2008 Stryker Awards
With the school year’s end barely out of reach, most of our minds are beginning to set into summer mode – the seniors are thinking about jobs or grad school and the rest of us are wondering whether or not we’ll be coming back in the fall. There are a select few of us, however, who can look back at this last year and know that they did something right, something that the school even bothered to recognize. Those individuals are the individuals who were recognized this past Tuesday night at the 32nd (check this) annual Stryker Awards.
The Stryker Awards are given to students and a staff member who have shown outstanding dedication to the university as a either a part of their student organization, or as being a role model for the rest of us to admire. This year’s Stryker award winners included students from many of the diverse fields and organizations here at IIT, including TechNews’ own Karina Powell. Other winners included members from Union Board and Student Government Association, among other organizations.
Not only is this award given to students and staff members who deserve recognition for going above and beyond what is expected of them, but it was also awarded to an organization this year – the IIT chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB). For the past several years, EWB has been working closely with local residents as well as other student organizations on campus to provide electricity to Pignon High School, which required EWB members to actually visit the site and meet members of the school’s administration.
This year’s Richard Babcock Leadership Award went to Ellen Kloppenborg, a Junior Chemical Engineering student with the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The Babcock Leadership Award is the only Stryker Award to carry with it a cash prize, which was awarded to Kloppenborg with her parents in attendance. She said that she would take her parents out to dinner with the award money.
Congratulations to Ellen and all of the other award winners. On behalf of the student body, thank you for your dedication to the university and for committing your time to help improve student life here so that the rest of us can enjoy the fruits of your labor.
