University Park, Pa. -- The Schreyer Honors College awarded its top prizes to a trio of graduates from Pennsylvania during its medals ceremony in May.
Nomi Deutch, from Glenside, Pa., received the 2005 Usharani and Channa Reddy Mission Award. Deutch graduated with honors in political science and minors in Middle East studies and Hebrew. She completed her first summer fellowship with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy where she was stationed at the Tel Aviv University. During her second summer, Deutch secured an internship with the U.S. State Department's Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and was stationed in Nicosia, Cyprus. She served as a resident assistant, president of the Penn State Republicans, and seventh grade teacher of Hebrew at the State College Jewish Community Center. Deutch plans to spend a year in Turkey on a Fulbright Scholarship.
The Usharani and Channa Reddy Mission Award is given to the graduating Schreyer Scholar who has excelled in and integrated all aspects of the Honors College mission statement: academic excellence, global perspective, leadership and civic engagement.
Thomas Essinger-Hileman, from Uniontown, Pa., received the 2005 Paul Axt Prize, the highest honor that the college bestows on a graduating scholar. Essinger-Hileman completed majors in three challenging fields of study: physics, mathematics and philosophy. In addition, he earned interdisciplinary honors in the fields of physics and science, technology and society. His honors thesis was the result of a detailed examination of important historical experiments in physics to show how they could be used to transform introductory physics education. Essinger-Hileman ranked at the top of his class in physics and maintained an outstanding grade-point average while doing substantial research. He spent one summer at CalTech working on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory project and another in Hamburg, Germany, working at the internationally recognized facility. Essinger-Hileman plans to continue his education to complete a Ph.D. and remain a practicing research physicist.
The Paul Axt Prize honors the graduating scholar who best exemplifies "the passionate commitment to inquiry that promotes high scholarly achievement and the intellectual curiosity and daring that leads to the development and pursuit of wide-ranging interests."
Holly Hantz, from Latrobe, Pa., received the 2005 Douglas G. and Regina C. Evans Research Achievement Award. Hantz earned a degree with honors in nutritional sciences. She maintained a 4.00 GPA while averaging nearly 20 credits each semester. Hantz began her research in the fall of 2002 to demonstrate how the red pigment in tomatoes might help protect humans from prostate cancer. About a year into her work, she presented her research at an international, interdisciplinary conference. The following year, she authored a paper on her findings that has since been successfully published. Hantz's awards include the Evan Pugh Scholar Award, and the Lockheed Martin Scholarship for Women in Science and Engineering. She was named one of only two recipients of the John W. White Graduate Research Fellowship given by Penn State's University Faculty Senate. Hantz also served as a nutrition peer educator and teaching assistant, student leader in her college's Women's Leadership Initiative, vice president of the Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon (THON), and many other service activities. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of California-Berkley.
The Douglas G. and Regina C. Evans Research Achievement Award recognizes the graduating Schreyer Scholar who accomplished a single, most extraordinary research achievement.
Additional information about the Schreyer Honors College can be found by visiting http://www.shc.psu.edu/