President Martin hands a prize to Malyaka Imran ’22 that honors “zeal for knowledge and industry to attain it.”
The Undergraduate Awards Ceremony (formerly called College Meeting) has taken place at Amherst annually since 1828, almost as long as the College itself has existed. But giving out the awards never gets old.
That’s what President Biddy Martin told the winners under a tent on the main quad on May 18, at the start of a ceremony that was livestreamed to their families, friends and classmates around the world. These prizes honor the achievements of first-years, sophomores and juniors in fields ranging from economics to public speaking to astronomy.
Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein announced the winners’ names and read the description of each award. “Now it gets complicated,” she said when she got to The Harvey Blodgett Scholarship, The Phi Delta Theta Scholarship and The Belt-Brophy Prize. Not only were these three geology prizes combined and divided among five students but the students had to walk up twice: first to accept certificates, and again to receive “a Brunton compass with field case, the most versatile field tool of the geologist.”
At the end of the ceremony, before inviting the honorees to pick up pins and Mammoth cookies, Epstein urged them to make sure she had the correct pronunciations of their names, in case they win more awards in the future. Their accomplishments at Amherst are far from over.
