Shinobu Kitayama, who received his graduate training at Michigan from 1982-1987 and then served on the faculties of the University of Oregon (1988-1993) and Kyoto University (1993-2003) before returning to UM in 2003, recently was announced as a recipient of the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Career (DSC) Award. APA honors only three DSC recipients each year (occasionally more, if a long-collaborating duo is among the recipients). Considering the many subfields of psychology and the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of researchers out there, the DSC is truly a rare recognition. Interestingly, one of this year's other recipients is Susan Gelman, a Michigan faculty member in developmental psychology since 1984. The DSC definitely has a maize and blue tint this year!
Shinobu, a one-time office-mate of your trusty blogger, conducted social-cognition research early in his graduate training, before switching to cross-cultural psychology and co-authoring the landmark Markus and Kitayama (1991) article, which was published in Psychological Review. The rest, as they say, is history, with Shinobu generating a huge output of cross-cultural research over the next 30 years (Google Scholar profile).
Of the UM social-psychology graduate students who were around from roughly 1984-1989 (either in my cohort, a little older, or a little younger), Shinobu is the first to win a DSC award (John Bargh, a 1981 Ph.D., won the DSC in 2014). See list of DSC recipients.
Several faculty members whose time at UM spanned the eighties (and in some cases, much longer) have also received DSC recognition: Bob Zajonc (at Michigan from 1955-1994, DSC in 1978), Dick Nisbett (1971- 2017, now emeritus; DSC in 1991), Claude Steele (1987-1991, DSC 2003), and Hazel Markus (1975-1994, DSC 2008).