Student Spotlight

Mira Yin (‘23, SOE/HC) and Sarah Velez (‘23, SEBS/HC) are Honors College students with a shared passion for service work. They co-founded a group called the Purple Hats Project, which works to hand-craft purple hats for the organization Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey. This organization then delivers these hats to hospitals where they are handed out to new parents to raise awareness of Shaken Baby Syndrome.

When the Honors College opened its doors in the fall of 2015, its staff and leaders told their first class that they would play a major role in defining its mission, as captured in the motto “Curiosity.  Knowledge.  Purpose.”  The story of A2E (Asset Based Community Driven Education, or Access to Education) exemplifies how fully the students embraced that mission and their long-lasting impact on the community.  The A2E program has grown from a group of students determined to build bridges with the community to a full-fledged tutoring and mentoring partnership with the ci

Last spring, the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and long histories of violence and discrimination spurred national protests and activism. Like the rest of the country, the Honors College at Rutgers–New Brunswick and its students, staff, and faculty deeply felt the impact of these events. The renewal of the Black Lives Matter movement brought to the surface the many ways inequality persists in our society and what we as the Honors College can do to foster a deeper culture of belonging for all.

Ankita Kodali began Rutgers Business School-New Brunswick as a shy student who sat in the back of the room and listened quietly when she joined a campus organization.

By the second half of her sophomore year, she had served in one or two leadership positions in small student groups and accepted the role of president for the Rutgers Business School Innovation Committee (RBSIC), which works closely with the Office of Career Management. By the end of her senior year, she would be president of two other student groups.

When Nadia Fedoryka came to Rutgers four years ago, she wasn’t sure the direction she should take but knew she had time to figure it out.

She loved science but wanted to know what makes individuals tick. Understanding the economy, she thought, would help her in life and whatever career she chose.

So Fedoryka decided to take an interdisciplinary approach to life and school and see where it would take her. 

Jeremy Lewan says he’s wanted to be a meteorologist since he was five years old. And now the Rutgers senior has been awarded the 2021 American Meteorological Society (AMS) Orville Family Endowed Scholarship for $10,000, the top prize in the country offered by AMS.

Lewan, who was born and raised in Bayonne, is currently a senior at the Honors College at Rutgers University- New Brunswick majoring in Meteorology with a 4.0 grade point average.