Since 1976, the Chapter has awarded a Phi Beta Kappa Prize given to the junior initiates who have demonstrated concern for the quality of life on campus, leadership ability, and a broad range of course work.
2024
The winner of the 2024 Phi Beta Kappa Prize is Gabriel Alexander Mathews Thomas. Congratulations, Gabriel!
Gabriel is a Philosophy major and Biology minor from Columbus, Ohio. His I.S., titled In Balance with This Life, This Death: An Analysis of the Evil of the Death and the Ways in Which Death Leads to Meaning, argued for the importance of confrontations with our mortality in leading to a meaningful life. He has been a four-year member of the Varsity Men’s Soccer Team, an Editor for the Arts & Entertainment section of The Wooster Voice, the treasurer and an Editor for the student run philosophy journal Sapere Aude, and the Student Liaison to the Philosophy Department. He has also worked as a professional Writing Consultant for the Writing Center and served as the Teaching Assistant for the classes “On the Meaning of Life” and “Logic & Philosophy.” Gabriel has been elected to the Philosophy honor society, Phi Sigma Tau, where he served as the Vice President, and he has been awarded the Ronald E. Hustwit Prize in Philosophy and the John F. Miller Prize in Philosophy on top of being selected for the Dean’s List and the NCAC Academic Honor Roll. Upon graduating, Gabriel plans to spend a year traveling and getting some living done before enrolling in either a PhD program in philosophy, where he would pursue teaching upon completion of the degree, or law school.
2023
Zoe is a Psychology major and Math and Chinese minor from Fort Worth, Texas. Her I.S. is titled Overlooked Adoptees: The Effects of COVID-19 Racism and Ethnic Identity on the Psychological Well-Being of Chinese Transracial Adoptees in the United States. (You can view her research at www.overlookedadoptees.org.) She has been involved in the Wooster Volunteer Network as Co-Service Trip Coordinator; BIPOC Performing Arts Alliance as secretary; the College of Wooster Dance Company; Women of Images Co-President; and most recently, co-founded the Wooster Adoptee Student Union on campus. She has also worked at The College Underground and has served as a teaching assistant for Introduction to Psychology, Sophomore Research Assistant, tutor, Global Engagement Office Peer Advisor, and social coordinator for the Chinese Studies department. She has been elected to the Math and Psychology honor societies at the college and was given the Experiential Learning Student Award in 2022. Zoe will be heading to Taiwan in the Fall of 2023 as an English Teaching Assistant with the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Upon returning to the United States, Zoe plans to attend graduate school, where she hopes to work in clinical settings with adoptees and Asian Americans.
2022
Karabella is a Psychology major and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies (WGSS) minor whose I.S. is entitled “Are We Defined by Our Adversity? Examining the Relationship between Childhood Trauma and Well-Being in Adulthood.” She has been a Resident Assistant, Writing Center tutor, WGSS Curriculum Committee member, TA, and research assistant on campus and works as a certified chemical dependency counselor at OneEighty in Wooster. As well as being a member of Phi Beta Kappa, she is also a part of the Psi Chi and Iota Iota Iota (Triota) honor societies. In her free time, she enjoys singing and performing on campus as well as reading and writing. Karabella will be starting her doctoral studies in Counseling Psychology at Purdue University this fall.
Mazvita is an international student from Harare, Zimbabwe, majoring in Environmental Geoscience. Her Independent Study thesis is titled “Modeling Meets Mirror Lake: How highly urbanized areas influence surface/water groundwater interaction”. She is the Co-President of the African Students Union, Vice-President of the Geology Club, and serves as an APEX Peer Mentor. Mazvita worked on campus as a STEM Success Initiative Intern, a Senior Admissions Intern, has engaged in sophomore research, has served as a Course Design Assistant, and was a 2021 APEX Fellow. Mazvita has been recognized with several honors, including the Association for Women Geoscientists (AWG) Geoscience Inclusion, Diversity, Equality, and Accessibility (IDEA) Scholarship, Karl Ver Steeg Prize (Major student with the highest overall standing at the end of their junior year), Experiential Learning Student Award, Dean’s List, Donald R. Coates Endowed Scholarship, Theodore Williams Scholarship, Wooster International Scholarship, Baily Scholarship, and Women’s Advisory Board Fund. In the fall of 2022, Mazvita will be at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, earning her Ph.D. degree in Earth and Planetary Science.
