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Home > News & Events > CLA Today Archive > Winter 2003 : Student Awards & Accolades

Student Awards & Accolades

Graduate students Vernando Aquirre-McKibbin Jr., and Hokulani Aikau received honorable mentions in the Ford Foundation predoctoral fellowship competition.

Kristin Carbone (sociology) received the 2002 American Society of Criminology Division on Women and Crime award for a paper on how race affects decisions to report victimization.

Sam Kean (English) received the Mark David Clawson Award for the best summa cum laude thesis by an English undergrad for his collection of poems, Cripple.

CLA senior Bianca Ward received one of eight 2002 Governor's Acts of Kindness awards for her community outreach activities in Patricia Crain's "Literacy and American Cultural Diversity" course.

Classical & Near Eastern studies student Aimee Dolich won second place in the national Hebrew Essay Contest of the Histadrut Ivrit of America.

Won-Ho (Wonny) Song, D.M.A. student in piano performance, soloed in three concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra in Nov. Song won the 2000 Grand Prize in the Minnesota Orchestra's WAMSO competition.

Three sociology grad students have earned awards: Colman Titus Msoka (anthropological research grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for his work on urban development in Tanzania); Andrew Odubote (the Adolescent and Youth Dissertation Award from the Murray Research Center of the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University); and Brian Dill (the 2002 Vincent L. Hawkinson Foundation for Peace and Justice Scholarship).

Tracey Gorman, D.M.A. student in voice, took first place in the Metropolitan Opera's district auditions recently and will go on to the Upper Midwest regional auditions.

CLA's newest Rhodes Scholar: Simon makes two

Honors student David Aaron Simon (political science, global studies, Russian) is a 2003 Rhodes Scholar—the second CLA student to be honored with this prestigious award in the past three years. The faculty committee that nominated David said he "brings together the intellectual perspicacity and potential for truly national leadership that mark the finest Rhodes Scholars.”

As committed to public service as he is to academics, Simon has volunteered as an interpreter and cultural liaison for Kidsave International; helped found parliamentary debate societies at the U of M and Veronezh State University (the latter while studying in Russia last fall); and interned at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, the Moscow Bureau of the New York Times, and Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. With the support of the Rhodes Scholarship, Simon intends to earn a graduate degree in international relations at the University of Oxford; he aims for a career in foreign affairs.

Molly Zahn (B.A. '01, religious studies), CLA's 2001 Rhodes Scholar, is studying the Hebrew Bible at Oxford.

VOTES 'R CLA

Zachery Coelius has never shied away from a challenge. When the honors junior in political science and history saw a problem—low voter turnout among college students—he and five classmates set out to do something about it. Now he's been named to the USA Today "All-USA Academic Team,” as one of the nation's top 40 college students.

Under the guidance of psychology professor Mark Snyder and Regents' Professor of political science John Sullivan—and with the active encouragement of CLA dean Steven Rosenstone, who doubles as a specialist in electoral politics—Coelius & company launched a Web and email marketing campaign, Votes for Students, to improve voter turnout among their peers nationwide.

The group developed a database of some 500,000 students in 10 states, and sent emails to those students last October to encourage participation in the November election. Their work was so impressive that they promptly received a $100,000 grant from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning (CIRCLE). With the CIRCLE grant, the students hope to expand the project to reach more students before the 2004 election.

“We're here to make [voting] easier and give students a voice,” says Coelius.

She's a winner

An outstanding student athlete from Flint, Mich., Brandy Pickens came to the U on a basketball scholarship. Last spring, she received her B.A. in psychology and was admitted to the highly competitive McNair Research Program. Named after Ronald McNair, the African American astronaut who died in the 1986 Challenger explosion, the program is designed to encourage students of color to pursue graduate degrees.

Pickens is working with psychology professor Eugene Borgida to research tobacco use and attitudes toward harm-reduction products. She plans to earn a Ph.D. in psychology.