CONTACT: Gila Reinstein, 203-432-1325, gila.reinstein@yale.edu #159
For Immediate Release: May 23, 2004
New Haven, Conn. -- Six Yale College seniors were awarded prizes for superior academic work in their fields of study during Senior Class Day exercises on May 23.
Richard Brodhead, dean of Yale College, presented the awards during the ceremony on Old Campus.
Silas Eamon Meredith of Branford College -- the James Andrew Haas Prize. This prize is presented each year to the senior "whose breadth of intellectual achievement, strength of character and fundamental humanity shall be adjudged by the faculty to have provided leadership for his or her fellow students, inspiring in them a love of learning and a concern for others." Meredith majored in history.
Raisa Adah Rexer of Timothy Dwight College -- the Warren Memorial High Scholarship Prize. The prize is awarded each year to the senior majoring in the humanities who ranks the highest in scholarship. Rexer majored in humanities.
Andrew David Klaber of Trumbull College -- the Arthur Twining Hadley Prize. This prize is given to the graduating senior majoring in the social sciences who ranks the highest in scholarship. Klaber earned distinction in both his majors: ethics, politics & economics, and international studies.
Prescott Davis Murphy of Calhoun College -- the Russell Henry Chittenden Prize. The prize is awarded to the senior majoring in the natural sciences or mathematics who ranks the highest in scholarship. Murphy majored in chemistry.
Kathryn Brittany Whalen of Branford College -- the Louis Sudler Prize for Excellence in the Arts. This prize is conferred each year upon a member of the senior class for distinguished work in the arts. Whalen was recognized for her accomplishments in filmmaking.
Rebecca Katherine Hunter of Jonathan Edwards College -- the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize. The award is given to a graduating senior who "through the combination of intellectual achievement, character and personality ... has done the most for Yale by inspiring in his or her classmates an admiration and love for the best traditions of high scholarship." Hunter earned distinction in English.
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The James Andrew Haas Prize is awarded annually to "that member of the Senior Class in Yale College whose breadth of intellectual achievement, strength of character, and fundamental humanity shall be adjudged by the faculty to have provided leadership for his or her fellow students, inspiring in them a love of learning and concern for others." This year the Haas Prize is awarded to Silas Eamon Meredith of Branford College.
SILAS EAMON MEREDITH
Graduating cum laude with Distinction in the History major, Silas Meredith possesses a rare combination of broad intellectual curiosity, exceptional musical ability, and unstinting commitment to community. He has mastered Spanish and Portuguese, carried out extensive research in Nicaragua and Brazil, and worked this year as a daily classroom teacher at the Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School in New Haven.
Mr. Meredith is also a multi-talented bass player who has performed with the Yale Symphony Orchestra and helped found a jazz quartet, a salsa band, a samba band, and a funk band. In his compositions, his sweeping bow and plucking fingers convert sounds and experiences into music which genuinely connects to his audiences. A natural teacher who inspires others with his own curiosity, he has taught music theory to high school students while at Yale; next year he will teach math in New Haven's public high schools.
In recognition of the ways he has used scholarship, music, and service to reach out to others, express new ideas, and create a more ideal community, Yale College takes great pride in bestowing the James Andrew Haas Prize for 2004 on Silas Eamon Meredith.
The Warren Memorial High Scholarship Prize for the Senior majoring in the humanities who ranks highest in scholarship is awarded this year to Raisa Adah Rexer of Timothy Dwight College.
RAISA ADAH REXER
Raisa Rexer graduates summa cum laude with Distinction in her major of Humanities. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year, she has completed three course credits with grades of A-minus and 33 and one half courses with grades of straight A.
Conversant in Spanish and French, Ms. Rexer has excelled in courses within and beyond Directed Studies and her Humanities major, while engaging energetically in local environmental issues. A recipient of the President's Public Service Award, she has held leadership positions with the Yale Green Corps and the Yale Student Environmental Coalition. She is an accomplished cellist who has played often in the Berkeley College Orchestra. Next year she will study on the Henry Fellowship at Oxford in order to pursue a Masters degree in nineteenth-century English literature.
In recognition of her accomplishments, Yale College proudly awards the Warren Memorial High Scholarship Prize upon Raisa Adah Rexer.
The Arthur Twining Hadley Prize, which honors the memory of the man who served as President of Yale from 1899 to 1921, is awarded annually to the Senior in Yale College majoring in the social sciences who ranks highest in scholarship. This year the Hadley Prize is awarded to Andrew David Klaber of Trumbull College.