As a Communication Studies major, Hannah’s I.S. is titled, “‘Not Liberating Women Means the Building of a Socialist Society is Only Half-Way Done’: A Feminist Analysis of Ho Chi Minh’s Advocacy for the First Law on Marriage and Family in 1959 Vietnam.” On campus, Hannah is the president of the Communication Club and Lambda Pi Eta (Communication Honor Society). She also works as a Senior Admissions Intern, a Career Peer Advisor, and a Peer Mentor. Immediately after graduation, she will be working at Penn State University as an Assistant Director of Annual Leadership Gifts.
2021
Rhiannon is a Communication Science and Disorders major. Her I.S. was entitled “An Atmosphere of Words: Clinical Considerations and Practices of Speech-Language Pathologists Regarding the Use of Speech-Generating Devices for Children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech”. She has engaged and served as an officer in the National Student Speech-Language-Hearing Association, as well as engaging across campus as a Highland Dancer and Peer Mentor in APEX. She has been recognized with several honors departmentally including the OSHLA Outstanding undergraduate senior student, Cummings-Rumbaugh Speech and Dramatics Prize, and Emerson Miller Memorial Prize in Speech. Rhiannon will matriculate at Baldwin-Wallace University this fall to begin work on her MS in Speech-Language Pathology where she was awarded a SLP Scholarship and a graduate assistantship.
Micah is a Philosophy/Mathematics double major with a minor in German Studies. Their I.S., “Abstract Unity in Material Diversity,” discusses analogies between formal structures in mathematics in the context of category theory and analogies between formal structures of empirical and mathematical existence in the context of Husserlian phenomenology. Micah has published three papers on philosophical issues of truth and reality as they appear in the work of Peirce, Husserl and Nietzsche. Departmentally Micah has been awarded the Ronald E. Hustwit Prize in Philosophy, the John F. Miller Prize in Philosophy and the William H. Wilson Prize in Mathematics. They hope to continue their research into parallels between category theory and Husserl’s philosophy of logic in the context of a graduate program.
2020
2019
Myra Praml is an Anthropology major and Art History minor. Her Independent Study thesis earned honors, and is titled “Education, Ritualization, and Time Travel: An Ethnographic Look at Visitor Experience in Modern and Neoclassical Art Galleries at The Cleveland Museum of Art”. She is the Co-President of the Sexual Respect Coalition and has served as the Gender and Sexuality Diversity Representative on Campus Council for the 2018-19 academic year. Myra has worked on-campus at the Office of Career Planning, the Learning Center, and as an Office Assistant for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. In the Fall of 2020, Myra will be at University College London earning her Master’s degree in Museum Studies.
Andrew White is a Psychology major with minors in Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His honors senior thesis is entitled “Cowboys and Tiaras: The Role of Child Gender Nonconformity on Evaluations of Same-sex and Different-sex Families”. He has maintained on-campus positions as a Resident Assistant and as a department assistant for the Psychology Department. He will be attending Indiana University’s PhD program in Social Psychology this fall where he will be researching the factors that can reduce the gender gap in STEM participation.
