Hall of Fame Inductees
Karen Borza Arabas '84 has the distinction of becoming Wesleyan’s first-ever woman to win an NCAA national title. Running in the 1,500m in her senior year, Karen crossed the line at the 1984 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships held in Northfield, Minnesota, in a career-best time of 4:36.03 to take first place. in a near photo finish as the runner-up clocked in at just 0.3 seconds behind Karen’s time which still stands as a school record today.
That NCAA title race was quite the ending to a distinguished career on the track that featured multiple NESCAC and Little Three Championships. Arabas won her first Little Three title as a sophomore in 1982 and she went on to win four more for a total of five coming in three different events. Her star status soared as a senior in 1984 when she won both the 800m and 1,500m NESCAC Championships. Those performances catapulted her to All-New England status in the 1,500m, all before her record-breaking NCAA title performance.
Karen graduated from Wesleyan in 1984 as an earth & environmental science major. During her time at Wesleyan, she was a sportswriter for the Argus and worked at both the physical plant and library during her undergraduate years.
She went on to earn her master’s degree at George Washington University in 1991 and a PhD in geography from Penn State University in 1997. Throughout her professional career, Arabas has penned several peer-reviewed articles largely based on forest science while her years of field research spans several decades. She has spent the last 20+ years as a professor in the department of environmental and earth sciences at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.
