2019 Regional, National and International Awards

Bridging Scholarships for Study Abroad in Japan

Oluwaseun Oshodi
Oluwaseun Oshodi ’20

Oluwaseun Oshodi ’20, an international economics and modern Japanese major, is one of 27 undergraduate students from across the United States to be named recipients of a Bridging Scholarship for Study Abroad to assist with expenses while studying in Japan in Spring 2019. She will study at Kwansei Gakuin University.


Capital Fellows Program

Dana Nothnagel ’19

Dana Nothnagel ’19, a political studies major, has been awarded an Executive Capital Fellowship. She will be placed with a mentor in one of the many executive offices of California’s Executive Branch which includes the office of the Governor, constitutional offices and cabinet-level agencies. Dana’s future plans are to continue working towards a career using research to help improve government functioning.


Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award

Aleo Pugh ’19, an Africana studies major, received a Library Undergraduate Research Award for their project “’Leery of Being Consumed’ Working-Class Black Dissent and the Legacy of Brown.” The Library Undergraduate Research Awards honor students who demonstrate exemplary original research and scholarship, including remarkable skill and creativity in the use of library and information resources. Pugh plans to pursue a PhD in history and African diasporic studies.


Claremont for Refugee Rights

Javier Lopez Casertano ’19, Narcisa Duque ’19, Kevin Kandamby ’19 and Carla Condori ’20, as well as students from the other 5Cs, were awarded scrolls in honor of their work on the US-Mexico border crisis by Congressional Representative Norma Torres in February 2019. Students traveled to the border and collected thousands of dollars to support humanitarian and legal efforts.

Javier Lopez Casertano '20
Javier Lopez Casertano ’20
Kevin Kandamby '19
Kevin Kandamby ’19
Carla Condori '20
Carla Candori ’20

DAAD Rise

Hongfei Chen ’21

Hongfei Chen ’21, a computer science major, is the recipient of a DAAD RISE scholarship to support research alongside PhD students in Germany this summer. Chen will be working with a research group, Smart Production Systems of the University of Applied Sciences in Dresden, that is developing a prototype of assembly line robots. Chen will focus on implementing a voice controller system on a dual-arm collaborative robot. She hopes to pursue a career in software engineering.


Davis Fellow for Peace Merit Scholarship

Brendan Schultz '19
Brendan Schultz ’19

Brendan Schultz ’19,  a politics, philosophy and sociology major, has been awarded a full Davis Fellow for Peace Merit Scholarship by the Middlebury College Language Schools to study Arabic this summer. The eight-week intensive language immersion course focuses on vocabulary and syntax and how to use the language to engage effectively with Arab culture.


Davis Projects for Peace

Noemi Delgado ’19, a Spanish language and cultures major, has been awarded the Davis Projects for Peace Award for her project, A Space for Solidarity: National Conference of Salvadoran Midwives. She will work with LAPRA, an organization in El Salvador that provides maternal health services in many remote communities. The goal of the conference is to provide a space for midwives, who are marginalized by the state, to fortify their knowledge, network and movement for recognition. Her future plans include going to graduate school in Public Health.


EnviroLab Asia Grant

Kathy Kile '97
Kathy Kile ’97

Kathy Kile ’97,  an English/World Literature & Sociology double major and Pitzer’s mailroom supervisor, will travel to Hue, Vietnam to teach environmental art to mentally challenged youth for six weeks for her EnviroLab Asia grant. The art will be created using recycled materials such as paper, plastic, scrap fabrics and old CDs. During her stay, Kile will also travel to an organic farm to work with the youth there.


EnviroLab Asia Student Fellowship

Ryan Drover ’19, a chemistry major, has been awarded an Envirolab Asia Student Fellowship. Drover will present a poster on the environmental benefits of blending ethanol into gasoline for Kuala Lumpur and Los Angeles. His presentation is based on collaborative research conducted between The Claremont Colleges and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia as part of an EnviroLab Asia redeveloped class taught by Professor of Chemistry Katie Purvis-Roberts.

Luyi Huang '19
Luyi Huang ’19

Luyi Huang ’19, an environmental analysis major, has been awarded an EnviroLab Asia Fellowship. She will present a poster on using interdisciplinary research methods to learn about environmental challenges in Southeast Asia at the ASIANetwork conference, “Asian in Undergraduate Education,’ in April 2019.

Julie Xu ’22

Julie Xu ’22, an environmental analysis and Japanese major, has been awarded an EnviroLab Asia student fellowship and will be enrolled in the Class Clinic lab entitled Biodiversity Lab.

Krystle Yu '19
Krystle Yu ’19

Krystle Yu ’19, an organizational studies major, has been awarded an EnviroLab Asia student fellowship and will be enrolled in the Class Clinic lab entitled Japanese Futures.