2018
2017
2016
Madeleine Grace O’Neill is a major in Political Science from Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Her Senior Independent Study thesis is entitled “Microaggressions, Trigger Warnings, and the Fight to Redefine Free Speech: An Analysis of the Judiciary’s Response to Campus Speech Codes Through Liberal and Communitarian Perspectives.” This project seeks to understand the legal and moral implications of free speech rights for university faculty and students in the contentious political environment of the 21st Century. The Editor-in-Chief of the Wooster Voice from 2014-2016, Madeleine is also the captain of the nationally renowned College of Wooster Moot Court team. A member of the team for the past three years, Madeleine has won a number of Moot Court awards at both the regional and national levels, including a first place finish at the Great Lakes Moot Court Regional Tournament, a fourth place finish at the national American Collegiate Moot Court Association Brief Writing Competition, and reaching the quarterfinals at the national American Collegiate Moot Court Association competition. Madeleine finished her undergraduate moot court career with the John D. Fackler Debate Award for the most effective debater at the College of Wooster. Following graduation, Madeleine will be employed as a courts reporter for the Erie Times-News in Erie, Pennsylvania, covering county, district, and federal court cases.
2015
Jacob Boca is a double major in Trumpet Performance and Music Theory from Meadville, Pennsylvania. His Independent Study in music theory is entitled “Metamorphosis and Persona in Ned Rorem’s Poems of Love and the Rain.” This thesis analyzes text-music relationships as they relate to various aural manifestations of an implied emotional transformation said to be occurring in a vocal persona that serves as this song cycle’s dramatic subject. For his Independent Study in performance, Jacob gave a recital featuring the music of Johann Fasch, Joseph Haydn, Edvard Grieg, and Eugene Bozza. This fall, he will begin a master’s program in Trumpet Performance at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music. In addition to his performance studies, Jacob will also serve as a graduate assistant to the Department of Music Theory at CMU where he will be a teaching and research assistant to Dr. John Paul Ito.
Morgan Hughes is an Anthropology and Studio Art double major from Chico, California. Her Independent Study project is entitled “The Canyon as Home: Accessing Food, Water, Education and Employment in the Former Tijuana Municipal Dump.” The study combines ethnographic research methods and art to explore the resources available to a community currently residing in the Canyon, a former landfill in Mexico. Through semi-structured interviews and participant observation, Morgan worked with Canyon residents to construct a visual record of experiences and everyday life. Following graduation, Morgan will travel to Malaysia to teach English under a Fulbright grant.
2014
Chelsey Porter is an English major with a minor in Education and an Ohio teaching licensure for grades 7-12 in Integrated Language Arts from Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Her Independent Study project was entitled “Enter Bottom With the Ass Head: A Critical Study of the Metacognitive Effects of Comedy.” It is a series of three literary analyses on comedic plays – A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, and Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley – that uses audience response theory to demonstrate that comedy is more rhetorically complex and intellectually stimulating than its current social stigma implies. This study was motivated by Chelsey’s desire to provide educators with greater justification for incorporating more comedic texts into their curricula. She found that the layers of meaning and dimension within comedy place audience members in a state of metacognition, or thinking about thinking, which is one of the highest levels of cognition. She is currently in the interview process for two teaching positions in Northeast Ohio and hopes to occupy one of these this fall.
Jonathan Reeves is a Neuroscience major with a minor in Philosophy from Cleveland Heights, Ohio. His independent study project was entitled “Validating Biomarkers for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Toward Improving Specificity and Selectivity of Cross-Cultural Diagnostics”. The focus of his thesis was to validate two potential blood-based biomarkers for PTSD that could be easily integrated into clinical practice in order to bypass complications to diagnosis presented by cross-cultural variation in behavioral symptoms of PTSD and lack of widespread cultural competence in practicing clinicians. He specifically analyzed blood plasma concentrations of corticosterone, a stress hormone, and haptoglobin, a marker of immune functioning, in a mouse model of PTSD. He concluded that although the joint use of these biomarkers does not serve as a reliable marker for the PTSD construct as a whole, these biomarkers provide clinicians with complementary information about underlying neuroendocrine dysfunction in PTSD and may serve as useful markers for identifying specific subtypes of PTSD. This fall, he will be starting a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He hopes to extend the findings from his thesis to study the psychophysiological underpinnings of trauma-related/anxiety disorders, the overlap between cardiovascular disease and psychopathology, and to identify culturally sensitive, evidence-based interventions.
