand clean technology.

-City News Service contributed to this article.