Gilman International Scholarship

Honesty Carswell ’20, an African American psychology major, has been awarded a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to study abroad in the Pitzer in Southern Africa program.

Erik Jacobson ’20, a neuroscience and Spanish double major, has been awarded a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to study abroad to the Pitzer Ecuador program.


Greenhouse Scholars

Bashel Lewis ’19

Bashel Lewis ’19, an organizational studies major with a focus in marketing, was invited to be the keynote scholar speaker at Greenhouse Scholars’ Glass Half Full event. Lewis was selected because of his commitment to student engagement, social responsibility and leadership to speak in support of Greenhouse Scholars’ mission to cultivate extraordinary young leaders to change low-income families and communities. His future plans are to work for The Nielsen Company as a market research analyst.


Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship

Marya Ornelas ’20

Marya Ornelas ’20, a biochemistry major, has been awarded a Goldwater Scholarship, which fosters and encourages outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the preeminent undergraduate award of its type in these fields. Ornelas’ research field of interest is synthetic biology, and this summer she will be undertaking an NSF REU at the Center for Synthetic Biology at Northwestern University. She plans to attain a PhD in chemical biology, pursue teaching at the university level, and lead a research group with a focus on engineering living systems as programmable therapeutic devices.


Lingnan University Visiting English Tutor Award

Aria Tung '18
Aria Tung ’18

Aria Tung ’18, a sociology major and media studies minor, is the recipient of a Visiting English Tutor [VET] award at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. Tung is currently completing a Fulbright English teaching fellowship in Taiwan. As a VET, she will design and run workshops for students aimed at developing their English language skills, as well as organizing cultural activities. Her future plans include enrolling in law school to study anti-discrimination law.

Krystle Yu '19
Krystle Yu ’19

Krystle Yu ’19, an organizational studies major, is the recipient of a Visiting English Tutor [VET] award at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. Yu is also the recipient of an EnviroLab Asia Student Fellowship. A major objective of the VET program is to provide opportunities for Lingnan University’s local students to mix with people of a similar age group but from different cultural backgrounds, as well as to design workshops for students to develop their English language skills.


Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program (MMUF)

Linda Huang ’21

Linda Huang ’21,  an Asian American Studies major, is a recipient of an MMUF award which is aimed at increasing faculty diversity by supporting underrepresented students to pursue careers as professors. Huang’s project will focus on conducting qualitative research examining three populations relating to San Francisco enrichment programs, with the purpose of seeking a more holistic way to bring students from underrepresented groups into higher education and to thrive. Huang plans to pursue a PhD in ethnic studies


Napier Fellows 2019

Prince Herbert Chabveka ’19

Prince Herbert Chabveka ’19, a qualitative economics major, proposed to increase awareness of women’s rights, and of men’s responsibility to fight against women’s rights violations, among men in his home village in rural Zimbabwe.

Justin Mugabe ’19, a mathematical economics and finance major, proposed to increase the capacity of a tech start-up in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, his home country, to include rigorous professional technology training of Internally Displaced People so that they can gain the skills needed to be competitive in the DRC’s challenging job market.

Brendan Schultz '19
Brendan Schultz ’19

Brendan Schultz ’19, a politics, philosophy and sociology major, proposed to implement the first region-wide youth program to nurture tolerance and inter-ethnic understanding among high school students in the Balkans.


National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF)

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Ben-Mitchell.jpg
Benjamin Mitchell ’18

Benjamin Mitchell ’18, a chemistry major, received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to support his research in inorganic chemistry at the University of Washington, where he is currently pursuing a PhD. Mitchell’s current research focuses on developing synthetic methods to achieve controlled core-expansion of inorganic clusters. In his application, he proposed to use these core-expanded clusters as inorganic building blocks to synthesize one-dimensional molecular wires, an essential component in next-generation electronic devices. As an NSF fellow, Mitchell hopes to share his love for chemistry with youth through outreach, and eventually pursue a career in academia as a professor.

Neuroscience Summer Research Fellowship

Daven Crossland ’20

Daven Crossland ’20, a neuroscience major, has been awarded a Keck research fellowship to study in a neuroscience research lab for 12 weeks. Daven will be working at Karuna Labs, a biotech company in San Francisco that utilizes virtual reality in order to improve patient outcomes for neuromuscular issues involving stroke or chronic pain. Daven plans to go to medical school after he graduates from Pitzer.


Newman Civic Award

Hannah Zuckerberg '20
Hannah Zuckerberg ’20

Hannah Zuckerberg ’20, an organizational studies major with a concentration in spirituality, has been named a Newman Civic Fellow through Campus Compact. Hannah’s work with various affinity groups on campus has been to bring together students with varying social and political views in order to create a more inclusive community shifting the paradigm to love and compassion. Zuckerberg states that her experience leading and organizing has taught her that the way to change culture is to bring people into meaningful, lasting community with each other, which she hopes will carry beyond the Pitzer campus to the nation and the world.


