The 49th Annual Citation Award Dinner
Honoring Irving Tragen ’45, Edward Halbach, Jr., and Nan Joesten ’97
Irving Tragen ’45
Citation Award
Irving Tragen, a distinguished diplomat with 55 years of service in Inter-American Affairs, is the 2010 Citation Award recipient. A Foreign Service Officer for 35 years, his assignments included senior diplomatic and development posts in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1980, Tragen joined the Organization of American States’ Economic Development Program, which tackled debt and foreign trade crises, border area infrastructure projects, and manpower development initiatives. In 1985, he was selected to organize and direct the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, leading its efforts to combat drug trafficking and abuse in the Western Hemisphere until his retirement in 1994.
One of Boalt’s most generous donors, Tragen and his late wife Eleanor endowed a faculty chair in Comparative Constitutional and Public Administrative Law in 2002. They made the first contribution in 2004 and the law school is one of three beneficiaries of the Tragen Family Trust. The other two beneficiaries are UC San Diego Medical School’s Geriatrics Research Program and the Museo de las Americas in Denver, to which Eleanor’s Latin American folk art collection has been donated. In 2005, Tragen established a State Department endowment in his wife’s name to create the annual U.S. Foreign Service Spouse of the Year Award.
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Edward Halbach, Jr.
Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award
This year’s Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award recipient is Edward Halbach, Jr., the Walter Perry Johnson Professor of Law, Emeritus. A leading scholar in estates and trusts, Halbach joined Boalt’s faculty in 1959, and in 1966—at age 34—became the country’s youngest law school dean. He was dean for nine years, during which the Boalt Hall Fund and the International Association of Boalt Alumni (IABA) were established, and later spent 11 years on the Boalt Hall Alumni Association board. Halbach, reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement Third of the Law of Trusts project, has won that organization’s Tweed Award for Special Merit in Continuing Legal Education and the National College of Probate Judges’ Award for Excellence. He was also recently inducted into the National Estate Planning of Hall of Fame.
Halbach occupied leadership positions throughout his career, serving as president of the International Academy of Estate and Trust Law, chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Real Property, Probate and Trust Law, and the division director of that section’s Probate and Trust Division. A co-reporter for the original Uniform Probate Code, Halbach has authored texts, casebooks, and articles on wills, trusts, future interests, taxation, investment law, and estate planning.
Halbach is the only non alum to receive the Citation Award—legitimated by being made an honorary alum and member of the class of 1962 (after which he was promptly billed for past class dues).
Nan Joesten ’97
Young Alumni Award
Nan Joesten, the recipient of this year’s Young Alumni Award, has enriched Boalt Hall in innumerable ways. She has been a Boalt Hall Alumni Association board member for the past five years, serving consecutive one-year terms as president from 2007–2009. Joesten also co-chaired her class reunion campaign in 2005, chaired Boalt’s law firm giving campaign in 2006, and was recognized by the UC Berkeley Foundation with its 2007 Trustees Citation Award for her outstanding service to the law school. Throughout her law career, she has been a strong advocate for the importance of mentoring in the legal profession.
Joesten specializes in business litigation and intellectual property and technology at Farella Braun + Martel, and recently served as the partner co-chair of her firm’s professional development committee. She was the 2008–09 co-chair of the Women Advocate Committee of the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section, and has also been appointed co-chair of the section’s annual meeting for 2012. A manufacturing engineer and advertising brand manager for Procter & Gamble before attending Boalt, Joesten is winding down an adventurous, year-long trek throughout the United States in a 40-foot motor home with her husband, Hank, and their three pets.