On April 18th, Kent State Geographers came together to celebrate the discipline and recognize the highest achievers in the department. Several awards were handed out to undergraduates, graduates, and faculty. Below we honor all recipients.
- Geography Majors Awards are awarded to outstanding undergraduate geography majors. This year we are happy to announce six awards to: Patricia Starkey, Jennifer Ruper, Chris Herzog, Brian McCullogh, Rachel Will, and Ben Richards.
- The Isenogle Memorial Award, from the Isenogle Endowment, is awarded to outstanding Geography students and for service to the discipline. This year the awards go to Peter Koby (undergraduate student), and Mike Allen (graduate student).
- The Rinier Scholarship is awarded each year, based on funds donated by James Rinier (emeritus), Dr. Rinier awarded these in person to Kristen Shreve and Shelby Huth.
- Each year, outstanding students in Geography are inducted into Gamma, Theta, Upsilon (GTU) the Geography Honors Society. This year, the inductees are: Dallas Foster, Jennifer Ruper, Kristyn Shreve, Patricia Starkey, and Colin Thomas.
- The Beck Research Award is awarded to the graduate student with the best published academic paper. This year the award goes to Cameron Lee for: Utilizing synoptic climatological methods to assess the impacts of climate change on future tornado-favorable environments. Published in Natural Hazards 2011.
- The Graduate TA of the Year is awarded based on nominations from the faculty. This year the award goes to Meg Petroski for her TA work in GIS.
- The Graduate Instructor of the Year is awarded to graduate students in charge of their own sections of labs or courses. The award is based on scores and comments on student evaluations. This year the award go to Alex Colucci (Instructor: Physical Geography Lab), Adam Cinderich (Instructor: Physical Geography Lab), and Weronika Kusek (Instructor: Human Geography).
- The Beck Travel Fund is a competitive award that students can apply to for research funding. This year, awards were made to Amanda Mullett to visit several museum archives across Ohio, Ashley Sedorovich to provide participant costs for her study participants, and to Gina Butrico, for travel to Iceland to undertake her research.
- The Gandhi Research Fund, founded by Surinder Bhardwaj, is a competitive award that students can apply to for funds to help offset the costs of undertaking research in South Asia. This year, one award was made to Khaled Rahmen
- As always, we are proud when our students receive awards from other sources. This year, Tom Ballinger (PhD student) was awarded an IGERT fellowship, and Rebecca Hoffman and Peter Koby were both awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Student Leadership Awards
- In recognition of outstanding teaching in the Department of Geography, Tom Schmidlin was awarded the Faculty Instructor of the Year. Tom goes above and beyond the requirements of his courses, has been a multiple nominee of the University Teaching Award, and students frequently point to him as an inspiration.
CONGRATULATIONS EVERYONE!