NIH IRTA Award

Sujay Singh ’19, a Neuroscience major, has been awarded an NIH IRTA award where he will be performing full-time biomedical research for 1 or 2 years at the National Institutes of Health. Awardees work with established investigators and receive training in research procedures and conduct research in selected areas of investigation.  Sujay’s future plans are to apply to medical school for an MD/PhD or DO/PhD with the goal to practice medicine in local underserved communities, as well as become a faculty member at a medical institution.


NYU-Shanghai Writing & Speaking Fellowship

Christine Leung '19
Christine Leung ’19

Christine Leung ’19, an English and world literature major and economics minor, has been awarded an NYU-Shanghai Writing and Speaking Fellowship to spend 10-months at NYU-Shanghai. The fellowship enables accomplished individuals with a passion for teaching to provide academic support and enrichment to the students who make up NYU-Shanghai’s multicultural student body. Her future plans include attending law school with a focus on education policy to advocate for education equity.

Sophie Rizzolo ’19

Sophia Rizzolo ’19, an international and intercultural studies major, is the recipient of an NYU-Shanghai Writing and Speaking Fellowship. Rizzolo has been a Writing Center Fellow during her time at Pitzer. The primary responsibility of a Fellow is to provide academic tutoring and support. In addition, Fellows develop their leadership, project management and intercultural communication skills by providing curricular and co-curricular support. Fellows are also invited to complete an independent writing project. Rizzolo plans to attend graduate school to pursue a PhD and a future career in education.


Princeton in Asia

Elizabeth Weinlein’ 18

Elizabeth Weinlein ’17, an environmental analysis and Asian studies double major, has been awarded a Princeton in Asia fellowship where as part of the Environmental Law Project, she will be supporting NRDCS’s initiatives in environmental law and governance and green finance. The project is research-based and will be conducted mainly in Mandarin. Upon completion of the fellowship, Weinlein hopes to complete two master’s degrees in urban planning and public health and continue working towards shaping healthy and sustainable communities.


Randall Lewis Health Policy Fellowship

April Forest ’18, a global public health major, was awarded a Randall Lewis Health Policy Fellowship. The RLHPF is a collaborative partnership between Lewis Group of Companies and Partners for Better Health, a nonprofit organization that works with agencies to develop health services to meet the health needs of local communities. During her fellowship, Forest will be placed with the County of Riverside’s injury and prevention department. She is currently pursuing a graduate degree in public health leadership and management at Claremont Graduate University.


Robert Day Scholar

Cole Maizel '21
Cole Maizel ’21

Cole Maizel ’21, an economics and environmental analysis major, has been named a Robert Day Scholar. Maizel has participated in Professor of Environmental Analysis Paul Faulstich’s Leadership in Environmental Education Partnership [LEEP] program and was named an Academic All-American as a member of the Sagehens Men’s Water Polo team.


UCLA Law Fellows Program

Francelia Lievanos '20
Francelia Lievanos ’20

Francelia Lievanos ’20, a political science major/Spanish minor, has been named a Law Fellow at the UCLA School of Law, where she will attend a series of academies that will provide mentoring, academic enrichment and career development in preparation for admission to law school.


Venture for America

Jacquelyn Aguilera ’19

Jacquelyn Aguilera ’19, a mathematical economics, design, manufacturing and management engineering major, is the recipient of a Venture for America fellowship, which is a two-year program for recent graduates who wish to participate in start-up companies. For Aguilera, the VFA fellowship is the first step in her entrepreneurial journey working at a high-growth start-up. In a few years, she hopes to apply her passion for accessibility and her VFA experience to starting a company that produces low-cost medical equipment or renewable energy.


WTS-LA Scholarship

Emma Barker 21
Emma Barker 21

Emma Barker ‘21, an environmental analysis major, has been awarded the Ava Dona Memorial Scholarship for Women in Transportation. Barker is currently a Robert Redford Conservancy Fellow, an intern at Huerta del Valle Community Garden, and a Sawhorse Revolution student ambassador. Her future plans include a career that combines her interests in sustainability, design, and environmental justice.  

Emily Ng '20
Emily Ng ’20

Emily Ng ’20, an environmental analysis & sociology double major, was awarded a WTS-LA Scholarship, a competitive scholarship for undergraduate women in transportation-related fields. As a Los Angeles native, Ng is passionate about air quality and transportation and their relationship to environmental justice. She plans to remain in the LA area after graduation to advocate for cleaner, breathable air and accessible transportation for all.