March 11, 2002

Contact: Mary Jane Dunlap, University Relations, (785) 864-8853.

KU alumna receives top cultural endeavors award offered by Costa Rica

LAWRENCE -- A University of Kansas anthropology alumna from Costa Rica recently received that country's highest award to distinguished citizens for cultural endeavors, the Premi Magon.

Maria Eugenia Bozzoli teaches anthropology at the Universidad de Costa Rica in San Jose. Bozzoli earned bachelor's and master's degrees in archaeology at KU. She completed a doctorate in anthropology at the University of Georgia, Athens, in 1975.

In 2000, she received the Malinowski Award in Applied Anthropology from the Society for Applied Anthropology.

In Costa Rica, Bozzoli has supported the exchange program, which is recognized as the oldest cultural exchange program between a U.S. and Latin American university. Bozzoli and KU history professor Charles Stansifer wrote a history of the exchange for the 40th anniversary, observed in April 1999 at KU.

Bozzoli's KU ties are long and strong.

Her husband, Alvaro Wille, earned a doctorate in entomology at KU in 1959. In fact, Bozzoli and her husband met as Costa Rican exchange students at KU and married. The young couple were present at KU when chief executives of KU and UCR signed agreements in 1959 that formally established an exchange program between the two universities.

Since her undergraduate years, Bozzoli has returned to KU at least three times -- in 1981, when her daughter Leticia Wille Bozzoli enrolled at KU through the university's exchange program with the University of Costa Rica; in 1984, when she delivered a lecture on agricultural expansion in Costa Rica for KU's Center of Latin American Studies; and in 1998 as a Hall distinguished visiting professor of anthropology.

Bozzoli's two brothers and sister also are KU alumni. Ricardo Bozzoli has a master's degree in civil engineering, and Fernando Bozzoli has a master's degree in social work. Her sister, Virginia Bozzoli, studied two years at KU's School of Education.

Bozzoli also taught at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge on a Fulbright fellowship in 1981.