NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñ The leading graduates in each of Vanderbilt‘s
nine undergraduate and professional schools were recognized by
Chancellor Gordon Gee with Founder‘s Medals during the university‘s
commencement exercises May 13.
Founder‘s Medals have been awarded every year since 1877 to top
scholars in each school. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the university‘s
founder, started the tradition in 1877 with a special endowment.
Students receiving Founder‘s Medals were:
Amy Suzanne Helman of Macon, Ga., for the Blair School of Music. Helman received her degree with a major in violin performance and a
minor in music literature/history. She has studied violin for 13 years
and piano for 17 years. While at Blair, she studied violin with
Christian Teal and worked on orchestral repertoire with Mary Kathryn
van Osdale, the Nashville Symphony‘s principal violinist. She
also studied conducting with Emelyne Bingham.
Helman attended the Eastern Music Festival and was awarded the
Conductor‘s Honor Award as an outstanding orchestral player in 2002 and
received the Heard Prize for excellence in string performance with the
string quartet Oriyah in 2003. She is a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda music honor society.
Lauren Weigand of Fort Smith, Ark., for the College of Arts and
Science. Weigand graduated with a 4.0 grade point average with a major
in chemistry and a minor in economics and mathematics. In addition to
the Founder‘s Medal, Weigand was awarded the chemistry department‘s
Thomas W. Martin Award for Excellence in Physical Chemistry and was
named the Outstanding Senior in Chemistry.
Weigand entered
Vanderbilt as a College Scholar with a perfect 1600 on her SATs and as
the recipient of a Harold Stirling Vanderbilt Scholarship, a National
Merit Scholarship, an Elks Most Valuable Student Scholarship and the
top national scholarship given by the Horace Mann Foundation. She spent
the summer of 2004 conducting chemistry research with the support of a
Stephen Harris Cook Memorial Fellowship. She used this research to
complete her thesis on alloyed semiconducting nanocrystals, which will
be submitted to the Journal of the American Chemical Society. She was
elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year and held leadership
positions in several other honor societies.
Joseph Daniels Blosser of Jefferson City, Mo., for the Divinity
School. Blosser received his master of divinity after being chosen as
one of the Divinity School‘s Carpenter Scholars for his commitment to
social justice and ministry. Prior to coming to Vanderbilt, Blosser
served as a hospital chaplain for Pacific Health Ministries in
Honolulu, where he studied the intricate interweaving of Micronesian
and Western cultural and religious practices. Blosser was chosen by the
Divinity School to travel to Mexico, where he studied the social,
political and economic circumstances affecting citizens and the reasons
they make the difficult journey across the border.
While fulfilling his degree requirements, he also served as an
intern minister for the congregation at Vine Street Christian Church in
Nashville and as the interim minister at Bellevue Christian Church. He
continued to develop his skills as a homiletician by preaching for
congregations in Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky.
Kate Komp of Green Bay, Wis., for Vanderbilt Law School. Komp came
to Vanderbilt as the recipient of the Patrick Wilson Scholarship. She
is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where
she majored in government and international studies with a second major
in theology. Komp served as the executive editor of the Vanderbilt Law
Review and was the recipient of the Cortner Award for her participation
in the law school‘s moot court competition.
Komp clerked for the Tennessee attorney general‘s office in the
criminal justice division, interned with Judge Aleta Trauger in the
Middle District of Tennessee and worked as a summer associate with
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr in Washington, D.C. In August,
she will move to Washington to begin a one-year clerkship with Chief
Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Jeff Fritsche of Fort Thomas, Ky., for the Owen Graduate School of
Management. Fritsche received his bachelor‘s degree in philosophy from
Hanover College in Indiana, where he was captain of the varsity
football team and was an all-conference wide receiver. He graduated
summa cum laude and was named valedictorian. Prior to entering the Owen
Graduate School of Management as an Owen Merit Scholar and Honeywell
Scholar, Fritsche worked in institutional sales.
While at Owen, Fritsche was a member of the Finance Club, the
Vanderbilt Hedge Fund Group and the Max Adler Student Investment Club.
He was recently inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma National Honor
Society for business administration students. Upon graduating from
Owen, Fritsche will relocate to Charlotte, N.C., where he will work at
Bank of America Securities in the debt capital markets division.
Ann “Annie” Menees of St. Louis, Mo., for Peabody College. Menees
graduated with a bachelor‘s degree with a double major in child
development and cognitive studies. Menees was on the Dean‘s List for
most of her Vanderbilt career and was named the university‘s 2002-2003
and 2004-2005 Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year and the SEC Co-Scholar
Athlete of the Year.
In addition to her academic achievements, Menees is a nationally
ranked tennis player, winning the SEC Fall Championships Flight B
singles match and helping to lead the Vanderbilt women‘s tennis team to
the NCAA Final Four in 2004. The team finished the season ranked No. 2
in the nation. Menees served as team captain in her senior year and won
the Vanderbilt athletic department‘s Jim Robbins Award for All-Around
Athletic and Academic Excellence.
Menees is also an active volunteer with the Ronald McDonald House,
Vanderbilt Children‘s Hospital and Kid‘s Zone, which involves taking
underprivileged children to Vanderbilt football games.
Stephen John McGuire of Baton Rouge, La., for the School of
Engineering. McGuire graduated with a bachelor‘s degree in mechanical
engineering. Since spring 2004, McGuire has been taking both
undergraduate and graduate level classes in the accelerated master of
science program in management of technology. He is conducting research
into the effects of third party process certifications on the market
value and systematic risk of publicly traded firms. He plans to
complete his master‘s degree at Vanderbilt in the spring of 2006.
In addition to the Founder‘s Medal, McGuire was the first recipient
of the Nancy and Bruce M. Mayer Honor Scholarship. He has served as a
liturgical minister in the Vanderbilt Catholic community and was a
member of the Tau Beta Pi and Pi Tau Sigma engineering honor societies.
He also served as an officer in the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers and in Interhall, the residential life government.
Travis
Scott Henry of Morgantown, W.Va, for the School of Medicine. Henry came
to Vanderbilt from Virginia Tech, where he earned a bachelor of science
in biochemistry, graduating summa cum laude in 2001 after election to
the Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society. Henry gained research
experience the summer after his graduation, when he worked at
Vanderbilt‘s Ingram Cancer Center and conducted research that was
eventually published in Molecular and Cellular Biology.
Since his first year, Henry has worked with Dr. Frank Carroll in the
Department of Radiology, helping to develop a pulsed, tunable
monochromatic x-ray source for therapeutic and diagnostic medical use.
Henry co-founded Committed Couples, an organization that supports the
notion of healthy relationships in medical school and beyond. He will
complete an internship at Vanderbilt next year before beginning his
residency at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Mo., in diagnostic
radiology.
Candace Riehl of Mayfield, Ky., for the School of Nursing. Riehl is
the first graduate of the Women‘s Health Nurse Practitioner Master‘s
Program to receive the Founder‘s Medal. She completed the program with a 4.0, which she earned while
continuing her own midwife practice, providing guidance to midwifery
students and raising her four children.
Riehl‘s personal history led her to a career in midwifery. She had her first child when she was 16, and the treatment
and care she received from her midwife sparked a desire to provide that
same care to other women. She joined the military and became a
distinguished honor graduate in a patient administration training
program at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, in 1981. She graduated with honors
in nursing in 1992. She became a certified midwife in 1996 and began
her own practice in rural Kentucky, where she continues to train
midwifery students from four universities, including Vanderbilt.
Media contact: Melanie Catania, (615) 322-NEWS
Melanie.catania@vanderbilt.edu