Grinnell College Athletics Hall of Fame
Stephanie Hitztaler ’96 was a two-time qualifier for the NCAA Division III National Cross Country Meet. The cross country and track star won several individual awards, including the Midwest Conference Cross Country Championship in 1994 and the Grace McIlrath Parker ’11 Trophy for Outstanding Senior Athlete in a Single Sport. She blazed through the second fastest 5-kilometer clocking in Grinnell history at the time, running the course at Chicago’s Lakefront Invitational in 18:37.9 during the fall of 1995. She was also a captain in track and finished sixth in the 1,500-meter run and third in the 3,000 at the 1994 Midwest Conference Track Championships. A Russian major at Grinnell, Hitztaler went on to earn M.S. and M.A. degrees in natural resources and environment and Russian and East European studies, and then a Ph.D. in natural resources and environment, all from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has spent extensive periods abroad working for environmental nongovernmental organizations and conducting research in the Russian Far East, including one year as a Fulbright Scholar. She currently lives in Jyväskylä, Finland, where she is working as a consultant for a NASA-funded project on land cover change in northern Eurasia.
