Three exceptional members of the Class of 2013 will receive the top
student awards during the undergraduate Commencement ceremony on Sunday,
May 19.
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| Miles Aaron |
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| Peter Bowers |
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| Dana Eckstein |
Dana Eckstein, who has been pursuing a double major in cinema and English in the College of Arts and Sciences, will receive the
Belle K. Ribicoff Prize, which is awarded for academic excellence.
Evidence of Eckstein’s incredible energy lies in the long list of
activities, awards, papers, and projects submitted with her nomination
for the Ribicoff Prize. Eckstein has been on the Dean’s List and the
President’s List every semester of her undergraduate career. Inducted
her first year into Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor
Society, she eventually served as treasurer and president of the Psi
Phi chapter. A presenter at the Undergraduate Colloquium all four
years, a two-year Humanities Center fellow, and a Junior Regents’ Honor
Award recipient, Eckstein was named editor of the English department’s
Aerie literary journal her senior year.
Eckstein
served in several roles, including general manager, of the student-run
STN Channel 2 News. Her original stop-motion animation film appeared in
the University’s 2012 Goldfarb Exhibition at the Hartford Art School,
and she received the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival
Regional 10-Minute Play Award.
"My father used to tell me,
'You can’t dance at two weddings with one tuchus,'" says Eckstein.
"It’s been my life goal to dance at all the weddings." Eckstein will
be preparing her writing portfolio for application to a Master of Fine
Arts program.
Miles Aron, who will graduate
with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the Acoustical
Engineering and Music program, is the winner of the
John G. Martin Scholarship.
The Martin Scholarship provides an extraordinary opportunity to study
for two years at the University of Oxford’s Hertford College in
England. Aron will start his master’s in biomedical engineering in the
fall at Oxford, researching drug delivery through the blood-brain
barrier in the treatment of cancer and other brain diseases.
Jazz guitar lessons with
Rich Goldstein, artist
teacher at The Hartt School, convinced Aron to enter the rigorous
Acoustical Engineering and Music program. In the College of Engineering,
Technology, and Architecture (CETA), Aron has impressed his
professors. “Miles is one of our top honors students and has
consistently performed well in all of his classes, even as he averaged
almost 19 credits each semester,” wrote
Robert Celmer, professor of mechanical engineering, in nominating Aron for the Martin Scholarship.
While at the University of Hartford, Aron has had challenging
internships, including working for the U.S. Department of Energy at
the SLAC National Linear Accelerator; PVI Systems; and NASA Ames
Research Center through the Connecticut Space Grant Consortium. Aron
also has presented and submitted research on nonlinear partial
differential equations completed with
Aslihan Demirkay, assistant professor of mathematics, and
Robert Decker, associate professor of mathematics.
The
John G. Lee Medal will go to
Peter Bowers,
who majored in mechanical engineering with a concentration in acoustics
and minored in electrical engineering and mathematics. The John G. Lee
Medal is awarded annually to a graduating senior from Greater Hartford
who has excelled academically while demonstrating a deep commitment to
community.
Although Bowers’s dream of becoming an acoustical
consultant brought him to the University of Hartford, his dream has
changed somewhat since he arrived. “From my course work in acoustics, I
learned about hearing loss and current treatments. There are
limitations to these treatments that need to be addressed.”
With a part-time job, interning at Westinghouse Electric Company, and
volunteering in the community, Bowers will graduate with a 3.99 GPA.
Bowers also has collected regents’ honors and numerous scholarships.
His volunteer contributions include serving meals to low-income
individuals in Hartford through the Hands on Hartford program,
participating in the Whole Plant Foundation established by Whole Foods
Market to aid the self-employed poor, and volunteering with Don’t Go
Deaf to raise awareness about hearing loss.
In the fall,
Bowers will enter Harvard University’s Harvard/MIT Program in Speech and
Hearing Bioscience and Technology. Ultimately he hopes to advance
technology involving hearing aids and cochlear implants.