2013
Lauren Lee is a Political Science major with minors in French and Economics from Holland, Michigan. Her Independent Study project was entitled “Don’t Bite the Hand that Feeds You: The Effects of Structural Adjustment Lending on Voting Alignment in the UN General Assembly.” It is a large-n statistical analysis of how being under IMF structural adjustment loans changes the way states perceive their position at the international bargaining table. She specifically asks whether being under structural adjustment changes the international behavior of indebted states, specifically their voting alignment in international forums. And furthermore, who does it change their behavior towards? The United States, the G-7 or the IMF itself? She concludes that lending decisions can change political behavior and that the G-7 is the only actor that influences the behavior of indebted states. This fall, she will be starting a Ph.D. program in political science at the University of California, San Diego and hopes to incorporate her interest in international debt into her dissertation research.
2012
Haley Brown is a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology major from Wilmette, Illinois. Her Independent Study project was entitled “Alterations in the Activity of the Yeast Peroxidase Tsa1 Upon Modification by Alkylating Agents.” The goal of her research was to elucidate the function of a protein in yeast, Tsa1, when it was targeted and modified by a class of molecules called electrophilic alkylating agents. This work was important because investigation of the function of protein targets of electrophiles is currently an active area of research. While at Wooster, Haley has been an active researcher, both on campus and for a summer at the University of Iowa. She served as a tutor for General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry, also as a laboratory teaching assistant for the Department of Biology. She also played the flute as a part of the Scot Symphonic and Scot Marching Bands. Next year, Haley will be at the National Institutes of Health doing research as a post-baccalaureate intern.
2011
Stephanie Jarvis is a Biology and Geology double major from Shelbyville, Kentucky. Her Independent Study project, entitled “Non-stationarity in climatic response of coastal tree species along the Gulf of Alaska,” was a critical examination of climatic growth response of mountain hemlocks at different elevations in southeast Alaska, the changes since the Little Ice Age, and the implications of that for tree-ring based climate reconstructions. While at Wooster, Stephanie has served as President of the Community Bike Program, Vice-President of Geoclub, and a student member of the Committee for a Sustainable Campus. She was also involved in the Organic Farming Club, the Campus Recycling Committee, and the Varsity Swim Team. She spent a summer studying tree-ring based climate reconstruction in Glacier Bay. Next year, Stephanie will attend Southern Illinois University Carbondale for graduate school in Geology.
2010
Lindsay Brainard is a Philosophy major from Gustavus, Ohio. Her Independent Study project, entitled “Contextualism, Factivity, and the Nature of Knowledge,” was a critical examination of a recently proposed account of the semantic properties of the word ‘knows’ and their implications for epistemology. While at Wooster, Lindsay served as a new student orientation leader, a peer tutor in the Writing Center, a student representative on the Educational Policy Committee, and Co-Editor-in-Chief for Sapere Aude: the Wooster Journal of Philosophical Inquiry. She was also involved in Philosophy for Kids, Model United Nations, the Chinese suite, and the Babcock International Living program. She spent a summer studying Chinese with the Wooster Summer in Xi’an Program and a semester as a visiting student at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Next year, Lindsay will pursue a Master’s degree in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.
A native of Wadsworth, Ohio, Justin Keener is a Chemistry major with minors in Mathematics and Environmental Studies. His Independent Study project “Optimization of a Wittig Polymerization for Use in OLEDs” worked to optimize the parameters of a polymerization reaction in order to synthesize a conjugated organic polymer for use in organic light emitting diodes. While at Wooster, Justin was Co-Captain of the Varsity Men’s Soccer Team, served as the Secretary for the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, and helped tutor introductory chemistry students. He is also involved in mission work, highlighted by the opportunity to participate in two trips to Kenya in 2009. Following graduation, Justin will be employed by ABS Materials, Inc. in Wooster, Ohio.