Franklin Miller Awards

Victoria has made substantial positive contributions to the academic environment at Kenyon, particularly in the STEM fields, where she has made Kenyon a more welcoming place for her fellow students.

During her time at Kenyon, Victoria has served as a K-STEM coordinator. This program pairs first and second year mentees with upper class mentors, who help students navigate academics at Kenyon. Mentees have told me how valuable they find the program in getting advice on balancing academics with other responsibilities, and finding a place at Kenyon. Mentors also find the program worthwhile, and enjoy improving their communication skills and paying forward the advice they received from their mentors. Victoria also coordinates a K-STEM Black History Month Showcase and events to promote women in science. These events enhance a sense of belonging among historically underrepresented groups in the sciences and are a great service to the entire Natural Science division.

An additional substantial service to the college is that during her junior year, Victoria was an extraordinary contributor to a tenure-track search in the biology department as a student member of the committee. She went beyond the call of duty especially in encouraging the involvement of her peers in the search and soliciting their feedback.

Victoria has done research with Matt Rouhier and he has the following to say about her: “Victoria has been a stalwart in my research lab for three years. I view her as a force for good in research. She has long held aspirations of seeing equal opportunities in the practice of science and she pushes herself and her community to achieve that goal. She is a team player, providing valuable contributions in all three areas of focus for my group. She is a great mentor and was a great mentee. With Victoria’s goal of opening doors for everyone in research she has gone the extra mile to help in training new students. As a mentee she was a patient, observant, diligent note-taking, and questioning trainee. Now she is applying those same skills to her role as mentor. To date, Victoria has mentored 6+ students in my research lab and many, many, more as a chemistry lab teaching assistant.”

Victoria has worked as my introductory biology (Bio 109/110) teaching assistant (TA) during this academic year. She always has the students in mind, and she provides valuable advice during weekly prep sessions. I know that her calm and confident demeanor provides for a better lab experience for the students. Victoria has also stepped up to work as a bioinformatics TA for a capstone gene editing project in Bio 116. Victoria is very proactive, asking for assignment materials in advance so she can anticipate questions students might bring to her. She puts her best into everything, and is very professional and responsible.

In summary, given Victoria’s outstanding record of service and teaching assistant performance, she is highly deserving of the Franklin Miller award. Such recognition would be an appropriate testament to her many accomplishments that have fostered a better learning environment for the Kenyon student body.

—Nominated by Assistant Professor of Biology Kathy Gillen

Molly Fording has been a bright star in our department in the last semesters as we emerged from pandemic stupor. As a minor, she was superb in Senior Seminar, raising the level of the whole course. In addition, she has been auditing well-nigh all Classics courses in translation on offer this year even while holding down her ambitious (and somewhat related) project of an English honors thesis. The professors of these courses regularly report in departmental meetings that Molly is the prime catalyst of probing and sensitive class discussion.

In addition, Molly is a pillar for our extra-curricular events. She joined the excursion to the Cleveland Museum of Art last year (organized by Professors Brent and Hahnemann), effortlessly dazzled the donor who happened to share her table at the dinner for a guest speaker, was one of the readers at the poetry in translation event (organized by Professor Caliva) and volunteered to attend both lecture and lunch with the candidate for our MYDF.

I could go on, but only want to add that underneath all of this collaborative activity lies a profound love of books; consequently, I cannot think of anybody who deserved this award more or who will make better use of a voucher to the bookstore.

—Nominated by Professor of Classics Carolin Hahnemann