Catawba College Announces 2026 Distinguished Alumni Award Recipients

Andrew Chambers ’17

Young Alumni Award for Service

Andrew Chambers has made a habit of showing up.

That was true when he was a student in Catawba’s Ketner School of Business, where he took on leadership roles in Phi Beta Lambda and helped bring back The Sayakini, the College yearbook. It remained true after graduation, when he kept returning to campus—sometimes for an Alumni Board meeting, sometimes for Move-In Day or a career panel, sometimes simply because there was work to be done.

Over six years on the Alumni Board of Directors, Chambers helped strengthen the ties between graduates and the College. Away from campus, he brought the same willingness to serve to organizations including ApSeed Early Childhood Education, where he began as the organization’s first intern and later served on its board.

At the same time, his professional responsibilities continued to grow. Today, Chambers leads the strategy and performance of a Lowes Foods digital storefront representing more than $50 million in business.

The settings have changed since his years at Catawba. The instinct has not. Chambers continues to look for where he can contribute, then steps in.

Caleb Garner ’17

Young Alumni Award for Career Development

Caleb Garner has built a career in the part of theatre audiences are not always meant to notice.

Light, sound, timing, preparation—the work behind the work. At Catawba, he studied both Theatre Design and Production and Theatre Arts Education, an early pairing of craft and teaching that has continued to shape his career.

Today, Garner serves as Resident Lighting Designer and Coordinator of the TheatreWings High School Apprenticeship Program at Charleston Stage Company. He designs productions while helping young artists learn the technical work of theatre and the discipline of making something alongside other people. He also teaches at the College of Charleston. The students he has mentored have gone on to professional theatre companies, national recognition, and advanced study.

His own work has reached increasingly visible stages. Garner created the original sound design for the stage adaptation of Patrick Bringley’s All the Beauty in the World, first presented at the Charleston Literary Festival and later Off-Broadway in 2025.

For Garner, though, the work has never been only about what happens under the lights. It is also about what gets passed on—knowledge, trust, another chance to make something good with other people.

Shari Marshall Graham ’83

Distinguished Alumni Award for Service

Shari Marshall Graham came to Catawba from Pennsylvania expecting to earn a degree. Instead, she found the place where much of her life would unfold.

She studied Speech and Political Science, met her future husband, Bill Graham ’83, and, after two years working for TV Guide in Philadelphia, returned to North Carolina. In 1986, they were married in Omwake-Dearborn Chapel. Salisbury became home.

Over the four decades since, Graham has invested herself in the life of that home. Her background in the arts found expression in directing youth productions and performing with Lee Street Theatre, while her service gradually reached farther into the schools, organizations, and families around her. At Catawba, that same instinct led her to serve the Chiefs Club and, with Bill, help establish the Bill and Shari Graham Genomics Laboratory, creating new opportunities for students.

What began as a college choice became something larger: a place to build a family, a community to care for, and a life shaped by the decision to keep giving back to both.

Steve Flood ’85

Distinguished Alumni Award for Career Achievement

Before Steve Flood talks about the companies he built, he talks about the people who gave him a chance.

Flood came to Catawba in 1981 and spent four years playing second base for the College’s baseball program. He still points to Bill Hall, then a dean at Catawba, as one of the people who took an early interest in him and helped shape the direction of his life.

That foundation carried into a career of more than three decades in the pharmaceutical industry. Flood founded and grew Granard Pharmaceuticals and Seton Pharmaceuticals before their sale in 2015, then co-founded Pangea Pharmaceuticals three years later.

In May 2026, Pangea reached another milestone with the sale of a majority interest to DW Healthcare Partners. Flood has since stepped away from day-to-day operations but remains connected to the company as a co-founder, shareholder, and member of its Board of Directors.

The companies tell part of the story. Flood still begins it much earlier—with the people who saw possibility in him before any of those accomplishments existed.

Curtis J. Walker ’92

Catawba Black Alumni Pioneer Award

Curtis J. Walker returned to Catawba in 2013 to lead the football program he had once played for.

As a student, Walker was a four-year starting linebacker, a three-time All-American, and team captain. More than two decades later, he came back as head coach and, in 2015, led Catawba to a South Atlantic Conference Championship and an NCAA Division II Playoff appearance.

His return carried significance beyond the field. As one of the first Black head football coaches in the South Atlantic Conference, Walker helped widen a path that had too rarely been open to others.

That work has continued beyond coaching. In 2026, Walker was promoted to Vice President of Athletics and Athletic Operations at Livingstone College, where he now oversees the work that supports student-athletes on and off the field.

Across more than three decades in college athletics, Walker’s roles have changed. The work beneath them has remained remarkably consistent: developing young people, creating opportunity, and leaving the path a little wider for whoever comes next.