ANDREW DAVID KLABER
Andrew Klaber has served as President of Phi Beta Kappa, to which he was elected in his junior year; he was awarded this spring the Marshall Scholarship for study at Oxford; and he now graduates summa cum laude, with Distinction in both Ethics, Politics & Economics and International Studies. He has earned 100% of his grades in A or A-minus with 33 grades of straight A.
At Yale, Mr. Klaber has been literally and figuratively a man on the move, whether rowing for Varsity Lightweight Crew, or performing with the Precision Marching Band, or biking 4,200 miles on behalf of Habitat for Humanity. For his environmental and philanthropic initiatives, including his founding of Orphans Against AIDS, he has been honored by the United Nations and the President of the United States.
In recognition of his exceptional performance and promise of future success, Yale College proudly confers the Arthur Twining Hadley Prize upon Andrew David Klaber.
The Russell Henry Chittenden Prize is awarded annually to that Senior in Yale College majoring in the natural sciences or in mathematics who ranks highest in scholarship. This year's prize is awarded to Prescott Davis Murphy of Calhoun College.
PRESCOTT DAVIS MURPHY
Graduating summa cum laude with Distinction in Chemistry, Prescott Murphy was elected to Phi Beta Kappa after four terms of enrollment. Of the 40 credits he has earned at Yale, 38 of them are straight A-in the sciences, but also in Portuguese and in Spanish, in Economics and in Anthropology, in History and in History of Art.
He has managed to juggle his impressive endeavors in the classroom and the laboratory with his activities as a member of the Yale Anti-Gravity Society. He will continue his career as a first-rate scientist with graduate work in Chemistry next year at Harvard University.
For his splendid research and his unstinting commitment to academic excellence, Yale College is proud to award the Russell Henry Chittenden Prize to Prescott Davis Murphy.
The Louis Sudler Prize for Excellence in the Arts is awarded this year to Kathryn Brittany Whalen of Branford College, for outstanding accomplishments in the area of filmmaking.
KATHRYN BRITTANY WHALEN
Kathryn Whalen's magically animated images entrance viewers with seemingly self-generated and self-sustaining motion. Her warm humor shows through her films, in which the castoff objects she picks up are tenderly brought to life with a rhythm that can range from cruel to comforting. Resisting the temptations of computer design and their convenient sentiments, she has shaped touching parables that remain handcrafted, as her artistic tools join the nostalgic subjects they treat. She records the effort of recording itself, so that the machinery of cinema joins the panoply of objets concrets in her films. Her work reflects a unique synthesis of her study with both the Czech masters of animation and the most ingenious of American filmmakers.
For her artistic achievements in the area of film, Yale College is proud to award the Louis Sudler Prize for excellence in the arts to Kathryn Brittany Whalen.
The Alpheus Henry Snow Prize is awarded to that "senior who, through the combination of intellectual achievement, character, and personality, shall be adjudged by the faculty to have done the most for Yale by inspiring in his or her classmates an admiration and love for the best traditions of high scholarship." This year the Snow Prize is awarded to Rebecca Katherine Hunter of Jonathan Edwards College.
REBECCA KATHERINE HUNTER
Elected to Phi Beta Kappa in the senior year, Rebecca Hunter has earned 38 course credits in Yale College, with 31 grades of straight A. At the start of this academic year, she was awarded the Francis Gordon Brown Prize, in recognition of her extraordinary combination of intellectual ability, athleticism, leadership, and service, made evident in her first six terms at Yale. Now, she graduates summa cum laude with Distinction in the English major, having also earned along the way Academic All-Ivy honors and Yale's DeLaney Kiphuth Student-Athlete Distinction Award for her stellar performance as a student and as a member of the Women's Varsity Cross-Country and Track Teams.
Hailed by her teachers as "a superb linguist and writer" and by her coaches as "one of the most exemplary leaders [Yale has] ever had," Ms. Hunter has recently been recognized outside of Yale's walls: she is the only graduating senior in the nation admitted next year to the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna as a Fulbright Scholar. To those who know her as a talented vocalist, an outstanding athlete and a superlative scholar, Rebecca Hunter is-quite apart from any future diplomatic training-already an accomplished ambassador for Yale College.
In recognition of all this and the promise of even more, Yale College takes great pleasure in conferring the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize for 2004 upon Rebecca Katherine Hunter.
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