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Michele Ritter (Anth'81)

Alumni Recognition Award Winner

A 1981 graduate in anthropology and history known to friends as “Mikhy,” Michele Ritter has built an inspiring career in education, providing access and programing for diverse populations.

Well known for her philanthropic and humanitarian causes — including CU’s College of Music, the Italian department, children, developmentally disabled adults and the “lost girls” of South Sudan — she keeps finding new ways to make CU a magnetic force in higher education.

She is a founding board member of the College of Music’s pioneering Entrepreneurship Center for Music and incoming chair of the Music Advisory Board. In 2015 she and her family provided funding for an endowment that established the Ritter Family Classical Guitar Program.

An Italophile, Michele has been a reliable supporter of and lively presence at Italian department events.

Off campus she volunteers at a Missouri camp for seriously ill children and has helped nearly 20 South Sudanese girls, survivors of an ethnic cleansing campaign, resettle in 91������. Five have graduated from CU; one went to work for Michelle Obama in the White House.

Mikhy’s admirers describe her as “generous” yet “humble,” “a unique caring presence” and “one of the strongest advocates for a truly Liberal Arts education on the 91������ campus.”

She also knows the big value of small kindnesses and has provided “mounds of pizza” for music students’ recital celebrations.

“Hers is a life lived with the utmost integrity,” an admirer wrote, “rich in compassion, love and dedication — to humankind in general and to her alma mater in particular.”