Nine Weinberg College Seniors Honored for Outstanding Academic Achievement
Nine Weinberg College seniors were presented with the prestigious Oliver Marcy, James Alton James, and Daniel Bonbright Awards during a ceremony led by Dean Sarah Mangelsdorf on November 11, 2011. The awards, each given to three students, recognize outstanding academic achievement across the sciences and humanities.
The Oliver Marcy Scholarship, for students studying the natural sciences and mathematics, was awarded to Kerianne Fullin, Hunter Gits, and Lauren Linzmeier.
- Fullin studies Genetics, Molecular Biology, and Global Health. Already a world traveller, she has recently conducted research in France and Ghana.
- Gits says he has been drawn to science since a young age and hopes to channel his interest in this area and passion for helping others into a career as a medical doctor.
- Linzmeier, a triple major in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences, Economics, and Math, plans to pursue a Ph.D. in economics following graduation. She cites her dual passions for economics and educational policy as driving forces in her career choice.
The 2011 scholarship winners with Dean Sarah Mangelsdorf (left) and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Academic Affairs Mary Finn (second from right).
The James Alton James Scholarship, awarded for distinguished achievement in the social sciences, was presented to Blake Erickson, Arthur Jago, and Mengyi Jiang.
- Erickson, a self-described avid runner, volunteer, and vinyl record enthusiast, is finishing a senior thesis on the impacts of environment and activity on human skeletal growth.
- Jago, a Psychology and Cognitive Science double major, has worked in Northwestern University Residential Life for three years and plays on the tennis club team. After graduation he says he plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Management/Organizational Behavior.
- Jiang is double majoring in Economics and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences. She cites campus diversity and friendships with classmates among the things she has appreciated most while at Northwestern.
Laura Jok, Joshua Levin, and Katherine McGarrahan were recipients of the Daniel Bonbright Scholarship, awarded for excellence in the humanities.
- Studying Creative Writing and Linguistics, Jok says she sees writing and teaching as possible future career directions, which she is preparing for through contributions to multiple publications and tutoring on campus.
- According to Levin, who is majoring in History and American Studies, law school is on his immediate horizon following graduation. He cites African American history, as well as race and cultural studies, among his research interests.
- McGarrahan is a French major and has also earned the Medill Certificate in Integrated Marketing and Communications. Eventually, she says she’d like to combine these interests through a role in international advertising or marketing.
The Marcy, James, and Bonbright Scholarships are named for three influential faculty members in Northwestern’s history. Oliver Marcy was a professor of natural science in the late 1800s and also acting president. James Alton James served as History department chair as well as the first dean of The Graduate School. For more than five decades, Daniel Bonbright was a professor of Latin and served as University president at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Honors and Achievements
Doctoral student Chris Shirley has won a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship for his study, Reading by Hand: Manuscript Poetry and Readerly Identities in Renaissance England.
Doctoral student Jade Werner has been named a 2013 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation for her dissertation, The Gospel and the Globe: Missionary Enterprises and the Cosmopolitan Imagination, 1795-1910.
Jacqueline Stevens, a professor of political science and director of the Deportation Clinic at the Buffett Center on International and Comparative Studies, has been named a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow.
The Global Health Studies program has won the 2013 Senator Paul Simon International Spotlight Award.
Jacob Lassner, a professor emeritus of history, has been awarded the Franz Rosenthal Prize in Islamics & Semitics by the American Oriental Society.
Earth & Planetary Sciences Professor Emile Okal has been named the 2013 recipient of the Sergey Soloviev Medal by the European Geosciences Union. Okal was cited for his “seminal contributions to the understanding of the physics of tsunamis and for establishing new methods of tsunami mitigation."
Xinwen Zhu has been awarded the Centennial Fellowship of the American Mathematical Society.
Douglas Medin, a professor of cognitive psychology, has received the William James Lifetime Achievement Award for Basic Research from the Association for Psychological Science.
Seth Stein, the William Deering Professor of Geological Sciences in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, has received a Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany.
Northwestern University physicist Nathaniel Stern and economist Bruno Strulovici each have been awarded a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship for 2013 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Anthropology Professor Helen B. Schwartzman has been elected to a Visiting Fellowship at Oxford's Magdalen College. She will research Bodleian Library collections on 19th and 20th century children's toys and games.
Professors Anupam Garg and André de Gouvêa have been named Fellows of the American Physical Society.
The Modern Language Association of America will present its 22nd Howard R. Marraro Prize to Associate Professor Marco Ruffini for his book Art without an Author: Vasari's Lives and Michelangelo's Death.
Alumna Michelle Grabner, who received her MFA from the department of Art Theory and Practice in 1990, was named one of three curators of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, an influential survey of the state of contemporary art in the United States.