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 Joey Driscoll, Hope Dworkin, and Danika Grieser:

Joey Driscoll has developed near native fluency in ALS and recently completed a student teaching placement at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. Within linguistics, she is noted for her exceptional writing, analysis, and scholarly engagement. She recently presented her linguistics thesis work at an international conference in the U.K.

She is self-taught in the violin and performs with the College’s Orchestra. Joey has also served as a Teaching Assistant, Writing Associate, and Speaking Associate (SPA). As a Writing Center Lead Fellow, she helped design trainings for future SPAs. As a FLI student, she regularly attended FLI resource fairs to familiarize students with the Writing Program.  

Noted for her creativity and boundless energy, Joey dressed up as “Lady WAWA” for the Writing Center’s end of the year Write-In, in which she wore a skirt made out of marked-up pages from her thesis and sang a Lady Gaga song.

Joey recently received the Fulbright Deafness Studies award to Italy, where she will work with the Sienna Arts Institute to develop a curriculum for deaf and hard-of-hearing children.

Hope Dworkin majored in art and art history and is graduating with High Honors. They are known for being a “mature and insatiably curious student-artist.” They recently completed an 11-sided zoetrope-like sculpture and had a solo exhibition in the List Gallery.

Highly adept at archival work, Hope produced an Art History thesis on scaffolding in New York City. As such, they "synthesized major works in urban history, casting light on an oft-ignored part of the urban environment.” Hope served as a research assistant on an urban and architectural history project that involved senior scholars and was viewed as an equal member of the team.

Hope helped create a strong sense of community on campus. They organized community dinners and outings for arts majors, and initiated a Moby Dick Read-a-thon that invited students, faculty, and staff to participate. At the College’s radio station, WSRN, they trained and supported 30 student DJs each semester, and as a Machine Shop and MakerSpace woodshop technician, Hope was the only student allowed to run certifications for other students.

Danika Grieser is graduating with Honors and a major in economics with a minor in political science. She is a well-rounded student of economics, known for her nuanced thinking and interpersonal skills. Within political science, she is noted for her excellent analytical and synthetic abilities.

As a Lang Opportunity Scholar, Danika’s expansion of the Tribal Court of Appeals Project seeks to codify legal precedent for the Flatland Reservation, her home of origin. Danika was the primary organizer for the Navajo Symposium that was held at Swarthmore, and served on the College Committee on Indigenous Relations with Indigenous Peoples.  

Danika has been deeply involved in Get Out the Vote work. As President and Treasurer of SwatVotes, she planned large-scale election events. She was also co-chair of Students for Ballot PA, working to make primary elections more inclusive of independent voters. With a Project Pericles grant, she organized a rally of students from across the state at the State Capitol.

Danika also served as Student Government Organization Vice President, Acting President, and the Board of Managers Student Representative. She was a member of the College Renaming of Trotter Hall Task Force and was a Lang Center Associate who has trained other LCAs.

The Lang Award is given to “a graduating senior in recognition of outstanding academic accomplishment.” This year the award was given to William Trone.

Will Trone was a double major in biology and mathematics and graduated Highest Honors. 

Will is known an independent and highly talented researcher who works at the level of an advanced graduate student. His Honors project on antiviral immune signaling in erythroid progenitors (cells that differentiate into red blood cells) embraces an ambitious research question with implications for human health and disease.

Within mathematics, he demonstrated mastery of both theoretical and applied aspects of mathematics. During the fall semester, Will trained for the Mathematical Contest in Modeling and produced a paper that tied together knowledge what he learned from multiple math classes.

Will is also known for being a generous mentor to other students and served as a catalyst. He has been praised for his ability to relay complicated and nuanced findings to a broad audience of his peers, and for his contributions leading classroom discussions.

Outside of the classroom, Will served as a Green Advisor, was co-president of the Swarthmore Taiwanese Association, and secretary of the Swarthmore Pan-Asian Association. Will is also a talented cellist and competed as a varsity swimmer during his time at Swarthmore.

The McCabe Engineering Award, presented each year to the "outstanding engineering student of the graduating class," was awarded to Ben Aaron and Zoe Sperduto.

Ben Aaron is graduating with dual degrees in Engineering and Mathematics, having taken additional Honors-level course work in Educational Studies to understand how to support student learning of engineering and mathematics, a combination that reflects his analytical rigor, academic interests, and curiosity. As a freshman at Swarthmore, Ben was awarded the Morris Monsky Prize in Mathematics, a prize awarded to first-year students who have demonstrated outstanding promise and enthusiasm in the field. Since then, Ben has continued to distinguish himself as a scholar and community member.

Ben is interested in sustainability in the built environment and has conducted research at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Purdue University, and at Swarthmore’s Wood Mechanics Lab. Most recently, his research has resulted in a conference presentation titled Spatial Variation in Structural Lumber Strength: Experimental Testing and Probabilistic Model, for which he earned an engineering video award at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.

Beyond academic excellence, Ben has been a consistent and generous community member. Ben has served in leadership roles for Swarthmore’s student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Student Advisory Group in Engineering. He contributed for three years to the College’s peer support network as a Student Academic Mentor, where he was known for his dedicated work helping other students develop their academic skills. Ben also served as a Teaching Assistant in the Engineering Department, and a clinician in the Mathematics Department.

Ben’s work has been recognized at the national level. He is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship awardee, which will support his graduate studies. This fall, Ben will begin pursuing a Ph.D. in civil engineering with a concentration on structural engineering at the University of Delaware.

Zoe Sperduto grew up in New York City, where early exposure to the intersection between the built environment and society motivated her commitment to integrating civil engineering solutions with the communities they are designed to support. At Swarthmore, Zoe pursued these interests by completing a major in Engineering alongside minors in Mathematics and Educational Studies.

During her time at Swarthmore, Zoe contributed significantly to the Engineering Department. She served in leadership roles with the Student Advisory Group in Engineering and the Society of Womxn Engineers. As a Writing Associate and Lead Fellow in that program, Zoe developed and led a series of technical writing workshops for first-year engineering students. Zoe presented her research on engineering writing pedagogies at the Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association conference.

Zoe has also performed research at Northeastern University and Swarthmore’s Wood Mechanics Lab, focused primarily on enabling a circular economy in the building industry. Her research has culminated in a peer-reviewed conference paper titled U.S. perspectives on deconstruction and reuse of structural wood products, coauthored by Amelia Landry ‘26, Abigail Peters ‘26, and Assistant Professor Fiona O’Donnell.

Zoe’s scholarly contributions have earned national recognition. She placed second in the Society of Women Engineers Undergraduate Research Poster Competition and was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to support her graduate studies.

This fall, Zoe will begin an S.M.-Ph.D. program in civil engineering at MIT, conducting research in both the Department of Architecture and the Department of Civil Engineering with a focus on increasing sustainability in the built environment.