Grove City College will honor three alumni with Jack Kennedy Memorial Alumni Achievement Awards at this fall’s Homecoming 2025 celebration.
The alumni selected for this year’s awards have made significant contributions to their fields, from the military to sports to medicine, and brought honor to the College, according to the Grove City College Alumni Association, which presents the awards.
The Alumni Association will also posthumously recognize legendary Economics professor Dr. Hans Sennholz with a David Rathburn Distinguished Service Award during the awards ceremony.
“Our Alumni Association is pleased to honor these individuals who have made notable impacts in their chosen fields. They join countless others who have brought honor to our College and provided faithful service over the last century-and-a-half,” said Melissa (Trifaro) MacLeod ’96, senior director of Alumni and College Relations.
The awards will be presented at a service at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10 in Harbison Chapel on campus. The service is open to the public.
This year’s honorees are:
- Mae M. Pouget ’82, (Capt, MC, USN, Ret.) – Pouget retired from naval service in 2021 with 26 years of active duty as a medical doctor and head of divisions, hospitals, and medical staff, managing health care activities for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. She was Deputy Chief of the Medical Corps from 2014 to 2017.
She is a family medicine physician, a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States. She holds a Doctor of Medicine degree from Virginia Commonwealth School of Medicine and completed her Family Medicine residency at Polyclinic Medical Center in Harrisburg, Pa.
Her naval service included posts as Senior Medical Officer of the USS Emory S. Land; Senior Medical Officer of the USS Kearsarge; Director of Health Services at the Naval Health Clinic in Corpus Christi, Texas; and Director of Medical Services at Naval Hospital Beaufort, S.C. She led several programs for the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) and was Deputy Chief of Navy Medical overseeing 4,000 doctors.
She also served as officer in charge of Troop Medical Clinic #8 at Camp Virginia in Kuwait, and as general medical officer, policy and plans officer at BUMED. She began her career as a physician at Naval Hospital Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
She has been awarded two Legion of Merit Medals, three Meritorious Service Medals, and three Navy Commendation Medals, among other honors.
At Grove City College, she was a letterwinner on the women’s basketball team. She is married to Lane Thurmond and the couple lives in Alexandria, Va.
- Jake Reid ’05 – Reid is president and CEO of the Major League Soccer team Sporting Kansas City, a position he has held since 2018. At the time he was named president at the age of 33, he was the youngest president in all Major League Soccer (MLS). Reid received MLS’s highest honor for business leadership in 2024 when he was named Executive of the Year.
Under Reid’s leadership, Sporting Kansas City transformed from an organization that ranked last in nearly every financial measure in 2010 to one that is now among league leaders for season ticket sales, corporate sponsorships, and merchandise and concession revenue. He has worked for the organization since 2010.
Also in the soccer realm, since 2023 Reid has been board vice president of KC2026, the organization working as a host city to the FIFA World Cup quarterfinal next July, predicted to be the biggest sporting event the city has ever seen.
For the last decade, Reid has worked to become an industry leader in technology solutions for sales and revenue generation, including mobile ticketing/ordering and data capturing to tailor the fan experience at Children’s Mercy Park stadium.
Reid started his career in the National Basketball Association with the New Orleans Pelicans and Charlotte Hornets. He then moved to England to work for Derby County Football Club, helping the Club achieve the highest average attendance in the 2008-09 English Football Championship while also outdrawing nine Premier League teams at the gate.
Reid is active in his community and is a board member for the Kansas City Sports Commission and The Victory Project. He is also a member of the Young Presidents Organization of Kansas City. He and his wife, Danielle, have two sons.
- Dr. Ted Schaffer ’75 – Schaffer, chairman of Medical Education at UPMC St. Margaret Hospital, has helped recruit and train more than 500 family medicine residents and served as an award-winning family physician for more than four decades.
Dr. Schaffer earned his medical degree from what is now Virginia Commonwealth University, placing in the top 10 percent of his class. After a three-year residency with the St. Margaret Memorial Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program, during which he was named a Mead Johnson National Achievement Award winner in Family Practice, he joined the teaching faculty at St. Margaret and has, over the last 43 years, served in multiple leadership positions at what is now known as UPMC St. Margaret. He served in many roles connected to medical education and health care in the Pittsburgh region, including 22 years as the hospital’s family medicine residency director, has guided 564 residents in family practice, and advocated for family medicine within the UPMC Health System.
Dr. Schaffer also took the lead in organizing seven family physician groups into one organization, Renaissance Family Practice, which is the largest primary care physician group in northeast Allegheny County, and maintains an active practice in Glenshaw, Pa., serving as team physician for the Shaler Area School District. He is a multi-year recipient of Pittsburgh Magazine's Top Family Physicians award.
A native of Annville, Pa., and valedictorian of his high school class, Dr. Schaffer was president of his junior and senior class at Grove City College and selected Senior Man of the Year. He and his wife Nancy (Cotton '78) reside in Allison Park, Pa., and have four children who have all become family physicians as well.
The David Rathburn Distinguished Service Award, which now bears the name of one of the College’s greatest leaders and benefactors, will be awarded to Dr. Hans Sennholz, who led the College’s Economics Department from 1956 to 1992.
A renowned economist and classroom presence, Sennholz impacted thousands of Grove City College students over five decades, not only as a proponent of the Austrian School but also as an inspiring and challenging teacher and mentor. He was “one of our nation’s most articulate, intellectual voices for ordered liberty, limited government, and free markets,” former College President Richard G. Jewell ’67 said upon the Sennholz’s passing in 2007.
Born in Germany in 1922, Sennholz experienced the deprivations of the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism. After the war he earned his first doctorate from the University of Cologne. He then studied at New York University under the great Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises and earned his Ph.D. in 1955. A year later, at the behest of then-Board President J. Howard Pew ’00, he joined the faculty at Grove City College where he served as professor of Economics and chairman of the Department of Economics for the next 36 years.
After retirement in 1992, he continued writing and working with think tanks, including leading New York’s Foundation for Economic Education, and remained an integral part of Grove City College. On his 81st birthday, he delivered the first lecture in Sticht Lecture Hall, which had just opened. Two years later, he gave the closing lecture at the first conference held by The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. Now known as The Institute for Faith & Freedom, the campus think tank is a part of Sennholz’s legacy.
His wife, Mary, was also a scholar and author. Their son, Robert ’75, and grandson, Roland ’08, are alumni.