Alumna creates Early Career Professorship to address food safety and security

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — “It’s all about first things first,” said Penn State liberal arts alumna Deborah Anzalone, medical doctor (M.D.). “If you don’t have food, you don’t have the energy to do anything else. Without it, there can be no human dignity or self-esteem. Food is first.”

Anzalone considers issues surrounding food, such as hunger, food-related illness, and global food production policies, to be among the world’s greatest challenges. To help address those challenges, she pledged $400,000 to establish the Lucille E. Anzalone, R.N. and Deborah A. Anzalone, M.D. Early Career Professorship in Food Safety and Security in the College of the Liberal Arts. Penn State will add $100,000 in matching funds as part of its Faculty Endowment Challenge during the University’s current fundraising campaign, “A Greater Penn State for 21st Century Excellence.” Early Career Professorships typically rotate every three years to faculty members in the first decade of their academic careers.

The first endowed faculty position to address food safety and security in the college, the Anzalone Early Career Professorship will support a faculty member affiliated with the Rock Ethics Institute, a multidisciplinary unit that promotes research and outreach collaborations that address significant social issues and real-world ethical problems.

Anzalone wanted to be a physician from the time she was very young. She attended Penn State to begin that journey, but rather than majoring in “pre-med,” she majored in general arts and sciences – the liberal arts. She “fell in love with the liberal arts” and was grateful to be able to build a career in medicine on a liberal arts foundation. Anzalone graduated from Penn State in 1978 and went on to earn her medical degree at Hahnemann Medical School, now Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She completed her postdoctoral work in internal medicine at Hahnemann and completed a fellowship in nephrology at Jefferson University Hospital. Thereafter, she enjoyed a successful career developing pharmaceuticals to address cardiovascular and kidney-related diseases. She retired in 2020 as an executive medical director for AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals.

A decade before retiring, Anzalone reengaged with Penn State and the College of the Liberal Arts. She began as a mentor to liberal arts students, then became a member of the college’s Alumni Society Board, and later joined the Board of Visitors of the Rock Ethics Institute.

Anzalone also became a donor. In 2013, she created a Trustee Scholarship in memory of her late brother, 1966 Penn State alumnus James R. Anzalone. Her latest gift is named for her mother, the late Lucille Anzalone, a registered nurse, “a fabulous Italian cook and an amazing baker” who raised Anzalone and her two brothers after Anzalone’s young father died. Lucille’s passion for cooking, family meals and good nutrition, along with her personal struggle to follow a gluten-free diet, inspired her daughter to create the professorship.

“My mother was a resilient single parent who believed that sitting around the table in the nuclear family and having a meal was essential for the general well-being of her family, and she was determined to keep that going,” Anzalone said. “Every meal had to be nutritionally balanced.”

Additional motivation for Anzalone’s gift came from two other sources – her career and her faith.

As a physician, Anzalone said that in some circumstances, proper, highly specific nutrition can mean the difference between living and dying. As a person of faith, Anzalone cited the lives and miracles of Isidore and Maria, patron saints of farmers, who fed the poor.

Reflecting on why she directed her philanthropy to Penn State and the Rock Ethics Institute, Anzalone noted that she and both of her brothers received excellent educations at Penn State and went on to become successful professionals. James was an attorney; A. Anthony is a physician.

Additionally, she said: “Penn State was one of the nation’s first colleges of agricultural science, and there is no institution in the world that could do a better job of stewarding this professorship. It’s going to take a multidisciplinary effort to address issues of food safety and security, and the Rock Ethics Institute specializes in that sort of collaboration.”

“Our broad mission is to support interdisciplinary ethics research that is transformative and can address the pressing problems of society today,” said Ted Toadvine, Nancy Tuana Director of the Rock Ethics Institute. “Everyone has to eat, so the issue of eating ethically and producing food in fair and just ways is always going to be central to the human condition. People will always need food, and there will always be ethical issues to address. This professorship fits perfectly with our mission.”

“This is a challenging moment for higher education, with the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic straining the budgets of universities nationwide,” added Clarence Lang, Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts. “At the same time, pressing global issues such as hunger, poverty and homelessness — issues only exacerbated by the pandemic — demand the type of innovative and interdisciplinary solutions that the College of the Liberal Arts, and specifically the Rock Ethics Institute, are uniquely positioned to provide. Because of Deborah Anzalone’s generosity, our college will be able to offer a named professorship to an outstanding emerging scholar whose research makes a real contribution to the fight against hunger.”

“Food safety and security is an ethical issue. This professorship helps the Rock Ethics Institute both raise awareness about global challenges related to food and foster innovative discoveries in food science and technology,” Anzalone concluded. “Food is a most basic physiologic human need. While it is compassionate to feed the hungry, especially during emergencies, my vision is to go beyond this. Protecting the food supply for everyone and creating systems to ensure enduring food safety and security, especially in but not limited to underserved communities, should be paramount objectives. The ultimate goal is to move from fulfilling a physiologic need to achieving a higher level of wellbeing for all humanity. Imagine people worldwide living in well-nourished communities, which are thus more stable, with greater capacity to promote not only individual happiness but also the greater good for all. Penn State — through its teaching and research — will plant the seeds for this better future.”  

The Lucille E. Anzalone, R.N. and Deborah A. Anzalone, M.D. Early Career Professorship in Food Safety and Security in the College of the Liberal Arts helps to advance "A Greater Penn State for 21st Century Excellence," a focused campaign that seeks to elevate Penn State’s position as a leading public university in a world defined by rapid change and global connections. With support from devoted benefactors who believe in Penn State and its mission, “A Greater Penn State” seeks to fulfill the three key imperatives of a 21st-century public university: keeping the doors to higher education open to hardworking students regardless of financial well-being; creating transformative experiences that go beyond the classroom; and impacting the world by serving communities and fueling discovery, innovation and entrepreneurship. To learn more about “A Greater Penn State for 21st Century Excellence,” visit greaterpennstate.psu.edu.