Pomona Honors Academic Merit, Diligent Study
By Jeff Horwitz
News Editor

On Monday evening Pomona celebrated its annual Awards and Scholars’ Banquet and Summer Research Poster Conference, a dinner intended to honor the accomplishments of those students who have distinguished themselves in the last year. Though the majority of honorees were Pomona students, the rest of the five-college community was also represented.

The largest group of students commended was the 2001-2002 Pomona Scholars, students who had GPA’s in the top quarter of their class for at least one of the two previous semesters. Pomona’s newest additions to the national honor and research societies of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma XI were also present, as well as the winners of assorted scholarships, fellowships, and travel grants. Many of the academic and departmental awards also conferred a substantial cash prize, in addition to prestige, on their recipients.

In a speech before dinner, President Stanley commented on the exceptional nature of those who received awards. “You are overachievers within a community of overachievers,” he said. “What you do enriches not only yourselves, but your community as well.”

Student reaction to the awards was positive, with cheers when Dean Quinley read the names of the winners of departmental awards. Some recipients showed a great deal of modesty about their success— “It’s an honor, it’s a blessing. I’ve been blessed,” bubbled Joe Hale ’03, one of two recipients of the Matthew Klopfeish Prize in Art, after the ceremony. Others saw the prizes as fuel for their ambition. “I’m moving up,” said Cory Forsyth ’03 after winning the Tileston Junior Physics Prize.

The second half of the evening was devoted to recognizing the work of Summer Researchers, Pomona students who received funding to do research over the summer within their field of specialty. The projects investigated an eclectic selection of topics, from analyzing Introns in DNA to studying a more accurate method of measuring body fat, to collaborating with an art professor on a performance piece called “Breach” in which a Pomona student pulled the art professor through a wall with a winch.

The author of the body fat measurement project, Katie Yamashita ’03 said her project kept her in Claremont for ten weeks, the majority of the summer. “It was pretty quiet around here, and really hot,” she said, “I went swimming a lot.” Katie said she learned a great deal in the course of her research, although one of the lessons was that a career involving skin calipers and lipid analyses “isn’t for me.” “You have no idea how many people spend their lives just measuring body fat. I don’t think I want to be one of them,” she said. As to the results of her study to discover the most effective non-invasive means of measuring body fat, there’s one foolproof way. “Just go talk to [Professor of Anthropology] Mark Jenike” she said. “He’ll tell you.”