Founders Award Past Winners
TROY, N.Y. - The 24th Annual Honors Convocation will be held on Saturday and five student-athletes will be among those honored with a Founders Award of Excellence. They are Sam Lee, Taylor MacEwen, Johnny Ramsdell,
Vera Titze and Luke Watanabe.
Lee is a senior computer science major and a member of the track & field team and MacEwen, a senior biomedical engineering major, is a runner in cross country as well as track & field. Ramsdell, also a senior biomedical engineering major, and Watanabe, a junior computer systems engineering major, both play football. Titze, a junior who studies physics, is dual-sport athlete on the soccer and track & field teams.
The Founders Award of Excellence was established in 1994 to honor students who embody qualities of creativity, discovery, leadership, and the values of pride and responsibility at Rensselaer. The award consists of a special certificate, recognition by faculty, staff, and peers at the Honors Convocation ceremony, and a cash prize. Approximately 70 graduate or undergraduate students - about one percent of our student population - are honored each year as winners of Rensselaer's Founders Award of Excellence.
- Recipients of the Founders Award of Excellence demonstrate all of the following characteristics:
- Strong academic performance. Candidates should be in the top 10% of their respective class;
- Pride and responsibility in all aspects of her or his life at Rensselaer;
- Outstanding leadership skills exhibiting discretion, judgment, and well-rounded regard for the opinions of others;
- Originality and imagination that may be evidenced by the potential to solve problems and possess skills to promote new ideas and theories in his or her field of study.
Eligible nominees must be enrolled as a sophomore, junior, senior, fifth-year architecture student or graduate student (full or part-time). Students may receive the Founders Award of Excellence only once during their tenure at Rensselaer.
Nominators were required to submit supporting documentation with the nomination form or ask others to join in endorsing a candidate. A letter of recommendation from the person submitting the nomination was required.
