Special Awards

Oak and Ivy Award | Lang Award | McCabe Engineering Award

The Oak and Ivy Award is given to the student in the graduating class who is outstanding in scholarship, contributions to community, and leadership. This year the award went to: Seungim Fruman and Kyra Roepke.

Min Fruman recently earned High Honors with a major in art history and a minor in Asian studies. Their Honors thesis, entitled, “Defining the ‘Ideal Woman’: Korean Femininity in Occupation-Era Mondernism,” examined modernist depictions of Korean women from 1910-1945. They have held numerous internships in curation, conservation, and museum studies, including positions at the List Gallery, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art.

Min has been an active member of the College’s music community. They have played in the College Orchestra for five semesters, serving as principal cellist for three of them. In April, Min won the concerto competition. Min is also a dedicated member of the Taiko ensemble, and has studied Taiko at conferences and pre-professional intensives all over the country.

Min is a founder of the Pan-Asian Association, co-president of Kitao Gallery, has served as a student representative on the College’s Art Committee, and has served on the APIDA Heritage Month Planning Committee, and the LGBTQ+ Student Advisory Board.

In the fall, Min will be entering an M.A. program in Asian studies at UC-Berkeley.

Kyra Roepke is a double major in biochemistry and linguistics who recently earned Highest Honors.

As a linguistics major, Kyra has taken a particular interest in American Sign Language and in one course worked with students at Swarthmore College and Gallaudet University to produce bimodal-bilingual videobooks for parents and teachers to share with deaf children.

Kyra has served as a research assistant and grader in both of her majors. She is a lead fellow for the Writing Associates Program and serves as a speaking associate. She was also a copy editor for The Phoenix. An avid dancer, Kyra has been active in the College’s Dance program, where she has performed regularly with modern dance ensembles.

She intends to focus on viral pathology research and is dedicated to studying the development and treatment of disease.

The Lang Award is given to “a graduating senior in recognition of outstanding academic accomplishment.”  This year the award was given to Nicolas Bilal Urick and Ziming Yuan.

Nick Urick is a double major in peace and conflict studies and Arabic studies who earned Highest Honors.

Nick came to Swarthmore as a McCabe Scholar and is a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. For his summer research, Nick compiled a significant reading list of critical and fictive works in English and Arabic. Nick’s thesis for one of his Honors preparations drew upon theoretical frameworks from peace and conflict studies and applied them to literature by examining the work of a set of Arab-American writers who navigate transnational belonging through their writing.
 
Nick is noted for enriching and supporting the classroom experience, and he further supported other students’ academic journeys by serving as a Writing Associate.
 
Nick is a published author with pieces in the The Peace Chronicle, and he was the recipient of the College’s Anne and Alexander Faber Grant for Literary Study. A natural academic, Nick has spent considerable time reaching out and building relationships with scholars of Arabic Literature across the country. In the fall Nick will enter a Ph.D. program in Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ziming Yuan is a double major in computer science and mathematics.
 
Her research lies at the intersection of individual privacy and ethics and is complementary to her ongoing work on the social ramifications of the lack of privacy and the emergence of deepfake imagery. She received an honorable mention from the Computing Research Association’s Undergraduate Research Awards, a nationwide competition with students from mostly R-1 institutions participating.

As an undergraduate researcher, Ziming has worked on three independent research projects that span theory, systems, and applications in computer science. She has papers in submission and published in highly-ranked CS publication venues. She has also worked as a research assistant and Ninja, who has inspired other students to conduct research. 
 
Ziming and her team recently won the Audience Choice Award at SwatTank for their development of “Suiter.io,” a consolidated platform that enables independent developers to amalgamate their apps, offering users centralized file storage and seamless data and app transfer capabilities.
 
In the fall Ziming will enter a masters program in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.

The McCabe Engineering Award, presented each year to the "outstanding engineering student of the graduating class," was awarded to Kevin Murillo. 

As an engineering major also graduating with minors in applied mathematics and educational studies, Kevin has demonstrated a profound commitment to racial, economic, and social justice during his time at Swarthmore. Through his membership, he helped Swarthmore’s newly-established chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers gain a foothold at the College, and he also worked as a student technician in Swarthmore’s Makerspace, where he played an important role in the growth and evolution of the space into a more welcoming and safe environment for all Swarthmore students.

Kevin has focused his engineering program of study on mechanical and structural engineering, and has engaged in multiple engineering research projects with Swarthmore faculty, the latest of which is documented in a forthcoming peer reviewed journal article co-authored with Assistant Professor of Engineering Fiona O’Donnell entitled “Spatial Variation in Structural Lumber Tensile Strength: Experimental Testing and Probabilistic Model."

Kevin’s ENGR 090 Senior Design Project, entitled “Design of a Square Deployable Truss Mast,” was a remarkably well-scoped and well-executed project. Kevin’s successful fabrication of a prototype mast was all the more impressive because it was accomplished with a high degree of independence, guided by and grounded in the research literature.

In the fall, Kevin will begin the next chapter of his engineering education as Ph.D. student in the Aero/Astro Department at Stanford University.