2023 President's Medalists

Stepping out of your comfort zone is one of the common qualities of a President’s Medalist, but, Lucy, you stand out in your constant pursuit of growth opportunities on our campus. In sports and science, on campus as a mentor, friend, member of Sketch’rs Comedy Troupe, and even as a chef, your nominators emphasized your willingness to strongly push yourself as well as pull others over obstacles, in a wide variety of settings. As a computer science and mathematics double major, you have explored the arenas of proximity detection and echolocation.

As a student-athlete, you have been instrumental in enhancing the culture of the volleyball program as you also earned accolades as the most decorated player in Denison volleyball history, including being NCAC Player of the Year in both the 2021 and 2022 seasons, as well as being a two-time All-American. You were awarded the James T. Glerum, Jr. ‘82 Presidential Award, which goes to the senior who has displayed superior athletic and academic accomplishments, in addition to service to the University that goes above and beyond.

From the gymnasium to the cosmos, you make a leap that’s at the heart of a liberal arts program at its best, from the physics of a good serve to the physics of astronomy, from computer science to the mathematics that powers those devices. And in those leaps across boundaries and out of comfort zones, we are told that your energy and interest invite your classmates to join in the discovery. Your remarkable breadth of involvement as a student at Denison makes you a definitive member of our President’s Medalist class for 2023.

Jaelyn, we’re told your decision to come to Denison was based in part on the promise that you could grow into the scientist you wanted to become without sacrificing your love of the arts. This, of course, would mean bringing your artistic flair to the physics classroom… where you built a robotic cat that chases a spot of light moving around on the floor. For that reason alone, we might consider you as a President’s Medalist, but there’s more!

You have been a physics major and music composition minor, with your arts involvement not limited to an instrument or a score, but extending to the world of dance, where you re-founded and served as president of the Denison Ballet Club, helping to reintroduce ballet when you discovered that Denison no longer offered it. You’ve also partnered with the Newark-Granville Symphony Orchestra to compose music, and your scores have brought music to the floors of the Newark and Granville libraries.

As co-president of the Society of Physics Students, you were one of six students in the country to receive their national SPS Leadership Scholarship in 2022, presenting a senior thesis at the American Astronomical Society national conference. One of your nominators stated, “without a doubt, Jaelyn is the best undergraduate research student I’ve worked with over the last 25 years.” This, and the many talents you’ve shared with our community, make you undeniably deserving of becoming a President’s Medalist.

Tait, you’ve been a leader both on campus and off, dedicating yourself to connecting peers on other university campuses and across the country. From the Campus Vote Project to political engagement with causes and candidates supporting environmental measures and open democracies, you have built not just bridges, but highways connecting life on campus with other colleges and universities, and to the wider political world all around us.

Described by your nominators as the “quintessential liberal arts student,” out of your major in environmental studies and minor in religion, you ventured into the challenging terrain of a senior research project looking at oil & gas extraction on Native American lands. You also took on the challenge of study abroad in Berlin, considering environmental and democratic governance in an international setting.

But it was close to home where you were part of an astonishing 99+ percent voter registration tally among Denison University students, leading our campus to have one of the highest voter registration rates among American universities. Or as one nominator observed: Tait, you have made voting a cool thing for Denison students to do. And you’ve done other notable things, too, from improvisational theatre with Burpee’s Seedy to the Outdoors Club, along with being a face in the Office of Admission that visitors have come to recognize throughout their time on campus. Only days ago, you learned that you’ve been selected as a 2023-2024 Cleveland Foundation Public Service Fellow, where you will be working for the Trust for Public Lands Ohio office. For these and so many other reasons, you deserve a place in this year’s President’s Medalist class.

Maddy, you have been described by a nominator as “curious, passionate, and brave,” as a major in philosophy, politics, and economics. You excelled in the classroom and have taken what you have learned there to contribute to our campus community. Your overarching interest in public policy has been reflected in so many areas of our campus, but particularly as DCGA policy chair, speaker of the Student Senate, and as 2023 class co-governor.

Your engagement with policy also led you to a summer internship in the Maryland Senate, working with the Commission to Assist Ukraine and the Helsinki Commission. You have enriched our community with your work on the University Conduct Board, University Council, and as a volunteer with Camp Kesem. You also have sought harmony as a member of the Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, with a music faculty member describing you as “the model of the liberal arts student we all love to work with.” You have been an admissions tour guide and senior interviewer, inviting a new generation of Denison students to the work you have begun, and improving our campus community by the connections you make on those tours and the admissions you help us reach. And you helped us create a student employment office that has made our campus stronger and healthier. For these reasons and many more, we present you with the President’s Medalist award.

