Past award recipient bios as they appeared in that year's event program (*deceased)
CIVIC ACHIEVEMENT: Hon. Ronald B. Adrine, ‘73 JD
Ronald B. Adrine earned a JD from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1973. He was first elected to the Cleveland Municipal Cort in 1981 and has been reelected three times, most recently in 1999.
One of the nation’s foremost judicial activists and voices against domestic violence, he has served on the Governor’s Task Force on Family Violence in Ohio, the Ohio Attorney General’s Vicitim’s Assistance Advisory Board, the Ohio Supreme Court’s Domestic Violence Task Force, the National Battered Women’s Justice Project Advisory Board, and was the first chairman of Cleveland’s Domestic Violence Coordinating Council.
He has lectured extensively on domestic violence issues for a host of organizations, associations and governmental agencies and is the co-author of Ohio Domestic Violence Law. He was instrumental in the establishment of a centralized, computerized protection order registry that Is now used by the Cleveland Municipal Court and 13 suburban courts.
In 1983 Judge Adrine developed the Community Reentry Program to help those who are released from prison make the transition back to society. In 1985 he was instrumental in starting a program to match defendants who had been sentenced to community service with the right jobs to utilize their skills or help acquire new ones.
Vice president of the Cleveland NAACP, Judge Adrine is a member of 100 Black Men of Greater Cleveland and was instrumental in founding the Norman S. Minor Bar Association for African American lawyers.
SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT: Robert B. Jaquay, ‘78 MPA/’81 JD
Robert Jaquay holds a 1978 master’s degree in public administration from the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs and a 1981 JD from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He also holds an MPA from Harvard University.
Since 1996, he has been the associate director of the George Gund Foundation, the largest private foundation in Ohio. He directs grantmaking in the areas of economic/community development and civic affairs and has been instrumental in making the community a better place in which to live by combining his legal and public administration expertise to effectively shape philanthropy and public policy.
Jaquay also has served as executive director of the Citizens Committee for County Government Reform, manager of the program planning division of the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, executive assistant to former Mayor George Voinovich, and development officer and assistant law director for the city of Cleveland. He has been involved in most major civic projects, including Northcoast Harbor and the Warehouse District.
Throughout his career, he has encouraged the development and improvement of many community organizations, advised and assisted elected officials on a wide range of public policy issues, and provided leadership on some of the most critical issues facing the city, county, and region.
For more than 20 years, he has been active in the Levin College as an advisory committee member and adjunct faculty member. He was named the Levin College’s Distinguished Alumnus in 1990.
SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT: Charles H. “Chip” Joseph, ‘97 JD
Charles H. “Chip” Joseph earned a JD in1 997 from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Formerly the senior director of emergency and transitional services for Catholic Charities, he now is the executive director of Y-Haven I and II, transitional housing programs for formerly homeless men recovering from drug and alcohol addictions. The men are permitted to live at Y-Haven facilities for up to two years while they receive counseling and work toward finding homes and jobs.
Joseph has spent his adult life helping people who are often ignored by society. His initiatives, such as organizing a man’s choice, softball team and softball league for residents of Y-Haven, boost the self-esteem of those in need.
One of his most novel ideas “staging a play inspired by, and starring, homeless men” came to him while watching a play at Cleveland Public Theatre. With support from the theater’s artistic director and staff, four plays were written and produced by Y-Haven residents in the past four years. The most recent was staged at a benefit and raised about $20,000 for transitional housing.
GEORGE B. DAVIS AWARD: Ronald R. Ledin, ‘69 BSME
Ronald R. Ledin earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1969 from the Fenn College of Engineering. A registered professional engineer in Ohio and Mississippi, he has extensive experience with complex engineering and design projects in a wide range of industries and has patented machine designs. While attending Cleveland State University, he taught mathematics at Cleveland’s South High School.
Ledin joined Middough Consulting Inc. in 1967 and has been the company’s president and chief executive officer since 1978. Based in downtown Cleveland, Middough is a full-service architectural, engineering, environmental and construction firm with offices in eight cities. Some 50 Cleveland State University alumni work there.
A member of the Fenn College of Engineering’s Visiting Committee, LEdin hosted a very successful Alumni Corporate Breakfast at Middough in 2003, as well as a meeting between faculty members and Middough’s senior management team and engineers to assess areas of common research interest. The firm has employed students in the University’s cooperative education program and hosts students for an annual “Engineer for a Day” job-shadowing experience. Last year, during the Fenn College of Engineering’s 80th anniversary celebration, Ledin received the Outstanding Alumni Award.
LIFETIME LEADERSHIP: Dr. Kofi Lomotey, ‘78 Med
Dr. Kofi Lomotey earned a master’s degree in education in 1978 from the College of Education. He went on to complete a second master’s degree and a doctorate, both in educational administration and policy analysis, from Stanford University.
Dr. Lomotey has risen through the ranks of higher education and since 2001, has served as president of Fort valley State University in Georgia. A recognized leader in urban education, he was the founder and principal of preschool/elementary schools in Oberlin, Ohio and in California, and served as a faculty member and administrator at Buffalo State University, Louisiana State University and Medgar Evers College, where he was senior vice president and provost.
He is the editor of Urban Education and serves on the editorial board of Educational Administration Quarterly and the International Journal of Leadership in Education. He is the author of seven books and 22 articles or book chapters, has chaired 18 doctoral dissertations, and has received nearly $300,000 in grants to support his research in education.
CIVIC ACHIEVEMENT: David R. Reines, ‘72 BA/’81 MBA
David R. Reines earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the College of Arts and Sciences in 1972 and an MBA from the College of Business in 1981. His public service career spans three decades and includes cabinet-level positions.
In his present role as administrator of the Board of Cuyahoga County Commissioners, he is the county’s chief executive officer, overseeing operating and capital budgets exceeding $1.5 billion.
From 1997 to 2001, Reines was the executive vice president of United Way Services of Cleveland, where he was responsible for al administrative services and the Community Information Resource Management division. He also played a key role in the Social Indicators Project, a joint effort with the Federation for Community Planning to provide easily updated information on social trends and conditions in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.
From 1991 to 1996, Reines was the first person to serve in the dual roles of deputy county administrator for health and human services and director of the Department of Human Services. He also ran the county's Department of Child Support Enforcement for two years and was the director of the Department of County Services for four years.
He has consistently been an advocate for those in need and has directed resources toward programs that comprise a social service safety net for the region.
He is a graduate of the Harvard University Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Governments and the 1993 class of Leadership Cleveland. He serves on the visiting committee for Cleveland State’s Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs.
EMERGING LEADERSHIP: Dr. Catherine M. Rokicky, ‘89 BA/’90 MA
Catherine M. Rokicky earned a bachelor’s degree in history and Spanish in 1989 and a master’s degree in history in 1990, both from the College of Arts and Sciences. She went on to receive a Ph.D. in history from Kent State in 1996.
Since 1998, Dr. Rokicky has been an assistant professor of history at Cuyahoga Community College, where she established a teacher resource center and web site for high school and elementary teachers and annually develops and presents workshops to assist teachers.
An accomplished author, she has published two major historical books dealing with regional and Ohio history. James Monroe: Oberlin’s Christian Statesman and Reformer, 1821-1898, deals with the topic of her doctoral dissertation, which won the 1997 Ohio Academy of History Dissertation Award for best dissertation in Ohio. Creating a Perfect World: Religious and Secular Utopias in Nineteenth-Century Ohio was published as part of the Ohio Bicentennial Series and brought her Tri-C’s Faculty Scholarship Award. She has presented her research in lectures across the nation.