Alums honored with McDaniel's Trustee Alumni Awards

Jennifer Hill Bubczyk is president of Hill Development Group LLC, a land development company. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and Writing from the college in 1993. 

As an active supporter of McDaniel’s Carroll County Scholars program, which provides guidance and support to Carroll County students as they navigate the college search process, Bubczyk has been involved as a member of the committee since 2003 and as chair since 2014. 

She was on the President’s Advisory Council, made up of entrepreneurial alumni who support students in what is now McDaniel’s Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and has volunteered on class reunion committees.

Additionally, she has served on the boards of Carroll Hospice, Carroll County Youth Service Bureau, the Montessori School of Westminster, and St. George’s Episcopal Church in Hampstead, Maryland, and was an advisory board member for BB&T, now Truist, and New Windsor State Bank, now part of ACNB Corporation.

She is a current resident of Manchester, Maryland, and a graduate of North Carroll High School.

Norm Sartorius, who earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the college in 1969, is a noted American woodworker. 

Sartorius worked as a psychiatric social worker before changing careers after completing a woodworking apprenticeship, where he learned to make many small, functional craft items, including spoons. He has spent the last 30 years crafting his unique wooden spoon sculptural carvings that are inspired by the material, nature, and rich-ethnic spoon-making traditions worldwide. 

A 2025 recipient of the James Renwick Alliance Masters of the Medium award, which honors the most significant artists in American craft, Sartorius has won the Smithsonian Craft Show Award of Excellence three times. In 2015, he received the Collectors of Wood Art Award of Excellence in Wood Art from the American Craft Council and was awarded a fellowship by the Tamarack Artisan Foundation for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts in 2014. 

His works are in the permanent collections of more than 20 museums and universities, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other public and private collections. 

For McDaniel’s 150th anniversary, he was commissioned to create a sculpture in honor of the college’s motto, which is displayed on campus in Hoover Library. The sculpture, titled “Bridge, A Radiant Reflection Integrating Past, Present, and Future,” includes wood from the walnut tree of his grandfather, Norman, who graduated from the college in 1900 and died in 1982 at the age of 103. The college’s Western Maryland Norman E. Sartorius Gift and Citation, given to a student who has contributed the most toward the moral and spiritual uplift of the student body, is named after his grandfather. 

Sartorius has also taught at Common Ground on the Hill in residence at McDaniel, receiving the Fine Arts and Crafts Award for Excellence in the Traditional Arts in 2017.

Additionally, he participated in leading national craft exhibitions for more than 35 years. His work has been published in many periodicals and books, including “A Gathering of Spoons” in 2012 and the book “Spoons to Stir the Soul: The World of Norm Sartorius,” by Craig Edelbrock, based on his retrospective exhibition at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia in 2022. He is featured in the “COLLECTORS" episode of the Peabody Award-winning series Craft in America on PBS, which premiered in December 2024. 

Since 2008, he has also co-directed a grant-funded research project exploring the life, work and legacy of American master craftsman Emil Milan.