Seyeong, as a political science major and a philosophy and studio art double minor, you have excelled academically while working multiple jobs, performing significant university and student service work, and interning with the Center for Global Programs; the Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights; and The Asherah Foundation. Your work on the University Honor Committee, University Conduct Board, as a Vail Series staff member, and as a singer in Tehillah demonstrate the wide range of ways you contributed to and influenced our campus.

Your nominators also tell us you pushed beyond your original academic endeavors in order to pursue a passion for making art, begun in an introduction to sculpture class, and leading already to multiple solo and group exhibitions. We are told you create artworks with whatever you find at hand, such as trash collected as part of a protest protecting a natural preserve where trespassers were endangering wildlife. And through your art, you further develop insights from prior research you’ve conducted along the way.

One of your nominators noted how impressive it is that you serve as a writing consultant in what is your second or third language. You have been exemplary in enlarging the Denison community’s global perspective, acting as a mentor for fellow international students, challenging us on the question of what it means to be people of color, and carrying your insights into independent senior research. Marking the high regard both students and faculty hold for you, we honor you as a member of this year’s President’s Medalist class.

We’ve all heard a great deal about algorithms in recent years, but few of us understand them much, if at all. Tessy, whereas most students in artificial intelligence simply read about the algorithm, and perhaps another very small select few implement the algorithm in a meaningful project, you took extra steps to find an elegant way to show how the algorithm changes, converges, and reaches a fixed point solution in a finite number of steps. Your nominator said, “It was truly a work of aesthetic and mathematical beauty.”

But you also connected the aesthetics of your computer science major to being an inaugural member of Denison’s varsity fencing team, including sabre squad captain, and simply as a fantastic role model for the team. Likewise, as the president of the Women in Mathematics and Computer Science group, you have been a role model not just for women, but for all the students in the department, one of six Computer Science Department Fellows as a sign of your academic ability and overall contributions to the department. Your careful and thoughtful deliberations on the University Honor Committee are an example for all Denisonians, as you have been a leader in the quiet work of upholding academic integrity on our campus.

In athletics, you have been recognized as a Top 50 Scholar Athlete every year of your college career, including receiving the Ted Barclay Top 5 award in your first year, which was also the first year for varsity fencing. Your professors, coaches, and teammates all agree your impact will be felt for many years to come. You’ve built foundations on which others will build, and for that we honor you as a President’s Medalist.

In this era of public discord and growing polarization, Zoya, you have engaged challenging conversations head on. In this time of civic tensions, you have been called one of the most caring and passionate students your nominators have known. You have established yourself as one of the most mature, composed, and eloquent students in Denison’s classrooms, with a genuine thirst for knowledge combined with a personal drive to constantly seek new understandings and discoveries.

As co-founder and secretary of the Denison Debate Society, and in your partnership with Braver Angels which hosted four large-scale debates at Denison, working towards depolarization, you led the way to free speech debates for nearly all first-year students during orientation week, believed to be the first of their kind to involve an entire incoming class of American college students.

You have held to your own perspectives and shared them through published editorial features and interviews about the striking down of the Roe precedent; and as president of Denisonians for Planned Parenthood, you co-organized and co-moderated a Lisska Center event, “Abortion in America…” with Professor Adam Davis. And you will make us proud as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Colombia next year! An honored data analytics and history double major and Spanish minor, your breadth of involvement and leadership make you a worthy recipient of the President’s Medalist award.

Oliver, your nominators, as faculty members and mentors, note that their descriptions of you are mirror how President Weinberg describes Denison. As a student who has exemplified the power of a liberal arts education in your academic and off-campus experiences, you bring into the mix your athletic engagement, as a two-year captain of the Denison ice hockey team, having been a part of a journey from being 0-20 in 2019 (which we’re told is quite bad), to a #4 ranking going into the AAC Division II Elite Playoffs. Your coach states you have been an integral part of building our hockey program and have been an ideal first contact for new recruits, while your long-time teammates call you the GOAT.

As one of two juniors inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, your academics have been stellar, and your gift of drawing others into what one of your nominators called your “world of discovery” is apparent. A global commerce and French double major, with an economics minor, you were a department fellow in both global commerce and modern languages and helped fellow students as a French tutor. You have extended your energy to the Denison Edge, acting as a student consultant to the Edge’s Advisory Board. And you have been a force in campus dialogue. Contributing to the 2021 “21 Days of Racial Equity” program, you challenged both students and faculty to interrogate racial capitalism, pushing for justice and equity to be extended to all participants in our global economy. For your wide range of contributions to our community, you have exemplified those qualities we seek in a President’s Medalist.