Lifelong Husky Deanna Jantzen honored for 50 years at Northeastern University

Deanna Jantzen, a fixture of the Northeastern community for more than 50 years, was honored Monday with a Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes graduates for their enduring contributions to the university.

by Tanner Stening

November 18, 2025

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When Deanna Jantzen first joined Northeastern University in 1976, Snell Library didn’t exist. Neither did the West Village. 

In fact, everything on the other side of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority tracks toward Columbus Avenue was undeveloped — yet to be imagined, let alone transformed into the bustling hubs of research and innovation that exist today.

“Those were all dirt parking lots,” Jantzen, a so-called triple Husky, or three-time graduate, told Northeastern Global News, referring to the Boston campus. “From Snell to Ruggles, and over the wall, was dirt.”

Jantzen, a fixture of the Northeastern community for more than 50 years, was honored at a luncheon on Monday with a Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes graduates for their enduring contributions to the university. It was a career that spanned three presidential searches in which she was intimately involved, including the 1990s under former Northeastern President Jack Curry, when the university underwent a major strategic reorganization. 

“That was the beginning of higher academic standards, smaller classes, revitalizing the campus so that it was more competitive and more appealing to students,” Jantzen said.

Jantzen retired this month from the university that now spans three countries and 13 campuses with students hailing from all over the world, and experiential learning programs in 158 countries.

Monday’s luncheon to honor her career took place at the Endicott Estate, a mansion built in the early 20th century and located in Dedham, Massachusetts, now used for a variety of civic purposes. 

Speaking to a packed room full of former and current colleagues from the past half-century, Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun said that Jantzen “epitomizes the notion of service,” and that “he learned a lot from her” during the earlier part of his tenure.

Aoun joked that Jantzen was like a co-op adviser during those early years. 

“When I started, I needed … somebody who would teach me about Northeastern,” Aoun said. “Someone who could teach me about its history, its values and its culture. And this person was Deanna. And she still does, after all these years.”

Aoun presented the Distinguished Service Award to Jantzen at the tail end of the luncheon. As part of the dedication, a Torch scholarship was named in her honor, a program that supports first-generation students. It has already garnered more than $130,000, said Diane Nishigaya MacGillivray, Northeastern’s senior vice president for university advancement, who announced the scholarship.

“We thought that a Torch scholarship in your name would be a fitting tribute to your legacy at Northeastern,” MacGillivray said.

Jantzen was first hired as the assistant director of alumni relations in the late 1970s, and was responsible for organizing alumni reunions and clubs. The first reunion she oversaw was for the class of 1922.

“I probably should have moved on from that earlier than I did, and this is true of every job I have had at Northeastern, but I became so attached to the people,” Jantzen said. 

It was a post she held for nine years before she became director of alumni relations and development at the School of Law, where she then worked for three years before leaving the university.

She was gone for all of three months before returning in 1988 to assist with the presidential search that brought in Curry. It would prove to be the only time she tried to leave during her 50-year tenure.

“Every time I thought about leaving, it was the people who kept me,” she said. “I’m a very personal kind of person, and I really value the connections I’ve made over the years, with the trustees, the alumni, those groups of people. But also within the university.”

Jantzen said she has “worked with every board chair” since Robert H. “Bob” Willis, who chaired the Board of Trustees in the 1970s. 

“Deanna is the glue that holds the trustees together,” said Jean Tempel, vice chair emerita of the Board of Trustees, “as much to each other as to Northeastern.”

Neal Finnegan, a Northeastern Chair Emeritus for whom the Neal F. Finnegan Plaza is named, read out Jantzen’s three degrees — a bachelor of arts (’75), a master of public administration (’76) and a juris doctor (’95) — before providing some personal reflections about their working relationship.

“Since your early days as an undergraduate political science student, you have embodied the spirit, drive and purpose of Northeastern,” Finnegan said. “Your work with our governing boards and special committees has proven invaluable to our strategic direction.” 

Corinne Reppucci, a professor of cooperative education at Northeastern in the 1970s, who was Jantzen’s co-op adviser, said Jantzen “became an ambassador for cooperative education” over the years — an example for new students and lifelong learners alike. 

Jantzen’s first co-op was with New Hampshire’s Department of Vocational Education, now the John H. Sununu Youth Services Center, working with troubled youth. 

“Dedication, reliability, loyalty and humility,” Reppucci said. “That’s how I would describe Deanna.”