University of Denver Autumn 2025

NEWSROOM

Meet the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Awardees

This past spring, the University honored four alumni with Distinguished Alumni Awards. This year’s honorees include individuals whose professional accomplishments and societal contributions demonstrate excellence across education, information technology, financial leadership, service, and student success. Though their paths differ, each shares a deep commitment to giving back and lifting others. Discover how the 2025 honorees’ DU experiences helped shape the lives they lead today.

Maria Alford-Suehnholz pays it forward to DU’s next generation Giving back to DU was ingrained in Maria Alford Suehnholz (BA ’84). “I was brought up with this philosophy of paying it forward,” she says. “My parents did it, my grandparents did it—it goes back generations.”

After earning a degree in mass communications, she built a 30 year IT career while supporting students in the Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, as an advisory council

Michael Atkins leads with heart in Denver Public Schools Michael Earl Atkins (MA ’16) describes his journey in the

chair and scholarship founder. She recently established an endowment within the Learning Effectiveness Program to support students with learning differences.

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program as a “Karate Kid”

moment. At first, he wasn’t sure how all the pieces would come together—until they did.

“This whole time I was learning who I was as an individual and the values that I needed to embrace to be able to serve a community as a school principal,” Atkins says. Atkins began his

K. Kayon Morgan builds belonging through mentorship K. Kayon Morgan (PhD ’17) lives by a guiding principle: “I lift as I climb.” It has shaped her path as a scholar, leader, and advocate for inclusive excellence. “I do not believe I would be where I am today if it wasn’t for the mentors and coaches in my life,” she says. Now serving as vice president of inclusive excellence and belonging at the University of Hartford, Morgan’s journey to DU began with a recommendation from her husband, who had just completed the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies doctoral program and suggested she do the same.

professional path as a school custodian before becoming a paraprofessional, teacher, assistant principal, principal, and now the director of Black student success for Denver Public Schools. Before earning his Principal Licensure Certificate from the Morgridge College of Education, Atkins viewed school leadership this way: “Give me a room full of teachers, let’s look at some student data, let’s plan, and then let’s go teach.” Now, thanks to learning from and working with his DU faculty mentors, he sees it as deeply personal and more values based. “I don’t know who I would be as a leader, a friend, a son, a father, or a husband, without my experience at DU,” he says.

At the Morgridge College of Education, she found a supportive community of faculty and peers, especially her advisor, Kristina Hesbol.

Today, she pays it forward by mentoring future

education leaders, including current DU students.

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UNIVERSITY OF DENVER MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2025