Over a long career in communications, Elaine Schlozman Chapnick ’61 has devoted herself to children’s issues, public health, and other societal issues. She worked on educational programming with the New York Council on Children’s Television and Newsweek Broadcasting, and brought her skills to the American Lung Association, where she was a key player in their pioneering anti-smoking campaigns. She recruited celebrities, directors, and ad agencies to donate their time for a series of iconic public service announcements that alerted the public to the dangers of smoking and brought the anti-smoking movement into the public eye. Before starting her career in communications, she was an English teacher in Chappaqua, N.Y.
At Barnard, Chapnick has served two terms on the Board of Trustees and has been chair of the Annual Giving Committee of the AABC, class fund chair for Reunion, class president, and chair of the Student Life Committee, where she used her communications skills to run focus groups with students on the quality of life at the College. Student input led to new rugs and warm lighting being installed in social spaces at the McIntosh Student Center, the former hub of student life on campus and now the site of The Diana Center, as well as in Lewis Parlor on the first floor of Brooks Hall. “We wanted to find ways to immediately make changes that would make a difference in the lives of students,” she says.
Coming to Barnard from the Midwest—she is from Kansas City, Mo.—“made me a New Yorker,” Chapnick says. “And Barnard helped to make me who I am.”
